The Man Called Brown Condor Read online

  Chastised, Johnny said, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I been dreaming ’bout flying since I was a kid. I heard plenty of those ‘Willie, get away from that wheelbarrow, you don’t know nothing ’bout machinery” kind of jokes when I first started work as a mechanic. I took it cause I had to if I wanted to work. I guess I proved them wrong. I got white folks come to me now. I just don’t like facing the fact that I gotta go through all that again with airplanes. I gotta fly. I’ll do anything. I’ll knock on hangar doors till my fists bleed.”

  “Look,” Robert said. “You got a good paying job in Detroit. Do you think you could get one in Chicago?”

  “Maybe. There are plenty automobiles there need fixing, I reckon. But why? Things are going good for me here.”

  “I was just thinking along your line, John. If you’re going to get turned down by a lot of flying schools, you might as well start with one of the best. That’s the Curtiss-Wright School of Aeronautics in Chicago. I think they teach aviation mechanics there, too. Maybe you could work days and go to their night ground school. There’s a lot to learn before you ever get in an airplane. If you can get through a school like that, you’ll be more likely to get some kind of aircraft mechanic or maybe flying job. That’s an idea you can chew on, anyway.”

  Robert put his weight down on the foot crank of his motorbike. After a couple of attempts, it fired up. He put on a pair of goggles. Before leaving, he turned back to Robinson. “I think you have what it takes, Robinson. I really do.”

  John nodded his head in thanks. “I don’t think you know what flying with you has meant to me. Just saying thank you is nowhere near enough, but I don’t know how else to say it.”

  Robert grinned. “Oh I know what it meant. There’s not a pilot alive who doesn’t remember his first flight.” He switched on his bike’s headlight, nodded a smile, and disappeared down the dirt road into the falling darkness.

  John sat alone on the running board of his car. In the stillness of the early evening he could hear all the sounds of the country, so different from the noise of the city. Away from the lights, he could see stars popping out as darkness descended. It was spring and awakening insects chirped their mating calls. A cow bellowed somewhere in the distance. Nearby, a sudden whirring announced some winged night fowl was on the hunt. It was a peaceful place to get his thoughts together. There was no way to justify, much less explain to anyone, why he would even think of giving up his job to go to Chicago on the chance he might somehow get into not just a flying school, but the best in the Midwest. His friends would think him a fool.

  Sitting there he came to two conclusions. The first was that his Momma was right a long time ago when she had said that it was foolish for a black man to think about flying. The second was that as soon as his boss could find a replacement, he was going to take his foolish self to Chicago. He shook his head, laughed, and climbed into his car to drive back to Detroit.

  ***

  Back at the shop on Monday, he was taking a break out front when a shiny new Pierce-Arrow sedan stalled on the street right in front of him. The driver tried several times to restart the car without success. The back seat passenger and driver, both black men, got out and walked to the front of the car. The driver opened the hood and both driver and passenger stood in the street pondering the situation. John walked out to them, introduced himself as a mechanic, and asked if he could help.

  The passenger turned out to be a doctor and the owner of the car. The three men pushed the car to the side of the street, and then the doctor, without so much as a thank-you, told John, “No one is to touch this car until I can get my mechanic here. Is there a telephone nearby? I need a taxi.”

  Although not the least bit pleased at being dismissed in favor of some mechanic from clear across town, Robinson told the doctor his boss had a taxi company and there was one ready to leave the shop. The doctor returned to his car, told his chauffeur to wait for the mechanic, and, glancing at Robinson, repeated his instructions that no one was to touch a thing on his car. A few minutes later he left in the taxi.

  After nearly an hour, the doctor’s mechanic arrived. John walked out to see the mechanic the doctor had prescribed to fix his new car. The mechanic’s name, John learned, was Cornelius Coffey. The introduction led to a discussion between a rather sarcastic Robinson and a somewhat indifferent Coffey who made it clear he did not need any help. Things could have gone downhill from there except by chance aviation was mentioned.

