Boyd
The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War
Chapter One
Haunted Beginnings
ERIE, Pennsylvania, is a hard town, a blue-collar town, a grubby and decrepit
town that has more in common with its fellow Great Lakes rust-belt towns of
Buffalo and Cleveland than it has with Pennsylvania cities. Perched high in the
northwestern corner of Pennsylvania, with its face toward the lake and its back
toward the rest of the state, Erie is the only lake port town in Pennsylvania.
Even people in other parts of the state often are surprised to learn that until
the last year or so it was their third largest municipality, after the elegant
and history-wrapped city of Philadelphia and the brawny sophistication of
Pittsburgh. The town of about one hundred thousand just doesn't seem that
big-not so much because it is remote, which it is, but because it is so narrow,
so provincial.
The one natural feature in Erie worthy of note is the glorious Presque Isle
Peninsula, which juts seven miles into the lake and forms a bay that in the
summer is ideal for boating and in the winter for ... read full excerpt from Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed The Art of War ebook
