The next day we started down to New York from Hartford and ran into lousy weather. It got so low finally that, although I was following railroads and valleys, I decided that I couldn’t go any farther. I milled around, dodging trees and hills for about ten minutes before I found a place to sit down.
I landed in a small field surrounded with stone fences. A man came wading through the wet grass toward us after we had stopped rolling. Bill asked me where we were, and I said I had only a vague idea after all that milling around but would ask the man. The man said Westport.
Bill howled with delight. Part of his delight undoubtedly was relief at getting down out of that soup without breaking his neck, but I was never able to convince him that I didn’t know I was landing at Westport.
[I SEE]
A man came up to me for flight test once when I was an inspector for the Department of Commerce. He flew terribly, so I sent him away and told him to come back in a couple of weeks, after he had practiced a little more. He came back a couple of weeks later, and I turned him down again.
The third time he came in he said, “I think we’ll get along all right this time. Can I take the test today?”
“I’m too busy today,” I told him. But he pleaded so hard that I finally said, “All right, I’ll squeeze you in this afternoon. Come at three o’clock.”
“Thank you, thank you,” he said, and held out his hand.
I reached out my hand to grip his and felt something in my palm. I pulled my hand away and found a piece of paper in it. I unfolded it and discovered a ten-dollar bill.