  As the conversation progressed, Coffey told John how he became interested in flying. “One day in Newport, Arkansas, where I was raised, I toted a five-gallon bucket of gasoline all day long between a barnstormer’s Jenny in a pasture and a country store half a mile away. White folks paid the barnstormer for rides in the Jenny. Just before dark, when everybody else had left, the barnstormer paid me with the ride of a lifetime. He let me take the controls a little bit. I could barely see out the cockpit but I made up my mind I would fly some day. That day ain’t come yet, but somehow it’s gonna.”

  The two men discovered they shared a dream so far denied them. That led to both men working together to troubleshoot and fix the problem with the doctor’s car. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

  Chapter 5

  Chicago, 1927

  ONE OF JOHN ROBINSON’S TRAITS WAS DEPENDABILITY. HE remained at his job until a satisfactory replacement could be found, which took almost a month. Before he left, Mr. Fitzgerald called him into the office. “You do good work, Robinson, and you know how to keep your mouth shut, you know what I mean? I got contacts in Chicago that could use a guy like you. Money would be good. What do you say?”

  Johnny had to admit the money had been good, but he had been bothered by the fact that he was working for an outfit that, besides running taxis, transported bootleg whiskey after it had been smuggled across the Canadian border. What would my Momma and Daddy think if they knew that? He hadn’t done anything illegal exactly, but he thought it would be better not to have his name going to any of Mr. Fitzgerald’s contacts in Chicago. He had read about the bootlegger wars in the Windy City.

  “I thank you, Boss, but I’ve saved my money and believe I can start my own small shop there. That’s what I’d like to do.”

  Those friends of John’s who knew the real reason for his move to Chicago thought it was a crazy notion. Giving up a good job and moving to a new city on the chance you can get into a flying school? They thought it was plain nuts. Perhaps among the most disappointed at his departure were several young ladies who had set their sights on Johnny.

  John Robinson was never foolish about anything. Determined, independent, smart, often stubborn, he was also possessed with enough common sense to temper his dreams with sensible priorities. In Chicago he took a room on the south side and transferred his savings to a local bank.

  After two weeks of looking, he found a small vacant building that had at one time been a combination livery stable and blacksmith shop. It needed work but was suitable for conversion into a small mechanics garage and the rent was right. John set to work. He modified the rear blacksmith shop area that faced an alley with a door large enough to drive a car through and fitted a wide double door onto the front of the building with a window on one side. He purchased a professional mechanics tool set for twenty-five dollars, a welding/cutting set for ninety-five dollars, and a bench vice and electric grinder for four dollars total. He used wire fencing to enclose a storage area for parts and built a long workbench along one wall. The last item he purchased was a sign that said Robinson’s Auto Garage. With pride, he hung it on the front of the building. He was nearly broke, but for the first time he had his own business.

  John slept on an old army cot on the second floor, really an attic that had been used for storage. Working nights after closing, he converted the area into living quarters. He gradually furnished the big room with a bed, table, chair, and couch, all bought second hand. He built bookshelves across one end. At the other end he installed a sin
k, an oil stove, water heater, and icebox. In one corner he walled in a small bathroom with a bathtub and a sink that he had to bend over to use because of the slant of the roof. He did all the work himself using materials bought from a wrecking yard. John knew he would need better quarters come deep winter, but it would do till it got so cold he couldn’t stand it.

  At first things were more than a little slow, but with the help of a few friends from Tuskegee and others he had met in the neighborhood, a little business began to trickle in. Most of the customers returned. It was evident to them that the quiet young man from Mississippi knew what he was doing. In the beginning, all his customers were black. Many of them could only afford to purchase used, run-down cars that needed a lot of work. By word of mouth, news got around that the work was good and the price was right. After a few months, white automobile owners began coming to his shop. Robinson’s Garage was going to make it.

  John hired an assistant named Jules Tuggle. As chance would have it, Tuggle had moved to Chicago from Mississippi. He was a self-taught mechanic, but John found him competent. Most important to John was having a trustworthy helper. It would give him a chance to get away for a couple of hours now and then.

