"We Could Have Been Bigger Than Pan Am" Traditional Cache
"We Could Have Been Bigger Than Pan Am"
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Size: 
(small)
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You seek a small camo'd container with log and swag at the site of Monroe's old municipal airport. The area figures prominently in an interesting story by J. Ray Shute, Monroe's long-time mayor and author of the book His Honor the Heretic (1950, Nicalore Press) about the early days of professional aviation, just a few years after the Wrights flew at Kitty Hawk:
"I got in the automobile business along about 1925, I believe, and it did bring me in touch with Henry Adams, and the two of us together built the first airport in Monroe, out where the Monroe Mall is now, which operated for several years. We built seven planes, and we were the competitors of Pan American. We were a little bit larger than they were at that time. They were based down in Miami, and we were the opposition bidders against them for all foreign airmail contracts. We always underbid them, but we never did get any.
"I finally went to Washington and talked to the Postmaster General and practically accused him of shenanigans with Pan American, giving them the contracts at the maximum rate, which was two dollars a pound-mile. We had bid what we thought we had bid in the route to Nassau and the one to Havana and the one to Mexico City, but we didn't get any of them. When he didn't throw me out of his office for insinuating he was crooked, then I knew I had hit the nail on the head.
"Anyhow, we had an airplane business here in Monroe. We did air photography, student training, and mostly passenger-hopping. People loved to go up in planes back then; it was so new, right after World War I, that they'd come out on Saturdays and Sundays. We'd do a tremendous business. We opened the first flying field in Charlotte, Gastonia, Mount Airy, Durham, Camden, Columbia. We operated in a lot of different places.
Pan American went on to become Pan American World Airways, commonly known as Pan Am, was the principal and largest international air carrier in the United States from 1927 until its collapse on December 4, 1991.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Onfr bs n gerr bs guerr
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