Ted's Flying Days, Part 1
TED'S FLYING FROM START TO FINISH, Part 1
I got hooked on flying when I was in my early teens. We lived on a farm near Nelson, Nebraska. When I would hear or see an airplane I'd jump on a horse and ride to the hay field where the barnstormers always landed about 4 1/2 miles from our farm. I would tie the horse about 1/2 mile from the airplane but it didn't do any good if the plane flew, the horse would get loose and go home and I had to walk. I hung around so much the pilot said I could go along with him as flunkie to keep the old Jennie cleaned up, etc. When I told my mother about the good deal she said no way, not until I got to my 21st birthday, as it was too dangerous and I'd surely get killed.
So that ended my hopes to fly. When I was 17 my Uncle Ralph Galusha (my mother's brother) came to visit us from Basin, Wyoming, and let me come to Wyoming with him to work for his brother, my Uncle Charlie Galusha. I was in the big money. He paid me $4.00 a day. I worked all that summer at the brickyard; then went back to Nebraska to help Dad get the corn shucked. Guess I talked the family into moving to Wyoming in May 1924. We all worked at the brickyard the first year. Then Dad started to farm on North Bench, north of Basin. His landlord whom he rented the farm from was Mr. Rowe who worked for the Ohio Oil Co.
I had my first airplane ride at Cody, Wyoming at the Frontier Rodeo on July 4, 1928 with a barnstormer, flying a Ryan BI 5 passenger with a Wright J5 engine. That same guy was flying out of an alfalfa field at a Meeteesee celebration a few years later when a drunken cowboy showed up and he was really loaded with booze. When the plane was loaded with passengers, the pilot started to taxi for take off, the cowboy ran and leaped up on the tail of the plane just ahead of the rudder, yelled "Yippee", raking his spurs on the side of the fuselage. The pilot was not aware of what had happened but as the airplane took off he had trouble getting the tail up so he warned his passengers he was having trouble trying to get the tail up and that they should put the seat cushions in front of them, and he would try to land. In the meantime the cowboy had dug his hand and heels through the fabric while holding on for dear life. The pilot managed to land roll to a stop and got out to see what part of the controls he had lost. The cowboy dismounted stone sober, took off across the field so fast, the pilot who had murder in his heart, could not catch him. The life of a barnstormer was never dull. I could go on and on.
Mr. Rowe gave me a job in the oil fields so I ended up in McFadden, Wyoming. While there I was married to Jewell Adams, and we had two kids while living there. When the N.R.A. went into effect we quit working 9 hrs a day, 7 days a week, and we went to either 36 or 40 hours a week. I ended up with my weekends off, so with all that extra time, I thought I should do something constructive. There were ads in the Laramie paper for flying lessons. So I loaded up my wife and kids and drove to Laramie one weekend and tried to find the airport. Could see the plane flying south of town. I finally got to it by going through fields and wire gates. Anyway, I found the road by going from the airport to town. This set a pattern in my life; I've always had a hard time finding my way around in a car.
At the airport I met Freddie Wahl who gave me a demonstration flight circling around snow squalls to stay V.F.R. I was thrilled and so lost I didn't know which way was up. We made a deal and I started to take flying lessons on weekends in a Hisso Eaglerock.
That was the start of my flying career in 1932. It was tough. In 5 weekends, going to Laramie 90 miles one way, I got in 15 minutes flying time. Anyone that would learn to fly at that altitude of 7300 feet and with southern Wyoming weather should have his head examined. If I remember right, I got 6 or 7 hours in that year. Then the next year, 1933, the company sent me out on pipe line jobs, so I made only 3 hours that year. I was helping to build a pipe line into Billings, Montana. We had Sundays off, so I went up to the Billings airport to see about taking a few lessons. The school up there was run by a fellow named Lucas. He said he would take me but he was going to start flying for Inland Airlines the next day. They were flying Stinson Gull Wings. At that time when they got a passenger they would fly to a destination and sit there until another passenger showed up. They got a mail contract later and flew on scheduled times. The man Lucas about a year or two after I met him was flying a Mono Mail. Later, Lucas flew the Mono Mail into a mountain. Maybe if he had stayed in Billings flying his little Curtis, Jr, he might be alive today, who knows.
