“Yes, I knew Wilbur Wright,” the white-haired, blue-eyed old man said as he reached for a beer and then sat back in his chair, pushing back the dark cowboy hat draped across his head in the process, “and Orville, for that matter. In fact it was Wilbur who taught me how to fly. I was the only American he taught while he was traveling through Europe. Let me see, it was… uh… in 1908 I think. Yep…1908.”
We sat on the east side of his beautiful ranch home protected from the murderous glare of a Kansas sun in the deep shade of the wide veranda. An ice cooler filled with freshly chilled beer sat at our feet. He sat in the canvas of a folding wooden chair with a cold brew in one hand and a smile on his handsome, weather-creased face.
I knew he was somewhere around eighty or more.
But to look at
