We met by chance on a sunny autumn afternoon, and she has been a part of my days since then. She is my mystery lady, all I know of her past are scattered notations of her lowest moments. She is older than I am, and her first fall from grace occurred before I was even born. She has been my distraction, my other woman. Her wings are white and her fuselage is a bright red. My wife has named her the "Scarlet Harlot".

Unravelling her mysterious past has been as interesting as making her repairs. Her logbooks were lost during a period of storage which may have lasted 20 years. Documentation of major repairs and ownership changes on file with the FAA stops in the mid sixties and does not resume until 1987.

From looking through her records, it appears that she spent her whole life here in the Northeast. She was built in June of 1946 on Long Island, and sold to an operator in Belfast Maine. Most of her owners lived in New England. In the mid sixties she was moved to New Jersey, and then disappeared from the FAA records.

More than twenty years later, she reappeared, still in New Jersey, apparently suffering from neglect and abandonment. Repairs were made for storage and handling damage, and the airframe and engine were both overhauled. She was made new again, but there are several signs that it was no simple task.

Since her overhaul, she has flown 500 hours in the hands of six owners. Some years she flew quite a bit, and some years she didn't fly at all. The lady has a checkered past, there must be a reason for having 20 owners in 52 years.

"Why?" I asked myself during ten weeks of spare time repairs. I asked myself why such a pretty little plane would have been tossed around all her life. I found the fuselage and wings to be quite clean and proper. The engine needed work, but with the help of packrat friends, the expenses were minimal. Just after New Years we made our first flights together.

I still don't know why. I like her lines, she has nice curves in all the places that airplanes are meant to curve. She carries her years well too, proudly showing the antique "NC" registration numbers she was given when she left the factory. She still stays in the maintenance shop where I work, and sometimes I will catch a glimpse of her and think how pretty she is before I remember that she is mine.

What is her future? I'm not sure. Despite my wife's joking, she is not another woman, just an old airplane that is just a bit unusual and rare. I enjoy flying it, I enjoy working on it, and I enjoy just looking at it. I would like to think that it has found a permanent home, but it isn't flesh and bones. If it makes life too complicated, it can easily move on.