UP UP AND AWAYYY!

 Okay, Halloween has come and gone and I just can't get a memory out of my head about a kid I went to school with.  His father was one of the only people I have ever known who made his fortune as a true inventor.  It always seemed to me, however, that the inventions were totally out of place.  He was the kind of person that, in theory, would be good to have with you in an emergency situation.  Given  little more  to work with than a tampon string and an Eggo waffle, he might  invent something that could  really  save your life.  In reality, however, the invention would have as little relevance to the surroundings you were in  as a ham and cheese  sandwich does to a bull fight.  With this in mind, let's move on two ingredient number two for this story.
     When I was growing up, just North of Los Angeles, the Santa Ana winds would blow twice a year.  Once in the Spring, and again in the Fall.  They are VERY strong and have been known to lift Spanish tile roofs, one tile at a time, and throw them over the house until there is nothing but bare wood on the windward side of the house.  Kids love it because it blows the Hell out of everything and has gusts so g that it isn't unusual to be talking with one of your friends  one moment and suddenly watching them land face first in the dirt the next.  So what does this have to do with an inventor and Halloween?  Well, happily, at least as far as this story is concerned, Halloween is in the Fall.  I know. You're asking, "How the Hell do these two things relate?", right?  Well in order for these two things to even begin to get funny, we need a final component.  We need the desire of a small boy to be a pilot for Halloween.
   
     The costume this man made  was absolute GENIUS.   It was a World War II  fighter pilot in a Dauntless Dive Bomber. The kid was  dressed with a fur hat and goggles and the rest of his body was designed  to resemble the fuselage complete with a vertical fin attached to his butt. His father had made  hollow "wings" out of cardboard taped around the edges of a pair of crutches that he could hold tight to his armpits.  The nose of the aircraft was a tapered box on his chest with a propeller on the front. He even had small cardboard fairings on his legs and  two round pieces attached to his shins to resemble landing wheels.  The entire thing was painted a beautiful navy blue; nose art and identification numbers as well.  I could see him standing in his kitchen from our living room window.  When he held still, he looked like a display from the Smithsonian Aviation Museum.  But that's not what Halloween costumes are for, are they?  No. They're for walking around in to get candy.  And here is where we get to put all the ingredients together into a  sick , twisted , 'Easy Bake Oven' of Fate, and then coax it, with the help of a small irony powered light bulb,  into a recipe for disaster.
     Jeremy stepped off the front porch and for a brief instant he was RESPLENDENT!!  The sun shined on the smooth upper surfaces of the wings and his white scarf  lifted off the edge if his collar.  He WAS a fighter pilot!.....And then the stiff  Santa Ana winds took notice of Jeremy.

     A gust of wind assaulted the brave fighter pilot as he attempted to taxi onto the front yard.  For a brief moment, with his  nose pointed defiantly at the raging tempest, it looked as though Jeremy was going to succeed and ride out into the wild blue yonder.  But it wasn't to be.  The wind caught the under side of the wings and propelled him backward across the yard  with a speed usually reserved for catapults.  His little feet, encumbered by cardboard landing gear, pinwheeled as fast as they could, but were unable to make 
purchase.  The wings folded up over his head and the wind swatted him into the chain link fence along  the side yard like a mosquito on a windshield.   Being a child myself, I did the only thing I could.  I howled with laughter.  Were it not for the fact that his parents were standing right on the porch, I am sure that the wind would have  squeezed him piece meal through the fence like so much  Parmesan cheese.

     Fear not. Jeremy is  now an inventor himself and lives in Iowa.  I hear he takes the train anywhere he goes too.