Lafe Pennington was everything Bud wasn’t. He graduated from the high-school, and was a clerk in the First National Bank. He was popular with the young ladies, and already wore a moustache. Lafe’s interest in aeronautics was older than Bud’s, but his knowledge was largely superficial. Young Pennington’s information did not extend much further than what he had written in an essay he read before the Scottsville Travel and Study Circle. This paper, entitled “The Development of the Aeroplane,” had been printed in the Globe-Register. Ever since its publication, Lafe had been trying to live up to the reputation it had brought him.
When Bud Wilson read the article, he at once pronounced it a “chestnut,” and declared that it was copied almost wholly from a magazine and an old one at that. Bud repeated this statement to Lafe himself on the memorable occasion when the aeroplane or glider dumped Bud.
While running the steam shovel at Greeley’s gravel pit, Bud had the long summer evenings to himself. There was a tool house, plenty of lumber, and, what prompted the manufacture of the small aeroplane, several long, steep switch tracks running down into the pit. After several weeks of work, based on a mass of magazine photographs, newspaper clippings, and scientific paper detailed plans, Bud finally constructed a pretty decent looking bi-plane airship, complete in all respects except as to the engine. It was a combination of the Curtiss planes and the Wright rudders, with some ideas of Bud’s in the wing warping apparatus.
This work was done in the abandoned engine house on the slope of the gravel hill above the pit. Lafe learned of the experiment through Mr. Greeley, who was rather proud of his young engineer, and who did not fail to talk about the amateur airship to those in the bank.
As chief aviation authority in Scottsville, Lafe felt it his duty to investigate. And, to Bud’s annoyance, the bank clerk made his first visit to the gravel pit on a Saturday afternoon just as Bud was about to make a trial flight.
“What do you think of her?” asked Bud proudly.
Lafe screwed up his mouth.
“Pretty fair, for a kid. But what’s the sense of it? You haven’t an engine, and I reckon you never will have one.”
“What’s the good of it?” repeated Bud. “I suppose you know the heavier-than-air car—the aeroplane—was developed before the experimenters had any power. If the Wright Brothers had waited for an engine, they’d never had a machine. The thing is to know how to fly. You can only learn by flying.”