Bill Barnes Air Adventurer, July 1935 — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Airport In A feet, banked slightly, and headed south, still climbing. From each of its two open cockpits a man looked over the side. The goggled and helmeted figure in the rear looked ahead for the most part—to the horizon and the nose of the ship, to the set of his wings, to the terrain ahead, and occasionally to the instrument panel in front of him. The other kept looking down at the flying field they had just left. It was a beautiful flying day. There was little or no wind. Few clouds were in the deep blue of the sky and the sun shone brightly and warmly. Visibility was nearly perfect. The field was on their left. On their right was a mountain; at their back, the little mountain city of Snowden, a city that is still rubbing its eyes and blink- ing in amazement at the phenomenal growth of its airport in importance and prestige and in the volume of its com- mercial activity. From a vacant cow pasture, used first by itinerant barnstorming fliers and then by intrepid local youths aspiring to emulate them, the port has grown by leaps and bounds to become the center of a bustling air commerce. More than a score of widely known firms, with SMALL PLANE rose from Snowden Field in a long ascent, businesses a part of the aviation in-: dustry, have offices or agencies estab- lished there. If the prime reason for this phe- nomenal growth is inquired of them, members of these firms are quick to refer the inquirer to the geography of the United States and then call atten- tion to all the “meridian chasers”—the cross-country record seekers, sports- men, adventurers, air-mail pilots, pas- climbed to about five hundred the Valley senger-line operators, and others— whose ships put in there. The flying field itself lies in a val- ley, now a “valley of lost hope” for one Freddie Harper, the man in that front cockpit. “Fearless Freddie” he was to most people. He had been thus playfully but admiringly dubbed be- cause, from the very day of his arrival at Snowden more than two years before this September Sunday, no one in all those two years or more had ever known him to be afraid of anything, least of all death, while going about the busi- ness of performing any of his spectac- ular stunts in the air. But Freddie Harper, parachute ex- pert, had become a craven. Fearless Freddie was afraid. It was not death that he feared but—life! And he was secretly taking a way out—a simple, easy way that would scarcely be likely to be called suicide. It would be cer- tain to be called an accident, the sort of accident, he knew, that holiday airport crowds secretly, consciously or uncon- sciously, hope to be able to witness. It would be the accident, the one that can happen only once in a professional para- chutist’s career. His ’chute was going to fail—utterly. Thrill-thirsty visitors to the field were going to have their craving fully satisfied for once. He knew it had been done before— by a despondent, friendless, homesick German exhibitionist, a beaten stranger in a strange land. But he had been crude and they had found him out. They had found his shroud lines tied in a knot and shame had attended his going out. Looking down, Harper saw that they were there in unusually large numbers, these sight-seers, doubtless on account of the perfect weather. According to (©) Ghook CO