  Robinson splurged and spent twenty dollars on a new suit and pair of shoes. He wore the outfit the first time he applied to the Curtiss-Wright School of Aviation located on South Michigan Avenue. His application was turned down. Not easily deterred, he kept applying. But each time his application was turned down. They never said being black had anything to do with it, and they had various excuses: “The classes are filled up”; “You just missed the beginning of a new class”; “Try us next spring.”

  John had heard it all before. He was angry but he could hold his temper when he tried. The rejections made him all the more determined. He discovered that Curtiss-Wright was starting a Saturday night ground school. He had left his home in Mississippi because, as he told his daddy, the only work he was likely to get at an automobile garage there was a sweeping job. Now he applied for and got a sweeping job Saturday nights at the Curtiss-Wright school. It wasn’t easy. Curtiss-Wright had a janitorial staff that worked during the week. John convinced them they needed one man part-time to clean up evenings on the weekend because they were starting Saturday classes and would need clean rooms to begin regular school on Mondays. He told the building manager he needed the job for extra money and would do it for whatever pay was offered to him. The building manager was impressed. John got the job and was paid twenty-five cents an hour for four hours work Saturday nights. On the way home, after his first night shift, Johnny laughed at himself. What would Daddy think if he knew I begged for a sweeping job in Chicago?

  There was method to his madness. He would close his shop late Saturday afternoon and rush out to Curtiss-Wright and tidy up all but the room designated for the ground school. Just before class John would enter the classroom and quietly do a little dusting and sweeping at the back. No one paid him any mind. The small class filled less than half the rows at the front of the room.

  John listened to every word of instruction. After the class was dismissed, he copied the notes, drawings, and figures that had been left on the blackboards before finishing up the cleaning, emptying the waste baskets, and sweeping the hall before heading home. The class members rarely took notice of him at the back of the room, but the instructor could see him. John approached him the first night and explained why that particular classroom was the last on his cleaning list. He was fortunate that the instructor had a sense of humor. Without his cooperation, John would have very likely been dismissed from his job.

  Sometimes the instructor would note John’s presence during class. He might look to the back of the room and say, “You got that, Johnny, or are we moving too fast for you?”

  The students would look back with amusement to hear John’s reply. “No, sir. I’m ambidextrous. I can move this dust cloth and my mind at the same time.”

  With friends who shared his interest in aviation, John established the Aero Study Group. On Sunday afternoons the group would meet and he would pass on the knowledge he gained while sweeping the back of the Curtiss-Wright classroom the previous Saturday. The field of aviation was growing daily, but was virtually closed to blacks. Nevertheless, John Robinson was determined not only to find a way to enter the field but help others do the same. He would share his knowledge and skills with others for the rest of his life.

  John’s friend from Detroit, Cornelius Coffey, would often commute to Chicago to meet with the study group on weekends and talk about the possibilities of learning to fly. One day Coffey suggested that the study group needed a project. Why couldn’t they build an airplane? It seemed a wild idea at first, but the more the group talked about it, the more they convinced themselves they could do it. There were advertisements in aviation magazines for plans for home-built airplanes. John and Cornelius pooled their money and ordered a set of plans for five dollars from the Heath Airplane Company. They also bought a twenty-seven horsepower motorcycle engine off a wrecked bike and rebuilt it themselves. The Aero Study Group now had a real aviation project.

  Chapter 6

  But Will It Fly?

  “YOU BEEN ACTING NERVOUS AS A CAT, JOHNNY. WHAT YOU SO UPTIGHT about? We almost have our plane ready to assemble and give a try.”

  “Cornelius, between you and me, that’s exactly what I’m worried about. I agreed the project was a good way for all of us to learn more about aviation, but I didn’t think about what we would do if we actually finished this thing. That’s what’s worrying me. You think about it. Everyone in the group has worked hard. They all studied, learned how to make the patterns, jigs and parts, covered the wings, rib-stitched the fabric, coated it with dope, and painted it. Now we’re assembling the whole thing. After all the hard work, they gonna want to see it tried out. None of us can fly it. How we gonna find someone qualified and willing to fly it? Even if we do find someone crazy enough to try, I don’t think we should let ’em. I mean, we don’t even know if this thing will fly, do we? It could kill somebody.”