The next year Freddie Wahl moved his operation to the Rawlins airport. We were very good friends by this time. One of his other students, Alvin Grand, had bought an Axelson Travel Air, and with Freddie moving to Rawlins and with Alvin's family needing the money, I and Cecil Halloway also of McFadden bought the Travel Air with his dad putting up the money, and we paid so much a month until we got it paid out. We paid $850 for it with a hangar. Freddie was teaching us to fly in it, but Cecil had a bad thing about rough air. He'd just loose his cool. He was flying from McFadden to Rawlins, and the air got rough. When he got to Rawlins he landed about 20 feet high and crashed so he just washed his hands of flying. Told me the plane was mine. I could fix it up, sell it or whatever. So when I could scrape up a few dollars I'd buy a part or two for it. In the meantime I had quit the Ohio and moved to Rawlins and worked for the Highway Department. With the time I had in the TravelAir and Freddie's Kinner bird I had enough time to go for a limited commercial license. I also went up for my A & E license about that time.
You had to have a mechanic license, so you could legally work on your own planes. Even if you could afford it, there was no one you could hire.
Barnstorming was a lot of fun and a good way to build up flying time. My brother-in-law, Levi Adams, sold tickets for us. Freddie would fly his Ryan BI and I flew the Kinner Bird. Levi had the best nature and sense of humor; the people were all different and yet the same, we always had the local expert on airplanes -- he never had the price of a ride but plenty of talk. Levi labeled them "Old Billy When's". They would put their foot up on the wire fence and say I knew old Billy when he had his airplanes out here -- a one-winger and two-winger which was not an aviators talk. They would have said a monoplane or a biplane and usually called by the make like Ryan-Bird, etc. Another type was the town belle that would work on Levi for a free ride -- he would usually get rid of them by telling them that he came from a long line of horse traders- if she had anything to trade they could make a deal. That usually ran them off. (In this day and age I don't think that would work.)
Then there was a parachute jumper that used reverse salesmanship. He'd go to a car with a boy and girl and offer them tickets. The boyfriend would say no--they wanted to see the show- not ride. Then the jumper wou|d say, come on, don't be a cheap skate--take her for a ride. She expects you to take her for a ride and shame the poor guy to spend his last $10.00 for a ride.
The jumper never did get beat up but expected it. He jumped with his auxiliary chute plnned with cactus that he had landed on and he knew that it couldn't open if he had needed it but luckily he never did.
The most dangerous part of barnstorming was the kids that would volunteer to take us to town in their car. At Big Piney, Wyoming, a kid spun his car three or four turns up on a grade and if we had gone off either side of the road the car would have rolled and it happened every place we went or else we had to walk to town. Of course, all of those kids wanted to show us how daring they were - just perfect for pilot material. A lot of those towns that. were barnstormed eventually did build airports and tried to use the same place we landed as those airplane fellows picked that place because they thought the air was better there. They didn't know it was picked because it had less irrigation ditches, smoother land and maybe drier or had the longest run into the wind. Some already had airports. For instance, one had all the runway marked with pretty white cones. After we landed found the cones were made of gypsum and four feet high. All you had to do was hit one and all was lost. Luckily we never did hit any of them.
The old Limited Commercial license allowed you to hop passengers or instruct as long as you stayed within 50 miles of your base of operations. I could barnstorm by changing my base to the town where we were going to barnstorm then back to Rawlins again. I was so hard up that I couldn't buy gas for my old car to get to the airport so I walked out to the airport on Sunday and if I just got one or more passenger rides I'd get 10 or 15 minutes flying time per ride so it was well worth the walk and time. In about a year or more I accumulated enough time for my commercial license. Flying time is like money - the more you have the easier it is to get more. In the meantime with Freddie Wahl's help we got the Travelair rebuilt -- what a good airplane. About that time Freddie took over the operation in Cheyenne and left me in charge of the Rawlins airport. I'd shovel a big snowdrift from in front of the hangar just about every day. My ex-boss, whom I had driven truck for all summer gave me a job as a bartender. My first indoor job. I liked it as I could stand behind the bar and look out the front and see a blizzard blowing. It sure beat being stuck with a truck on a windy hill. One time while trying to be bartender I had a lady customer. After mixing a drink for her she said, "Ted, I can tell something about you! You haven't spent much time on either side of the bar."
On May 19, 1938, James A. Farley, the Postmaster General, declared National Airmail Week to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Inauguration of Scheduled Airmail Service by flying a plane load of airmail on a flight sponsored by the business people of various communities. I flew my Travelair from Rawlins to Baggs and Craig, Colorado. Landed out in the sage brush north of Baggs, was met with the mail from the post office and flew to Rawlins, and left the Travelair there, using the Kinnerbird to fly to Saratoga and Encampment, Wyoming. My wife, Judy went along as a passenger. Saratoga has a good airport but we had to land in a bean field southeast of Encampment. We flew that mail back to Rawlins to be picked up by Freddie Wahl who had picked up mail west of Rawlins, Rock Springs, Green River, Kemmerer and Big Piney. We loaded all the mail in the Ryan and Freddie flew it to Cheyenne. The weather was bad and one airmail flight was to Douglas and Wheatland where the pilot cracked up his plane and several others did not fly because of the bad weather. Freddie Wahl and I each received a certificate from James A. Farley for participating in Airmail Week.
