Copyright © A. Filippone (1996-2001). All Rights Reserved.
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Praising the Wright Brothers



… but the fact remains
that a couple of bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio,
had designed, constructed, and flown
for the first time ever a practical airplane…

… on the chilly December day
two shivering bicycle mechanics from Dayton, Ohio,
first felt their homemade contraption,
whittled out of hickory sticks,
gummed together with Arnstein’s bycicle cement,
stretched with muslin they’d sewn on their sister’s
sewing-machine in their own backyard on
Hawthorne Street, in Dayton, Ohio,
soar into the air
above the dunes and the wide beach
at Kitty Hawk.

[adapted from The Big Money, by John Dos Passos, 1932]


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Copyright © A. Filippone (1996-2001). All Rights Reserved.