The new millennium's first morning was as perfect a flying day as you will ever find in January. The sky was variable, some sun came through high clouds, and the temperature was cold enough to keep the grass runways frozen, but not so cold that the engines needed to be preheated before starting. South winds peaked at perhaps ten miles per hour.

The rush and fuss of Christmas had kept my little red plane on the ground for three long weeks, and it was time to go for a ride. Dansville is always a choice, with its three fast food restaurants nearby, but its very convenience and dependability always puts it at the bottom of the list. The truck stop at Towanda Pennsylvania would probably have been open on New Years Day. A bit farther, 100 miles to the west, Eddie's Diner in Great Valley NY might be open, but the grass runway across the road from it might be snowed under. Even though all the fancy birds have disappeared for the winter, Weedsport is still open to take care of us plain old sparrows.

Many people will argue where the heart of aviation is. Some will say it is the airlines, some will say that it is the folks who fly around in big single engine or light twin engine airplanes, and others will argue that the heart of aviation is in the little airports. I won't argue... I will state it as fact that aviation's heart beats in airplanes that have less than 150 horsepower. When everyday people discover that flying is something that is within their means and abilities, their first romance is the sensation of flying low and slow over the countryside.

Moving up through bigger airplanes and through the ranks of commercial aviation, more and more the airplanes are corporate or consumer tools, and the pilots are more and more likely to be clock- punching employees who wear union pins. We always are warmed and reassured by the occasional stories of 747 captains who spend their weekends bumping around in Piper Cubs, and our own little group includes a few airline pilots.

Pilots can't do much with their airplanes without airports though, and I haven't heard any recent thank- yous to all the foolish romantics who own and operate all of the country's little airports. I'll start with Dundee, because it is a classic example of a privately owned airport that is maintained for the free use of the flying public. The club has built, maintained, and improved it for their own use and for the use of any and all who might wish to stop. Most of the country's public- use airports are privately owned.

Typically, airport owners live very interesting lives, but unless there is an outside income, it is a life on the edge. Such is the price of romance. Nobody can operate a little airport unless they can somehow include the goodwill of a hundred friends into their accounting. All of this brings me back to Whitford's airport in Weedsport, where we gathered on New Year's morning.

John had a few students to teach later in the morning, but he probably would have been up early anyway, because much like a farm, there is always something that needs doing at an airport. John is not the head cook though, that's Rosie's job, and she could just as well have taken the morning off. She could have let the stove stay cold just this once. After all, the sparrows had all grown old and moulty before she started cooking at the airport, and they could certainly fend for themselves for one Saturday.

Duty had called though, and she was there with coffee, eggs, pancakes, and bacon when our 50 year old airplanes started arriving. I was the last of the tailwheel planes, landing in the grass just a minute behind the Subaru powered airplane that Larry Huntley has built. Harry Arcangeli seems to have been the first pilot to land on the paved runway, arriving in his well- kept 1957 Cessna 172.

We sat around a big table for two hours, in conversations that were typical of the morning gatherings at any local diner. This was "our" place though, more like a clubhouse than a diner, and for the price of a plate of pancakes we could sit there all morning. Maybe some of us said thank you when we left, maybe not.

Thank you, Rosie, for opening up on New Year's morning. Thank- you too, to all the other folks that selflessly sustain the romance of aviation for everyone to enjoy. Thank you from the old timers, from the newcomers, and from all the people who haven't discovered aviation yet.