Raise your hands if you've flown anywhere lately. You in the back? All of you, huh?
Well, then you know what a JOY it is to park in a giant concretegarage and trudge to the terminal and check your bags and search for your tickets and make sure your boarding passes are correct and then — oh wait, I forgot that tiny detail about going through security and ...
(I'll still never understand why they wouldn't let me bring my swordcane along on my recent jaunt to Switzerland.(
Well, you get the picture. And I recently found two pictures taken at Memphis Municipal (before it became International) Airport taken in the mid-1950s, which reveal a considerably more casual approach to air travel.
I have no idea who this family is, but I simply want to point out two things. First of all, in the photo above, the old terminal (originally located on the north side of Winchester) was a handsome enough building, but it was definitely a more low-key affair. No, it didn't have the wonderful martini-glass columns of the architectural marvel designed by Roy Harrover. Instead, the main entrance was little more than a big awning. You pulled up here, hopped out of the car, and walked right into the terminal, pausing (as you can see here) to wave goodbye to the family you were leaving behind.
The second photo, below, also shows how relaxing the whole thing was. If you arrived early, you parked at the curb just a couple of hundred feet away, carried your luggage to an outside bench — just like sitting in a park – and waited for your plane. When all was ready, you carried your suitcases out to the tarmac, scrambled up the steps, and took your seat.
Now in those days, you probably weren't flying on supersonic jets, so the journey probably took longer, and without all the high-tech safety equipment the old planes tended to do unpleasant things like crash into mountains or let their propellers fly off, but what I'm getting at is that the process of boarding was a lot better.
Or at least it sure seems that way here.
