After it was over with I found myself in my airplane blissfully avoiding the traffic snarls that other Spring Breakers faced somewhat more confused than I was when I had first started this Spring Break. I was capable of feeling pain. I was capable of feeling glee. I was thankful not to be on 35 at the moment and quite pleased to be in the air but beyond that everything was confused. I flew to the cafe after topping the airplane off at Hamilton. Hamilton's airport had a terminal preferred by insects in that section of plains but I knew darn well that the airport was also a yuppie free zone. The terminal was a small old functional office building lacking central heat or air. There was a gas space heater on the floor and wall AC in the window. I paid for my 100LL and filed my next flight plan was back on the way. The floor was dark hardwood and wood paneling.  Hamilton was just a small rural community on the plains of Texas neither rich materially or resource wise. Hamilton was also so far away from the big city that none of the money associated with a big city came Hamilton's way. The big road going through town was 281. It was two lanes at Hamilton as it wound up the backbone of Texas running from Mc Allen in deep south Texas to some point along the Red River into Oklahoma. The second hop to the cafe fun again.

Even with the fuel stop I was smoking a bunch of land bound friends stuck on I-35. The only real way to get around Texas is by small airplane. It was faster and a whole lot more fun. I could come into a place like Hamilton sample its character and still beat the land bound crowd. Door to door time the small airplane smoked the 737's of Southwest Airlines because it got going sooner and the front door of the café was gate to board the airplane.

I got back to the cafe and went into the cave of its interior and started playing my guitar. Donna shot me a dirty look. I responded by hugging her on her shoulder. What was coming out of the guitar was hints of confusion and pain. This was disturbed by the start of business. The café was theoretically supposed to make money. I stashed my guitar. The dinner rush started. I was soon busy flipping burgers and getting hot and sweaty. Donna and I handled it well. I then decided at nine to give her the store till close. She thanked me. I had not placed my self on the schedule but had decided to come anyway. I finally flew back to my dorm room for some much-needed sleep.

The next day was just a normal one at school. I drove out to the café and soon found myself in a convoy of fellow Schreiner students. I could not help but grin. As I pulled into the parking lot I saw Karen, Renee and Kim parking along side my car. I hoped the locals would not leave when they saw the three.

I saw Donna making a burger and I headed for the cappuccino machine. I took an order for 3 cappuccinos. I decided to put some Gordon Lightfoot on sound system as a compromise. Much to my chagrin both groups of people liked hearing music. Kim had shortly cropped blond hair and was both loud and a good listener. She was English major along being an accomplished poet. Renee was louder then Kim but lacked the quiet softer edge. She was an actress and wanted the whole world to know how good she was. Renee was the quietest of the 3 introspective and mellow a person who saw the ingredients of the group.

Kim started looking beneath the Plexiglas counter top and started reading. I had written an essay about a flight to visit my uncle. The flight was one of the last to use Honolulu as stop over for gas. I knew it at the time. I wrote the essay as a piece of primary source history. I could scarcely imagine what it was like flying in the era of the Clippers or even in the era of the big prop planes as they crossed the Atlantic and Pacific. I wondered what Gander was like as stopping point. That essay and the photos I took were records of an era that was now history. I had been a true historian writing down what I saw.

Kim remarked, "That's good writing what inspired it." I replied, "I was trying to capture that moment. I knew I was one of the last people to experience it. I needed to save the story of three hundred or so people on a lonely dot in the middle of a great ocean from three hundred or so walks of life when they are too tired too lonely and too bored to be anything other than them-selves. It was midnight on that island but our internal clocks were saying anything from two to eight in the morning and at nights end our brains would be thinking dinner when the clock on the wall said breakfast: odd experience that is now history. It was partially inspired by Arlo Guthrie's 'City of New Orleans'" Kim and I talked for a few more moments and than her and the rest of the trio headed off to a little table and started talking among themselves making notes on whether my coffee was good our not.

Donna was getting busy on her end. I was soon making burgers as all three hands suddenly found themselves with plenty to do. I was the boss so I forced myself to do more. Deep inside something was burning. I liked my essay but something was about to come out in due time. I did know what it was but I was shocked from Spring Break and that played a role.

