The airline business was far more complex than Ted Hart had anticipated. First of all, there were
the unions, the most obstinate being the pilots’ organization which made it difficult for Ted to create
schedules that made any kind of sense from a financial point of view. Then there was the government
(pronounced guv-mint up in Tallahassee, Ted’s new home away from home). The state didn’t have
many regulations when it came to commercial airlines but at the federal level, administrators k ept
close tabs. To Ted it seemed like interference until one of the pilots, who had flown so many missions
during the war that it was a miracle he survived, gave him a wake-up call on the tarmac in Orlando.
“All you talk about is profit margin! What do you want us to do, kill the passengers?” the pilot yelled.
And for a moment, Ted thought he was about to get shoved straight into a propeller of a DC-3.
Afterward, he realized the pilot had been right. He— Ted Hart, a blue-collar son of Fall River,
Massachusetts—had put money ahead of people. It was one of the worst moments of his life. He
walked away from the runway and lit his new pipe, which he’d purchased after breaking the old one.
He hadn’t been able to give up smoking but at least he quit a cigarette habit. If only Jackie would do
the same. The woman smoked like a chimney. The kids complained about it all the time. The Surgeon
General’s announcement earlier that year about a strong link between cigarettes and cancer had an
impact on him, but not Jackie. Maybe, Ted thought, he should throw in the towel. All he really wanted
was to go home, not that Naples was “home,” exactly, but that’s where Jackie and the kids were living
and waiting for him. Waiting, waiting, waiting. He’d done so much of that in the Army. He’d thought
that once the war ended he would no longer have the feeling that the present was to be endured. The
future was when life would really start. But it didn’t feel
that way for a New England boy living mostly in a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida. Things were not
going well for Jackie. She was upset, and he didn’t blame her. Darn that guy Darryl Norwood. Ted
was furious, not so much about the possible destruction of the river but the fact that some lowlife
redneck was exploiting his wife by calling the new development Dreamsville Estates. That was nerve,
even by Yankee standards. So much for Southern honor! Ted had a strong desire to settle the dispute
the way it was done in the Army—by presenting Darryl Norwood with a knuckle sandwich right to the
jawbone. On Jackie’s behalf, Ted had swallowed his pride and talked to his boss Mr. Toomb.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the old geezer refused to interfere with Darryl Norwood, shrewdly
pointing out that if Darryl’s development was successful, the airline would be, too. Mr. Toomb,
however, agreed that Ted could use his connections and time on the job to try to find out more about
Darryl’s backers. So Ted figured that on his monthly trip up north, he would make the short drive
from New York to this place called Basking Ridge, New Jersey, and see if he could get some
background and, ideally, maybe even meet the investors— information that Jackie wanted as well.
Ted wondered what it was about Jackie that made her get in over her head. He wanted to help her, and
he wanted to be on her team, but he’d come to realize that part of being married to her was coping
with her impulsive side. Had she been like this in Boston? He couldn’t even remember anymore. The
past two years in Collier County overshadowed all the years that came before. Meanwhile, the kids
were getting older. His daughters were in a perpetual state of warfare with Jackie, and although this
was worrisome Jackie assured him it was normal for teenage girls. Judd spent much of his time
steering clear of his sisters and Jackie when he could, but the result was that the boy was basically
raising himself. He’d joined Civil Air Patrol, and he’d been looking after Dora Witherspoon’s turtles,
so he was busy. But he needed a father’s guidance. A father who was home. Ted had hoped his family
would adjust, and until this new problem with Darryl Norwood there’d been some progress. When
they arrived in the
summer of ’62, he and Jackie had the worst fight they’d ever had. If only she hadn’t encountered
that palmetto bug sitting on the toilet seat on the very first night in their new home. After the
screaming was over she’d said, “Ted, we need to talk about this palace you’ve brought us to here in
this cultural mecca.” Judd had settled in fairly quickly. But for Jackie and his daughters, it was a
struggle. At least, Ted reasoned, the girls had each other. After all, they were twins. But they were not
happy; anyone could see that. As for Jackie, she’d had some spectacularly bad moments but at least
she’d made some friends with that book club. And ever since she’d put Naples on the map with her
Miss Dreamsville radio show—which, thank God she wasn’t doing anymore—the local people
seemed more tolerant. For a while, she’d even been something of a hero. The fact that Ted was old
Mr. Toomb’s right-hand man had given the family a little extra leeway. No one in town wanted to
provoke Mr. Toomb, one of the richest and most powerful men south of the Mason-Dixon line, with
money invested in cotton, orange groves, tobacco, sugarcane, and— that old Southern favorite—land.
