I was walking casually toward the cockpit when I saw that the man in the pilot’s seat was frozen in horror, and that the engine was much louder than it should have been. The throttle was nearly full open, and in all the wind and sudden noise, my helper had forgotten what to do. He sat there, staring straight ahead, as the biplane, all by herself, began to move.
“THE THROTTLE!” I screamed. “CUT THE THROTTLE!” Quick visions flashed of the Parks leaping into the air with a man at the controls who had no faintest idea how to fly. I ran toward the cockpit, but already the airplane was rolling swiftly across the concrete, engine roaring wildly. It was a dream, like running from a railroad train. I threw myself desperately at the cockpit, grabbed the leather rim with one hand, but could not move any farther. The immense propellerblast kept me from moving; it was all I could do to race alongside the biplane.
The vision of my airplane a total wreck gave me one burst of strength to claw my way against the hurricane, up onto the wing. We were moving 20 miles an hour, accelerating quickly. I clung to the edge of the cockpit with every ounce of strength I could squeeze from my body. The man was cold wax in the seat, his eyes glazed, his mouth open.
The biplane was moving far too fast, and turning, now. We were going to groundloop. In one desperate motion I reached over the cockpit rim, grabbed the throttle and slammed it back. It was too late, and all I could do was hold on as we went around. The tires cried out, dragging sideways, one wing lifted, the other went hard down, scraping concrete. I clung there and waited for a wheel to collapse, or the gear to break away.
After five seconds tense as shredding steel, the wings leveled and we coasted to a stop, all in one piece.
“That,” I said, panting, “was a ground loop.”
The man climbed like a robot from the cockpit, and not one word did he say. He set his feet on the ground and began walking woodenly toward the office. It was the last I saw of him.
The engine was still running. I set myself down into the seat and talked to the biplane for a while. This had been her way of telling me not to leave her to unknowing people, and I promised that I would never let that happen again.
It was nearing sundown by the time we landed at Kahoka, and Dick was ready to leave.
“I gotta get goin’,” he said. “I told my wife I’d be home at seven, and it’s seven right now. I shall do some violent aerobatics over the field and be on my way. Let me know when you’re back around here.”
“Thanks, Richard. We’ll do ’er.”
I propped the Cub for him and he was off. He flew a pretty set of aerobatics overhead, as he promised, plus a few strange things of his own—flying sideways through the air, flat turns, steep climbs and pushovers.
The crowd was on us before Dick had disappeared in the west, and we flew the last hour steadily, till dark. By the time we covered the airplane and walked to the Orbit Inn, we felt as if we had been working for a living. We had flown twenty-six passengers by the end of the day, and Dick had flown another five. He had made his gas-and-oil money, and Stu and I split $98.
“Almost made it, Stu. Almost broke a hundred-dollar day.” We felt affluent, and ordered double milkshakes.
Stu was worried that we would miss the ten-twenty local news, so we walked into the hotel lobby and found the antique television set going unwatched.
It was an interesting lobby. The fans washed mild vertical air down over us, in reminder of times that hadn’t quite gone by. There was a bell on the counter, the kind that dings when you tap the button on the top. Against the wall was a monster Firestone Air Chief radio console, four feet high and three feet wide, with stick-on paper squares over the pushbuttons: WGN, WTAD, WCAZ. If I pressed those buttons, I wondered, would I find Fred Allen, strolling in gentle static down Allen’s Alley; or Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy; or Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy? I was afraid to try.
The ten-twenty news came and went without any mention of those delightful barnstormers out by the edge of Kahoka, and Stu was crushed. “My one chance to get on television! One chance! And I ended up on the newsroom floor!”
That night Stu tried using cheesecloth for a mosquito net, taping a peak of it to the bottom of the wing. From what I could see in the dark it looked good, but it didn’t work. The mosquitoes learned at once that the trick was to land, to walk under the edge of the net, then take to the air once they were inside. It was another hard night.
As we settled sleepily into the breakfast booth, I said, “Well, Stu, is it moving-on time?”
“Oi thonk so,” he said, yawning. “’Scuse me. Darn mosquitoes.”
We were blessed with a charming waitress, who had somehow missed her Warner Brothers
screen test. “What are we having for breakfast this morning?” she asked sweetly.
“Cherry pancakes, please,” I said, “bunch of ’em, with honey.”
She wrote the order, and stopped. “We don’t have cherry pancakes. Is that on the menu?”
“No. Awful good, though.”
She smiled. “We’ll give you cherry pancakes if you get the cherries,” she said.
I was out the door in a flash, into the market two doors down, and laying out 29 cents for a can of cherries. The waitress was still at the table when I returned, and I set the can down triumphantly. “You just take these and dump ’em right in the batter.”
“The whole can?”
“Yes, ma’m. Zonk. Right in the batter. Great pancakes.”
“Well… I’ll ask the cook …”