“I had hardly expected to find the author of that among the candidates for flight training,” Brooks Upham went on, “but since you are here I’ll do my best for you. My aide, young Jimmy Lowry, will take you out for a flight check and if he rates you ‘promising material,’ I’ll see that planes are put at your disposal at any time you may want them. No need for you to fool around with the regular schedule for ground school; you know all that. It’s simply a question of nervous and physical endurance whether you can complete the entire course in the two months.” He reached for a push button. “By the way,” he added, “my lady asked me to invite you to dine with us this evening—seven o’clock—service uniform.” Within a half hour, Jimmy Lowry and I were down at Squadron Six Beach warming up an N-9 seaplane. The Consolidated NY’s had gone into service for land-plane training but the N-9’s still survived for work on floats. Jimmy, after a few words of instruction, motioned me into the rear seat and took his instructor’s position in front. Then signaling to the “boots” to cast us off, he opened the throttle and taxied out into the stream where he cut the gun and let the little plane idle up into the wind. He gave her the gun and as the engine took hold we skittered smoothly over the surface and into the air to sail out over the landlocked bay. Below us, the old town of Pensacola nestled among live oaks and Spanish moss now devastated by the hurricane. While I had taken the controls now and then, flying as a passenger, I had never presumed to land or take off and had had no other instruction than the few orders Jimmy Lowry had given me back there at the Beach. Now he shook the controls as a signal for me to take over and, as I did so, held both hands aloft to signal that I had charge. Jimmy Lowry now put me through all the “checks” in accordance with what I learned later was a well-established routine. He sent me flying over the land at an altitude of about fifty feet and, after we had proceeded too far to permit turning back for a water landing in case of engine failure, he cut the gun and watched my reaction. The only thing I could see to do was to land straight ahead into the palmetto swamp, and this, I learned later, was considered to be good “reaction in emergency.” Jimmy opened the throttle again before we tangled with the palm fronds, and then waved me back to Squadron Six Beach. He said nothing as we walked up the ramp and, at the entrance to Bachelor Officer Quarters, simply saluted and walked off toward the commandant’s office. Still in the dark as to my future, I hunted up my room in “BOQ” and found my baggage already in it. A colored maid was making up the bed.