I can’t recall whether, in 1978, I was disappointed by the absence of goggles and leather helmets on the Ag-Cat pilots. In my grammar school days, lots of us wanted to be aviators; all of us wore earflap helmets. Mine, like most, was made of fake leather, a fabric which, almost by the hour, increased in brittleness. One of my school mates had a real leather helmet (a German pilot’s helmet). He was shorter than I, but his helmet made me feel like a midget.