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was still able to do some professional flying, as well as own a few different planes personally.
More than thirty years passed, and then by chance, there was a medical meeting I needed to attend in Orlando, Florida, and owning a Cessna 340, I elected to fly it down from Washington State. My wife, quite curious about how many of my old Florida Keys stories were true, sug- gested that after the meeting I take her to some of those high-end resorts so she could see just how luxurious they were, and if there was any truth at all to my stories about beautiful tanned girlfriends and jetsetters.
So, after the meeting, we flew the 340 down from KORL to KMTH (Mara- thon), the airport closest to where I had lived on the Keys. We rented a car and drove up to Islamorada, where I had made a reservation to stay at one of the first waterfront motels I had worked at. As we drove up to the entrance, I could tell right away that it somehow was not the fancy high-end place of my memory. But it only got worse. We checked in and drove the rental car to the faded door of our assigned room. The room was hot and smelled like stale cigarettes. I could not help but notice that the walls were all ex- posed concrete block, albeit painted. My wife looked around and gave me
a bemused and knowing smile, but being the kind person she is, chose to say nothing.
That evening for dinner we drove to a nearby roadside restaurant that I recalled (with hazy memory) as somewhat decent. The place was mostly empty, had plastic chairs and vinyl tablecloths, and a greasy cardboard menu. The waitress was thin and shrunken from too much sun and tobacco. While my wife was studying the menu, I asked the wait- ress if she had lived on the Keys long. She replied, yes, all her life in fact and asked why I wanted to know. I replied that many years ago I had attended high school there, and wondered if she might know any
of the kids from that time. She offered a puz- zled look, asked what year that was, and started eying me up and down very carefully. Then she suddenly grabbed me by the shoulders in a very possessive and familiar way and burst out with “Kevin, I am Sandy, we played in the band together... remember me?” While I stumbled
for words my wife almost fell off her chair laughing.
Clearly, this whole thing about fly- ing back to my old high school-era stomping grounds in my own aircraft was not going as planned — no tanned girlfriends or jet-setting hotels this time around. Hoping things would improve the next morning, I called the last hotel I had worked at before leaving the area as a kid. It took some doing for me to convince the reser- vation clerk I was not some kind of bum, but when I told her we would be arriving in our own, private, twin- engine, pressurized and air-condi- tioned aircraft she finally came over to my side and made the reservation.
August 2023 / TWIN & TURBINE • 19