I saw him a few days after he had gone back to the lines.
“How they going, Gloomy?” I greeted him.
“Oh,” he said, “that bit of army flying made me careless. I almost hit a radio tower this morning. Carelessness is what kills all old-timers, you know.”
“Gus,” I said. “You’d be miserable if you didn’t have something to worry about. You will probably live to have a long white beard and worry yourself sick all day long that you are going to trip on it and break your neck.”
Only a faint flicker of humor lit up his gloomy eyes.
[WEATHER AND WHITHER]
Archer Winsten writes that “different” column in the Post, In the Wake of the News. I met Archer for the first time in San Antonio in 1927. He was down there for his health, and I was instructing at Brooks Field for my living. We both had ideas of writing even at that time. We became fast friends before Archer went home to Connecticut and I went to March Field, Riverside, Cal.
I resigned from the army the next year and went with the Department of Commerce. I was assigned to fly Bill McCracken, head of the department, on about a seven-thousand-mile tour of the country. I kept asking Bill if his itinerary was going to take us to Westport, Conn., or anywhere near it, because if it was I wanted to go see my friend Archer Winsten, who lived there. He said he didn’t know where the place was, and I began looking for it on the map. I couldn’t find it and told Bill that. I remarked how strange it was several times later that I couldn’t find Westport on the map. A couple of times Bill asked me if I had found it yet, and I said no.
I was strange to the East at that time, and when we got to Hartford I was sure we were going to go right past Westport without my ever finding out where it was. I complained to Bill about it and we both looked over a map and couldn’t find the place.