The Spirit of ST Louis (55 page)

blanket, and strapped the bundle down in the front cockpit with the seat belt. At ten o'clock on the morning of May seventeenth, I took off, circled once above the hangars to say good-by, and set my course directly toward Montgomery, Alabama.

I made Meridian, Mississippi, before sunset, and headed west again the following morning. That was the day I became so badly lost. The sky was full of great white clouds; the horizon, broken by local storms. For almost half an hour, I saw no check point on the ground that conformed with the small-scale map I had purchased from an Americus drug store. Then I placed too much significance in the angling tracks of a railroad, and changed my course to the right. I kept on flying in a direction I thought was westward. There was no compass in my Jenny. I'd bought a compass, discolored by age, the day before I left Souther Field. But in my hurry to get started I'd wrapped it up in my blanket roll, planning to install it sometime when the weather held me on the ground. Now it was out of reach.

The territory below grew wilder -- mostly swamp and timber. Storms became thicker and heavier. After an hour had passed, I decided to land, ask where I was, and fill up my tanks. The fields below were small, hilly, and most of them plowed. To land in plowing meant an almost sure nose-over for a Jenny; and one could never get off again -- even when the ground was dry. At last I found a pasture that contained two well-sodded slopes, with a small meadow between. That would give me an upgrade for the end of my landing roll, and a downgrade for the start of my take-off—an ideal combination. The territory all around was pretty rough. Engine failure on take-off would mean a nasty crack-up. But that was true most places in the South. I circled several times, studying the surface on the ground, made the shortest landing I had yet accomplished, coasted down the near slope, across the meadow, and stopped rolling halfway up the slope on the far side. I felt highly professional.

A small but dark storm area was drifting in my direction, and only a mile or two away. I wanted to get my plane into a grove of pine trees at one side of the slope behind me, and tie the wings down before strong wind gusts arrived. So I opened my throttle, blew the tail around, and taxied across the little meadow at the highest speed I dared. It was too late to stop or ground-loop when I saw a ditch ahead, almost completely hidden by grass. I had barely time to pull the throttle shut. There was the crash of wood as my wheels dropped in and the propeller struck the ground. The tail rose, like a seesaw run amuck, until it was almost vertical in air. I thought my Jenny was turning upside down. Then it settled back to an angle of some forty-five degrees.

I climbed out of the cockpit down to the wing, and then to the ground, and surveyed my damaged plane. It was splattered with mud, but I could find nothing broken aside from the propeller. If I'd followed my landing tracks, or if I'd even been ten feet farther over, I wouldn't have hit the ditch at all. Raindrops began to patter on fabric. Northwest treetops were boiling in the wind. The rudder drummed against the flippers with a heavy puff. Several men and boys came running up.

"What's the name of the nearest town?" I asked.

"Well suh, if you go nawtheast, you come to the city of Maben. If you go sauthwest, you come to the city of Mathis-ton. When you all landed, you just about split the difference between 'em."

"What's the closest big city?"

"Well suh, if you go 'bout a hundred miles sauth, you come to Meridian. That's about the biggest un we got 'round heah."

Meridian, Mississippi! That's where I'd started from -- I'd flown north instead of west! I thought they were going to say I was in Louisiana.

By that time a crowd was assembling in spite of the rain -- whites and Negroes, grandfathers, daughters, babies, and dogs. We hauled down the fuselage and pushed my Jenny out of the ditch, into the grove of pines. I tied wings to trees, and rode into Maben with a storekeeper who had locked up his place of business when he heard of my landing and driven out to see for himself what had happened.

Before leaving Souther Field, I'd invested twenty dollars in two extra propellers as a safeguard for my summer's barnstorming. I telegraphed for one of them to be expressed to Maben. Then I engaged a room at the old Southern Hotel. The next afternoon, I installed the compass in my cockpit.

Four degrees right rudder.

Three days later, the new propeller arrived at the railway station. I lapped it onto the engine shaft between showers. A urge part of the population of Maben, Mathiston, and the surrounding country came to watch me work and test the plane.

