Home

Long ago, in a time of frequent sonic booms, black and white television and daily elementary school air raid drills, a young boy stood in his back yard and looked up at the sky.

“I don’t think I belong here,” he said to the sky. “I cannot talk my talk with anyone here and they all think I am strange.” 

The boy lived through his middle-class upbringing in relative comfort with a family that loved him, but did not understand him very well. He was correct in thinking that he did not belong. He felt strange and out of joint with the universe he found himself in, but had no idea what universe, if any, he belonged in or how to go about finding it.

People called him “bright, but strange and aloof.” He could sometimes appear to fit in with the universe if he tried very, very hard by faking it. He played with the usual toys, went to school and made friends, but never felt totally comfortable in the world of school, sports, church, and life in general.

So, he went to school every day and got along. He played sandlot football, but could not understand why the other guys liked it so much. He went to church because his Mom said so, and joined the Cub Scouts because his big brother was a Cub Scout, and it was expected of him. 

Since he did not belong to the world he found himself in, he let his mind wander to worlds of his imagination where he did fit in and was the hero of every story. Most all his imaginings were about flying.

People shook their heads in bewilderment at his lack of focus on the real world and would say: “well, that is just Kevin being Kevin.” Because of his wistfulness, nobody, even his parents, expected him to amount to much when he grew up.

When he was twelve, he went to the local airport with his Dad to take pictures with a Kodak Instamatic Camera in order to earn his Photography Merit Badge for Boy Scouts. 

He did not want to leave the airport that day. He was home. 

The weird boy from the strange otherworldly, reality of the 1960s and 1970s had finally found the universe he belonged in. People spoke his language and understood why he could spend day after day in the hot sun just looking at and touching airplanes.

Tied-down aircraft danced in the wind and talked to him. He learned about weather, fuel, and how to push an airplane back into the hangar when it was done flying. He would frequently just sit on the ramp in silence and when he did, nobody said: “That is just Kevin being Kevin.” They knew he belonged there.  They themselves had spent long days at airport staring into space and thinking after finding their home among the planes and hangars.

The people in Kevin’s airport home were not his parents or his siblings, but they nevertheless raised him to adulthood in the world of flying and aviation. 

He grew up at the airport and when he left for college, the first thing he did when he arrived was seek out an airport near the school. He grew up some more in Tallahassee until an airline called him to his new home airport in Atlanta.

Later in life, anytime the boy was in need of comfort and a break from the non-flying universe that he still did not understand, he would go out to an airport and just sit there “being Kevin.” These included airports in London England, Shreveport, Miami, Chicago, Toronto and Waupaca. 

When he wasn’t home on the ground at the airport he was even more at home in the air flying the airplanes that used to dance in wind and talk with him when he was younger. They understood when he talked his talk. He was home.

 Where is your home?

It was a hot day last Wednesday, but I flew my airplane from Lexington KY up to Georgetown anyway to buy some cheap Avgas and drink a cold Diet Coke. Once fueled, before I saddled-up for the hot-bumpy flight south to KLEX, I had a few minutes to talk with the line crew chief who had just topped-off my ride. 

As we talked about the heat and other local airport things, I learned that he had medically retired from a very nice corporate jet-flying job a few years ago. Unable to fly professionally ever again, he took a job pumping gas, towing airplanes around the ramp, and spending his days in the blistering heat and numbing cold that ramps in Kentucky can provide.

“I just had to come back,” he said. “I had to come back home.”

I nodded because I knew exactly what he meant. Georgetown’s airport is closer to my house than KLEX and I told him that I had spent countless hours wandering the ramp there looking at airplanes, talking to a few of them and spending even more time in a trance, “just being Kevin.”

“People used to tell me that I was a space cadet too.,” he said. “I never understood how people could not ever want to fly or be around airplanes in a world where flight and airplanes existed. I just like being around airplanes and airports, you know? I spent a lot of time after my surgery moping around the house until my wife told me I had better get myself out here before she killed me! So, here I sit.”

There must be thousands of aviation expats like my newfound line-crew friend and me. 

Maybe you are one of us -- Have you:

·     Found excuses; even pitifully lame ones, to go the airport?

·     Once at the airport, spent hours there for no particular reason?

·     Pulled a lawn chair out near the runway just to watch and critique landings?

·     Pretended you liked the FBOs coffee just so you could spend more time in their lobby?

·     Peered into the windows of parked aircraft to the point that security people had to come out and have a “talk” with you?

·     Gone to the airport when you were uncomfortable or confused with the real world and just wanted to go home for a while to think?

If you have done any of these things you are one of us — the universally untethered unless around aviation few.

I think everyone has felt from time to time that they don’t belong in the world in which they find themselves. Some, like my wife, are at home around horses. Others like my daughter, found their home on an athletic field, or in my son’s case, behind a drum set playing with his band.

Someday, in the hopefully very far away future, this pilot will fly west and head up to whatever awaits tired airline captains and aged CFIs when they shuffle off their mortal coil. I am pretty sure that I will arrive, freshly young and healthy, on the ramp of my airport. Avgas will be ten cents a gallon and all of my dogs from my previous life will be living in the hangar as airport dogs. 

The wind will be blowing beautiful new dancing airplanes around in their tie-downs and all will be well in my universe.

I will be home.

Find more of Kevin's writing at: cessnaflyer.org and piperflyer.org

I am looking for new clients. Contact me here at LinkedIn or at: [email protected]