Snippet – small scrap or fragment
As an amateur essayist I am always looking at the world around me with my tri-focal glasses in search of something to write about. Often while reading, my attention span gets side-tracked and I raise my eyes to note something that may have moved or maybe I simply wanted to change my focus for a moment or cogitate on what I have been reading. If I am not careful I might lose my original train of thought completely and start off in an entirely different direction One early complaint I received was, “Venrick, you major in minors.” “Well, thank you, but I don’t remember asking for your opinion,” should have been my reply but I probably lost the nerve to shoot back in such a snippy manner. But snippets of information somehow still rule in my life.
As I have written before in this blog I am a member of the American Amateur Press Association, and during the twenty odd years I have belonged to this group I have been satisfied with all the snippets available in the monthly bundle of the AAPA. The few dozen of members who really work at being an active member abound in their unique abilities to pry out interesting stories from every-day life or mine informative journals from the depths of life around them have been a blessing to me. What is sad, however, is the inevitable fact that life is cut short for some of these writers and it is hoped another will step up and take their place in the pristine writers group of the AAPA. This fact of life has been the norm for the few decades I have known of the AAPA and pleasant thoughts abound to recall names of former members once found in the bundle.
One of the members whose writings often find a spot in my mind is a (now-retired) dentist in Redding, California. Dr. Leonard Carrick is his name and Len, as many call him, has an uncanny ability to weave snippets together making very interesting stories. One such story, “Ink & Wings”, was found in INK CAHOOTS ’89 (the 17th Annual Edition) which is an annual cooperative effort of the members of the AAPA.
In this edition of Len’s articles, he wrote about Orville and Wilbur Wright, who hale from my state, OHIO, and it was in their bicycle shop that the metamorphism of two men whose name would ring in the ears of America, and perhaps the world, for years to come. Later, the name Patterson was added to their name, and Wright-Patterson became the name for an air base in Dayton, Ohio. To those living near Columbus, Ohio, another name was prefixed to their name, Curtis, and thus Curtis-Wright became the name of an airplane factory as well as an aircraft. Even though these brief snippets of how Orville and Wilbur’s name were examples of how they became known to the world of flight, I never knew their bicycle shop in Dayton, Ohio, was the place where these two brothers invented an improvement to a hay-baler, a practical paper folder, and used a variety of their machines to remodel their home.
While reading Len’s piece “Ink & Wings” I didn’t really give the title much thought until the very end of his little essay (which, by the way, was printed using hand-set type and took up twenty lines of space on the back side of this piece), until I read about Orville, when he was 17, designed and built a printing press large and fast enough to publish a daily newspaper. Ultimately their inquisitive and inquiring minds nurtured a consuming interest in manned flight. “Putting beans on the table,” as Len wrote was why they worked on bicycles but those two brothers demonstrated what masterful men they were in dealing with unique snippets. May their tribe increase!
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