About Schmidt|Eppley Airfield, Omaha — Watching the Daughter Go

Helen is buried and Jeannie has a job in Denver, so Warren drives his daughter out to Eppley Airfield and lets her go. It is a small scene — a kerbside, a bag, a goodbye that neither of them knows how to extend — and it sets up everything that follows, because the moment her plane lifts he has nobody left in the house.

Eppley is Omaha's airport, on the flat river bottom north-east of downtown at 4501 Abbott Drive, close enough to the Missouri that planes bank over Iowa on the way out. It is not a grand terminal. It is two concourses, a fountain, a lot of Nebraska in the carpet, and it handles most of the state's air traffic without ever feeling busy.

Anyone can walk in. Park in the short-term garage, come through the doors Warren came through, and watch the drop-off lane for ten minutes. The film understood the specific loneliness of that kerb: you are still holding the car keys while the other person is already gone.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.