Page 90 - Donnie MacDermid of Margaree Valley: "It could have been worse!"

ISSUE : Issue 73

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1998/6/1

And so we got together one day to discuss this all over. While we were discussing it we come to realize that buying an airplane was going to cost quite a bit of money and none of us had a hell of a lot of money. So I says to myself, "I'll fix that. I'll build one." I always had a hankering to build things, you know. To make something. I got another little story I can stick in here now. When I was a kid I was always making something, you see. Of course then it was hammer and nails, I was making something out of wood then. And my father had a workshop built out of great big wide boards, and he had little narrow thin board batten down over the cracks. And that was nailed with smaller nails, and the nails were staggered from side to side, from top to bottom, down this. And when I'd be stuck for a nail, I'd go be? hind the workshop with a hammer and I'd pull a nail out here and there, till one day he was in the shop and it was a windy day, and suddenly light would appear in a crack, then it would disappear, and he'd hear a slap outside and he'd go out, and here some of them were swinging by one nail at the top, and some of them had one left at the top and one left at the bottom and the wind would blow it out again and WATCH FOR: I • LEGENDS Tour-July 25/98 | • Motor Madness - Aug. 25/98 • Demolition Derbies • Children's Race Car Day & MUCH MORE Thunder Street & Sportsman | STOCK CAR RACING ( EVERY SUNDAY ) • SYDNEY-GLACE BAY HIGHWAY ?? 564-5464 ? office 562-2921 I SIMEON'S II Family Restaurant 427 Grand Lake Road, Sydney 562-0251 We Feature: • Full Course Meals • Fresh Seafood • steaks • Chops • Ethnic Dishes • Homemade Pies Baked Fresh Daily Come in! We would love to serve you! SIMEON'S Restaurant & Tiffany Dining Room FULLY LICENSED Piummer Ave., New Waterford 862-8090 • 862-8093 We feature the same great food as Simeon's II ?& we have large Banquet Facilities & Lounge slap against the wall. Now, have you ever tried driving nails in February or March with cold fingers and crying, and a sore butt that you couldn't sit down on, even if you had something to sit on? Well, that was me. (He wasn't proud of you getting your nails that way.) No, he wasn't. And of course he had to keep his good nails all hid on me or I'd have them all drove in something on him. I can appreciate that, you know, what that'd be like, I suppose. If I had a kid that way myself I'd probably hide them on him. But I don't know if I would really, because it's an indication if he's going to be something, if he's a doodler...I know I didn't amount to be a hell of a lot.... But anyway, like I say, when I got into aviation really, was back in '59. So this bunch of us decided it was going to be too expensive to buy one, so I said, "Okay," to myself, "I'll build one." So that yel? low one down there {Bonnie's pointing at a picture) says A6B. That was my first one. I bought the blueprints for thirty-five dollars in Riverside, California, from Ray Spitz. And I got the tubing in a place called Machine Craft from Troy, Ohio, in the States. Anyplace that I could buy it at a price I could afford. I tried a place in Toronto, but the price was so ridicu? lous I couldn't even think of it. So I bought the tubing down in that place in the States. And it's all welded steel tub? ing in the airframe, and it's fabric- covered, you know. Now there was a young fellow living next door to me then, a lit? tle Abraham boy, and he and I were good buddies. And he was very interested in things like this too, you know, so he helped me with a lot of it. Helped me with most of it. In fact, we were looking at a picture here just yesterday evening, he's got a five-gallon can and he's supposedly putting gas in it, and there's not even fabric on it yet, you know. And this got to be a joke with us.... (So you were building an airplane for five guys, nobody knows how to fly?) None of us SUPERIOR FENCING LTD: Commercial Residential Industrial INSTALLATIONS and REPAIRS 4 Chain Link Fencing Wooden Fencing ' Custom Decks 4 Retaining Walls FULLY GUARANTEED Locally Owned & Operated 539-2027 AFFORDABLE QUALITY WORKMANSHIP

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