As you’re reading this, Oshkosh, the aerial extravaganza known to young’uns as AirVenture, is in full swing. However, for only the second time in 60 years, it’s happening without me. I was supposed to leave this morning, Saturday, PHX to MLK (Milwaukee). But, didn’t. The dire reports of smoke smothering everything and a casual study of the harmful aspects of smoke introducing particles into our blood streams talked me into asking my doctor the obvious question. Should I? The answer was a forceful no. Something about having crap floating around in my brain’s plumbing system figured in. This would have been number 59 for me.
All packed up and no place to go.And, no, I don’t pack that well but Marlene, the AZ Redhead does!
For me, being a working something or other, the week at Oshkosh is eight days on a golf cart hell bent on covering every inch of the grounds a minimum of twice a day, hopefully three times, “prospecting”. I’m looking for airplanes, people and situations that I think the rest of the world would enjoy knowing about via the pages of one of the EAA’s four magazines (Sport Aviation, the big one, Vintage, Warbirds and Aerobatics). The area to be covered is immense, something like two miles long and a mile wide with a semi-separate area, the North 40, forming the top of a “T”. It’s totally carpeted with airplanes and exhibit areas and nothing in the airplane area is static. The population is constantly changing with arrivals and departures changing the story possibilities every few minutes. I always want to cover the grounds to find the cool, the unusual, the oh-my-God-what-is -that? I hit the ground running at 0700 and stop when it’s too dark to get decent photos of possible subjects. When, approved, I retrace my steps and tag the airplane with a card imploring them to call me so we can set up photos and interviews. The process repeats itself until Sunday, when the field is emptying and I’ve sucked the editorial possibilities dry. My brain will have stopped functioning a day or two earlier.
When something looks as if it has possibilities, I fold one of these up and stick it in a cowling or door crack.
This wonderful craziness is punctuated with daily respites of an hour and a half standing on stage talking about something I hope people are interested in (welding, tailwheel flying, Pitts specials, homebuilt designs, etc.). Those always devolve into bull sessions that are huge fun.
My decision to pull the plug is a big damn deal for me. I know that for the rest of the week I’m going to have problems keeping my mind focused. I go back a few years with the event. My first four years at the convention, began in 1966, when it was still in Rockford before moving to Oshkosh. I hitch-hiked the first two times from college in Oklahoma. From the beginning to today, I’ve spent 58 weeks, which is over a year, on site.
I guess it could be said I’ve been doing the Oshkosh thing for a long time. So this week, being stuck in the office is weird beyond imagination. However, I’m going to make my personal total of 60 times on-site no matter what. I’m certain I’ll be golf carting again next year. However, if something dictates that’s my last time, I have a buddy who I can count on to make sure my urn makes the next trip. It’s 60 times or bust!!
What follows is a long ago column about one of my ancient Oshkoshes.
“You don’t do this often, do you?” I looked up from the tattered 1981 August issue of Life magazine to see a sweaty round face on top a wrinkled sweatshirt pointed my way. I glanced around the laundromat to see if he was talking to someone else. I saw my little girl, Jennifer, behind me spelling out her name on the windowsill in dead flys and my son, Scott, was cowering in the corner repulsed by the entire scene.
“I mean you’re not professional laundromat users, are you?” the round face continued.
Again, I glanced around, but this time at myself to see what it was that gave me away as being an alien on a soap suds planet. I was wearing a clean T-shirt that said “I survived another Oshkosh” (not a proven fact yet since it was only Wednesday). Every crack and crevice on the top of my best buffalo hide Justins was packed with Wisconsin dust and the skin on my face had this ready-to-fall-off-in-flakes look like a dried river bed curling up before your eyes. My mustache looked like something had died on my upper lip and I couldn’t decide whether to wash my hair or send it out to be sand-blasted. Even so I looked at my new friend and said “No, we don’t use laundromats often. What gave us away?“
The answer jolted me. “You all look too happy to belong here.” My God, I thought, here we were, a family of wretches so totally delapidated that certain tribes of Africa would make us live in a hut outside the stockade, and this guy thought we looked too happy to be in a laundromat.
Then I looked at everyone else there.
