The Man Called Brown Condor (33 page)

John paused, then shook his head.

“We mighty glad you're home, son. Wish you would stay.”

“I wish I could, but there's no place for me down here. You know, more than half my students in Chicago are white. They got more money up there. Mr. Hughes told me he had only two students. Those two and a few young ladies from Gulf Park College are all that can afford lessons on the whole coast. Seems there's a Dr. Cox from the college teaches the Gulf Park girls in his own plane. I know you and Momma do alright down here. Most white folks here on the coast treat blacks fair . . . long as they don't get too ambitious. Things are different up North. Sure there are whites up there who don't like colored folks, places where coloreds aren't allowed same as down here, but there's more opportunity. I have a business in Chicago I can't walk out on. I'm making good money. I have a place in the community.”

“Son, I understand. This has been a good place for your mother and me. Not everything's right for colored folks, I don't mean that, but I doubt we would be happy anyplace else. We know you're used to a different way and you got things to do. I reckon Chicago is more home to you now.”

“Ya'll worked so hard to send me and Bertha to school. Ya'll are part of everything we do.”

Mr. Cobb got up and put his hand on John's shoulder. “Come on, son. I reckon we've worn you plumb out.” As the two got up from their chairs, Mr. Cobb said, “I've got tomorrow off. How long since you been fishing?”

“Lord, I don't remember.”

“I got two poles and a bucket. The tide'll be changing late afternoon.”

“Sounds good to me, Daddy. ”

John woke up late feeling rested. Celeste Cobb came into his room carrying his uniform she had brushed and pressed.

“Good morning, sleepyhead. It's nine o'clock. I'll have you some breakfast by the time you get dressed. You're supposed to be at the newspaper by ten-thirty.”

“Momma, I thought I could be out of that uniform now that I'm home.”

“Well, you can't. You gonna wear it to the newspaper. They'll want a picture I bet and you gonna wear it for the goings-on this Sunday at the airport too. Besides, I took your suit to the cleaners and the rest of your stuff I'm washing and ironing.”

“Momma, you haven't changed a bit. You still boss around here.” John laughed.

“That's right. You may be an emperor's pilot and a big hero, but ‘round here, I'm queen.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

By the time John had cleaned up and finished dressing, the wonderful blended aroma of brewed coffee, baking biscuits, and frying bacon drifted up from the kitchen. He put on his tie, buffed his shoes, and went downstairs to a morning feast. Celeste fussed over him, glowing with the joy of having her boy home. She served up hot coffee to start things off. Then came two eggs over light, crisp bacon, steaming buttered grits, and biscuits with homemade scuppernong jelly.

Finishing his last cup of coffee, John protested, “I think after all this breakfast I'm gonna have to go back upstairs and take a little nap.”

“You get yourself out of this house and down to the paper. Walking to town oughta work off a few of those biscuits you helped yourself to.”

John walked down Thirty-First Avenue and turned left on Thirteenth Street. There was a new service station on the corner of Thirtieth and Thirteenth. Like most of the gas stations in the South, it had two gas pumps and three toilets, one on the side marked Women, one marked Men, and the third in back marked Colored. The station attendant looked a little perplexed. He had never seen a Negro man in an officer's uniform before.

John crossed the G&SI tracks and turned north on Twenty-Seventh Avenue toward the train station. “Johnny! Johnny Robinson,” called a large man pulling to the curb in a new four-door Dodge D2 sedan. John recognized the well-dressed white man wearing a seersucker suit, white shirt, tie, suspenders, and a sailor straw hat. John had worked for him after school, weekends, and summers as a teenager.

“Hello, Mr. Simpson. How have you been?”

“Just fine, Johnny. Mrs. Simpson's maid told her this morning that you got home yesterday. You have really done yourself proud. We kept up with you in the papers and from Lowell Thomas on the radio. Several men including the mayor were talking about you this morning at coffee. Do you need a ride somewhere?”

“Thank you, Mr. Simpson, I appreciate the offer but I've just got a few blocks to go and sorta want to look the town over. It's been a while since I was here.”

