In the meantime, before that, my uncle had been a mechanic in World War I. He had given me all his books, and so forth and I still have them, and I studied them very thoroughly, to the great detriment of my Latin and French in high school. They were much more interesting than my Latin and French. The pilot, who's name was Seewanee Taylor, was rather impress that I had studied the airplane so thoroughly and knew it so well, all out of a book. I knew more about it than he did, in fact. He wasn't a mechanic at all.
So I became his unpaid mechanic that summer. After vacation started, I got a job in a machine shop, to learn the toolmaker's trade. Every afternoon after work I would go out and help him. Most of his flying was done in the evening.
Later on, I was able to buy a motor cycle, with money I made as a toolmakers' apprentice, so I had transportation from then on. This went on during the summer of 1923. Finally, I went back to my last year of high school. I continued to help him until October and he finally took me for a ride. I was really disappointed because it was only about five minutes.
I could understand that, though, because the sun had set and it began to get dark.
When we got back on the ground, as I say, I was rather disappointed. As I helped him tie the airplane down, he told me that he was going to stop flying for the year and go down to New York (City) for the winter. In the spring he was going to get another airplane because this airplane was in such atrocious condition. The airplane was absolutely awful.
It had been standing out in the weather ever since World War I. There were holes in the fabric big enough for a cat to jump through. He said, "You can have this airplane and I'll get another one in the spring. And if you'll fix this one up with new fabric covering and so forth, I'll come up and teach you how to fly." I was flabbergasted. All of a sudden, the owner of real airplane! I was just starting the fourth year of high school.
Well, it was tied down in a field off Route 55. That was where he was going to keep it for the winter. Well, you give a seventeen year old an airplane -- and I had sense enough not to let my parents know about it [Prolonged laughter] --
and something's going to happen. I started taxiing the airplane around that big field. That big field is still there, a meadow, off of Overlook Road, which goes around two sides of it, just a short distance from Route 55. There was one tree in the middle of it, just one tree -- had to miss that. So I taxied the aircraft around and I had the books on the subject.
And one book, a wonder- ful book, written by Captain Horacio Barber of World War I. He was an early bird pilot, in England, and very famous before the War and was in charge of flight training in England during the War. He wrote a book, called "Aerobatics". In fact, he coined the word, "aerobatics". It was a beautifully written book, with illustrations, and I studied every word about it -- primary flying, right through aerobatics.
So I applied the knowledge of that book to the taxiing of the airplane. Now those airplanes did not have brakes on the wheels, it had a tail skid and no brakes. And believe me, you had to know how to handle them on the ground or you would wreck them instantly before you ever got them off the ground. He stress that fact in his book. So I started practicing and doing what he said in that book. I tried to taxi that airplane for a few weeks. Every good day, after school, I would go out on my motorcycle with a five-gallon can of automobile gas and taxi around. Finally, I got so good I could do what they call "grass cutting".
Now grass cutting . . . I'll go back a few years. After the flight at Kingwood Park, my father took me down, on two or three occasions, to Miniola (Long Island) to see the airport down there, before World War I. I saw them training students in Curtiss airplanes, pushers where you sit down in front, and these airplanes are made out of bamboo and wire and fabric, same as the one he flew down the Hudson River. Very frail kite. And they would taxi across the field, getting it off the ground about a foot high. That was as high as the airplanes could fly because they had the throttle blocked so it could not get enough power to fly any higher than that. That's what we call ground effect. These students had no dual controls and no instructor and they would go back and forth across the field so they could land the airplane successfully. Those airplanes had a fixed nosewheel that would not ground loop, or make a sudden turn by itself.
I'd seen that going on and figured if they could do it maybe I could do it, too. Well, it just happens that a Jenny is an entirely different airplane from the Curtiss pusher. It has a tail skid and two main wheels in front of the center of gravity and, therefore, it does not want to go in a straight line -- it wants to go back the other way all the time. In order to fly it successfully and handle it on the ground, you have to know how, and that involves using the ailerons and not the rudder -- the rudder is ineffective on the ground. You must use the ailerons and this was stressed in Barber's book.
So I guessed if I could handle that airplane on the ground, I could take it a foot off the ground and land it without running out of field.
