The day was crystal clear, almost blinding in the clarity of the landscape. Smog often clouds the view, making the mountains appear etched in the background like a matte graphic, an illustration of the moment. But on this day, the mountains bulged into the view, giving me a fresh perspective on the somewhat industrial area I was passing through .
I was on a mission to renew my passport at the Hollywood Way, Burbank California USPS.
The Bob Hope Airport (where you still walk onto the tarmac and out to the stairs rolled up to the aircraft, sixties style) is practically across the street. This is the hub of the birth of aerospace and aviation. I rather liked the idea of making the passport pilgrimage, with anticipation of a transatlantic flight, in the shadow of aviation pioneers like Howard Hughes, who got his start right in this very neighborhood.
There's a bronze statue of Amelia Earhart in a nearby park. Earhart became the most famous female pilot of all time. I bet people pass by her effigy every day and don’t know who she is.
There's another aviatrix a lot of people have never heard about. In the late twenties, after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, a lot of rich girls were buying fast and flashy sport planes. One girl in particular, Pancho Barnes, an heiress who played hard, set up shop in the Mojave Desert in the thirties, with a resort called Pancho’s Guest Ranch Hotel and Happy Bottom Riding Club, complete with private airstrip.
Next door was an Army tent encampment that became Edwards Air Force Base. The bar at the Happy Bottom Riding Club became the defacto headquarters for the first generation of supersonic test pilots, those daring (and arrogant) young men who were to define the "right stuff."
And so I stood in line ruminating on all that had gone before me as the clerk went about the official business of stamping, stapling, and swearing me to tell the truth. There was an old world air to the ephemera of forms, receipts and signatures. Perhaps someone will find me on a street corner, dressed in bronze for some deed as yet still unknown, watching over the world, a reminder of days gone by.I was on a mission to renew my passport at the Hollywood Way, Burbank California USPS.
The Bob Hope Airport (where you still walk onto the tarmac and out to the stairs rolled up to the aircraft, sixties style) is practically across the street. This is the hub of the birth of aerospace and aviation. I rather liked the idea of making the passport pilgrimage, with anticipation of a transatlantic flight, in the shadow of aviation pioneers like Howard Hughes, who got his start right in this very neighborhood.
There's a bronze statue of Amelia Earhart in a nearby park. Earhart became the most famous female pilot of all time. I bet people pass by her effigy every day and don’t know who she is.
There's another aviatrix a lot of people have never heard about. In the late twenties, after Lindbergh crossed the Atlantic, a lot of rich girls were buying fast and flashy sport planes. One girl in particular, Pancho Barnes, an heiress who played hard, set up shop in the Mojave Desert in the thirties, with a resort called Pancho’s Guest Ranch Hotel and Happy Bottom Riding Club, complete with private airstrip.
Next door was an Army tent encampment that became Edwards Air Force Base. The bar at the Happy Bottom Riding Club became the defacto headquarters for the first generation of supersonic test pilots, those daring (and arrogant) young men who were to define the "right stuff."
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