The Fledgling
Taking the leap out of the nest
LATE ONE SUMMER EVENING, I was sprawled on my couch
watching a Rockford Files rerun, when a commercial from a
local ultralight dealer came on. (There are enough clues in
that sentence to tell you that this must have happened a
long time ago. Rockford reruns are rare to nonexistent anymore, and TV commercials for ultralight sales and training
dried up by the mid-1980s.)