Our church got a great idea to have a metal scrap drive to raise funds for the new kids’ classroom addition. So, after we got home this afternoon, we sent the kids on a scavenger hunt to find what they could in the woods. The church gets to build without going into debt, our woods get cleaned out, and our kids stay occupied while we get things done around the ranch… everybody wins!
A while later, they come back with the Radio Flyer filled, and empty it to start their scrap pile.
Some of this is pretty much normal stuff you might expect to find on an old farm… bolts… a can full of nails… a roll of scrap fence… an old car or tractor generator… some miscellaneous farm implement parts… even a cast iron manifold off a tractor.
But what’s that square piece of aluminum towards the upper right of the photo?
A cargo door off some kind of light aircraft.
Actually, it looks like it has a paint scheme similar to my buddy Jughead’s Cessna 170, and he does have a bit of a reputation for landing in a different location than his aircraft (the story is here – and it’s worth a read). But I checked, and his airplane is safely in its hangar.
So now it’s a mystery. I’m not quite sure how it got into our woods. At first I thought it might’ve fallen from the sky (this happens from time to time – someone forgets to close the latch properly, it pops open inflight, and it gets ripped from the hinges and falls to earth, followed by the pilot’s lunch). But then I noticed a few other pieces of aircraft aluminum in the pile.
Now I’m tempted to go look and see if the rest of the thing is out there.
[edit: I was thinking last night… I may need to buy this from the kids and turn it into something on the farm – we are the “Flying T” after all]
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