Most of the houses were small frame buildings, neatly painted, and interspersed with several tumble-down shacks. The business section was half-way down the street, and consisted of a tottery wooden shed labeled “Garage,” a small drug store with fly specked windows, and a big, square building with a false front, modern show windows, and a big sign reading:
MUMFORD’S GENERAL STORE
Post Office, East Point, Kentucky.
A bright red gasoline pump stood in front of it, and a rolling oil tank. Four old men were in conversation in front of the store, and there was a group of younger men whose meeting place was evidently the garage. A few wagons were drawn up along the stone sidewalk, the horses tied to hitching posts. Evidently all the available cars had been driven out to the field.
As they drew up in front of the store the fat driver offered to wait and transport Hemingwood back to the field, which offer the Bostonian accepted with thanks.
He went into the crowded little store and looked around at the counters.
“Mumford sells everything from pills to plows,” he soliloquized, and then spotted a short, broad, baldheaded man emerging from a cubbyhole in the rear. It proved to be Mumford.
Hemingwood introduced himself, explained his need of a hundred gallons of gas delivered at the field every flying day, and learned that Mumford owned a truck with which it could be delivered. The storekeeper also opined that he could undoubtedly find a place for the flyers to live if they would wait for definite information until the afternoon.
The flyer studied his man a bit, and decided to take him into his confidence to a slight extent. He told him about the casual meeting with his niece that morning, and went on to say: “I came down here with Ballardson. He wanted this gas business, so to keep him from being sore I told him that I had made arrangements in advance with you. I don’t know anything about East Point, but I figured it might save unpleasantness. Will you bear me out in my story, if necessary?”