Peck's Bad Boy in an airship

by George W. Peck

In the morning while we were taking baths and preparing for breakfast, I found that Pa had been flying pretty high on government money, and he had all kinds of gold and paper money and bonds, and he made people think he owned most of America.

Pa asked me how the people at home looked upon his absence, and if they advanced any theories as to the cause of his being abroad, and I told him that everybody from the President down to Rockefeller knew about what he was out looking after, and that when I left Bob Evans at Fortress Monroe he told me to tell Pa to send a mess of airships to him so he would meet them when he got to San Francisco, as he wanted to paralyze the Japs if they got busy around the fleet, which pleased Pa, and he said, “Just tell the people to wait, and I will produce airships that can fight battles in the clouds, but it will take time.”

Then we went out in the country about a dozen miles, and met the inventor and his wife, and the inventor filled a big balloon that looked like a weiner sausage with gas that he made over a fire out in a field, and the inventor and I got on a bamboo frame under the balloon, and he turned on the gasoline that runs the wheel for steering, and they cut her loose and we went up about fifty feet and sailed around the country a half mile either way and watched Pa and the wife of the inventor as they sat under a tree and talked politics.

We came back after a while and Pa was proud of me for having so much nerve, and I told him the government at home was complaining because Pa didn’t go up in the airships, cause they said he couldn’t buy airships intelligently unless he tried them out, and that if he didn’t look out they would send some expert out to take his place and spend the money, and as we were landed on the ground I dared Pa to get on the frame and go up with us for a little spin, and he was afraid the woman would think he was a coward if he didn’t, so he got up and straddled the ridge pole of the bamboo frame, and said he would take a whirl at it if it killed him. The balloon thing couldn’t quite lift all of us, so I got off and give her a lift, and up she went with the inventor steering, and Pa hanging on for dear life and saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep.”

Up She Went with the Inventor Steering, and Pa Hanging On for Dear Life.

I have seen some scared men in my life, but when the machine got up about as high as a house, so Pa couldn’t get off, and the woman waved a handkerchief at Pa, he swallowed his Adam’s apple and said, “Let her go Gallagher,” and Gallagher, the Frenchman, let her go.

Well, you’d a died to see the thing wobble and see Pa cling on with his feet and hands. For about a quarter of a mile she went queer, like a duck that has been wing-tipped, and then she began to descend.

First she passed over a lot of cows that women were milking, and the cows stampeded one way and the women the other way, and the women were scared more than the cows, cause when they got out from under the ship they prayed, but the cows didn’t.

Then the ship struck a field where about forty women were piling onions on the ground, and it just scattered women and onions all over the field, and of all the yelling you ever heard that was the worst.