My Open Hangar Door Policy

My hangar faces north, which means it gathers moss but no solar heat in winter, and when I raise the door in a southerly breeze anything loose near the airfield gets sucked inside. That’s good, because I get lonely sitting alone (the very definition) at a small airport on a weekday when respectable citizens are elsewhere improving society.

I was feeling vaguely guilty for not contributing to societal betterment when Bill’s 1947 Piper Super Cruiser (PA-12) flew over the runway and banked into an arcing descent from downwind to final with Bill adding a touch of forward slip merely because he knew it looked good. Almost as good as his wheel landing on the left main, into the wind, and then the right before the tailwheel settled onto applauding turf.

He parked beside the runway, climbed out and stretched, indicating he’d been aloft since dawn. I hadn’t; too busy watching clouds mold cartoon figures against a Disneyesque blue sky. Without students I needed a mission to overcome the inertia that trapped me in a lawn chair beneath my Aeronca’s right wing.

Bill settled onto a kitchen chair, one of those red and tan vinyl jobs from the 1950s. As his scuffed bootheels drummed atop an upturned oil bucket, he asked, “Been flying already?”

“Since dawn,” I lied, but I’m bad at it, and Bill drawled, “Bull—” And by custom, the conversation should’ve wandered into Bill saying how smooth the morning air was and how he’d flown down to Benny’s airfield, but no one was around, then I should’ve asked about the recent top-end work on his 108-hp Lycoming. That could’ve stretched several minutes before Bill once again complained that “you should get a coffee pot in here if you expect to draw a better class of freeloaders,” but something caught his eye and conversation sputtered. I turned to where he looked.

A small tour bus had pulled off the highway into our parking lot and stopped beside the rusty snowplow. We’re proud of it, but honestly Nash Field (6Z6), Indianola, Iowa is not a stop on Viking land excursions. Sure, world travelers know our town as home to the National Balloon Museum, a must-see if you’ve seen everything else in life, but it’s miles up the road. Obviously, someone was lost and turning around.

Instead, the bus door opened, and a young man stepped out and walked toward us. His fellow passengers cowered safely inside with the tour guide frantically waving her clipboard and pointing at her watch, unaware that they had exited any earthly timeline, and this rebellious tourist was being sucked into the black hole that is my hangar.

In his Midwestern demeanor Bill greeted the stranger while offering a kitchen chair from my June Cleaver dinette set. “I’d suggest coffee,” he said, “but cheapskate here,” indicating me, “refuses to buy a pot.”  The visitor thanked and declined, his accent unfamiliar, so Bill asked, “Don’t sound like southern Iowa. Where you from?”

“Switzerland,” the stranger answered and said his name was Karl and he’d been shanghaied onto a corporate vacation tour exploring the historic Pines-to-Palms Jefferson Highway, which stretches from Canada to New Orleans and, unknown to the non-pilot tour planners, passed our airport.  

Old joke: “How do you know if a pilot’s in the room? He’ll tell you.”

Karl did, adding that he’d spotted our windsock through the trees and called for the bus driver to stop. Now, we watched him move around my airplane, a pilot jonesing for an aviation fix, so I asked, “Ever flown tailwheel?” He hadn’t, and I had my mission.

We rolled the airplane outside and despite anemic objections in one of the eighteen official Swiss languages, Karl claimed the front seat as I took the back, before Bill at the propeller called, “Contact!” and swung it to life.

The air was choppier than expected, the crosswind challenging, but Karl transitioned from hapless tourist in a strange land to a pilot of the universal sky wherein he regained his bearings. He flew well, particularly the third low pass down the runway, rocking wings at befuddled tourists still inside their wayward bus.

After landing, I climbed out, leaving Karl alone for the silent post-flight reflection that’s critical to aviation’s soul. Eventually, we pushed the airplane into the hangar, and Karl asked how much he owed.

“First flight’s free.”

He thanked us, as the bus horn signaled that reality demanded his surrender to mundanity. Before leaving, Karl handed me a Swiss ten-franc note and said, “This will buy you a beer when you visit Switzerland.” And he left, never to return.

My hangar has drawn countless visitors in the past forty years, and many have left behind calling cards that I’ve stapled to the back wall, as I did Karl’s Swiss note. Should my wife, Kathy, and I visit Switzerland, I might take the ten francs with us, even though I don’t like beer. More likely, I’ll leave it on display with dozens of other memories, and there I will keep them—borrowing from Longfellow — “Till the walls shall crumble to ruin and moulder in dust away.”

Moral? Ain’t none, except a warning to approach north facing hangars with trepidation. In the right conditions they could draw you inside, and some portion of you might never escape.