Original Fokker D.VII for sale!

[JohnReid]

This is probably as close as your going to get to an original undistrubed cockpit.

[Roadhog]

Dear Forum mates, I am afraid that what our friends in Canada are experiencing with this D-VII bruhaha may be a symptom of what has been going on in America for several years. Former hippies (in my opinion) with PhDs have been slowing taking over many of our nations museums and state historical societies.

Hell they opposed war in 1968 and they'll oppose war, any war, until the day they die. The Vietnam War was the focus of their youth and they still see through that glass darkly, once again, in my humble opinion.

Here in Kansas we fought a pretty nasty dress rehearsal for the American Civil War from 1855-1860 that cost over 200 men and boys their lives all over the prescence of 194 slaves in the Kansas Territory. We are now right in the middle of the 150th Anniversary of that struggle that could have been a tourist bonanza but no, the woman in charge of the Kansas State Historical Society, who got her PhD in Califorina Folk Art (i.e. historic quilts) says no. We are not going to glorify war or violence of any kind while she's in charge. No event that had a violent theme or that harmed animals can be re-enacted or depicted in any state historical setting or property.

Hell, there goes most Native American themes, the Spanish Exploration, the French fur trappers, the Mountain Men, Bleeding Kansas, the American Civil Warm the Indian Wars and so on. You get the picture.

These are the same type of people who attempted to depict the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 with racism and genocide at the Smithsonian a few years back.

Harry Truman's warnings to the Japanese were ignored and like it or not, those bombs saved my father's and hundreds of thousands of others lives. He had fought on three islands and had been wounded five times and should have been rotated back to the States but his superiors told him, "Sorry Jack, after Okinawa and Iwo Jima, there's nobody left to take these kids into Japan."

Dad always said that he knew in his heart of hearts that if he'd have gone ashore in the battle for the Home Islands, he'd have been killed.

Sorry about this rant, but I deal with idiots in museums and historical societies all of the time and when they learn that I am a retired soldier, their attitude usually changes towards the frosty side. Good luck up there in the Great White North. Hey maybe the MacKennzie brothers could buy it, eh? VR, Scott Price a.k.a. Roadhog

[FlyXwire]

I'm part owner of a family farm in Kansas, and my great grandfather homesteaded a farm there living in a sod house in the mid-late 1800s while the family saved up for lumber to build a proper dwelling, before a prarie fire swept across the plain and consumed the lumber entirely (he and the family did perservere however). My oldest sister is married to a farmer there, and I spent most of my summers as a youth "on the farm", and I love the land for it's seemingly boundless horizon.

Unfortunately in my mind, Kansas has become a political battleground these days again, almost echoeing some of the same themes we thought resolved decades ago (even a century past). There's plenty of peculiar happenings going on in Kansas currently, deriving from across spectrum, with differences in opinion seemingly as wide and untamed as the Kansas range used to be. Probably why aviation has always been so compelling to us all, as it seems so free of the limits man places on one another when earthbound.

Anyway, just like we're not in Kansas anymore, some things do really make you feel like you're living in the Land of OZ sometimes. Well, back to the aviation discussion here guys.

Oh btw, be sure to visit the Wizard Of Oz Museum in Wamego, Kansas when you're passing through (maybe they've got some floor space for a lonely Fokker).

[FlyXwire]

Oh, as a sidebar to my post above, my oldest sister has a PhD too, and lost her teaching job a couple of years ago due to educational funding cuts in Kansas.

Seems like there's plenty of this sort of thing going around these days (and not just in regards to museums).

[JohnReid]

Speaking about museums,supposedly the CAM is watching the Fokker developments closely.I can only hope that it is true!