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his fingers and fingerprinted the fuselage with his gluey fingers, like model-building kids have done since time immemorial. It’s a right-of-model-building passage!

Then Trystan started on the wings. I stood back. Then he started on the engines—the two we had, anyway. He trial-fit, glued, held, fingerprinted, rubber-banded, and set ’em aside to dry. Then he asked, “What do we do now?” I said, “Wait. We’ll build some more tomorrow when you get home from school.” So much for instant gratification.

The next day, first thing he asked
when he walked in the door was, “Can
we work on the model?” I said, “Yup, we
can.” We got everything out again, and he
took all the rubber bands off the parts
and all the glued parts stayed together,
which he found very satisfying. Then he
went to work putting the wings and hori-
zontal stabilizer on the fuselage.
Couldn’t use rubber bands this time.
Glue-and-hold only. We talked about
dihedral and getting it right. So he trial-
fit and glued and held and sat and looked
at me with the “How long is this going to
take?” look. I answered his non-verbal
communication with, “Hold ’em until
they’re dry enough to stay in place.
Dihedral, remember?”
Two seconds later I got (and you knew
this was coming), “How much longer?”
Some concepts you have to learn the hard
way; I think I spent half my model-building
life holding drying parts. Then, mercifully,
I said, “Here, let me show you another
trick.” I had him set the fuselage down. The
wings, glue not dry yet, started to droop. I
said, “Here, put these little blocks under
the wingtips to hold the wings at the cor-
rect dihedral. Now let the thing dry.” More
non-verbal communication: He looked at
me with the “Why didn’t you tell me that

Trystan and his two-engined KC-135.

before?” look. Sneaky Papa! Then he said,
“I like the tricks.” And asked, “What now?”
I said, “Decals…tomorrow.”
Same as the day before, after school
Trystan burst through the door and
asked, “Can we work on the model?”
Same answer from me, “Yup.” He said,
“Decals?” I said, “You got a couple small
parts to do first.” He said, “But they’re so
small I can hardly hold them in place
with my fingers.” I said, “New trick!” He
liked that. So I showed him how to hold
the small parts in place with tweezers
until the parts dry. That took a little
coordination, but he got the hang of it.

Okay, time for the decals. (I was still wondering if they’d work.) I had him cut the individual decals apart with scissors while I got a cup of warm water. I said, “Now take one decal and put it in the water.” He did, intrigued. Then I told him, “Watch it curl up.” And it did—after 40 years of being in the box! Then I told him, “When it starts to uncurl, take it out of the water, slide the decal off the paper, and carefully put the decal in the correct place on the model.” And he did all that…and the decal promptly stuck to his finger, then to the airplane, then back to his finger, then tore in half. One decal down.