Viewing page 154 of 228

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

53

The summer of 1911 indicated that as a female flying performer I might may be in the process of losing my [[strikethrough]] exclusiveitivity [[/strikethrough]] exclusivity.  Two young women appeared on the field at Mineola to learn to fly.  They were Harriet Quimby and Matilda Moisant.  I never had the extreme good fortune to know either of them.  They lived in the elegantly grand manner at the Garden City Hotel. I, peasant that I was, spent most of time time in the opposite direction. I stayed at the Gold Bug Hotel, an establishment of [[strikethrough]] questionable [[/strikethrough]] impeccable reputation a strictly middle class establishment operated by a man named McCloughlan.  Actually I really lived at the home of the Superintendant of the Mineola Fairgrounds directly opposite the Gold Bug.  My method was not entirely stupid.  The Gold Bug was the hang out of most of the professional aviators of the day. Like every profession, there are little inside-the-house-tricks that one can pick up. I, like the other fledging pros, sat and listened to these men talk about the things that happened in their exhibition work.  [[strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] How they worked themselves in and out of problem situations was part and parcel of flying education.  It stood me in good stead for many years and helped me as much as the off-hand instruction I had received from a racing driver who taught me how to drive the country roads of my past.  I stuck with and was stuck with the Gold Bug. It may have added little to my reputation as a lady but it contributed vastly to my knowledge as a flyer.  The ladies of questionable virtue could do as they wished, I was a tomboy and their pursuits and mine were at quite [[strikethrough]] disergent [[/strikethrough]] divergent directions.  Harriet Quimby was backed by Collier's Magazine, which had a very early interest in flying manifest by the Collier Trophy. Harriet was also the first woman to have a government license. Matilda Moisant, who also learned to fly and was the sister of Johnny Moisant, a famous exhibition flyer, Matilda didn't follow up on career flying although following her training she was scheduled to join then something happened and it never came off.

Transcription Notes:
Reviewed - removed the [[sic]]