Nothing by Chance

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One summer in Cook, Nebraska, a group of part-time pilots decide to recreate a 1920s-style "barnstorming" flying tour. Calling themselves the "Great Flying Circus," they travel the American Midwest giving rides for three dollars and talking to the small-town characters they encounter. Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, leads the group, which includes a dentist, a college instructor, a stunt pilot, an airline captain, a college student and Jack Brown, a man who was a barnstormer in the 1930s. Canadian pilot Glenn Norman serves as the circus's barker and ticket taker. In Cook, the group's 1929 Stinson monoplane crashes, forcing them to fly their 1928 open cockpit Travelair biplanes to Kahoka, Missouri, in time to celebrate the Fourth of July. They complete the tour with appearances at Ferris and Pecatonica, Illinois, and Rio, Wisconsin. In Rio, a fire destroys one of their planes. During their travels they meet an old man who is convinced that tornadoes are being generated because the astronauts landed on the moon, and a small boy who is willing to spend an entire day washing the planes for a few minutes of flying. Along the way, the men rediscover small-town America.