About Christmas that year I got a call from a fellow I had instructed some in Rawlins from Winslow, Arizona. He had bought an Aeronca K and wanted me to go to Winslow and instruct students for him. It was the first time I had been offered a job flying so I told him if he would send me money enough to get down there I'd come. I got the Travelair out and headed for Winslow. All I had was a highway map that covered four states. I landed in Grand Junction for gas. The snow was plowed off the runway, only a narrow strip and snow was halfway to the upper wing. When I left there I climbed out over the mountain with just the tree tops sticking out of the snow. But as I left the mountain the snow was very thin and when I got to the Mesa Verde River, it wasn't even frozen over. I thought, Oh boy, this is great! After being in Winslow about ten days I got a charter trip to Phoenix and could see all those green fields and orange groves and kids swimming in the canal - I said to myself this is for me and the flying weather was good all the time.
The man I was flying for at Winslow had an Aeronca K. It had a Aeronca 2 cylinder engine and it wasn't the easiest little plane to fly- 40 HP at about 4000 feet altitude on the field. About half my flying was trips over the Meteor Crator west of Winslow. After about six months my boss traded the Aeronca K for a Aeronca Chief that had a 50 HP Continental engine. Shortly after that my boss and his wife were having a lot of trouble and he took off leaving her with the airplane and pilot plus payments on the plane. She tried to take over the paper on it, but her credit rating was less than bad and all I had to keep from starving was the few students and trips. So that I could keep off the bread line, I signed up for the plane and why they trusted me I'll never know. To make a long story short, the man's wife took after him--they tried every way to get the plane back and they even sent the sheriff after me so I showed him that I had made a lot of payments on the plane and owed for the rest of the payments as per note that I had signed. I told the sheriff if they would pay me what I had put in it, and give me my note paid, they could have the plane. The sheriff said the plane was mine unless they paid off and that was the last I ever heard from them.
I had lots of fun in Winslow flying all over the Indian Reservation. The local theater had bank night every Thursday and we gave them a second prize of a free airplane lesson. I don't think we made one student sale but had a little fun. In Winslow there was a little group of colored people that worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. One bank night one of them got the free airplane ride and gave it to a little 15 year old girl. All of them came to the airport to watch. I was sure I wouldn't see a lesson on this ride and the wind was such that I had to taxi to the far end of the runway for take-off, and the girl would look out the window and then back to me and pretty soon she said, "we ain't very high, is we?" She was sure that the pilot was cheating her on the ride.
Shortly after the man and his wife left, T.W.A. needed a mechanic at Winslow and I went to work for them so I could eat regular and send for my family and run my flying on the side. About that time I started flying to Gallup, New Mexico, on weekends which was my day off and ran a school there that saved my flying business. All those Indian reservation employees were paid good and had no depression at that time.
The next summer I had my only airplane crack-up. Holbrook, Arizona was having a celebration of some kind and I flew the Aeronca down there to try to hop some passengers. I landed inside an old race track, flew over the town several times and not one person came out. The race track was up above the north end of town and I decided to make one more pass over the town and if no one came out I would fly back to Winslow. That is when the engine quit just as I went over the bluff, and I turned back to the field but so low I had to land long on the runway running through the race tracks where I left the landing gear and other parts of the plane. I called the Finance Company and told them they could repossess it as I had no money to fix it up again. They told me they didn't want it and said they would defer some payments until I got it repaired but I didn't have that kind of money. Then my good friends and students at Gallup got together and paid me for flying time in advance so I soon had the Aeronca flying again.
One of my friends that had a commercial license was flying a passenger for me at Gallup -- he made a low tight turn around the smoke stack at Gameco, N.M. and spun in. The Travelair was totaled and I sold what was left for $50.00. It also taught me not to loan an airplane to anyone.
I had a little instrument experience at Gallup. I was caught down there in a fog so thick I couldn't see the end of the runway. My boss at T. W. A., Winslow, called me and he was desperate. All T. W, A. flights were canceled at Winslow due to bad weather in California. I tried the train and bus, and no way could I make it, back until late that night or next day and my boss had already worked a straight 24 hours. I checked the weather, the fog was only about 1000 feet thick and no wind, so decided I would try it. I cannot believe it now but I let a student go along for the ride. I had to take off to the west, make a 180 turn and climb down the valley east so I trimmed the plane for hands off climb. Next thing I knew I was slipping to the left to the Santa Fe Roundhouse just under me. I retrimmed the plane again and tried to help control the air speed and talk about luck, we popped out into the bright sunlight. No one will ever know how good all that visibility looked to me. I winged to Winslow to help take care of those DC 3's until they all left.
