The Fun of It/Chapter 4

by Amelia Earhart

JOY HOPPING AND OTHER THINGS

IN 1922, I certainly didn’t think of my flying as a means to anything but having fun.

So I turned to other means of making a livelihood. My father’s health had begun to be impaired and I attempted commercial photography after a course in the subject through the Univer­sity of Southern California.

I tried photographing ordinary objects to get unusual effects, and made a number of studies of such things as the lowly garbage can, for instance, sitting contentedly by its cellar steps, or the garbage can alone on the curb left battered by a cruel collector, or the garbage can, well—I can’t name all the moods of which a garbage can is capable.

I carried a small camera with me most of the time. Once a new oil well was kind enough to come in just as I was passing in a car, and I caught its first gush with a small motion picture camera and also the oil deluge which followed.

A man jumped out of another automobile. “Pardon me, lady,” he said, “were you taking a picture of that oil well?”

“Yes, I was,” I answered.

“Well, I’m a real estate operator and I’d like to buy a copy of that film, if you’d care to sell. You see my property’s right over there and I’d like to show my prospects what might happen any day in their own yards. What a selling point!” he added as his eyes grew starry.

He turned up to buy the film after it was de­veloped, and the last I heard it was being shown in tent entertainments for prospective buyers and others.

In addition to photography, I carried on in a variety of different occupations including the un­conventional ones of being interested in mining in Nevada, and the hauling of building materials by truck locally.

After a year or so of such activities, I decided to return east with my mother and sister who were not particularly fond of the west coast. I wanted to fly east, but the idea seemed so fearful to my family that I finally consented to drive instead. My sis­ter went by train in time for summer classes at Harvard where she was working for a special degree, and Mother and I started by car.

“Which way are we going?” she inquired, as we left Hollywood one morning.

“I’m going to surprise you,” I answered, as I headed north instead of east.

Neither she nor I had ever seen some of our best national parks, so I had determined to do some touring. Sequoia, Yosemite, Crater Lake—we peered at all of them in turn. It was June when we arrived at the last, but the road around the ancient cone was still blocked with snow. So I plowed up the coast again.

“Aren’t we going east at all?” said Mother, in­terestedly.

“Not until we reach Seattle,” said I with a growing appetite for national parks.

We sampled Canadian scenery at Banff and Lake Louise. While crossing the prairie at Cal­gary, I lost a precious part of my belongings. At the end of one day, as twilight came on, Mother and I found ourselves on a deserted road without signs of any sort. Our gas was running low and we had no idea how we had arrived where we were. As I rounded a corner, what turned out to be an Indian reservation spread before us.

“This doesn’t look very hopeful,” I said, “but perhaps I can find someone to ask about roads.”

“I see either a wooden Indian or a real one,” ob­served Mother who had been busy looking about.

He was real.

“Where is the main road?” I asked as a starter.

“Unh, papoose,” grunted the solemn figure from the depths of his blanket.

I tried again.

“Papoose,” came the answer. This time he raised a brown hand and pointed to one of my cherished possessions in the car—a stuffed monkey. Papoose. He wanted the animal for his little In­dian. Our situation seemed desperate enough to merit the sacrifice, so I handed him the toy.

“You made the wrong turn five miles back,” he informed us. “Follow this road until—” and he finished the directions in perfectly good English. I felt like demanding my monkey back.

The lure of another park began to draw us to Yellowstone, so we returned to the United States. In this curious region it is easy to see the origin of Indian legends of the Great Spirit. With big geysers spouting here and there and the little muddy ones called “paint pots” plopping away continuously during the twenty-four hours, one ig­norant of any scientific facts would certainly im­pute such phenomena to strange gods. Mother said she was almost afraid to go to sleep lest one should plop into bed with her.

As thrilling to me as the national parks were the long stretches of open country dotted with air mail beacons. I saw these first at Cheyenne for the mail route follows somewhat that of the Lincoln High­way. Omaha is one of the oldest stations in the mail development and every time I pass that way I remember the first trip. It is such things which make the real thrills in aviation. I have never been on the ground in this section since, except to drive in from the airport, but I have followed the air route many times.

I finally reached Boston and had so many tourist stickers on the windshield there was little space left to see through it. When I parked the car, groups gathered to ask me questions about conditions of roads, how I’d come, why I’d come, and any number of other questions. The fact that my roadster was a cheerful canary color may have caused some of the excitement. It had been mod­est enough in California, but was a little outspoken for Boston, I found.

Within a week I had the last of the troublesome operations on my nose, to relieve the condition re­sulting from my small share in the War. And after I recovered from this I returned to New York and Columbia. Like a great many other girls at this age I had no special plan for myself. But despite my decision against medicine, I was still interested in sciences.

