It ought not to be only for the nostalgia of some momentary comfort that we remember. Our efforts to comprehend the present may receive an assist from deliberate and thoughtful recollection of things that happened less than 100 years ago. Charles Lindbergh made his trans-Atlantic flight in 1927. [See the link for details]
https://www.charleslindbergh.com/history/timeline.asp
There are word pictures about him and The Spirit of St. Louis in The American Scrap Book published in 1928, a copy of which I have due to my MIL’s generosity with her own personal library back in the ’80s.
The Need for a Second Look is the title of their brief forward and these words are included in the comments that introduce this sizable volume:
The American Scrap Book and its companion volume, The European Scrap Book, aim to collect between the covers of two books, the year’s golden harvest of thought and achievement. The newest ideas in Literature, Art, Music, Business, Science, Religion and Invention make up the material that has been gathered together. Here, jostling together in pleasant proximity, are hundreds of writers and painters and world flyers, statesmen and biologists and doctors, poets, playwrights and diplomats.
“If we are to build up a Civilization around ourselves in these United States,” says Vachel Lindsay, “we must learn to keep our beautiful things, and to look at them more than once.”
A second look is what this book…offer(s) the reader. An opportunity to look a second time at beautiful worthwhile things and weave them into the fabric of our consciousness so that they may become a part of us.
It is a serious attempt to harvest the distinguished work of the year and prevent its being blown out of our hands in the swift passage of the seasons. We whiz through life at a pace that leaves very little time for reading, and no time at all to be wasted.
From the Scrap Book, p. 250:
The Parting of Lindy and The Spirit
Following his historic solo flight from New York to Paris and his subsequent air tour of Latin America, last spring Colonel Lindbergh and The Spirit of Saint Louis dissolved partnership when the plane was placed in the Smithsonian Institution. As they parted company, the noted aviator murmured, “I am sorry.” An attendant who witnessed the leave-taking on Bolling Field, while installing night lights on the trans-Atlantic flyer’s new plane, observed: “Boy, he sure hated to see her go. You can believe that.”
[After they parted, H. I. Phillips published this silent conversation between the plane and the pilot in the New York Sun]
Slim
Well, good-by, old girl! You’ve earned a rest;
You’re very tired. It’ll be very quiet here.
The Spirit
What? Is this a joke, Slim? Tell me you’re just fooling.
I need a rest? I’m tired?
Where am I going? What’s this all about?Slim
Listen, old girl – You’re going into a nice
Warm, comfortable, clean, high-class museum –
The Smithsonian Institution;
It’s run by nice people; you’ll love it.The Spirit
Slim, you can’t mean it; me in a museum!
Me in a musty old hall with a lot of stuffed lizards
And skeletons and armored dummies, spinning wheels,
Death masks, Colonial skillets
And ball gowns of Dolly Madison and Mrs. Cleveland!Slim
I know it’ll seem strange at first girl. But
You’ll come to like it after a while.The Spirit
Do you mean it, Slim? Me bolted to a floor never to rise again?
Never to leap in the cool of the morning air
And soar through the sunlight into the skies?
Never to see the stars again,
Know adventure, overcome odds and feel the joy of triumph?
Tell me it ain’t so, Slim!Slim
Don’t rub it in, old girl!
I’d rather do anything than leave you like this.
They’ve made me do it with a lot of talk about
Custom, tradition, history, education and such stuff.
They say “we” owe it to future generations.
It’s a kind of duty, old girl.The Spirit
Duty, eh? Well, all right … I’m game, boy. I’ll go through;
But I’ll be mighty lonely without you, Slim.
There will be no kick in mixing with crowds of sightseers, museum nuts, old ladies and noisy children
Make it easy for me, Slim … Drop in once in a while
For old time’s sake.Slim
Sure I will! I’ll come in often.
But I’d better be going now, old pal.
This ain’t making it any easier for either of us.
G’bye … pal.The Spirit
G’bye, Slim … and good luck!
Thankfully the Spirit of Saint Louis is not bolted to the floor although it may have been at one time.
We all have things in our homes –
…old screwdrivers, commercially printed wooden cheese boxes, the hack saw used by Grandpa, Dad’s bill fold, Mom’s last driver’s license, high school diplomas from 1933….
…draft-status notifications for men in their early 40s issued near the beginning of World War II, Grandma’s old Bible or tea set, a painting of the original barn on the old home place…..
…things that speak of flights made, cloud banks avoided, or bright sunshine flooding through someone else’s window.
Document the back stories of the stuff you dust and store. Like The Spirit of St Louis, these things need the stories in order to live on.
The “late head of the U. S. Steel Corporation” Judge Elbert H. Gary, died on August 25, 1927. This paragraph from his will was included in the 1928 American Scrap Book:
I earnestly request my wife and my children and descendants that they steadfastly decline to sign any bonds or obligations of any kind as surety for any other person or persons; that they refrain from anticipating their income in any respect; that they refuse to make any loans except on the basis of first-class well-known securities and that they invariably decline to invest in any untried or doubtful securities or property or enterprise or business.
Signed copies of Mailboxes and Old Barns ($18/including shipping) can be ordered by emailing [email protected]. Payment can be made by PayPal or check to Sharon Torgerson, P O Box 513, Woodburn, OR 97071.