“All right, Johnny, just want you to know we think a lot of you.”

At the train station, where the GS&I tracks running north from the port crossed the east-west L&N tracks, things did not look as busy as when he was a boy. The waiting room was still divided between white and colored, but the hustle and bustle was gone. The buildings across the brick paved street were beginning to look a little shabby, especially the small hotel.

John walked around to the Railway Express freight door. A stout black man was loading cartons onto a baggage wagon. He was wearing railroad bib overalls and a seasoned Railway Express cap. A watch chain hung down from one pocket, while from the small center pocket of the bib the drawstring of a tobacco pouch suggested he was a roll-your-own smoker.

“Can you tell me when the next train leaves for New Orleans?”

The man looked up at John. He put down the package he was lifting and broke into a wide grin. “Johnny! Hot damn, if you don't look like something! I mean, you lookin' good!” He shook John's hand and slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, I want you to meet everybody. I been telling 'em about you and the fun we used to have. You know, I remember when you gave me a model airplane you made from an apple crate. Come on and meet some folks.”

“I only have time to say hello, Marcus. I've got to get down to the newspaper. I'll look you up later.”

“Well just let me introduce you to the stationmaster and my bossman.”

Marcus led John to the office window where a telegraph operator sat working his key. After he had been introduced to all the railroad men in sight, John excused himself by inviting them all to the airport on Sunday. Marcus, his boss, and the stationmaster were promised a flight.

It was already ten o'clock. John quickened his step. He passed the theater with its side ticket window for blacks who had to climb an outside staircase and enter the balcony to see the moving pictures. It was the only theater in town that allowed Negroes at all. It, the Anderson Theater, and the larger Paramount Theater were the only buildings in town cooled with “refrigerated air.”

Turning east down Fourteenth Street, he walked past merchants celebrating Trade Day. Elmer's department store had a sale on men's seersucker suits at $3.98. Pants and shirts were on sale for $1.00 each and Panama straw hats were seventy-nine cents. Nearer the paper was the Hill Grocery Store where signs in the window advertised steak at twenty-three cents a pound and lettuce at five cents a head. A package of five bars of Octagon soap was priced at ten cents.

John passed the Markham Hotel. On the opposite corner was the
Daily Herald
office. He knew that if he had been a white celebrity, the paper would have sent a reporter out to his house, but he had grown up with such differences and rarely let it bother him.
It's not so different in the North; they just don't call it segregation. I reckon one day maybe this country will get over all that, but I got too much to do to worry 'bout it.

He entered the
Daily Herald
office and was invited into the newsroom which was separated by little more than a counter from the rest of the interior. In the back the presses could be heard running while the
clickclick
of the linotype machines joined the pecking of typewriters, ringing telephones, and people talking over the noise—or at least trying to. Windows were open and the air was circulated by numerous oscillating fans, some mounted on walls, some sitting on the floor, but it was still hot and humid inside. The men all worked with their coats off, their ties left on, and their sleeves rolled up to their forearms. The ladies all wore light cotton summer dresses. The editor, Mr. Eugene Wilkes, invited John into his small office, which had windows on three sides through which he could observe the entire operation. In the office, John met Mr. Glen Rutledge who introduced himself and offered John a chair and the interview began. The two newsmen were genuinely interested in John's story. All in all, John thought the interview was a well-spent hour.
I bet maybe it was the first interview ever with a black man sitting down in the editor's office.

The story made the front page of the afternoon paper under the headline,
“
Gulfport Negro Who Piloted Emperor Haile Selassie Visits Home; Relates His Experiences In Wartime Flying.”

The article dated June 26, 1936 began: “J. C. Robinson, Negro aviator who gained worldwide fame as Emperor Haile Selassie's official pilot and who was in charge of the entire Ethiopian Air Force, is in Gulfport visiting his stepfather and mother, C. C. Cobb and wife, who reside at 1905 Thirty-First Avenue. Robinson called at the
Herald
office this morning wearing the Ethiopian army official uniform. His rank is colonel and his uniform carries the official emblem of the emperor, the Lion of Judah, worked in gold thread mined from the gold mines of Ethiopia from which King Solomon was supposed to have secured much of the gold for his famous temple at Jerusalem.

