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Broadwick - 5

So then they came after me, and by that time I d calmed down a little bit.

Some time later, I landed on a great big old windmill, and my parachute didn't catch anyplace and I rolled off and went down face first. I fell on my face and everybody thought I'd killed myself. I came out with a broken arm and some cuts on me. I had on a white dress and of course I'd shed a little blood, and everybody thought I was banged up to a terrible extent, which I wasn't . My face got along all right, but my arm took a little while to heal. 

After that, I went back to work on scheduled time and I was never afraid any more. I just knew that it was entirely up to me. When I got into the air, there was nobody that could help me, so I had to figure out the things that I could do to get back safely, without hurting myself or anybody else. 

I could always direct myself. You see, when you leave the ground, you know which way the wind is blowing. In a hot air balloon, you've got to go with the wind. But when you are up there, you also have to look at a certain amount of that, as you've got to come back in the shifting of the currents that you have to come back to. Well, in between that and a place to land -- that's what you always look for, trying to get into a spot where you can land -- but if you don't know how to judge your winds, how far it's going to carry you, and what current switches take you this way and that way, which they do in a hot air balloon. If I couldn't find an open spot or a nice big back yard, I would take a tree, because it was safer to hit a tree than to hit a roof, because you'd fall off, with a roof. In a tree, you parachute was big enough that it would hang someplace in a tree so you wouldn't fall.

Of course I landed on some high tension wires once. I knew I was going to hit them, and I swung underneath it, and burnt all the cords on my parachute off and I dropped about 15 feet, I guess, to the ground. It was kind of a bump, but I was so thankful that my life was saved by getting underneath there, because if I'd hit those wires -- I was so close to the ground when I saw them. I don't think I was