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YANKEE PHOTOGRAPHER

YANKEE
PHOTOGRAPHER

by George HL Hill

WITH PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR

Coward-McCann, Inc New York

Copyright, 1953, by George H. Hill

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, must not be repro-
duced in any form without permission. Published simultaneously in
the Dominion of Canada by Longmans, Green if Company, Toronto.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 53-8886

MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To my wife Doris but for whose help and in-
terest this book would not have been possible.

Illustrations

The following illustrations appear on the Endpapers:

1. CHAPTER xn The Gertrude L. Thebeaud

2. CHAPTER vni Roosevelt on private yacht

3. CHAPTER vi Dirigible towing surfboard

4. CHAPTER DC Eclipse story

5. CHAPTER vii Coast Guard rescue of Robert E. Lee

6. CHAPTER x Vermont flood

7. CHAPTER vi Runaway balloons

8. CHAPTER iv Sugaring Off in Vermont

9. CHAPTER iv Fishing for sharks

10. CHAPTER vi Plane jumper boarding submarine

Illustrations following page 88:

11. CHAPTER iv President Coolidge and Mrs. Coolidge

casting their votes

vii

12. CHAPTER VIH Nitrate ship explodes

13. CHAPTER v Airplane taking off from top of car

14. CHAPTER v Airplane in position on car

15. CHAPTER iv The DeviFs Workshop

16. CHAPTER iv President Coolidge on his farm

17. CHAPTER iv The bird that never flew

YANKEE PHOTOGRAPHER

Chapter 1

IT WAS MARCH 11, 1928 and the New England
coastline was being pounded by gale winds and snow. The
barometer had been falling for many hours and the sea-
faring old-timers on Cape Cod knew that a northeaster
had moved in with all its fury. The last glimmers of day-
light had passed hours before, for it was now about seven
o'clock in the evening and the howling winds had started
to pack the snow in drifts on the highways. The old salts
sat by kitchen stoves in their rugged Cape Cod cottages,
and as the shutters rattled and beat out their rhythmic
but mournful chorus, they thought of the men at sea fight-
ing the mountainous waves.

Then through this blinding snow and wind came the
dreaded pierce and crackle of an SOS that alerted every
Coast Guard base on the New England coast. Within five
minutes my home telephone in Boston rang and an ex-
cited voice said, "Hill, we have just received an SOS from
the S.S. Robert . Lee. She has just struck Mary Ann
Ledges near the Cape Cod Canal. Cutters are leaving
Boston now and others are being diverted to the scene
from sea. The nearest Coast Guard Station is Manomet
Point and they will put out in surfboats if the seas will
permit."

A quick look at a map and I tossed a shovel into my car

3

and along with camera equipment, overshoes and extra
warm clothes I was off on another story.

Yes, for twenty-five years I held a front row seat at the
thrilling news stories that have made your headlines.
One by one they paraded by the lens of my camera, some
in perfect weather conditions which were ideal for the
photographer, but more often in blinding snow storms or
pouring rain, when even the inventors of the modern cam-
era would shrug their shoulders and fold up. But that
isn't newspaper photography.

The cameraman knows when a big story breaks that it
is his job to get a picture on the editor's desk just as fast
as is humanly possible, and that light and weather condi-
tions are of minor importance in the mind of the editor.
To date I have never heard of a newspaper photographer
utterly failing to get a picture on any big story because of
poor light.

The news cameraman is a very peculiar fellow who acts
like any individual in ordinary life but changes immedi-
ately into a reckless daredevil who will take all kinds of
chances and perform the impossible the instant a major
news story breaks.

I have walked miles in the middle of the night battling
my way through the deep sands of a Cape Cod beach,
while a howling wintry gale drove the snow and sleet into
my face and clothing in freezing masses of liquid ice. All
during the struggle I knew that at the end of this hike I
would find a ship ashore with all kinds of picture possibil-
ities, and I could visualize the layout of pictures that I
wanted: a Coast Guard crew working with breeches buoy
rescue apparatus, or bringing the crew ashore through
high seas in lifeboats. All of which I knew would make
page one, with an eight column spread in the newspapers
all over the country.

Arriving at the wreck I would make photographs by
the light of magnesium flares or by flashpowder cartridges,

4

and if the crew were still on the wreck, it was then a mat-
ter of finding a good lofty sand dune, and huddle in on
the lee side until daylight when the Coast Guard would
take off the crew.

Then the long grind back through the deep sand to my
car and a fast hundred mile drive to Boston with the pic-
tures. Tired? No, not until the last picture had been serv-
iced to the newspapers and the negatives sent off to the
New York office, and then I would realize that I was just
about dead on my feet, my clothes and shoes were soaking
wet, along with the fact that I had not been in bed for
about thirty hours and had completely forgotten to eat
during that time.

After the story is over and the pictures are spread over
the front pages of the newspapers, the photographer gets
the proud feeling of a tough assignment well done, and he
files away in his mind another story that he will never
forget.

It was then that I would relax into a normal individual
once more, and on the way home for some rest would
often think of the dangers I had been through and shiver
when I thought what would have happened to ine if I had
dropped from exhaustion out there on that beach at night
miles from anyone, and how quickly I would have frozen
to death. But if the same story took place under the same
conditions on the next night, I would have been going
down that beach again without a thought of the dangers
that lay before me.

Story after story brought thrills and dangers, with mem-
ories that are now priceless, along with humorous episodes
and memories of the swell times I have had with veteran
competitive newspaper cameramen and newsmen who are
listed among my closest friends.

The newspaper photographer is not just "another guy
with a camera." He must have a great number of qualifi-
cations that add up to make him the professional news

5

cameraman that you see on the spot where hot news is
breaking.

First of all he must be a photographer, and a good one,
who can cover any assignment from a society wedding to
a horse race, and then call the office and add to his day's
work a general alarm fire, or a thug at Police Head-
quarters. Very few newsmen specialize in any one type of
assignment, and must have a general idea of all sports so
they are able to get a picture that is interesting for the
expert in the sport to see, and something that is also of
interest to the great "John Public" who reads the papers.

There is no time to check exposures with exposure
meters, or look up in a little book to see how fast they
must run their shutter speeds to stop the action that is
before them. Their job is to get the picture and get it
fast, and they must rely on their experience, judgment,
and knowledge of many other assignments to produce a
perfect picture.

Another must for the news cameraman is an almost
born sense of news which gives him the ability to arrive
on the scene of a big story and in a second visualize that
story in a picture. Then he must find himself a spot where
he can get a good news angle in the picture, something
that will fit into a two column cut, or a shallow eight col-
umn cut to go across the page, all depending on his judg-
ment of the story's news value while he is photographing
it.

This news ability is hard to explain, but it comes natu-
ral to some, and others never can get it. I have seen fine
photographers try to break into the news game, as we call
it, but after covering a few minor news stories they found
themselves on assignment from the Advertising Depart-
ment, making pictures of furniture for use in advertise-
ments or out working for that well known Real Estate
Department, making pictures of buildings for the same
use. Both of these departments are necessities in every
6

paper, but the top flight newsmen have very little to do
with them.

A cameraman's personality and general appearance also
play a large part in this success. He must be able to fit
himself into all kinds of occasions. On his personality de-
pends a great deal whether he gets a picture or not. He
must be able to sympathize with people who are in trou-
ble in order to get pictures that show them in their diffi-
culties, be very dignified and on the high-hat side when
he tries to talk himself into some very exclusive society
party, but at the same time be plenty tough when the story
breaks where he is covering thugs at Police Headquarters,
while their buddies are promising the photographer a
broken neck and broken legs if he makes any pictures.

Nerve is also a primary asset that must be well estab-
lished in his makeup. Nobody has much use for a timid
individual, and in news work a cameraman is called on a
great many times to climb up ladders to heights where
the ordinary fireman takes on that funny feeling, where
the shivers run up and down his legs, and travel to all
parts of his body with every step. I will never forget some
of the feelings I have had, especially on cold winter days
when the ladders were covered with ice and a hose line
was usually strapped to the center, encased in ice. I had
only one free hand to really work with, as my camera was
held in a death grip by the other hand, and from about
the middle of the ladder up, every step meant another
swing of the ladder. In some of the spots where I have
climbed I have seriously wondered if I had been hired to
be a steeple-jack or a news photographer, but I always
came back to the office with a picture that I was satisfied
was the best I could get on the story, and never with the
feeling that I could have made a better picture if I had
climbed up on some elevation.

The cameraman's camera is his working tool, and like
the carpenter, plumber or machinist his work is only as

7

good as his tools. Every cameraman has his own camera
equipment which he uses every day and he knows just
what to expect from it and knows all its little idiosyn-
crasies. Most cameras now are the property of the news-
paper which employs the photographer, but he selects the
type camera, lens equipment, flashgun and other articles
which he wants, and that is his outfit as long as he works
on that paper. The camera equipment gets some pretty
rough treatment in the regular routine of the news
cameraman. It is soaked at least twenty times a year in
everything from rain-water to chemicals from fire hoses,
along with an occasional bath in salt water spray while the
photographer is hanging onto the deck of a Coast Guard
cutter making pictures of a rescue at sea, or a complete
submersion in snow while the photographer is making
storm pictures in a howling blizzard in the winter months.

Even with this severe treatment, the photographers
take good care of their outfits. The instant the pictures
are finished the camera gets a good drying out and a clean-
ing. The average news camera lasts over ten years, and is
then turned in for new equipment.

Very few newsmen carry more than one camera with
them on a story, for the simple reason that they would not
have time to swap around and use different ones. A news-
man selects a camera that will do all kinds of photography
and do it fast, and that is the camera that he uses for all
of the regular daily assignments. Each paper has in the
office a long focus camera that is used by different photog-
raphers as they cover football, baseball and yachting, or
any story where telephoto shots are needed. Along with
this long focus camera which is known as a "Big Bertha,"
most newspapers also have in the office an aerial camera
for use on all stories covered from the air. Like the "Big
Bertha" the aerial camera is used by all the photogra-
phers.

Aerial photography is just another part of the news-
8

man's daily routine. On all stories that are of the hot news
variety and take place some distance from town, the news
editor first thinks of an air shot so that he gets a picture
back in a hurry, and one photographer is assigned to the
air while two or three more start over the road to fill in
the later editions with the ground shots.

Today aerial photography is more or less routine, but
back when I made my first flights in 1919 it was a differ-
ent story. I can remember leaving the office for a fast trip
in those days, and when I finished shaking hands with the
editor and staff I felt that I was going to my own funeral.
With some of the planes I took off in I am pretty well con-
vinced now that it was about a fifty-fifty chance. Those
were the days that were known as the "Hay Wire" days,
when the pilots made most of their own repairs, and hay
wire completed a lot of them.

News photography in general is the same the world
over, but it varies according to the type of paper for
which the photographer is covering. Some papers are
more or less conservative, and the pictures they use are of
a different type than those used by the present day tab-
loids. Many papers use a lot of picture layouts which con-
sist of four or five different pictures to tell the story,
while others only use one, regardless of how big the story
actually is.

It is relatively simple for a photographer connected
with a single paper to learn exactly the type of picture his
editor wants and with that in mind he can hit the paper
consistently with pictures that appeal to the editor and his
staff.

The news cameraman who is employed by one of the
news syndicates however, is up against an entirely differ-
ent set-up. He goes on a story alone, and he has at least a
hundred different editors to satisfy, with all kinds of
papers from the conservative to the wildest tabloids.
Along with that he has the Sunday picture page editors

9

who will expect a good layout that will be a bit different
from the ones used by the daily papers, so they can make
up a page of pictures that will not hit the presses for per-
haps ten days after the daily papers have used the story.

The large news syndicates cover the entire world, with
staff cameramen located in every country, each covering a
territory. On these men is placed a terrific responsibility,
for the reputation of the syndicate rises or falls according
to the manner in which the cameraman covers his terri-
tory when big news breaks. These men are all veterans in
the business and are on call twenty-four hours a day. They
must know their territory like a book and have personal
contacts in all parts of it so they will receive tips the in-
stant a story breaks. In most cases these men are on their
way with cameras before the home office in New York has
even heard of the story.

They must be able to estimate at once how big the story
actually is, and just about how much money they should
spend in order to rush the pictures. They must be able to
decide in an instant the fastest way to get to the location,
and know the fastest way to get their pictures back to the
home office.

It was in this news syndicate field that I spent most
of my life, and I know the feeling of responsibility the
cameraman has when he gets a flash on a big story, that
has just broken, maybe a few hundred miles from town.
He senses the tremendous competition he will have on the
story from the rival syndicates and from all the local
papers. He can almost see the teletype in the home office
pounding off miles of tape from editors all over the coun-
try with the question "When can we expect the first
pictures?"

