MORNING
I’ll get back to this picture, the Spirit of St. Louis, now that I know a lot about it. Framed with wood and piano wire, the “hubcaps” are made of doped cotton. It was custom built, no forward vision (he used a periscope) and note the wingspan almost twice the length. Range: 4,200 miles; his trip: 3,600 miles. Depending on who you ask. He was after a $100,000 in case anyone out there thinks it had some kind of scientific undertaking. The city of St. Louis paid for the construction.
Having slept through my intended screenwriter’s meeting, I watch a mystery movie. The Falkland’s War, 1982. The mystery is how the bad weather always prevented the British from flying their airplanes, but seemed to have no effect on the Argentines. This is a recurring theme in all Brit documentaries, much like the flank attack for the Americans and the rainstorms for the French. The exact things that stop their operations somehow provide shelter for the enemy.
The Lindbergh biography and the comfy recliner put me out until 4:00AM.
So how is the book on Lindy? It begins with his early life where they try to make a big deal of his growing up alone on a farm. Yet, there is no mention of any farm chores, you know, cows milked. He seems to have spent his time building duck ponds and target shooting. And on constant trips to Detroit and California, the latter still being a bit of an expedition in 1913. And by that year, the upper Mississippi was hardly the wild west. Example, he saw an airplane from his very back porch, did he not?
The bio is extensive but focuses on things I don’t identify with. Lindy dropped out of school to go pick potatoes where I’m the opposite on that count. Pitchforking spuds is fine if you like it, but pure torture when forced upon those who don’t. There is far too much emphasis on parental foibles making poor Lindy’s life somewhat less than idyllic. Like his father’s moods and squinting eye or his mother’s screaming attacks. Hey, poor-baby Charlie, want to trade?
From what I gather, his early life was downright luxurious. The author tries to make it sound like a struggling existence, but fails via sentences like how Lindy arrives at Penn Station “for the first time since he was ten”. Poor baby, considering visiting New York is a “difficulty” some of us have been trying to afford for thirty years.
But Lindy and I share one common dislike—a dislike of the hotel system in America. He complains of being overcharged an outrageous $3 per day. Another similarity is how in public he tends to say “we” when he should be saying “I”. I'm saying that I have the same bad habit of publicly saying "we" when I do all the work myself. This blog is obviously not public.
At the same time, I am thoroughly enjoying the passages about building airplanes. And technical details of the flight. Since he had not done well in navigation school, he drew a map with one hour segments that showed his magnetic declination at each waypoint. It doesn't say, but what's the bets he's lucky Paris has the Eiffel Tower.
NOON
I got a bill in the mail today. I very rarely get bills, but this was the tax bill on this place. Due now, but I think I’ll delay it until November. Why? Because there is a certain grim satisfaction in paying them their taxes with their own money.
I looked it up, Ruth Rowland Nichols. She tried, in 1931, to be the first female to solo the Atlantic and got as far as New Brunswick. Ruth had participated in a NASA training program for female astronauts, which included the then-gorgeous Jerrie Cobb. Nichols committed suicide in 1960.
Meanwhile, I’m rooting for Lindy’s aeroplane. The motor has perfectly make 14,472,000 rotations. All this while, thirty years later, the pilot admits he had ghosts and vaporous presences on the trip, giving him “messages of importance unattainable in ordinary life”. Consolations to anyone who inherits this book from me, I had been eating sprats and didn’t notice until too late I had gotten fish oil all over my fingertips. And into the pages. What's the next guy gonna think?
Anyway, our hero has by now made Paris and the newspapers have made millions. Listen up, historians, the conduct of these papers is a real background into how degenerate most have become by today. All the dirty tricks of the American press were already in evidence. Shopped photos, fake interviews, a Brazilian lady’s society even demanded to know the fate of the “kittens” he had take along. All invented by crooked journalists and compliiant editors.
AFTERNOON
Okay, fasten your seat belts. For two reasons. One, Trent has another hybrid and what a gem. It is at least 15% larger than his old model, the one that got T-boned. It has the same lines as a smaller vehicle but is almost the size of an SUV once you get up close. I like it and maybe soon I’ll get some close ups and maybe a shot of the exterior lines. It is as roomy inside as my old Cadillac.
He took to the patterns readily where I usually expect an ex-guitar player find certain moves “wrong”. No so, within the hour, we were playing a series of tunes that show we paid attention when we were learning our voicings a couple of years back. And when I say take to it, I’m watching for the enthusiasm that tells me the music is going to get practiced. He also responded very well to the fact that the advanced material is fun.
Advanced? Yes. I brought him right in at the level I’ve learned is beyond the initial hurdles. That is, past the barriers that can turn rehearsal into tough lessons. Everybody who has ever given up learning an instrument knows what I’m talking about here. It is rare, but occasionally you find a person who plays bass instinctively and there are early indications that is what is going on. There is no doubt we’ll follow this up as I can quickly show an avid learner how to play bass better than I can play guitar. That’s important, since he’ll often have to cover for what I cannot play.