On the test flight, my take-off was easy, and my landing fairly good; but constant rains had kept the field soft. Wheels and tail skid left shallow ruts behind. I taxied back carefully round the ditch end, and announced that I was ready for passengers. While I was waiting for the propeller, I had talked half-a-dozen townsmen into promising to fly with me. Most of them were right there, gathered around my plane.

"Hank, climb in; you all been talkin' all mornin"bout the flight you're going to take!"

"Oh, Ah – – – Ah'm goin' up all right; but how 'bout all you fellers that was fightin' for the first ride? Sol, you was speakin' mighty big few minutes ago. Don't hear nuthin' from you now."

"Seemed a lot safer yest'day when that plane couldn't really fly."

It took several minutes of persuasion to get the first Mississippian into my cockpit. After that, they came fast. I stopped my engine only when it was necessary to pour gasoline in the tanks. I kept the fuel level low, to make take-offs easier. That day, I took in enough money to pay for new propeller, gasoline, and hotel bills, and leave me a profit besides. At last, my flying was on a paying basis. Hours in the air put dollars into my pocket instead of taking them out. I was earning enough to live, and for the upkeep of my plane; that was all I asked.

"Bill, you'll nevah know what your place is like till you look down on it from up 'hove. Say, you ought'a see the chickens ta-a-ke for cover. Costs money, but it's sho' worth

it!"

"Mose, how'd you feel strapped in 'tween them wings?"

"Boss, Ah'd go but Ah ain't got no money."

"Well, Ah'll chip in fifty cents to give Mose a ride. Boys, who'll go 'long with me?" "Ah'll put up half a dollar."

"We'll pay his fare if you'll give him a flip-flop, mister. Mose, how 'bout a flip-flop?"

"Yes, suh. Ah ain't feared o' nothin' that man wants to do."

Mose, delighted by the attention and encouraged by a dozen fellow Negroes, was willing to take on anything at all. I showed him where not to step on the wing as he climbed in, and belted him tightly down in the cockpit. But his attitude of confidence melted when I snapped the buckle and he realized he was committed to the air. His face grew serious.

"Mose, Ah bet you wish you hadn't spoke up so quick now. You look 'most white already."

"Sho' a scared nigger sittin' in that place."

"Shucks, who's scared? Ain't nobody scarin' me. Ah know that aviator ain't goin' to kill hisself, and Ah'm stayin' right with him."

"Mose, that airplane won't no sooner git off the ground than you goin' to duck yo head down 'tween your knees an nevah bring it up agin." Everybody laughed.

"Huh! Scared? why, man, Ah'm goin' to enjoy myself up thar. Ah'll be a-laughin' an' a-wavin' all the time."

"Wavin' -- why, man, you goin' to have your hands so full of airplane you won't be able to get 'em high as yo' nose."

"Mose, don't you let them rascals skeer you. Jist hold your handk'chief out an' show 'em you can wave."

"Course Ah kin wave." Out came a huge red and rather dirty bandanna.

There was a cheer as I opened the throttle and taxied off. I climbed to two hundred feet, banked steeply, dove on the field, pulled up in a cautious zoom. Mose grasped the rim of his cockpit with one hand until his knuckles whitened; but he held the bandanna resolutely aloft with the other while dozens of faces looked up at us.

But I'd promised flip-flops. Zooming around the field wouldn't satisfy the sponsors of the flight. They expected much more in return for their fifty-cent pieces, and I intended to give it to them. The main problem was that I'd never had any training in acrobatics. I'd been in the front cockpit once when Bahl looped his Hisso-Standard, and once when he spun it; and I'd stood on top of his wing once while he looped. But I'd never handled the controls during any kind of stunt. However, I'd listened to older pilots talk, and I'd stunted in my mind, working out theoretically the movements Of stick and rudder.

"You don't have to dive much," I'd been told. "Just nose her down and let her pick up speed." That advice, I realized later, concerned a Hisso-Standard -- not my underpowered Jlenny.