He has sent his home office a wire "Left for to

cover expect to file first picture wirephoto in about

hours."

As he is burning up the miles in his car or flying by

10

plane to the spot, he knows his editors are getting every-
thing ready in New York to handle his first picture.
Motorcycle messengers will be at the office door, ready the
instant the picture comes out of the darkroom to rush it
to the airports, railroad stations and post offices, while a
crew of regular office men will rush it to the New York
papers.

With all this in mind you feel that the whole world
is depending on you. Your mind starts to picture other
stories like the one you are headed for, and you think out
exactly the picture you will make for the wirephoto and
what you will make to follow up after you have sent your
first shot.

Upon arriving at the scene you make a quick survey and
pick your angles for the picture, check to see if you are
ahead of competition, and then start shooting fast but
accurately.

If the story takes place in a large town, it is only natural
that you have a contact there with some portrait photogra-
pher who has a studio and darkroom where you can de-
velop and make a quick print. In a matter of minutes you
will be sending your first picture to the home office over
the studio telephone by means of modern wirephoto, with
the valuable notation on it of the other syndicates that are
on the scene. If you are able to tell your office that compe-
tition has not yet arrived, you have a beat, and the New
York office will add to the caption on the picture, "FIRST

PICTURES OF EXCLUSIVE." These will be sold

at premium prices. If other syndicates are there, mention
is made of them so the New York office knows just what it
has for competition and makes its plans accordingly.

This is newspaper photography as it is in the syndicates
today, where I think most of the glamour and thrills are.
When the syndicate photographer is not covering big
stories which, of course, do not take place every day in
every territory, he must be producing something, so he

11

goes to work on features which are used by all papers for
Sunday sections and daily picture pages.

Here again the syndicate photographer must have the
ability to know just the types of pictures that will make
good features and that will appeal to the public at large
when it sees them in the pages of its home town news-
paper.

Chapter II

THE EVER PRESENT question "How did you get
started in newspaper photography?" can be answered very
simply. It all started in 1914, with a Number Two Bulls-
eye Camera, owned and operated by my mother. As a
youngster in short pants I would watch her develop films
by the light of a little oil-burning red light on the kitchen
sink shelf.

When I was fourteen years old I began making pictures
with the same little box camera and started developing
and printing them myself. Soon I was developing and
printing rolls of film for the neighbors, and had built up
quite a business. I moved from the kitchen to a darkroom
which I built in the cellar. When I arrived home from
school I developed rolls of film I had picked up on the
way, and printed the rolls I had brought home the day
before which were now dry and ready to print.

By this time photography was in my blood and I de-
cided that when I was through school I would be a pho-
tographer. I took on a newspaper route, delivering the
morning papers throughout our neighborhood, and began
saving every cent I could make from the photographic
work I did afternoons and the paper route I had in the
morning.

It was now a case of reading photographic catalogues,
and counting my money. I soon had money saved, and

13

with a loan of twenty-five dollars from my mother and
dad, I went to a camera store and purchased my first real
camera, which was a four by five Graflex camera with
an F4-5 lens.

I was surely in business now, and I started to take all
kinds of shots. I specialized in birthday parties for young-
sters, for I could sell a print to every Mother, showing her
child at the party.

Children at play, dogs and pets, new houses, gardens,
milkmen, coalmen and even the iceman all fell prey to
my camera. In about two weeks I had made enough
money to pay off the loan from my mother and dad.

I found I was making more money in faster time with
the camera than I made developing and printing films,
so I stopped the latter and also the paper route to devote
all my spare time to camera work. I gradually began to
add to my camera equipment so I could cover inside shots.
I added a tripod, flashlamp, more plate holders, a set of
filters, and a leather case which I could carry over my
shoulder.

I was not satisfied with just getting good pictures. I
wanted to know some of the basic principles of photog-
raphy, so I started to read technical books which told me
why certain filters would give dark skies, and how differ-
ent formulae of developers would increase or decrease the
contrast of the negatives.

In High School my instructor in General Science, Mr.
A. B. Tripp, knew I was greatly interested in photography
and he gave me valuable assistance. He even gave me spe-
cial photographic problems to work out as part of my class
work and credited my marks on these problems.

By this time the camera and I were inseparable, and
on Sundays I took trips to the beaches in summer, or to
wooded areas, where I could make some good shots using
filters. I kept a notebook with, me at all times and made
notes on the exposures and types of filters I was using.

After I had developed my plates I could check back to
the notebook and tell exactly how I was doing. Each week
I tried different types of plates, different developers, and
different brands of paper for printing.

I was producing better and better pictures, and I
started to watch all the pictures in newspapers to see just
how they were posed in order to get the news angles in
my pictures.

I watched for big news stories to break and bought all
the papers to study the pictures for the angles used by the
news photographers. Whenever I heard of a big fire in the
afternoon or evening I tried to get pictures, and then com-
pared them with the pictures used by the papers on the
same fire. In that way I taught myself about news angles.

I finished my high school education a few months before
my eighteenth birthday, and proceeded to get a job the
next day working for Ralph Harris & Company, a photo-
graphic supply store in Boston. Mr. Ralph Harris soon
learned that I talked and lived photography, and he put
me behind the counter as a salesman. Here I met a num-
ber of the old-time newspaper photographers, and conver-
sations with them solved a lot of the mysteries that I
couldn't solve.

My heart and mind were set on being a newspaper
photographer. In less than a year the great influenza epi-
demic broke out in Boston, and I heard through one of
the photographers that the Boston Post was in a bad way
with their entire photo staff laid low with the dreaded
influenza.

On my lunch hour that day I climbed the two long
flights of stairs to the city room of the Boston Post and met
my first city editor. He was Eddie Dunn, a veteran, top
flight newsman. He leaned back in his chair and listened
to my story, while his sharp eyes seemed to dance and
glisten as I told him how good I was with a camera and
how sure I was that I could produce good news pictures

15

for him. He asked me a few questions, and I seemed to
have the right answers. Then came the greatest thrill of
my life.

He looked at me and said, ''Well son, if you can make
pictures the way you say you can, 111 put you on the staff,
but I never thought I'd be hiring an eighteen-year-old kid
as a staff photographer. Can you come to work this after-
noon?"

I assured him that I thought Mr. Harris would release
me for he was greatly interested in my getting ahead.
After a quick conference with Mr. Harris I was on my
way to my first newspaper job with his well-wishes.

In less than an hour I had consumed a sandwich and
was back at the Boston Post where Mr. Dunn took me
down into the large darkrooms to show me where the
stock and developers were kept, and told me to load my
camera and then report upstairs to him for my first assign-
ment.

The darkroom was so large compared to the little one I
was accustomed to working in that I thought I was in
a huge ballroom. The developer which I had mixed in
quart bottles was now in five-gallon spring water bottles,
and the half gallon hypo bath was now a huge tank hold-
ing at least twenty-five gallons. I was so thrilled that I
could hardly talk as I quickly loaded the camera and pre-
pared for my first assignment.

I went up to the city room, and Mr. Dunn called me to
his desk. He said, "Okay son, now I want you to go up on
Boston Common and get some shots on the Liberty Loan
Drive. You'll find a French tank up there that has just
come back from the war, and I want a shot on that and
anything else that you can pick up there to tell the story
on the Drive. Here's your Press Badge. Don't get nervous,
and get some good stuff."

I left the office in short order, with a firm determination

16

that nothing was going to stop me from getting 'some good
stuff/

I arrived on the Common and found the tank. Now just
what I was going to make for a picture of that tank was
my problem. I tried to visualize the type of picture I had
seen in the papers, and then I decided I would have to
put someone in the picture. I found a French soldier near
the tank, so I put him on the machine as if he were work-
ing on it and made the shot. Then I got pictures of a
group of people listening to a speaker who was talking on
the Liberty Bond Drive. I had two pictures then that I
thought might cover the story but I wanted another, so
back in my mind I remembered that the papers used a lot
of close-ups of pretty girls. I looked over the crowd and
found a pretty girl and posed a close-up of her signing a
blank to buy a bond. I got the names and then went back
to the office.

As I passed the city desk, Mr. Dunn called me and
asked me what I had made the pictures of. I told him and
he assured me that I had covered the story okay, provid-
ing my pictures were all right. Developing the negatives
was more or less a worry in a strange darkroom with de-
veloper and chemicals that I was not accustomed to, but
they were perfect, and the next morning at six o'clock I
had bought a Boston Post and viewed my first news pic-
tures in print.

I shall never forget the thrill my mother and dad got
when they saw the pictures. I know they bought at least
six copies of the paper to show their friends the pictures
their son had taken.

I got along fine on the Post, and soon found myself
being assigned to bigger stories, and out of town stories
with some of the star by-line reporters such as Hal
Wheeler, Roy Atkinson and others who were top men on
the paper.

I began to get a yearning for a chance at a paper that
had a Sunday rotogravure section, where I felt my pic-
tures would get a better spread. Within a year the oppor-
tunity came my way and I joined the staff of the Boston
Herald- Traveler.

My pictures began appearing in the Sunday Herald
roto section carrying my by-line, giving me prestige that
I needed. I worked hard to get good interesting layouts
and kept Jean Stimmel, the roto editor, well supplied
with a variety of good, well lighted pictures covering
sports, features, society, and unusual angle shots on news
stories, all of which were making the roto section con-
sistently, with my by-line. These were made as extra shots
I picked up during my regular routine of news coverage
for the daily paper.

In early November of 1919, my by-line roto pictures
paid off, for I got the break then that I have always fig-
ured was responsible for my crashing into the national
photo syndicate field.

The Curtiss Wright Company, then operating two
small planes, Curtiss JN4's, in the New England states,
wanted to get some publicity. One of their officials had
seen a number of my pictures in the Herald "roto" and
called me on the phone to inquire if I would drop in at
his office and talk with him about an airplane proposition
he had in mind.

I called on him and he laid his cards on the table. He
told me he wanted some publicity for the Curtiss Wright
Company and was willing to let me fly in one of their
planes, free of charge, on any story that I would select. I
could make all the photographs from the plane that I
wanted to, so long as the caption for the pictures carried
the line, "Taken from a Curtiss Wright Plane," when
they were printed. In a split second I assured him he had
closed a deal, for I realized an air picture of any worth-
while event would make a page one news picture.

18

In those days, airports were almost unheard of and
the plane I was to fly in was based in a farmer's mowing
field in Bedford, Massachusetts, about fifteen miles from
Boston.

Back in the office it was now my problem to figure the
ideal story to cover from the air. All types of stories went
through my mind, but suddenly I thought of the Harvard-
Yale game, one of the big football games of the year. This
game was scheduled to be played the latter part of the
month, and as far as I knew, no pictures had ever been
made from the air of a major football game. This seemed
to be a natural.

Not thinking about the fact that I had never been in a
plane before, or the difficulties I might meet up with, I
rushed up over the stairs to the city room and promptly
went into a huddle with Bill Fitzpatrick, the city editor
of the Traveler the evening paper of the Boston Herald-
Traveler. He listened for a minute and then took me into
the office of the managing editor. The door was closed,
the idea was unfolded, and accepted as a grand possibility
for the Traveler to get a clean "scoop" on the Harvard-
Yale game.

They would use the picture in a half page cut on page
one but there was just one little hitch, that little thing
called time. The game started at one-thirty P.M. and the
deadline for a picture to be in the engraver's hands was
three P.M. It meant flying over the stadium, getting the
picture and flying back to Bedford, fifteen miles from
Boston; landing and rushing the picture over the road,
developing and printing it all in one and a half hours. In
the best of conditions this was close time if everything
worked out perfectly.

Not to be licked at this stage of the game I came up
with a quick idea of making a parachute, in which to drop
the plate holder from the airplane near the stadium, have
a taxi waiting there with a reporter to chase the parachute

as it floated down, and rush it to the office where a photog-
rapher would be waiting with developer in a tray ready
to put it through in the fastest possible time.

That met with the approval of the editors. Not only
would they furnish a taxi at the stadium, but they would
have two so that in the event the parachute landed on
either side of the stadium the area would be covered.
They would assign Al Brust, one of the photographers, to
the office end of the assignment, ready to rush the plates
through the developer the instant they arrived at the
office.

A final check with the Curtiss Wright Company and
everything was agreed on, but it must be kept absolutely
secret. I had about two weeks to make a parachute that
was fairly certain to open, and figure out some way of box-
ing in my camera to keep the wind from tearing it open
when I made the pictures. As the plane was an open cock-
pit biplane, it meant I would have to expose the camera
to the full slipstream of the propeller every time I made
a shot.

