It didn’t take much to get the glider airborne. The wind was gusting and I was standing hundreds of feet above the ground so a simple forward arm movement and a gentle letting-go propelled the two-ounce balsa projectile on its way … on a flight through American history.
If you weren’t homeless or destitute or prone to dreaming about Kraft Singles, how long would you stand in line for free cheese? In Tillamook, Oregon it would appear to be a daily habit and thousands and thousands of our nation’s most lactose-tolerant will stand on line until, well, until the cows come home for what amounts to a sweaty little handful of cheese cubes. At first, it appears to be a sickness, the kind that makes fat people fatter, but then it suddenly becomes endearing and American and, finally, you realize that these free-cheese-cube-hander-outers should be celebrated as the shrewd cheddar pimps they truly are.
It was 1972 and Bobby-Ellen used to like to drive with her top down.
Her hair was brown unless the light hit it in a certain way and then it was red. On the farming side of town there were horses out in the pastures the same color, chestnuts. She wore it long and wild and she washed it every second day with Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific. Hair was important, it defined who you were, how you rolled and what you stood for so, Bobby-Ellen figured, people should be able to smell it a mile away.