Wiley Post was a man of curiosity and adventure born into a working family of cotton farmers who bounced around Texas and Oklahoma, finally settling near Maysville, Oklahoma. How many times do you hear this about inventors — Wiley Post did not like school. He did favor mechanical things. According to accounts he saved up to buy one of the first bicycles in the county, he studied “newly arrived sewing machines,” and he disassembled and reassembled farming machinery in the field. Before he was in his teens, Post went to work as a traveling repair man. He saw his first airplane in flight, a Curtiss biplane (often called a Curtiss Pusher as its engine and propeller were behind the pilot’s seat), at a county fair. He was