"My husband is deceased, and I am here alone... There isn't any liability insurance... We have pretty much decided that the airstrip is just for family."... " Watertown is ten miles south of here; it is a good airport and you could land there."

Well, Watertown is indeed a good airport, but that is not what I wanted. I wanted a folksy grass strip close to a village, not an air- carrier airport with a mile or two of concrete inside of a barbed- wire fence line. I didn't try to explain because it would have seemed that I was arguing against her preference that strangers not land at her place.

Some folks have their landing strips charted as "private" but welcome visitors, and I have heard of others who are downright hostile to strangers who just drop in. You don't know unless you call ahead. Several years ago I received permission to land at a private strip near Lakeville, at the head of Conesus Lake. I visited there once and enjoyed the trip, so I decided that I would go there instead of heading up north. I was on vacation last week, and the forecast suggested that this might be the only day for a special trip.

Conesus is hardly out of the back yard, pale in comparison to a trip to the Thousand Islands, but there were a few other reasons not to spend the entire day in the airplane. I would go to Lakeville, eat a good breakfast at Minnehans, and see what else I could find for amusement. I set no deadline for my return; it would be just like I was on vacation.

The diner is a short walk from where I parked along the north end of the landing strip, and the village center isn't too much farther than that. Arriving overhead, the town had interested me, so I decided that I would walk in and take a closer look after breakfast.

The main road is quite an old stretch of highway, with a history that goes back to the earliest days of the area's settlement. Many of the houses strut their classic character in style, while some simply show their age. Either way, they were interesting to view. I poked along the several buildings that once marked the town's connection with the railroad and to the rest of the world. I strolled the large and well kept lakeside park, nicer in every respect than lakeside parks I have seen in any other Finger Lakes villages or cities.

While I was exploring the railroad area, I had noticed a red 1948 Ford pickup pull into the hardware store. It seemed to me that it was a treated as a daily driver rather than as a show truck, and that pleased me. As I exited the park, I saw the truck at the loading dock of the old feed mill, now a warehouse. I didn't have to contrive any circumstance to give the truck a closer look, because it was right in my path.

It is owned by a fellow named Bob, who might be a bit older than me, but is enjoying an active retirement. He is a fortunate sort of fellow who had a range of various jobs which required him to think while working with his hands. The working years were marked by hustle and deadlines, but retirement has brought him lots of shopwork on his own terms. We agreed that too many of life's simple pleasures pass us by too easily when we are in a hurry.

In just a few minutes we covered a lot of subjects, but of course there was a spell of car talk. His old pickup has a Ford 289 and an automatic transmission, a front suspension and rear axle taken from contemporary automobiles, and electric windshield wipers from a VW, among other modifications. As I had guessed, the truck was pretty much his daily driver.

He told me he lived just out of town, up the road at the top of the hill, and I said that I lived near Watkins Glen, and had flown over here for breakfast. He said "You made two circles, and the second one passed right over the house, with the engine throttled back for landing. I watched you, and thought you must be having fun".

Sure, I was having fun, and it was an interesting flight. The real pleasure though was walking into town and looking around, and meeting people like Bob. That is why the "good airports" like Watertown don't interest me at all.