Preview
Identifier
20124402
Description
Gliding Enthusiasts Keep New Wins in Living Room Some years back, a friend said, the 15-year-old Dick Johnson, "Say, I think I know where we can get an old used glider real cheap." And that, Johnson tells his wife these days, is why that 50-foot pair of partly finished wings are stretched across the living room of their split-level Arlington home. "Actually, they're 58 feet," Johnson said by way of setting the record straight. "That's 27 1/2 feet for each wing with the fuselage between them." The fuselage isn't in the house, Mrs. Johnson said, somewhat thankfully. Johnson, a crew-cut blond aerodynamicist at Temco Aircraft Corporation in Garland explains the wings in the living room like this: "They have to be glued with a special glue so they'll hold together under the stresses of hot air thermals and other soaring phenomena," he said. The glue, it seems, doesn't dry properly unless the temperature is 70 degrees or more. So Johnson has his choice-suspend work during the winter or move into a heated enclosure. "I tried the garage first," he said. It was big enouch, all right, but didn't have heat. An attempt to run a duct out from the houses's furnace ended in failure. That left the living room. So now, stretching from picture window in front to the door of the den in the back are the wings. They run sort of diagonally, cutting the room into two triangles. One side has the pianothe other side has the Christmas tree. "And all of it has wood chips," Mrs. Johnson said. It seems that shaping of the spruce and Philippine mahogany of the wings requires a hammer, chisel, keen eye and steady hand.
Archival Date
1958-12-16
Collection Name
Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection
Collection Number
AR406-6-180
Original Format
Negatives, Black & White
File Format
JPG
Rights
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License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Subjects
Gliders (Aircraft)
Names
Johnson, Dick; Johnson, Alice (Mrs.)
Subjects
Gliders (Aircraft)