The Air Force Museum

When I was 8 my father gave in to my brother Billy's begging and decided to take us to the Air Force museum in Dayton,Ohio.  Billy was 6 years older then me and was mad for airplanes.  He would sit out in our backyard and listen to the airplanes flying overhead for hours at a time.  We lived near two major airports so there were always airplanes flying over head.  It didn't matter how high up they where he could tell what kind of plane they were by the sound of the engine.  He had been begging my father to take him for what seemed like years and finally my dad agreed.  Dad took a day off on a Friday so we could drive to Ohio.  We would spend Saturday at the museum and drive back on Sunday.  Yay! a whole weekend.  That was a big deal in my family. Friday morning we piled into the station wagon, me, Billy, and my parents, while it was still dark out.  It had to be about four in the morning.  Billy and I climbed into the back with our blankets and toys and books and promptly fell right back to sleep.  How my father was able to drive at that time of the morning I will never know but every car trip we took started out the same way.  In the dark.  After a gazillion stops to use the bathroom, to eat or just to stretch we make to
Ohio and a motel where my father went right to bed and my brother and I got sent out to play in a really crappy playground that was nearby.  The next day we got to go to the museum.  I have to admit that I really don't remember all that much about the actual museum.  I really couldn't have cared less about airplanes or the air force for that matter.  I was just happy to be someplace other then home and it meant a few hours not under the overprotective watchful eyes of my mother.  My father had decided that Billy and I could walk around by ourselves as long as we stayed together and promised not to leave the museum grounds.  So off we went in one direction while my parents went in another.  I spent hours listening to my brother explain every minute detail of every airplane and engine and everything else we saw that day and what do I remember of all of that? The pigeon and the rock.  The pigeon was a stuffed carrier pigeon that had had it's leg blown off during WW1 but had managed to deliver it's vital message anyway.  I loved that pigeon.  Mainly because it was the only animal it the whole place and while Billy loved airplanes I loved animals.  I dragged him back to the pigeon over and over all day long.  The rock is a different story.  Part of the museum was a path outside the building and the rock was on this path.  It was getting close to the end of the day when we found ourselves running into my mother by this rock.  She told us to wait by the rock while she went and got my father who was somewhere inside the museum.  So we waited and waited and waited.  You have to remember that this was before cell phones so there was no way to find each other except by running into each other.  After about 40 minutes Billy decided to go looking to Mom himself.  Two minutes after he left my father comes walking back down the path by himself.  After explaining about mom and Billy he leaves me by the rock and goes looking for the two of them.  Now remember I'm 8 years old and I don't like being left alone by this rock so after a couple of minutes I go off looking for everyone else.  At some point after that my mother,father and Billy come back out to the rock only I'm not there.  (I learned the rest of this later)  Dad goes in looking for me and I of course came back out.  Mom goes looking for dad, Billy goes looking for mom, Dad goes looking for Billy and this goes on and on until the place is practically ready to close.  At some point I got fed up with looking at a rock and decided to look at the pigeon again.  At this point the security guards start chasing everyone out of the museum.  It turns out that the pigeon is right at the entrance to the building and everyone has to go past me to get out. When we finally got back to the car we were all exhausted from this game of cat and mouse we'd been playing for hours and my father turns around and says from now on we meet at the pigeon.  Forever after that is was a running family joke that whenever we went some place as a family we would designate a "pigeon" to meet at.