The building of the parachute was a cut and dry
process, to get the chute to open and come down slowly
enough to insure a light impact with the ground, and at
the same time not float so slowly that it would drift miles
before landing, as every minute of drift meant time and
distance that the taxis would have to travel to get it,

A cruise through second-hand camera stores produced a
hard leather carrying case just big enough to carry the
plate holder, with some soft packing around it. It must be
remembered here that in those days we used glass plates
and a sharp jolt would spell doom to all our prepared
plans.

The parachute had to have many tests, and I climbed
to the top of a high building in my neighborhood at least
a dozen times making small alterations on the chute after
each descent until I finally pronounced it perfect.
20

The camera was my next problem, as the metal flap,
which protects the lens on all Graflex cameras, had to be
removed. I knew that focusing through the hood was an
impossibility, as the wind would tear the hood out of the
camera. On a good clear day, with the camera mounted on
a tripod, I focused the camera on infinity (which is any-
thing beyond a distance of 100 feet), being very accurate
in all my moves. Then with a steel drill, I drilled a small
hole through the wooden box and into the brass focusing
rack. With a tap I threaded the brass rack and then put a
machine screw through the wood into the brass rack and
made the focusing absolutely solid. The camera was now
focused on infinity and set so that it could not be moved.
After this was completed I made a final check, using a
strong magnifying glass to be sure the infinity focus was
wire sharp.

A generous supply of adhesive tape kept the hood of
the camera from opening, and another strip along the four
sides of the lens board made sure that the camera and lens
didn't part company while I was over the stadium. The
final touch was the heavy leather strap that I had used
years before on my paper route. This strap went through
the handle of the camera, and over my right shoulder,
across my back, and under my left arm back to the cam-
era. This made the camera and me inseparable.

Everything was now ready and I had about four days to
wait and sweat it out. It all had to be kept absolutely
secret, without even the photographer who was to develop
the plates knowing what was to be on them. The taxis
were hired in advance for simply a trip to the stadium and
return, and the two reporters who were to ride the taxis
and write a story of their part in the stunt were assigned
but not told what the story would be. A large car was
hired to drive the pilot and me to Bedford where the
plane would be ready.

The day before the flight I signed releases with the

Curtiss Wright Company, clearing them of all responsibil-
ity in the event I was killed on the trip. With all the wor-
rying that my parents were doing, and the editors asking
me if I still wanted to go through with it, I felt when I
went to bed on Friday night like a man who would wake
up the next morning for his execution. I was only nine-
teen years old and rather young to sever my ties with this
great world, but it was my chance and I was going to take
it.

Saturday arrived and at eight o'clock in the morning I
walked in the office door to be met by the city editor. He
escorted me into an office and told me a sad story. The
owners of the paper had talked with their Legal Depart-
ment and had been advised they would be responsible in
the event I was killed, so as sorry as he was, one of the
greatest stunts the paper had tried to pull was just plain
cancelled. This was the straw that almost broke the cam-
el's back.

I took a piece of paper out of his desk, tossed it into a
typewriter, and typed out a statement saying I was taking
a day off that day and was not then in the employ of the
Boston Herald-Traveler as I was flying over the Harvard
Stadium to make some pictures, agreeing to sell the
Traveler a picture exclusive for one dollar, and then I
signed the document with a reporter as a witness. A quick
call to the Legal Department and the stunt was on again,
with the agreement that I could sell pictures to any of the
other papers for use the next morning.

With a handshake and an assurance that everyone
would be at his post, I left to pick up the pilot, Tom
Potter, and then drove onto the mowing field in Bedford
where the plane was ready for the take-off.

It was a perfect day. By this time I was simply thinking
of getting the pictures and had no fear at all. When we
arrived at the field in Bedford I got my first look at the
plane as it sat in the tall grass. (When I visualize that

scene now and remember the appearance of that plane
as it sat there, thirty years ago, and then look at one of the
present planes, I realize the tremendous strides that have
been made in aviation during this time.) It was a Curtiss
JN-4, known to the pilots as a Gannuck, a double seated
biplane with my seat in front of the pilot. From my posi-
tion the lower wing cut off the visibility of the ground as
I looked straight down. This meant every time I shot a
picture I would have to lean out of the cockpit and shoot
back in order to clear the lower wing. I got into the plane
and made a few practice moves, so I could adjust the strap
that went over my shoulders and through the handle of
the camera.

It was now one o'clock and we had to get into the air.
The motor started a couple of times, coughed and
stopped, and finally started to run in a real businesslike
fashion.

Inside my overcoat pocket I had tucked the parachute.
The case that was to hold the plate holder and float to
earth on the parachute was pushed loosely inside my over-
coat on the left side, and a loaded magazine carrying
twelve plates was tucked inside my overcoat on the right
side. A piece of rope was tied around my waist to keep the
articles from falling through. The Graflex camera was in
my lap with the plate holder that was to make the descent
securely fastened to it. From this description you can
imagine that I had about as much room to work in as a
passenger on a crowded subway train during the rush
hours.

By now the pilot was jazzing the motor to check it.
Finally he throttled it back, tapped me on the shoulder,
and told me to keep my safety belt fastened until we were
clear of the field. Also to let him know when we got over
the stadium if I was at the right height by holding my
hand level; if we were too high I was to point down; and
if too low to point up. When I was ready to shoot, I was

to hold my arm up, and he would bank the ship so I
could get more visibility around the lower wing.

A nod of my head gave him an okay, and the motor
began to roar. We bumped and bounced and finally the
plane began to ride easier and I saw the ground start to
leave us. We were airborne and I was on my first flight,
and my first big stunt.

I looked over the side a minute, and then got my mind
on my camera. I checked everything, lens aperture, shut-
ter curtain, and made sure the plate holder latch was in
place and tight. Then I settled down to enjoy the ride. I
looked forward and the engine was so close it seemed to
be almost in my lap. I watched each of the valve rods and
rocker arms as they opened and closed in rapid succession,
and then I leaned over to see how much I was going to see
behind the lower wing. When my head cleared the little
windshield the wind was terrific. I made up my mind then
and there that I would have to take a good husky grip on
the camera when I pushed it out into that stream of air,
so I tightened the strap a couple more notches. This
would allow me to keep the camera tight on the strap
and avoid some camera movement.

We were now over Harvard College and I could see the
stadium straight ahead with the Charles River winding
alongside it on two sides. I looked for the two bright yel-
low taxicabs with the white crosses of adhesive tape on
their tops to identify them. I quickly spotted them, one
on each side and well out in the clear. The game had just
started and the stadium was a black sea of humanity, with
every seat filled. On the playing field I could see the uni-
formed players and referees in white.

This was it! Was I going to put the stunt across or
would I forget to pull out the holder slide? Would the
exposure be right? Everything flashed through my mind.
I turned to the pilot, signaled the height was perfect and
pointed to the left as he was too close, for I wanted to be

sure I got the entire stadium in the picture. I had no view-
finder on the camera and it was a case of just plain point.

We were now in position and I held up my hand for
the pilot to bank the ship for the first shot. I leaned out
and shot the first picture on one side of the holder, slid
back into my seat, changed the holder over to the other
side, pulled out the slide and signaled for another shot.
He banked the ship again and I made the second shot.

Now for a quick job of getting the leather case out of
my coat, putting the holder in it, snapping the parachute
onto the case, and tossing it over, and waiting. I started to
make the change but I was so cramped for space with the
camera in my lap that I could hardly move my arms to
get the case out of my coat. I finally got the leather case
free of my overcoat, and I put it under my chin to hold it
while I reached inside my overcoat with my left hand to
get the parachute out of my inside pocket.

An airpocket, a bump of the plane, and my head jerked
back releasing the case, and out over my head past the
pilot and the tail section went the leather case that was
to carry the plate holder to the ground. This left me with
nothing but the parachute and the holder. I tore off a
couple of extra strips of adhesive tape that were on the
camera, taped the shroud lines of the parachute onto the
holder and wrapped it all together. I knew now that
the chute would drift a lot farther with its load lightened,
as the missing case weighed over a pound.

I motioned the pilot to head up into the wind and we
went about a mile, where I tossed out the package. It was
now in the lap of the gods, and all I could do was hope.
The chute opened perfectly, and the holder was hanging
gracefully under it. I could see the taxis start to move, and
follow along close to each other under the precious pack-
age. We were circling around over it and it seemed as
though it would never reach the ground. It was getting
closer and closer to the Charles River. The men were

leaving the taxis now and running along the grass plots
that lined the river. It seemed that they must be able to
reach it, but then I recognized Walter Meyers, one of the
reporters, running across the bridge to the other side of
the river. In the center of the bridge he stopped and held
up both arms to us and I knew that meant the chute had
settled into the middle of the river and had sunk, just in
front of the Weld Boathouse.

I looked at the pilot and his face was reflecting my ex-
pression. There was only one more thing to do. I had a
plate magazine in my coat with twelve loaded plates ready
to shoot. I held it up for the pilot to see and motioned for
a quick turn around the stadium. In a slight bank we
made a circle around the stadium as I shot four exposures
and then pointed to the pilot to head back to Bedford.
Tom set the ship's nose for a bee-line to Bedford and in
a short time I could see the T on the ground, easily iden-
tifying it as our landing field.

In a matter of seconds we were in over the field and
bumping along its rough surface in a perfect landing. The
instant the motor stopped we jumped out of the plane
and into the fast car that had taken us to the airfield.

Breaking every speed law that was ever written we
raced over the road direct to Boston and rushed into the
city room just as the taxi-borne reporters were telling the
city and managing editors the disaster that had overtaken
the parachute. The plates that I had with me were rushed
through, and the Traveler that afternoon carried a half-
page cut on page one of the airview of the Harvard-Yale
game, the first aerial picture ever made of a major football
game.

The picture carried a by-line with my name and also
a cut-line story mentioning it was taken from a Curtiss
Wright plane piloted by Tom Potter. This was followed
up the next morning by the Boston Herald using a signed
story of my experiences over the stadium that day.

26

I rushed prints from the best negative to different New
York photo syndicates. As I have mentioned before it was
here that I got my break, and got into national news syndi-
cate photography.

The Xew York Times had just started a national news
syndicate known as Wide World Photos. They used the
air shot of the game in the syndicate and sent me a check
for one hundred dollars for the picture, which was my first
big money. Along with their check they sent me a letter
asking me to submit pictures to them on news and features
which I covered in my regular routine on the Herald-
Traveler. Soon I was not only selling them large numbers
of picture stories, but I was receiving many assignments
to cover for them in my spare time. In less than three
months from the time I sold them my aerial Harvard-Yale
game picture I received a wire from Mr. Charles M.
Graves, managing editor of the Times-Vfide World Syndi-
cate, asking me to come to New York at his expense for a
conference. As a result of that conference I became New
England manager of the Wide World Photos Syndicate,
with an unlimited expense account and a free hand to
cover all news and feature stories in the New England
territory and the block of Canada north of New England.

I could hardly believe it myself, as it had been my
ambition as a youngster to get in newspaper photography.
At nineteen years of age I was in news photography of the
biggest kind, covering for a national news syndicate that
was supplying the largest newspapers in the world with
my pictures. I had gone a long way in a short time,
through hard work and the good breaks that I was lucky
enough to get.

Chapter ill

THE TWENTY-FIVE YEARS from 1919 to 1944
which I spent shooting a camera for Wide World Photos
I shall never forget. On almost any subject that can be
brought up regarding happenings in the New England
territory I can say, "Yes, I covered that, and had a front
row seat when all the action took place."

I have been in everything from a captive balloon a thou-
sand feet in the air, to a submarine going along a hundred
feet under water. Fires, floods, explosions, accidents or
weddings have all been part of a day's work to me. Some
were interesting while others were gruesome, boring or
humorous. I have been invited to cover many stories, have
received fancy press ribbons that allowed me to go any-
where, and along with them a card inviting me to a dinner
at the Press Table. But on other stories guards have been
posted to keep me out. As all good newspaper photogra-
phers say, "We've been insulted by experts, thrown out of
some of our very best places, but we've always come back
to the office with a picture."

At many social functions where photographers were
barred from the scene, and I was able to work my way by
the guard disguised as a guest, I would make pictures with
a small pocket camera having a fast lens. After the pic-
tures were published, I would usually get a telephone call
from the committee in charge of the function telling me

of the fine picture I was able to get, and asking if they
might buy some of them. This would take place after they
had gone to the extremes of posting guards to keep all
photographers out and doing everything in their power to
stop the pictures.

Mentally the news cameraman is just as human as any
other individual. I have covered stories where I almost
hoped the pictures would be a failure, for I knew if they
were used they would be embarrassing to the family of
the person I was photographing.

