I really like this photograph (here's a link to a larger version) for some reason. It resonates with the book I'm reading right now, One Summer: America, 1927 , which gives a good if brief account of the beginnings of aviation in America (author Bill Bryson reports that before Lindbergh, there was no technology in which America was more backward, and trailed Europe more badly, than early aviation). It resonates with personal experience, because I've flown in a plane like that (at an airshow, for a fee—with artist and photographer Chris Bailey, he of the Lost Portfolio); it touches on personal connection, because I'm loosely related to a guy who was a barnstormer (Henderson Wheeler was his name—the father of one of my mother's cousins; he died in a plane crash when his son was very young). And it triggers my acrophobia (fear of heights). It was bad enough—under control, but present—riding in the open cockpit of a plane like that. There was a time in my life when just seeing this photograph would have given me bad dreams.
I also like imagining where the photographer is as he (or she) took the picture. Here's a link to a possible picture of the photographer. Well, a picture of a man with a camera from the same album (mustn't assume).
The photograph comes from an album that belonged to barnstormer/daredevil Carter Buton. It's on loan to the archives of the San Diego Air and Space Museum, some of which is on flickr.
Buton died in 1971 at the age of 79, give or take a year. So he survived his wing-walking and biplane-trapeze antics of the 1920s.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
No featured comments yet—please check back soon!
