INTERESTED PEOPLE ARE INTERESTING

INTERESTED PEOPLE ARE INTERESTING

My good friend, The Legendary Budd Davisson (he hates it when I call him that, but it’s just the truth) publishes a comment every Saturday on his Substack.

This Saturday, the title was “Interested People Are Interesting,” a quote he attributed to his mother from his earliest years, and long before the statement became popular from Gene Youngblood, whom Wiki says was a “…theorist of media arts and politics” and is credited with that truism.

I rather suspect if I introduced Budd to this group here at TAFM, many would respond “Tom! How is it you know this person?” And the truth is that he and I - if we wanted to (which we don’t) - could go from Zero to Screech in 60 seconds on any number of topics. But we don’t. When I read something from him that might elicit that response, I scroll past it; he does the same with me.

Because all of that is irrelevant.

Budd is one of the people who invented contemporary aviation photography 60 years ago with the amazing cover shots of his that Flying magazine (in its day, the leading general aviation magazine in America) published. All taken within 90 minutes of sunrise. The play of light on the subject matter elevates the airplane to a work of art. Just so you know I am not BSing you, here’s one of the shots - he took it from a PBY Catalina, leaning out of the bulbous rear gunner’s position, and a moment after he took it, the part of that canopy that slid open came loose and nearly decapitated him when it fell on top of him; it took the guys flying the airplane 20 minutes to realize something was wrong, because his radio headset got knocked off.

All in a day’s work.

I’d admired Budd’s work for 30 years, and then one day 30 years ago, I found an email from him in my inbox. He’d gotten it from our mutual friend Barrett Tillman. In it he asked if I would like to become one of the contributors to Flight Journal, a magazine that he was creating and would edit. After I got over being amazed that The Legendary Budd Davisson would email me asking that question, I replied “Yes.”

And then, up until three years ago when the owners of the magazine stopped paying writers for their work as the contracts said they would, and Budd resigned as editor (and the rest of us left when he did), I received a Serious Education in Good Writing from Budd. It was all in the details. The result of that is you enjoy reading my books. When you do, say “Thank you, Mr. Davisson.”

As the photo here shows, Budd is a pilot’s pilot. He’s 81 and is the premier instructor in advanced aerobatics in the U.S. He can still make my head spin snap-rolling that Pitts Special of his so tight it feels like we’ve lost all forward momentum. He just got named to the Hall of Fame of the Experimental Aviation Association.

So when Budd gets “philosophical” in his posts, I have a tendency to listen closely.

“Interested people are interesting.”

That one definitely grabbed me. Yeah, that’s one of those Grand Truths you know is a Grand Truth the minute you read it, and you know you’ve been living your life in accordance with that truth from the beginning.

I’ve spent my life in search of “interested people,” whatever it was they were interested in. Stuff I would never do, but when they describe it, the joy in their voice as they do so and the light in their eyes as they do, insures I will be interested to listen to them.

There isn’t one friend I have - or have ever had - who didn’t enter my life because we were both “interested people.” About many different things.

Besides aviation photography and airplanes and the people who fly them, I also love Budd for the fact he won’t buy a new car because he can’t work on them himself. I used to love a Saturday spent doing a tune-up on my 1975 Honda Civic. Honda had a manual about the size of the LA phone book (back when LA had a phone book), with every single thing you could do for the car in detailed instructions with photographs that had arrows pointing to what you were going to work on. That manual was so good, I did a ring and valve change, following what was there. It was fun and I liked knowing that my Honda Civic (this is back when it was powered by a 1927 airplane engine and didn’t need special equipment to meet California smog laws) was the best-performing Honda Civic in Sacramento.

I like people who like to do things like that. The stuff the “normies” don’t even think of. I like people who look at 12 bushel baskets full of rusting parts and tell themselves “That’s an airplane,” and 12 years later - after remanufacturing all those rusting parts and then making all the others - they take that airplane into the sky again.

Here’s a picture of my old friend and fellow filmmaker (we did several projects together) Dorian Walker with his105-year old American DH-4, which he restored from original materials so that it is licensed by the FAA as an original DH-4.

And here’s how they did it.

I love people who are that kind of crazy that they would do such a thing, just to do it. It’s a good, clean, clear kind of crazy.

I get the same thing here at That’s Another Fine Mess.

When I started this Substack, I had no thought that it would become what it is. I thought maybe 50 people would be interested in what I post here.

But it turns out a lot of “Interested People” found me interesting.

So far as I can tell, all of you are the same kind of people I have spent my life seeking out.

Interested people.

Which makes you interesting.

When I thought about what Budd wrote, and how much I liked the comments to that post from my fellow crazies who are privileged to know him and be members of the “Weirdos Society” he founded, I realized That’s Another Fine Mess is the same kind of place.

Just different.

That became particularly obvious when I took three hours yesterday to read through the comments to the November 22 post, which involved me doing a lot of thinking about what I’d read.

So, when you think about all the “memorable people” I have known that I write about, just realize this:

You are all “on the list.”

Interested people are interesting.

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