I found this photo of the Fleet Model 2 that my grandfather was posing with when he was a young man. It looks like the kind of picture you would take of your new car, doesn't it? Maybe this was taken the day he got it. I don't know. But it's a nice-looking airplane. It's in pretty rough shape now, neglected for I don't know how long, decades,probably.
It's kind of sad to see it that way, but that's the way all our material possessions end up. Things we dearly longed to have eventually finish as just some old junk, stored in the attic or basement and forgotten, tossed out, donated, hauled to the dump. All the wishes to have, all the work you do to save the money to buy the most wonderful thing in the world and it ends up just being trash.
Oh, stop that, Wanda. You're going to depress yourself. So okay, maybe I will have the Fleet restored. It would make another great project for my boys, especially if they know once they get it in flying condition they can take to the skies in it and zoom around like Ace Drummond in the 1930s. ♫"Oh give me a ship and a song!"♬ Knowing them, one will pilot the Fleet and the other the Waco and they will dogfight each other. And their mom will be on the ground shouting up at the sky, "Be careful!"
