Cars and planes

 The older we grew, the less I was in the picture.

Sam moves up from kit models. He lays aside the gluing and fitting of plastic bits to move up to ship models. A small wood replica of a tall ship joins the vases and clock on the mantle. It is complete, with sales and small threads of rigging. Each detail is carefully hand painted, down to the tiny men on deck. 

Then he begins a much larger sailing vessel. In the evenings, the massive wood model almost three feet long begins construction on the dining table we hardly ever use anyway. But when he reaches the point of the rigging, his patience is over, and it goes into dry dock on top of his closet. 

Then it is slot cars. There is a track across from the Laundromat where my mom and I spend an evening once a week. Sam rides along, first renting a car and buying time to run it on one of the two large tracks. Soon my dad gets involved. The coffee table is covered with race cars under construction. They custom assemble chassis and rewrap the wiring of the electric motors. A soldering iron is almost always heating, so be careful. The clear plastic bodies are customized with small bottles of smelly paint. Pin stripping tape and decals are meticulously added. Many tires are eaten slick by being run around and around the same tracks. They practice on laundry nights, enter competitions on weekends. Slick looking cars are displayed on the mantle. 

Then, as Sam begins to learn to drive, my dad leads him into airplanes. These are constructed with balsa wood frames covered in thin nylon “silk” and painted with airplane dope. They move from electric engines to small gas engines. They learn up close and personal the mechanics of prop size and rigging wires to control lift. 

These aren’t the more expensive radio controlled planes, they are wire controlled. In the middle of a corn field in the San Fernando Valley, there are some blacktop pads marked with two circles. Men and boys show up, and when it is their turn, they fly. The pilot stands in the middle while the ground crew fires the engine. The pilot turns in a circle as the plane takes off, at the end of two wires that control and limit the flight. Around and around, maneuvering flips and circles in the air. Learning to take off and land, hopefully without crashing. On busy days, a turn may only last one tank of gas in the small engine. My dad’s flexible work schedule allows for occasional visits on weekdays for longer flight practice. There are competitions on weekends. 

Our coffee table is covered with balsa wood and fabric scraps. There are jars of airplane dope and thinner. The decals are bigger. And there are still small engine parts, sharp tools, and clutter. Planes hang here and there on hooks on the wall, with several favorite planes displayed near the fireplace. 

It is always about my dad and my brother. Their hobbies during most of my elementary school years dominated space and family time. I was sometimes taken along, the little sister tag-along obligation. I sometimes got to run a slot car, but never a good one. I was even given one that hadn’t run fast enough. I accidentally left it at the track and it was gone. They gave me a plane to try, a small one they couldn’t get to do flips. I followed their instructions carefully. They started it up, I got it to lift from the ground. I immediately flipped it, crashing it back down on it’s back. It was irreparably damaged. 

I wasn’t just the tag-along, I was the girl who always screwed it up. I never could enter their world and get anything right. 

When I think back on this, my heart cries. I did well in school. I was learning sewing and baking. I was beginning to write poetry, had an imagination few people even guessed at, and a singing voice I tried to hide because it was bigger than the sweet girl voices of my peers. 

Parents build what they value. In my family the only values  that mattered were my dad’s, and there always seemed to be very few things about me that were worth his time. It was more complicated than that, I know now. But I couldn’t begin to understand that then. So I grew up sad and trying harder to not screw up, so I could deserve to be loved.