“Hey, how about
riding with me in the back seat and helping me polish my barrel rolls? I have a
tendency to dish out.”
...a tendency to dish out.
...a tendency to dish...
...a tendency...to....
Never ending echoes in the dark and dim hangar of my
memory.
Pity the person who spends his or her entire life without
feeling at least one stunning revelation; one jaw-dropping, eye-bulging, head
turning tap on the shoulder, like a profound whisper echoing through the
strands of the soul. My propeller had hardly stopped when I heard the whisper.
This is the place.
I slid the canopy back and took off my headset, feeling a
fresh, woodsy breeze on my face, along with a growing smile. I looked aside at
Ellie, seeing her taking her headset off and attempting to restore the smooth
flow of her now tangled hair. She hated headsets.
She saw the smile. I nodded to her, my eyebrows arched.
“This is the place!”
“It is?” she asked with a wrinkled brow beaming with
subtle cynicism.
“Oh yeah.”
Before we even got out of the plane, a tall aged man
appeared near the left wing, ball cap perched atop his head, hands thrust into
khaki pockets, eyes sweeping across the Grumman's sleek profile, then settling
on me. His smile reassured me. I wasn't sure what kind of reception we would
get at this rural aviation outpost.
“Welcome to Moontown,” he said.
I got out and shook his hand. “Jay Hargrove. I look after
things around here,” he said, his eyes still studying the Grumman. “Never seen
one of these in here.” He nodded to Ellie, then looked back at me.
“What brings you in?”
I told him how we were thinking of moving to the
Huntsville area and were flying around checking out the city and the lay of the
land. If we decided to move here we would need a new home airport to base the
Grumman.
We had seen the main airport—the “Jetplex” as it was
called. With its pair of 10,000 foot runways, construction projects and its
vying to become an airline mecca, it had no time for sport aviation. It was
definitely not the place.
We had also checked out the smaller airport at
Meridianville, just north of Huntsville. It too aspired to grow and cater to
the money-making side of aviation—servicing and pandering to airplanes that
burn kerosene. Still, a lot of small planes resided there. It was a potential
base, but it had no character. No culture.
Our Grumman-American AA-5 would be needing a home. But
not one of those. It had been based at airports like those. Never again, I
hoped.
“Home base? Well, you've found it!” Jay said.
We took leave of Jay and strolled, looking around. A vast
expanse of burning blue sky swept overhead and dropped toward the green rolling
ridges. Moontown's flight pattern was on the north side of its east-west
runway. And for good reason. The terrain to the south rose hundreds of feet
above the field. The grass strip, bounded by forest on the north and the
hangars to the south—and oh, so soft to the touch of the Grumman's wheels—lay
alongside our path as we walked.
“Isn't it beautiful?” I asked El, expecting an
affirmation.
“Well, I like the grass and the hills, but—” Her voice
trailed off, knowing she was about to cloud up my dreamy skies.
“But?” I asked, turning to her. “But what?”
“It looks like a shanty town.”
I looked askance at her.
We walked past a long row of open hangar ports composed
of rusty tin roofs supported by old timbers. Tired, aged, paint-flecked planes
lurked back in the dark, musty recesses, ropes tethering them to a red clay
floor. Birds chirped and fluttered through the overhead areas of the hangars,
pausing to deposit creamy white calling cards on the sleeping aluminum and
fabric machines below. Here and there, weeds grew, uncut, near the front of the
hangars where the sun could get in. An unsightly assortment of items shared the
spaces with the planes—dilapidated cars, a tractor, junk lawn mowers, and an
old lathe that must have weighted a ton.
“You sure you want to keep the plane here?” she asked.
I looked out at the idyllic grass strip. “Oh yeah!” I
said, undaunted by the shabby structures. She shrugged.
Jay invited us into the airport office. Over the door sat
a sign that said “Moontown Airport (3M5), elevation 639.” I knew 3M5 was the
three-letter identifier the FAA had assigned the airport, but I had no inkling
of how embedded in my being that letter, flanked by those two numbers would
become.
We sat with cold drinks and looked around at walls
studded with pictures of planes and pilots, and the ragged, scissor-cut-off
shirt tails of those who made their first solo flight from the airfield's
grassy runway.
Jay proceeded to educate us. It was a privately owned
airport, he said. One of the few left. But it was open to public use. No, not
his airport, he chuckled. He just looked after it. Didn't even get paid.
Retired now, he needed something to keep him out of trouble and let him stay
close by the planes and pilots. He didn't fly much anymore, though.
I marveled at that name: Moontown.
Huntsville, Alabama was the birthplace of America's space
program. The Apollo moon missions began here in the minds of some profound
thinkers. So fitting, I thought. Then Jay poured coffee, sat and shattered my
lofty expectations. “No,” he said, shaking his head. He, himself, had worked
for NASA. “The airport was named after that road out yonder that runs back
toward that mountain and just ends up there by a farm—Moontown Road.”
But, surely the road was named after the space program, I
pressed. He chuckled again, shaking his head. “Nobody knows.”
We bade him goodbye, fired up the Grumman and took off. I
circled the field, still smiling. Ellie was right. The rusted, ragged
multi-colored tops of the hangars and buildings did indeed look like a shanty
town. Yet it was the place. I knew it. After two decades of pushing jet
fighters, transports, and airliners, I was about to find an abundant table to
nourish my flying crave.
But the discovery would be a bitter-sweet one that would
bring me unexpected and unbounded joy, salted with rancid servings of
sorrow—and one gut-wrenching, tearful ration of anguish. The “Place” at the
table would have its price.
“I have a tendency to...”
“I have a...”
“I have...”
