Yeager: An Autobiography

PANCHO'S PLACE

Pancho Barnes and her place were a big part of the sixteen years I spent out on the Mojave. If her little oasis didn't exist, we test pilots would've had to invent something like it, because it was the only place in sight to unwind and have a good time. It was our clubhouse and playroom, and if all the hours were ever totaled, I reckon I spent more time at her place than I did in a cockpit over those years. And I was tlying about five different airplanes daily.

At the end of each flight, I'd turn off all the cockpit switches, but there was no way I could so easily turn off all the switches inside myself. Glennis understood that her only serious rivals were not other women, but other pilots like myself, who shared the dangerous life of testing airplanes. The physical and mental stresses were felt by all of us and drew us together in special ways. Often at the end of a hard day, the choice was going home to a wife who really didn't understand what you were talking about, and from whom you kept back a lot so as not to worry her, or gathering around the bar with guys who had also spent the day in a cockpit. Talking flying was the next best thing to flying itself. And after we had a few drinks in us, we'd get happy or belligerent and raise some hell. Flying and hell-raising-one fueled the other. And that's what Pancho's was all about.

I met Pancho Barnes on my first trip out to Muroc in August 1945, when we were testing the Shooting Stars. There were only two places to eat off base, Pancho's and Maw Green's. Maw was a marvelous old salty character, a real desert rat like Pancho, who ran a little restaurant with her husband Angus. You could either eat at Maw's, near Anderson's store on the railroad track, or drive on out to Pancho's about ten miles farther. Pancho had a real dude ranch operation out there: a twenty-room motel, a swimming pool, stables, bleachers for a rodeo, and, of course, her bar, which was desert-basic- a jukebox, a pool table in back, a battered old piano, some tables and chairs. She also had a landing strip; people would fly up from Los Angeles to party. She raised her own cattle, fed them from her own alfalfa field, aged her own beef, and served a helluva good steak. She called the place "Pancho's Fly Inn." Later on, she changed it to "The Happy Bottom Riding Club," making it a private club so she could get rid of some of the weenies who'd hung around. Gen. Jimmy Doolittle and I got the first two membership cards.

Pancho was forty-six when I first met her. She had black hair and dark eyes, slim hips and broad shoulders. She would never use a five- or siX-1etter word when a four-letter word would do. She had the filthiest mouth that any of us fighter jocks had ever heard. Now, that's saying a lot, but it's true. She once complimented a general's wife at a party by saying, "For a bitch, you're a pretty nice dame." For Pancho, that was just normal talk. She had to be tough because the only argument about her was whether she was the ugliest woman we had ever seen, or one of the ugliest. But that didn't keep her from being married four or five times and bragging that she had had more lovers than all of our flying time put together.

Hell, we liked each other right off the bat. In those days, most of the fliers who hung out at her place were Hollywood stunt pilots and civilian test pilots. She found out I was a fighter pilot, an ace in the war, and wanted to know all about combat flying. I'd never met anyone like her. She had been a famous aviatrix, one of the first Hollywood stunt pilots and winner of a bunch of Tom Thumb races in the early 1930s. She had flown with Doolittle and Toohy Spaatz and Paul Mantz, and they often visited her place.

Her real name was Florence Lowe. Her grandfather was Thaddeus Lowe, one of the founders of Caltech, who had used a hydrogen balloon for artillery observation in the Civil War. As a girl, she lived in a thirty-room mansion in San Marino. She had a real society wedding and married a Pasadena minister, the Reverend Mr. Barnes. They had a son, Billy, who died in his thirties, when the Mustang he was flying drilled a hole not five hundred yards from Pancho's property. Pancho walked out on Barnes when Billy was still an infant and took up flying. She claimed that her husband had only slept with her once and that produced Billy. So she divorced the reverend and took off. But she sure as hell made up for lost time after that.

She became a smuggler and gunrunner, flying into Mexico during a revolution. She flew rumrunners into Ensenada and Tijuana. She spoke Spanish and Yaqui better than I talked the king's English. She had been living in the Mojave since 1933, where she started her place when the base was little more than a rat's nest. When I met her, she was married to a guy named Don Shalita, and she invited me and another Shooting Star pilot named Johnny Johnson to go down to Mexico for a day or two with her and Shalita. So we drove down in an old Cadillac and spent the day in Tijuana. She knew everybody south of the border. It was real interesting for me because it was my first trip to Mexico, even if it was only right across the border from San Diego.

In the spring of 1947, I again made a trip to Muroc, and Pancho asked me to fly down to Mexico with her in her Stinson. She flew it herself and she was a damned good pilot. We flew into Hermosillo, where the mayor greeted her like an old pal. They stuffed us with food and filled our tanks with tequila to the point where yours truly fell asleep standing in a closet. The next morning we set off on horses to a remote Yaqui Indian village. We rode all day to get there, and they welcomed her like a queen. The Indians took us out hunting deer on horseback. Every time I'd shoot, the damned horse would rear, and while I held on for dear life, it galloped me off into the brush. The Yaquis thought I was a great clown. From there, we flew down to Guaymas where Pancho had a friend who owned a fishing boat. We went out and caught marlin. I had a ball, and by the time we came back from that weekend, we were good friends. And I was just a maintenance officer. Her liking me had nothing to do with the X-1.