Many of the court cases, especially divorce suits where
the evidence drags the mother or father through the mud,
is in my opinion not the type of picture to splash on page
one of the home town paper.

But the more mud and filth that is turned over in the
trial, the better the news story. Soon enough of it is
brought to light and a photographer is assigned to court
to cover the case. I don't think there is a photographer
living who enjoys covering this type of story, or who gets
a thrill out of publicizing some poor souls who are already
up to their necks in trouble.

This, my dear readers, is not the fault of the newspaper
editor who assigns the photographer to the story or the
photographer who makes the picture, but purely and
solely the fault of the good old American public which
seems to love to read all the inside information on a good
spicy divorce. It should be remembered that the type of
story and picture used by a newspaper are the kind that
the editor of that newspaper knows his reading majority
wants. The editors keep a close watch on the circulation
figures, and if a series of spicy stories brings up the circu-
lation you can be fairly sure that more and more of them
will appear on the pages of the paper.

A smart lawyer who is handling a case which he knows
is bait for the newspapers should go out of his way to be
friendly with the newsmen covering the case, and if the

woman involved is a decent person but through some cir-
cumstance got mixed up in the trouble, the chances are
that the photographers will not break their necks to get
pictures.

I have even known photographers to go to the extremes
of telling the lawyer a way of getting out of court with
his client, so that the photographers would be covering
another door and no pictures would be made on the story.
The reverse of this happens however when the wise-guy
lawyer appears at court and proceeds to tell his client that
the newsmen are a bunch of punks but he will get him
out so no pictures will be made. It is a very good bet that
the client of that lawyer never believed so many pictures
could be made of him or her, for every door will be cov-
ered and the photographers will all agree to work on a
cooperative basis, which means if one gets the picture he
will see that all the others get prints. In this way all angles
can be covered and every photographer will use every
trick he knows to get the shots.

One of the stock tricks that brings pictures about
ninety-nine percent of the time is one that I have used
many times myself in order to get pictures that I really
wanted. The woman in a sensational case is allowed to
leave the courthouse. On the street she feels that every-
thing is fine, and that the photographers are not on her
story. As soon as she leaves the building and is on her way,
a photographer follows along about ten feet behind her.
With his camera at eye-level, all focused, he calls, "Oh,
Mrs. Jones/' or whatever her name may be. The lady, of
course, turns around to see who is calling, looks right into
the lens of the camera, and then it's just like shooting a
sitting duck.

Another one o the stock tricks is accomplished with
the assistance of a reporter who stands in front of the
courthouse with a newspaper open in front of him, read-
ing. The photographer is close to him with his camera

30

focused in back of the paper, through a hole in the paper
the size of the camera lens. For the person coming out of
court it looks innocent enough for two men to be standing
on the sidewalk reading a newspaper. The reporter looks
over the top oi the paper and when the victim is on the
spot where the camera is focused he simply says "shoot"
and the picture is in the bag.

On some of the Criminal Court cases w r here real thugs
are involved we have had plenty of trouble getting pic-
tures. Most of the real tough ones came during the pro-
hibition era. The rum runners who operated in gangs
would stand around outside the court and warn us that
we would hit the dust the instant we started to take any
shots of their buddy who had run afoul of the law. We had
to get shots, so it was a case of shoot and either run or start
swinging a good healthy right with a camera wrapped up
in it. A good* well-placed swing landing a ten-pound cam-
era on a thug's head usually took a lot of steam out of
them, but in many cases where we were greatly outnum-
bered it was a case of a quick shot and then a sprint to the
office.

I have seen some of the tough boys take a newsman's
camera and smash it to bits on the curbstone. To my
pleasure I have seen the same fellow a few days later, in
court, pay the price of the camera plus a fine and court
charges.

In my judgment it is always better for anyone mixed
up in a court case to willingly pose for a picture, as it is
always a better looking picture than one that is kidnapped
by the photographer as the victim tries to hide his face or
pull a hat down over his eyes. Any of these pictures, show-
ing the persons trying to cover their faces, gives an appear-
ance of guilt when produced in newspapers while a good,
posed picture with a smile looks much better and at least
gives the impression that they are not trying to cover any-
thing.

31

The police give perfect cooperation in most cases, so
that the photographers can get shots of criminals that have
just been arrested. It is a big help to them to have the
photographers get pictures, for after they are printed,
readers of the papers can recognize the criminal and in
many cases crimes are solved by printing of the criminars
picture in the papers.

Cheese cake photography is another type of picture that
seems to have the reading public baffled. "Why so many
pictures of bathing girls?"

We have had everything from a Rose Bowl Queen to a
Roller Towel Queen, and I can almost guarantee that if
the manufacturer of collar buttons would produce a pic-
ture of a beautiful, well-built blonde, in a scanty bathing
suit holding a large collar button in her hand, she would
appear in newspapers from coast to coast with a caption
under the picture stating she had just been selected as
"National Collar Button Queen/' Here again the editors
use them to please their reading public. It must not be
forgotten that the man of the house buys the newspaper
in most cases and brings it home to his wife and family
who read it after he has finished it on the way home.
Most men like to look at pretty girls, and while a number
of them will not admit it, a shapely girl in a scanty bath-
ing suit catches more than just a casual glance.

All of these pictures of the pretty girl type make excel-
lent "fillers'* and cuts are made of them to hold in the
make-up room until the time comes when a two column
cut is needed to fill space on a day when news is slow. A
cut of a pretty girl or some other feature picture may wait
in the niake-up room for months until the time is right
and then it appears. Pictures of hot news must be used at
once, and anything that is left over is just discarded, as it
would be old stuff if used the next day. Features are of
great value to the editor for that very reason. He must
have pictures ready on the make-up bank which he can

3*

use any time to fill in a vacant space. Features and pretty
girls are not dated and are just as good if used within a
reasonable period of time.

Fires are always sure shots for the photographer but
make difficult subjects because of smoke and steam. Wind
plays tricks with smoke and often blankets the best shots
so it is impossible to get the action on account of the
smoke. Some of the best fire shots are made after the
photographer has waited perhaps ten minutes in low
hanging smoke, all set for a shot, and then a puff of wind
will lift the smoke and clear it for a few seconds, allowing
the alert photographer just enough time to shoot his
picture.

On some fires where large areas are covered by the
flame, the airplane is the best method of coverage, but
flying in small planes over a big fire area gives plenty of
thrills, for the plane is thrown around in the air like a
ping pong ball on a table. Every time the plane hits an
updraft of hot air from the fire it skyrockets up and then
it is a case of circling again to get a close-up shot from
another angle. I have flown over forest fires when I
thought the plane would burn before we got through the
clouds of smoke and red hot flying embers which seemed
everywhere even at a thousand feet elevation.

Forest fires are the most dangerous of all to cover. At
least, I have had my narrowest escapes from them. It is
usually a case of leaving the main roads, going into the
woods to get pictures of the fire, and picking an opening
or a house far in the woods which seems sure of falling
prey to the flames. I would pick a location and get set
waiting for the fire to reach the area where I planned my
shots. Smoke driving before the fire is usually so thick
that it is hard to tell exactly where the actual front of the
fire is coming, and if great care is not taken the sides may
close in around you, and you find yourself surrounded by
fire. On two different fires I have had to drive out of a

33

narrow road through fire on both sides. Both of these
times I had figured the head of the front was at a spot
where I was waiting for it to jump the road, but found
that the ends had gained on the middle and both ends
jumped the road before the middle had reached it.

Fire wardens often start backfires at a main road, and
if they do not know that a photographer is in the woods
getting pictures, the backfire will be started. In a short
time you find a good fire behind you while you are still
waiting for the main fire to reach you in the opposite
direction. After a few experiences covering forest fires
you know the dangers and treat them with a lot of respect
and plenty of caution.

Marine stories have always been my favorites for
they make good picture material. I like the water and
have covered all the International Fishermen's Races off
Gloucester, Massachusetts, and Halifax, Nova Scotia. They
lend themselves to good picture possibilities. By the
proper use of filters and telephoto lens, excellent pictures
can be made, and every assignment means a good day on
the water. High winds and rough weather mean more
action in the pictures, and as I have never been a victim
of seasickness, the rougher it gets the better I like it.

Of the different sports, I like football and track meets
for pictures. Football gives good picture studies of long
runs when covered from the top of the stadium with a
telephoto lens, as each player can be seen close to the play
and from a good picture, the fans can see how it was possi-
ble for the player to make his run. In covering football
the ball must be shown in the picture, so it is a case of
watching the play closely through the camera and tripping
the shutter the instant the ball is visible.

Track meets with the hurdles and dashes make good
shots of action and facial expressions. Pole jumps and high
jumps give good opportunities for low angle shots that

34

amplify the actual height of the athlete as he clears the
bar.

Winter keeps the news photographer busy covering win-
ter sport carnivals such as the Dartmouth Winter Carni-
val, which is one of the outstanding events of the winter
here in New England. Along with the carnivals come the
ski jump and ski racing meets, all of which make fine pic-
tures but in most cases are made in severely cold weather.
Cold weather is a challenge to the news photographer, for
in many cases the camera starts to do queer things. The
shutter speed may be set at high speeds but the instant it
is released the well trained ear of a newspaperman will
sense trouble. His camera is so cold that the tension on
the springs, along with contracting metal, has changed
the entire shutter speed. If the camera is taken indoors
to warm up, the lens steams and tends to give him more
trouble, so the camera is usually given a good check-up
before it gets into cold weather. It is a great thrill to
stand under the take-off lip of a ski jump and make shots
of the jumpers as they sail over your head like eagles in
space.

Winter mountain climbing is rugged work for the
photographer, but has good opportunities for pictures. I
have climbed Mt. Washington twice in winter and as far
as I am concerned that is enough. I shall never forget the
trip I made up the mountain through the South Chimney
of Huntington Ravine with Professor Odell and a group
of Harvard students from the Harvard Mountaineering
Club. When we got well up into the South Chimney the
students proceeded to tie themselves at intervals on a long
rope, with Professor Odell at the lead. Each student car-
ried a Swiss ice axe, and wore alpine crampons, which are
long steel spikes fastened into the soles of their shoes. I
was carrying a case on my back loaded with extra plates
and photographic material which I needed on the trip,

35

along with a Graflex camera in my hands. Without a rope
tied to me I seemed all alone, and more or less blushed
as I looked at my feet to view the fifty-cent pair of ice
creepers strapped to my shoes. I had to be alone and some
distance off from the group in order to get the pictures
of the students climbing up through this solid mass of
slippery ice formations on the side of the mountain. Once
in a while I took a look down below me and got a funny
feeling as I witnessed the nice icy chute the chutes I was
climbing on and nothing below me for over a thousand
feet. The professor finally called to me and told me he
was getting a little nervous about me. He told me to
spread eagle with my arms and legs in the event I slipped.
I made the trip, taking advantage of the holes cut in the
ice ledges by the students, and again I guess I had a rab-
bit's foot in my pocket for I returned with some good pic-
tures and no mishaps.

Chapter IV

WHILE THE COVERAGE of feature stories may seem
like very tame assignments to the novice, a died-in-the-
wool cameraman gets a great kick out of features, for it is
in this type of coverage that he is able to really do his stuff.
Nine out of ten features are the result of the photogra-
pher's own news sense, where he sees something that is a
little bit odd or different, and decides that in a series
of photographs he can use different angles. By working
in close-ups he can build it up to an interesting story which
will be suitable for a full page of pictures.

Features are an absolute necessity to all newspaper
editors for it is only on very few days of the week that the
editor has national news pictures enough to fill his paper,
and he must constantly rely on feature pictures to fill in
the gaps. The picture pages are a steady drain on the
features that the editors have in reserve, and the national
news syndicates are always on the alert for good feature
material to supply the ever present demand.

Seasonal features must be watched carefully by the
syndicate photographer so that the home office has pic-
tures in time to get them out for the different seasons of
the year.

Around October the syndicate photographer looks
around for a good toy factory that is busy getting out or-
ders for the Christmas trade. Every year I covered a toy

37

layout and captioned it "Santa Glaus at work for the
youngsters at Christinas/ 7 These pictures showed the toys
as they started along the assembly line of a factory, girls
painting the faces on dolls, one general view of many
different types of toys, a shot of the final painting of
wooden toys, and always a small child with an armful of
the finished toys, to finish the layout. Along with this set
of pictures was a cut-line story, telling the number of toys
that was now in production for the Christmas trade and
anything new in the line of toys for that year. The series
would be sent to New York and released from the home
office over the national syndicate around the middle of
November, giving the editors time to make up and use
them during the early part of December.

