There is really nothing else like the airpark where I live. People may live on big lakes or golf courses or with acres of piney woods behind their homes, but an airpark is a place where many people have airplanes, not a set of golf clubs or a sailboat or hiking gear. And they don’t just have airplanes, they have beloved, cherished airplanes in candy-apple colors. So, when my husband and I moved here, it was naïve to think that as non-flyers – the name given to people who aren’t pilots – we would seamlessly fit in with residents who fly off into the clouds on a regular basis.
But I made things worse. First, I am terrified of flying. Second, we bought our house in the airpark because it was the most affordable craftsman-style home in the area at the time – and it’s here only because this is where the original farm family lived. It’s 100 years old.
Can you see where I am going with this? We were out of sync from the get-go.
Also, since I didn’t know the lingo of pilots, I offended many of our neighbors right away by telling nearly everyone else I met in town that most of the pilots were also campers. “You may think everyone flies,” I’d say confidently. “But many love the outdoors. There are RVs everywhere.” Why had I never seen that many RVs? This never crossed my mind. But RVs were referenced constantly. One day, a man I’d met in our airpark told me he’d heard I’d been misusing the term. “RVs are aircraft,” he explained. They are hand-built. From a kit. Then flown. They are otherwise known as EABs. I was stunned I could have gotten this acronym so wrong.
But this wasn’t the end of my faux pas moments. In an effort to be welcoming, one of my neighbors invited me to an airpark-wide spring breakfast, to be held in a big hangar at the airport itself. “They’re going to launch balloons, you’ll love it,” she said.
I told her I’d be there. But, back in my days as a reporter, I’d covered events with balloon launches for promotional purposes – and nothing seemed so environmentally unfriendly to me as people holding party balloons on a string and releasing them into the sky to mark the opening of a car dealership or a political rally. “I’d love to go to the breakfast,” I told my neighbor. “But I am going to skip the balloon thing. I am not a fan. They can drift into telephone wires and trees and really be a nuisance.” It was only later that I realized these weren’t the kind of helium balloons you buy at a store; They were big, beautiful hot-air balloons, which would ascend from our small airport. Even as a non-flyer, I knew I was being a total dunce.
Help came in the form of the Ninety-nines. This is an international organization of women pilots, and Amelia Earhart was a founding member. It has a wonderful chapter here. One of my favorite neighbors, Deb, who was an air-traffic controller for many years, is a “99.” She told me about a half-day informational meeting at the Independence Library for people like me. It was called “The Flying Companion Seminar,” and it was designed for non-pilots who go up in planes as passengers and who don’t want to be useless pieces of protoplasm while the plane is in the air. That actually isn’t the way it was described, but I think that pretty much nails it, based on the attendees like me I met that day. I found it amazing – I saw so many of the women I’d met at our airpark book club, social events and even at our annual craft fair here … and it turns out they are pilots! They knit, they sew, they make to die-for brownies – and they fly, too.
The main speaker, Marilyn, was a woman I’d long admired because she’d been a school administrator, which I put right up there with storm-chasing meteorologists in terms of stress.
In fact, right away, Marilyn was placed under some duress when the audiovisual equipment failed, ironically, just as she was instructing us on the reliability of aviation technology. She handled it very well, at one point extending her arms to explain how a plane behaves at a certain altitude. She added that onboard paper charts could be effectively used to assist any pilot, should they ever have a failure of the dashboard or whatever-you-call-it on an airplane that’s needed to view surroundings.
The charts then were passed around, for all to see. If you’ve ever seen a map of crowded geographic features written in a foreign language, this is pretty much how they looked to me. So, I did what I always do in such a situation and started asking questions of the woman sitting next to me, who was a pilot. She had a deep voice, and before long Marilyn, the former educator, came back to reprimand me for talking in class.
I told Marilyn, right after she shushed me, that I couldn’t fathom these charts and that I’d actually managed to pass organic chemistry in college, so this was concerning. It was making me worry about people like her. What if there was trouble in the air? Do these confusing poster-sized things really help?
“Of course they do,” she said. What astounding precision Marilyn showed, pointing out things on that chart like a talking Rosetta stone. “And if you need to do a quick landing, there you are! Safe and sound, perhaps at some airport where you’ve never been, but then you may find a new restaurant.”
What calmness. What control. I was considerably reassured about flying, if I could have a woman pilot at the helm. But what was this about discovering a new restaurant? It sounded odd. Later, I asked Deb about this. “Oh, that’s what we call the 99-dollar hamburger,” she explained. Was this because it was bought by a 99 who touched down? “Oh no,” she said. “A lot of small airports have their own restaurant, and when you take into account the fuel and all the other things that it takes to get to one of them, that’s the term to describe what the hamburger probably really costs.”
Well, here is the good news for anyone in my small town who wants a $99 hamburger for less than ten bucks. You can get a delicious sandwich with a side of your choice at our very own restaurant, The Starduster, just by walking, bicycling or driving over to the Independence State Airport.
