Mouth of the River

Riding home on Bus 2 as a middle school student, everyone always knew which way the wind was blowing – the orange and white windsock in the corner of the field, a clear gauge. Kids on the bus would press their noses to the window to see if the horse, fittingly named Auto, had stepped out of the barn. Little did they know the bus was driving by Madbury International Airport, established by Joseph Moriarty, who you see to the left. Joeseph Moriarty is a Madbury native and legend and has lived in Madbury for 62 years. Moriarty grew up on a turkey farm always tinkering with different machines, least favorably the manure machine. Through this, he began to develop his engineering skills. Sonn to build planes, cars, and everything in between. 

This is Moriarty’s solo plane and the one he flies most often. “This is a nice little airplane; I can roll it out myself and it only burns about six gallons an hour. Going about 110 (miles per hour).” Before Moriarty began fixing planes, he was flying them. Moriarty was always interested in gliders and model planes as a kid and had his first flight experience with a military flight instructor down the road from his childhood home. “I would hear that little piper cub go up and hop on my bicycle to go down Mast Road. I’d sit on the fence, watch and wait for the plane to return. Sooner or later, he came over and offered me a ride, and then started teaching me to fly. I wasn’t even old enough to have a driver’s license at the time.” It would be a few years later when Moriarty received his own piloting license and his journey into the world of aviation would begin. Photo 4 

Moriarty describes how to fly a plane and the purpose of the dials and ball within the plane. He had dabbled in planes in the early 50s but took a ten-year break before getting his license. During this time, he worked for NCR (National Cash Register). He went to a specific school for computers and said, “This school was eight months long, eight hours of class time a day. The first grade below a 90 you’d fall back into the class behind you, the second grade below a 90 you got eight cents a mile to go back home. That was when I became a motivated student.” 

This is Moriarty when he played baseball for Durham grammar school. As a kid he had big dreams. He remembers looking out at his grandparent’s plot of land and saying, “Someday I’m going to have an airplane and a runway right out there on that field.” As every adult does, they gave him a pat on the shoulder and let him dream. It wasn’t till decades later that he decided to follow that dream. He recalled being in the car with his wife Barbara and seeing a plane preparing to land. Barbara, knowing his interest in aviation, told him he should go get his license. It took just three months for Moriarty to receive a pilot’s license. He received it so quickly with help from his instructor saying, “The instructor I had in 1963 must have noticed I was counting money because it was 14 or 15 dollars an hour back then for lessons. We stopped after just making a landing and he said, ‘See that airplane it’s taxing all the way down to the end of the runway. Then it will wait in line down there. If you’d like to save a little money, we can land and take off over there.’” Pointing to the grassy area between the taxiway and the runway. So instead of getting one or two flights in a lesson, I could get six.”  

Moriarty has been working on the yellow 1938 Navy aircraft for 35 years. This isn’t the first plane Moriarty has worked on. He has fully rebuilt and restored many different planes, going out to Dayton Ohio to fix planes. This Navy Aircraft was first designed and built to be lowered off a ship by crane. However, because of the hassle of putting it back on the ship it was used mostly as a trainer plane. When Moriarty bought it many years ago it was a crop duster. It had large fiberglass barrels where the fertilizer would be kept and hadn’t been flown in seven years upon the purchase. The last flight was from Rochester back to here on the third of November. That was its first flight in 45 years. 

A big addition to this plane was the front cockpit, although it can be flown with a single pilot. Biplanes stopped being used regularly after the 1930s after discovering the advantages of monoplanes. Moriarty describes the biplane saying, “One of the reasons for biplanes is structural stability. When you’re flying, all the pressure on the top wing is trying to pull the plane up. The wires take all of the strain on it while flying, set to a certain tension. Then when you land you strain the wings on the bottom. Many think that with two wings you can fly farther but all the wires create drag on a biplane.” Moriarty shared his grievances with the biplane saying, “That biplane’s not very fast. It burns 24 gallons of gas an hour and a gallon of oil an hour. That thing uses oil in the winter when it’s not running.”

Moriarty has been fixing up cars and machines his whole life, he references this Model T saying, “Believe it or not, this will start. This is the infamous Model T, which they built for many years, and it almost ruined the Ford company because they wouldn’t give up on it when the industry was passing them by.” The Model T is a finicky car with a crank in the front and no clutch. The car only has two gears, high and low. To put it into high gear you press the first pedal down and in low gear you let the pedal go back up. Moriarty is no stranger to the Model T. As a kid, he would drive along all the dirt roads in the Model T. He had always been fascinated with cars saying, “I got interested in cars and girls and forgot about flying.” 

This is the 1956 Ford Thunderbird, an iconic car and one that Moriarty had been building for his mother in 1962, a car he is still working on now. It had fallen on the back burner as he began fixing up other cars saying, “I bought a parts car and was leaning against the bench with a beer and a bag of chips looking at the Thunderbird. It dawned on me; you’re fixing the wrong car, you dummy. I fixed the parts car and sold it making a nice profit. In time someone told me about another car, and I ended up fixing up about seven of them. This one never got finished.” 

This is Moriarty’s most recent car project. Moriarty took this 1952 International model to Dover High School from his childhood home on Packers Falls Road. This car found off Freshet Road in Madbury, was rebuilt by Moriarty. The truck’s wooden bed was crafted from a tree Moriarty cut down himself. 

Moriarty planted that tree when he first moved into his current Madbury residence. He has been a selectman for 43 years and is the current Madbury road agent. Although Moriarty’s flying days are behind him, Moriarty is still working even in retirement. Moriarty is currently working on receiving his certification as an electrician. Moriarty has lived a worldly life but always kept his deep roots in Madbury. It’s said most people who remain in small towns are fenced in with small ideas. I would argue Moriarty saw the horizon over that fence and took to it. 

– Maeve Hickok