September was the month we always started to look
around for a Thanksgiving Day feature. This usually con-
sisted of a series made at a turkey farm showing flocks of
turkeys, along with a close-up of one big turkey, and a
good human interest picture of a little boy carrying a tur-
key on his back with an axe in his hand, or a pretty girl
sharpening an axe on an old-fashioned grindstone while
a turkey was perched alongside her. This layout also re-
quired a turkey dinner at my house in September for I
had to have, a cooked turkey for pictures. After the turkey
was cooked, I usually made a picture of an elderly lady
at the oven with the door open taking out the turkey and
some little youngster all smiles, looking at the huge
nicely browned bird. Then a close-up of the youngster
with a napkin tucked into his collar and a big smile as he
takes a man's size bite out of one of the legs. Either of the
last two pictures would be suitable for a half-page picture
on Thanksgiving morning. This turkey layout was always
in the hands of the editors at least three weeks before
Thanksgiving in order to give them time to plan their
papers.

Plymouth, Massachusetts, was always on the job just

38

before Thanksgiving with their publicity men, notifying
all newspapers that they were re-enacting the first Thanks-
giving with the Pilgrims and Indians and would cooper-
ate in every way possible to give the photographers any
type of picture they desired. For years I covered this
advance Thanksgiving and had the pictures in time for
the papers to use the "First Thanksgiving" along with
present day pictures I had made and sent out.

Early spring meant a layout which could be used for
Easter. This was always a trip to a good florist's green-
house where a mass of Easter lilies could be shown in one
picture, and then a pretty girl with her head framed in
Easter lily blooms. There was usually a shot in a church
with a close-up of a vested choir singer and lily blooms in
the background.

Early spring also meant a spring fishing layout made in
a stocked pond of a sporting club which was free from the
state fishing laws. In this way I could always take a model
to the pond and get shots of her fishing, and close-ups of
her holding her fish, long before the fishing season
opened. The pictures would be on the editors' desks for
use the day the law opened the fishing season.

Summer and the art colonies went hand in hand, and
were always good for some nice trips, getting layouts on
the artists painting scenes on the wharves at Province-
town on Cape Cod, at the picturesque lobster and fishing
towns of Tenants Harbor, Port Clyde, and Martinsville
on the Maine coast.

Mother's Day called for a picture of a typical mother,
in a pose that would be emblematical of everyone's
mother. At the start of World War II, I posed a Mother's
Day picture which was used widely across the country.
This picture, made at night, showed an old-fashioned
lamp in a window made of small panes of glass, and in the
window was the typical mother with the curtain pulled
back as she hung a service star against one of the panes.

39

The lighting from the lamp and the side lighting from
inside the room gave the picture the atmosphere I was
trying to carry out. After the war was over I made a Moth-
er's Day picture, showing a typical mother opening the
front door of her home and seeing a large box of flowers
resting against the door casing. Behind the door, hiding,
was a service man in uniform peeking around the door
to see the expression on his mother's face as she saw the
flowers, and waiting to give her the final surprise of his
own first appearance back from the war. Both of these
Mother's Day pictures were used widely because they
were not only Mother's Day pictures, but they carried
with them the feeling of the times.

Features can be covered with just one picture where
camera angle and lighting will make it, or they can be
layouts which are a series of pictures with plenty of thrills.

I remember a feature story I covered in winter on the
top of Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire which
ended with plenty of thrills and sent several members of
the party to the hospital before it was over. Jake Coolidge,
one of the best known veteran newsreel cameramen in
the country, called me one day in the early part of the
winter and said he was planning to make a feature on the
"Old Man of the Mountain," and asked me if I wanted
to go along on the story. The "Old Man" is a natural stone
face on the top of Cannon Mountain. It had just been
braced by huge iron rods to keep it in place as the winter
ice and frost had started to move some of the huge boul-
ders that made up the face. I thought it would make a
good story, showing how the Old Man looked after he
had his face lifted, and showing from the top of the head
what the Old Man saw in winter.

Bill MacDonald, a star writer of the Boston Transcript^
was going along on the story to write a full page feature,
and he wanted to use a layout of my pictures to illustrate
his story. We planned just about every picture we would

40

make on the way up, and on arriving were met by a guide
and two young fellows who went along to help carry the
movie equipment, and pose for any pictures that we
wanted on top of the head of the Old Man. In order to get
on the head we had to climb up a trail to the top of the
mountain and then come down part way. It was a mild
day when we arrived at the base of the mountain, with
good clear air and plenty of snow on the ground. The best
view we could get of the old stone face from the base was
close to Profile Lake. We decided we would get a good
telephoto shot of the head as it appeared from the base
before we started up the trail, so we picked our location
and made the shots. Jake Goolidge, who was shooting the
story for Pathe Newsreel, agreed to stay at that location
and when we got up on top of the head he was to make
his movies with a long focus lens. I left him a Graflex
camera of mine with a telephoto lens on it, and he was
to shoot a couple of shots with my camera showing the
group when we finally got up on top. We were dressed
for the trip, or at least had plenty of warm clothing for
the kind of day it was, when we started up. I had another
Graflex camera and a carrying case on my back with extra
plates in it for use on the top.

We started up the trail* It was very calm and fairly
warm with the temperature just about at the freezing
mark. The guide led the procession up the mountain
Bill MacDonald of the Boston Transcript, a young cam-
eraman for Pathe Newsreel who was making the shots for
Jake Coolidge on top of the head, two young fellows who
were to help out and pose for pictures on top, and myself.
As we progressed along the trail it got steeper and steeper.
We slowed up some as the equipment we were carrying
seemed to get heavier with every step we took. Close to
the timber line we found a boiling spring and stopped
to rest while we had a drink of water. By this time almost
anything was an excuse to stop and rest a minute.

41

Leaving the timber line, we started up over the barren
rocks. The going was slower all the time as the rocks were
covered with ice and snow and the trail was just about
lost. We had to get on top of the head to make the pic-
tures while we had good light, and then get back down
to the base before it was dark. With this in mind we
started to push along faster, although the going was get-
ting tough. I noticed that a slight breeze appeared to be
coming up, and the air seemed to start taking on a bite,
but I figured this was the natural thing to expect at the
altitude we were now in. At the top we stopped and got
down behind some big boulders to rest for a few moments
before starting down the other side to the top of the head.
We knew Jake was at the bottom with his eyes glued to
the old man's head, waiting for us to make our appear-
ance. In about ten minutes we were there and had made
a couple of pictures when I noticed a dark cloud coming
our way and a bad looking sky.

The guide, who knew the territory like a book, saw
what was about to happen and immediately called us to
start back up to the top at once. Bill wanted to get some
pictures for his story so I stayed along with him and the
young fellow from Pathe Newsreel, while the guide and
his young helpers started back. In a matter of minutes we
were in a howling gale with snow, rain and terrific cold
wind. Everything started to turn to glassy ice and we were
sliding off rocks, unable to keep our footing. It blew so
hard we could barely breathe. It was now a case of work-
ing from one big boulder to another and getting down
behind, resting, and then starting for the next one. I heard
the young cameraman from Pathe start to cry and scream,
all at the same time. I got over to him and he told me he
was blind and he knew he was dying. By this time I was
getting a complete casing of ice all over me. I looked at
him and saw that his eyelids were covered with liquid ice
which was coming down on us. The lids had frozen to-

4*

gether. He thought his eyes were open and that he could
not see. I told him to rub his eyes and he would have his
sight all right. The instant he rubbed the thin coating of
ice from his lids he had his vision again.

By this time the guide and his two young helpers had
started along the trail, figuring that we were following
them. The storm continued to get worse every minute
as we battled from one boulder to another. The trail had
just plain disappeared and it was a case of following
along in the direction we thought the trail was going.

After battling our way for about an hour in this terrific
storm I spotted a place in the timber line below us that
looked like the trail. We made for that spot and located
the marker that designated the top of the trail. Even the
footprints of the guide and his two helpers, who had gone
down over it a short time before, were now filled with
snow, and drifts were across the trail that was fairly well
open when we had walked up over it. The young Pathe
cameraman spotted the trail and started down over it as
fast as he could, but MacDonald was slowing up all the
time, so I stayed along with him. It was now getting late
in the afternoon and I was afraid darkness would over-
take us before we got off the trail at the bottom. I tried
to hurry him but he acted sleepy and didn't seem to care
if he hurried or not. Finally he told me that he was
going to lie down and take just a little nap. I knew this
would be the end for if he had stopped he would have
frozen to death. I asked him if he wanted a smoke and
he said he would if I lighted it for him. I gave it to him
and with much exertion he finally got the mitten off his
right hand. I saw that his hand was swollen to twice its
normal size and was snow white and blue in color. I knew
it was frozen and that he was fast getting in bad shape. I
told him we had to get moving fast because he was in a
bad way, but he still had the idea that if he took just a
little nap he would be all right to go to the bottom. I

43

couldn't let him sleep, so I kept arguing with him to keep
going. When he fell down in the snow I helped him up
on his feet again and started along down the trail. It was
hard going as it was slippery and had deep drifts of snow
in places.

About the last quarter of the way down the' trail he '
took on such a drowsy feeling that it was almost impos-
sible for me to keep him walking. I tried to carry him,
along with my camera equipment, but found this was im-
possible, so I dragged him a while and then got him on
his feet again for a short distance. It was just getting dark
when we came off the trail at the bottom and found Jake
Coolidge organizing a group to go up the trail to bring
us down, as he knew we were in trouble.

We took Bill back to Plymouth, New Hampshire, and
started to work on his hands by rubbing them with snow
after we reached the hotel. I found that I had frozen the
tips of my fingers on both hands, so as I worked in the
snow on MacDonald's hands, I thawed out my own. I had
no bad effects from the trip but Bill went to the hospital
at Plymouth and then on to Boston where he spent more
time in a hospital while the specialists battled to save his
hands from amputation. He wrote the story which ap-
peared in the Boston Transcript with a layout of my
pictures, and is now in good health.

One summer a few years ago I happened to be in Hyan-
nis on Cape Cod covering a story. A fisherman came up
to me and told me he could give me some good pictures
if I wanted to go out with him some day. He told me he
would like to take me out to the shoals to catch some
sharks.

I told Larry Ellis, the New England cameraman for
Fox Newsreel, about it and we set a date to journey
down to Hyannis and meet the fisherman. We started out
to the shoals with him to get a good feature layout on

44

shark fishing. He had a couple of friends with him to do
the fishing as we would be busy making pictures.

The fishing lines consisted of rope about the size of a
clothes line, on the end of which was about six feet of
small chain and a hook about a foot long baited with a
whole fish.

We started out for the shoals in a good sized power boat
in perfect weather. As the boat rode the gentle swells we
arranged a place for our camera equipment on top of
the pilot house so we could get a good view of the entire
deck when the fishing started. On arriving close to the
shoals, the skipper stopped the boat, signaled the fisher-
men to toss their lines overboard and start fishing.

It was only a short time when the first shark was secure
on a line and started up from the bottom. The instant the
shark was hooked all other lines were coiled to avoid a
snarl under water as the shark started to thrash around.
Once the shark was started from the bottom it drove di-
rectly to the surface and made frantic passes by the boat,
always rolling on its back in attack position. As the line
took on some slack it was immediately taken up by two
men on the deck who were working on the line at all
times. As the shark dived and rolled we were shooting
pictures to get all the action. Finally after fifteen or
twenty minutes with plenty of motion where the water
was a white foaming mass caused by the wild thrashing
of the hooked shark, the fish began to lose its fighting
power and pushed its head out of water with its mouth
wide open, showing all its teeth sparkling in the sunlight,
almost as though it were posing for a national toothpaste
advertisement. This gave us a swell chance to get close
shots of the head, which we needed in the feature series.

When we were through shooting pictures of the shark
in the water, it was hauled over to the boat where the skip-
per was waiting for it with a baseball bat which had been

45

drilled down through the center and loaded with lead.
As the line brought it close to the boat the fight started
all over again and the skipper then started to use the bat
in true slugging style. When the shark was subdued he
was hoisted on board. It all made good picture material.
We were out on the fishing grounds about two hours and
in that time caught nine sharks weighing from three to
five hundred pounds each.

These sharks were of the variety known as sand sharks
and as far as I could learn, have never caused any trouble
to bathers, but when the newsreel was shown on the Cape,
and my pictures appeared in the papers, a bathing suit
was something that looked nice on the beach but the
bathing public remembered the pictures. Swimming lost
a lot of its popularity.

