So my first 4th of July as a newly divorced person has come and gone, and I survived!! The holidays are sometimes more of a worry than a joy after going through such an upheaval, as the divorce process promises to be. It takes a while for the dust to settle. So what do airplanes have to do with divorce? Learning to fly solo again. Photographing aircraft on the ground and in the sky has become a comforting hobby for me, along with living vicariously through the pilots.
Visiting the Historic Aircraft Restoration Museum was something I had been wanting to do for quite a while. As I entered the building and stepped up to the glass counter to buy a ticket, I felt like I had already stepped back in time. I overheard some of the pilots shooting the breeze at a nearby table, about airplanes and stalls. A part of me wished I could pull up a chair and join them. The museum consists of four separate hangers full of antique aircraft, in all their glory.
I joined the group of people who were waiting for the tour. Feeling a bit awkward, surrounded by strangers, I was glad I had my camera to focus on. We were introduced to a young man who would serve as our tour guide. He was full of interesting information, and answered all of our curious questions. Here are some photos of some of the aircraft.
“Creve Coeur Airport is on the outskirts of busy, sprawling St. Louis, Missouri, and it’s a world away. To drop in for a weekend is to step back to a time when flying was not a way to cross continents but a pastime to enjoy with friends and a chance to raise a little hell. It’s not just that the airplanes you see puttering around the airport are almost all classics from the period between the world wars (the airport hosts one of the largest collections of vintage aircraft in the country-more than 75 Monocoupes, Stearmans, Travel Airs, Stinsons, Fairchilds, and rarer types). And it’s not just because the setting is so lovely, a checkerboard of fields and farms with two great rivers, the Mississippi and Missouri, converging nearby. Creve Coeur evokes nostalgia because it, like most of the small airports profiled in this series, has found a way to keep the noise of modern life away from the airport grounds-or at least a way to drown it out with the continual cough and hum of Continentals, Lycomings, and the rarer powerplants of an earlier time.”
I wish I could identify all of these planes by heart, but that will take some time to learn them all, along with more trips to museums and airshows, which is fine by me. When the tour was over, the young man walked with me to the parking lot. He asked me which group of people I was with and I replied, “I’m not with any group, I’m flying solo.” We talked a bit about the cost of earning a private pilot’s license, which was way out of my range, as I have two teens getting ready to drive this Fall, and about the hot July weather. As I walked to my car, gazing at the Stearman parked on the airfield, I thought to myself, what a great way to celebrate the 4th of July!
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