Nothing by Chance

“How’d you know where we were? You call Bette or something? How’d you find us?”

“I don’t know. Just thought you might be around here,” Dick said, sitting relaxed in the Cub’s cockpit, puffing slowly on his pipe. “This was the last place I was going to try, really.”

“Hm. That’s fantastic.”

“Yeah. How’s it goin’, barnstormin’?”

Dick stayed and flew through the afternoon with us, and carried five passengers. I had a chance to stay on the ground and listen to the people after they had flown, and discovered that there is a great driving force toward believing that the pilot that one flies with is the best pilot in the world.

“Could you feel it when he landed?” one man said. “I couldn’t feel when he landed. I could hear it, but I couldn’t feel it, it was so smooth.”

“Y’know, I have a lot of faith in him …”

“What do you think of your pilot, Ida Lee?” a coveralled farmer asked his wife, after she had flown with Dick.

“Everything was so pretty, and fun,” she said. “I’d say he’s good”

Just before five p.m. I saw that my fuel was getting too low to last through the heavy flying till sunset, and at the same time we found that the man who had the key to the gas pump was out of town.

“I’ll hop over to Keokuk, Richard,” I said, “and you keep the folks happy, flyin’.”

“Take your time,” he said.

In twenty minutes I was looking down in dismay at the Keokuk airport. It was all concrete runway, with new construction everywhere. To land on the hard surface would be to grind the tailskid to nothing, and I didn’t have enough fuel to find another airport. But there was one short section of grass left on the west side of the field, and we landed there.

We had to cross a new runway to reach the pumps, all along the edge of the runway was a muddy deep ditch, with a five-inch lip of concrete to jump. We taxied back and forth along the edge of the runway, picked the least muddy section for crossing, and charged at it straight on.

It didn’t work. The mud slowed the biplane to a walk, and by the time we reached the concrete lip, full power on the engine wasn’t enough to drag it across.

I shut down the Wright, holding unkind thoughts about aeronautical progress and the wholesale destruction of the grass runway, vowed never again to land at Keokuk or any modern airport, and went for a towing machine.

A tractor, mowing grass, was the answer.

“Hi!” I said to the driver. “Got a little problem here, trying to cross your new runway. Think that machine of yours could tow me out?”

“Oh, sure. She can tow airplanes ten times that size.”

He left his grass-mowing at once and we rode together back to the airplane. When we got there, there was a line service man from the flight school across the field, looking in the cockpit.

“Looks like you got stuck,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “But we’ll have ’er out in a minute here and I’ll come over get some gas from you.” I took a coil of stout rope from the tractor and tied it from the iron hitch to the landing gear of the biplane. “That oughta do ’er. We’ll kinda help the wingtips here and you see if that tractor can do the job.”

“Aw, she’ll do the job. Don’t you worry.”

The tractor made it look easy. In a few seconds the biplane was standing free on the concrete, ready to start engine and taxi for gas.

“Thanks. You really saved me, sir.”

“Think nothin’ of it. She can pull airplanes ten times that big.”

The line service man was looking nervously at the big steel propeller, hoping that I wouldn’t ask him to swing that by hand to start the engine. It is a frightening thing to one who has never hand-propped a Wright, but we had no choice; the starting crank was in Kahoka.

“Why don’t you hop in the cockpit, here,” I said, “and I’ll swing the prop.” I walked back as he climbed aboard and showed him the throttle and ignition switch and brakes. “Just pull the throttle back a bit after she starts/’ I said. “She should start right off.”

I pulled the propeller through a few times, and said, “OK, give me contact and brakes, and we’ll start her goin’.”

I pulled the big blade down and the engine fired at once. Good old reliable Wright.