A Young scientist experiments to overcome
Twelve-year-old David Janzen is a wonderer at heart. Short of stature, he is tormented at Central Elementary School (where his dad is a science teacher) with a different epithet, that of “shrimp.” It is the early 1960s in Del Rio Vista, “a small, central California farming community.”
He wonders if he can build a balloon that can soar into the sky and parachute its payload unharmed to the ground. He wonders if, one day, he can build a rocket to reach into orbit.
“At home,” he observes, “I was a ‘ shrimp’ — but I wasn’t excluded from life because of it. At home, in my experiments, I could be someone. As long as Mom didn’t know the details.”
David tells his story in “The Art Of Stretching” ($8.99 in paper, selfpublished; also for Amazon Kindle) by David H. Dirks, Chico State grad, now a Livermore resident. Sketches throughout the book are by Benjamin Pacheco and help readers visualize what David is up to.
Dirks draws on his own memories for his quietly loving account of the fictional Janzen family. There are seven of them, two brothers, three sisters and a fair amount of squabbling. Young David has an eye for engineering but his initial balloon experiments end up terrorizing the neighbors (explosions, anyone?).
While his father gently encourages his explorations, his mom is wary. “I was a scientist, and I needed room,” David remembers. “Mom was always pulling me back, making me do my homework and insisting I go to church instead of sleeping in Sunday mornings. Mom did not understand science.” Will she ever see the light?
Neighborhood kids throw dirt clods at David but secretly admire what he and his new friend, wheelchair-bound Jack, also 12 years old, are accomplishing. Together they create a new balloon inflated by natural gas from the science classroom’s Bunsen burners, one which can theoretically
climb a mile and release its occupant, a “ratastronaut,” safely to the ground.
Readers will find themselves rooting for David and Jack when launch day arrives.
David is always stretching, even as a kid reaching for the stars. It is fitting we turn our eyes heavenward this Christmas season and become wonderers as well.