Another Cape Cod story that I shall always remember
is one that I decided I would make on old retired sea cap-
tains, who whittle out toy windmills and sell them to the
summer trade. This type of feature attracted me because
I thought I could get some good weather-beaten faces
and good character studies, along with general views of
the colorful windmills displayed in large masses along
the Cape highways.

I drove down to the Cape and stopped at several of the
different displays to talk with the men who were mak-
ing the windmills, looking always for the right character
for my pictures. Finally, after making several stops, I
found a fellow who was just about the type I wanted. He
told me he was the man Joseph Lincoln had written
about in his book Shavings. This gave me a little news
angle to the layout, and as the fellow was making all
his windmills by hand, he seemed like the perfect subject
so I made a whole series of pictures on him as he worked
on the mills. During the conversation I had with him
he showed me a stool in his shop where he said Joseph
Lincoln sat day after day and talked with him, as he was

writing Shavings. I put out the series of pictures, with a
caption story to the effect that the original "Shavings"
was still on Cape Cod whittling out toy windmills for
the summer visitors; along with information on how
many windmills he whittled out each winter and that he
was a retired sea captain.

The pictures were used in the papers and within three
weeks I received nine letters from different men on Cape
Cod telling me that I had made a bad mistake. Each one
of the nine claimed he was the original "Shavings" of
Joseph Lincoln's book. I wrote each of the men telling
them that eight others had also written me claiming to be
the original "Shavings/* but that if they would get to-
gether and decide which one was the original I would
be glad to make a trip to the Cape the next summer and
make another layout to correct my mistake. I have never
received an answer from any of them.

Another feature story I shall never forget was one made
in the little town of Winchester in New Hampshire, a
part of the Monadnock Region. It was the unusual setting
for the story that made it interesting. Phil Darling, secre-
tary of the region, dropped into my office one day and
asked me what I thought about a feature story of a man
making grandfather clocks in a garage. He told me of an
elderly gentleman in this little town who operated a ga-
rage and made clocks which sold all over the country. His
workshop was his garage where he also repaired automo-
biles.

I thought it over for a minute and tried to visualize just
how I was going to make a good picture story out of it.
To be truthful I was not too much sold on the idea but
I agreed to go up and look it over to see if I could make a
feature layout on it.

In a few days I called on Phil and we drove from Peter-'
boro over to Winchester. On arriving in the little town,
Phil told me to drive up a small driveway past the house

47

to a garage that set in the rear of the house. The building
was filled with the usual clutter that one finds in a coun-
try garage; parts of car springs on the floor mingled with
pieces of frames, fenders and a few rear end assemblies.
A long bench was firmly bolted to the wall with a huge
vise and a plentiful supply of heavy hammers, files and
wrenches scattered over it. The clockmaker was hard at
work driving a bushing out of a part of a front wheel
bearing with a heavy sledge hammer.

He stopped his work and Phil introduced me to him. I
asked him if he made his clocks here in this garage. Assur-
ing me that he did, he asked me if I would like to see
some of his clocks, and he promptly took me to his house
where he ushered me into the parlor of a beautiful old
New England home.

Here I really got a thrill for, in this room filled with
New England antiques was one of the finest grandfather
clocks I have ever set my eyes on. "This," he said, "is
one of my clocks and I like this one for its chimes so I
decided to keep it myself." He told me the story of his
chimes and how he made them to get the quality of sound
that I soon heard. Then he told me how he obtained the
fine mahogany and walnut wood that he used in the cab-
inets of his clocks. By now I was fascinated for I realized
that I had found another Yankee genius who just went
quietly along producing clocks that were masterpieces.

We went out into the garage where he opened a closet
and produced part of the works for a clock he had in the
process of construction. I have seen fine workmanship in
many places but I have never seen anything finer than
the delicate, precise work that appeared in this clock
mechanism. It was almost completed and had the chimes
already built into it. The full rich tones which came from
the chimes would alone sell the clock. These chimes were
made in this garage and the method of getting the qual-
ity of tone was one of the secrets of his trade.

I asked him where he got the faces for the clocks with
the beautiful an work and lettering on them. He told me
that he made his own clock faces and just sketched them
out there on the bench. The lettering and art work looked
like fine engraving and I just couldn't believe this man,
who was near seventy, could produce them. I told him
that it seemed almost impossible to me that he could do
this after using his hands and arms for heavy work such
as he was doing when I entered the garage. He shrugged
his shoulders, laughed and said, "Well, I guess seeing is
believing, isn't it?"

He produced a clock face partly done, told us to wait
until he washed up a bit, and he would go to work on the
face to show us how he did it. In a few minutes he was
back with a few brushes in his hand. He wiped off the
bench with a rag and put down a few newspapers to cover
the grease and oil. He opened some oil paints and here,
in a setting of old car parts and junk, was an artist at work
if ever I saw one. With brushes that were so small that
he could paint hair lines he started to work on the numer-
als on the clock face which he had already lightly
outlined in pencil. One by one he produced beautiful pre-
cision numerals with not a sign of a quiver to his brush
lines. This amazed me and I told him I couldn't under-
stand how his hand was so steady. He said, "Son, I'm just
an old upstate Yankee but I know enough to go to bed
nights and get my rest. Up here we sleep when it's dark
and work when it's light."

I have thought of that statement a good many times
when I've been burning the midnight oil. I realized that
here in New England most of the country folks live that
way and are strong and hearty people when they are well
into their seventies.

I asked about his cabinet work and he produced one of
the cabinets which was almost complete. It was another
precision job with wood joints that were hard to find, and

49

wood that had beautiful graining and finish. He took me
up to the loft over the garage to show me his secret for
his fine cabinets. He spent a good part of his time riding
around the countryside buying old pianos and old organs
made of solid mahogany and walnut. This wood was old
and well seasoned and from this wood he built his clock
cabinets. As we talked he unfolded a story that later made
him famous with my pictures across the entire country.

He has rebuilt antique clocks for museums in all parts
of the United States, and his clocks are in some of the
finest homes in the land. He told me how he had scoured
the state for certain grades of old apple wood to make
wooden gears for some of the old clocks which he has re-
built for museums and that he has built special machinery
to cut these gears from both wood and brass.

I asked him if he had done any advertising. He
laughed at me and said he had all the business he could
handle and that he had turned away many customers be-
cause he didn't want to sell his clocks to people he didn't
like. He builds about six clocks a year and when they are
completed he sells them to people who have a prized pos-
session for the rest of their lives.

I inquired about the timekeeping qualities of his clocks
and he told me that all his clocks carry a guarantee of
running within thirty seconds a month of accurate time.
He added, "I have to give myself this amount of leeway
as some people don't bother to adjust the pendulum prop-
erly. If I could go with the clocks and adjust them myself
for the spot where the clock will stand, I could guarantee
them to an accuracy of five seconds a month."

I made a layout of pictures featuring him at work
among the old auto parts, and made sure that I had pic-
tures which portrayed these beautiful clocks which were
the result of the hands of this New England Yankee gen-
ius. After the pictures were published in magazines and
papers across the country, I received a letter from this

50

fine gentleman thanking me for the publicity I had given
him and saying that he had received over three hundred
letters asking him to quote prices on his clocks. A few
of them told him to build a clock for them and send it
to them with the bill. His letter ended with a "best wishes
to the Yankee Photographer from the Yankee Clock-
maker." When I received this letter I got quite a thrill,
for in my work, I was able to take this unusual clockmaker
out of his little Xew Hampshire town by the medium of
photography and show him to the world. In a small way
I was able to bring to him credit for the wonderful work
he was doing.

"\Vhen I think of New Hampshire I also think of its
sister state of Vermont. In Vermont my fondest recollec-
tions take me to Plymouth Notch where I spent many
days photographing Calvin Coolidge in the little town
where he was born and where he spent his vacations dur-
ing most of his life. I knew Cal very well. To me he was
New England's Abraham Lincoln. He was quiet but when
he spoke he said something that was worthwhile. I have
covered a great many high government officials from presi-
dents down, but to me he was tops in everything a nation
should look to in a president.

I covered Calvin Coolidge from the time he was gov-
ernor of Massachusetts straight through to his funeral in
the peaceful little Vermont hillside cemetery at Plymouth
Notch. I covered him for spot news stories, and covered
him for features. One of the outstanding feature layouts
that I made of him was on a trip which I shared with him
on board the presidential yacht Mayflower^ while he
was president. This was in no way an exclusive but I did
have a big part in making the trip possible for the news
photographers.

He was on his vacation at White Court in Swampscott,
Massachusetts, which was the summer White House, and
for weeks the photographers had been arriving daily at

5 1

White Court early in the morning to photograph him
with the different important guests who called during his
vacation. It was necessary to arrive at the summer White
House early because Coolidge was a man who rose early.
Sometimes we got the best pictures around seven in the
morning. We would, however, wait through the day to
see if any other photos were to be made and we usually
left around seven at night.

After a few weeks, this long twelve-hour day seven days
a week was beginning to show on us, for after we had
finished our day long wait we had to go back to the office
at night to develop and print our pictures, write captions
and get our pictures off to the papers and the New York
office before we went home. This meant arriving back to
our homes every night about eleven o'clock and starting
off again the next morning at six o'clock. It soon began to
be an almost impossible schedule and I was delegated
to talk to Dick Jervis, the head of the Secret Service,
to try to have him arrange with the President to pose for
his afternoon pictures with his visitors earlier so we could
get back to the office and home at an earlier hour.

The next day we arrived at White Court at our usual
hour, and Dick Jervis told me that he had spoken to the
President and told him of our request and he thought
we would get our pictures earlier. That day was the same
as other days, however, and the pictures were not made
until late in the afternoon. This more or less got under
our skins but the following day we met at the summer
White House as usual at seven in the morning. We did
some griping among ourselves about the late afternoon
pictures and we decided that we would wait until two
o'clock in the afternoon, and if we were not called by
then we would say nothing but leave for Boston with no
one staying around to make any pictures after that. Two
o'clock came and we hadn't been called for a picture, so
we all left.

52

The following morning when we arrived Dick Jervis
called me and asked what had happened to the photog-
raphers the afternoon before. The President had rung
for the photographers at iout o'clock and when he went
to get us no one was there. I assured him that he was cor-
rect and reminded him that we had made a request for
earlier afternoon pictures. As nothing was done about it
we decided to leave at two o'clock and get home at least
once at a decent hour,

Dick Jervis went up to see the President and in a few
minutes he came back with the information that the Presi-
dent wanted to see us. We went to the front of the house
where we were always met. Gal came over to me and asked
where we were the afternoon before. I told him just what
our situation was, that we had been putting in some im-
possible hours for weeks, and as we were not called by
two o'clock we decided to go home and get some rest. At
that he laughed and passed each of us a small white card
which had written on it "Eastern Yacht Club Dock 8
A.M. Tomorrow." We put the cards in our pockets and
the President posed for a picture with one of the cabinet
officers who was his guest that day. Then he told us there
would be no more pictures that day so we could leave and
get some rest. As we left White Court we firmly believed
that our little talk had worked, and that we would now
be getting our pictures in the morning and the early after-
noon.

The card which we received was, I guess, a dress re-
hearsal for the small card which Calvin Coolidge passed
to the reporters before the nomination and which became
so famous. That card had the words "I do not choose to
run" and was amplified with "I have no further comment."
The card which we received, however, simply gave the
place and time and we naturally figured we were to get
some pictures as he left the dock to board the Mayflower
with some prominent guests. We were happy at least that

53

it was in the morning and we wouldn't have that long wait
for late afternoon pictures.

The morning came and we were lined up on the dock
at eight A.M. as directed on the card. To our great surprise
a power launch from the Mayflower came over to the dock
with an officer decked with gold braid. He stepped on
the dock and asked us if we had cards from the President.
We assured him that we had. He asked to see them and
also our newspaper credentials. We were then told to
board the launch to go to the Mayflower. It was all a mys-
tery to us but we started out and soon came up alongside
the presidential yacht. In a matter of seconds we were on
board the yacht at anchor in Marblehead Harbor.

I asked the officer if he knew what this was all about
and he simply said he had orders from the President to
take the newspapermen, who appeared on the float with
cards, on board the yacht. Other than that he knew noth-
ing of the President's plans.

The white launch left the ship, made another trip to
the dock and tied up. In a short time we saw the Presi-
dent and Mrs. Coolidge arrive on the dock, board the
launch, and in a few minutes they were alongside the
Mayflower. The President, dressed in his regular blue
serge double breasted suit and wearing his customary
stiff brimmed straw hat, came on board with Mrs. Coo-
lidge. She was dressed in a sport dress and wore white
shoes and hat, along with the broad smile and cheery
twinkle in her eyes that made her popular with news
photographers wherever she went.

