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Broadwick - 7

pink bows on the arms and a little bonnet on. I was far from a doll, but that's the way they billed me, lots of times, and I never thought much of that.

Q: The crowds were good, usually?

Broadwick: Oh, very good. Sometimes the wind would be so high that you couldn't take off at your scheduled time. I've had people wait until the wind went down, which would be about 5:30 or 6 o'clock -- wait for that wind to go down so that they could watch the balloon ascension. Now I realize, that was a pretty good thing, to have people wait hours..

Q: What did you charge?

Broadwick: Oh, we didn't charge anything. We were hired by the carnival company. We were paid a salary, as I told you.

Q: What were the parachutes like?

Broadwick: The parachute was made out of a lightweight sheeting, an unbleached muslin. My mother and all the rest of the folks used to make their sheets out of that, and the balloons were made out of a little heavier material. But the parachutes had cotton ropes in them -- they strung out about 30 feet, from the top of the balloon to where I hung on the trapeze at the bottom -- and there were 38 cotton ropes around. So I imagine the parachute would weigh maybe around eight pounds. I shouldn't say that, because I'm not sure of it. I just didn't pay any attention to the weight of them, at that time.

Broadwick made all of the parachutes that we used on the hot air balloons. He was a very good seamstress, and he'd sit down and sew up a parachute, cut it and sew it up, in about a week. He made all of his balloons. He was a wonderful balloon builder and parachute builder.