Pop did help me in a couple of areas, though. We had a little house (not a shack, remember. Not a shack), and Poppa and Momma’s biggest contribution to things in my life today were that they were always looking for ways to make things better.

Momma would try to save money on milk by buying a cow, and putting it in a small, fenced-in area out back. Pop made more money slowly, by figuring out how concrete worked, and letting the engineers know when their plans were off by just a bit. And what that would mean for the road they were building one, two, ten, or twenty years into the future. My parents were bright people, Jane. If I could get into a time machine and go anywhere, I’d love to go back and see their courtship. Were they both on the outside looking in, the way I was as a kid? How did they find each other? And why couldn’t I have ever found that someone?

School was- well it was awful. For me at least. The teacher would show us how to do a math problem on the blackboard, I’d get it, and then be ready for more. But I couldn’t do more, because the other kids hadn’t caught up. I was like a runner who had to have a pair of dumbells strapped to his feet whenever the starting gun went off. This kept going through grammar school, middle school. I didn’t have hardly any friends, really, since I wasn’t good at baseball (it was still America’s pastime then- not that I’d be great at football or running around with the black boys playing basketball these days, either), and never quite figured out how to talk to girls until that ship sailed.

But you know, Jane, sometimes the world has a way of easing you into things. Sometimes you don’t even know where you’re going, or where you’ve been going until you’re already there.

Me, one day I was just sitting back on a grassy hill near our house. I did that a fair bit back then. The War was on, and instead of going home after school and watching TV like so many kids have been doing since the 50s, after I had another crappy day slogging through school I’d go out back and just flop down on the green grass and look up at the sky.

Tom Riechert, the school superstar sportsman from 3rd grade to the end of high school, picked me out as his special punching bag. He’d clout me, I’d make the kids laugh at him, and he’d get his toadies to clout me some more. I knew I was in for some serious beatings from him when he got this little, kind’ve crazy look in those ice blue eyes of his. Then anything could have happened. I saw him pick up a tree branch and beat on Izzy Finklestien with it until his head was bloody and he said ‘uncle’ in Yiddish. Why? Well, he was Jewish, of course. What more did you need back then? Poor Izzy didn’t speak a word of Yiddish- his family were only nominally practicing Jews, but with a name like that, there was no way the poor kid was going to get any peace as long as there were Tom Riecherts in the schools, on the baseball team, and the football team, and rich enough that he could throw parties for the cool kids every weekend.

The American Airman had made his first few appearances by then; a few blurry pictures and write ups in the local paper. I think every boy back then wanted to fly planes and shoot down the Nazis. Even blond-haired blue-eyed kids like Riechert knew the right thing to do was shoot ole’ Fritz between the eyes if he had a chance. And Fritz spoke German, wore a steel helmet, and fired grease guns at all the comic book flying ace heroes, like Crash Carson or Dan Dare. Maybe that’s why they made me into the Airman’s regular foe- Moth-Man had a nice, same-first-letter ring to it, huh? Doncha think?

Okay, Jane, I get it. Focus. Indulge me- this is the first time anyone’s wanted to hear me talk about anything other than ratting out a partner since I can’t remember when. Where was I? Oh yeah. Riechert, and the American Airman.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Well, when the Airman started getting more press and better pictures, I guess someone in the propaganda department had the bright idea of making him into a comic book hero and getting the kids behind the war effort. Up until then they only had pictures of him wearing either street clothes or his full, crisp airman’s uniform, epaulets, wedgie hat and all. Me, I think the boys in the propaganda department decided they needed something that was everyman, an American pilot, and something a little extra- kind’ve like a god-boy thing going on. I mean, who really knows how the guy got his powers, right? The comic books say he got them when he got hit by a lightning bolt, standing up on a raft when his plane crashed at sea. But who knows, really? They stopped talking about the lightning angle when the dozenth boy got hisself fried standing out in a storm, holding a big metal stick in the air, hoping they’d get zapped and be able to fly, too.

But even with that, suddenly, the Airman went from being just something out of the ordinary to being just . . . everywhere. I mean, before the only flying hero was that comic book guy in the blue suit with the ‘S’ on his chest. Remember him? Suddenly, we all were all everything about the American Airman. When he burst out of the clouds in the newsreel, wearing that pilot’s leather jacket and the goggles, but his hair never came out of place, right down to the little black curl in the middle of his forehead? And the big red-white-and-blue ‘A’ on his chest in a fancy-shmancy shield logo over his heart? I think at that moment every boy in America wanted to be the American Airman, and every gal wanted to have his babies. You know?

And that’s when I wanted to fly, Jane. I laid down on my back one day, looked up at the sky, and I had this thought. Not quite a vision, but a thought. Not of American Airman flying through the clouds, but a real-live man, with real wings, floating, flying, looking up at the sun and flying higher and closer with every swoop and dash. I wasn’t going to try it the easy way- too many kids got their insides turned out trying to catch lightning bolts. Nope, I knew that even if that’s how ole’ double-A did get his super power, God doesn’t let it strike twice the same way.

But I did have a way with machines.

See, I had friends who would look at an engine like it was a magician’s top hat. Something totally magical and mysterious, but you knew if you said the right words and did the right things, rabbits and doves’d start jumping and flying out of it.

But to me, Jane, an engine wasn’t any more complicated than a pair of drapes on a running track. I found out first I could take most things apart, then after a few more years of taking things apart, I found out I could do a pretty decent job of putting them back together, too. I started doing it for a few extra bucks on the side- fixing old-man-Merkley’s lawnmower, or opening up the blender for Jennie Brando’s mom and finding the wire that’d come loose made me enough money for a month’s worth of weekend John Wayne movies.

And soon, after we heard about the Airman, I started thinking about how I’d make a pair of wings, something that could make me as able as the American Airman in the sky. Maybe if I impressed him enough he’d take me on as his sidekick! I even started thinking about what my hero name would be. Air-boy wasn’t catchy enough. Wing-lad didn’t have it either. I shelved the name hunt, thinking that it’d be a better idea to have the wings working first before I tried to get a cool name to go with them.

Oh, and as for names? Yeah, I asked my mom once why they named me ‘Icarus.’ All the kids at school called me ‘Icky.’ She said my dad thought a man who flew too close to the sun and got burned was way better than a man who worked as a drudge everyday of his life and had nothing to show for it but a little box of ashes buried six feet under.

So, maybe because of that, and the Airman, and just because I found I liked machines, I didn’t go looking to get hit by lightning. Nope, I went looking for what we’ve all wanted since we were old enough to want to fly:

I wanted wings.

TO BE CONTINUED...