  “Well, we’ve been doing things right, following the plans, haven’t we? Our figures check out on dimensions and weight and balance. The workmanship looks good, don’t it?”

  “Yeah, I believe all that. I’m proud of the job everyone’s done. But trying to fly it? I got to tell you that scares the hell out of me.”

  “You and I rebuilt the engine. We know that’s right.”

  “It runs all right, but I think it might not be big enough.”

  “Well all I know is everybody’s excited about this thing. They’ve put in a lot of time and sweat. You know that. Some have worked every weekend and all their other spare time and chipped in money when they had it. I bet no other group like ours has ever built an airplane. It don’t have to fly far—just get off the ground, you know, like the Wrights did. They didn’t fly but about a hundred feet or so the first time but it counted. What you gonna tell ’em?”

  “I don’t know. Hand me that torque wrench. These propeller attachment bolts have to be tightened exactly right.”

  A few weeks later, John told the whole story to Bill Henderson, the night school instructor at Curtiss-Wright who had not only allowed him in the classroom, but also often stayed after class to answer his questions.

  “Johnny, are you pulling my leg, or have you really built a plane?”

  “Mr. Henderson, the group has built every part according to the plans we bought. Now they have it all ready to take out to a field this Sunday and assemble it. They expect me to find them a flyer to try the thing out.”

  “Now wait a minute, John. I think I can guess what you have in mind and the answer is not just no, but hell, no!”

  “I’m not asking you to fly it, Mr. Henderson. I just thought maybe you could come out and see the thing. You know, look it over, inspect it, and tell ’em what a good job they’ve done. Then you could tell them there are a few things that won’t pass inspection, maybe not their faul
t but something about the design, or the engine we’re using, any excuse to postpone a real flight. They might be disappointed, but you’d encourage them to keep their interest up. Maybe if you told the school we built an airplane it’d help me at least get accepted into aviation mechanics school. Besides, if someone like you don’t come out to see it, who at the school will believe a group of Negroes can build an airplane. ”

  “John, you’re determined, if a little crazy. I give you that. Damn if I don’t believe you.”

  John couldn’t help but smile. “Does that mean you’ll come out next Sunday?”

  “It means I’ll come out and look at the contraption, play your game, try to save your reputation with the group. I’ll inspect the workmanship and make some comments. I’m going out there to satisfy my curiosity, that’s all.”

  That next Sunday, the group carefully loaded the disassembled aircraft onto a stake bed truck to transport it out to the pasture they had rented for the day. John’s entire study group gathered at the field. Cornelius Coffey, who usually rode the train, had driven the 260 miles from Detroit to be there. It was a clear day with fair weather clouds lazing against a blue sky. The fuselage, sitting on its main wheels and tail skid, complete with tail empennage, engine, and propeller was secured to the bed of the truck. The wings, carefully padded with quilts, were tied to the stake sides of the truck. They had one five-gallon can of gasoline. Once they were at the field, the group unloaded the fuselage and wings. Supervised by John and Coffey, they carefully attached the wings and bracing wires. With string, plumb bob, and tape measure, they rigged the wings and bracing wires as they had done on the first assembly back at the shop, and checked everything else at least five times. When they had finished, they put five gallons of fuel in the tank, all it would hold, and tied the tail to the fence. Several members of the group took hold of the plane while John hand-propped the propeller. After several attempts, the engine sputtered to life, scattering dust and loose grass and startling several of the members who had never actually been around an aircraft when the engine started. John squeezed into the tight cockpit—not an easy task—and checked to see that the controls responded freely and correctly. Then he advanced the throttle to full power. The plane, vibrating from wingtip to tail, tugged at the tether rope. Satisfied, John shut the engine down and climbed out. In spite of himself, he could not hold back a smile.