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But then one day there it was It was the guys at the soap factory that made it ithout the crew at Vat Three who showed up out of nowhere, the story would be a wrinkled ball at some baseboard yet

It took ti is to let the story write itself, while one sits at the typewriter and does as little thinking as possible It happened over and again, and the beginner learned—when you start puzzling over an idea, and slowing down on the keys, the writing gets worse and worse

Adrift at Kennedy Airport comes to mind The closest I steered to insanity was in that one story, originally planned as a book As with Letter, the words kept swinging back to invisible dank boredo in the lines It went on that way for nearly a year, days and weeks at theall the acts, satchels filling with popcorn research, pads of cotton-candy notes, and it all turned into gray chaff on paper

When I decided at last that I didn’t care what the book publisher wanted and that I didn’t care what I wanted and that I was just going to go ahead and be naive and foolish and forget everything and write, that is when the story opened its eyes and started running around

The book was rejected when the editor saw it charging across the playground without a single statistic on its back, but Air Progress printed it at once, as it was—not a book, not an article, not an essay I don’t knohether I won or lost that round

Anyone ould print his loves and fears and learnings on the pages of ives them to the world When I wrote The Pleasure of Their Company, one side of this fareas simple and clear: “The way to know any writer is not to meet him in person, but to read what he writes” The story put itself on paper out of a sudden realization … some of my closest friends are people I’ll never meet

The other side of this farewell to secrets took some years to see What can you say to a reader alks up at an airport knowing you better than he knows his own brother? It was hard to believe that I hadn’t been confiding my inner life to a solitary typewriter, or even to a sheet of paper, but to living people ill occasionally appear and say hello This is not all fun for one who likes lonely things like sky and aluht “HI THERE!” in what has always been a silent unseen place is a scary thing, no matter hoell meant it’s said

I’lad now that it was too late for me to call Nevil Shute on the telephone, or Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, or Bert Stiles, when I found that I loved who they are I could only have frightened thelad-you-liked-the-book walls againstspoken with theraph parties I didn’t know this when The Pleasure of Their Co … new truths fit old ones without seams or squeaks

Most of the stories here were printed in special-interest ht have read them and thrown them away, or dropped them off in stacks at a Boy Scout paper drive It’s a quick world,Life there has the span of a May-fly’s, and death is having no stories in print at all

The best of my paper children are here, rescued froain, leaping fro is a happy thing to do I read them today and hear myself in an empty room: “There is a lovely story, Richard!” “Now that is what I call beautiful writing!” These h, and someti that

Perhaps one or two of ht be yours, too, and take your hand and maybe help you touch the part of your home that is the sky

—RICHARD BACH

August 1973

People who fly

For nine hundred ht 224 from San Francisco to Denver “How did I come to be a salesman?” he said “Well, I joined the Navy when I was seventeen, in the one to sea and he was in the invasion of Iwo Ji craft, under enemy fire Incidents many, and details of the time, back in the days when this man had been alive

Then in five seconds he filled me in on the twenty-three years that caot this job with the company in 1945 and I’ve been here ever since”

We landed at Denver Stapleton and the flight was over I said goodbye to the salesman, and ent our ways into the crowd at the teret him