David Murdock Column: On paper airplanes (and a fascination with flying toys)

Somewhere among all these books of mine — I don’t know where, but somewhere – there is a book about paper airplanes. I bought it when I was about 16 — sometime in the middle of my teenage years — but I do clearly remember that I bought it. I can even remember sort of what it looks like; I just don’t remember exactly where it is.

Something happened last week that brought it to mind. However, other “somethings” kept me from embarking on a full-fledged “book hunt” to find it. That “something” was a mention in some internet article that I read — not sure where that is either, but I saved it to a file — that mentioned balsa wood airplanes.

I haven’t seen one of those things in years!

However, it’s probably because I haven’t been looking for them. Once I searched for balsa wood airplanes on the internet, they were everywhere. And the ones that I saw were exactly the same as the ones I had growing up, even down to the details.

Most men my age probably had one at some time or the other. Fairly inexpensive and definitely loads of fun, those simple toys brought hours of delight. The simplest of them were gliders. Made of lightweight balsa wood, they weren’t the sturdiest of toys, but they were a blast while they lasted.

The more complicated versions had wire landing gear and a plastic propeller driven by a rubber band. I experimented with those — trying to get them to take off by themselves, that sort of thing. It was always best, I remember, to wind up the rubber band propeller and hold it still with one hand and launch it with the other — that’s how I got maximum flight time and distance with them. The thing is that the flight time was measured in seconds and the distance in feet.

Later, I found model rockets at the “five and dime” store in Attalla I loved when I was a kid. That was a real step forward, but model rockets were way more expensive than balsa wood airplanes. However, they flew long enough and far enough that there was a real possibility that they would be damaged on landing. And, model rockets required a large field. Balsa wood airplanes could be enjoyed in the backyard, or even inside on rainy days.

But, let’s go back a few years.

What got me started in this fascination with flying toys was paper airplanes. Those were perfect — they didn’t cost much at all, and they rewarded creativity. Once I’d learned how to make paper airplanes, it wasn’t long until I’d learned how to craft the two basic types: slow gliders that could fly quite a ways and fast darts that didn’t go too far … but didn’t go too far very fast.

All my friends loved them, too, and we would compare notes about what we’d learned and teach each other to make better paper airplanes. After a while, I wasn’t so concerned with making them fly farther and faster — the “technology” of paper airplanes only goes so far — as much as I was concerned with how they looked.

Using those beloved old encyclopedias we had, I looked up the various insignias of the air forces of the world and began to emblazon mine with rather shaky renditions. It wasn’t long before I had all the air forces of the world in my collection — well, all the air forces with markings depicted in the World Book Encyclopedia. One thing leads to another, and soon I’d looked up historical camouflage patterns and decorated my paper airplanes accordingly. Before too long, I was checking books about air forces out of the library. Again, one thing leads to another.

Not long after, I discovered scale plastic models of historic airplanes. I loved those classic kits. If I hadn’t learned to build those kits, with step-by-step instructions, I would never have been able to build model rockets later.

At some point, I lost interest in paper airplanes, balsa wood gliders, plastic scale models and model rockets made out all three materials. When I found that book about paper airplanes at about 16, though, I bought it. That paper airplanes were a real hobby astounded me at first, but there are people who stuck with that fascination long after I did. They use computers these days to design paper airplanes to achieve maximum flight time and distance. Computers can print designs on the paper so that the airplanes are quite beautiful when folded.

So, when I searched the internet for balsa wood airplanes, all the “new technology” in this old fascination of mine came up — I couldn’t believe it! One of the reasons that I didn’t search for my decades-old book on paper airplanes is that I know how one thing leads to another.

And, my “allowance” is a lot more now than it was when I was 16. Y’all know the old saying: “The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.” I don’t really have time for a “new” hobby — no matter how “old” it is — and I really don’t need to stoke my competitive streak right now.

But, if y’all hear that I’ve entered some paper airplane design competition, don’t be surprised.

David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions reflected are his own.

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock discusses paper airplanes