It took me close to fifteen minutes to get up 3000 feet. I wasn't sure where to hold my nose on the horizon to get the best angle of attack, and I didn't want to overwork the engine climbing. Three thousand feet seemed high enough for safety, even with inexperienced feet and hands. I splashed around in the air for a few minutes to get the feel of controls -- wingovers, sideslips, and two steep spirals, all of them pretty sloppy and with the earth quite out of place.

Mose had ducked his head down between his knees in the first bank; but he kept his handkerchief high above the cockpit, although no one could possibly see it from the ground.

I was still over 2000 feet high when I finished the last spiral and leveled out. It was time to loop. I pushed the nose down and waited a few seconds. Wing fabric bulged between ribs. Controls stiffened. Noises took on a higher pitch. It seemed we were going awfully fast. I pulled the stick back slowly and opened the throttle wide. My body sank into the cockpit's seat. The earth drifted rearward, behind my trailing edges. Two landing wires fuzzed against the sky. White clouds took on an awkward tilt. How much strain would the fittings stand? I didn't dare use more muscle on the stick. At forty-five degrees, the engine began to labor. At sixty degrees, the wings were trembling. At ninety degrees, my Jenny hung motionless in the air.

At that instant, Mose must have thought the flip-flops were over, for his head reappeared above the cockpit's rim. I kicked full right rudder, but I'd waited too long. It had no effect. She whipped. Air rushed backward past the fuselage. The tail jerked up. The nose jerked down. Strange things happened to clouds and ground -- A plowed field was where the sky had been, and it was getting bigger fast. All trace of Mose had disappeared, including the bandanna.

It was easy enough to come out of the dive, and I held the nose high to gain back a little altitude. Then I climbed for three or four minutes and tried another loop, with almost the same result. The Jenny would have whipped again, but I kicked rudder sooner on the second try and tipped her over on one wing. Something was wrong with my technique; that was clear enough. I gave up any more attempts at looping, and brought Mose down in dives, zooms, and spirals. It wasn't until I throttled the engine for the final glide that the bandanna rose again, followed by his face. He peeked out, drew his head in like a startled turtle, then straightened up and looked around.

As I taxied back to the laughing, shouting crowd, the bandanna was flying as high as the top wing.

"Hi, Mose, was it worth it?"

"Shucks, it was won'erful! Ah'd like to go right back up agin." Mose was warming up as I guided his foot onto the walkway to keep him from stepping through the wing covering. "Ah wouldn't take nuthin' for that trip. Boy, you don't know what you're missin'." As soon as he got onto the ground, he was surrounded by Negroes and whites, all talking and joking, and paying almost no attention to what was being said.

I stayed in Maben for two weeks, and carried close to sixty passengers. People flocked in from the surrounding country. Some traveled for fifteen miles in oxcarts, just to see my Jenny fly. One old Negro woman came up to me with serious face and asked, "Boss, how much you all charge fo' to take me up to Heaven an' leave me dah?"

I could have carried many more passengers, but the rains continued, and each flight rutted the meadow until the OX-5 engine didn't have enough power to pull its Jenny through the mud. Every time I landed I had to ask several men to push on the wings before I could get back to the harder ground of the take-off slope. I had looked over the surrounding country for a better field; but there was none. I said good-by to my Southern friends, and headed west again, for Texas.

How simple it was, flying above ground! If you got lost, you landed and inquired; if you were short of fuel, you phoned the nearest oil company to send out a truck. If you were tired, you stretched out on the grass; and if you wanted to sleep, you slept --

I'm five degrees off course again. I've got to be more careful.

At Marshall, Minnesota, I joined my father. He was running as a candidate for the United States Senate that year, in a special election called because of Knute Nelson's death. I had suggested that he make some of his campaign trips in my Jenny, and he agreed to go. Father had never liked the idea of my flying. It was too dangerous an occupation, he said, and I was his only son. He told me there would always be a position open for me in his office; and he outlined several business projects we might start together. But when he found that I was determined to follow the profession of an airplane pilot, he helped me in every way he could. "You're your own boss," he'd said finally. And that time he really meant it. Now, I was to take him for his first ride in an airplane.