Mr. Toomb would stray from Ted’s carefully constructed business plan and buy a piece of land, and
Ted would ask why. There was never a reason beyond, “Well, it was for sale.” The last time it
happened, though, Mr. Toomb put Ted in his place by saying, “I hired you to give me the know-how
into the way business works in the North, not to tell me what to do.” So Ted had learned to walk a thin
line. He was still trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Up north, the best way to stay
gainfully employed was to play the game. Generally speaking, this meant giving your boss all the
credit publicly and then you’d be rewarded later. Ted had tried that with Mr. Toomb, and it hadn’t
worked. He was baffled until he began to notice that in the South an employee seemed to fall into one
of two categories: You were either a servant with no rights or say whatsoever or you were “family.”
You didn’t have to be related. In fact, you could be any color of the rainbow and possibly be referred
to as “family” by a white person (although never, Ted observed, the other way around). To Ted’s
Northern ears, there was something patronizing about a white person referring to a black person
(usually a longtime servant) as “part of the family.”
Then the day came when Mr. Toomb said to him, “Ted, you’re like a son to me. You’re a part of
the family.” And Ted felt very special and very honored, until he remembered that Mr. Toomb said
the same thing to his longtime, long-suffering chauffeur, who was black. He had discussed it that night
with Jackie, who was just as confused and disturbed as he was. She relayed a conversation she’d
overheard two women having at the Book Nook. In loud voices they’d said, “You know, Yankees
have their race problem, too. They shouldn’t be coming down south telling us what to do about our
Negroes.” Jackie was pretty sure she was meant to overhear this remark, and was about to say
something when Judd and the twins entered the store. She had planned to meet them there and buy
each one a book of their choosing. “So you didn’t say anything?” Ted was surprised. Jackie had
sighed. “I’m learning to choose my battles,” she’d said, “and I didn’t want to embarrass the twins. But
I talked to all three kids about it later at home. I asked them to think about it and I’m proud to say that
all three of them had the same reaction. The phrase ‘our Negroes’ made them nuts.” Our Negroes.
Yes, Ted had heard it many times, too. Another common saying which jarred his Yankee sensibility
was “Here in the South, Negroes know their place.” And the people saying it didn’t seem to realize
how they sounded. What was brazen and insulting to his ears was normal chitchat to them. It was a
huge relief to him that Jackie was being more careful about what she said and did. Three civil rights
workers—two of them white—had been murdered three months ago in Mississippi. Even with Jackie
being more prudent, he wished he was at home more, not that he could control Jackie but at least to
ke ep a close eye on her. Jackie complained often that she hated how much he was on the road. If she
was in a particularly bad mood, he would get the “it’s not easy being a woman” rant. Clearly, she was
restless being a housewife and mother. Well, it wasn’t so great being a man, either. That’s what he
wanted to say but didn’t because starting a third world war was not in anyone’s best interests. But was
it really so bad for women? It was men who were sent off to war. It was men who died in battle or
came home and had to live with what they’d seen or done. And then what? A man had to get training
or an education,
find a job, earn money to support a family. Sometimes he actually envied Jackie. When the kids
were at school she had time on her hands. When was the last time he had that luxury? She loved that
book, The Feminine Mystique, but he blamed it for leading to her breakdown in early ’63. He would
never forget how she took off in the family station wagon only to return hours later in that 1960 Buick
Le Sabre convertible. He understood that it was her personal declaration of ind ependence, a way of
defying the “drudgery” (her word) of her boring life as a wife and mother. What about him? What if
he traded in his dull sedan for a sports car? That would be the day! Frankly he didn’t feel so fulfilled,
either. She wasn’t the one who had to put on a suit every day and duke it out in the white-collar
trenches. Ted was surprised that the world of business felt so similar to the Army. Mr. Toomb could
be as insufferable as any general, and Ted was a lowly foot soldier being sent to do the hard part, or so
it seemed. And who knew the airline industry would be so awful? People thought it was glamorous,
but it was like running a bus company, exc ept these buses had wings and flew in the sky and,
therefore, presented a lot more risk. The pilots were proud and stubborn, and completely unwilling to
have their authority challenged. They had survived the war. Surely they didn’t need “babysitting,” as
they called it. But the pilots proved to be a little too casual for Ted’s (and the guvmint’s) taste. They
didn’t worry about running low on fuel. Crash-landing? Oh, not to worry. Did that all the time during
the war. Worst of all was the shell-shocked former bomber pilot who forgot to put down the landing
gear and slid to a stop—with a plane full of passengers—near the airport terminal (as these buildings
were unfortunately called, in Ted’s opinion) at Jacksonville. The pilot’s only comment was, “Oops.
Crappy landing.” Ted was beginning to think the airline wouldn’t make it to the end of the year. It was
now early S eptember 1964. The incorporation papers hadn’t even been signed—a “detail” (Mr.
Toomb’s word) that made Ted sick with anxiety. They shouldn’t even have been flying. And yet Mr.
Toomb was concocting ridiculous plans for expansion. To himself, Ted wondered if it was time to get
his résumé ready, just in case.