“He was employed by C. A. Simpson in Gulfport at one time and went from Gulfport to Chicago, where he worked for six years with the Curtiss Flying Service.

“Ethiopia had twenty-four airplanes during the war, he said, and all but three of them were shot down.

“During his thirteen month's service in the Imperial Ethiopian Air Service, he was wounded three times and gassed twice.”

The article went on to describe the situation in Ethiopia and the emperor's escape. It concluded by announcing that Robinson would make an appearance at the Gulfport airport sponsored by church groups before returning to Chicago.

Celeste Cobb carefully clipped the article from the front page and placed it in the scrapbook with all the others she had collected. Then she put the scrapbook back on the table beside her Bible.

The following Sunday, Gulfport Airfield was overflowing. The mostly black crowd was salted with white officials, aviation enthusiasts, and curious onlookers. Children ran among the crowd, paying little attention to their mother's warnings not to get their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes dirty. Arthur Hughes patrolled the hangar and ramp warning, “You young'uns stay off those airplanes! Don't touch the propellers!” There were five planes on the field and Hughes had his hands full protecting them, not just from children but from curious adults as well. “Don't touch the airplanes!” It was the largest crowd ever gathered at the airfield.

Booths had been set up by church groups to sell sandwiches, cookies, cakes, ice tea and soft drinks. Mr. Hughes was to get ten percent of the proceeds. Several churchwomen walked through the crowd selling chances for a plane ride with Colonel Robinson.

Chairs had been set up on the flat bed of a truck decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. Charles and Celeste Cobb were introduced and seated there with various dignitaries who took turns making short speeches and announcements. Among the white citizens seated were Gulfport Mayor, J. W. Milner, and Dr. Cox, president of Gulf Park College who also taught flying at the all-girl school. John, uncomfortable in his uniform, was seated beside Mayor Milner.

Speaking last, John made a short speech thanking those present for honoring him with such a homecoming. There was much applause. It was then time for the drawing for the airplane rides.

A lady from the AME church climbed up the steps to the platform and held out a large hat box filled to the brim with tickets. John reached into the box and pulled out a ticket for the first ride. When he read the number there was a squeal from the crowd as a young woman ran forward holding the matching number ticket tightly in her hand. The crowd applauded and then roared with laughter when a man at the edge of the platform recognized the winner and called out, “My goodness, Colonel Robinson, you be careful! That's my daughter.”

John smiled down at the man. “I certainly will, Mr. Gaston.”

The crowd standing around the blue and silver-gray Stinson parted to allow John and his passenger through. They watched with intense interest as the colonel made a last inspection of the craft before helping a very excited Julia Gaston into the plane, securing her seat belt and closing the passenger door. He asked the onlookers to move away from the plane, climbed into the pilot's seat, and closed the door. Checking to make sure the area was clear, he primed the engine and engaged the starter. The propeller turned several revolutions before the engine roared to life exhaling a cloud of blue smoke from oil accumulated in the lower cylinders of the radial engine. The blast from the propeller scattered those standing behind the plane as it began to taxi. Miss Gaston waved frantically at her friends. The crowd moved to the edge of the grass runway and grew silent as John wheeled the plane into the wind. The engine thundered as the plane began its takeoff roll. Several young boys ran chasing after the graceful ship. The Stinson lifted into the air, the people all waving and clapping their hands. Standing on the speaker's platform, tightly clutching the arm of Charles Cobb, Celeste felt both immense pride and trembling fear as her son's plane roared past.

John carried his passenger south over the shore then circled the town. A few minutes later he was back over the field. Before landing he made a long, fast, low pass down the field to the great approval of those gathered below. He then brought the Stinson around on final approach, lowered the flaps and made a graceful landing. Slowing quickly, he taxied back to the parking area.