Free A Long Way From Chicago by Richard Peck

her chicken sandwich with her usual appetite, observing thecrowds. If I could read her mind at all, she was thinking she could do with a cold beer.
    The day seemed to have peaked and was going downhill now. As we left the Temperance tent, the quartet was singing, in close harmony:
    . . . Lips that touch wine
    Will never touch mine. . . .
    We were ready to head for the parking pasture, but Grandma turned us the other way, toward the midway and the biplane.
    “Wha—” said Mrs. Weidenbach, but fell silent.
    We were walking through the fair, and something inside my rib cage began to stir. There ahead, the biplane was on the ground. Afternoon sun played off the dull mahogany of its propeller. Something within me dared to dream. I wasn’t swooping. I didn’t even taxi, but I was walking lighter.
    Giving blue ribbon winners free rides hadn’t stimulated much business. Barnie Buchanan was lounging beside his plane. He was smoking another cigarette in a cupped hand, pilot-style.
    Grandma strode past the ticket table, out onto the field. She paused to look the plane over from prop to tail. Then she glanced briefly down at me. I didn’t dare look up at her. But my hopes were rising. Then she marched forward. When Barnie Buchanan saw Grandma bearing down on him, he tossed away his cigarette.
    “I’m a blue ribbon winner,” Grandma announced, “here for my ride.”
    “Wha—” Mrs. Weidenbach said.
    My brain went dead.
    “Well, ma’am,” Barnie Buchanan said uncertainly, noticing her size. “And what class did you compete in?”
    “Fruit Pies and Cobblers.” She held up a crumpled blue ribbon clutched in her fist. She gave him a glimpse of it, then dropped the ribbon into her pocketbook.
    “Well, ma’am, it seems to me I’ve already given a ride to a man who won first in pies,” he said. “A little fellow.”
    “Oh that’s Rupert Pennypacker,” Grandma said. “You got that turned around in your mind. He won in Sausage and Headcheese. Don’t I look more like a pie baker than him?”
    Grandma reached up to pull the pin out of her hat. She handed the hat to Mary Alice. “Here, hold this. It might blow off.” I saw the hatband was missing from her hat, the blue ribbon.
    It took three big members of the American Legion and Barnie Buchanan to get Grandma into the front cockpit of the plane. Eventually, the sight drew a crowd. The Legionnaires would invite Grandma to step into their clasped hands, then boost her up. That didn’t work.
    Then they’d hoist her up some other way, but she’d get halfway there, and her hindquarters would be higher than her head. They had an awful job getting her into the plane, and they were wringing wet. But at last she slid into the seat, to a round of applause from the crowd. Grandma was a tight fit, and the plane seemed to bend beneath her. Barnie Buchanan stroked his chin. But then he pulled his goggles over his eyes and sprang up to the rear seat. He could pilot the plane from there, if he couldsee around Grandma. A Legionnaire jerked the propeller and the motor coughed twice, then roared.
    Mrs. Weidenbach was between Mary Alice and me now, clutching our hands.
    A lot of Grandma stuck up above the plane. The breeze stirred her white hair, loosening the bun on the back. Her spectacle lenses flashed like goggles. She raised one hand in farewell, and the plane began to bump down the field.
    Now my heart was in my mouth. Everyone’s was. The biplane, heavy-burdened, lumbered over uneven ground, trying to gather speed. It drew nearer and nearer the hedgerow at the far end of the field.
    “Lift!” the crowd cried. “Lift!” Mary Alice’s hands were over her eyes.
    But then distant dust spurted from the plane’s front wheels. The tail rose, but dropped down again. It had stopped just short of the hedgerow, and now it was turning back. We watched the bright disc of the whirling propeller as the biplane returned to us.
    Barnie Buchanan dropped down from the cockpit. He