The President held up his hand and said "No pictures."
This was about all we needed to completely mystify us,
for now the question in everyone's mind was "What did
we come here for if not to make pictures?" Without a
word of explanation the President and Mrs. Coolidge
walked forward and disappeared through a cabin door.
In a moment we heard a short blast on the ship's horn

54

and the mooring line was cast off. The pulse of the engines
could be felt through the ship. We were under way, steam-
ing out of Marblehead Harbor. As we passed through the
lines of beautiful yachts moored in the harbor we received
salutes and waves from all those on board. Most of the
yacht owners were training their binoculars on us, trying
to pick out President Coolidge, but he was not on deck.
His presidential flag however was waving in the breeze
from the mast, telling all seafaring men that he was on
board.

After we cleared the harbor and were heading for the
open sea, the cabin door up forward opened and the
President and Mrs. Coolidge stepped on deck. Now he
was dressed for the part with white pants and shoes, a
medium blue sport jacket and a yachting cap. He had a
broad grin as he approached us. We could plainly see he
was having a fine time keeping us all guessing. He greeted
us with, "Boys, I knew you were tired and have put in
some long hours. You've done a fine job, so today this is
your trip and I'll pose for all the shots you want/'

This turned into a field day for us and we made all
sorts of pictures showing a president on board his yacht.
Mrs. Coolidge posed along with him, and I made one of
the finest feature layouts ever made on a president along
with good hot news pictures of the President on his vaca-
tion.

The ship was ours. We visited every corner in it and
enjoyed a fine steak dinner with the President and Mrs.
Coolidge. Then, to make the trip a permanent record for
us, they posed for a group picture with us. I cherish the
picture as it is one of my most prized possessions.

After a day at sea the ship headed back to Marblehead
and we were taken ashore, ending an historic trip, for as
far as I know it was the only time in the history of the
country that a president took a group of photographers
on his yacht for a day's outing.

55

Feature stories produced all sorts of pictures and sub-
jects, and were always different. I can vividly remember
a feature I made at Ellsworth, Maine, close to the famous
Bar Harbor summer resort.

In this little town of Ellsworth, one of the local resi-
dents had been working for years building a completely
revolutionary airplane. It was to flap its wings and fly
like a seagull. I had heard of the plane and had talked
to the builder but was always told it was a secret; that I
would be notified when it was completed and ready for
its test flight.

One day in my morning mail came a letter from Ells-
worth telling me that the mysterious airplane was to have
its test flight on the following Monday. I called Phil Coo-
lidge and Larry Ellis, two of the newsreel photographers
who were not competition to me, and on Sunday we drove
down east to Ellsworth to cover the take-off of this seagull
plane which flapped its wings and, as its inventor told
us before the trial flight, "It would take off just like a
bird/'

We located the designer and builder of this mystery
plane and he talked with us for a few minutes, graphi-
cally explaining the beautiful scene that he would give
us in the morning with this graceful bird plane flying
straight up from a small field into the blue sky filled with
white fleecy clouds. This would be fine but could we just
look at the plane? After some salesmanship and an expla-
nation that if we could see the plane we could then decide
on the type of equipment we would need to get our pic-
tures in the morning during the test flight, he agreed to
our request. He said he would take us to the workshop
and let us view the metal bird. We would, however, have
to solemnly promise that we would tell no one that we
had seen the plane until after the take-off in the morning.

The inventor led the way up the street to a long one-
story building which was relatively new in appearance

56

and then unlocking the heavy door, he paused to LCUL ^
we were about to see the plane that would revolutionize
flying. The door opened and we saw a masterful piece
of workmanship. It was beautiful a large wooden bird
with a satin smooth finished body of wood. Its out-
stretched wings were wooden frames, carrying hundreds
of large flaps made of thin shining tin.

This was really something to look at, and from a picture
point of view it had everything a story should have. But,
how would a plane like this fly? I asked the designer
if he had made any tests at all. He told me that he had
worked it all out on paper and there was just nothing
else the plane could do but fly. He confided in us that
years before he had spent hour after hour studying birds
in flight and had discovered their secret of flying. Without
a bit of hesitation he told us that he had applied their
method of flight to this plane. In the morning he would
haul the plane onto the field with a pair of horses and as
soon as he could fill the gasoline tank and start the motor
he would fly off the field as easily as a bird. The advan-
tage of this plane, he explained, was in the fact that he
needed no runways. The plane would flap its wings and
take to the air with the greatest of ease.

A large aviation motor was bolted securely in the back
of the bird, opposite the wings. A series of wheels and
levers connected to a clutch on the motor would flap the
wings. The motor had been tested for a few seconds to
make sure it would run, but the wings had never been
connected while the motor was going as the height of the
ceiling would not permit the wings to lift. This was not
necessary, we were told by the designer, as he had worked
that all out on paper also, and the morning would prove
everything working perfectly. We would see history being
made in the field of aviation.

We left the gentleman with his bird plane and got in
our cars to go back to our hotel* The morning was sure of

57

producing a topnotch picture layout regardless of what
happened. If it flew, we had a layout of the first plane of
its type on its first flight which would not only make a full
page feature layout in the leading papers of the country
but also would make one or two pictures for page one as
spot news pictures. If it was a failure and didn't fly, we
still had a good feature layout of this beautiful bird-like
plane which was the result of a man studying birds in
flight, and with nothing but his ideas on paper he had
spent months building this creation but then forgot how
to teach the bird to fly. It could always be used with a gag
cut-line.

In the morning we had breakfast bright and early and
started for the field. It was a typical New England sum-
mer morning. The grass was covered with dew, and over
head a clear blue sky dotted with tufts of white. We could
just picture the large bird taking off into this sky that was
perfect for pictures.

On arriving at the workshop we found the rear doors
were open and the plane was partly out of the building.
Along with the designer was another man who seemed
to be pretty well along in years. He was introduced to
us as the workman who had worked on the plane with the
designer. This had all been done in secrecy, in order that
none of the natives of the town would know anything
about it until the huge bird flew over the town. A large
pair of work horses was standing by, all harnessed ready
to haul the plane up onto the field.

With the bird now out in the daylight we really got a
good look at it from all angles, and we began to ask our-
selves questions. We noted the undercarriage was just a
pair of rubber tired automobile wheels mounted on a
front axle bolted directly to the wooden frame at the
bird's breast. I pointed it out to Ellis and told him the
bird would have to land and take off pretty easy for there
were no springs or shock equipment to take up any jar.

58

Then Coolidge noticed that the propeller which was
mounted on the bird's beak was not connected to the en-
gine at all, and the tail had no landing strut or any means
of keeping it off the ground when it landed or took off.

I asked the designer about the propeller not being con-
nected and he said that he would use that only for fast fly-
ing straight ahead. For this test he was just going to fly
and circle around slowly to let us photograph the bird in
flight, but after the test flights were made he would then
get the necessary parts to put the forward speed on the
plane. By now we could see many things that seemed to
be missing but we were assured by the designer and his
workman that they were unnecessary as birds didn't have
them.

Now the horses were ready and the workman lifted the
tail of the bird while the designer took the reins. It was
only a distance of about five hundred feet from the work-
shop to the field and the horses started up over the rough
land to the spot selected for the take-off. As the horses
walked along with the bird behind them, the workman
struggled to hold the tail off the ground. When we arrived
at the take-off spot we found a small open field of about
two hundred square feet. There were evergreen trees
around most of the field which the designer told us was
perfect as it would keep the plane from the view of every-
one until it took to the air. His main idea seemed to be
to keep it a secret until he flew over the town.

With the plane in position the workman lowered the
fail to the ground and left for the workshop. He returned
in a few moments with a sawhorse, and with the help o
the designer this was placed under the tail to put the
plane in a flying position.

The gasoline tank consisted of a five-gallon oilcan
mounted inside the body with a pipe line running for-
ward to the engine which was secured opposite the wings.
In the nose of the body just behind the propeller was an

59

open cockpit seat. The workman told me that he had
spent many hours dreaming of this day, and today when
the bird flew he would be in that seat.

In this setting against the dark of the evergreen trees,
the bird-like plane with its glittering wings and smooth
natural wood body was a beautiful sight and showed in
an instant the months of hard work that had brought it
to its present state of completion. Phil Coolidge looked
at the plane and said it was a shame to start the motor
and wreck this beautiful bird. To me it looked like an
accident waiting to happen, but to the designer and the
workman it was to be their day of days today the bird
would go aloft and fly.

The designer walked around the bird several times to
make sure everything was in the best of condition and
then, deciding that the hour had arrived, he gave the
workman the order to start the engine. With a couple of
cranks the powerful aviation motor started and set up a
terrific roar, but quickly the workman throttled it back to
an easy pulsating idle and took his position in the open
cockpit seat where he had the clutch lever that would
throw the wings into motion.

All chances of this plane flying had now left our minds
and we were looking around the field for the best direc-
tion to start on a hasty retreat in case we had to when the
motor started. This was going to be a news story regard-
less of what happened! Hearing the roar of the engine
when it started, and then seeing the position of the work-
man in the nose of the bird, I decided it might be just
good news policy to get a picture of him before something
happened. I told the designer I wanted him to hold every-
thing until I got a close-up of both of them standing
by the plane. The movie men saw at a glance what I had
in mind and they followed in my footsteps to get their
close-ups.

With our feet braced and ready to spring for safety at a

60

moment's notice we waved to the designer that we were
ready. He went to the side of the plane and told the work-
man not to make this a long flight but to circle and come
right back. Then he stepped back and gave the signal to
start.

With a wave the workman opened the throttle about
quarter speed and the engine started to roar. With a for-
ward lunge he threw the clutch lever and the bird be-
came action unlimited from tail to open cockpit. The
wings gave one or two terrific flaps and the sky became
filled with flying tin; the workman had been thrown clear
of his seat and was resting peaceably on the ground. The
designer rushed to the bird to stop the engine, but by this
time the once beautiful bird was flopping around the field
like a badly wounded duck.

The tin wing valves which were supposed to open on
the upward motion of the wings and close on the down-
ward motion were falling around us like rain. The wheel
landing gear had broken through the body and the tail
was resting on the ground the wings were still beating
themselves to pieces on the ground as the designer, in
a frantic but lucky swing, caught the clutch lever and thus
ended the bird's misery.

He told us that of course this was the first test but he
was convinced that the bird plane would be a success, as
he had seen daylight under the wheels when the wings
started to flap. To us this was unimportant for, by that
time, we could see daylight through almost any part of
the bird. He assured us he would change a few things and
make a few adjustments in the wing valve assembly and
he would let us know when he intended to make the next
test. But the next test never came for the plane that was
to fly like a bird.

In the steady search for features with good picture pos-
sibilities we always made a good maple sugar layout in
the early spring when the maple sap started to run with

61

the first warm days. The best spot for this was my old
stamping ground in Plymouth Notch, Vermont, where
Colonel John Coolidge, father of the late president, had
a large sugar maple orchard on the side of the hill over-
looking the little town. The equipment had excellent
picture value. A large tank was mounted on a sled and
hauled by a pair of oxen through the orchard to collect
the sap from hundreds of pails which were hanging on
the trees. Near the edge of the orchard stood the old time
sugar house, weather beaten and crudely built, but ideal
as a photographic subject.

Herb Moore, who was president of the Home Town
Coolidge Club and a general promoter for the little town,
was always willing to stage the pictures for me and he
would produce the old-fashioned hand-hewn shoulder
yoke with a pail hanging on each end. Herb knew the
type of picture I wanted and he dressed for the part in
his heavy red wool shirt and long felt boots.

The layout consisted of pictures of the oxen with the
collecting tank sled, shots of Herb with the old yoke col-
lecting sap, boiling the sap in the sugar house, filling the
gallon cans with golden syrup and always a shot of a
little country boy with a big close-up smile as he ate a
piece of maple sugar.

This layout always had the same result an avalanche
of mail arriving in Herb Moore's mail box ordering maple
sugar from the Coolidge Farm. If the entire township had
been one big orchard there wouldn't have been enough
maple syrup to fill the demand.

Scientific subjects always made good feature layouts. I
worked very closely with Jim Rollins, the publicity
director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
and it was on one of these M. I. T. stories that I produced
a layout of unusual photographs.

Colonel Green, a great friend of M. I. T., had a large
estate at Dartmouth, Massachusetts. He had built a large

metal hangar on this estate to house a dirigible but had
only used it for that purpose a short time and had no fur-
ther use for it. Knowing that the scientists at M. I. T.
were experimenting with high voltage electricity in vol-
tages high enough to produce man-made lightning, he
offered the hangar to the Institute for its experiments. A
very high building with a large open-spaced interior was
needed and this building fitted the requirements.