And while you’re there, you are fairly sure to see a 99 if the weather is good. Look up into the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Yes, and it’s superwoman! A high-flying female that, even though I am way past my 60th birthday, is teaching me that there’s always time to look up to new role models, and certainly not just when they’re overhead in the wild blue yonder.
But I made things worse. First, I am terrified of flying. Second, we bought our house in the airpark because it was the most affordable craftsman-style home in the area at the time – and it’s here only because this is where the original farm family lived. It’s 100 years old.
Can you see where I am going with this? We were out of sync from the get-go.
Also, since I didn’t know the lingo of pilots, I offended many of our neighbors right away by telling nearly everyone else I met in town that most of the pilots were also campers. “You may think everyone flies,” I’d say confidently. “But many love the outdoors. There are RVs everywhere.” Why had I never seen that many RVs? This never crossed my mind. But RVs were referenced constantly. One day, a man I’d met in our airpark told me he’d heard I’d been misusing the term. “RVs are aircraft,” he explained. They are hand-built. From a kit. Then flown. They are otherwise known as EABs. I was stunned I could have gotten this acronym so wrong.
But this wasn’t the end of my faux pas moments. In an effort to be welcoming, one of my neighbors invited me to an airpark-wide spring breakfast, to be held in a big hangar at the airport itself. “They’re going to launch balloons, you’ll love it,” she said.
I told her I’d be there. But, back in my days as a reporter, I’d covered events with balloon launches for promotional purposes – and nothing seemed so environmentally unfriendly to me as people holding party balloons on a string and releasing them into the sky to mark the opening of a car dealership or a political rally. “I’d love to go to the breakfast,” I told my neighbor. “But I am going to skip the balloon thing. I am not a fan. They can drift into telephone wires and trees and really be a nuisance.” It was only later that I realized these weren’t the kind of helium balloons you buy at a store; They were big, beautiful hot-air balloons, which would ascend from our small airport. Even as a non-flyer, I knew I was being a total dunce.
Help came in the form of the Ninety-nines. This is an international organization of women pilots, and Amelia Earhart was a founding member. It has a wonderful chapter here. One of my favorite neighbors, Deb, who was an air-traffic controller for many years, is a “99.” She told me about a half-day informational meeting at the Independence Library for people like me. It was called “The Flying Companion Seminar,” and it was designed for non-pilots who go up in planes as passengers and who don’t want to be useless pieces of protoplasm while the plane is in the air. That actually isn’t the way it was described, but I think that pretty much nails it, based on the attendees like me I met that day. I found it amazing – I saw so many of the women I’d met at our airpark book club, social events and even at our annual craft fair here … and it turns out they are pilots! They knit, they sew, they make to die-for brownies – and they fly, too.
The main speaker, Marilyn, was a woman I’d long admired because she’d been a school administrator, which I put right up there with storm-chasing meteorologists in terms of stress.
In fact, right away, Marilyn was placed under some duress when the audiovisual equipment failed, ironically, just as she was instructing us on the reliability of aviation technology. She handled it very well, at one point extending her arms to explain how a plane behaves at a certain altitude. She added that onboard paper charts could be effectively used to assist any pilot, should they ever have a failure of the dashboard or whatever-you-call-it on an airplane that’s needed to view surroundings.
The charts then were passed around, for all to see. If you’ve ever seen a map of crowded geographic features written in a foreign language, this is pretty much how they looked to me. So, I did what I always do in such a situation and started asking questions of the woman sitting next to me, who was a pilot. She had a deep voice, and before long Marilyn, the former educator, came back to reprimand me for talking in class.
I told Marilyn, right after she shushed me, that I couldn’t fathom these charts and that I’d actually managed to pass organic chemistry in college, so this was concerning. It was making me worry about people like her. What if there was trouble in the air? Do these confusing poster-sized things really help?
“Of course they do,” she said. What astounding precision Marilyn showed, pointing out things on that chart like a talking Rosetta stone. “And if you need to do a quick landing, there you are! Safe and sound, perhaps at some airport where you’ve never been, but then you may find a new restaurant.”
What calmness. What control. I was considerably reassured about flying, if I could have a woman pilot at the helm. But what was this about discovering a new restaurant? It sounded odd. Later, I asked Deb about this. “Oh, that’s what we call the 99-dollar hamburger,” she explained. Was this because it was bought by a 99 who touched down? “Oh no,” she said. “A lot of small airports have their own restaurant, and when you take into account the fuel and all the other things that it takes to get to one of them, that’s the term to describe what the hamburger probably really costs.”
Well, here is the good news for anyone in my small town who wants a $99 hamburger for less than ten bucks. You can get a delicious sandwich with a side of your choice at our very own restaurant, The Starduster, just by walking, bicycling or driving over to the Independence State Airport.
And while you’re there, you are fairly sure to see a 99 if the weather is good. Look up into the sky. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Yes, and it’s superwoman! A high-flying female that, even though I am way past my 60th birthday, is teaching me that there’s always time to look up to new role models, and certainly not just when they’re overhead in the wild blue yonder.