K_Biker_Bill

I was a freshman in high school when my father was temporarily posted to Castle AFB in Atwater, CA. Dale Root's construction article about his ‘Ascender’ had recently been published in American Modeler magazine in August 1957. I loved the looks of the Ascender immediately and read every word of the article many times. RC for boys was just a dream, completely out of the question at that time; not only because of the cost, but also for someone like me who had to pack and move on a regular basis. I generally flew control line and free flight, but was allowed only a shoe-box sized personal gear container at moving time. I packed my model magazines and my few engines and had to give all my carefully-built models away. The time in Atwater was only for a few months (B-52 school for my father), so I was limited to hand launched gliders there, albeit nice flying ones from Jetco.

My parents announced an upcoming weekend visit to Oakland/San Francisco, and I immediately began pressuring my mother to allow me a quick visit to ‘Root’s Hobby Hut’ as Dale called his hobby shop. My father the cold-warrior didn’t care at all for my incessant model building, and would have never have made such a stop except for my mother’s influence. As we approached Oakland he finally agreed to make a quick detour to the shop. It was Sunday morning, and so the store was closed, but I had roughly a minute to stand outside and look through the windows before he began barking at me from the car that we had wasted enough time there. What a great place it was too. Dale’s fabulous Ascender hung right in that front window, and I believed it to be a masterpiece.

Forty nine years have passed since that minute at the shop, but I still dream of the visit occasionally. Invariably, I walk back and forth along the storefront, but have difficulty finding the door. When I do, I somehow find it impossible to approach closer than a few feet.

I continued building models non-stop until I left for college, and my father *****ed and moaned continually about what a waste of time it was. I knew better though. It was one of the few ways I had to cope with the kind of lonely and transient life I led, and it was powerful medicine too. I went to sixteen schools, and modeling kept me out of trouble and focused on aviation the whole time. Then too, I always found an instant pal the moment I met another model builder.

I just received the Ascender plans from the AMA plans service, but sure would like to have that entire issue of American Modeler, or even just a copy of Dale's article. Any help from you guys would sure be appreciated.

Bill