As you enjoy or endure the Sun and/or Fun fly-in at Lakeland Florida this year please keep in mind that it was all my idea.
That’s right. I was a line boy in Lakeland during the wild-wild early 1970s. I worked for both Lakeland Flying Service and Roberts Flying Service, depending on who had most recently fired me and hired me. I ran that ramp with an iron fist. Planes got tied down. Aircraft got chocked and big writhing fuel hoses got handled with an aplomb that would belie my future as a lover, evocative of one of your Barry Whites.
When I wasn’t pulling planes out of the hangar by their props or pushing them back into the hangar with their struts, I was planning, plotting, and peering (I said “peering” son, get your mind out of the gutter) into the future of Lakeland’s Drane Field.
We line ninjas were all sitting around in front of Mr. Robert’s FBO office, washing oranges late one afternoon. We were always washing oranges. That was our big draw – we would give oranges away to the Yankee pilots when they chose or FBO over “brand X” which was Lakeland Flying Service. It was too late to do any airplane work. Too hot to light up a cigarette next to the fuel truck and too early to dump the vodka into the orange juice fountain in the pilot’s lounge.
“Guys,” I said. “We need to hold a really big-assed fly-in, rat-cheer, in Lakeland Florida. If there is anything we need more of around here it is Yankees with airplanes and money. They like hot weather, fire ants and thunderstorms the size of planets up there in Yankee land. Maybe if we held a big-assed fly-in we could get some cash in this damn place and stop having to wash these oranges.
We could call the fly-in: “Let’s Get Drunk and Fly”.
Nobody liked the idea that day but somebody was listening to us secretly. I suspect the fillings in my head were wired directly to the NSA, but that is the subject for another blog post. Anyway, they stole the whole idea from me called it “Sun n Fun” and the rest is history.
