barnstorming

http://www.oldrhinebeck.org/

if you've never spent a day at a real aerodrome, not just a landing strip but all the word aerodrome drags along with it, there's a whole list of things your life is short on. things that could throw of the balance of things and send you sliding ever nearer an edge of a world composed mostly of sadness and missed opportunity. and i'm not saying it will be easy for you to find one. the word itself doesn't even fit itself into conversation anymore. not since the second of the large wars. but you'd be a fool to pass up a chance to go if you found one nearby. fortunately for those of us in the new york state area, there's rhinebeck.

saturday was opening day at the aerodrome and the sweetie and i drove the fortyish valley miles through green mountains. rhinebeck, if you've never been, is an old town. the folks there enjoy this and have kept a substantial section of this place curled up against the hudson as close to just as it used to be as they can. i think they do a fine job. the aerodrome itself is off one of those roads that seems major in a small town, even though there's nothing at all like a house nearby. it's out by where small towns keep their big stores. an intersection everyone can get to and nobody lives near. but turing from that intersection brings you to a gently winding road with nothing around but leafy green.

you could miss it in all the trees, but you turn and there it is. the parking lot is a dirt loop between some old barnlike things and the airfield, full of fat, loaded down harleys, a few pointy motorcycles that look like they belong in a circus and a variety of truck and truck like vehicles. you walk up the dirt loop to the top of the rise where three bedraggled "hangars" sit. each one holds a few planes and parts and motors. you get the sense of visiting the pound, seeing musty, eager pets someone else forgot about or didn't want. you'll find yourself wanting to touch them, the canvas wings, the smooth propellers. there are little notes scattered all around reminding you how it's not nice to touch the planes but you see the planes waiting for you, planes born before your grandparents, some of them, and you know if you could get all the other slackjawed tourists out of one of those sheds for just a second you'd reach over the rough twine that serves for velvet rope in this sort of place and you'd touch every one of the planes. you would.

at least that's how i felt. the sweetie got a little worried about the homes the planes were staying in. barnsheds full of holes, buildings with doors on some of the hinges. places with dirt floors. when you pay your money you walk into a small clearing with a couple of snack bars and a gift shop. get some fries. there is malt vinegar at the condiments table and this should make you happy. get a sno cone to turn your lips purple or green or red. there are burgers and nachos and something called steak. i don't know.

there is a raised stand, a grandstand, sort of. a man on the platform barks over loudspeakers that somehow sound old fashioned about finding a seat. the seats are planks on cinder blocks. they fill up close to the entrance, close to the snack bars. keep walking. go past the rides booth and plant yourself on a plank. the man will tell you in tin can words about the planes you will see. they are like giant insects, butterflies, dragonflies, fireflies. they look like they're made of matchsticks. old ones. with tissue paper. they are things you would hold carefully cupped in both hands.

the first plane up is giving rides. it's a vehicle made in 1929 and you realize that you want, at least a little bit, to ride it. you enter a raffle to do just that but are probably pretty relieved when a girl who is not you wins instead. the rides go on a bit. the other planes begin to line up. one of them flies up and, in an attempt to prove aero agility, the pilot tosses out a roll of toilet paper. it slithers out of the plane and dribbles down against a bright blue sky. the pilot turns the plane around and cuts the paper over and over, turning and returning. you are surprised how impressed you are with something like this. cutting toilet paper into strips.

the planes that follow ease out. you expect old men in pajamas to be flying them. most of them need help to turn while on the ground. two men go out and shove the planes around when they get to the edge of the grass. there is all this ricketiness, all this ramshackle, fallingdown oldness there but when the oldest plane flying in america grasshoppers across the green field you know you are seeing into the past. you know you are getting something most people walking around out there won't ever get. so you sit there with your lips sno cone red, shoveling popcorn in your mouth, watching men who are so much in love with these flying beasts they are willing to climb inside them over and over, men who are so much in love they want you to see the planes the way they do, as butterflies, as angels, as protectors of the free world and everything.