The Man Called Brown Condor (32 page)

“That's right. Look here, there must be a thousand colored folks at the field already. I'll come over and get you myself before we have a riot or something out here. If you can get the wheel off your plane, we'll bring it back here with you. We got a tire and tube to fit it. My boys can mount 'em while you talk to these people. Then we'll get you and the wheel back to your plane. That sound alright?”

“Mr. Key, that would be mighty fine of you. I'll pay for the service. Hang on just a minute and I'll get Mr. Perkins here to tell you exactly where we are.”

“Just tell him you're at Perkins' store on Highway 80, four miles west of the Tombigbee Bridge.”

John relayed the location to Al Key. Then he paid for the phone call, borrowed a screw type automobile jack and a toolbox from the storekeeper, and returned to the plane where he jacked up the right gear strut and removed the wheel. Afterwards he returned to the store and bought a quart of milk, a tin of sardines, and a box of crackers for lunch. He sat out on the porch talking with Mr. Perkins. They heard the sound of an aircraft directly overhead. By the time they walked out to the pasture, Al Key was waiting for them beside his plane, a Curtiss Robin.

A year earlier, Al Key and his brother Fred had set a world endurance record flying a high- wing Curtiss Robin monoplane modified with an in-flight refueling system of their own design. The plane also had a platform attached, which allowed them to walk out and add oil to the engine while flying. A second plane lowered a fuel line several times every day and night. Food and water was lowered to them on a rope through a hatch in the cabin top. They remained airborne in the vicinity of Meridian for twenty-seven days, a record that was only broken by astronauts living in the International Space Station.

The two Mississippi pilots stood for a moment looking at one another.

“Mr. Key, I'm John Robinson. I sure thank you for taking the time to help me. I would be in a mess without you.”

“Well, come on. We got to get you and that tire to Meridian. I think every black from the town and surrounding parts must be waiting for you at the airport. Never seen anything like it.”

John thanked Mr. Perkins and told him if he could leave the plane on the jack he would pay him for the use of his tools.

Al Key with Robinson approached the airfield at Meridian. It had just been named Key Field in honor of the two brothers.

Years later, Al Key described their arrival: “We circled over the field and could see the crowd waiting on the ramp. There must have been about three thousand people down there, all looking up at us. In those days we weren't so concerned about regulations. I checked the area and saw no other traffic. Robinson gave me a questioning look and I just smiled and pointed at the crowd. Then I gave it full throttle and put the plane in a shallow dive to pick up lots of speed. We flew down between the terminal building and the hangar just over the heads of all those folks. They were looking up wide-eyed at us with their mouths open. I pulled the Curtiss right up and over into an Immelmann turn. Later one of the boys on the ground swore to me that the whole crowd went wild and that one old colored man standing near him hollered out, ‘God Almighty! Look at that nigger fly!'

“After I had done that Immelmann, Robinson looked over at me and laughed, shaking his head, but he didn't say anything. In any case, when we came in and landed, I let Robinson get out and I sort of stayed hidden in the plane. Later, after he had made his speech, he paid me and we took the new tire mounted on his wheel and flew back to pick up his plane. He told me that all the blacks thought he had done that crazy stunt. I told him we would leave it that way. He grinned, thanked me again, and we shook hands. I liked him. Yes, he was all right.”

J
OHN TURNED WEST CLIMBING OUT OF THE FIELD BY
P
ERKINS' STORE
to follow Highway 80, part of the ten-year-old designated United States highway system. He followed it west to Jackson where he landed at Hawkins Airfield (originally called Davis Airfield) and made a brief talk at Jackson College, founded in Natchez in 1877; the black college was moved to Jackson in 1882. Late in the afternoon John took off from Jackson for the 150-mile flight home to Gulfport. He picked up US Highway 49 south. The highway was mostly sandy-clay and gravel with a few new stretches of paving. The last seventy-five-mile stretch from Hattiesburg to Gulfport seemed the longest. The late afternoon sun cast a yellowish hue on the earth below where a young forest was struggling to cover the scars left by the clear-cutting practices that sadly had, with no thought given to conservation, destroyed the vast stands of virgin longleaf yellow pine. Some miles south of Hattiesburg on the east side of the road, he saw the abandoned, deteriorating buildings and overgrown acreage known as Camp Shelby. It was federal land that had been set aside as a training camp for the army during the Great War.