If Father had any fear of flying, he didn't show it, although I thought his lips were tighter set than usual when I gave him helmet and goggles, and strapped him down. He began his aerial campaign that day by throwing out printed circulars above the town. I hadn't thought to tell him to let the slipstream catch a few dozen sheets at a time, so when I nodded the signal to cut them loose a block of five hundred banged against the stabilizer. Father looked a bit startled at that. But our handbills hit the town; and he enjoyed the ride, and started plans immediately for going up again.

Flying has often made me conscious of the relativity of time. I felt it more than ever that morning, with my father's head in front of my windshield. He'd fled in an oxcart from savages, at the speed of two miles an hour; and now, in this same state of Minnesota, he was riding through the air on wings, at the speed of a mile a minute. My father's lifetime spanned more change in the environment of man than man had experienced in the previous thousand years.

That was the summer I landed at our Minnesota farm. I'd looked forward to bringing my own airplane home ever since I began flying. It was a luxury to which I'd promised to treat myself as soon as I'd made a little extra money and developed sufficient skill. By early fall I felt I'd amassed enough of both. I barnstormed my way north, past Minneapolis, past St. Cloud; and pointed my nose one morning in the direction of Little Falls --

There it is, lying nakedly below me, river and creek, fields and woodlands -- our farm. It has never fully exposed itself to my eyes before. How well I know each detail! How little I've understood the whole! In the past, I've seen our farm as a surgeon views his patient -- all parts hidden but the one on which he works. Now, I embrace its entire body in sight and consciousness at once -- in a realization which previous generations assigned to birds and God. How delicately Pike Creek ravels through its valley! How stalwartly the pines stand up, like guards for lower timber! I see the bare curves of our western hill, the dells of our eastern-twenty. Cow trails tie barn to pasture, gate to gate, wind in and out through trees. The Lunds' house is closer, the Williams woods is smaller, than I thought either one to be.

I learn the wind's direction from silvered poplar leaves, stall over the fence, land tail skid first, stop rolling with plenty of room to spare. I open the throttle enough to swing the tail around and taxi slowly. The ground is soft. The take-off won't be easy. If it rains tonight, I'll probably have to wait for the earth to dry again.

"Nay doggone, the man that invented these things vas quite a feller!"

Daniel Thompson stands looking at my Jenny, axe at an angle on his shoulder.

"Aye never thought Aye'd live to see such a contraption," he continues, looking first at the plane and then at me, and then chuckling in a sort of bewilderment. Of course he knows I learned to fly last year, and he's used to seeing me drive cars, and my motorcycle, and all sorts of farm machinery; but the airplane resting here where we used to unhitch our hay wagon is almost too much for him

"How's the farm, Thompson?" My eyes sweep over the neglected field.

"All in veeds."

Yes, it's true. There are no crops in the fields, no wheel marks on the road that crosses the creek, no fresh cow dung on the, path we follow. The tenants I selected failed to make a living on the farm. There weren't enough acres under plow, the pastures were too wooded, the buildings were too far apart. It was one problem after another until finally they left.

Well, that's the price I pay for flying. One can't direct a farm from an airplane hundreds of miles away.

"They're starting to cut timber in the valley," Thompson volunteers, as we walk toward our padlocked house.

"Yes, I know, the survey for the new Pike Rapids dam showed that our valley would be flooded, so all the trees will have to go -- the great white-oak where my father and mother camped while the first house was being built, the little crab-apple orchard by the river bank, the tall linden whose branches filtered up the rising stars. In the future, my rapids will become a lake; my drying-rock, a slippery, submerged stone.

I knew that day that childhood was gone. My farm on the Mississippi would become a memory, of which, sometime, I'd tell my children, just as my father told me of his fields and forests on Sauk River. As the modern railroad came to divide his family homestead, a modern dam would submerge the valley acres of our farm –

It's twenty-six and a half hours since I took off. That's almost twice as long as the flight between San Diego and St. Louis; and that was much the longest flight I ever made. It's asking a lot of an engine to run twenty-six hours without attention. Back on the mail, we check our Liberties at the end of every trip. Are the rocker-arms on my Whirlwind still getting grease? And how long will it keep on going if one of them should freeze?