She was only sixteen, but her paint was faded, her tailwheel smashed, and mice nested in her belly. She had suffered a hard landing in a farmer’s field near Delta Junction, and there she lay for three Alaska winters until my father rescued her in 1963. Fourteen months of his loving attention restored the 1947 Aeronca Chief to like-new condition. That fall I was off to college in Seattle, where I started flying lessons. The following summer, 1965, I worked […]