Flying at five thousand feet fifteen miles south of the little lumber mill town of Wiggins, John saw a distant, clear, unbroken horizon that made his heart beat faster. The clean line stretching beyond the flat coastal plain was the Gulf of Mexico. The sight filled him with the happy-tired feeling that comes at journey's end—a journey home from halfway around the world.

The Stinson let down to a thousand feet to circle over Gulfport. Black smoke poured from the tall smokestack of the town's power plant situated on the beach at the foot of Thirtieth Avenue. The port wasn't as busy as he remembered. There was but one steamship in the harbor. John looked down at the stately 200-room Great Southern Hotel made entirely from fine, Mississippi long-leaf pine timber. People playing tennis on the hotel's court looked up as he banked over the town. Along the shore, the concrete steps of a seawall, begun in 1927, now stretched east and west from the harbor paralleled by a two-lane road that had been designated US Highway 90 in 1925. The coast locals still called it Beach Drive. Most of it was paved, replacing the old oyster-shell road. The streetcar tracks along the beach were gone and the tracks in town sadly no longer used. Several broad streets in Gulfport had center dividers planted with palm trees and flowers.
It's a pretty town,
John thought to himself,
but it sure seems smaller.

He circled over the shimmering water to look down at East Pier and saw it was still a popular fishing spot. Men, women, and children, black and white, sat or stood along the end of the earth-filled pier trying their luck.
I guess in these hard times, all those folks are trying to catch their supper.
Several people waved as he flew overhead.

John turned eastward down the shoreline toward Biloxi. The hotels were mostly vacant since the crash of 1929. The beautiful Edgewater Hotel with its grand, oak-shaded lawn and eighteen-hole golf course cast a lonely shadow in the setting sun. In the 20s, whole trainloads of tourists used to come down from Chicago every winter to stop at Edgewater's own station. The White House Hotel, the lovely Buena Vista, and the elegant Markham Hotel in Gulfport were all suffering. Cannery Row in Biloxi was still in operation. Huge piles of oyster shells stood witness to that. Canned oysters were shipped as far as Chicago and New York. The shells supplied material for roads, driveways, and parking lots all over the coast. Biloxi still called itself the seafood capital of the world, but, like the country, the industry was struggling.

Turning offshore back toward Gulfport, Robinson could see the barrier islands, Horn, Ship, and Cat. Looking down on East Beach near the harbor, he picked out the spot where he saw his first airplane, Moisant's Curtiss Pusher.
Seems like a long time and a million miles ago.

Over the port, he picked up the northbound Gulf & Ship Island Railway tracks and followed them across the L&N Railroad toward Gulfport's grass airfield located west of the tracks and north of 33rd Street. Out his left window, he could see the Big Quarter and was able to pick out the two-story house on Thirty-First Avenue where he grew up. He wondered if his sister Bertha would get home during his visit. Bertha had married a fellow school teacher, H. L. Stokes. They were teaching school in Arkansas.

At eight hundred feet, John flew a left downwind pattern, lowered the vacuum-operated flaps, and turned base. Letting down to four hundred feet, he did a final turn and crabbed into a crosswind from the southeast. He set the plane down and taxied to the flight line where four planes of various makes were tied down in front of the one hangar on the field.

The hangar doors were open. John could see a man working on a WACO biplane. His name was Arthur Hughes. Arthur had been running the airport since 1934. There was barely enough local and transient business to keep the field going. The only regular flight into Gulfport was a mail plane, since airmail service had begun in 1928. Hughes got by selling fuel, working on aircraft engines and airframes, and giving flying lessons to the few students who could afford them.

Mr. Hughes saw the Stinson taxi up. He climbed down from the WACO. Cleaning the oil off his hands with a rag, he walked out to meet the pilot. When he saw John step down from the Stinson, he knew right away who he was. He had read all about him in the local
Daily Herald
newspaper. Hughes introduced himself and helped tie the Stinson down for the night. It was quittin' time and he offered to drive John to his mother's house. John thanked him. “That would be mighty nice of you, Mr. Hughes.” Johnny was surprised at the courtesy.

In answer to the knock on her front door, Celeste Cobb came from the back of the house wiping her hands on her apron. All she could distinguish through the screen door in the failing light of dusk was the silhouette of a tall man.

“Hi, Momma.”

The small, stout woman held both hands to her lips. “Johnny! Oh! Praise Jesus!” She threw open the door and put her arms around his neck. He picked her up off the floor and swung her around on the front porch.

