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Things have really changed.

Airports aren't as bad as they once were — at least, not the one that has the 12,000-foot runway perched 30 feet above sea level about 10 miles southeast of Fort Myers.

Not that Douglas Adams was wrong, necessarily, when he said, "It's no coincidence that in no known language does the phrase 'As pretty as an airport' appear."

But beauty isn't everything. Like its brethren throughout the world, Southwest Florida Inter- national Airport — RSW in airport code — is a litmus test of the region stretching from Naples to Fort Myers, and beyond. In appearance, in the people it draws, and in its presentation of itself and all of us, however, it's like no other place. RSW is the crossroads of our culture, just as grand urban train stations or great harbors once played such a role in cultures everywhere.

All that provides reason enough for Florida Weekly to conduct the simplest exercise: On a single day last week, we went out to observe what RSW offers at first glance, as if we'd never seen it before. And in some ways, we hadn't.

More than 691,000 people came through this airport in December. In 2008, 7.6 million traveled its concourses, coming and going, according to Lee County Port Authority statistics. That's an astounding average of 20,822 people per day for each of the 365 days in a year. Chances are most of them were more worried about getting to the right gate or baggage turnstile than about catching a whiff of the culture here on the sunny Southwest coast — and you may have one of those travelers.

Here, we may give you a reason to glance around next time you join the traveling parade.

Pretty is as pretty does

You still might not be inclined to say, "As pretty as an airport." Instead, you might be startled by the beauty of blue light flooding a long train of windows to the sky, the bronzed dolphins leaping from a torrent of water, a cypress-head swamp or sea-borne sunset splashed in a rich palette of watercolors, or the dragon flies of ruby or indigo glass and silver, aloft in the great hall.

You might even glance backward into once upon a time, to a plain, plankfloored room outfitted with two single beds, a bureau, a washbasin and pitcher, a couple of oil lamps and a mosquito mister, where a fresh breeze ruffles the curtains framing wide-open windows. Those windows look out on San Carlos Bay and the distant mangrove burr of Pine Island from the home photographer Charlie McCullough's grandfather built on Sanibel Island in 1908.

The title of the photo, taken about 1942 before Mr. McCullough went off to join the 10th Mountain Division during World War II, is, "The Way It Was." It's one of three signed McCullough photos on the 300-yard-long wall upstairs in the RSW terminal building.

The way it was is not the way it is now, of course, at RSW — not with an architecture that startles by its introduction of light and space amid utter utility in the main terminal; and not with the waterfront condos, new homes and golf courses that rotate their lush images one after another across the electronic billboards throughout the airport's main hallways; and not with the fruits of industrial and automotive largesse that invite travelers to pluck them from their dreams: a "beluga"-colored Bentley priced at $219,215 downstairs by the baggage (some baggage); and upstairs a Jaguar XFL ($51,350) along with a Porsche Cayman S Sport Coupe ($73,865).

Each of those dream machines comes from Naples car dealers, and each has four tires and a steering wheel, along with a front seat and a back seat, just like Thomas Edison's Cadillac or Henry Ford's Model T.

The antique cars are there too, on loan from the Edison-Ford Winter Estates, along with cardboard mannequins of the inventors standing beside their machines.

Only at RSW can you learn that exactly 100 years before Porsche came out with this Cayman Sport Coupe in 2008, Mr. Edison began tooling around in his Cadillac Model 1908G, a four-cylinder opera coupe with a 1906 Columbia electric car cab added to the Caddy chassis. It would be six years before Mr. Ford introduced his 1914 Model T, a fourcylinder engine that used a crank to start and could do a maximum of about 25 mph — faster than a man could sprint, but slower than a horse could gallop.

The Model T cost $490, which would be about $10,350 in today's market. And it got about 25 miles per gallon of fuel, which is better than the Bentley (rated at 10 mpg in the city and 17 on the highway) and at least as good or better than the Porsche (rated at 18/26) or the Jaguar (16/25).

Theater of the real

The way it was, was not always good.

In those days, when airports offered about as much of the local culture as a fast- food wrapper, you would "go through your phone book, call people and ask them to drive you to the airport. The ones who will drive you are your true friends. The rest aren't bad people; they're just acquaintances," as Jay Leno said.

Now, a woman who describes herself as "a friend of a friend" is holding up a sign for her friend's friend, since she's never seen him before, she says. The sign reads, "Shane Wells."

Now that's really a friend, but this is really an airport, where such little acts of friendship are the almost invisible threads in a much larger tapestry of stories.

There is no better place to observe the theater of the real, that patchwork of American stories now made our very own, than at RSW.

You might begin by riding in from the long-term parking lot on a shuttle piloted by Richard — just Richard, a Kentuckian who tells us he worked for Ford Motor Company in Louisville for almost 40 years and has retired twice, once in 1998 and again in 2005.

About Ford's future, you can get it here from the horse's mouth. "It's been hard," he says, "but they're coming back. The new guy in charge is just exactly what they need."

At the terminal, you might find Muffy — just Muffy (who's a lot tougher than her name suggests), waiting to help you behind an information booth. As a girl growing up in New York City, she recalls, she'd go into Manhattan from Flushing, Queens, with her friends, see Glenn Miller play from the balcony of the Paramount, have a 40-cent meal in Chinatown and "stiff out the waiter from a tip" and walk all the way home using the last 10 cents she had for an ice cream cone instead of the subway (5 cents) and the bus (another 5 cents) — all for $1.

