January 31, 2023 Men Who Ask for Directions

The Liberty Gazette

January 31, 2023

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

They didn’t know the area well, but they had a map in the Curtiss Jenny, out for a little cross-country fun. Granted, it was a railroad map, but that’s what they all used back then, before aerial maps. Just follow the railroads to get from town to town and look for the water towers to verify you’re in the right place.  It was 1924, not that long after the days of wagon trains on dirt roads. Sure, Henry Ford, Louis Chevrolet, Barney Olds, and of course Fred and Augie Duesenberg were already selling horse-less carriages, but it hadn’t been that long. 

They left Houston and went west. The map showed a couple of rivers flowing through that part of Texas. Only one of them was accompanied by the symbol of a railroad track. So, on they flew, thinking they were following the right one – the river alongside the railroad – when they finally realized that something didn’t look right. These weren’t the features on the ground below that they expected to see. Then they realized that the mapmaker should have added railroad tracks to the other river, too. That’s when they learned that the Rio Grande wasn’t the only river that gave Texas train passengers a view. The Nueces did as well. And below them was Camp Wood. Of course, they don’t know that until they landed, because the map didn’t have the names of towns. 

That’s what happened to Charles Lindbergh and his friend Leon Klink. At least the men can be credited with stopping to ask for directions. That it was the town square where they stopped made for some exciting chatter in Camp Wood. 

They could have taken off the next morning, but the two young bachelors stayed another day to go to a dance. The next morning offered a favorable winds. Lindbergh wrote in his book, We, that “One of the town streets was wide enough to take off from, provided I could get a forty-four-foot wing between two telephone poles forty-six feet apart and brush through a few branches on each side of the road.” As they lifted off, just before passing said poles, “there was a rough patch on the street. One of the wheels got in a rut and I missed by three inches of the right wingtip. The pole swung the plane around and the nose crashed through the wall of a hardware store, knocking pots, pans, and pitchforks all over the interior.” The storeowner refused Lindbergh’s offer of payment – it would be great advertising, like Land here for a great deal on all your household needs!

The Texas Historical Commission granted an historical marker along Highway 55 in Camp Wood to commemorate the unplanned stop made by the man who would, just three years later, become the most famous man in the world.

For the whole story and more, get yourself the book, History Ahead; Stories beyond the Texas Roadside Markers (Texas A&M University Press), which includes a few more aviation stories.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com