Nerve enough

An air pilot and the field of broken wings
By Richard Howells Watkins
The time was when the T. M. O. Transportation Co. occupied a proud position in the latest infant industry—aerial passenger carrying.
The T., who was Jim Tyler; the M., Burt Minster; and the O., Delevan O’Connell, each had a plane of his own. The company leased a field on the edge of a sizable little city and erected hangars. No less than three mechanics labored to keep the ships in the air.
The three partners had a bank account and a growing clientele among the more progressive members of the community. They had carried doctors to patients, ministers to congregations and judges to court. Yes, undoubtedly the T. M. O. Transportation Co. was the peer of any aeronautical outfit in the country.
As Del O’Connell put it, in one of his prophetic moods—
“The day will come when T. M. O. means as much in this country as C. O. D.”
That was rather strong, perhaps too strong, for not three days later, quite without reason, Del’s motor threw a connecting rod clean through the crankcase. In the consequent forced landing in a pasture some distance from the field, he cracked two struts of his landing carriage in a successful effort to save the wings.
FALLS THREE THOUSAND FEET; LIVES
was what the morning paper shouted to the city at large, and the growing clientele shriveled like a violet on a griddle, and the bank account was not slow in following it. Of course Del O’Connell hadn’t fallen an inch; he had merely glided down without motor; but how are you going to explain that to a headline-reading public. It worried him, however, that the cracking of two struts should split their little business to its foundations. And he prophesied no more.
At last the T. M. O. Transportation Co. loaded itself into the two good ships remaining, left two of the mechanics behind and departed for fresh fields.
At another town, smaller than the first, they had pitched their tents and taken a field—by the month. The hard work of building up reputation in a business generally considered the apex of the risky was begun again. They carried hundreds of passengers in safety. Not once did one of the pilots yield to the desire for a jazz ride and tailspin a ship or even roll it over once or twice. The strict aeronautical aristocrats consider such antics in commercial flying equivalent to the employment of a puller-in outside the store in the retail clothing business.