This time I tried some physics as well as other interesting subjects. There was a quiz in physics every week. When I could not answer questions properly I inserted a little French poetry. After the Friendship Flight I received a note from the instructor of this period asking me if on the trip I met any situation difficult enough to be forced into French verse.

“Mon âme est une infante en robe de parade,
Dont l’exil se refléte, éternel et royal,
Aux grands miroirs déserts d’un vieil Escurial,
Ainsi qu’une galère oublié en la rade.”

This and similar noble lines fill space nicely but unfortunately do not count as answers to direct questions.

During my collegiate experience I never sought a degree. I felt somehow my choice of subjects was as good for me as anyone else’s. Possibly by the time I am eighty I may know whether I was right or presumptions! At any rate I already know that everything I have studied that I was in­terested in has given me something.

I returned to Boston and Harvard for the next summer. My sister was teaching and I wanted to try it also. But, as in the west, I did various things, finally ending at a settlement house, as a novice social worker.

The place where I found myself was Denison House, Boston’s second oldest social center. It stood in a little island of residences surrounded by warehouses and other buildings in a lower corner of town. The island had at one time been a rather “nice” section and many of the tenements, homes of well-to-do people. The stone fronts of some of the houses, the high ceilings and curving bannis­ters inside were mute reminders of a more glorious past.

The people whom I met through Denison House were as interesting as any I have ever known. The neighborhood was mostly Syrian and Chinese with a few Italians and Irish mixed in. I had never been privileged to know much about how people other than Americans lived. Now I discovered manner and modes very different from those with which I was familiar. Under my very nose Orien­tal ideas and the home-grown variety were trying to get along together. The first time I saw, sitting on a modern gas stove, one of the native clay cook­ing dishes used for centuries by the Syrians, I felt I was seeing tangible evidence of the blending process.

Changes which words underwent in meaning and pronunciation were very interesting to me. The fruit which hoarding houses have justly or unjustly made famous was usually pronounced pru-ins in two syllables, instead of prunes. The word “fresh” covered all degrees of misconduct and could be a slight rebuke or an insult. It was funny to hear of a “fresh baby” instead of a naughty one. The Chinese called it “flesh” but kept the same meaning. I wonder what Americans do to foreign words.

I enjoyed visiting the homes of the neighbor­hood. Now and then when I stayed to meals, some of the articles which long before I had tried in vain to make palatable appeared in delicious form to laugh at me. The Chinese method of cooking peas in the pods, for instance. Through experiences with different foods I came to the conclusion that one can learn to eat anything. The great explorer Stefansson recently told me he had proved that doing so was possible if a certain method was followed.

“On my expeditions to the North,” he said, “the rations had to include whalemeat, as that was one of the few kinds of fresh food available. It is usually not palatable at first. I asked several men to undertake an experiment and live exclusively on whale meat to see if they could learn to like it. Every time a similar test has been made the re­sults have been the same. For the first few days,

The Friendship

Courtesy Pan American Airways

Interior of a Modern Transport Plane

the men can eat whale meat three times a day with­out effort. Then they begin to tire of it and eat less and less. For a period they can’t bear the sight of it. Soon their intense hunger forces them to nibble and after this stage their appetite gradually increases. At the end of thirty days they have learned not only to like whalemeat, but they never lose the taste for it.”

I think I myself can eat anything but oatmeal. Some day I shall have to try out the Stefansson method of learning to like it!

There was always plenty of work to be done at Denison House for there were classes and game periods of all kinds for boys and girls. Besides these, English writing and reading were taught to those ambitious mothers and fathers who knew only their native tongue and came to learn a new one.

This instruction, by the way, is very different from ordinary classes where pupils know the lan­guage. Did you ever stop to think how explana­tions could be made if you did not know any of the words the teacher was using? Of course, she would have to pantomime what she was saying. In the beginning, that is exactly what is done in these classes. For instance, to teach “door,” the instruc­tor has to go to a door and point it out. To inter­pret “I open the door,” she must go through the whole motion with the class repeating the words. And so on through the sign language until pupils learn enough to take up the alphabet.

I became so interested in this kind of teaching that I was trying to write a book on it with a co­worker when the Atlantic flight came along, and prevented our finishing it. Since then the number of such classes in settlements and public schools has decreased partly because of the effect of the laws which restrict immigration.

It would have been much easier at Denison House had there been money enough to do all that waited to be done. So few people understood the real needs, that little money was available. We could not have managed at all without the help of the young men and young women who came as volunteer workers from schools and colleges about Boston. They acted as leaders in Boy and Girl Scout groups; they coached dramatics; they taught sewing and basket making and cooking, and told stories to the youngsters in the evening. I often wished my father could have been on tap for some of these groups for I knew his thrillers would have made a hit.

