It’s a beautifully still Saturday morning in mid-September, with the last wisps of overnight fog gliding along timbered shorelines and curling into the moist air. Dawn and I and our dog Piper are in our Stinson, winging our way northeast across Puget Sound to Skagit Regional Airport (KBVS) in Burlington, Washington. We are making this short flight to attend EAA Chapter 818’s monthly meeting, where I am to be featured speaker. This is only my second public speaking engagement since college, and despite the rather humble occasion, I have a noticeable twinge of nerves. Today I’m making the conscious decision to stretch myself. It helps to remember that some of my favorite writers were also noted speakers, including some who wrote for FLYING.
I’ve subscribed to this venerable periodical since my early teens and read it in the local library for a few years before that. I’d peruse the news and gawp at the air-to-air photos and soak up every word of the articles, but first I’d head straight to the columns, for it was there that my love of aviation and appreciation of good writing were most equally rewarded. My two favorites were Len Morgan’s “Vectors” and Gordon Baxter’s “Bax Seat.” Morgan was everything I wanted to be, with the fortune of having been born in a more interesting age. There was such grace and poignancy to his writing, infused with the wisdom of a long life well lived, and a little sadness as well, for his more interesting age was one in which an aviator regularly lost compatriots he called friends.
