Iwas 17 years old, sitting in the hotel’s blue 1963 Corvair van next to a 3,000-foot private runway on the north end of Key Largo, waiting for a guest to arrive from Chicago. The red and white Piper Comanche with the engine making a distinctive roar circled the airport once and then landed, the tires making a chirping sound as they touched the hot pavement. It rolled up to the ramp, and as a teenage airplane nut, I could hardly contain myself. This was no ordinary Piper Comanche, it was the new one that had a 400-horsepower, 8-cylinder Lycoming engine under the cowl. It was an airborne hot rod easily capable of 220 miles per hour; the fastest single-engine piston airplane made in the US at the time. As I got out of the van, I was almost drooling.
The pilot waved at me nonchalantly as the propeller stopped moving, and a minute or two later he stepped out onto the wing carrying a small suitcase. My job as the hotel bellboy was to take him a mile or so to the hotel and help get him checked in. He was a friendly guy and must have recognized my enthusiasm. During the brief van ride, he mentioned he had just flown down from Chicago, where it was snowing and he was very glad to be in the nice 80-degree weather in the Florida Keys. I listened to his story about the flight in absolute awe and promised myself, that someday, I was going to do what he, in such a seemingly casual fashion, had just done.
Years went by. I moved away from the Florida Keys to the Seattle area, obtained a commercial pilot’s license, became a flight instructor, and flew all sorts of general aviation aircraft for a living while working through college. I also got married, and probably more often than I should have told my wife who was born in Norway all kinds of embellished stories about the luxurious hotels I had worked at in the sunny Florida Keys. After finishing college, medical school and residency, we settled down to raise a family. Once my medical career was under way, I 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, suggested 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 (Marathon), 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 exposed 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 waitress 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 puzzled 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 flying 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 reservation 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-conditioned aircraft she finally came over to my side and made the reservation.
After securing the new reservation, we promptly checked out of the cement block motel, drove the rental car back to KMTH, got back in the 340, started the engines, turned the air conditioner on high, and departed for the far north end of Key Largo.
Twenty minutes later I was circling the runway at the Ocean Reef Club, just as I had seen the Comanche 400 do way back when. The 340’s tires made the same chirping sound as I landed, and I taxied up to the same exact spot the Comanche had parked all those years ago. Waiting there next to a white Ford van was a sun-bleached high school-aged kid who reminded me much of myself all those years ago. On the way back to the hotel, I explained that decades before I had held his exact job and asked him to give us a tour of the resort. It had grown somewhat, but to my relief was indeed just as fancy as I had told my wife. Our room faced the water, was cool and elegantly decorated — with no cement blocks showing. That evening we had a very nice romantic dinner at the resort restaurant with white tablecloths on a secluded table for two facing the water.
After dinner, with a light breeze blowing off the water, we were walking around in the moonlight under the palm trees when my wife said, “Well, I guess we finally arrived”. And with her help and that of the Cessna 340, that is just what happened.