There were sick children who had to be taken to the hospitals and poor mothers who had to have explained to them that hospitals were not dreadful places where their children were imprisoned and tortured by cruel doctors. It is not so easy to understand the ways of a new country when one knows nothing of the laws or customs. Half the trouble caused by the so-called “furiners” is only because no one has taken the trouble to interpret to them the best these United States stand for. Of course, all the interpretation should not be on one side.

In the midst of all these activities at Denison House, not much time was left for flying. How­ever, I did join a chapter of the National Aero­nautic Association there and was ultimately made Vice-President. And I did tuck into the busy Denison House days everything I possibly could that had to do with my favorite hobby. I knew some of the local flyers. I went up whenever I had the opportunity. I was busy, too, with Miss Ruth Nichols of Rye in trying to work out some means of organizing the women in the fold. The National Playground Association asked me to be on the Boston Committee to judge in a model air­plane tournament they were sponsoring at the time. And since this combined my two greatest interests, aviation and social work, in an unusual way, I was very glad to serve.

None of this was what you could call important—except to me. It was sheer fun. And it did keep me in touch with flying.

It usually works out that if one follows where an interest leads, the knowledge or contacts some­how or other will be found useful sometime. To the person who has learned to swim well comes the opportunity to rescue a drowning man. If I hadn’t cared enough to become a member of the aviation group in Boston, there wouldn’t have been a Friendship crossing for me.

Instead of the elaborate plans which many of the newspapers insisted I had been making for many months, the whole expedition was a matter of chance. It happened as follows.

The invitation to fly the Atlantic came by tele­phone.

Each afternoon Denison House swarmed with children released from school. They were of most ages up to fourteen, practically all sizes and several nationalities. I had to see, among other things, that the right children found their way into the right classes, and that game leaders and instructors were on the job and prepared. There were always minor complications. Occasionally the adult work­ers were late or couldn’t come at all. Sometimes the children were so full of pep, they could hardly settle down to any one activity. Plaints from those who never could decide what they really wanted to do always had to be heard.

“Miss Earhart, I know my lines. Can’t I play games today instead of rehearsing the play?”

“Miss Earhart, I’d rather paint than play games. Please can’t I change periods just this once?”

After such temperamental problems were solved for the time, there were others which kept me more or less on the run until dinner time.

In the midst of such an afternoon in April, 1928, I was called to the telephone.

“I’m too busy to answer just now,” I said. “Ask whoever is calling to try again later.”

“But he says it’s important to speak with you,” replied the young messenger, who had been sent to find me.

Very unwillingly I went to the telephone to hear a pleasant masculine voice say,

“Hello. You don’t know me, but my name is Railey—Captain H. H. Railey.”

Without much more introduction he asked me if I should be interested in doing something for avia­tion which might be hazardous. Of course, I asked him more about who he was and why he picked me, and what the hazardous undertaking was. This last he wouldn’t tell.

Finally, after he had furnished excellent refer­ences, and reasons for calling, I made an appoint­ment to see him at his office that very evening. Curiosity is a great starter.

My meeting that night with Captain Railey, who was subsequently in charge of the business affairs of Admiral Byrd’s Antarctic Expedition, was very interesting. He told me that a woman had planned to make a transatlantic flight, but for vari­ous personal reasons had abandoned the idea of going herself. She still, however, wanted an Amer­ican to be the first of her sex to cross the ocean by air.

“I might as well lay the cards on the table,” finally said Captain Railey. “Would you fly the Atlantic?”

I thought one minute and said,

“Yes,—if.” There were still many “if’s” in the situation. Captain Railey told me, so I needn’t begin on mine. He had simply been asked by a friend of his in New York to cast about for an eligible woman who would go as substitute on the expedition.

Just what the qualifications of eligibility were I have never found out—but I went to New York as a candidate to be looked over. There I learned that the sponsor of the flight was the Honorable Mrs. Frederick Guest of London, the former Amy Phipps of Pittsburgh. She had quietly purchased a tri-motor Fokker from Admiral Byrd and planned to name it the Friendship as a symbol of good-will between her own and her adopted coun­try.

“Was I willing to fly the Atlantic?”

“In the event of disaster would I release those in charge from all responsibility?”

“What was my education—if any?”

“How strong?”

“How willing?”

“What flying experience?”

“What would I do after the flight?”

These were some of the questions rained upon me.

