It happens without fail: every time I come or go from our major airport at Timehri, I’m caught up in a memory of the time in the mid-1950s when I worked there as a youngster. Atkinson Field was the name then, and I had joined BG Airways, fresh out of Saints, working for a while at the Ruimveldt Ramp and then later at Atkinson. I lived on “The Base”, as it was known, with my sister Theresa and her husband Joe Gonsalves in a house almost directly opposite where CJIA now stands. The BG Airways operation was south of the terminal, and my job as a Flight Clerk was largely office work, which included working out the load distribution for cargo in the DC3 twin-engine planes we used for the interior flights, but it included going on flights to the Rupununi, helping to unload and load cargo in Good Hope, Karanambo, Lethem, Annai, etc.
Leaving Atkinson in the morning meant that we would still be in the Rupununi around noon. The Dakotas were former US Army planes, with no insulation – in effect, a large metal tube with three doors – and sitting in that savannah sun off-loading and loading,