He was right, beneath the grime and the dead skin, we all had this inner glow that said our sojourn in fluff and fold heaven was temporary. It was obvious that we had dropped out of the flock that surrounded Oshkosh only to perform restoration processes on Levi’s and T-shirts. They were so soiled they were about to take off on lives of their own and keep us awake at night as they thrashed around in the laundry bags trying to get out (you shouldn’t wait too long to do laundry at Oshkosh. Levi’s can get unruly).
We weren’t actually in Oshkosh. We were fifteen miles south in the town of Fond du Lac which for nine days every year becomes our mailing address, telephone number and crash pad. Why not Oshkosh? For one thing, after ten or twelve hours on the field you need to be able to sit down somewhere with people who don’t smell as bad as you do. For another, we’ve come to look at the Dartmoor Hotel (now long gone) as being a mini-destination or satellite that allows us to step over the line into the chaos that is Oshkosh but then, when our senses have been assaulted to numbness and our feet have refused to take another step, we can step back through the invisible curtain to find a certain amount of tranquility at the Dartmoor’s indoor pool .
Just across Highway 41 from the Dartmoor is the Fond du Lac Airport which is not only the site of the IAC Aerobatic Contest the week following Oshkosh but during the week is the scene of a laid-back, rather impromptu fly-in of its own. Since the Warbirds of America headquarters is at the Holiday Inn on the south side of the field, you find a lot of Oshkosh commuters hustling around in Mustangs, P-40s and T-28s. I can sit at the edge of the field or, if I‘m being particularly lazy, at the Dartmoor’s pool and watch all matter of marvelous flying machines slide down final through a liquid gold Wisconsin sunset to spend the night across the street.
The next day that commuting traffic is reversed.
I also use Fond du Lac Airport as a staging area for many of the air-to-air shoots we do during the week. The beehive that surrounds Oshkosh is so intense sometimes that it’s much easier and safer to just “meet me at Fond du Lac at, 3,000 feet, four o’clock.” And, while three or four hundred thousand people are sitting at Oshkosh watching the airshow, we‘re running around Southern Winabago County putting history on film.
I can’t think of too many airplanes that I haven’t flown into Fond du Lac doing photo shoots—Mustangs, T-28s, T-34s, Swifts, LongEzes, RV-3s, Baby Lakes, Skyotes, etc. I know Fond du Lac’s runways and surrounding territory at least as well as I do my home airport. One such episode had me in the back of a T-28, canopy cracked open, going in circles with a warbird on each wing as I shot inside and outside turns with differing sun angles. As I was close to being done with a duo, I’d radio my compadre on the ground and he’d launch another two airplanes. That day I shot 28 airplanes in less than 90 minutes. A personal record. My old Nikons were smoking!
It would be really easy for the operator of an airport on the edge of the Oshkosh TCA (Terrified and Confused Area) to get irritated at all the nit-picking requests and aerial shenanigans going on. But the manager, is right in there mixing it up with the rest of them giving rides in a Breezy, pushing Pitts in and out of his hangar (I once counted thirty-three at one time during the IAC contest) and generally doing his best to be helpful. Sure, he makes a buck or two on fuel sales, but, when you average out two Quickies, a LongEze, a Cassutt and a Mustang, you’re not talking a lot of gallons.
Although I don’t ever remember introducing myself to the manager or stating my needs, he’s never so much as raised an eyebrow when I’m running around in the middle of the airport pushing airplanes out into the grass to get pictures or hovering on top of the airport while I call up a Corsair, a couple of Mustangs or a Starduster for some air-to-air work. The manager looks like he’s having the time of his life which makes it hard to pick out the manager from the managees.
When the Davisson Family thinks about Oshkosh, the mental images conjured up include much more than miles and miles of airplanes. It includes the many hours we get to spend together in the evenings. The quietness of the sunset at Fond du lac Airport seems to be different than the one up at Oshkosh.
Maybe the guy at the laundromat was right. Inside, every one of us is smiling and laughing and enjoying so much more than simply airplanes, and that the glow worked its way through the dirt and grime.
Incidentally, FYI, it takes seventy-six dead flys to spell “Jennifer”.
How long ago did this happen? Jennifer turned fifty a couple weeks ago and no longer counts dead flies and Scott, sold his company, is semi-retired and fifty-four. And I’m still going to Oshkosh. Usually, anyway. bd
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.