The Spirit of ST Louis (38 page)

A headache -- Why does my head press against the skylight's rib? It hasn't done that before. Something isn't right in the plane. Why is the cockpit too small for me? Certainly the dimensions haven't changed. Certainly I haven't grown any larger. But of course -- the air cushion I'm sitting on -- it's been expanding as I climb to lower atmospheric pressures. I didn't notice how taut and hard it was getting. I open the valve for a few seconds, to lower my position and make sure the fabric won't burst.

Even in Washington there were interesting hours. I was six years old the first winter we arrived, and rented rooms in an apartment house. It hadn't taken me long to get outside, into the vacant lot next door. It was a marvelous place. No grown-up could understand the opportunities it offered. In it, I had early experiences in paleontology and aerodynamics. It held all kinds of imaginary adventures. There was a weed-screened pile of earth in one corner of the lot -- a useless pile to anyone who didn't believe in buried treasures. But to one who did it offered days of work, and reward -- after patient digging with a stick -- of a smooth and oval stone, split through the center to let out the perfect fossil of a fern leaf. Curving, brown, and glazed by time, that fossil was as graceful as it was old -- millions of years old, my mother said.

And there were days in the lot when I encountered serious problems caused by a wind which blew away sheets of paper I brought out to play with. Of course one could weight them down with stones. Paper blew; stones didn't. It was like fire and water. One burned; one stopped burning. That was easy. But how about wood? A block of wood could hold down a sheet of paper, while a shingle, which felt heavier, might blow away all by itself. On windy days, I experimented with pieces of wood tossed high above my head. Cubes dropped straight back down, but shingles fluttered off at an angle. It was all very confusing. One must consider shape, as well as weight, in relationship to air. I concluded that it was best not to turn your back on an important sheet of paper weighted down with wood.

My happiest hours in Washington were outdoors, spinning tops, playing marbles "for keeps," and roller-skating over the asphalt streets. On clear and warm vacation days my mother and I visited the parks and buildings of the city. We usually started out from our boardinghouse by walking past Scott Circle. "General Winfield Scott was a relative of yours," my mother used to tell me, "a few generations back on the side of your grandfather Land." I climbed the Monument; watched the Treasury print our money; spent hours in the Smithsonian Institution. Sometimes we made trips through the country nearby, to places like Mount Vernon, or Potomac Falls, or Arlington Cemetery. Often we took a street car to Rock Creek Park, for a picnic in the woods and a walk through the zoo. It was seldom very crowded, and there were always things to do. You could float sticks down the creek, or climb its steep banks, or watch automobiles and horses on the drive while you ate your lunch. Lots of dignitaries passed by. If you were lucky, you might see the President himself. Once I watched Taft take exercise on that drive, walking behind his horse-drawn carriage.

Yes, I saw Teddy Roosevelt driving in his car. I stood near Woodrow Wilson, in the White House, while he signed a bill my father sponsored. I watched the "Suffragette Parade" on Pennsylvania Avenue. I met Champ Clark, and Bob LaFollette, and Knute Nelson of Minnesota. In Washington one lived with famous figures, saw history in the making. But one forgot about the sunsets, and lost the feel of branch to muscle.

It was near Washington that I attended my first air meet. Mother and I rode out of the city to Fort Myer, Virginia, where a half-dozen airplanes were lined up in front of the plank-built grandstand. We waited a long time while engines were tuned up and mechanics puttered around the wings. Then, one of the planes took off and raced a motor car around the oval track in front of us. You could see its pilot clearly, out in front—pants' legs flapping, and cap visor pointed backward to streamline in the wind. Another plane bombed the chalked outline of a battleship, with oranges thrown down by hand. A third had a forced landing in the woods half a mile or so away. I could see it banking as it dropped below the treetops, and a lot of men began running toward the place where it went down.

The altimeter shows 7500 feet. Stars are brighter and there are more of them. That means I'm gaining on the storm. And the throttle isn't yet wide open; I still have a reserve of power. It's surprising how well the Spirit of St. Louis climbs at this altitude, with nearly 300 gallons in the tanks. Three hundred gallons is the biggest load I took off with during the test flights at Camp Kearney. It's 50 gallons more than I carried when I left North Island for the nonstop flight over the Rockies to St. Louis.

THE FOURTEENTH HOUR
Over the Atlantic

TIME - 8:52 P.M.

Wind Velocity Unknown Visibility Night –heavy haze

Wind Direction Unknown Altitude 9300 feet

True Course 66° Air Speed 85 m.p.h.

Variation 32° W Tachometer 1700 r.p.m.

Magnetic Course 99° Oil Temp. 35°C

Deviation 0° Oil Pressure 60 lbs.

Compass Course 99° Fuel pressure 3 lbs.

