Frequent Flyers
In the January 9, 1926, issue, Charles Gilbert Reinhardt wrote of his experiences as a barnstorming pilot in “Gypsying the Jennies”
A Curtiss JN, or “Jenny” biplane, lays a smoke screen at an aerial circus held by the U.S. Navy at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
The “flying gypsies” as he called them were of two kinds. One was the serious pilots who were flying stunts over crowds and giving rides, hoping to save enough money to enter commercial aviation.
The others were young men with wanderlust who liked the wild, reckless life, “setting out from a jerk-water town with just enough gas to make the next jump and a thrilling uncertainty as to when they will next feed either the planes or themselves.”
Imitated, Never Duplicated
In the 1900s, Courtney Ryley Cooper got to know Buffalo Bill Cody while working with several circuses and Wild West shows. In his Post article “Draw, Stranger” (January 2, 1926), he noted that many of the old-timers claimed to have performed all sorts of heroic deeds, but would criticize Buffalo Bill as a “white-haired old fraud, a four-flusher and a person who never did anything more for America than to shoot glass balls from the back of a horse in a Wild West show. The queer thing was that, for some unaccountable reason, nine-tenths of those defamers wore long hair and a goatee and a certain type of big hat, and did their darnedest to look like Buffalo Bill.”
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Comments
A lot of rural people made moonshine during the Great Depression in order to make a living. Especially here in the South.
I’m going to look into the 1926 article referenced here. You know me Jeff. I’m always interested in 19th and early 20th century tales from the American dark side, especially con artist “doctors” with this or that potion to make all our problems go away. Of course we want to see them caught and punished, just not right away.