A large number of my old friends were attending the races and soon after landing I met Bud Gurney who, together with one of the flying students at Lincoln, had managed to get to the races without buying a Pullman ticket. He had brought his chute with him and was entered in the parachute spot landing contest, in which he was to be the last attraction of the meet by staging a double drop.
In the evening, after the races were over for the day, I carried a few passengers and looked over the different types of planes. I would have given the summer’s barnstorming profits gladly in return for authority to fly some of the newer types, and I determined to let nothing interfere with my chance of being appointed a Flying Cadet in the Army. This appeared to be my only opportunity to fly planes which would roar up into the sky when they were pointed in that direction, instead of having to be wished up over low trees at the end of a landing field.
When I went to St. Louis it was with the expectation of pressing on still farther south when the races were over, but with Bud’s assistance I sold my Jenny to his friend, flying instruction included. Marvin Northrop who had flown a Standard down from Minneapolis had sold his ship in St. Louis also; together with a course in flying. Since it was necessary for him to return home immediately, I agreed to instruct his student while mine was learning on the Jenny.
I had promised to carry Bud for his last jump, and towards evening on the final day of the races he packed his two chutes and tied them together with the only rope he could find. It was rather old but we decided that it would hold and if it did not the only consequence would be a little longer fall before the second chute opened.
I coaxed the old Jenny up to seventeen hundred feet and as we passed to the windward of the field Bud cut loose. The first chute opened at once, but in opening, the strain on the old rope was too great and it snapped releasing the second chute which fell another two hundred feet before opening.
Planes were circling all around the parachute and flying in every direction without apparent regard for one another. The air was kept in constant motion by their propellers, and the chute swung from side to side in the rough currents with the result that Bud broke an arm as he landed among the crowd on the side of a ditch. This was the only accident in which anyone was injured during the entire meet.
For the next few weeks I instructed my two students and made a short barnstorming tour through Illinois.
IV
Heading South
When the period of instruction was completed I flew the old Jenny up to my student’s home in Iowa and, after watching him make a few solo flights from his home field, I left on a train for Lincoln. My last sight of the old Jenny was as it passed two hundred feet over the station near the center of town—and my parting instruction had been to keep a safe gliding angle when over the city and under no circumstances to come below fifteen hundred feet.
I went to Lincoln to get an S.V.A., which is a two-place Italian pursuit plane, and fly it back to St. Louis. But on arriving I learned that it was in the old Pulitzer Field near Omaha and in questionable condition. It was reported that some cows had eaten all the fabric off the rudder. Cows and mules are fond of the fabric covering, and it is not uncommon to hear of a plane being completely stripped by these animals in a few minutes. On the other hand, I have left a machine unguarded in the same pasture with cattle for days without having them touch it. And during the two weeks I spent at Maben, Mississippi, there had been a number of mules in the same pasture with my ship yet they apparently never came near it.
We filled the back of a touring car with a new rudder and other spare parts, and drove to Omaha the next morning.
The S.V.A. was in even worse condition than had been represented. In addition to needing a new rudder, part of the lock-stitching had broken in the wings and as a result, the fabric was very loose. The radiator had developed a number of leaks which someone had attempted to stop by dumping in a pailful of bran. And when we eventually did get it started the engine skipped badly and would not “rev” up over 1,100 rpm.
At last we decided to attempt to fly the ship to Lincoln where it would be much more convenient to work on it, and I took off with a sputtering motor and with the centigrade five degrees below boiling. At the end of five minutes the needle was crowding the peg at 115°, and in fifteen minutes the water expansion tank exploded. I landed in a stubble field and hired the farmer to hitch his team to the ship and haul it to a fence corner next to his house, where I left it to be taken apart and hauled to Lincoln by truck.
I passed the month of December barnstorming in Illinois, and in January went to Chanute Field to take the entrance examinations for a Flying Cadet.
On one occasion while at Lambert Field I had made a short flight into the Ozark foothills with Leon Klink, an automobile dealer who had bought a Canuck that fall and was just learning
