“Hat’s a piece of shit, G. P.”
“Well, hell, yes, of course it is, but a profitable piece of shit. You mind if I smoke a cigar?”
“Not at all.”
“Care for one yourself?”
“No.”
He lighted up a big Havana number, waved out the match and took a deep draw off the cigar, the eyes behind the round rimless glasses narrowing to slits.
Then he said, “Now…would you like to know why I
3
The wax-mustached, bunny-nosed “Managing Director” of the Coliseum—a buff brick building between Locust Street and Grand Avenue in Des Moines, Iowa—had proudly told me, earlier that evening, that the facility in his charge played an important cultural role in Des Moines, citing as a recent example a presentation by the Russian ballet. I decided it would be less than gracious to mention that the bulletin board in the lobby heralded the upcoming poultry show as his next attraction; and anyway, I needed him to help me set up a folding table for tonight’s speaker, after her presentation, to sign copies of her most recent book,
My role as bodyguard entailed any number of activities I hadn’t expected, including hauling in from the trunk of her Franklin a slide projector, a reel of 16-millimeter film, a carton of books, and of course a small tin cash box for me to make change out of, being the guy who’d be selling
The capacity of the joint was 8,500, and that was exactly how many butts were fitted into the seats. Mine was not among them—I was standing, arms folded, my back to a side wall, fairly near the stage, where I could keep an eye on the speaker and the crowd. They were mostly ladies, dressed in their Sunday finery, though this was a Thursday evening—feathered chapeaus and pearls and lacy gloves that would have waited till Easter if such an important guest hadn’t come to town. A few men in suits and ties were sprinkled around the hall, and nobody looked like a farmer, nobody seemed to have manure on their shoes. Nobody looked like somebody who might have sent Amelia Earhart a fan letter comprised of cut-out words from magazines and newspapers, either; still, you never know.
The stage was rather large, empty but for an American flag at one side, an Iowa state flag on the other, a silver-white movie screen, a lectern, and a single armchair, near the state flag. A murmur of anticipation was rumbling across the room, like a motor warming up.
We were in the second week of our lecture tour. We had stayed in Chicago the first night, where she’d spoken at the Orchestra Hall to a group of 1,000 4-H members, and had done De Kalb last night, at Northern Illinois State Teachers College, speaking to a much smaller group, coeds mostly (“We welcome home an Illinois girl”). Then it had been on to Gary, Indiana, and Battle Creek, Michigan, and a blur of cities and towns that gradually curved back westward.
Onstage, Miss Earhart displayed an unpretentious grace and an effortless command, with a deceptively casual, off-the-cuff manner (though she gave one basic speech with little improvisation) that made the audience members feel she was speaking directly to each of them.
But I knew that right now, in the dressing room backstage, she was sitting quietly, head lowered, hand over her eyes, in a zombielike state, having already thrown up, once or twice. I’d found out the hard way that she, like Garbo, wanted to be alone. She needed at least fifteen minutes to gear herself up for the ordeal of facing a crowd.
The house lights went down as the movie projector began its whir, and black-and-white images came up on the screen, the sonorous voice of Lowell Thomas, made tinny by tiny speakers, elucidating newsreel footage that began with the lonely unattended Boston takeoff of the Fokker seaplane
Then the footage ended and the lights came up and there she was, no longer an image flickering on a screen, but a sweetly pretty young woman seated primly on stage, in the armchair near the Iowa state flag. Hands folded in her lap, like a schoolgirl, only the faintest smile acknowledging the immediate, ringing applause that filled the hall, she did not rise. Perhaps because she was seated, and her willowy height was not yet apparent, the impression she gave was of an improbably slight figure, for a woman of such accomplishment; in a gray chiffon frock of her own design, coral beads at the curve of her long, lovely neck, she was perfection, with only the studiously tangled mop of dark blond hair to hint at the daredevil within.
In bow tie and tweeds, the bunny-nosed Coliseum director was at the lectern, smiling prissily, as if all that applause had been for him. He informed the crowd of Miss Earhart’s graciousness and friendly manner, how she put on none of the airs the famous frequently brought with them; and he spoke, rather eloquently, of her bravery, and her devotion to the cause of equality for women.
Through all this, Amelia gave no sign that she was being spoken of, or stared at; neither proud nor embarrassed, she gave no clue that experiences like these were far more frightening to her than flying across an ocean.
“Gertrude Stein has called us a lost generation,” the Coliseum director said.
I didn’t know how to break it to him, but I didn’t think Gertrude Stein had Des Moines in mind.
“But,” he continued, “no generation that could produce our speaker could ever be considered ‘lost.’ She displays better than any other young woman of her generation the pioneer spirit and courageous skill of our Midwestern forefathers…and need I remind you that she is a Des Moines girl, come home to share her story with us tonight…. Ladies and gentlemen, the Queen of the Air, Lady Lindy—Miss Amelia Earhart!”
She winced, just barely, at that “Lady Lindy” sobriquet, which followed her everywhere, and annoyed her no end. And as the most resounding applause of the night followed her introduction, she rose with easy grace, moving fluidly to the microphone, where she thanked the director and patted the air with one hand, gently, till the applause abated.
“It’s true,” she said, in that low, rich, yet very feminine voice, “that I saw my first airplane here in Iowa, at the State Fair. It was six years after the Wright Brothers made their historic flight at Kitty Hawk, and it was their
