It happens without fail: every time I come or go from our major airport at Timehri, I’m caught up in a memory of the time in the mid-1950s when I worked there as a youngster. Atkinson Field was the name then, and I had joined BG Airways, fresh out of Saints, working for a while at the Ruimveldt Ramp and then later at Atkinson. I lived on “The Base”, as it was known, with my sister Theresa and her husband Joe Gonsalves in a house almost directly opposite where CJIA now stands. The BG Airways operation was south of the terminal, and my job as a Flight Clerk was largely office work, which included working out the load distribution for cargo in the DC3 twin-engine planes we used for the interior flights, but it included going on flights to the Rupununi, helping to unload and load cargo in Good Hope, Karanambo, Lethem, Annai, etc.
Leaving Atkinson in the morning meant that we would still be in the Rupununi around noon. The Dakotas were former US Army planes, with no insulation – in effect, a large metal tube with three doors – and sitting in that savannah sun off-loading and loading, they would become virtual furnaces; in 10 minutes you would be drenched in sweat, and 15 minutes later, with the plane now aloft at 8,000 feet, you would be drying off in the cold, only to be pouring sweat again at the next stop.
Compared to Hague and Vreed-en-Hoop and the Pomeroon of my school days, the interior trips were magical. I was in this completely different Guyana that most Guyanese had never seen, and I was in it virtually every week, marveling at the mountains and the dark-green valleys. On one trip, the pilot took us on a detour down into a wide canyon; on either side of the aircraft the view was of pink rock walls that seemed to go on forever. It was fascinating to see the panoramic sprawl of the savannah in the dry season, and then the lake it became in the rainy season with cattle standing like black and brown statues on the few high spots. I remember going into Orinduik one day in the rain with the DC3 skidding back and forth across the earth runway, coming to a halt just about 20 feet from the river.
Atkinson was a very small community then with everyone knowing everyone and with some memorable characters. One was the legendary Art Williams who was known for his spick-and-span khaki shirt and pants (I never saw him dressed any other way), and his fancy cigarette holder. His flying exploits were legendary, but Mr. Williams was also a brusque character with no interest in small talk. In later years, when I migrated, I got to know the affable outgoing Americans in the US (“So how are you today?); Art Williams spoke in few syllables and to the point. I had the scare of my life one day when we took off for a South Savannah flight, and as soon as the plane lifted off the fire warning light came on; actually a fairly small light, it looks enormous when you know what it is; I was staring bug-eyed at the thing. Mr. Williams came back to where I was sitting, looked at the right engine for a couple minutes, grumbled at me “Keep an eye on it,” and went back to the cockpit. My hands were sweating. “Keep an eye on it?” What sort of strategy was that? The light stayed on. Landing at Good Hope, I thought, “Thank, God. This is over.” But Art Williams and the co-pilot walked around the engine, poked at the cowling a couple times, and, to my horror, we took off again – fire-warning light still glowing like a beacon. We made that entire trip, four stops and back to Atkinson, with the light constantly glowing, and me still keeping an eye on it.
Williams was known to get edgy flying on instruments, but his visual orientation of Guyana was precise. I saw him one day in clear weather looking out the window to his left as we descended for Atkinson. He pointed to a house on the ground and told the co-pilot, “I can tell by where we passed over that house; we’re a couple degrees off for the runway.” I asked the co-pilot later about it, and he laughed, “Yeah, and he was right, too.”
There was also an airport radio officer named Frank Nascimento. In radio lingo his call letters were Fox Nan and everybody knew him as “Foxy”. A soft-spoken, almost shy guy, he would do the most outrageous things. The Base had a pool, but Foxy never owned a pair of swimming trunks; he would calmly walk through the neighbourhood (the place had no fences) and simply acquire the first swimming trunks he came to on a clothesline. Foxy’s job included filing hourly weather reports. One day, instead of looking through the window to check the clouds, he ran up to the opening and leaped out onto the shed. Rain had just fallen. Foxy skidded off the wet roof and landed 8 feet on the ground below. He got up, walked a few feet, and fell over again, but he was okay; he had been cushioned by Atkinson’s plentiful white sand.
Another oddball was a BG Airways pilot, a Polish guy named Vicky Fajks (pronounced “Fikes”) who was unbelievably hyper; always hopping about, clapping his hands, yapping, non-stop. On his day off, Fajks would cajole any private plane owner at the airport to let him have a fly, and he would take off and do stunts, way up in the air, right over the runway. It was illegal, of course, and he would be grounded for a couple of weeks, swearing that he would not repeat the stunt, but the next chance he got Fajks would be up there doing his loops.
A small community, gossip was rife at Atkinson. With virtually nothing to do everybody would be there at the volleyball game. After the game one evening, people were standing around in the near dark, gossiping and slapping mosquitoes, but nobody was leaving. I said to Rudy deBruin, the Shell rep, “Why is nobody going home?” He said, “You hear all that gossip? The first person who leaves becomes the next subject.” Indeed, I migrated one year later, and while I’ve been all over the map, including several places as thinly populated as Atkinson, I’ve never heard anything like the gossip that raged in that tiny place. Of course, by the time I left it I was likely the target for some gossip myself, but that’s another story.