It was made clear that the men in the flight were being paid. Having established that, I was asked if I was prepared to receive no remuneration my­self. I said “Yes,” feeling that the privilege of being included in the expedition would be sufficient in itself.

Ultimately, Bill Stultz, the pilot, received $20,000 and Lou Gordon, the mechanic, $5000. My own compensation which I had never really seri­ously considered was, in addition to the fun of the exploit itself, the opportunities in aviation, writing and the like which the Atlantic crossing opened up for me. Incidentally the fees from my newspaper story of the flight went back into the treasury of the enterprise.

Most matters having been settled satisfactorily, there were certain ones to be decided on from my standpoint. I wished to check the equipment and meet the pilot. And I wished to do some of the flying myself. The idea of going as just “extra weight” did not appeal to me at all. Despite my intentions, however, it turned out that was just what I did, for the weather encountered necessi­tated instrument flying, a type of specialized flying in which I had not had any experience.

It took us twenty hours and forty minutes to cross from Trepassey Bay to Burryport, Wales. In this time the water was visible for only a little more than two hours. We might as well have been flying over the cornfields of Kansas for all we could see of what was beneath. We were in the fog, over it, or between layers for about eighteen of the twenty hours. But I am getting ahead of the story.

Probably few people realize fully what goes on behind the scenes of any major expedition. Whether by horseback or automobile or boat or air, preparations are apt to be long drawn out and worrisome. On the Friendship Flight everything had to be tested from the performance of the plane itself, its carrying capacity, speed and other quali­fications, to the accuracy of the instruments on which the pilot depends. Then there were the specially installed radio and the three motors with all their many accessories.

Behind the preparations of the moment lay hun­dreds of hours of flying which Stultz had done, and on Lou Gordon’s part, years of experience with en­gines. There were three in the actual crew of the Friendship, though a host of others were employed in the preparatory details. Stultz, originally sug­gested by Commander Byrd, had an exceptional record as a pilot, and Gordon was selected by Stultz as a thoroughly first-class mechanic.

All work on the project was shrouded in secrecy. That created difficulties for everyone. For in­stance, no one knew—not even my family—that I had anything to do with the Friendship. And as to the plane itself, outside of our own group there was no knowledge of what was planned for it. Os­tensibly the Fokker was still owned by Byrd and was destined for the South Pole expedition. That alibi effectively covered the physical preparations of the ship.

I did not dare show myself around Boston Air­port, where the ship was being worked on. Not once was I with the men on their test flights. In fact, I actually saw the Friendship only once be­fore the first attempted take-off. Obviously to have been detected in the picture would have brought premature publicity, and swamped all concerned with thrill writers and curiosity seekers.

For flying the Atlantic four years ago was deemed somewhat more venturesome and jour­nalistically more spectacular than it is today. I wonder, for instance, if you know that the Friend­ship Flight was the eighth crossing and that its crew brought the passenger total up to that time to thirty? This figure is exclusive of the lighter than air expeditions. Since June 17, 1928, thirty-one people have crossed the North Atlantic in heavier than air craft and about twice that number have made the journey over the South Atlantic. Approximately five hundred have made it in dirigibles.

Today an Atlantic flight is, of course, still haz­ardous. But its chances of success have increased over those of a few years ago. Airplanes are faster; engines more reliable and facilities for weather reporting greatly improved. Today within a few hours one can get a weather picture of conditions over the North Atlantic whereas all we had were relayed at our expense from ships, twelve to fifteen hours late.

But I think that our desire for secrecy was dic­tated primarily by what was almost a superstition. We did not want to talk about what was to be done until it became an actuality. And by great good luck, we were able to keep any word of the flight from leaking out until the Friendship was on its way eastward from Boston Harbor.

For the 900 gallons of gas we planned to take, two large elliptical tanks, in addition to those in the wings, were constructed in the cabin. These occupied the space normally used for passenger chairs in the modern airliner. The weight of all filled would be about 6000 pounds, as gasoline weighs a little more than six pounds to the gallon, and the tanks themselves are heavy, too. With the gas we actually took, the Friendship weighed more than five tons.

Originally the Fokker was a land plane with wheels, but pontoons had been built and fitted so that it was transformed into a seaplane, the first tri-motor so equipped. In theory, at least, it could land on reasonably smooth seas safely. Pontoons, by the way, not only are supposed to slow down flying speed in the air as opposed to wheels, but may decidedly increase the difficulties of getting off with a heavy load.

