The Corner Office

Non-erotic

A few years ago we bought an airplane. Two actually, to fly our patrons who didn't own yachts from the International Airport to the resort my father Anthony had built on the back bay. Because it had been my idea and prodding that led to this development, I was given the task of running the operation. The corner office facing the ramp on the second floor of a somewhat run-down old wood and metal siding hangar in Harbour Towne came with the job.

City airport was built about 100 years ago on an empty field. Today it is a tightly walled-in space near the centre of towne. Decades ago a larger International Airport was built 28 kilometres / 17 miles away and the runway here shortened and realigned to restrict flights over the historic harbor and towne centre at the east end and an expensive marina and condominium development at the west end.

My office is in the east end of the building and faces this displaced threshold and ramp. A bar and restaurant occupies the second floor on the west side. Patrons can dine at the window tables and view the single engine airplanes and light twins fly right at them and then over their heads when they take off to the east. A well known international logistics company uses the space beneath the restaurant and the west quarter of the hangar.

We have the middle half of the hangar, which we use as our maintenance base, and a Fixed Base Operator has the eastern quarter of the hangar and first floor offices. Living quarters for our operation's three employees on the town side of the second floor. By way of comparison, the company we replaced has 23 employees to run four aircraft. We have three besides myself and I probably spend ten percent of my time managing flight operations. Hotel staff handle all of the bookings.

Looking from left to right out my front window, just beyond the ramp and drainage ditch and chain link fence denoting the edge of the airport property is a plastered brick wall. Inside is the garden and playground of the local Mosque. It is in a commercial row facing the street beside a barbeque restaurant, a scuba diving shop and a bakery. On the opposite side of the street is another commercial row with two bars and a Mexican restaurant. This row backs to the municipal harbor on the back bay.

The harbor edges away from the street and a marine supply house and an electrical contractor sit behind a Caribbean restaurant, another bar, and a pharmacy. A grocery sits on the corner and the airport boundary runs along the mostly north south street. Looking out my side window a gym, seafood restaurant, and golf cart rental agency bring us to the next corner. An old hotel with a magnificent courtyard that has been converted to condominiums sits across the side street beyond the fence.

From the crew apartment adjacent to my office, the south east corner of the airport contains a modern modular building that houses the municipal airport authority. Twenty people supposedly work there but I've never seen a single one of them. No-show jobs are quite popular here. The two airlines-- who like us fly little 13 passenger single-engine aircraft, but who unlike us cater to the general public-- the FBO, the logistics company, and our operation take turns monitoring the radio and running things.

Harbour Towne is unplanned, somewhat old, and there never seems to be parking available anywhere. Busses run along the street on the airport's southern boundary when they can get past the double parked cars and haphazardly parked golf carts-- regulations are not generally enforced in tourist areas. There is a printed bus schedule, but with detours and traffic it is a mostly useless statement of intent. The street to our south is lined with more restaurants, bars, another hotel and golf cart rental agency.

There is a kosher / halal market beneath the Chabad House next to the synagogue. It was founded by German refugees in 1938. Everyone here is the descendant of refugees. Escaped Spanish slaves from Jamaica in 1655, freed French slaves and Huguenots from the West Indies in 1763, displaced Confederates from Louisiana in 1865, Mestizo from the Yucitan in 1900. From Europe in the late 30s, China in 1949, and more recently from the Middle East...

The garden of the synagogue is a thin ribbon between two hotels leading to the gulf. There is a 150-year-old French Protestant Church and then a long low commercial strip with small shops under professional offices and beauty salons in front of a private gated street serving a long row of skinny modernist condominiums located along the sandy gulf coast beach.

That is the area right around the east end of the old city airport. The western end is mostly residential with a few public houses, cafes, and coffee shops mixed in. The properties further to the south are newer, a bit larger-- nothing is big by American standards-- and much more expensive. Just to the south is a large condominium development with private docks.

The original towne centre with its 110-year-old cathedral, fish market, and harbour is an easy walk from my office. My (technically half) siblings and I attended the two gender specific church schools located a block and two from the cathedral. Unlike the government school nearby we had books, running water, and competent teachers who had taken a vow of poverty-- rather than a vow of graft.

Towne centre is surrounded by many smallish residential units and shops. The properties along the island to the north include many small hotels. They are older, less posh, smaller, and along with those in the central district cater to middle-class tourists. They come to enjoy sipping rum while sitting in the breeze from the back bay and gulf-- out during the day, and in at night-- in a place where the thermometer almost never exceeds 31°C / 88°F or dips below 18°C / 65°F.