The next summer Bill Cutter from Albuquerque wanted me to come there and fly for him in his C.P.T. courses so I moved again and went to work for him. I wanted to fly for a living and this move and working for Bill Cutter was the answer and instructing was the way to build up flying time. If I remember right they had 32 C.P.T. students at that time. They already had their instructors and when I started they averaged about eight to twelve hours so I ended up giving them all their spins. Eight to ten hours a day I did nothing but spins and when I was learning to fly I always got sick doing spins. It was a fact that we use to spin an average of 6 to 8 turns then haul it out any direction and pulling a lot of G's. The C.P.T. program requirements were to make two turns and recover within 30% of where they entered the spin. Cutter- Carr were using Stinson 109 airplanes - three place with a Continental 75 HP engine and at that altitude over 5000 they were sick. With a full swivel tail wheel and only brakes on left side, the students wiped out 2 or 3 with ground loops so they phased them out and replaced them with Taylorcrafts. The Taylorcrafts were just right for the primary course. I had my own class in the next C.P.T. course. I had a star football player and was he clubfooted. I was afraid to solo him so turned him over to Bill Cutter. Early in the morning Bill flew with him. I also had a student I soloed and was standing by the runway where I turned him out of the nest. Bill pulIed up with old clubfeet about a hundred yards ahead of me. My student landed and I waved him on then Bill's boy came in and made a perfect landing. As soon as he hit the ground he flew apart - wide open throttle and full rudder he spun like a top but finally got the poor little Taylorcraft stopped. Bill always smoked or ate cigars - he pulled it out of his mouth looked at me and said "ha, ha ha" got in with his student and went to the hangar. When they got out of the plane and was walking to the office Bill grabbed him by the shoulders hauled off and kicked him in the butt. Bill was small - weighing about 150 pounds and this guy was about 240 pounds and also the Lobo Champ fighter. Bill said if he had known that, he sure wouldn't have kicked him.
At that time we were flying off the Municipal Airport and had a little crowding with the airlines howling about the students cutting them off. Continental Airlines was the worst - they would take off at Santa Fe in their Loadstars at 6500 feet elevation never had a very big load and dive at Alburquerque Airport and a student would be on final approach before they got in sight then they would say the student cut them off. So Cutter-Carr leased the old West Mesa Airport. So Virginia Cutter, Bill's wife, and I opened up for business on West Mesa Airport with all the primary students of C.P.T and all the other students. We had four classes C.P.T. students. I also set up the maintenance shop. All helped, mostly kids, out of which I made some real good mechanics. The rules that C.P.T. set up was we were only allowed to fly 45 hours a week but my very good friend, Bob Stubelfield and I always flew about 70 to 80 hours a week but just logged 45 hours for the inspectors benefit.
I instructed quite a few girls and had lots of good luck with them, including Mrs. Cutter, and we usually had one or two girls in the C.P.T. program. One of the instructors had a girl student that he was afraid to solo so turned her over to me to check for a wash out. We took off to be sure and she was nervous when we came in for a landing. She cuddled up real close and I thought she was working on me so I would pass her, using her feminine wiles. The next landing the same thing only she landed about 2O feet above the runway. The next landing I watched her instead of the runway and sure enough she was looking or sighting right over the center of the nose and all she could see was blue sky. Therefore, if she leveled off just right it was a good landing and if not it was bad. So we pulled off the runway and I explained to her that she must look at the runway and use her depth perception. Needless to say I soloed her after three more landings. Her instructor nearly drowned in sweat until she made some nice landings.
After that class I flew to Canton, Ohio, via airline, to pick up a new Waco U.P.F.7 secondary trainer and I was promoted to a secondary instructor which was all aerobatics and that was the most enjoyable flying and certainly was fun. The students were so eager for aerobatics. We would fly them about 4 or 5 hours to familiarize them with the airplane - more power, open cockpit, etc. When the big day arrived I'd tell them to empty their pockets, tighten their seat belts as we were going to get on our back and be sure no matches in their pockets. We would fly to practice area climbing for altitude then I'd roll the plane on its back and watch them in the mirror. They would usually hang out of the cockpit - head and shoulder - looking up at the ground. After that they got the seat belt tight. Also when I'd check the other instructor's students they would try so hard they would black out and end up on their back with one wing low. I soon learned to keep my knees out of the way of the stick as when their vision returned they would whip the stick all over the cockpit - then recover.
Next, the WWII adventures.
