The air conditioning was working overtime as my dad drove the family’s minivan through the streets of Phoenix, AZ and back towards the retirement community of Payson, AZ. My grandfather’s quick and unexpected death had shocked the family and convinced us to travel from Oregon to Arizona by car in order to clean his place and see where he had lived for the last fifteen years. As the 100+ degree day shriveled our desire to work, a road sign for the Arizona Air and Space Museum promised relief from the hot summer sun and a stuffy car. The museum had two large hangars, mostly containing planes from World War I and World War II. Only a few cars dotted the parking lot as we had arrived at the museum about a half-n-hour before closing. To our good fortune, one of the museum volunteers (an older gentleman in his 70s) offered to give us a solo tour of the museum.

We began our tour in the World War I section of the hangar where to my surprise they had a model of the German Fokker Tri-plane. The next fifteen minutes of the tour passed uneventfully. The endless history and mechanical facts about the planes failed to hold my attention as I marveled at the size and beauty of each aircraft. Of course, I benefited greatly from the fact that my brothers and I could have any of questions answered in a prompt and complete fashion. As we moved from the first to the second hangar a noticeable change in our tour guide took place. The second hangar held most of the museum’s World War II airplanes and as it turns out our guide had attempted to become a fighter pilot during the war. At the same time, outside the hangar a thunderstorm started to brew. The wind and rain could be heard slamming relentlessly against the hangar. The combination of the wild weather and the nostalgic story made time appear to stop in its tracks and then, to my surprise, it started to reverse. It turns out that our tour guide had washed out of flight school because of his bad eyesight, a realization that still brought tears to his eyes 60 years later. As he finished his story, the thunderstorm outside started to wind down and time returned to the present.

I would like to think that it is was the effect of a small family of boys, boys in which the tour guide could see a glimpse of restlessness and adventure in their eyes that sparked this experience. Had it been a group tour, I would like to think that our guide would have continued with his usual presentation of facts. That is why I prefer to tour in a small group because than history will come alive