The scientists designed the equipment they needed and
worked for years building and erecting it inside the
hangar. When it was completed and ready for testing,
Jim called me and asked if I wanted a good layout story
on man-made lightning. I assured him it had great possi-
bilities and we went down over the road to Dartmouth
where I was to make my first photos of this type of light-
ning.

We arrived at the huge hangar and took a look inside.
In the center of the building stood two tall tubes with a
large ball mounted on the top of each. The tubes were
about fifteen feet high and each ball was about ten feet in
diameter. At the base of each tube was an enclosed cabi-
net that housed the machines which produced the high
voltage that ran into millions of volts.

One of the scientists told me that the machines charged
the large metal balls until there was enough voltage to
send a streak of lightning to the opposite ball and that
the lightning would be, to all appearances, the same as
natural lightning. He warned me to stay clear of the
apparatus when it was operating and set up the camera at
the opposite end of the hangar where I could photograph
the entire set-up when it went into action as the lightning
might jump to anything within range.

I set up my camera on a tripod for I knew it would be
like photographing natural lightning at night, when all
that is necessary is to open the shutter and let the light-
ning do its own work as it darts across the film. Picking a

63

location where I could cover the entire apparatus from
the ground to the roof of the hangar, I made sure of the
focus and waited until the action started.

In order to study the flashes and see them clearly the
lights were turned off, with the exception of a couple of
small lights at the base of the tubes. The hangar had no
windows so the entire interior was dark.

Soon the high speed machines which generated the
high voltage began to whine and scream as they built up
speed. The entire procedure began to send weird shivers
along my spine. Suddenly there was a terrific snap and a
flash of lightning left one of the huge balls and hit the
opposite one; then another hit the metal ceiling of the
hangar; then they were hitting the ground. All during
this time I was opening and closing my shutter and chang-
ing film holders as fast as I could. This terrific snapping
and crashing, along with the bright blue and pink streaks
of lightning hitting about everything in sight, gave me the
feeling that I was certainly photographing something
new. I had photographed about every kind of story but
this was the first time I had made a set of pictures inside
the devil's workshop.

The huge ball-topped tubes were now moved closer to-
gether and the lightning then went onto a straight course,
jumping between the two balls, which made me feel a lot
more at ease. To demonstrate the power of the man-
made lightning a block of wood was placed between the
large ball electrodes. The first streak of lightning split
the wood like a match stick.

As you can well imagine, I had a spectacular set of pic-
tures when I left the estate that night.

Chapter V

IN THE CATEGORY of stories known to the veteran
news photographer as stunt features come some of the
greatest thrills. These stories are usually the result of the
wild but fertile mind of a photographer who is looking
for a good layout of pictures when hot news stories are at
a low ebb.

I was returning by car one day from Northampton,
Massachusetts, where I had been making some photos of
Calvin Coolidge, and I had very few pictures lined up for
the next two weeks. As I drove along the road with Wil-
kinson of Paramount Newsreel we were trying to get an
idea of something we could work out that would make a
good layout feature. We came up with all kinds of ideas
and finally I remembered that a few weeks before I had
been talking with the manager of the Moth Airplane
Company, the manufacturers in this country of the British
Moth Plane. The factory was in Lowell, Massachusetts,
and the manager had told me he would be very glad to
cooperate with me on any story I could think of that
would produce pictures to publicize his Moth Airplanes.

With this in mind, I told Wilkinson that we could do
something new with a plane and that I knew I could get
the plane for any stunt. Many wild ideas came to mind,
such as a tug-of-war between an airplane and an automo-
bile, and dozens of others, but they all washed out when

65

we thought of the practical application of the stunt and
found it would be impossible to do it either from a photo-
graphic angle or the physical limitations of the plane. We
liked the idea of doing something with a plane and an
automobile so finally I came up with the idea of flying
the plane off the roof of an automobile. This, of course,
was just a brainstorm but the more we thought about it
the more we realized that actually it could be done; cer-
tainly a stunt that had never been done before and would
make a sw r ell layout of pictures which would hit all types
of papers.

I remembered some of the facts that the manager of the
Moth Airplane had given me. The plane would take off
at forty-two miles an hour, and it was one of the lightest
planes ever built. The speed offered no problem to us for
certainly a car could travel forty-two miles an hour. I felt
sure I could get the plane and I knew I could get a car
for I was well acquainted with Fred Ordway and Carl
Batchelder. Fred was president and Carl was vice presi-
dent of the Henley Kimball Company, New England dis-
tributors of the Hudson automobile, and they were always
very glad to get publicity for the Hudson car.

I went directly to Lowell and visited the manager o
the Moth airplane factory. I told him that I had a stunt
in my mind which I knew would produce national public-
ity for his plane and company, but he would have to keep
all the details absolutely secret and if completed would
have to be an exclusive story. With assurance from him
that he would abide by the secrecy part of the deal, I told
him that the stunt was to fly an airplane from the roof
of an automobile. He just sat back and laughed and said,
"Brother, I've heard some good ones but this tops them
all. Have you got any more ideas like this one?"

I told him that to me it sounded just as ridiculous but
to my judgment it could be done and I was sure his plane
could do it. I stressed the fact that it had never been done

66

before, and that it was a sure-fire national news layout
which would hit papers all over the world. After some dis-
cussion he began to see that it wasn't an impossibility and
he called in his test pilot, Al Krapish, who would be the
pilot on the stunt. Al came in and was informed of the
secrecy angle and was given the stunt in detail. He agreed
it could be done and was willing to fly the plane from
the roof of a car.

I had now overcome my biggest problem. I had the
plane, and it was simply a case of getting the car and the
necessary framework built on it to hold the plane.

With a measuring tape and the help of the pilot I made
a number of accurate measurements which would enable
me to draw a plan of the necessary steelwork framing for
the car. I also got the weight of the plane at the wheels
and the weight on the tail strut as these would be the
three points where the plane would rest on the car roof
structure.

Armed with these measurements and the assurance of
the use of the plane, I called on Fred Ordway, distribu-
tor of the Hudson car, to outline the stunt to him and
assure him of the national publicity which would result
from it.

He was enthused over the idea and agreed to go along
with me, furnishing the automobile and the necessary
steel tubing framework for the car to hold the plane. Be-
cause of the need for secrecy, even the builders of the
steel work could not know the exact use which was to be
made of the structure they were building. The next morn-
ing I took the measurements and plans to the Henley
Kimball garage in Cambridge and Fred Ordway brought
in the car that was to make history. The car was a new
demonstrator of the Super Six class and had the longest
wheelbase made by Hudson. Fred introduced me to Red
Pealier who was the blacksmith at the garage and the
man who would build the superstructure on the car. Of

course the first question Red asked was what the structure
would be used for. I had to give him some answer so I
explained that Fred had bought a new type of light speed-
boat and was going on a trip with me. "We were planning
to carry it on the roof of the car. It was hard to convince
him but he went ahead with the project and after two days
of welding, drilling and bolting we had completed the
job. The measurements checked perfectly and it was
solid enough to hold the weight it was to carry.

Al Krapish was ready at any time to deliver the plane
and fly it for the stunt. The location of the airport for
this episode had not been decided but it had to be some
place where we could put the plane onto the superstruc-
ture and also where a long run could be made. It must
also be a spot away from the eyes of inquisitive newspaper-
men. As it was in the early fall, I decided that Old
Orchard Beach in Maine would be the ideal spot. Here
we would have a runway over six miles long at low tide
with a perfect hard surface. The high bankings at one end
of the beach would make an ideal spot to load the plane
onto the car.

Another good friend of mine, Pop Hutchinson, owned a
large hotel at Old Orchard Beach and with the hotel he
had a large garage which would house the car until every-
thing was ready. As it was late in the season, the guests
had all checked out and the hotel would be closed for the
year in about a week, but I knew we would complete the
stunt in a few days if we had any kind of break in
the weather.

Wilkinson, from Paramount Newsreel, who had been
with me when I thought of this stunt, was only filling in
for Phil Coolidge, the regular cameraman who was on
vacation. Phil had returned by now and we were working
together on the stunt. He was of course anxious to get it
going before the story leaked out to some other newsreel
or newspapermen.

68

A telephone call to the airplane pilot to be ready the
next day, and a call to Pop Hutchinson at Old Orchard
Beach that we would be down there late at night and to
have his garage open, and everything was set. I drove the
car from Boston late at night with a red lantern hanging
on the rear end of the superstructure, which protruded
about ten feet behind the car. Arriving at Old Orchard
Beach I put the car in the hotel garage where it was hid-
den from view.

Pop met us at the garage and was somewiiat surprised
at the appearance of the car, but w r e told him to just keep
quiet, to say nothing to anyone, and when the time came
he would be able to see just what the funny looking con-
traption w r as to be used for.

History- had already been made on this famous beach by
some of the trans-Atlantic take-offs of the early days, when
airports just didn't exist that had runways long enough to
allow the take-offs which were being made by the early
pioneers in flying.

Operating a flying service on the beach, and always a
big help to any flyer who landed there, was the veteran
flyer Harry Jones. I had worked with Harry on many
stories and had hired him to fly me on several occasions
when I had to make aerial photos. I talked with him
about the proposition and showed him the car the next
day. Then we went to a lumber yard and bought some
heavy planking to be used in getting the plane onto the
car framework. At the location of Harry's hangar, the sand
dunes had been graded to a gentle rise from the hard,
smooth sands of the beach, and just beyond that spot
there was a sharp cutway with a drop of about five feet to
the level of the beach. This was an ideal location, for we
could roll the plane up the graded section to the top of
the sand dunes and then, by putting the car against the
dunes at the drop-off point, we could put the planking
from the top of the dunes in an almost level position to

69

the top of the car and roll the plane onto the metal struc-
ture.

The weather reports were ideal for the following day,
and the tide would be dead low at eleven in the morning.
Everything seemed to be working for us, but we realized
that a lot of mishaps could take place before we had the
final pictures. I called Al Krapish, the pilot, and told him
that the tide would be out enough by nine o'clock in the
morning for him to land. I warned him to land as close
to the water as possible for the upper part of the beach was
soft sand and might give him trouble.

We were all awake bright and early the next morning.
It was a day just made for the take-off. Bright sunshine
streamed in the windows and hardly a breath of wind was
stirring, but both Phil Coolidge and I were beginning to
take on a little nervousness for we knew it was a good
story, but after all it was a dizzy idea and almost anything
could happen before the stunt was completed.

We had breakfast and drove over to the hangar in Phil's
car, to await the arrival of the plane. The tide was down
fairly well from the high water mark and we knew that
by nine o'clock Al would have plenty of hard sand to land
on. At nine o'clock on the dot we heard the motor of a
plane and Harry Jones pointed to the small plane coming
in from the west.

Al came in low over the beach once and looked over the
conditions and then circled to land. He got out of the
plane and, as he had not seen the car with the structure
built on it, we took him down to the garage. He checked
it over, pronounced it perfect, and assured us that the
stunt would be easy after we had loaded the plane on the
car roof.

The next problem which confronted me was a driver
for the car. I knew it would have to be someone with a lot
of nerve to drive with a propeller roaring just in front and
over him. I went down to Biddeford and checked around

70

for a good tough taxi driver who would not be afraid of
anything and finally found one who said he would drive
anything with wheels on it and an engine. I took him
back to the hangar at the beach and then went down to
the hotel garage for the car. To avoid any possible curios-
ity seekers on the streets, I drove the car up the beach and
swung it into position, headed tightly against the sharp
bank of the high sand dunes from which we w T ere going to
roll the plane.

We put the heavy planking from the dunes to the super-
structure of the car. By now, a few of the neighbors who
lived at the beach the year around had wandered over to
see what w r as going on. As Harry Jones knew them, we
were sure they would help us and wouldn't put in any
telephone calls to newspapers. With the five or six men we
now had we rolled the plane up the grade from the beach,
over to the top of the elevated sand dunes and, tail first,
across the planks onto the car structure. Everything fitted
perfectly, with the tail skid resting in the small box-
shaped rigging on the protruding section at the rear of
the car, and the wheels resting in the curved chocks to
keep them in place until the pilot attained his flying
speed.

With the plane on the roof, the car was starting to settle
in the soft sand so I backed the car down on the hard sand
of the beach. As I moved the car we noticed the plane did
quite a bit of swaying. Then we realized that the springs
of the car were too flexible and the action would have to
be taken from them. I got under the car and took some
measurements. In Harry's hangar we found some heavy
pieces of timber and cut four blocks. We jacked up the
car body a little, put a block under each of the four
springs, and tied them in