The Online Photographer

I like this photograph (here's a link to a larger version) for some reason. It resonates with the book I'm reading right now, One Summer: America, 1927, which gives a good if brief account of the beginnings of aviation in America (author Bill Bryson reports that before Lindbergh, there was no technology in which America was more backward, and trailed Europe more badly, than early aviation). It resonates with personal experience, because I've flown in a plane like that (at an airshow, for a fee—with artist and photographer Chris Bailey, he of the Lost Portfolio); it touches on personal connection, because I'm loosely related to a guy who was a barnstormer (Henderson Wheeler was his name—the father of one of my mother's cousins; he died in a plane crash when his son was very young). And it triggers my acrophobia (fear of heights). It was bad enough—under control, but present—riding in the open cockpit of a plane like that. There was a time in my life when just seeing this photograph would have given me bad dreams.

The photograph comes from an album that belonged to barnstormer/daredevil Carter Buton. It's on loan to the archives of the San Diego Air and Space Museum, some of which is on flickr.

I also like imagining where the photographer is as he (or she) took the picture. Here's a link to a possible picture of the photographer. Well, a picture of a man with a camera from the same album (mustn't assume).

Buton died in 1971, at the age of 79 give or take a year. So he survived his wing-walking and biplane-trapeze antics of the 1920s.

Mike

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To dream, perchance to buy

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Featured Comments from:

Dave: "Great photo...if you're interested in barnstorming I recommend the book Nothing By Chance by Richard Bach. It's about the summer of 1965 when Bach and a friend tried to revive the barnstorming tradition. Most of the book takes place in Wisconsin. It's an enjoyable read, written before Bach [author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull in 1970 —Ed.] took his new-age turn."

-et-: "Your remark about your acrophobia reminded me that my wife told me many years ago that her father had acrophobia. This was memorable because he was a combat pilot in WWII and Korea—and had actually obtained a private pilot's license prior to WWII.

"As long as he was inside an aircraft he had no problem with the acrophobia, but he reportedly rode a shot-up plane down to the ground on two occasions rather than use a parachute. He said that he had made a mandatory jump during military training that reduced him to a heap of quivering jelly, so he regarded crash landings as preferable to another jump. (That viewpoint resulted in a metal plate in one shin after the second crash landing.)"