A Page of History

Last column’s topic was Mojave Airport as of 1986. We noted how the Space Port, as it is now called, has grown considerably since then.

I promised I would write about “another view” of Mojave, as written by a reporter from the New Yorker Magazine after he had visited the airport to cover test flights of the Voyager as it prepared for its around the world flight and record attempt.

The August 4, 1986 magazine article featured the opinions of Burton Burnstien. He first interviewed Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager and then took time to look around Mojave.

Probably hundreds of reporters flocked to Mojave to cover the world flight, but Burnstien chose to add a “side bar” to the facts of the Voyager and its world-renowned flight.

T his article about Burnstien appeared in The Enterprise, on a Mojave front page. I wrote the article when my byline was Susan Strahan. I grew up in Mojave, owned one of the houses he did not like, and made a living there.

I noted that coming from New York to Mojave might have been culture shock to him, but few (none) innovations in flight and space have occurred over NYC.

The reporter began his article by noting the proximity to Edwards AFB and then decided to take a shot at Mojave.

“And yet Mojave has the look of a town that has seen better days, dating back to the glorious twenty-mule team borax mining era of the 1880s.”

I didn’t live in Mojave in the 1880s, but I have seen photos. I am not sure if it could be described as “glorious.” It was an exciting time and I bet Saturday night was a raucous time at the many bars on Main Street – but glorious? I would describe the events since 1986 at the Mojave Space Port to be glorious!

He called the houses “contemporary” and the hotels and stores on the “Spartan, strictly functional side.” I would have to assume that he did not enter Carols’ Department Store which might have been functional, but never Spartan.

The locals were referred to as having the “flinty weathered faces of unreconstructed gold prospectors.” I don’t even know what that means.

Men were called “hefty ones” who hung around the Pancake House (No longer there) “chatting in their southwestern drawl about hunting and fishing.” I am not sure what a southwestern drawl is; let me know if you hear anyone speaking that way today in Mojave.

The women were “plain, who cheerfully offered long answers to simple questions.” Apparently he had not talked to very many women in his lifetime!

Finally he said that “folks around there still tell time by the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe.”

In 1986 we did not care about the trains going by all the time, unless we got stuck at the Oak Creek Crossing or Sierra Highway was blocked by the “Trona Train.”

Then – and now- they don’t have many “unreconstructed gold prospectors” in Mojave. What they had in 1986 and in 2016 are highly educated aerospace engineers, innovators, and dreamers who reach for the stars every day.

The aircraft and spacecraft that have come and will continue to come out of Mojave are nothing short of incredible and sometimes nearly unbelievable – and glorious!

I am sure That New York reporter chuckled as he wrote that article and thought about how urbane and sophisticated he was. . . I wonder if he ever sat at Reno’s Café back room at lunch and drew up the plans and dreams for the Voyager?