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78

Waco 

auctioned off the family furnishings so they might have the money to get to Battle Creek, Michigan. Theoldest [[The oldest]] child was a girl, and Sam was the oldest of threeboys [[three boys]]. Dad Junkin like most parents who have had little academic education wanted his children to go thru college. When Sam graduated from B.C. High School, he was given a scholarship, and offered a two thousand a year job, when he came out of college with his M.E. The question of "Totcollege or to Work" seems to have been just as big an issue then as now, so Sam went to work, building his own ideas. In 1910, a neighbor fellow, Pete Goff, built a man carrying a kite for Herb ^ Junkin and it was through Herb that Sam and Pete became chums. Pete says, Sam was more studious than he was, a grade ahead of him, and he, Pete , liked outdoor activity. Sam was engrossed in the study of Deisel engines. His natural tendency expressed itself on the technical side more than the practical, then. Sam and Pete built a motor ice-boat in the winter of 1910. Sam made the drawings, figured out the mechanical features, helped on the building of it, but being naturally clumsy with tools,it was up to Pete to do most of the labor. The motor was one previously used by Glenn Curtiss[[underlined name]] in a motorcycle. It was one cylinder, aircooled, with an intake valve, but no push rod and ported through the cylinder wall for the exhaust. Finally the motor ran continuously..[[Underlined]] Same designed a propeller, and Pete carved it out of laminated walnut and maple.  Everything worked, worked so well in fact, that as the boys rounded the bend of the B.C.river, they couldn'tstop the thing. They plunged off the ice into the chilly water, where "the boat" still is, but thank God, they were not." Their first glider was built with finances acquired by working on the old soldiers at Nichols and Sheppard Shops, to make up all the major pieces of wood from their stock, and by soliciting pennies, nickels and even dollars, from everyone, for the rest of the supplies. The glider flew, though the picture of Sam might preclude such a happy result. Clayt joined the gang somewhere in here. Sam thought he was conceited, but changed his mind.