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A Story Worth Telling
“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the Earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
— Leonardo da Vinci
As a licensed pilot, granted one who hasn’t taken the controls of an aircraft in many years, I can still relate to da Vinci’s intoxicating longing for flight.
That same longing obviously lingered in two little-known, long-ago aviators from Shelby County. These were pilots whose flying adventures were reportedly the subject of family-reunion stories for many years, including during the 1980s.
In fact, the abandoned frame of an old airplane stood in the southern part of the county for a long time as a “monument,” of sorts, to their tastes of flight.
I first saw what was left of the rusty remains in Florence Duncan’s yard on a dirt road some 40 years ago. A stop at Mrs. Duncan’s house while visiting family friends in the Dreka Community introduced me to her and to the fabled stories of the flying machine slowly succumbing to vegetative overgrowth.
“It’s been there since ‘bout 1947,” she said of the old airplane’s skeletal parts. “I keep it there for sentimental value.”
She continued to share her reminiscences.
“Two of the boys (family members Ernest Duncan and Duncan Rolland) bought the airplane and wanted to turn one of our fields in front of the house into a runway for it,” she said. “My husband, Dean, and I told them ‘No.’ But you know what? They cut my persimmon tree and flew it there anyway.”
She added, “It was an old airplane. Duncan said he gave $150 for it. When they lit it out there that first time, they hit a terrace over yonder and broke one of the wheels. They fixed it with bailin’ wire before they decided to go to Center in it. They came back in a while, but they didn’t set down on the field quite soon enough. The wheel they wired up didn’t hold, and the airplane crashed, almost flipped over.”
The incident scared her, she said.
“I went runnin’ out toward the field,” Mrs. Duncan told me. “The whole family was right behind me. When I got close enough, I heard Ernest say, ‘I told you we should have lit it down in Center.’ That’s when I knew they were all right. I couldn’t believe they crawled out of that airplane and walked away from it.”
She continued, “After the crash, Van Bertherd, a young man just down the road, thought he could do better. He worked on it and headed down to the corn patch with it. The corn was just coming up at the time, and the plane got stuck. We wound up havin’ to take the mule down to the field, then towed it to a level stretch on the road. Van got it off, just barely clearing the fence and the pine trees, but came right back. Said it needed lots more work.”
According to Mrs. Duncan, the wrecked aircraft was eventually dragged to a corner of the yard where children climbed and played on it.
“Pretending to fly,” she said. “I went out there once and asked where they were flyin’. They told me they were way up high over Dallas.”
One of the pilots had some second thoughts.
“Duncan was badly shaken by that wreck for a long time, but he admitted later to wishin’ the airplane had been salvaged,” Mrs. Duncan recalled. “Said it would be an antique now, worth a lot more than the $150 he paid for it.”
In the 1980s, the wreckage of the Dreka flying machine had reportedly been used not only for a kid’s playground, but also for years of target practice, leaving what little remained when I saw it that long-ago afternoon.
It literally was just the bare frame, once covered in fabric. No wings. No motor. The cockpit area had just enough room for a pilot and a passenger sitting in tandem.
“I’m glad Duncan and Ernest weren’t hurt in the crash,” Mrs. Duncan said. “About the only thing I’m still mad about is my persimmon tree. It never did come back.”
