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Two more men stepped from the cars. “You giving rides?” they said.
“Sure thing.”
“Well, let’s go.” We went..
Circling to land, I saw that the cars had parked exactly across the end of my strip. If we touched down too long, and rolled straight along the ridge-line, we’d run right into the middle of them all. I cut the throttle back and decided that if we were rolling too fast, I’d turn left, down the side of the ridge, up the side of the crest and then deliberately ground-loop right. If everything went well, I wouldn’t even damage the airplane. Still, I didn’t want to land long.
As a result of all this thinking, we dropped in to a hard landing, bounced up into the air again, and staggered along the ridge to a stop. It was a reminder that we didn’t want to land too short, either.
From these first passengers I now had $9 in my pocket, and I left the airplane to her spectators for a while and walked across the street to the hamburger stand, Lu-Juan’s. Ah, food! As the gasoline was precious to the biplane, so those two hot dogs and two milkshakes were precious to the pilot. I was happy just to sit there quietly and eat something more filling than hay.
The airplane now had a good crowd of spectators standing around her, and I began to worry about her fabric. I ordered an orange drink to go and then walked back to the airplane. There were passengers waiting to fly.
From time to time during lulls in the afternoon, Bill talked again about his field. “If you were going to make an airport out of this strip, what would you do to fix it up? For less than five hundred dollars, say.”
“Wouldn’t have to do much to it at all. Maybe fill that part right down at the end, though that would be a lot of fill. Wouldn’t have to do that; all you’d have to do would be to mark out the levelest ground. That’s the biggest problem, picking just where to touch down and roll out.”
“You wouldn’t say to level the place up?”
“I don’t think so. Nothing better than takeoff downhill and land uphill. Just put down some lime or something like that, to mark where to land. Put in a gas pump later, if you wanted. With the lake there and the place to eat, this would be a nice little airstrip.”
“How wide would you think it might be?”
“Oh, maybe from about here … over to about … here, would be wide enough. Be plenty wide.”
He took a double-bit axe from the bed of the pickup and chopped a mark into the earth at each edge of the landing area.
“I’ll just mark this off here and maybe some day we’ll have something going.”
As it happened to
the first barnstormers, it happened to me. An axe marks the place where the first airplane lands, and someday in the future there are many airplanes landing. I didn’t think till later that if this field were turned into an airstrip, there would be one less pasture in the world for barnstormers to fly from.
“I’ll fly with you if you promise to fly real smooth …”
It was my red-Ford-driver and self-styled coward, Ray.
“You want to go up in that dangerous thing,” I said, “that dangerous old airplane?”
“Only if you promise not to turn her over.”
I had to smile, for despite all his words of fear, the man wasn’t afraid at all; he rode the airplane like a veteran, the circle over the golf course, the two circles of town, the steep spiral over the strip, looking down, looking down, like it was all a dream of flying.
“That was really fun,” he said, and went back to his car, happy.
“Free ride for the owner, Bill,” I said to the elder Cowgill, “Let’s go.”
“I think Cully wants to ride more than I do.”
Cully did, and pulled his own leather flying helmet from the jeep as he ran for the airplane. “Dad got it for me at the war surplus,” he explained, climbing by himself into the front teat. He liked his ride before we ever got off the ground.
With my debts paid, and the last ride flown, I poured two five-gallon cans of Regular gas into the tank. Enough to fly alone, and to check the effect of car-gas on the engine. It worked just as smoothly as aviation fuel, if not a tiny bit smoother.
So, by sundown, I had flown twenty passengers and had $49 in my pocket after food and fuel. A good feeling from the hayfield noon, with a dime to my name.
I knew now, without question, that the land of yesterday does exist, that there is a place of escape, that a man can survive alone with his airplane, if only he has a wish to do so. Milan had been good to me, and I was happy. But tomorrow it would be time to move on.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