One day, I had been doing this for about a month, I was getting a little tired of it, anxious to go on up and fly it, but I knew I would be in deep trouble. On my eighteenth birthday, December 15th, 1923, I was doing my thing, practicing, on a beautiful day. I was taking these passes across the field, about a foot high, then making a landing without ground looping, without losing control on the ground . . . that was an absolute necessity. I was thinking about how wonderful it would be if I could just go on over the fence and take off. No, I thought I better not because I would really be in trouble because I didn't know how to make a turn yet [Snickers], or approach to landing. [More snickers] So I was doing this a few more times and thought I better wait a couple of days and it would be the twentieth anniversary of the Wright brothers' flight. The Wright brothers made their first flight on December 17th, 1903. I became preoccupied with my thoughts and, before I knew it, that fence was right in front of me. It was either crash into the fence . . . or go over it.
It wasn't a high fence, so I decided to go over it. I opened the throttle the rest of the way and went over the fence.
Believe me, I was thoroughly terrified! [Laughter] My mouth was full of cotton. I couldn't swallow. I was just, just terrified, because I knew I was really in trouble. And I really WAS! So I watched the trees go under the wings and I watched those rocker arms on the engine [with arms thrust out ahead and clenched fists, palms down, Miller wiggled his forefingers up and down] up in the front -- I didn't dare look anywhere else. I didn't dare. I just kept flying.
Of course, I was totally lost because I had never been beyond that point, to the east of that field. Remembering this, I had to get down, but in order to get down I had to make a turn, and I had to learn how to make a turn. I remembered Captain Barber's instructions: If you get wind on the right cheek in a left turn, you are skidding, or on the left cheek you are sliding. So you have to adjust the turns so you don't get wind on one cheek of the other, just on the face. What was happening was I was getting plenty of wind on my face, because in the meantime someone had stolen the instrument panel out of the airplane and the wind was going into the front cockpit, coming under the cowling and coming right into my face. It was December 15th . . . it was a nice day, but it wasn't exactly warm. Fortunately, I had my motorcycle helmet, goggles and jacket on.
Anyhow, I went up there practicing turning and it must have been over an hour. I was too busy flying to even look at my wrist watch, but I had plenty of fuel in the tank. I spent plenty of time up there, at least an hour, practicing turns and getting lost in the bargain. I found the Hudson River and followed it to the (Poughkeepsie) bridge and followed Main Street and then recognized the field, but the field went by me so quickly that I didn't have time to turn and land.
[Laughter] So, of course, I was taking only shallow turns and I was so low I couldn't see things very far ahead anyway.
So I thought I better get up a little higher and I probably went up to two or three hundred feet.
Well, after many attempts, I finally came in over the high trees and bounced . . . and saw that fence . . . and went over it again! [Laughter] I was off again. So I went back and followed the roads, maybe five or six times. I'd come over those high trees, then I'd run out of field before I could get the airplane stopped. I'd bounce and bounce again, then I'd go over the fence and open the throttle and go around. These go-arounds were like ten miles in diameter. [This time, Miller joins his audience in laughter.]
Finally, I decided I wasn't ever going to get in over those trees and I better go to that other field where the Alpha-Laval plant is now, because I remembered it had telephone wires and I could come over the wire, then close the throttle and land. I thought if maybe I could do that I could get down on the ground. I went over and came in over the wires, closed the throttle and got in on the ground with the first try. But, I remembered that the farmer who owned the field had rented it to Seewanee Taylor and Seewanee Taylor still owed the rent, so I thought I better get it out of there before he grabbed the airplane.
So, off I go again . . . solo number two. I go back to the first field again and made a few more attempts and finally got it on the ground, after only one bounce, without hitting the fence. As I taxied back, a man had stopped in a little Model-T Ford pickup truck. He was a farmer type and he said, "Gee, it shore was purty the way you landed that thing.
How much ya charge fer a ride?" [Prolonged laughter] There was a great big sign on the side of the fuselage that said "Five Dollars". I pointed it out and he said, "How much?" I realized then he didn't know how to read, so I said, "Five dollars." He sez, "I ain't got that much." I sez, "How much ya got?" "Dollar-and-a-half." "Get in." [Prolonged laughter] And on my third solo, I became a commercial pilot! [Much more laughter] There weren't any licenses and any regulations, so I was not breaking any law, just the law of common sense. I got him up and got him down successfully, and by the time I got back, there were several other people there. So I continued hopping passengers the rest of that day until it was too dark to fly. I went home with a pocket full of money, because the rest of them paid five bucks apiece.
He has the introduction price, at a dollar-and-a- half.
So that's how I got started. Someone was just asking me who taught me to fly, and I said, "Nobody."
