A Tribute To My Friend John
John was usually a man of few words and even fewer visitors. He'd kept to himself for as long as I'd known him - a grumpy, stubbornly solitary guy whose real passion was the hobby of remote control airplanes and the internal combustion engines that powered them. We met at my local fly field, a flat stretch of land where he'd show up nearly every Saturday with his planes and a look that dared anyone to talk to him. Over time, I grew to know him, though, and every now and then, after he'd made some miraculous repair in the middle of pit row or managed to re-tune some sputtering engine back to full power, he'd walk by and give me a little nod of acknowledgment, as if to say, "Alright, you're not so bad."
Our connection was built on a shared love of RC planes. Over the years we spent hundreds of hours together, hands gripping our radio transmitters, eyes fixed on the skies as our planes performed lazy loops, sharp turns, and the occasional thrilling nosedive. He had an uncanny knack for aeronautics, a natural understanding of how to make his winged-machines fly longer and land beautifully. He never let anyone too close to his private world though. He'd spend the day with us at the fly field, then head home alone, leaving us with nothing but vague ideas of the solitary life he lived away from us.
John's death was sudden. We were all shocked, of course, but it wasn't until we learned what he left behind that we truly realized how little we actually knew about him. He'd let so few people into his life that most of us barely even knew where he lived. After he passed, some of my fly field buddies discovered a small, quiet house hidden under layers of mystery and the unmistakable scent of gas, oil, and old engines - a hoarder's house, stacked floor to ceiling with relics of our hobby.
Every inch of John's house was devoted to his obsession, shelves upon shelves crammed with mostly engines, propellers, and an astonishing array of other one-of-a-kind RC airplane parts he'd gathered over his lifetime. It was hard to imagine how he'd managed to move around in there at all. Each shelf was a fortress of metal and wood, towers cataloging the intricate history of his life in pieces of airplanes. And the strangest thing? It was all meticulously organized, each object carefully placed, as if he'd actually had some grand plan for it all.
Small, single-cylinder engines were neatly lined up like soldiers awaiting their orders. Other shelves held propellers, some so old they'd likely splinter at a touch, others gleaming as if he'd just polished them the day before. Old toolboxes were stacked to one side, each drawer filled with screws of all sizes, washers, and nuts. To anyone else, it would have looked like chaos, but to those of us who knew John, you could almost see his grumpy, exacting hand in it, his penchant for order even amid the mountains of parts and pieces.
I think he saw every piece as an opportunity, a puzzle that just needed the right place, the right moment, to finally soar. He never threw anything away, as if each object held the possibility of flight, another model waiting to be born. And maybe he saw himself in those parts, too - a little rough around the edges, sometimes too old to work perfectly, but still holding the potential for one last great flight. There was no room for anything extraneous in his house. Even though he kept so much, each item felt selected with a sense of purpose, a tribute to his love for all things airborne.
Most of us had known John only through the planes he built, flew, and sometimes (only rarely) crashed. But now, among his shelves, his life laid bare. He had made his home his final fly field, each shelf like a runway waiting for takeoff. And perhaps he knew, on some level, that the house would stand as his legacy. That someday, some of us from his fly field would come and see his devotion, his passion, captured in metal and wood, just waiting for someone to understand.
John was sometimes harsh, never one to say a soft word if a gruff one would do. But he'd given a final glimpse into his soul, hidden in the quiet shadows of his house.
I'm not sure if anyone can say for sure what drove him to fill his home like that. Perhaps he simply couldn't bear to part with the pieces of his dreams. Or maybe he felt more connected to those engines and propellers than to some of the people who lived in the periphery of his life. In the end, his shelves weren't just storage - they were a testament to his devotion, a life built around the freedom he found in the skies. To John, every part had mattered, every small engine and propeller meant something, even if he never told anyone exactly what.
When I think back on John now, it's not the grumpy silence or his solitary life that I remember. It's the way he made his world out of shelves and parts, creating a strange kind of sanctuary where he could live among his dreams. His house, once a mystery, now feels like an answer to a question we never thought to ask.