The EAA Pancake Fly-in is a long standing tradition that dates back to the very early days when Paul Poberezny first started gathering people, who for some unexplained reason, like to build and fly their own airplanes. We dropped the tradition in Chapter 79 many years ago and have on occasion, debated the logic of bringing it back. The last several years we have hosted fly-ins and have had mixed success. So this year we sat down and analyzed the factors and tried to determine why more people were not showing up. It was puzzling. You would think that airplanes alone would bring out the people in droves. Ah, but than the brainstorm hit! What could our missing ingredient be? Could it be food?
Of course we were not sure if this is what was needed. Our hypothesis could only be tested by adding food to our fly-in event. Discussion continued and debate ensued over what food to provide and how to prepare and deliver it. Of all the choices available, we seemed to keep coming back to pancakes. Now in my own personal opinion, pancakes may approach what may be nature’s most perfect food. I don’t know how they were invented but I suspect someone long ago discovered the sweet maple sap flowing from a tree and then realized they had to come up with an appropriate food substance to justify the ingestion of this sweet nectar. After many trials and errors, the pancake was invented, and today we have this soft, moist, tasty cake that is perfect for soaking up sweet syrup.
They are easy to fix and they cook in a flash on a hot grill. And somehow they got passed off as real food and over the eons it has become acceptable to consider them the main course of the first meal of the day.
So having decided to once again give pancakes a try at our next fly-in, we began setting in motion the plans and tasks necessary to make this happen. The EAA 79 board, in their infinite wisdom, did not take the task lightly. All eventualities were considered. Some objected to pancakes simply because of the work involved. And then there were the liability phobes: what if someone got salmonella and died and we got sued and all of us lost everything we had? Fortunately we are well insured for such a happening. Some were very insistent that cooking pancakes was simply too overwhelming for us to handle and should be farmed out. Oddly, these same people have built airplanes with their own bare hands. In the end, we recruited Warren Gullickson to go through the grueling fifteen minute exam to qualify as a food handler. So with a firm understanding of how to use his trusty stem thermometer, we felt qualified to actually take on the inundating task of flipping flap jacks. As it turns out, it really isn’t all that tough; and quite tasty too.
As the attendees lined up anxiously waiting for our grills to heat up, we went through a few start-up pains. It seems that the mere presence of customers waiting to be served can instill a bit of a panic in those doing the cooking, especially when the grills seem to be heating up slowly. What we didn’t anticipate is that many were ready for their pancakes at 7:00 a.m. even though 7:30 was the advertised start time. But than I remembered my own pancake fly-in experiences when I was the one in line. Sometimes they have run out of food and you can stand there waiting for 30 or 40 minutes. I think what some of the excited servers overlooked was; that airplane people can stand around airports talking about airplanes for hours. To do it while in line for pancakes just adds a little justification to this waste of time. So once the grills got hot and the pancakes started flipping off the grills and the line began moving, everyone seemed to settle into a comfortable cooking mode. As it turned out, no one in line expressed any impatience. The line moved smoothly for over three hours. I spent a few hours on the egg grill myself and had a blast. And I noticed the others were reluctant to give up their spatulas when offers of relief were given. All in all, I would have to say that our fly-in was a success. Many flew in and we served over 130 breakfasts. And this was in spite of a morning that started off very rainy. So can we conclude that pancakes are the necessary ingredient for a successful fly-in? It would certainly seem so. But regardless, they taste so darn good, we might as well include them anyway.