This morning they were riding to TPA, known to most people as the Tampa International Airport. It was a nice, slow, easy ride, and they had taken it many times before. They were going to meet their Great Aunt Joan and Great Uncle Mike who were arriving from Harmony, Rhode Island, or as some people from Providence put it, "the end of the earth."
Aunt Joan and Uncle Mike liked to sit in the front of the plane, and this had a simple explanation. Uncle Mike flew planes! If the pilot or co-pilot became disoriented, disinterested, or disabled for whatever reason, Uncle Mike would be ready to step-up and sit-in. Uncle Mike was not a commercial pilot, don't get that idea, and he had never flown anything bigger than a 9-seater, but he was ready, willing, and able. In short, if it could fly, he could fly it.
Aunt Joan was explaining all of this to a lady who was sitting next to her. The lady's husband leaned forward and asked Uncle Mike, "Are you going to the Air Show this weekend?" Uncle Mike said that he was definitely going to the Air Show this weekend, if it was nearby.
"It's right in Tampa, at MacDill Air Base, four miles from downtown."
When the cousins, Liam and Lara, met their Great Aunt and Uncle in the airport terminal, and everybody hugged everybody else, and said "Hello," and 'How was your trip?", and "How is everything going?" Uncle Mike asked the cousins, "Do you want to go to the Air Show?" The kids, speaking together, said, "Sure, tomorrow, but today we ride the bus." The cousins handed Aunt Joan and Uncle Mike two senior citizens bus passes, and they all rode from the airport to the downtown bus station, enjoying the scenic route through neighborhoods and passed city parks. If they had taken a taxi, they would have seen Interstate 275 East, and a hundred roadside advertisements for personal injury lawyers and breast enlargements procedures and pain management clinics; that kind of stuff.
When they arrived at Lara's parent's apartment, the "How was your trip?" chorus began all over again, and Joan and Mike moved into Grandma and Grandpa's bedroom, and Grandma and Grandpa moved into the storage room, where they had a king sized blow-up mattress. Liam's parents had recently moved to Tampa after being released from the State Prison where they had been serving six month for fraud, false pretenses, and uttering (They weren't guilty, of course, but they pleaded "no contest" and served the six months). Liam's parents were sleeping in a spare bedroom, and Liam was sleeping in the closet. Lara's parents had the master bedroom, with their own bath, and Lara was sleeping in the closet in what was now Uncle Mike and Aunt Joan's room. In short, everybody had a nice place to sleep, and all spaces were filled, but, as Grandma said, "There's always room for one-more." She must have been referring to some extra space on the king sized blow-up mattress that she shared with Grandpa.
Before long, it was time for few before-dinner drink, so everybody moved outside to a common picnic area and, later, had a big plateful of sausage and peppers on top of a mound of penne pasta. The cousins took Uncle Mike aside and showed him a satellite photo of MacDill Air Base and planned a route to the Air Show. A city bus passed close to a remote gate, they would enter through that gate, and skip all the traffic associated with an Air Show. Uncle Mike could see that the Gate and the area around it was marked as a Restricted Area. The cousins said that, surely, the area would not be restricted during an Air Show. Uncle Mike had his doubts about this, but the family was onto their after-dinner drinks, and the more Gallo's he drank, the more his doubts faded away, until he just didn't care any more.
Mid-morning, next day, the three of them got off the bus down by the back gate to MacDill Air Base and the Air Show. It was really quiet down there. The sign,"Restricted Area, Keep Out," was 6 feet tall. The gate was locked with a chain as thick as a child's wrist. Uncle Mike was about to suggest that they call a taxi. Lara walked up to the padlock that was holding the chain together, grabbed it with both hands, and gave it a violent tug. One tug, and the lock was open; three seconds later, they were on the other side of the fence.
Uncle Mike thought, 'This is not good," but he kept quiet. Before Uncle Mike had left Rhode Island, Uncle Charlie had told him about the children, "Just be agreeable, and don't talk too much. Everything will work-out fine. Trust me on that!"
Against his better judgment, Uncle Mike followed the children. After a few minutes, he started to get a nature-call and asked the cousins to be on the look-out for a men's room. Liam said, "Let's look in this building. Men's rooms are usually in buildings."