Drift Angle 10° R Mixture 4

Compass heading 89° Fuel tank Nose

Ceiling Unlimited

Above Clouds

Thirteen hundred miles behind. Two thousand three hundred miles to go. I finish the log entries and switch off the electric torch. Its light so blinded my night-accustomed eyes that minutes seem to pass before they see stars again. The clouds are still within a few hundred feet of my wheels. There's no doubt now that a storm area lies ahead. I keep climbing slowly, higher and higher, rising to meet it, thankful it didn't come before a third of my fuel's gone. What kind of storm will it be, how large, how high, how turbulent? Will my still overloaded plane have ceiling enough to climb above its clouds?

How high do storm clouds usually rise? We mail pilots often discuss that question, and ideas vary. To start an argument at the airport lunch stand or on a hangar evening, one need only to ask how high the average storm ascends.

"Higher than your plane can fly," a pilot will answer.

"At ten thousand feet you can get around most of them," claims another.

Somebody always expresses the opinion that a man's a fool to go up over them at all. "When a storm gets so bad you can't stay under it, you'd better find a field and land."

After the discussion is over, you go away with little more knowledge than you had when you arrived -- and more respect for storms. The fact is that pilots seldom venture to fly above large areas of unbroken cloud. After all, mail planes have no radio, and their fuel ranges are short. When a pilot leaves ground contact far behind, the odds against him mount. Most of us can think of storms into which we ventured beyond prudence, and from which we escaped with narrow margins. We remember the times, too many of them, when someone took off into thick weather and never returned. Such incidents caution us against recurring boldness.

It's only a few months ago that the Detroit plane flew into a tornado, and told its story through the silent sky over the Chicago mail field when its arrival time came due. I flew in from the south that same evening, through storms and between layers of clouds. Ahead -- black, tremendous, pyramided in the heavens, I saw the edge of the tornado. Those clouds had gone up more than 10,000 feet -- more than 20,000; their tops had merged with thin cirrus tails that must have been five miles above the ground. But that was a tornado, and one expects tornados to do freak things.

I think of the stormy night in Illinois when I made my fourth emergency 'chute jump. The clouds were above 10,000 feet that time too. I'd climbed higher and higher, through lightning, turbulence, and whipping rain, running my fuel tanks dry to keep the mail from burning when it crashed, hoping to see the sky once more before I jumped. If I could see the stars, Pd thought, I wouldn't mind so much diving out into the storm. One gained such confidence from the stars. A single minute in their light was all I needed. But only once had I caught a glimpse of them, from the bottom of a giant funnel in the clouds. They'd blinked on for me one, two, possibly three seconds, and then were gone for good. The gray walls of that funnel had stretched upward to a hopeless height. The storm must have reached at least 20,000 feet above the ground that night; I never knew, for my reserve tank ran dry at 14,000 and I stepped over the side of my cockpit, into space.

How high should I climb tonight? When should I stop reaching for the stars, take fate as it comes, strike directly at the demons of the storm and plunge into their realm of misty blackness? I'll climb to 15,000 feet, I decide, and no higher. Above that altitude, air's too light to support efficiency of either plane or pilot. My engine would drop in power, my wings would grasp for substance, and lack of oxygen would dull perception when difficult flying required still more alertness.

No, if clouds rise above 15,000 feet, I'll throttle down again, reset my stabilizer, and sink into the body of the storm.

My eyes on the stars, I travel with their light-years back through time. I'm in the railroad station at Detroit. Escaping steam from the locomotive dampens my cheek as I wave good-by to its engineer and pass its great steel wheels and driving rods. There he is at the gate, a little to one side of the crowd, face beaming, familiar white mustache and gold-rimmed spectacles, an old black felt hat raised high in his hand to attract our attention—Grandfather) I can see the bald spot on his head where an organ grinder's monkey once tried to crack a peanut. He's not tall, and he never elbows his way to the front, but he's always there to meet us when we arrive. He takes a suitcase in each hand as he greets my mother, and we start toward the streetcar.

"Charles, we're having smelts for dinner," he says, "and you and I are going over to Canada this Sunday, to pick some flowers."

It's half a block from the car line to the gray frame house at 64 West Elizabeth Street. Lilac bushes by the steps are in full bloom, fresh against the city's carboned earth and sooty walls. We turn in off the flagstones and stop in front of the low porch, while my grandfather searches for his key ring. There's a metal plaque on the door, which says "C. H. LAND, DENTIST." The whole place is dwarfed, and partly hidden, by brick-walled apartments on each side.

