Photo Credit: Herald & Review/Mark Roberts
Howard Moma is something of a one-man show at the Taylorville Municipal Airport. In addition to his main duty as record keeper, the 12-year employee cleans the facility, mans the phones and mows the grass along the airport’s six runways.
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Photo Credit: Herald & Review/Mark Roberts
Harold Daugherty of Taylorville, several who visit the airport daily, looks over a jigsaw puzzle at the airport.
By Tony Reid
TAYLORVILLE — Howard Moma must go down to the airport again, to the lonely field and the sky.
And all he asks is some tall tales and a few travelers to share them with, by and by.
Moma’s
job title at the city-owned Taylorville Municipal Airport is actually
records clerk. He logs the planes that drop in and fly out and reports
to airport Superintendent Bill Newberry, who also happens to be
superintendent of city-owned Oak Hill Cemetery and therefore a man who
already has a grave workload.
So that pretty much leaves the
68-year-old Moma as the sole hands-on airport employee, handling
everything from the grass cutting (he estimates he mows the equivalent
of more than 15 miles about every two weeks on the 300-acre site) to
changing light bulbs and making a clean sweep of the restrooms.
And
he loves his five-day-a-week, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job. He’d landed at the
airport in 1996 after retiring from a 31-year career working at the
Caterpillar Inc. plant in Decatur. Moma didn’t know a thing about
flying, although he’s since learned how, and says the urge that made him
taxi towards a post-retirement career was the prospect of a
deceleration into frustration if he didn’t find something to do after
Caterpillar.
“Being retired is not easy,” he explains, sitting
behind his neat counter with a model of the Wright brothers’ plane that
started it all dangling from the ceiling above his head. “What do you do
with another eight hours a day? So I came out here even though I’d
never been to the airport before.”
It turned out to be a natural
fit for a guy with an easygoing personality who cruises along on a
current of down-home friendliness. His approach is appreciated by the
single-engine pilots who arrive to share flying war stories, fret about
the weather and maybe grab a cup of coffee or heat a snack in the
microwave. The coffee maker and microwave, by the way, along with other
creature comforts, were personally provided by Moma; there’s a cup on
the counter for contributions to the java fund.
Outside are
self-service gas pumps where pilots pull up like motorists and swipe
their plastic to fill ’er up before heading back into the wide blue
yonder. And with aviation fuel prices of a shade over $5 a gallon to go
along with the warm welcome waiting inside the neat airport building,
the whole Taylorville experience tends to promote a rapid climb in pilot
mood elevation.
“You land at a big airport, and gas is going to
be $7 a gallon,” said Craig Gifford from Minneapolis, who was flying
something called a Bellanca Viking on his way home. “I just loaded 50
gallons and, at a savings here of $2 a gallon, that is worth one hundred
bucks to me.”
He’s a member of the United States Advanced
Aerobatic Team and was returning from a practice session in Florida. He
enjoyed his brief stop in Taylorville and promised, when he’s passing
this way again, to flip out of the sky and dive down for a return visit.
“Nice airport, good and fast fuel pump and nice, cheap fuel price,” he
said with a smile for Moma. “If I’m on this route again, I’ll be back,
you betcha.”
Other visitors drop in more often — like every day —
and don’t arrive by plane. One of them is an 89-year-old World War II
paratrooper who drives up to shoot the breeze with Moma and work a
jigsaw puzzle with him. Some of their previous efforts are tacked up on
the wall, including a fiendishly difficult World War II scene of an
American fighter attacking a Japanese carrier. A whole bunch of that
puzzle is nothing but blue Pacific and Moma said it took them more than
two weeks just to get the ocean backdrop assembled.
“The other
day, a guy come in, I think he was from New York, and said, ‘Here’s your
puzzle,’ ” said Moma. “He told us the last time he was here he saw us
working a puzzle and decided he’d bring a new one with him.”
These
pilot types are clearly a considerate breed, and Moma said some of them
also have a very down-to-earth approach to life in the clouds. He cites
the example of one aerial wanderer who had explained to him his simple
midair restroom philosophy and how he knew when it was time to
re-embrace the surly bonds of earth. “That pilot told me he fills up
with fuel before he takes off and keeps an empty gallon jug with him in
the cockpit,” said Moma.
“He said ‘When the jug gets full or the plane’s tanks get empty, that is when I am landing.’ ”
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