“It was his first cross-country flight, and his hardest. In the first place, it was February, and the weather was pretty bad for flying—so uncertain that they couldn’t predict what he’d run into. But he decided to take his chance. This was in 1929. Of course, its being 1929 didn’t make it any harder, but I just thought I ought to tell you what year it was. The start from Los Angeles wasn’t bad. He had a mechanic with him to keep filling the gasoline engines, a fellow by the name of Oscar Grubb. They hadn’t flown for very long when they ran into a fog. Hawks thought he’d try flying below the ceiling—but he ran into a snow storm. Then he tried climbing above it. He couldn’t get over it. “And in the midst of all this terrible strain of flying through fog so thick that he couldn’t see the nose of his plane, the engine began to miss. The tank was empty. He switched on the other tank. It was empty, too. Why hadn’t Oscar warned him that the fuel supply was out? What had happened to it? Hawks looked back. There was Oscar, sprawled out, fast asleep. But he woke up. Pretty lucky for Oscar Grubb that he did, and typical Hawks luck. The tanks were filled, and on they flew through the murk and fog. The fog cleared a little when they got to Kentucky, but Hawks didn’t know where he was, anyway. It wasn’t until they got to Washington that he recognized his position, by the Capitol dome. From there he sped to New York, where everybody was glad to see him. No wonder. This speedy gentleman had made the trip in 18 hours, 21 minutes, breaking all speed records then existing for non-stop cross country flight. “It got to be a habit, this record-breaking. His next venture was New York to Los Angeles and back. He left Roosevelt field at 8 o’clock in the morning, and was in Los Angeles in the evening. Seven hours later he turned back and in 17½ hours more he was back again at Roosevelt field. It was dark coming down, and he broke a wing, but he escaped unhurt. He’d broken the east-west, west-east, and round trip records, all of them, making the round trip in 36 hours and 48 some minutes. “Hawks never let people forget him for long. He was out to sell speed to the country, and he knew that the way to do it was by speeding. In July everybody began to hear about the ‘mystery ship’ that was being built for him. It was a monoplane. On August 6th, it was a mystery no longer. Hawks was going to race with the sun. The sun had always beaten him so far, and he wanted a return match, for revenge. “So he lifted his monoplane into the air in New York, just as the sun was rising, at about 6 in the morning. He flew right with that sun and got into Los Angeles before it had set, or just about 10 minutes before 6 o’clock in the evening. He’d beaten dat ol’ davil sun, all right. One week later, and he was on his way back across the continent again, and got to New York in less than 12½ hours.