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Editor’s notes: Boss, the plane, the plane!
editor's notes

First, you probably already know Richmond Hill officials are pondering whether or not to build an airport somewhere within its city limits.

It’s no surprise, really. What city out there worth its chops doesn’t want its own airport?

None, that’s what. As one knows, cities are very much like teenagers and easily influenced by peer pressure. So as soon as the cool city gets an airport all the other cities want one.

It’s essentially the same sort of public-spirited mindset (also known as temporary insanity) that compels mature adults to have yard signs with their names printed on them planted all over the place and left there to wither and fade so they can maybe get elected to an office that doesn’t pay diddly squat – or actually does pay diddly squat – and then have to spend four years regularly wading through the swampy miasma of social media, which, as we all know, is populated mainly by disgruntled complainers who wouldn’t know an ordinance from an ocelot, but think they do.

Hint: Ocelots are giant kittycats. Ordinances are Army firecrackers.

Anyway. To reiterate, Richmond Hill is looking into whether it should have an airport.

The key is whether it can be easily converted into a spaceport, because that’s where the future is headed. Outer Space.

I’ve already got a name for the spaceport: The Henry and Clara Ford Interstellar Spaceport because if Henry Ford were alive today he’d be making cars on Mars and need to get back down here on occasion, so he could eat candy bars and hobnob and goobersmooch with the folks on The Ford.

Mostly he’d be buying them gunny sacks of beans to go plant so they’d learn to be self sufficient and quit bothering him with the small stuff while he tries to figure out what’s making that squeaking noise when he drives down his avenue through the city he named.

But back to the Henry and Clara Ford Spaceport.

The economics of this thing will obviously be a boon for the city. The spaceport will require more than the usual allotment of Motel 6 space, what with all the Wookies and Romulans who’ll be beaming down here to play pool and quaff craft beer and root for the Ohio State Buckeyes, Richmond Hill’s second favorite college football team judging by population. That’s good for everybody, even if it does result in the arrival of still more hordes of oatmeal eating transplants who talk though their noses.

Editor’s note: This isn’t the first time the subject of a spaceport has been broached on these pages.

As recently as Aug. 11, 2022, this dumb editor opined the new Belfast Keller Interchange needed “a Spaceport so people who live in those soon to be built ‘gardens that grow people’ can go to space if they feel like it without having to drive into the rest of Richmond Hill to get on a rocket ship.”

He (me) also noted “the powers that be in the Pembroke Mafia Football League were going to put a spaceport in Pembroke or somewhere nearby, but we forgot to strike while the iron is hot. The PMFL’s loss is the BKI’s gain, if developers and city councilmen get on the stick and build a Spaceport. A giant one, with a Hooters in the lobby so astronauts can have some chicken wings and a cold one before they blast off. Space is meant to be fun.”

Speaking of the future, I’ve always believed there should be an advanced degree course at Georgia Southern to help train the next generation of Hooters hostesses, because the need for more Hooters around here is going to explode once the Ford Spaceport takes off and everybody is zipping around in flying electric cars, wondering where their next meal of chicken wings is going to come from.

That said, here’s a pro tip. If you’re ever getting gas after work at the station next to the Hooters at the Highway 204 exit and it’s in the middle of the night and some dude in a baseball cap and untucked shirt comes stomping out of the woods with a spear and makes a beeline for the gas pumps, don’t make eye contact and don’t hang around. People with spears are likely not stable.

Alas, I suspect Richmond Hill will have an airport long before it gets a spaceport. And that’s OK too.

It’ll give the ghost of Herve Villechaize a chance to dust off his acting chops and wander around saying, “Boss, the plane, the plane,” every time some well-heeled traveler flies by to check out all the warehouses and traffic jams and gloat because they’re up there sipping Chablis while the rest of us are stuck down here on Ford Avenue, wondering if we’ll ever get where we’re going, and if we’ll know it when we get there.

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