ABSTRACT
I move back in time to another phase of my education: the Great Depression. I found it to be well-named, for it produced great depressions in man and boy alike. To my biased view, the Midwest, l’Amérique profonde, that expanse of flat land, flat speech, and flat-spirited people, prepared the mind for departure elsewhere, anywhere, that with luck might turn into permanent escape. For very young boys, escape took the form of constructing model airplanes and hiking out to the nearest airfield to watch proceedings. The exploits of World War I pilots, or of civilians such as Lindbergh, supplied arguments and even agreement among us boys in lazy summer hours on end. That background would lead many to flight training in the Army Air Corps or in the Navy. For some it would also lead to early death in what we came to call “our war.”
