by Beth Hermes

Created on: March 05, 2009

I was in a swimming pajama a nightdress of sorts with a great straw hat covering my red curls, carrying a little tin pail of water over to Mama and getting the hem of my dress soaking wet. Mama would laugh and dig little holes in the sand into which I would pour the water. Suddenly, everyone on the beach looked up at a strange humming noise. People started pointing in the distance, shading their eyes against the sun. Out of nowhere, Daddy came and snatched me up and began running, camera under one arm, me under the other, with Mama trailing behind, bare feet under her long dress.

"Anna, quick!" He said, practically tossing me and the camera into the pram.
"What is it, Willie?" she shouted, shading her eyes and looking up where Daddy started pointing.

"We have to hurry! It's an aeroplane!"
What a commotion! Everyone craning their necks when they heard the noise! I thought we'd be trampled. I was far too big to be stuffed into the carriage, especially one I shared with the bulky camera, but Daddy kept running, dripping in sweat, almost all the way to our house on Ditmars Avenue! - where he quickly set up his camera right there on Chauncey Street. He muttered under his breath when the legs of the tripod seemed to be stuck he was sweating and wheezing from the exhertion of the long run from the beach. Finally, he leveled the tripod, stretched out the neck of the camera in record time and settled it atop the tripod's long, skinny legs. Then, before we knew it, the strange little humming contraption came down out of the sky and began bumping and racing right down among the vacant lots on Woolsey Avenue. It came to a stop near Goodrich and out stepped Mr. Harry Atwood, right as you please, waving to everyone from a space near the wing!

"Doesn't look very air-worthy," Mama said to Daddy, as she finally caught up to us, limping and breathing heavily. "You'd never get me into one of those things. Looks as if it would fall right out of the sky!"
No one could get very close to the little aeroplane because there were policemen everywhere trying to control the crowd. But Daddy begged a favor from Officer Miller, whose wife was in a sewing group with Mama. Thank goodness he did! Daddy developed that photo for the newspaper, and was so proud when he saw his name in print, even though they spelled it wrong: "Photograph courtesy of Wm. McCaffey," it said. Mama snorted and said she'd written it clearly in her own neat hand, and they could have at least checked the spelling. Of course they spelled "Harry Atwood" correctly, she said. Daddy just chuckled and asked her to please keep a few copies "for posterity."

"Certainly, Mr. McCaffey," she said. Then Mama smiled at me and said, "posterity, my posterior!" I giggled because she did, and because Daddy put his hands on his hips in an exaggerated fashion and began to chuckle himself.
"Well, this is how I'm going to get rich and famous, even if I must change my name to William McCaffey," he said, putting a cigar in his mouth as he perused the paper for the fiftieth time that day. "Would likely make your father happier, if it sounded like you'd married an Irishman!"

Mama snorted, still smiling. "He'd have disowned me sooner!"

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