I took the letter downtown to the airport authority that same afternoon, asked for the man who had stood in my yard with his hands over his ears, and when he unfolded it, his face went pale, because the three words Clyde underlined twice in red pen were prior recorded easement.
The airport man had pointed at Clydes magnolia and told me the runway extension was approved, my house was in the new noise zone, the tree was in the flight path, that the FAA could condemn it all one way or another.
He did not know Clyde had already dealt with the FAA back in 1989.
The last time the airport tried to expand, in 1989, my husband fought it and won a recorded avigation and property easement agreement, government letterhead and all, that permanently protects our house and our land from being condemned for airport expansion, the very thing the man in my yard swore the FAA would do.
The airport was a little strip when we moved in in 1964, and when it first tried to grow in the eighties, Clyde did not roll over. He fought, and he won a binding agreement with the aviation authority that limited what they could ever take, and he kept it in the back of the mailbox post, and underlined the three words that mattered most in his red pen.
A prior recorded easement agreement ties the airports hands. They had already, in 1989, agreed in writing to the limits on expansion over our property, and that agreement binds them and the FAA now.
I had a lawyer confirm it, and he said the 1989 agreement was ironclad, that the airport had signed away the right to do exactly what the man threatened.
When I set that letter on the counter and the man unfolded it, he stopped laughing. He read prior recorded easement underlined twice, and he read the signature, and he went to get someone more senior, who read it and went to get someone more senior than that.
The magnolia is in the flight path too, its coming down, he had said, laughing. He was not laughing at the counter. The runway extension was rerouted, the buyout line was redrawn short of my land, and Clydes magnolia still stands in the front yard.
Clyde planted that magnolia the week we moved in in 1964, and he built the swing that hangs from it, and he protected it with a government agreement in 1989. I sit in that swing every evening, jets and all, because my husband was in touch with the FAA long before that man ever put his hands over his ears in my yard, and he left me three words in red pen to prove it.