The scene unfolds in a sharply mown hayfield on the outskirts of a smalltown in the Midwest, with the tang of the shorn stubs rising so that you can taste as well as breathe in the scent. The lower of the two stacked wings of the almost-new biplane brushes the tips of the stalks left standing, and music plays behind a young woman as she stands at the fence. She’s taking it in, listening to the low rumble of the radial engine, smelling the oil that reminds her of the machine shed back at the farm. The humidity will filter up into a mist tomorrow morning, but this early August evening stays clear enough and as bright as her eyes at the prospect of flight.
Back in the mid 1930s, my grandmother took her first joyride in a biplane. For $5 that she split with her best friend, Marion, Isabel Barker defied her father’s explicit instructions not to go up in one of those “newfangled contraptions” and snuck in the secret flight at the county fair in Maquoketa, Iowa. She confessed to him later, being the honest soul she was. But she never forgot that view from the front seat—perhaps a Standard.
