Thank you Ken-that was lovely.
Saint-Exupery was a pilot,as you know, so that was pretty a propos!
Speaking of pilots, I was at the Long Beach Air Show a few months back and
there was a delightful gentleman there with a scale Curtiss-Jenny. Named for
his mother and with a small photo of his 1930s pilot dad, he had built it
himself and flown it to Oshkosh and back! There was a young man who was
talking to him about how he had always wanted a bi-plane-to feel the wind in
his face-the whole romance of it! But, felt it was beyond his means-and
difficult to find. I told him-"Get a little british sportscar, like a
Triumph Spitfire-it's almost the same idea!" The Curtiss-Jenny man laughed
and said "Exactly!"
And we were comrades.
Laura G. and Nigel
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Bertschy <kentop@dakotacom.net>
To: Spitfires@Autox.Team.Net <Spitfires@Autox.Team.Net>
Date: Thursday, December 31, 1998 6:00 PM
Subject: Spitfire stories
>Wow. Great stories all around. The most enjoyable reading I've done all
year.
>To cap all these stories off, here's a quote from a children's book called
>"The Little Prince" by Antoine De Saint-Exupery:
>
>The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
>"You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one
>has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first
>knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have
>made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world."
>And the roses were very much embarassed.
>"You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for
>you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just
>like you - the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more
>important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that
>I have watered: because it is she that I have put under the glass globe;
>because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is
>she that I have listened to, when she grumbled or boasted, or even
>sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is MY rose.
>
>He went back to meet the fox. And the fox said, "And now here is my secret,
>a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
>what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time you have devoted
>to your rose that makes your rose so important. Men have forgotten this
>truth. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for
>what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."
>
>Now, substitute the word "rose" with the word "Spitfire"
>
>Pretty profound children's book, eh? Happy New Year
>
>
>
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