But when Hoover and I showed up as the X-1 drivers, you can imagine how pleased she was. Hell she knew everything that went on at Muroc. Her place was only a few hundred yards from the lakebed where we took off from the old south base. She got a bang out of the idea that we were flying the X-1 for the kick of flying it, not for some big contract bonus. She wouldn't let us ever pay for food or drink. She told Slick right to his face, "Do you know what Yeager makes? Two-fifty a month. Do you know what he's getting to fly the goddamn X-1? Two bucks an hour. And where are you and your hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar bonus? You'll be reading about him in the paper when he does what you were supposed to do."

One night, she asked Bob, "Hoover, why in hell are you only a lieutenant?" He shrugged and said something about a freeze in promotions. "That's a crock of shit. The Air Force never appreciates real talent." And she picked up the phone by the bar and called General Spaatz on his unlisted number in Washington. "Tooey," she said, "I've got a young lieutenant here named Bob Hoover, who's being fucked over royally…." Hoover liked to have died, and I stopped laughing by the next day.

Just before our first flights in the X-1, Gene May, a civilian test pilot, came over to Hoover and me at the bar, and said, "What makes you young fellas think you can fly faster than sound?"

Hoover said, "Well, Mr. May, Captain Yeager and I happen to have more time flying jets than you or any other ten civilian fliers you can name. So, what makes you think we can't?"

Pancho overheard this and said, "That's right, Gene, these two can fly right up your ass and tickle your right eyeball, and you would never know why you were farting shock waves." That was old Pancho.

If she liked you she was as generous as all outdoors, but, man, if Pancho didn't, she was a tomcat by the tail. For example, if she ever heard anyone say a word against me, out they went. And they stayed out, too. She just thought the world of me, and, as I've said, this was before the sound barrier. She gave me an old Triumph motorcycle, a beat-up old wreck, but I loved to ride around on it. One weekend, before Glennis came out, I took off with Hoover riding on the back to go see Don Bochkay, a pal from my old squadron. Bock lived out at Malibu, and Hoover and I rode right up the steps of that front porch and into the living room.

Pancho liked Glennis. She knew what it was like living on a captain's salary and raising a family, so she'd pack up steaks for us to take home; a couple of times, she put us all up in her motel for a week or more, while we were in the process of moving. She had a Dalmatian named Spot that followed her everywhere and slept right next to her in bed; if any of her husbands didn't like it, they went, not the dog. When Spot fathered a litter, she gave a pup to my kids. We named her "Sug," short for "Sugar " which is what I used to call Glennis in our courting days.

When Pancho got married for the final time to Mack McHendry, in 1952, she asked me to be best man. Albert G. Boyd, our base commander, now a two-star general, gave away the bride. Glennis helped her get dressed. It was the damnedest wedding we ever saw. The bride wore white lace, there were fifteen hundred guests in a big tent set up behind the motel. Pigs roasted in a big pit, and she had huge ice sculptures that melted to the size of ice cream cones in the afternoon heat. Man, it was a broiler, and we all about died in there. But Pancho brought in a bunch of Indian chiefs to do a special bridal dance that lasted nearly an hour. In the middle of it all the bride announced, "Hey, everybody, help yourself to the food. My ass is killing me in this girdle. I've got to change into my jeans.'

A lot of wives thought that Pancho ran a cathouse and raised hell if their husbands hung around out there. It wasn't a cathouse, but it sure as hell wasn't a church, either. She staged some Stag Nights that would make a Frenchman blush. And all the women who worked for her were single and good-looking. A wiseguy friend of hers once called to say he was coming up for the weekend and wanted a good-looking gal on toast. Pancho served it to him as a joke. I helped carry the unhinged door over to his room. On top was a naked waitress resting on five loaves of toast.

The rumor was that some ol the gals were on the lam from L.A. for various reasons. I don't really know; but every once in a while some of the toughest, meanest sons of bitches would come out there and hold a high-stakes dice game at her motel. She warned her friends to stay away. When she staged her rodeo shows, she also warned us fighter jocks not to mess with those cowboys. We didn't listen, and I remember feeling like an actor in a bad western, backing off, with a pistol pointed at my gut, while walking backwards out the bar door with my hands in the air because a cowboy thought I looked too long at his girl. You'd think, by the way, that a rodeo would be wholesome family entertainment. Everyone brought their wives and kids. But for openers, Pancho had a naked gal with long hair ride bareback around the stands. She introduced her as Lady Godiva.

Pancho's was the scene of many a wild night. And it was also the staging area for great adventures. One of the best (or worst) occurred right in the middle of the sound barrier flights. It was two in the morning on a Saturday night, and a bunch of us were still at the bar, when Russ Schleeh, a good pilot and a great guv (even if he was not only a damned bomber pilot, but head of the bomber test section at Wright), suggested we go out on a bear hunt. I had an old Mauser rifle that my Uncle Bill, a gunsmith in Hamlin, had made for me. Russ had a thirty-eight caliber automatic. Bob Hoover and Jack Ridley had .22s. The four of us piled into Hoover's Roadmaster convertible and took off for Johnsondale, a logging camp up on the Kern River.

