Nothing by Chance - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Richard Bach (Photographs) #23

Photographs

^{The Luscombe and the biplane in earlier days, as we were practicing landings in fields, wondering if it just might be possible to survive as modern-day barnstormers.}

^{Sometimes it is devilish hard to pick up a handkerchief.}

^{And sometimes it’s easy.}

^{How it looks after you hit the thing, and climb away in triumph. That’s a smoke flare tied to the horizontal stick, which I could fire by pressing a button in the cockpit.}

^{When you smash a wheel into a dike of earth at 110 miles per hour, you expect some inconvenience.}

^{The beauty of friends, Part 1. Stu MacPherson and Johnny Colin, having welded the broken landing gear, begin on the wing. I’ve gone to Iowa after a spare propeller.}

^{Part 2. Johnny, Dick Willetts, Stu and Paul Hansen worked through the rain to fix the biplane while I was gone. Paul took this picture (and all the others, too).}

^{The last bits of repair, and Johnny is all set, drift streamer in hand, for his afternoon jump with Stu. By the time the jump was finished, the propeller I’m holding was installed, and the engine run.}

^{One time all summer Paul Hansen was the first one awake. He took this picture. Then he went back to sleep under the wing.}

^{Aerobatics and dogfights over the fields brought people to watch the sky-gypsies, and to fly with them, $3 the ride.}

^{Anybody who likes to get down from the sky the way Stu does is not only out of his mind, but a valuable member of any flying circus.}

^{After supper, we carried lots of passengers. But during the day…}

^{Stu and I in Palmyra, Wisconsin. Except for the shape of its automobiles, Midwest America hasn’t changed much from the days of the first barnstormers.}