DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture Mineola, Texas, on the Fourth of July, 1917. Most folks in town are probably figuring on fireworks, maybe a picnic, the usual Independence Day proceedings.
What they got instead was something none of them had ever seen up close — a Curtis JN-4D biplane, the kind they called a Jenny, dropping out of the sky and touching down right here on this flat stretch of ground known at the time as Massengale Meadow. The pilot was a member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps, and whether he planned it as a spectacle or just needed a place to set that bird down, well, the marker doesn't say.
But the terrain did exactly what good Texas land sometimes does — it cooperated. Flat, open, just right. That particular quality caught somebody's attention, because Massengale Meadow began its transformation into one of the first airports in the state of Texas.
Military aircraft used it during World War I, so this quiet meadow was touching history at the edges of a world at war. Then the 1920s arrived, and with them came a different kind of flyer altogether — the Royal Flying Circus and other barnstormers made this field their home. Now, barnstormers weren't exactly known for caution or modesty, and a group calling itself the Royal Flying Circus wasn't underplaying things either.
The years kept moving, the field kept expanding and improving, and today it remains a privately-maintained public use airport. From a Jenny landing on a July Fourth to a functioning airport that's still open — Massengale Meadow grew up, and it never quite came back down to earth.
What the marker says
The age of aviation came to Mineola on July 4, 1917, when a Curtis JN-4D "Jenny" biplane, piloted by a member of the U. S. Army Signal Corps, landed at this field. Called Massengale Meadow at the time, the site's flat terrain proved conducive to the establishment of one of the first airports in Texas. It was used by military aircraft during World War I and was the home of the Royal Flying Circus and other barnstormers in the 1920s. Expanded and improved over the years, it remains a privately-maintained public use airport. (1988)