Right then I heard Kim announce that I was going to read an essay as she slid to the open Mic. This was one of many open Mic but the first one where people would actually speak. I was set up. I knew it but I forced myself as I pulled my essay from out of the counter. I was partially upset at Kim but I would be lying if I said I was also quite happy that she did it. She MC'd many a literary event on campus and she pulled a fast one. I nervously walked up and I went straight for the heart of the essay.

"We had arrived the flight from LAX was little over four hours long and our flight to Sydney would be an additional ten. All of us were worn out and tired. It was eleven o'clock and the airport was in its late night semi-slumber. Out in our immediate section of the ramp was a United DC-8 seventy series. It predated our DC-10 it was an anachronism with new engines that gave it a second shot of life. I could not decide whether it was old or new, the engines were made in the early to mid eighties yet when the 747 and DC-10 were a dream that DC-8 was flying the Pacific. It was a bionic freak. Nearby was another DC-8 sixty series old engines, old airplane hanging on as its replacements themselves were being replaced. No telling where it had been what it had seen if it could talk the stories it that would tell. I wondered. I strolled on by a closed airport shop. In the display window I saw a model of an Air New Zealand 747-400. The writing was bold-faced graffiti on the walls. The 747-400 MD-11 767-300ER A330 and A340 were call capable of leaping this ocean in a single bound: LA to Manila nonstop at its widest girth. This airport's days as a crossroads were numbered and fading fast this summer most likely would see the last.

I checked in at the gate and took my place on an elevated area of gray carpet near the window my legs drawing support as they stretched down its gentle slope. Blood circulated freely for a precious hour. It was nice to be able to use my legs and have free unhindered blood flow through them. Hawaiian music echoed in the background a lazy sound a nearby security guard looked far from threatening he was weary from his long day. Honolulu was near a restful slumber and was worn out. The feeling was in the air. The gate personnel all had tired drawn out look in their eye. I scanned the full lounge area. A family of German tourists had that look in their eyes as I remembered a line from an old Simon and Garfunkle song "Still you don't expect to be bright and bonviant so far way home so far away from home." The kids had lost some of their enthusiasm they were wearing as they boarded the airplane at LAX that arrival seemed like a lifetime ago now. I read the faces weariness with a touch of loneliness. I rolled my mental crossroads out as I looked at an Aussie bald headed little loud tired and hopelessly informal letting out a bit of laughter from some joke that could only seem remarkably funny at 02:00 PST or 11:30 PM Honolulu time. He was five thousand miles away from his home. I was four thousand miles away from my home 5,200 from my destination. We were all tired the veneer of who we tried to appear to be had been shed somewhere over the Pacific between Los Angeles and here. We felt a lonely unity that could come from being stuck in a confined area for the better part of day while being handled like cattle. From the security guard to our gate agents their was an unsaid feeling of unity we were all tired we were all weary and for this time we were all in this together.

I found myself gazing once again across the orange tinted flood lit lamp of an airport half-asleep. Planes were magical hop on one be halfway around the world in a day. That DC-10-30 that brought me here was a magic carpet that was oblivious to time Frankfurt Dallas New York were all places it could skip to and from in flights no more than 11 or so hours. It did this crossing time zones as if they did not exist. So it was three hundred or souls from three continents brought together by God on this night one of only a few remaining of Honolulu being a great Transpacific crossroads. The feeling of doom was in the air as they magical beasts that shot through multiple time zones themselves were being made obsolete by the next generation which could leap the ocean in single bound. The last of the great aviation crossroads was being claimed by time itself. Honolulu had been the first now it was the last."

The crowd was clapping. I guess it was good faire for the Texas Hill Country romantic heck yeah. Mournful as well with just of hint of Calvinism and fate brought it. I tried to capture the essence of that moment knowing that as I was writing it that moment itself had become history along the DC-7 and the Boeing 314 flying boat. I was there I had the obligation to tell the story.

Kim went up next. She applauded me and then, read one of her poems describing man woman and the pleasure pain and confusion of sex. Some of the locals made their way to the door some surprisingly stayed. Her delivery was much more dramatic then mine was it was little wonder why she was so popular at poetry slams. Open Mic ended as suddenly as it began. I cringed a bit disagreeing with the whole idea of sex before marriage. The Mic was open and I would not censor even stuff that I thoroughly disagreed with. It was nine and one by one locals filed out as Kim and her entourage. She warned she would be back and there would be more to be read by her as well as others. She tossed me an implied warning through her closely cropped blond hair and focused eyes.