CURTIS FIELD, L. I.—PATSY, THE MASCOT FOR “THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS”
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 1100 R.P.M.
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.