Daughter of the sky

For the next few weeks after the Pacific flight Amelia rested at her home near Toluca Lake and luxuriated in the warm California sun. She spread a blanket on the wide lawn and took sun baths. She stretched her long, straight legs over the soft wool of the blanket, closed her eyes against the glare of the sun; then, as if she were preparing maps and charts for a long flight, she surveyed her past accomplishments and her future plans.

The Friendship flight and its sudden catapulting to fame of an unknown social worker. The year before that when she had read in the Boston newspapers about Charles Lindbergh and his sensational solo conquest of the Atlantic: how she had thrilled to his victory. The “Lady Lindy” tag the press had given her because she looked like him: how it made for difficulty in trying to be herself and making her own flights. The Atlantic solo: she had to do it to deserve the fame that the Friendship flight had heaped upon her. The hop from Hawaii was free and clear: it involved no debt that had to be paid. And so would the rest of her flying be. Women could fly as well as men; she had proved it and would prove it. Then when she reached forty, that fortieth year which followed July 24 in 1937, she would quit—give up long-distance flying and retire to short jaunts for pleasure. Each thought had unfolded before her scrutiny, like new stretches of countryside beneath the wing of her Vega. Amelia turned over on the blanket and tanned her back. She was not yet thirty-seven.

Not for long after the Pacific flight, therefore, did she stay on the ground or remain confined in her attractive California cage. The year 1935 became one for record-making and record-breaking. On April 19 she flew 1,700 miles from Burbank, California, to Mexico City; then on May 8, from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey. The first flight she made because of an invitation from the president of Mexico; the second, because Wiley Post told her not to do it.

One day when AE and Wiley Post were discussing flying in general, Amelia told the veteran pilot about her plans to fly from Mexico to New York. He asked her what route she intended to take. She told him she would go as the crow flies—in as straight a line as possible.

Wiley Post strode across the room to a globe on the table. He turned it until he found Mexico, then measured the distance to New York between his thumb and little finger. He raised his head.

“You are cutting across the Gulf then?” he asked. The white patch over his eye caught the light from the window.

“Yes, sir!” Amelia answered. There was no doubt in her voice.

“That’s about seven hundred miles,” he said. “Almost half an Atlantic.” He looked at her directly, his large round face serious and questioning. “How much time do you lose if you go around by the shore?”

“About an hour. Maybe a little more.” She fingered the long string of pearls about her neck. Her voice was low and soft.

“Amelia, don’t do it,” Wiley Post said. “It’s too dangerous.”

AE was incredulous. Did Wiley Post, who had braved every hazard in flying, think such a simple flight as this one was too dangerous? She could not wait to be on her way.

It was not the first or the last time that she disregarded professional advice.

Shortly before midnight on the nineteenth of April she soared into the California moonlight, heading south and east. The light from the full moon was soft; it gently gilded the rolling hills and marked as with a large diffused flashlight the course to the Gulf of California. In the moisture of the night air the Wasp motor purred: the rhythm of the pistons was smooth and even.

The moonlight, which had been a guide, now played tricks on the earth below. A white haze had moved in from the coast and covered the shore line and the stretches of desert. In the light it was difficult to tell the one from the other. Amelia strained her eyes, looking for telltale signs to help her navigate. Now she caught the light on the rolling breakers, then a black shadow on the scalloped sand, but the short glimpses were not enough for pilotage.

She scanned the instrument panel. Her eyes stopped short at the dials on the lower right. The hand of the oil-temperature gauge pointed beyond the red quadrant. The engine was burning hot. Amelia reduced throttle, then readjusted the propeller at another setting. Neither helped. The Wasp continued to overheat.

She pulled out her flashlight, flicked it on, and checked her maps. According to time and distance, Mazatlán, on the Mexican coast, should be directly below. Gently she applied left stick and rudder, leveled her wings, and headed east. Mexico City should be 600 miles away. She stared directly before her and slightly to the left at her compass: it had rolled into the new heading.

Left and right under her wings the mountains of Central Mexico sloped upward into high tables. She found the towns of Tepic and Guadalajara. She hoped she would not wander from her course: unknown winds had a way of keeping a plane from making its track.

The Vega, cruising at 10,000 feet and at an indicated air speed of 150 mph, sped over the mountains and plains. Amelia caught sight of a railroad below. A railroad? It should not be there. She wondered where she might be.

