Pilot Logbook Lies And More [Hardcover]

Once upon a time . . . How else do you start a story on a white blank screen? Do you open the tale with some far-out statement that you, the author, have to maintain chapter by chapter? Or do you leave the writer some leeway to spin his or her story? Once upon a time gives the author that privilege. Lets start with a life that began because of some quirk of nature. Normally, when the many halves of a new life struggle their way up the warm, moist channels to meet the other half of a new life, one new life-form develops. However, in this particular sexual encounter, two spermatozoa overcame the odds and managed to penetrate a pair of ovum. Now two new life-forms begin their migration down the channel to fasten their growing cell bodies to the nourishing walls of the womb. Nine months later, two baby boys were born (a traumatic event probably best not remembered) and began their life journey. In the evolving tale, it will be up to the reader to determine if this is a compilation of fact, a mixture of fact and fi ction, or just pure fi ction. The fraternal twins grew up on a farm in the Midwest, and some of the rigors of farm living in the 1920s are part of the tale. However, it is used only to set the stage for one twins story. But wait! The twins were not alone. Two brothers preceded them so closely in this family that only two years separated the youngest from the oldest. A sister was born when the twins were fi ve. The mother of these fi ve children died shortly after the fi fth baby was born. The fathers mother stepped in to care for the newborn and at the same time tackled the task of raising and infl uencing the lives of four rambunctious boys. Five years later, the father remarried, and fi ve children were born to this second marriage, but so much later that they had little to no infl uence on the character of the elder fi ve. The fi rst four were close enough in age to present the same parental challenge as quadruplets. Each brother probably infl uenced al.