Muffy doesn't care about dollars anymore. "We're all volunteers, you know," she says of her cadre of helpers, after giving a man directions to Marco Island.

Throughout the terminal, the ebb and flow of daily life rolls on: Housekeepers in uniform blue shirts move from trash can to trash can, emptying near-empty bags and replacing them, ignoring the Porche and the Jag, but not the people near them. One blue-shirted woman wielding a dust scoop smiles at another woman, a traveler, wielding a fretsome child.

Other workers wheel carts of food through the airport — milk and pastries, for example, or tray upon tray of sandwich wraps and canned drinks. One man, his airport I.D. swinging wildly, rushes past with a guitar case emblazoned stem to stern with stickers, including a prominent "Black Rock."

An older couple move stiffly toward some seats, but halt in the open hall before they reach them. They turn to each other, wrap themselves in an embrace of four arms, head to head and hip to hip, and begin kissing. Slowly they sway like sea grass in a gentle current, back and forth, until the kiss ends, when they resume their walk to the chairs, seating themselves without a word.

Meanwhile, a suitcase-toting Lee County Commissioner Ray Judah walks past — past the gift shop, the displays of books about Florida or by Floridians or both, past the Starbucks stand, the golf shop with its 50-percent off sales, past the Dunkin' Donuts and past the kissing couple, before turning with a companion into Chili's Grill & Bar, a sit-down restaurant with a touch screen menu.

A party of winter-clad visitors follows behind the commissioner. "We went to the bathroom so I could change out of my winter boots into my sandals," one woman explains to her companions, glancing proudly at her strappy shoes and freshly painted red toenails.

On a nearby chair, a woman says, "My neighbors take care of it, they're here all year." She shrugs.

"I stopped worrying about hurricanes. I figure, 'I've got insurance, why worry?'" her companion replies.

"Well, that hurricane they had in — was it 2002 or 2004? — ours was still new enough that the developer did it all over, the walls and everything."

When an elderly man wearing scenes of a fox hunt on his trousers limps past, both women stop to stare, while a couple speaking German grows suddenly silent.

A younger woman walking with two pre-teen girls and a smiling man announces suddenly she's heading to the restroom.

"I thought we were going to the beach," protests one girl.

"I want to go to the beach," insists the other.

"It only takes 30 seconds to change," the woman says. Sure enough, about 90 seconds later she emerges in shorts, a halter top and sandals. Her upper calves, now exposed, reveal the marks of the socks she wore from Milwaukee, where her flight originated.

In the background, ignored by most, Bob Dylan is singing his 1966 version of "Like a Rolling Stone."

A grandpa, meeting a young couple with a small boy, says to the youngster, "I've got a BIG surprise for you at home."

An art museum by any other name

In airports of old, or elsewhere, it's a pretty sure bet that grandpa didn't get to meet his family in front of an extensive collection of art provided through the Port Authority's "Art in Flight" program. But here, RSW showcases paintings and sculpture by artists working in Lee and Collier counties. Among them: Caitlin Blankenhorn, Daniel Calvert, John W. Cane, Muffy Clark Gill, Robert Greenwald, Scott Guelcher, John Ketley, Megan Kissinger, Jo-Ann Lizio, Joshua Myers, Sandi Orgovan, Renee Rey, Doris Schroeder, Carl E. Schwartz, Bill Thomas, Florene Welebny and Roseline Young.

And then there's Mr. McCullough, with his two other pictures flanking "The Way It Was."

In one, you're about 50 yards off a fish house, out on the water, where a man smiles at you from the deck above the pilings that disappear beneath the waves ("Fish House"). In the other, you're watching Ralph Woodring cast his fishing net ("Ralph Woodring Casting"), which is an extraordinary moment in time.

Nowhere else in the world can you stand and watch Mr. Woodring work, since he's about 60 years older now and no one else does it quite that way anymore. Mr. McCullough took that picture about the time of the Berlin Airlift, in 1948-49.

"The Berlin Airlift — A Legacy of Friendship," which uses more than 60 historic photos to depict the moment when America, England and France saved more than two million Germans by airlifting supplies in thousands of daily flights into West Berlin, through Soviet airspace, stretches out nearby.

That exhibit isn't unique to RSW; it also appeared in Seattle, courtesy of the German government.

After all, more than 100,000 Germans visit Southwest Florida each year.

Steve — just Steve, who might shuttle you back out to the long-term lot if you parked there — isn't one of our German visitors. Instead, he's a Brit, and a resident. With his gray hair pulled back in a ponytail, he recalls his boyhood in England, where he was born in Yorkshire and raised outside of Manchester.

"Yeah, they had snow there," he says, pausing to glance past the long lines of traffic and into the flat line of trees rising from the surrounding wetlands. They're shimmering and alive with new green in the afternoon light, where the air measures exactly 80 degrees Fahrenheit. "But I'm here now," Steve adds. And even though he works four days a week for eight hours a shift, his grin sheds the same unmistakable pleasure that illuminates the terminal in the faces of thousands each day.

That's the airport, for you — as pretty as a winter day.