Treat Williams is a neighbor of mine and he was at my house
Our kids go to school together. And he was at my house one day and he saw the airplane from Wow! City! and he said, “Wow, airplane!”
“Let’s do an airplane book.” And I thought, “Okay. I have an idea.” My father lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is the home of the largest air show in the United States with 10,000 airplanes every summer. You can’t get a hotel room in Oshkosh during the air show for love of money — it’s booked out five years.
I said, “Look, if you fly us to the air show, we can stay with my Dad and we can make a book about it.” He said, “Okay.” So what we did is
Well, first of all, I mean, this is so cool, this book. I mean, we have this is Navajo 95 Charlie Lima, which is Treat’s airplane, and that is the authentic actual instrument panel. So all you need is a cardboard box and this book and you’ve got an airplane.
Now, when we went on this trip
I went with Treat and two pilots from Delta Airlines who had flown in military and had flown
I mean, these guys were so veteran pilots, Carl and Harry.
I’m gonna read you just a little bit. What was so interesting to me was the way they talked. Dad and Carl ran through the takeoff checklist. “Fuel full,” Carl asked. “Check,” said Dad. “Flaps for takeoff?” “Check.” “Radio’s on?” “Check.” “Let’s taxi out. Ready to go?” “Yep.” “Check avionics?” “Got em.”
“Directional gyro?” “Check.” “Transponders?” “Set.” “Navajo 95 Charlie Lima taxi into position and hold.” “95 Charlie Lima, positioned to hold, Roger that.” “I’m gonna fly in a stunt plane,” Ellie said. “You can’t. You have to be a pilot,” said Gil. “I will be a pilot some day,” said Ellie.
So the dialogue, you know, was so much fun about this. “Okay, line her up. Check the heading. Yep. Run the engines. Full power. Air speed’s alive. 95 knots and liftoff.” “Vroom!”
It was so much fun listening to this! Anyway, so once we get down to the air show, then we have the air show. And, of course, I went crazy because there’s nothing cooler than 10,000 airplanes in the whole planet earth. And there’s, you know, there are all these pilots and these guys had actually flew them, old guys in their 80s with big, Beechway Ford Liberator Bombers with windows, you know, with these signs in the window that said, “Jets are for kids.”
And so I drew a B17 and the Fokker Triplane
And we gotta have a big helicopter because
“Helicopters,” said Carl. “What’s so special about helicopters,” Ellie asked. “Can they do stunts?” “Some can,” Carl said. “But what’s really special is that they can they fly places that no airplane can — straight up, straight down and they hover in the air.”
“They can be flying ambulances and rescue people lost at sea.” These facts are really important for kids. And we have the Blue Angels. And “Wow,” said Ellie, “They can fly with wingtips as close as the length of a soda can at hundreds of miles per hour,” said Gil. Which is actually true. And Treat heard that from one of the Blue Angel pilots. Can you imagine, those big airplanes?
So, anyway, Ellie gets
finally, she’d been bugging ‘em that she wants to do stunts. She goes up in a pit special which, by the way, is this fantastic airplane, tiny, little stunt plane with a 13 foot wingspan. They can go do loops and barrel rolls and spins.
And then she does her loop and that’s kind of the highlight of the book. And she goes all the way around. And then they land. And then they take off. “Dad, can I be co-pilot,” is the last line of the book.