From then on the family scarcely saw me for I worked all the week and spent what I had of Saturday and Sunday at the airport a few miles from town. The trip there took more than an hour to the end of the carline, and then a walk of several miles along the dusty highway. In those days it was really necessary for a woman to wear breeks and a leather coat. The fields were dusty and the planes hard to climb into. Flyers dressed the part in semi-military outfits and in order to be as inconspicuous as possible, I fell into the same style.
One day as I was striding along the dusty road, a friendly motorist offered me a lift. My costume and destination explained my errand. There was a little girl in the car who became exceedingly excited when she found out for a certainty that I flew.
“But you don’t look like an aviatrix. You have long hair”.
Up to that time I had been snipping inches off my hair secretly, but I had not bobbed it lest people think me eccentric. For in 1920 it was very odd indeed for a woman to fly, and I had tried to remain as normal as possible in looks, in order to offset the usual criticism of my behavior.
My learning to fly was rather a long-drawn-out process, principally because—no pay, no fly and no work, no pay. However, when the time at last came to solo, the period of training seemed to act to banish nervousness. I went up five thousand feet and played around a little and came back.
“How did it feel?”, the watchers on the ground