We arrived around four in the morning; it was cold, late fall, and we ended up parked at the garbage dump, figuring that's where the bears hung around. We parked Hoover's car so the headlights shone on the garbage dump. We had two sleeping bags between the four of us. We flipped and Hoover and Schleeh won the bags. They slept out in a raw wind and spitting snow. Ridley and I were inside this damned old ragtop convertible on cold leather seats. Ridley was in the front seat and I was in the back, shivering in our flying suits, trying to stay warm on a bottle of Pancho's Mexican sauce. Every so often Jack would turn on the headlights and call out to Russ and Bob, "Hey, you guys seen any bears yet?" But those two were inside the sleeping bags dead to the world.

We snoozed, or tried to. Suddenly we heard a godawful scream and pistol shots. Ridley turned on the headlights and we jumped out of the car. There was ol' Schleeh, standing up in his sleeping bag, looking down into the garbage pit, waving his smoking pistol. "Jesus, I saw a bear and I think I got him," Russ said. Then we heard a shout from the bottom of the pit. "Hey, you son of a bitch, what are you doin'?" Hoover was down there, still inside his sleeping bag.

The zipper tassel on Hoover's bag had begun blowing in the wind, tickling his nose while he was asleep. He dreamt a bear was licking his face. He woke up, drunk and terrified forgot about the embankment and that he was inside a sleeping bag, and rolled down it, screaming. In the dark, he looked just like a bear to Russ who emptied his pistol at Hoover. Jack Ridley said it best: "There ain't no future bear-hunting with this sorry outfit."

I can't recall any rowdy fun that wasn't connected to Pancho's. Of course, she had the most fun of all. She couldn't care less about making a profit. Most of the booze was brought up from Mexico (the good stuff she kept locked away), and many nights I bartended when all the drinks were on the house. She loved flying and pilots, understood us and shared in our code. "Dumb bastard," she'd say, along with the rest of us, if a friend augered in. If a guy got hurt she had her own remedies. When one pilot broke his back crash-landing, Pancho said, "I know what that son of a bitch needs. He's going crazy from being horny and sober." So she marched on the guy's hospital room with a couple of bottles and one of her prettiest hostesses.

Hell, she was one of us so she knew our natures. She laughed when we brawled, knowing damned well there was nothing to it; the only sore feelings would be bumps and bruises. For us, a big part of the fellowship of flying was experienced at Pancho's. Being in our early twenties, we were in good physical shape and at the height of our recuperative powers-which we had to be to survive those nights. That was our Golden Age of flying and fun. By the time we reached thirty, our bodies forced moderation on us.

Pancho's own Golden Age really began when General Bovd came out in 1950 as base commander, moving all of the test division out from Wright Field with him. Her place was jammed every night. On the weekends, guys brought their wives for dances and barbecues, and the place toned down. The old man really liked her, and she took good care of him.

We came right over her place on takeoffs and buzzed the shingles off until the old man issued orders to stop. Around five one Saturday morning, Pete Everest and I took off in a couple of F 86 jets to do an air show for the Navy at Inyo Kern. We buzzed the motel. When I landed late that afternoon, I received two urgent messages: call Pancho and report immediately to General Boyd. Pancho told me that the old man was still at her place when we buzzed and was hopping mad. I reported to him, and the old man really looked the worse for wear. "I thought I issued strict orders not to buzz Pancho's," he frowned.

"Yes, sir."

"Well why did you disobey my orders?"

I said "Generai, how did you know that I disobeyed them? I buzzed that motel at five this morning."

He grinned. He couldn't help it, and that made him only madder. He glared at me for a long minute.

"Goddamn it, Yeager, get out of my sight."

Glennis thought that Pancho lived vicariously through my exploits. Maybe so. She was furious that I never got the recognition she thought I deserved for breaking the sound barrier, and didn't care what visiting general or politician she said it to. When NASA sent up chimps in the first space capsules, she told me, "Those damn news people don't know a real hero from ape shit." All of the experimental test pilots of that era who had flown supersonic were regulars at her place and she formed a "Blow and Go Club ' and hung our pictures on her wall. My picture was in the place of honor, and Pancho sat next to me at a farewell party in 1954 when I left Edwards to take over a fighter squadron in Europe.

I was glad I wasn't around to see Pancho's decline. The commander who replaced General Boyd declared her place off-limits on moral grounds. Pancho sued the Air Force, and after years of legal wrangling, won an out-of-court settlement of $400,000. But she lost her battle to save the place. The Air Force wanted to extend the south base runway, and her bar and motel were condemned. Then the bar burnt to the ground. Pancho gave up and moved fifty miles away. She tried to start another place, but it never caught on.

I visited with her a few times a year. She was living alone with her dog in a mobile home out on the Mojave, a desert rat to the end. She said to me "Well, goddamn it, we had more fun in a week than most of the weenies in the world have in a lifetime." The saddest part about her passing a few years back was that it was nearly a week before her body was discovered inside her mobile home.

She was my friend.