The Chronicle -

Part of the problem with owning and operating the only flight school in town in the 1920s and 1930s was, every time one of your students slapped together some home-built piece of kit, you'd be expected to help get it in the air.

At least, that seems to have been how it worked for Ted Barber, owner of Bend Flying Service and Central Oregon's first commercial aviator.

"I was never one to back away from adventure in an airplane," Barber wrote in his autobiography, "The Barnstorming Mustanger." "I always figured airplanes were made to fly, and I was made to fly them."

This was a nice general...