“Oh, no doubt he could tell it was Ireland,” insisted Pat. “His mother was Irish, you know, and it needs mighty little Irish blood to make a man long for the ould sod.”
“Well, anyway, there he was over Ireland,” put in Bob, pointedly. “And from Ireland, on to England, and from England, on to France. Along the Seine, and then Paris. They were waiting for him at Le Bourget, and sent up flares and rockets, long before he got there. Maybe they weren’t excited when he flew into range! It was about 8:30, that is, French time, but about 5:30 New York time, when Lindy and the Spirit of St. Louis circled around the landing field at Le Bourget and landed. Golly, I wish I’d been there. The first man in the world to fly the Atlantic, landing before my very eyes! He’d gone 3,640 miles, and had made it in 33½ hours. Some going!
“Well, he was there. And he got out of the plane. And you all know what he said when he got out. I—”
“I am Charles Lindbergh,” said Captain Bill and Pat, not quite in unison.
“Yup,” said Bob, “‘I am Charles Lindbergh.’ He thought that they wouldn’t know who he was. He’d been flying pretty low over Ireland and England, and so far as he could see, nobody had paid much attention to him. So he introduced himself, just as though every man, woman and child in every civilized country wasn’t saying that very name all through the day. Remember when we heard the news over the radio, Hal? We were so excited we nearly upset the furniture. Golly, that was a day.
“Well, that was Slim Lindbergh’s flight, and now about Slim himself. He was born in Detroit, Michigan, on February 2, 1902, and that means that he was only twenty-five years old when he made his greatest flight, which is pretty young to become the most famous man in the world.
“His dad was Charles A. Lindbergh, and he died in 1924, when he was running for governor of Minnesota on the Farmer-Labor ticket. He’d been a Representative in Congress before. Lindy and he were great pals, and played around together a lot. Lindy’s mother was Irish, and taught school in Detroit.
“Lindy went to school in Little Falls, and to Little Falls High School. He graduated from there when he was 16. He was good in Math and in other things he liked, but not in grammar.
“Lindy didn’t go right to college. In fact, he didn’t go until three years after he’d graduated from high school, and then he went to the University of Wisconsin, to take up mechanical engineering. He was good at that. He’d always liked to tinker, and he got his chance there. He did at college just what you’d expect him to do. He had some friends and acquaintances, but mostly he kept to himself. He was the same quiet, shy person that everybody got to know later, when he became famous.
“Slim didn’t stay at Wisconsin very long, so we don’t know what he would have finally done there. He went over to Lincoln, Nebraska, where they had a flying school, and asked them to teach him to fly. They taught him the beginnings of flying, and from the moment his hands touched the controls, he knew that this was what he was cut out for. He just took naturally to those levers and gadgets, and could handle his plane like a toy.