602     April 12, 1965
Betsy, Bill, Bess, Henry

Igor Bensen from Raleigh, North Carolina brings boxes of assorted sizes which contain: “A do-it-yourself helicopter”                 
Bensen’s open-air “gyrocopter” differs from a traditional helicopter in that the rotors are driven by the wind, like the seeds of a maple tree.  His company sells helicopter kits for amateurs to assemble in order to avoid hefty certification fees from the Federal Aviation Administration.  His kits run a little over a thousand dollars, including the engine that provides forward thrust. Bensen’s lifelong passion for flight led him to an association with Igor Sikorsky, considered the father of the modern helicopter. Between 1957 and 1987, his company would sell around 10,000 of these kits.  Hobbyists today can still purchase similar designs.   

[Tom Decker] from Emmett, Idaho is a smokejumper for the US Forest Service, and on his first jump: “I landed in a nudist colony”            Smokejumpers parachute into forest fires as first responders to help put the fires out.   

Special guest Morey Amsterdam brings challenging questions that have been posed to library information desks.  Questions include “What does the S in Harry S Truman stand for?” (Nothing, it’s just an S), “Who was the first human being to fly in outer space?” (Yuri Gagarin) “What is a group of starlings called?” (murmuration) and “Who was the first woman in a cabinet position?” (Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins).  Long before the internet put information at our fingertips, such material was found in reference books, and in libraries full of reference books.  Amsterdam plugs his upcoming movie, a comic farce which is literally called Don’t Worry, We’ll Think of a Title (1966).