In the old days, and for my purposes let’s say those were the 1920’s and 1930’s, life seems to those of us looking backward to have been simpler. It probably was because there were fewer choices in everything. More choices mean complexity which defies simplicity. Part of what attracts some of us hopeless romantics to antique aviation is the lure of that simplicity.
I lead a busy and complex life. My schedule is packed and it requires nearly a full-time effort to coordinate it. Part of that lack of simplicity is an effort to cram as many chances to see and fly old airplanes as possible. As the spring and summer come there are lots of opportunities but unfortunately many are a long way from where I live. So planning is required.
The problem with planning and antique aircraft is we don’t get to specify the weather. And these old birds don’t do well in the kind of weather my Piaggio shakes off like dew. I’ve already missed one big event due to weather and this weekend I was determined not to let it happen again.
But, there was a lot of weather forecast. I could get to where I wanted to go but I couldn’t get back – on my schedule. This wasn’t a problem for real barnstormers. Their schedules had ultimate flexibility because if they couldn’t go they didn’t, but where they were headed everything, and everyone, would wait.
Instead of waiting these days we “pivot”. We go to “plan B”, or “C”. That’s what I did this weekend unable to see my plans to fruition. So, I had the time to pursue the simple pleasures of flying from long grass (as in not cut recently) runways, reducing the local insect population, and sharing the skies, and the beautiful green landscape below, with other inadequately employed pilots – also known as “airport bums”. Between flights, we had conversations in which the only topic of genuine interest was airplanes. None of them will be memorable except as they add up across our lives as time well spent doing not much.
In between the bugs needing to be removed, the oil replenished in the tank, and what has escaped from the radial engines removed from the fuselage. This is not work but a form of active nostalgia as we wonder how to get back to a simpler place, if even for a moment, in our complicated lives.
Before going home to the windswept oven I live in at Oklahoma City, I needed to move my airplane from Brodhead to Poplar Grove to have an intercom installed. When I bought my first Waco the seller gave me an old headset without a microphone. He didn’t like to talk to his front-hole passengers. But I’ve found that the ability to communicate with hand signals sometimes fails – despite the lovely image of Karen Blixen reaching for the hand of Denys Finch Hatton in “Out of Africa”.
In addition to the maintenance work, this gave me an opportunity to fly for a while across the verdant flatlands on a beautiful, cool, summer day to my favorite airport. Poplar Grove is an oasis for antique aviation aficionados. There are two wide grass runways so beautifully manicured you expect a hole and a flag at the end. They are so smooth it elicits genuine pleasure to land on them. Today, I wasn’t sure I’d actually touched down for a hundred feet or so until I realized that the stick had been in my lap for quite a while. Maybe one of my best landings ever – or maybe just a routine day in aviation paradise.
After chatting with the place’s owner, Steve Thomas and avionics technician, John, for a bit work was over and there was time to kill while waiting for a ride to the silver tube and a return to the complicated life. So, I walked the half mile to the Poplar Grove Vintage Wings and Wheels Museum. It’s in an old hangar brought here stone by stone from somewhere else to remind us what simpler times looked like. It’s filled with treasures of slower transportation from days almost forgotten. But its main event is a Curtiss JN4, the “Jenny”, that was built from plans by volunteers who donated 22,000 hours to build it. It’s beautiful in its spidery way. Like something from a cross between “Mad Max” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” it levitates then floats away rather than flies.
After the museum it wasn’t time to go so I sat in a pavilion enjoying the gentle, cool breeze, and watching Luscombes, Stearmans, Wacos, and even a Cirrus take off and land from the fairway cum runway. I finally made it – to the simpler times of those halcyon days – when whiling away an afternoon at the airport meant missing nothing and gaining everything.
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