The Happy Bottom Riding Club by Lauren Kessler

Author:Lauren Kessler [Kessler, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-76964-0
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-12-14T16:00:00+00:00

13

Pancho’s Fly-Inn

When the war ended and the U.S. government lifted the ban on civilian flying, Pancho quickly moved to reopen her field. But to her astonishment, her application was rejected when a Muroc pilot training commander intervened, insisting that there was not enough room in the area for civilian hobbyists in addition to the military and test pilots. Enraged, Pancho immediately went over his head, working her connections in the upper echelons of the military. After a few well-placed phone calls, her permit was issued. She had won easily, but that initial brush with Muroc was an inkling of what was to come, the beginning of what would be a monumental turf battle over who belonged in the desert and who owned the sky.

With permit in hand, Pancho added two more runways to her little airfield to make landing in desert crosswinds safer and easier. They were lit by kerosene lamps that Billy or one of the workers would set out at dusk every night and collect again at dawn. With the hangar she had built for the Civilian Pilot Training Program before the war and the new runway improvements, Pancho had a sizable private airfield adjacent to her expanding guest facilities. She renamed the entire operation “Pancho’s Fly-Inn” and established an open-door policy at the airfield. Anyone could tie down his plane for free, providing he agreed to buy gas and oil from Pancho. Her Los Angeles and Hollywood flying friends jumped in their cockpits, zipped over the San Gabriel Mountains, and came out for fun. Military pilots, now discharged from the service, hangared their little recreational planes at Pancho’s. They had railed against the desolation of the Mojave when they trained here, but the desert pulled them back. As fliers, they could not resist the clear weather and the vast sky and the growing community of like-minded aviation hobbyists.

Pancho was soon hosting so many guests that she had to make additional improvements, spending considerable money renovating and remodeling the two Army surplus buildings she had placed on the property to serve as motel rooms. Always delighted with any excuse to buy horses, she added even more to her stables, which now featured a dude string of twenty Thoroughbreds she rented out to guests. She expanded the small rodeo arena and made grand plans to build an even bigger facility that would host nationally sanctioned competitions. As the fighter pilots and their crews left Muroc, the test pilots, engineers, and aircraft company men came in even greater numbers. The base quickly, almost effortlessly, changed from a wartime training center to a big, literally booming, jet-testing facility. The attendant social whirl at Pancho’s correspondingly intensified.

She closed down the dairy business for good—it had been costing her money for years—and concentrated on providing the men of Muroc with a place to have an unfettered good time. But word of mouth was spreading even faster than Pancho wanted it to. Serving her Hollywood friends and the new Muroc arrivals, the dashing young test pilots she had a permanent weakness for, was one thing.

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