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101

Waco

for human error, but he would not be "taken in." He would resolve each week that he would hire some callous brute who could fail to see the other fellows viewpoint and just bounce 'em out. Many a chap was rehired, once, but not twice. One of the youngsters (nineteen) asked Sam why he had married a widow, and the world full of girls, and widows without a kid! Sam recognized this for genuine young puzzlement and not the impudence it sounded like, so he said, "At the end of this year, I will ask you the same question, you watch her, then you tell me." The "excursions" were grand. Sam would give the boy who drove up to Piqua only 15 mi away - for our propellors [[propellers]], something else to do, and borrow the truck, breeze in for me, with a handful of telegrams to send, and off we would go. (The steam cooker saved the day, and dinner, right about here). I was amazed that Sam drove, but Clayt said he just got tired of playing chauffeur, told Sam he could drive or walk. Sam went him one better and had Phil Goembel teach him to fly. On these trips, which would have seemed so gamin to our eastern relatives, (my riding in the truck, tsk! tsk!,) we would sing and laugh and laugh and sing. Sam was really much more conservative than George but he lost his dignity often and kissed me righton the Lincoln Highway, more than once. These were those honeymoon trips he had promised me, (and I had kept the piece of paper), until he could really fly me to California, or Florida, the next winter. What would we do with our excess money, for I insisted, to his delight, we would do no vulgar splurging, nor wholesale entertaining. We would use it to /educate the less fortunate children of aviation parentage and background. Sam did most of his business by telegraph, under protest, but he said he was building airplanes, doing business with men who flew, and letters were too slow to catch them, which was true. Sam wanted toheap everything that money could buy on me, which made me love him more; but I never wanted quantities of anything, except happiness, and I knew quantities of material things, didn't bring [[strikethrough]] it [[/strikethrough]] happiness.