Barn roof bad for cardboard aeronautics
BURTON W. COLE, Editor
By Burton W. Cole
The cardboard box whapped against the rungs as I dragged it behind me up the ladder. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“It’s a perfect idea,” said Ollie, my third cousin twice removed, but not removed far enough to keep me from getting folded, spindled, stapled or mutilated.
Cousin Ollie always popped up with preposterous plans. I always groaned, “I don’t think this is a good idea,” to which he claimed, “It’s a perfect idea.”
Later, after the ambulance would leave, Ollie would shake his head. “I don’t know what went wrong. It was perfect.”
It never was. Like this hairbrained scheme.
The cardboard box once held a refrigerator or a water heater or some other heavy, nonflying object like that. I wrestled the thing onto the barn roof. “A kid can’t build an airplane out of a cardboard.”
Ollie snatched the box and dragged it up the shingled incline. “Maybe kids like you can’t, but farm kids with imagination can do anything.”
I glanced down, gasped, and scrunched my eyes closed. “This is kinda high up.” I army-crawled across the roof. “I prefer heights where they belong — ABOVE me. That’s why they’re called heights.”
“Oh, come on, Burtie. I’ve been running up and down that ladder all morning with airplane parts.”
Ollie folded a couple of lawn chairs and positioned them inside the box, one facing front and one looking aft. “Besides, we have to start high up. Our plane doesn’t have an engine. Dad caught me before I could get the motor out of the lawnmower.”
“Then how does the plane stay up?”
“It’ll be a glider. You and I will swoop along on the breezes.”
“We? Not me. I’m not a we.”
“Don’t be a wienie. It’ll be fun.”
“I’m stocked up on fun. My last ambulance ride was only three weeks ago.”
Ollie grinned. “Sorry about that. You never should have grabbed that bull by his horns.”
“You told me to.”
Ollie snickered. “Yeah.” From a pillowcase he used as a backpack, Ollie pulled out one of Aunt Tillie’s serving trays. “You’re the tail glider. Use this rudder to steer the plane.”
“Steer?”
“Now help me attach the wings.” Ollie positioned the big cardboard box onto Aunt Tillie’s collapsed ironing board.
“Wings,” Ollie said. “Get the baling twine and duct tape out of the pillow case. Let’s get these wings attached.”
I tossed him the baling string and began turning box and board into a mummy with the duct tape. “Your mom isn’t going to like you stealing the ironing board.”
“Wings, Burtie. And it’s Tuesday. Laundry day’s not till Thursday.” Ollie scratched his ear. “If we took the back wheels off my sister’s tricycle, we could rig them on the legs of the ironing b…, I mean, wings for landing gear.
“This is a bad idea.”
“It’s perfect. Woulda been even better with the mower motor. We coulda flown all the way to Grandma’s house. She always bakes cookies on Tuesday.”
I will spare the reader the details of our flight, mostly because my eyes were closed through the whole thing. But I was right — it was a bad idea.
It was a bad idea from the moment we screamed off the barn roof (“Burtie, stop screaming!”) until we touched down in the manure pile what felt like three years later. In truth, we dropped like a cardboard rock, like a couple of nincompoops into the… well, you know.
Aunt Tillie yelled at us the whole time she hosed us down with the garden hose. She never paused for breath while we had to hold ours to keep from being drowned.
She never used that ironing board again.
“That was a bad idea,” I groaned.
Cousin Ollie shook his head. “I know what went wrong. You forgot to steer.”
I duct taped him to a tree.
We’re pretty sure Burt’s faulty memory about his childhood is acting up again. Send the real story to news@falmouthoutlook.com