In just a few short months, the close cropped and smooth Athletic Field became a rough and weedy shambles. To add to the modeler s troubles, Prop 13 was causing the City of Redding to cast about for new ways to pay for their recreational activities. As a result, they started charging the various softball leagues a fee to play on the ball parks. Those playing softball, then migrated out to the college and started infesting the flying field. It mattered not that they had no permit and the modelers did.
Softball players are much too important to worry over such trifles.
So they moved in, bringing their beer with them and set up games at each side of the poor modelers, trying to fly. Soon it was impossible to take off or land without flying over a ball player. AMA said that silly as it might seem, a baseball player is actually, technically speaking, a human being and therefore, we were not allowed to fly over them. Several models and other equipment were struck with errant foul balls. To heap coals on the fire, Dick Beckman crashed his biplane in the tennis courts, missing a co-ed by inches.