Jasper County Democrat, Volume 18, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1915 — Page 2 Advertisements Column 4 [ADVERTISEMENT]

hardened just as he did, and we ceased to shudder until he had made his sixth or seventh loop in succession and started on another. However, his earthward glides were ever thrilling, and ever will be, no matter who does it, nor how often it is done. When he started falling toward the soil from three or four thousand feet and with his motor still, and not a sound but the whirr of the air through his wired frame, we all held our breath, every time! He fell like a rock, faster and faster and faster until just as the blood was filling our eyes and faces in amazement, the apparently breathless Beachy would suddenly “bank’ his machine against the air, by tipping the tail pieces a trifle, and glide horizontally to a running .stop on the grass' on his large-tired, rubber wheels,: IJe never fell straight down, but affc-r starting vertical, would invariably take a backward slant, so that a person directly beneath him could read the big letters “BEACH Y” printed across the top of , the top •■■’plane. That was wonderful: That he could, comet three . thousand feet at probably 150 miles an hour downward and get ,his breath was also a marvel; that he was not benumbed. or beside himself and thus forget to “bank’’ for the horizontal turn at the proper timewas also wonderful—a predecessor lost his presence of mind in Texas one time, and dived two feet Into the hard soil. • . ' - And still another marvel was how that boy—he was less than thirty i should judge from his face—could hit La Marina, a grass sward So rods long and ten rods wide—but he hit it square im the middle, at one end every time, no matter how high he was when he let go aloft. I shall never forget his wonderful feats, nor his kind, modest manners and the matter of fact way in which lie attended to matters. No shinj tights for him, he dressed in a business suit like anybody; wore a cap, and got ; into the machine just that way; on Iy. no olie ever prepared to get easy for craning his neck till Beachy took his cap carefully in both hands and placed-the peak to the back and pulled it far down over his ears. Then he was off instantly. He. would leave the ground in from 20 to 50 feet and when a hundred yards away, and 50 to 100 feet up, he always let go and waved both hands wildly, just to show that matters were O. K. with him, and that lie would soon be back. • Xo. I never met him, I didn’t mean to infer that when I say we knew him-—I have been no nearer him than a hundred feet or so, but we always watched his actions so closely that we felt as if we knew him personally. But here is what made me think of it; we had a new one today—a new aviator thrill—by Art Smith, and he is some aviator too. He can hover fly prettier than Beachy, and never can do the death drop better, but today when Smith was about TOOO. or 3,500 feet in the air, in a thirty mile wind, in which we on the earth had to hold our hats firmly, Smith ducked slightly, as did Beachy, ’Prior, to making the vertical climb in his loop, and let go a smoking fire brand at one end of his machine;; and He looped, the smoke tail following ever so pretty. He was carried put of the vertical several times by the wind,, but didn’t seem 1<) mind it, then, beginning at the fifth lobp, blessed if he wasn't whirling ’round and: round in a horizontal circle, one pair of planes pointing directly to earth and the other pair in the zenith, and round and‘round he went falling slowly till he* had completed about twelve loops. When we realized through our tear filled, wind blown eyes that he had a smoky spiral a thousand feet long following him, thrown in twelve pretty loops or spirals, giving a map °f the route as it were for verification of our bewildered senses, showing that he really did start looping vertical loops arid finished with about half a dozen horizontal spirals. Well, we thought that was some nerve, especially in that wind, when suddenly, not more than 500 feet up, he ducked, rose to the verticals threw only one wing of the tail, and careened sharply over to the left, flying back down and' at right angles to his start, then s’ help me, if that Art Smith didn’t turn over and,over three times with first the right planes on top and then the left on top, (l think you see what 1 mean, il i had him in my hand at arms length I would turn my hand over and over from top-right, if it wouldn’t twist off, down through, left, nrhtil he had made three times over. Xow it, takes some imagination to see this for he had to keep going into the wind some, since his propeller was roaring like the tide all the time, but he did it by throwing one of his two tail fans up, and the other down; how in the world he remembered at the right time which was “down” is a marvel. Then he roamed around the house tops in a flight that was absolutely crazy, utterly devoid of all system, tangling himself up in the tightest knots, it would seem, and that inexhaustible stream of white smoke still trailing him—it was a perfect vision, Then he shut off the motor at about 300 feet up—an unheard of procedure—they always do it in making the drop, but then the speed gives the control—here he was almost still (horizontally) when he >gt go the motor and the fan stopped, while ascending sharply: then he ducked, at 200 feet he righted by means of the tail fans, just like a sea gull; then dived to about 100 feet, when he righted again just to check his fall, and thus he worked his tail piece and landed with almost no horizontal movement, though the final alighting was a glide, of course, when the wheels took the sod, and he rolled up to within six feet of his starting hole. Well, even I put my papers he tween my knees and clapped my hands till they were warm. He certainly is a bird with human brains; but we will not go back on Beachy’s memory, for he did it first; that is he beat the birds first though he never whirled over and over like a