The taxi went in and out like a fiddlers elbow through the town and I almost did a video lunch a few times. I still had to shake hands with the unemployed and that ride didn't help. We pulled up to a grass field with a few planes and a falling-down nasty wooden shack full of dead flies with a sign across the front that read, "The South (something) Flying Club". The heat of the afternoon made it drier than an Arab's fart and the place smelled of it. I threw Richard Petty a couple of bucks and looked around. It didn't appear that the place was even functioning let alone an airport. There was debris and rusting pieces of metal all about with snippets of yellowed grass pushing through in places. I was just about to relieve myself when something shuffled through the door of the shack and into the sunshine.
He looked like Groucho Marx on vicodin and was covered in grease and oil stains. He had on a single coverall and nothing else, the hair on his shoulders looking like a jungle.
"Help ya?" he asked and then spit a wad of some brown-green mass onto the ground which missed and hit his foot. It disappeared in the growth of hair that reached to his toes.
"You charter flights?" I asked, stupidly.
"Yup." he said and then swallowed - what, I didn't want to know.
"I'm trying to get to Campbelltown. Can you take me?" I glanced around this train wreck of an airport, looking for something that reminded me of a plane.
"Yup." he replied and coughed, hacking up another brown-green mass, this time hitting his other foot.
"Umm, how much?" I asked now having to pee and possibly puke at the same time.
"50." he said and looked me over, his hand scratching for something around his rear area. I was afraid of more brown-green masses.
"OK, what do we go in?"
"Behind the house." he said and waved his hand behind him.
House? I could tell he probably couldn't pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. But I wanted to put an end to this case, so I strolled around to the far side of the shack and was greeted by a large, silver plane that blinded me in the sun.