A Fairy Tale

This was the beginning of the flight of my life. It was March, 1971, and I was ready to depart the farm near Lexington, Nebraska, to go to Lincoln and then on to Mineral Point Wisconsin a day or two later in the EAA Biplane that was built by my dad. Though temperatures hovered just below freezing, the snowmobile suit kept things tolerably warm.

The purpose of the flight was to propose to my college girlfriend, Fairy, after meeting her parents. A cold front chased me all the way there and I had to divert from Mineral Point to Dubuque, Iowa, where they had an enclosed hanger to protect the plane during the snow that fell the night after I arrived and the following day. The flight went well except for one detail; I had no goggles, and by the time I arrived, my eyes were nearly the color of the airplane.

The next day Fairy’s parents loaned us the car to drive the forty miles to back to Dubuque to buy some ski goggles at a sporting goods store. We turned on the lights to make ourselves more visible in the falling snow and found a store with the goggles. However, on return to the car, we found that it wouldn’t start since “Captain Contagious” had forgotten to turn the lights off when they parked and had drained the battery.

While waiting for a local road assistance service to provide a jump start for the car, somehow the question popped out: Would you marry me? I got the prompt response: Are you serious? Yes, I was, but also a little perplexed by that time. Fortunately, she agreed to the proposal, for if she hadn’t, it would have been very awkward being stranded in a car waiting for the road assistance and later, it would have been a very cold ride back home in the biplane.

#biplane #airplane #snow #engagement