She had estimated her time of arrival at one o’clock, Mexican time. The chronometer for total elapsed time clicked past the hour for arriving over Mexico City. She looked down, trying to find something on the ground to correspond to the markings on her map. She flicked off the flashlight. She was lost.

As if in insult an insect flew into her left eye. Amelia tried to dislodge it by rubbing the closed eyelid with her finger; the rubbing made the eye sore, and it started to burn and cry. She flickered her eyelid, trying to keep the eye open so that she could see. It was no use. Suddenly she decided to make an emergency landing.

Amelia thought of Wiley Post, who could make a landing easily with one eye. He had learned to get along without depth perception in judging distances and lining up objects on the ground. Would that she had his ability now.

She circled, looking for a likely place; then she spotted what seemed to be a pasture. She swung down low and swept by in quick inspection. Unlike the time in Ireland when Gallagher’s cows fled in all directions at the sound of the plane, now the goats and cattle were placidly indifferent to the roaring plane, and the Irish green grass and shamrock were replaced by cactus and prickly pear.

Amelia fixed her good right eye on a patch of the pasture, swung a wing up in a steep turn, and eased the plane into the final approach. Reducing the throttle, she brought the stick back slowly, held the nose up, and dropped the tail skid then the wheels onto the ground. The plane clattered to a stop.

Cowboys and villagers sprang up as if out of nowhere and rushed to the plane. They were not at all surprised at seeing a woman pilot, at this time of the night, at such an unlikely place.

The vaqueros could not speak English and Amelia could not speak Spanish. Smiles and gesticulations served as the common tongue. One of the cowboys showed Amelia on her map where she was. He pointed to Nopala, then pointed down to the ground; a bright white smile broke across his dark skin. Amelia nodded, then noticed on the map that Mexico City was only about fifty miles away.

As she looked about around the plane, she could now see that what she had thought was a pasture was in fact the bed of a dry lake. Happily she noted as she walked up and down that the bed was flat and without obstructions for take-off. She hoped that the engine had now cooled down sufficiently so that she could make it to the capital city.

By waving her arms she tried to explain to the villagers that she wanted a path cleared down the dry lake so that she could once more get into the air. She climbed into the plane, then taxied down to the edge of the hard, sandy bed. She looked out to see if the way ahead were clear: two cowboys had placed themselves in the middle of the take-off run, directly in front of the plane. Amelia set the brakes and climbed out of the cockpit.

With much pointing and gesticulating, she finally convinced them that everybody—including cattle, goats, and children—was safest far over to the sides.

She walked back to the Vega. She took a corner of the kerchief about her neck and wiped her left eye dry; the insect had been watered and flushed out.

The Lockheed roared off the dry lake bed. In less than thirty minutes AE had found the military field at Mexico City and rolled her plane to a stop.

The days that followed were for Amelia what she called “Fun in Mexico”: meeting, seeing, doing in endless activity. She met President Lázaro Cárdenas, she saw the floating flower gardens of Xochimilco, she watched a game of jai alai and a charro fiesta. She attended a concert given in her honor.

A few days after the concert she was given a costume like the one worn by the cowboy musicians who had entertained her. She promptly put it on and wore it to a horse show; then posed in it, her face cracked wide in a full smile.

She loved the color of the costume because it was her favorite blue. There was fine silver embroidery at the collar, sleeves, and waist, and along the seams of the trousers. To top the ensemble, she wore on her head a large high-crowned sombrero with a curled-up brim gaily trimmed in entwining leaves and flowers. It became one of her treasured gifts.

The women of Mexico, particularly, interested Amelia. As she went about from place to place, she noted the few sheltered women of the higher classes; the many, bent and worn from the hard labor of the peon; then again the few self-supporting of the middle classes in the city. She would have liked to know more of their strivings and ambitions; she had seen enough, however, to know that reforms were needed in the new order.

“I, for one,” she wrote of the experience, “hope for the day when women will know no restrictions because of sex but will be individuals free to live their lives as men are free—irrespective of the continent or country where they happen to live.”

As in the past, GP had joined AE and guided her through all the festivities. As her manager he had become indispensable to her, particularly where only a man could get certain things done. She was free to live her own life as men are free, but there were times when GP with his bulldozing energy was the only man for the job. Without his help she would not have been able to take off from Mexico.