The "Restricted Area" sign on the door was not as large as the one on the gate, but it seemed a lot more official. This doorway had a keypad on the siding, with a sign that spelled out: SECURITY CLEARANCE REQUIRED. Lara tried the door, Liam tried the keypad, the door opened. In fairness, it was not that simple. Liam had pulled a small, smooth stone from his pocket, the stone was as white as milk. Liam seemed to read something off the smooth surface while saying the words, "What is the code to this keypad? STARLIGHT-STARBRIGHT!" Uncle Mike said to himself, 'What the heck was that all about?'
As predicted, there was a Men's Room in the building, and Mike headed towards it. First things first.
Liam and Lara were a little concerned about Uncle Mike because he seemed to have a serious look on his face, but when he came out of the Men's Room, Uncle Mike looked like his happier self. Lara nodded her head, "Yes," to her cousin, and Liam nodded his head, "Yes," in return. The cousins were standing by this needle-looking vehicle, and Uncle Mike asked them, "What is that?"
"It's a plane."
"It couldn't be a plane," he told them
"There is an operator's manual here that says this is a plane, a stealth plane. Let's get in, Uncle Mike. You sit up front where the pilot sits." It all seemed so harmless at the time.
Mike looked around. No matter what the manual called this "needle," it could not fly: no wings, no tail, no controls, just a few buttons. Mike saw Lara's hand reach over his shoulder towards a button that said, "Start." Uncle Mike was 100% sure that this thing could not fly, but he was also 100% sure that nobody should push the Start button until she knew exactly what was about to get started. He was half-way through saying, "Don't push that button!", when Lara did just that: she pushed the Start button, and simultaneously, a cover shot over their heads, seemingly from nowhere, and the "needle" jumped 4-feet off the ground, and the plane darted through a small opening in the building and up to the sky. Whoa, maybe it was not a plane, but it COULD fly. Mike whispered to himself, 'I don't think she should have done that.' Next, Mike started flipping through the operator's manual, looking for the part about landing, while the kids were saying, "Whoop-EEEE! Fly it, Uncle Mike, fly it!" Oh, to be young again.
Uncle Mike could see Lara's hand coming over his shoulder again, and he thought, 'She is going to push the Eject button? Oh, no!', but she was reaching for a button that was labelled, "Elevate," and before he could stop her, Lara hit the Elevate button and sent them away from Earth, headed in the direction the moon at race pace. Then, Liam started hitting buttons, and they went left and right and up and down. One minute they were over Tampa Bay and a few minutes later they were over Milledgeville, Georgia, then they were headed in the direction of the moon again, and then they were going to CRASH. Uncle Mike did not care anymore, all his caring was gone, he was two steps behind whatever was going on. Before he could say, "Don't!", one or both of those little cousins had pressed a button and then another one. He thought he was beyond caring, but he proved himself wrong because a light started flashing that said, "Fuel Empty." He yelled into the air, "We are out of fuel." They were pointed straight-up. He saw a hand reach over his shoulder, and instead of hitting yet another button, the hand started to pat him on the chest.
"Don't worry, Uncle Mike," then she hit a small button that Uncle Mike had not seen before, "Land."
Maybe he blinked, or maybe he passed-out, he was not sure, but in what seemed like the blink of an eye, they were back where they started from. The cover retracted, they stepped out, and they were on solid earth again.
Liam asked, "Do you want to see if we can refuel, and do it all over again." Uncle Mike's gave him a look that had no expression in it, and Liam said, "Maybe that's enough for one day."
Lara said, "Maybe it is."
Liam asked, "Uncle Mike, do you want something to drink? There is a drinks tent near-bye."
Before Uncle Mike could get his thoughts together, Lara said, "I think maybe he does. We were up there a long time."
They ducked under a VIP tape and went to a courtesy tent where the host was serving free beer. Uncle Mike was not a beer drinker, but he knew how to do it, so he requested three beers and drank all three of them. A good looking hostess came by and asked, "Another round?"
Liam said, "If you don't mind." That was how Uncle Mike came to drink six beers in five minutes. After that, he was having a little difficulty walking straight, so they called for a taxi, which was free if you were having a little difficulty walking as a result of your time in the beer tent. Later, Uncle Mike seemed to remember that somebody touched him with a magic wand, and said the words, "Stardust."
