Charles C. Patton Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

to his mother and said, "Hey,mom, what'll I do with it?" nd of
course, Mrs. Bunn about fainted. Fortunately, my fath 4 r was
home, so they went across the street to my father and my dather
took the end of his finger and stuck it back on with some
adhesive tape, and the damn thing grew. (laughter) That wqs his
experience there.
Q. Was he able to use it?
A. Yes. He just cut off the end of it, beyond the end of the
first knuckle. He was very mechanical. Had a little motor driven
automobile called the t'Redbug". Brought it from Bud Vredenberg.
It had four wheels and a platform, and the fifth wheel on the
back on which was mounted onto a gasoline engine and a driver
that drove the fifth wheel, we ran all over town with that, and
as he grew older, he didn't go to high school here. He was sent
away to Lawrenceville. Only common people went to high school,
and he didn't do very well, and they brought him back home, and
while I was in high school, I suppose in my senior year, he
bought himself an airplane. It was a WACO, W A C 0. That was a
type of bi-wing airplane with open cockpit, one cockpit in the
front of the other, and two wings. He learned to be a pretty
good pilot, and he used to call me up on the telephone and say,
"hey, come on, let's go out fly ing." So we'd go out to the
southwest airport which was out south of Wabash on Old Cbatham
Road, in between two railroad tracks. It's all built up with
houses now, and they have some of the old airport buildings still
there. Anyhow, I'd go flying with him and back in those days,
there weren't any laws against aerobatics, so he wouldn't
hesitate to try all the wing-overs and the loop-the-loops,
Immelmanns, and spins. Oh, it made me sick, spinning in.
I remember one time, he called me up and said, "Hey,, come
on, I've got to go down to St. Louis and swing
i
the co pass.
Well, swinging the compass meant that you had to calibra e the
compass. It was done in St. Louis where they had a concre e pad
with a big circle on it, with an X in the middle of the c rcle.
You put the airplane in the circle and lined it up with th line
that pointed north, then you got in your plane and you s t the
compass. And that was. . . but going down there, he'd g down
hedge-hopping. And I mean Literally hedge-hopping. Over the
telephone wires, over hedges, up and down, and he didn't have to
navigate. He'd just follow the Chicago-Alton railroad. That's
what took us there. That's what Lindberg did. I repember
Lindberg coming over. Of course, he didn't use the same aihport,
he used another airport which was. . well, it wasn't an
airport, it was just an empty field out west of town.
remember watching him fly the mail over in this big. . . Wtll, 1,don't I
remember what kind of an airplane it was, but I remember t was
painted green and the pilot sat way back in the tail, and 1 t had
exhaust pipes an it, and it always came through from Chicago in
the late evening, taking the late Chicago mail to St. Louis and
the flames from the exhaust pipes were visible as he went over.