Every time I see the little baby planes (Cessnas, etc) as I'm near Page Field (the airport of Fort Myers back in the day), I think of the crop duster scene in North By Northwest. Search it out. You'll know the reference.
Weird as it may be to correlate a Hitchcock movie to an air strip, but no matter how many times I pass the area and see the planes come and go, I can't help think about that scene.
Yes, I know... this is no longer the 1950s and there's no Cary Grant around. Neither is anyone making movies there and just as the day is long, no corn is available (maybe just palmettos, according to Lee County Port Authority). But it's still a sight to be seen.
Okay, so doing a little more reading on the Port Authority site, it looks like Page Field started as a puddle jump spot from Miami to Saint Petersburg but it fell through due to (ba ba ba bum... certain death) soggy grounds during summer. Of course; there's a ton of rain that saturates the area from May to October. Why is this not surprising that you can't have an air port on marsh land? Build up, man, build up.
Build up is what the natives did.
The area was deeded to Lee County in the early 1940s by the Works Administration because the ongoing crises at the time (Japan / Pearl Harbor / WWII) and the ease of being able to use the land to make a better runway situation.
The whole plot became an "advanced fighter training base. The United States Army Air Corps named the field Fort Myers Army Air Base, although the official name was the Lee County Airport. Locals, however, referred to the facility by several different names". Lee County Commissions office got one name to stick: "Page Field after a local World War I flying ace, Capt. Channing Page, the first Floridian to receive a commission into the Army Air Corp".
Needless to say, three years before the retaliation on the Japanese (the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima), Page Field was heavily used by various Bomber Groups and fighter pilots to make sure they were all up to snuff on defeating the enemy.
The war ending in 1945 ended the use of the Air Base in Fort Myers so it went back to being a "normal" airport. Way to go, locals, for helping a cause?
Thirty eight more years, people came and went from this one area of town. I know that my (older) friends and relatives mention how things are built up now compared to then... when they used to come down here from 1965-1990 and Fort Myers was all open space.
Even some of the friends who were born in the area and went away on a different life path, came back to see what they knew and where they were doesn't really exist anymore. Streets famously made for one way in, same way out, lined with palms or gladioluses... are missing from new memories.
The main street we travel on near my house.. one of the plant name sakes... don't seem to have any semblance of reference to why it's named the road.
Sure, there's a tomato field near my house (or ex tomato field, as the owners have said they've sold the land because it's not making money anymore... this is a 100 year old field with 40 years of tomato growing. When I moved here [11 years ago coming up next week], we'd always went to pick the maters. They were dirt cheap [ha ha] per pound, but over the last couple years, the price per pound skyrocketed to match the size of the tomatoes. I kid you not - if you looked closely at some of the stalks, there very well could be a single tomato the size of your palm. I've picked those before. Along with the smaller ones) but it doesn't scream "tomato road / drive". It's not located at the corner of Tomato and Other Veg. It's located at the intersection of "these things don't exist here anymore".
Anyway, I've gotten off topic.
Although the LCPA site doesn't get the exact date in 1983, they state that "Southwest Florida International Airport (RSW) was certified for operation and Page Field was designated a general aviation airport". I saw on another website it was May 14, so I'm a day older than it. Yippie?
Page Field doesn't go away once RSW becomes the big boy on campus, even though there were some troubled years in the 1990s. Page Field needed to find its rock bottom, apparently, but with the county giving it a face lift via a "5 year plan", it has come out sober and is a "a thriving, prosperous, rapidly developing general aviation facility".
The field has "a new general aviation terminal and FBO - Base Operations at Page Field - opened on the field's west side. The project included a 22,613-square-foot terminal building with first-class services and amenities for passengers and crews, executive conference room, seminar facility, easy access from runways with a new parallel taxiway, a new 24,000-square-foot itinerant aircraft hangar and 600,000 square feet of ramp space with exclusive business aircraft parking. A full-scale P-51 replica hangs from the ceiling in Base Operations and a fully restored AT-6 Texan trainer is displayed outside, paying homage to the airport’s history."
To which I come to the point of my ramblings.
I have pictures, not amazingly edited, as I'm still not up to snuff on a proper editing bay. I don't have my monitor calibrated and I am not using a Fruit inspired operating system. So WYSIWYG and I'm not that sorry... I just don't have the opportunity right now for a studio. I wish I did, but my bedroom is my work area, sadly enough.
So... I'm working on an HP Pavilion Laptop with Windows 8 (Amazon has 11 and 12 generation versions, making mine... 2nd generation?), a Logitech wireless mouse and keyboard, Photoshop CS5, and doing my best to post amazing pictures from my Canon EOS Rebel T7i camera.
This might be an opportune time for a commercial break.
"So.. do you like what you see and read? I've got a Ko-Fi page. Any little bit helps and could pave the way to have me get better at taking photos and uploading them". Find out how to support me here: https://ko-fi.com/abe11825
Okay.. back to the point of the program.
Now I shall submit the following 35 photos for approval of the Midnight Society:
Thank you.
I know the picture with the sign about the first plane is off center. I wasn't really paying attention when I took the photo. I didn't know if anyone was going to come around and take my camera away or ask me not to film anything... given the fact there are "report suspicious activities" signs on the fence. All I need is to be arrested for taking photos.
Take it as you will. Learn up on history. Have a different level of boredom. Either way, it's 86 degrees here and with humidity, it's 93. It's only 6:15pm.
Stay cool.
Cheers
See also (aka what the title came from):
- Fantasy Island ("De Plane")
- North by Northwest ("runnnnn")
See Also (aka links about Florida):
- About Page Field | The Page Story (the LCPA site I kept quoting)
- Weird histories of Fl by Mark Muncy (Via Amazon. You'll have to weed through the erotica novels, but his stuff is a side note to a lot of back stories of America's Wang)
- "Diverse History Comes Alive in Fort Myers in Southwest Florida"
- "About Fort Myers"
- "The History of Fort Myers" (via Fort Myers Online)
- "Midnight Society" quote
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Thanks for sharing!