I wish this photo had turned out, but between it being extremely hot and humid in the cockpit and the Minolta lens I was testing out being of generally poor quality, it was just too out of focus for me to put in my main series.
For those unaware, this is a C-97G “Stratofreighter” cargo aircraft (converted from a KC-97G aerial refueling aircraft) on display outside of a hotel in rural Wisconsin. The hotel is situated next to what was once an airport, and appears to have been a place for pilots to congregate in the 1960s and ‘70s. Documentation online is sparse, but based on photos on display at the hotel, pilots would often meet at the hotel and park their aircraft on the front lawn in this era.
This C-97′s claim to fame is that it was used in a Mercury Cougar advertisement with Farrah Fawcett in the mid-1970s, hence the nose art. In the late 1970s, it was bought by the hotel owner to be used as a café and flown into the small airport, where it was just barely able to manage the landing.
The café plan was never carried out, and instead it sits on the front lawn as a display piece that visitors (and birds) can go into. It has degraded somewhat over the years due to neglect and visitor abuse, with many controls in the cockpit no longer functional (though I recall the ailerons still worked as of these photos). The airport has long since closed (presumably sometime in the 1980s), and is now used to store construction equipment.
