Building 13

We were parked at the gate in Boston, over at terminal E. I was in the cockpit, setting things up for departure, when I glanced to my right. Next to us was a nondescript building, a small rectangular structure of dirty yellow brick with blue trim, old and anachronistic-looking amidst all the modern build-up at Logan. A holdout from the ’50s or ’60s maybe? A sign said “Building 13.”

Something about it kept nagging me, until all at once I remembered.

I remembered walking below a Boeing 707, all in polished silver, running my hands along engines and landing gear. We sat in the cockpit too. Me and my father and my friend from school, Peter O’Leary. It was cloudy, drizzly. The year would’ve been 1977, I think. We were in sixth grade.

Building 13, I now recalled, had been the American Airlines cargo building. A 707 freighter would park behind it, just a few feet to the right of where I sat in my Airbus nearly fifty years later. My dad knew someone who worked inside and was able to set up a visit.

I forget who the worker was. It may have been a relative — a grand-uncle or some such whose name has escaped me. Whoever he was, he took us out to the apron and gave us run of that 707 for at least an hour.

Today a thrill like that would be documented by two dozen iPhone photos. But as so often is the case for those of us of a certain age, nothing of that day exists except my memory of it.

Back in the 1970s, most of the major airlines had cargo divisions with dedicated freighter fleets — cargo jets that hauled only pallets, not passengers. There, out on the back side of the airport, there was no sort of security clearance. You just walked out to the plane. Nobody batted an eye.

It’s funny how much of Logan has changed over the decades. Although it’s kept a degree of character, of local “feel” that most big airports lack, a lot of it is new, shiny, glass-and-steel generic. But tucked-away pockets remain just as they were when I was eleven years-old.

There’s talk of extending terminal E further to the west, which would put Building 13 in the target of a wrecking ball. Sooner rather than later, I’m sure, it will go the way of Minoru Yamasaki’s stately old Eastern terminal and all the old hangars that were knocked down.

I don’t know what it’s used for. American hasn’t flown freighters in eons. I could call Massport and ask. But I don’t want to. It really doesn’t matter. For me it will always be the AA cargo building, as it was that day in ’77, sitting in the cockpit with my father and my friend.

Photo by the author.