The letter, on yellowing paper whose edges are beginning to crumble, is dated "Jan 31," without a year. It's one of surprisingly many that I wrote home from college—evidently I had no life—and it doesn't take much sleuthing to figure out that the year was 1964. I was 20. I had learned to fly and acquired an instrument rating during a two-year hiatus in my formal education, and was now hatching a scheme of building my own airplane. This was an undertaking for which I had no qualifications whatsoever, but mere incapacity does not daunt the young.
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