Inside, I rush back to the kitchen to find my grandmother. There are the steps my tricycle once rolled down. There's the stuffed head of the big Rocky Mountain sheep that I use as a target for my unloaded rifle. Here's the safe which holds platinum foil and bright sheets of dental gold. And now I pass the cabinet full of polished stones and fossils. On one of its shelves there is a piece of a mammoth's tooth! Each wall and corner has its treasures, to be recounted through the days ahead. I'll get my uncle to open the box with the human skull, to fight with my cannon and leaden soldiers, to show me the latest rocks he's brought from his mining claim in Canada. There are my old toy fire engines, high on the back hallway shelf. There's Grandmother, smiling and getting up from the kitchen table, and at her feet my battle-scarred tomcat, Fluff.

Next, upstairs to wriggle out of my traveling suit and into clothes which can be rubbed against the black grime of central Detroit. My grandparents have struggled futilely against that grime. Years ago Grandfather invented an air-conditioning system for the house—big wooden frames of cheesecloth through which an electric fan sucked air, scrubbing it clean of soot. But dirt soon clogged the layers of cloth, and seeped in through cracks with wind, until washing and dusting seemed to spread it rather than keep shelves and windows clean. As the city's factories increased in size and number, even the leaves on trees grew dark; and in spite of my grandmother's effort white lace curtains turned gray.

Grandfather is a scientist who invents all sorts of things, from baby-rockers to high temperature gas furnaces. His specialty is the development of porcelain dentistry. The basement and half the rooms on the ground floor of his house are filled with tools, machinery, and chemicals. The walls of these laboratories enclose a unique world. Here, I live amid turning wheels, the intense heat of muffle furnaces, the precise fashioning of gold and platinuin, and talk about the latest discoveries of science.

My Grandfather is as wise as he is old, and he can make anything with his hands. Whether he's baking a delicate porcelain flower or building a bridge for the mouth of one of his patients, he's always ready to answer my questions and teach me the use of his tools. He has given me the freedom of his laboratories, restricting only the most delicate instruments and dangerous chemicals from my use. He shows me how to mix clay and make moulds, how to cast metal, to handle electrically charged wires, to polish my Minnesota carnelians on his dental wheels. The benches we work on are littered with forceps and plaster casts, patterns for gas furnaces, old teeth, blowpipes, and bottles with dust-covered labels. One always has to clear off a space in which to work. Grandmother just turns her back on the laboratory. She knows there's no use trying to keep it clean, and that Grandfather is happy there.

At dinner table, I listen to discussions of philosophy and the latest scientific theories. I can appreciate, even when I can't understand, the clear-cut language of science. It doesn't hum in my ears like a church sermon or a political speech. People have been preaching about God and arguing about government for hundreds of years, and still they don't agree about who's right and who's wrong. Science isn't like that. It confronts opinion with facts. In science men are measured by what they really do. There's no unfairness about it. It doesn't matter whether you believe in God, or whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. Your experiment works, or it doesn't. A machine will run, or it won't. You can't prove that the atheists are wrong, and you can't prove that the Democrats are wrong, but the arguments of science can't be denied when an airplane actually flies or a human voice is carried from one city to another without wires.

Science is a key to all mystery. With this key, man can become like a god himself. Science is truth; science is knowledge; science is power. With its telescopes it reaches out to the stars. With its microscopes it's learning the innermost secrets of life. By its growing proofs of evolution, it's confounding preachers with their fables of Adam and Eve. When I grow up maybe I'll become a scientist too.

There are times when my grandfather is disturbed about science. He gives me nickels to go to the theater on Woodward Avenue where new "moving" pictures are replacing still slides on the screen. But he says the films may have a bad effect on boys and girls—for some reason they show life as it isn't, and as it shouldn't be. Detroit is becoming the automobile center of the world, he tells me proudly; but he's concerned about what automobiles will do to people and their homes. The time will come when every family will own a car, according to Henry Ford; but there are too many accidents on the streets—collisions, and men killed. Grandfather often passes by a wreck on his daily walks, and sometimes he brings back a broken spoke or a piece of glass to illustrate the story he tells about it. I remember him saying once, after he'd seen several accidents close together, that maybe evolution would limit the growth of the automobile. It might be, and he'd laughed a little when he said it, that automobile drivers would be killed off so fast there wouldn't be any left some day.

I don't understand evolution. It's all mixed up with dinosaurs and stone-age men. But science says it's true. And if it's true, that may prove there isn't any God. If men descended from apes, they didn't begin with Adam and Eve. The answer seems to depend on "the missing link." That's an old skull, half ape and half man. And Grandfather thinks that some day they'll find it. Then the Bible would be proved wrong. And if it lies about Adam and the Garden of Eden, how can one trust what it says about Heaven and hell, and God?

These problems continued to throb in my mind through years beyond childhood. Is there a God? Is there an existence after life? Is there something within one's body that doesn't age with years? There were times when I considered taking up the study of biology and medicine so I could explore the mysteries of life and death. But these sciences belonged to well-grounded, brilliant minds; their study was intricate, and my school marks were poor in the subjects they demanded as a background.