The Cannibal Queen Read Online Free PDF Page B

states on the corners. What would be the fun in that? The article doesn’t say much about fun. Maybe that’s implicit.
    Perhaps I should hit every state. It would give my publisher something to put in the press kit they send the reviewers and it would give the reviewers something to write about. As it is the book reviewers may merely dismiss my scribbles as “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” by Stephen Coonts, who is old enough to know better but obviously doesn’t.
    I started in Colorado and now I’m in Kansas. Only 46 states to go.
    I look at the nifty pictures in the magazine as I mull over the idea. This guy flew his home-built around the country in 1972, when the Vietnam War was in full swing. I spent seven months that year flying A-6s in combat. That December Rachael had her first birthday, but I missed it. I was on Yankee Station, the same place I had been when she was born.
    The hamburger is good. As for the route, I’ll have to think about it. If I manage to land in all of the contiguous 48 states, I could brag about this summer for the rest of my life.
    Only one other plane, a Cessna, takes off in the hour we spend on the ground. The big empty airfield with its dilapidated hangars and cracked asphalt is all ours when we taxi out and give the Queen full throttle.

3
    S KID HENLEY IS A TALL, LEAN MAN WITH A LITTLE WHITE MUSTACHE on his upper lip. His face is tan and weathered, as befits a man who has spent his life flying airplanes. He admits to seventy-seven years of age and 15,000 hours in the cockpits of Stearmans. I goggle.
    David and I landed in McAlester, Oklahoma, after flying down from Coffeyville. Now we are standing on the ramp at the airport looking at the Cannibal Queen. Skid Henley restored her. He started in the fall of 1987 and finished a year later. “Did two of them, one right after the other. They’re a little different. Yours has the headliner behind the rear cockpit.”
    “Why’d you do that?” I ask. The headliner was not stock. In fact, mine is the only Stearman I have ever seen with a headliner.
    “Well, I’ll tell you.” He grins and walks over to the plane. “See these wing leading edges? They’re one-piece metal. I bought five of them ’cause I usually mess one up. But I didn’t this time. Had one left over and was looking at the plane and thought why not? So I turned it down some and spread it a little and fixed it on top of the fuselage behind the rear cockpit. Looks pretty good, I think. Of course, then I had to alter the door to the baggage compartment. Sawed it in half and moved the hinge to accommodate the headliner.”
    He spoke quickly, the words and thoughts tumbling out. “This plane was a PT-27, made for the Canadians. When I first saw it, it was trashed out, no engine, wings two feet longer than they are now. The tail was torn off in a tornado or something, and Frank Dear got it and worked on one wing, but it was too big a project. He sold it to me, then I sold it to an engine shop. They let it sit for three years; then Frank Dear got it again. Then my boy Robert decided he had to have a biplane, and he called Frank and made a deal and it ended up over in my workshop.
    “Got the engine up in Indianapolis. It was off an AT-10— they weren’t much of an airplane—and the ring cowl was with it, right off an AT-10. Went up to Indianapolis and brought it down on a pickup truck.”
    Finally I steered Mr. Henley to his life in aviation. “First airplane I ever saw to get to know was a Heath Parasol. Then I got to flying a Gypsy Moth. Finally a fellow signed me off for solo in it even though I’d been flying it without papers since I was fourteen. Got my license as an airplane mechanic after I had an eye injury, but my eye finally healed up and it’s the best one I got now.”
    He went on, detailing an aviation career that included ten years as an airline pilot, test pilot flying SBD Dauntless dive bombers for Douglas Aircraft, civilian flight instructor for the