Page 39 - Sorghum
P. 39
Dr. E. W. Branyon’s Bio
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caboose while the train was still moving fast. That was exciting. The world was awkward and slow moving then. We’ve come a long way in a short time.
We’d also build model airplanes out of balsa wood with rubber-band motors, working sometimes an entire week on one. We’d fly it once and watch it crash and break on the ground. It never discouraged us because we’d be back building another one, and pretty soon got them to fly pretty well.
Every now and then a barnstorming airplane would come by and take people for a ride for $5. Daddy never gave me the $5 but it was enough to see the plane. As a senior I went to Montgomery with Boy’s State, an organi- zation for apprentice politicians. They took us to Maxwell Air Force base and I saw lots of planes. After moving to Anniston, I flew about five times a year, but Daddy’s only plane trip was in 1964 when I took him from Bir- mingham to a National School Board meeting in Houston. As Daddy described it:
One of those low rumbling thunder storms struck Birmingham just as the plane went aloft. Lightning and thunder was popping all around us, above and