“Oh, Johnny! Daddy Cobb and me prayed so hard for you. We so proud. Everybody's been waitin' for you. Now you put me down! I got work in the kitchen to do.” John set his mother down, picked up his suitcase, and followed her into the house. “Your old room is ready upstairs, fresh, clean sheets and bath towels. We all ready for you.” She walked down the hall toward the kitchen wiping joyful tears from her eyes with her apron. “My baby's home!”

John and his mother were sitting in the kitchen when they heard the front door open and the distinct step of a person walking with a limp. Celeste motioned for John to be quiet. “I'm in the kitchen, darlin'. Did you bring home the fresh shrimp for the gumbo?”

Mr. Cobb, walking down the hallway answered, “Yes, honey, I got shrimp, fresh okra, and I also bought a basket of peaches and some fine pork chops.” He rounded the kitchen doorway.

“That boy gonna need lots of your cookin' when he gets . . .”

John stood up and grinned at the gray-haired man standing in the doorway. “Hi, Daddy.”

Charles Cobb came in and set the groceries on the kitchen table. “Let me look at you, boy. Don't you look fine, just fine, son.” The older man fought the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes. He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around Johnny. “I'm so thankful you're home, son.”

To John, Daddy Cobb looked much older than he remembered and the limp had grown more pronounced. “You lookin' mighty fine yourself.” For a moment longer, John held tight to the gentle man he loved.

The word that Johnny Robinson was home spread rapidly. That evening, the Cobb home filled with friends and neighbors of all ages. Many brought food and drink turning the homecoming into a neighborhood party that spilled out on the front yard and into street. To his surprise, Janette Sullivan brought him a chocolate cake just like she used to when he came home from Tuskegee. She was one of several women who paid a great deal of attention to John.

Everyone wanted to hear about the war, about Emperor Selassie, the world travels, his battles with the Italians. John answered many questions, but passed lightly over as many as he could. He tried to hide the embarrassment he felt from all the attention.

Some wondered if the war had changed John, but in an interview in 1974, Bernadette Barabino (Graham) remembered, “When he came home, he was the same old sweet Johnny. Women were crazy about him. He was a gentleman everybody loved.”

Celeste introduced her son to leaders from the AME and the Bethel Baptist Church. They said they hoped he didn't mind that they had arranged a big day of events for him on Sunday. First, they said, there would be a picnic at the airport where they hoped he wouldn't mind giving airplane rides. They would raffle off chances for the rides.

Now John understood why Mr. Hughes had been so nice to him. All the doings at the airport on Sunday would be good for business. He glanced at his beaming mother and knew he was trapped. He smiled at her and told the church people, “I'll be happy to do it.”

“That's just wonderful. Several city officials including Mayor Milner will be out at the airport, and afterwards there'll be a big reception at Bethel Baptist Church. And don't you forget, the
Daily Herald
called and asked if you will go in to see 'em tomorrow. They want to do a story on you and the doings at the airport.”

“That sounds mighty fine,” John said without much enthusiasm. “I can tell ya'll put a lot of work into all this.”

When the last guest left, John let out an audible sigh and slumped into an overstuffed chair in the living room. Charles Cobb returned from the kitchen with two bottles of Dixie beer. For a while both men sat quietly and sipped their beers.

“You seem a little uneasy, son. I guess we making too much fuss over you. Everyone ‘round here heard you was coming and wanted to see you. There was folks here tonight I ain't never seen myself.”

”Well, Daddy, it's nice to get all the attention, but after a while it gets a little heavy to carry.” John easily picked up the familiar speech of his youth. “Folks keep wantin' to hear 'bout the war, but they don't want to hear 'bout it, I mean what it's really like. I can't tell 'em anyway. Don't want to talk 'bout it, not to them, not to the newspaper. I'm sick to death of it. I don't even want to think about it.” John paused a long minute. “You know it's gonna happen again, war I mean. Hitler and Mussolini and all their Fascist thugs are gonna set fire to Europe if the rest of 'em don't do something to stop 'em pretty soon. I heard people talking 'bout it on the ship. They sittin' round waiting for the League of Nations to help. It ain't gonna be no help—didn't help Ethiopia. Talk ain't gonna stop 'em. Proved that already. It's gonna happen, Daddy, but I'm through with it. I'm gonna go back to my flying school and teach pilots. We gonna need pilots and lots of 'em. Some of 'em gonna be black if I have anything to do with it.”