The Spirit of ST Louis Read Online Free PDF Page B

eastern end. There are no runways, but the clay sod is good surface for any size of aircraft during summer months. In freezing weather, gusty winds and deepening ruts make operation difficult.
    Lambert Field's major commercial activity is carried on by the Robertson Aircraft Corporation, built and managed by the Robertson brothers, Bill, Frank, and Dan. A little, stove-heated office, two frame warehouses for airplane and engine parts, and half of a civilian hangar, house its operations. The Corporation's major income results from the sale of reconditioned Army training planes, engines, and spares—all placed on the market at extraordinarily low prices.
    Except on week ends, when the National Guard Squadron comes out in force, there are seldom more than a half-dozen pilots on the field, and the chief activity consists of training students. One can always make a few extra dollars and build up flying time by instructing. Besides there is no better way to learn the tricks of air and aircraft.
    Those of us who instruct know Lambert Field as a child knows the details of his home and yard. We know the erosions on its shallow slope, the downdraft over Anglum, the depressions where drain tiles have caved in. In every azimuth there's a reminder of some past incident of flight. One pushes his plane out a hangar that housed the Curtiss Navy racer. (It left is source of sound somewhere in the air behind as it flashed around the pylons.) At this spot, just beyond the line, George Harmon was killed when his pilot stalled on a left chandelle. (I helped cut him out of the wreckage—unconscious but still alive. He died on the road to the hospital.) Against an east wind, one takes off over the cornfield where Captain Bill spun in after his National Guard Jenny's engine failed. (By some miracle he wasn't hurt, and climbed out of the crash before we reached him.) There's where Smith and Swengrosh died when they lost a wing in a loop. There's where Frank Robertson and Pres Sultan clipped the top from a big cottonwood tree, without even cracking a spar. (The trunk was eight inches in diameter where their Jenny snapped it off.) On the side of that ditch is where Bud Gurney broke his arm in a parachute spotlanding contest. The pigpen by the white farmhouse is where 0. E. Scott once nosed over.
    How Scotty loves to tell that story! His engine cut on take-off. He wasn't high enough to turn. Straight ahead lay the pigpen, and in it he landed. Muck caught his wheels and whipped him upside down. He found himself hanging on the safety belt, his head two or three feet above a stinking wallow, "with all those pigs squealing and nudging in around me, just as though I was one of 'em!"
    Scotty is manager of the field, and its oldest and most cautious pilot. He owns an OX-5 Standard with wings that haven't been re-covered for so many years that you can poke your finger through their varnish-stiffened fabric. When weather is good his plane is always on the line, ready to carry any passenger who'll pay five dollars for a ride. Scotty is also pilot of the new Travel Air which was bought last year by Harold Bixby, a St. Louis banker who became interested in aviation. With an OXX-6 engine, deep blue fuselage, and shining, nickel-plated struts, it's the most modern and attractive plane in our hangars.
    Scotty has let me fly the Travel Air several times, and introduced me to its owner. To us on the field it's more than a symbol of better aircraft to come. It's a link with the powerful business world. Bixby is one of the men who run the great city of St. Louis, yet he looks on flyers as something more than acrobats and daredevils. Judging from a more stable viewpoint, he too believes that aviation has a future. His Travel Air, resting on the line, is like a signpost assuring us that the road we follow leads toward fertile lands.
    Since Bixby bought his plane several of the city's businessmen have started flying. There's Harry. Knight the broker, who's taking lessons.