It was fifty years ago that young Peter Leroy unintentionally pulled a fast one on the people of Babbington, New York. With a design ripped from the pages of Impractical Craftsman magazine, he built a flying aerocycle in his parents' garage. Then, before a breathless audience, he took off into th...
I could hear my father downstairs, whistling, as he did whenever a burst of enthusiasm came over him and he felt for a while as if he were a boy again, feeling the boyish lift of possibility in his life. I was as reluctant to join my father in building the aerocycle as I was to join him in his en...
G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds THE DAY WAS NEARLY PERFECT for traveling: clear and cool and still. As I pulled onto the road, my heart was full of the mad hope that Spirit might on this promising day take to the air and fly me to my next stop. “Let’s go, Spirit,” I coaxed her. “Let’s rise up, l...