Sometimes it is difficult to tell what is real and what is a dream. In fact, if you are paying attention, most of the time it is difficult to tell what is real. Uncle Mike found himself in that position in the morning.
Uncle Mike woke up in his bed with Aunt Joan lying beside him. "Joan, I just had this crazy dream. I was flying a needle, and the cousins were pushing buttons, and...."
"Arggg," she said.
"I've got to get up and go to the Air Show with those kids."
"Arggg," she said again. "That was yesterday. You already went."
"What?"
"You came home smelling like a brewery. The kids said you got dehydrated and stopped at a beer tent to 'fill-up!' You came home in a taxi. Remember?"
Mike was quiet for a long time, and then he just jumped out of bed. "I've got to talk to those kids."
When Uncle Mike approached the cousins, he could see the look of innocence on their faces, too innocent. He had used that face a few times when he was their age and a few times since. "Did we take a ride on a stealth needle plane, or did I just dream it?"
"Maybe you just dreamed it," she said without changing the look of innocence on her face.
"Maybe you did," Liam added, barefaced."
"You are not going to tell me, are you?", he said to them.
"Tell what?"
The other one said the same think, "Tell what?"
"About riding the needle!"
"What needle?"
The other one said the same thing "What needle?"
Uncle Mike looked at them. "Was it was all a dream?"
Little Liam said, "Maybe it WAS all a dream."
Little Lara said, "Maybe it was."
Uncle Mike scratched his head and rubbed his chin. "It sure seemed real..., but..., it seems unreal, too. What a dream!
A short while later during the midday news, the news reader made the spectacular report of unidentified jet trails observed during the air show at MacDill Air Base, YESTERDAY. Tens of thousands of people had witnessed jet trails during the show, but no planes or rockets had been detected. National Security investigators were in Tampa reviewing tapes and interviewing witnesses. The public was asked to phone the Investigators' Hot Line if they had any information about this event.
Uncle Mike watched Lara tap the numbers into the phone and wait a long time. Finally he heard her say, "Those white streaks were not made by planes or rockets, they were made by ducks' feathers. Hundreds of white ducks were passing through Tampa yesterday during the Air Show, and the air streams left by the jet planes just ripped the feathers right off those ducks' backs, and it was the ducks' feathers that made the white streaks you photographed!
"Ducks' feathers?"
"Yes, my cousin and I saw a lot of featherless ducks waddling all over the place in south Tampa."
"Hold-on, I need my supervisor to hear this."
Lara held on to the phone, and the supervisor came on the line, and she repeated the explanation, and he said, "Ducks' feathers?" Then he said, "Hold-on, I need the investigator-in-charge to hear this."
Lara held on to the phone, and the investigator-in-charge came on the line, and she repeated the explanation, and he said, "Ducks' feathers? Ducks' feathers? Where the hell are those ducks now?"
"It is hard to say, they just flew away, headed north. Ducks do not need feathers to fly, everybody knows that. Maybe the ducks are in Georgia by now."
Uncle Mike did not say a word, but he sure was thinking a few words, putting 'two and two together,' as they say.
A short while later, the news reader interrupted the show to report that the mystery of the jet trails had been investigated and solved. What appeared to be jet trails to the observers on the ground had actually been ducks' feathers that had been caught in air streams. According to the investigator-in-charge, the featherless ducks had been found in Georgia and taken to Washington, D.C. for further investigation and treatment."
Uncle Mike scratched his head and rubbed his chin, and then he said, "Now I know I'm dreaming." Then he added, "Uncle Charlie told me I was going to like you two. Is there any place else you two would like to go?"
" China!", they both said it together.
"China? Why in the world do you want to go to China?"
"To play Chinese Checkers, of course."
Uncle Mike threw his arms into the air, "Of course." Then he added, "You better call Uncle Charlie; he was the Wyman Elementary School Chinese Checkers Champion in 1941, seventy years ago. He still has the trophy sitting on top of his television set. Phone him; I think he will be ready for another adventure, and..., he loves Ramen noodles!"
"He loves refried beans, too."
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