The motors to carry the Fokker were Wright Whirlwinds, 225 horsepower each. The width of the wings of the ship was about 72 feet, which is more than twice as broad as most houses are high. They were painted a lovely gold and narrowed gracefully in shape at the tips. The body of the ship, the fuselage, was orange, which blended beau­tifully with the gold. It was chosen, however, not for artistic effect, but because chrome-yellow, its technical name, can be seen farther than any other color. In case we had to come down, a little bright spot bobbing about on the water would have stood a better chance of attracting attention than one of neutral tints.

In what space the tanks left in the cabin, a small table was set up for navigating instruments. Our rolled-up flying suits and a five-gallon can of water constituted the available seats. In the cabin floor was a hatch which had to be opened for each calculation to show drift or actual velocity over the ground. For, of course, speed over the ground may not be the same as air speed.

Airplanes are equipped with air speed indicators which tell the pilot how fast a stream of air is passing the wing of the ship. If there is little or no wind, it may read approximately true for ground speed. It reads the same whether the plane is flying with the wind or against it. A plane which travels 100 miles in still air would be going only eighty miles an hour over the ground if a twenty-mile wind blew against it, head on. But the air speed indicator doesn’t know the difference and gives its hundred m.p.h. reading just the same. Conversely, if the twenty-mile wind were blowing in the same direction as the airplane was flying, the speed of the plane would be increased to 120 miles per hour. So there must be other means of deter­mining actual ground speed. Over a mapped territory the pilot without much trouble can clock his speed with the landmarks he can recognize. Where landmarks aren’t available, different types of indicators are used to make the calcula­tion.

While preparations for the flight were progress­ing, I carried on with my job at Denison House. No one there, except the head worker, knew I was concerned with flying the Atlantic, for I continued to supervise as well as I could the varied activities which fell to my lot.

Toward the end of May we were ready to go—more or less ready, anyway. In a chartered tug one dawn, we put out to the Friendship at her moorings off East Boston. But our first attempt came to naught, as we did not get away.

Twice the experience of trying to start was re­peated. Once there was too little wind for the Friendship to rise from the water, and once too much fog.

^[1]The fog comes on little cat feet and sits on its haunches
Overlooking city and harbor
And then moves on.

I can quote Mr. Sandburg’s charming poem with enthusiasm as I write this. However, I can’t say I appreciated it the day of the second unsuccessful take-off when the fog he sings of descended to dampen us spiritually as well as actually and to keep us on the ground for the time.

Despite its poetic possibilities, fog, of course, is one of the great hazards of flying. From the air, when one cannot see the horizon, there is nothing much on which to base knowledge of one’s position in space. Only the instruments which have been developed in the last few years can be trusted to tell whether one is upside down or right side up. The poor old senses, which serve us so well so often, don’t send the correct impressions to the brain in this instance at all.

Just how far one may be deceived in this way was once clearly shown to me by a certain test. I was blindfolded and put in a chair which could be noiselessly revolved. The examining physician began to turn the chair slowly to the right.

“Which way are you turning?” he asked.

“To the right,” I answered smartly.

“Now which,” he asked a moment later.

“Left,” I answered promptly.

“Lift up the bandage and look.”

I did. I wasn’t turning at all.

“If you had not made the mistake you did, you would not have been normal,” said the doctor cheerfully.

Then he explained that when he first began to turn the chair the direction registered on my brain correctly. If he changed the speed of rotation or stopped, I received the impression I was turning in the opposite direction. Nothing but the sight of objects I recognized or some instrument which could not be fooled could make me believe the direction of the turn was not reversed.

The following is an interesting test which you may experiment for yourself:

If you would like to see what you can do—or can’t—when you are unable to see, try to walk blindfolded in a straight line. You had better go where there is plenty of room and have someone walk closely behind you lest you run into some­thing. Pick out a point several hundred feet away, and then see where you are at the end of the time it would have taken you to reach your objective.

In thick or heavy rain or snow, a pilot is just as blind as if he had a black cloth over his eyes. Con­sequently he will make the same mistakes as I did in the chair, if he does not have unbiased instru­ments to tell him the truth. Thus the plane might be in a steep spiral and he might be trying to right it by doing unknowingly the very thing which would tend to keep it so. I do not wish my state­ment to sound as if all any flyer had to do in “soupy” weather is to look at a few instruments, flap his wings and away. It must be remembered that reading and reacting to instruments require practise and skill.

As with music, for instance. One might well say to any random individual, “Here is a sheet of music and there is a piano. Go ahead and play.” It would be absurd to expect faultless execution with­out the subject’s understanding and his repeated performance.

To complicate matters, instruments for blind fly­ing are not yet perfected, neither those for the cockpit nor those which are a part of ground equip­ment.

1. We are indebted to Henry Holt & Company, Publishers, for per­mission to reprint this extract of “Fog” from Sandburg’s “Chicago Poems.”