THE RETIRED HANGAR

Mary Jane flew for a living, not as a crew member but as a businesswoman. She sat in the same seat each time she travelled and left her house in a rush to get to the airport.

Mary Jane Ellis volunteered for the position because she loved travelling and had no family. Going from North America to Turkey was the first time she saw it. 

She gasped, “Say, do you see that?” She asked the guy sitting next to her. 

“See what?” the man said. “Lady, were you drinking before you came aboard today?” 

“Shit no!” 

“I think so, honey. There’s nothing there. And to prove it,” he said.

“I’m going to take pictures of every bit of sky you tell me you see something in. I happen to be a professional photographer.” He said as he reached under the seat for his camera bag.

“Honestly, you can’t see that plane over there in the tendrils of that dark cloud.”

“Nope. I see nada except for the dark cloud. Tendrils? What are you talking about?”

The clouds have density. Within the darkness, they hold their secrets. They are an invisible hangover that holds planes that have disappeared in history and have never been recovered. Nobody knows why Mary Jane can see them, but she convinces anyone who hears her that she is seeing planes. 

“It’s the most important airplane of all time! The Wright Brothers biplane.” Mary Jane said. “I see the wing warping they used to achieve bank, which, in coordination with yaw from the rudder, allowed their craft to be controlled.” 

“Hey, that’s a concept still used on virtually every plane in the air today,” her seat buddy said as he snapped two or three shots with flash and without. 

Then she looked for a long while before she saw something that caught her eye again. In the meantime, the flight attendants came around with drinks and then offered a meal. They were in the process of collecting the garbage when she nudged him again. 

“There, she pointed, right there. Blériot, inspired by the Wright Brothers' ability to use wing warping to fly an airplane, modified his monoplane and set off to become the first person to cross the English Channel in a heavier-than-air aircraft. His success proved aviation wasn't a toy for rich playboys but a valuable tool to shrink the world.” 

He took five pictures, and before she knew it, she saw a Cessna—also a single-engine aircraft— ”Clyde Cessna went on to form Cessna Aircraft Corporation, selling more aircraft than any other company.”

And just like the sky cleared, the tendrils receded, and she saw no more of the dark, grey clouds with tendrils from her window. She kept looking and watching for more objects in the sky from flights tested, failed, or gone missing, but she saw no more. 

The man, named J.R., wrote out his phone number and email address. He also asked for a snail mail address to send the picture to Mary Jane. He jotted Mary Jane's details on a sticky note and placed it into his camera bag. Upon landing, they wished each other a safe journey and parted ways.

Mary Jane went to Turkey for medical reasons. She forgot all about J.R. and the photos he had taken on the way to Istanbul. On the way home, she flew Business Class and was not seated near a window, but the seat was more prominent, and she could lie down if needed. 

When J.R. returned home from the hospital with pneumonia and forgot about the photos, his son, Luke, came to stay with him while he recovered. Luke found the camera bag and asked his dad if he could look through his trip pictures. 

“Sure, son, but you may see many black photos. This kooky woman who sat beside me on the plane swore she saw something in the sky. I took pictures of whatever she told me she saw. Maybe you could develop them in my dark room and send them to her for me, please.”

“No problem.” 

So, while J.R. slept in the afternoon, Luke developed two prints for his father and one to mail to Mary Jane.  

“Dad, you said you took pictures of nothing, but look at these photos,” Luke said. He showed his father the photos and said, “I’ll send them to Mary Jane immediately.”

“Great. I’d appreciate that,” J.R. said from his bed.

Luke went to the post office and sent the photos. Inside the envelope, he wrote that it would be great to talk to her once she received them.

After three weeks, Mary Jane called to speak with Luke. It happened that J.R. was awake. 

“Hello, Mary Jane, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” 

“Hi, J.R., don’t worry about it. I’m just glad the images came through in the photos.”

“Me too.” 

“Thanks so much for taking them. You made me feel sane once I saw these pictures.”

“Yes, I can imagine,” J.R. answered. “What should we do with them now?” 

“Sell them to the highest bidder, or at least get our story out there, don’t you?” Mary Jane said. 

“That’s not a bad idea.” J.R. paused. “As a photographer, other professionals could tell these photos are authentic.” 

“Okay, let’s put our thoughts down and talk again in a week,” Mary Jane suggested. 

“Good idea. Talk to you then. Good-bye.” 

“Good-bye.” 

After a week, the two missed each other’s calls. Then, after another week, they spoke again. They agreed to go to TIME magazine and talk with the editors to see if they were interested in their photos and stories. They decided to fly both J.R. and Mary Jane to their head office in New York and interview them together. They wanted the camera, the negatives, and the photos, both copies, to be brought with them when they came. 

The editors met with them in the lobby. After being given visitor passes, they proceeded to the upstairs conference area, where the cameras were set up.

TIME magazine photographers booked flights on many of the flights to Europe overnight to see if what Mary Jane saw was what they could see. None of the photographers couldn’t see a thing.

Only one attendant claimed to see something, and the photographer who took the pictures captured them on his camera film. The rest were unsuccessful. No other photographers captured any photos of anything remotely close to a retired hanger in the sky.

Only one on their final run captured DaVinci, who had two flying machines built and created one machine that strapped onto the backs of men’s backs and relied on wing power by flapping the arms and wings for the legs. All to propel man along in the air similar to that of a bird—that was his concept, and since that didn’t work out, he failed to create a flying machine. 

His second approach examined the vision of a physical apparatus men sit in. Still, he lacked the vision to propel it forward, essentially developing the first airplane. The paperwork on which DaVinci wrote all his ideas was found and kept in a vast volume of his works. 

The editors and interviewers were amazed when the viewer and photographer revealed the remarkable photos and story. They couldn't believe what they saw, and accepting their story was even more challenging.  They never realized they witnessed a historical flight graveyard with massive machines and lifeless bodies that had earned the honour of eternally existing in the clouds.

An article was written about the grey, cloudy, turbulent air that produced tendrils that held the planes in perfect stillness in the retired hanger, which was many thousand feet above the clouds. The retired hanger, nestled in the sky, held the key to the history of air travel in the United States, a sight only a few fortunate individuals could occasionally glimpse. 

The next edition  of TIME had pictures of those who captured the shots and those who saw the planes on the cover; the photos inside were of the many images of the different types of planes sighted, and the caption below read vintage planes as seen in “The Retired Hanger.” 

Mary Jane left her house in a rush to get to the airport.