Part 9 (1/2)

The drunk was evidently too drunk to get out of the c.o.c.kpit because he cracked up with his s.h.i.+p. My friend managed to get his s.h.i.+p down without jumping. It was only a wonder, plus some neat flying on my friend's part, that he wasn't killed too.

BUILDING THROUGH

A pilot should never be too stubborn with an airplane. I learned that early, fortunately, without coming to grief in the process.

Another pilot criticized my flying once. He criticized the way I was making my take-offs. Kidlike and c.o.c.ky, just out of flying school, I took a foolish way of proving he was wrong. But he had me so riled by his caustic and nasty remarks about how I was going to kill myself if I kept that up that I flung out a challenge to him and felt I had to keep my att.i.tude even when I saw I was overdoing the thing and thought I was going to crack up.

”If you think my take-offs are so dangerous,” I told him, ”I'll just go out there and cut my gun in the most dangerous spot of this dangerous take-off and land safely back in the airport.” And I stalked out, fuming, and got in the s.h.i.+p.

I took off toward the high trees at the end of the field, didn't let the s.h.i.+p climb very steeply approaching the trees, and banked just before I got to them-exactly like I had been doing on the take-offs he had been criticizing. But I also pulled up sharply, just to make it worse. I didn't want him to have any comeback. I cut the gun and started dropping back in over the trees into the airport. I should have put the nose down a little to cus.h.i.+on the drop, but I was mad. I'd show him the worse way.

I wanted to gun it because I was dropping hard, but I wouldn't give him the satisfaction.

I hit like a ton of bricks. The s.h.i.+p groaned and bounced as high as a hangar. Luckily, it was a square hit and a square bounce. That's the only reason I didn't spread the s.h.i.+p all over the field. It hit and bounced again and rolled to a very short stop for a down-wind landing.

”All right,” I told the guy when I crawled out of the s.h.i.+p, ”you go out now and cut your gun just over the trees on one of your safe, straight take-offs. You won't have a turn started and already pretty well developed, and you won't have room enough to start one. You'll pile into the trees in a heap, and if that's safer than landing on the airport in one piece, then I'll admit that your take-offs are safer than mine.”

He didn't dare and he knew it. So he just glared at me, knowing d.a.m.ned well, as I knew myself, that I should by all rights have cracked up on that landing. But I had him, and he shut up and didn't make any more cracks about me.

MUCH!

Somebody asked me one day what kind of an airplane I flew. I told him any kind anybody was willing to pay me for flying.

”But don't you own an airplane?” the man asked.

”No,” I answered. ”And furthermore,” I added, ”I have never owned an airplane, although I have been a professional pilot for eleven years.”

Why?

Well, I can best explain that as I explained it to a little boy once out in California.

I was at the Lockheed factory. I had been there several months, supervising the construction of an airplane I had sold to a rich sportsman pilot in the East. It was a Lockheed Sirius plane and at that time a s.h.i.+p which was taking everybody's eyes as the latest and sleekest thing yet developed by the engineers. Lindbergh had just popularized it by flying himself and his wife across the country in it and establis.h.i.+ng a new transcontinental record.

They rolled my s.h.i.+p out on the line one bright, sunny day and I must say that in its s.h.i.+ny new red-and-white paint job and its clean, sweeping lines it certainly was a beautiful sight sitting there glistening in that California suns.h.i.+ne.

A little boy who had crawled over the factory fence despite the ”No Trespa.s.sing” sign evidently thought so too, for he was standing there gazing raptly at it with eyes as big as silver dollars when I stalked out toward the s.h.i.+p to make a first test hop in it. He intercepted me neatly as I rounded the wing tip and approached the c.o.c.kpit.

”Ooh, mister,” he said, ”do you own that s.h.i.+p?”

”No, sonny,” I answered. ”I merely fly it. I find that that is less expensive and more fun.”

CROSS-COUNTRY SNAPSHOTS