Ready For Takeoff -- Dad Recalls A Dome Full Of Paper Airplanes

THE OTHER DAY, Mrs. Johnston asked me what I wanted for Father's Day.

This is our annual ritual. She asks what I want for Father's Day and I tell her nothing, and she says I got to want something because, after all, it is going to be Father's Day and the kids will want to get me something. Of course this isn't true, but I have to play along.

After we go through the routine of what I want for Father's Day a few times, I say something like: The kids can wash my car or maybe they can clean out the garage.

When Mrs. Johnston tells the kids what their father wants, I hear shouting from them that what their father wants sounds like work and wouldn't it be better if dear ol' Dad just took them all to the movie. Or maybe we could go to Capitol Hill in Seattle and get some Dick's burgers and eat them while ol' Dad sat in the car and made rude comments about the people walking by.

But today will end up with me getting breakfast in bed and the kids giving me Father Day's cards that Mrs. Johnston picked out and then told the kids to sign or face getting the evil eye from their mother.

Actually, there isn't much to do on Father's Day. The restaurants don't advertise that the kids should take Dad out to dinner and the florists don't have special bouquets to send to Dad. The telephone companies won't say on Monday that the long-distance lines were overloaded from the calls being made from children to their fathers.

In other words, Father's Day ain't no Mother's Day.

The only event I can remember that was advertised as a Father's Day event was the paper airplane-flying contest at the Kingdome.

The event lasted only a couple of years before the folks at the Kingdome decided it looked like too much fun for the fathers and their kids and canceled it. But the years that it did run, I would load up the minivan with our kids and some neighborhood kids and we would all go down to the Kingdome to fly paper airplanes.

It was a perfect event for fathers because they could do something with their kids that they both enjoyed: flying paper airplanes. Plus mothers were happy because they got an afternoon off; kids were happy because they could make paper planes to float from the 300 level of the Kingdome and win prizes, and dads were happy because they could spend the afternoon showing their kids how to make paper airplanes (all males are required to know how to make paper airplanes by the third grade).

You could get into the Kingdome with a donation of food for the local food bank and buy an official paper airplane for a quarter. The idea was simple: Just put your name and address on the paper, fold it up any way you wanted and let it go sailing from the 300 level.

On the Kingdome floor was a bunch of huge circles. Inside each circle was a prize, like free pizzas, movie tickets or record albums. In the center of the field was a convertible or pickup truck. If you got a paper airplane in the circle - or in the pickup truck or car's front seat - you won.

The nice thing about the contest was that you didn't have to be talented in folding airplanes or a Boeing engineer to get a paper airplane to fly into a circle. You just folded up a piece of paper and let it float.

There would be dozens of paper airplanes floating through the Kingdome during the contest, but the kids could always watch their own plane as it made its lazy way down the field toward a circle. At the end of the day, you went to a booth and picked up your prizes. Most of us usually won something.

The contest was dropped several years ago and now the Kingdome itself is going to be dropped. But maybe the folks at the Kingdome could have some kind of contest next Father's Day where dads and kids could buy a swing with a sledgehammer or drive a bulldozer . . .

Steve Johnston is a reporter for The Seattle Times. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.