The flaked and faded word Caroline painted in aqua script across the bulbous nose of an old Convair fuselage looms up unexpectedly and stuns you. There sits one of the most evocative remnants of Camelot, silent in the pale winter sun, assaulted by the sounds of pizza parlors and service stations. The suburbanites of Silver Hill rush by this tiny corner of Maryland uncomprehending. Thirty years ago, the world knew. Two engines would belch smoke and roar a message of adventure, as John Kennedy staked out his New Frontier across the nation.
Countless times you bounded up those stairs, flopped in a seat, while the Caroline rolled down a distant runway, headed for another city, another rally. Kennedy reigned in his swivel chair at the center of the cabin, barking at his campaign organizers, laughing at the pratfalls of the traveling press, sucking on Callard & Bowser butterscotch squares for his strained larynx, and showering the floor with the devoured pages of the day's newspapers. All the while a comely stewardess rubbed Frances Fox tonic into his luxurious shock of hair, a zealously tended political asset.
The Caroline is only one of 40,000 items of aircraft memorabilia, from whole | planes to burp bags, collected at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration, and Storage Facility workshop of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington. For most Americans, a big chunk of their history is concentrated in the metal sheds on those 25 acres, where 22 technicians slowly, meticulously regenerate the epic of flight.
A black Stinson Reliant of fabric and spruce rests on the floor, seemingly poised for takeoff. You took your first flight in one of those graceful monoplanes in 1935. The last of the barnstormers out of Omaha had dropped in on a harvested alfalfa field. For $l.50 you rumbled through the stubble and jolted off into the air, choked with awe and fear. Above the old town, you could see the high school and your home and beyond them the vast, quilted cropland. Your world and the way you looked at it changed forever. The pilot, casual in his open, checked shirt, let you hold the wheel for a few seconds, and just then you were a god.
There is one of Roscoe Turner's sleek racers in the shop. Turner was a hero to Depression-ridden boys. He flew in pink jodhpurs, gleaming calvary boots, brass-button tunic, and sported a needle-pointed waxed mustache. He carried a bottle of Carbona cleaner with him to hold grease spots on his rakish costume to a minimum. You got to see him at Sioux City, Iowa, on a scorched tarmac in the drought years, and the thrill lasted the whole dismal summer. Turner brought along his pet lion cub Gilmore, which draped its paws over the side of the cockpit as Turner cut the switch and saluted. In a back room at the Garber Facility, Gilmore, long ago a grown lion, proudly presides, beautifully stuffed and stored.