MY FIRST PLANE Since I had first started flying at Lincoln, the year before, I had held an ambition to own an airplane of my own. So when I took my last flight with Lynch in Montana, and started down the Yellowstone, I had decided that the next spring I would be flying my own ship. Consequently when April arrived, I left Miami and went to Americus, Georgia, where the Government had auctioned off a large number of “Jennies,” as we called certain wartime training planes. I bought one of these ships with a new Curtis OX-5 motor and full equipment for five hundred dollars. They had cost the Government nearly twice as many thousands, but at the close of the war the surplus planes were sold for what they would bring and the training fields were abandoned. Americus, Georgia, was a typical example of this. The planes had been auctioned for as little as fifty dollars apiece the year before. A few days after I arrived, the last officer left the post and it took its place among the phantom airports of the war. I lived alone on the post during the two weeks my plane was being assembled, sometimes sleeping in one of the twelve remaining hangars and sometimes in one of the barracks buildings. One afternoon a visiting plane arrived and Reese stepped out of the cockpit. I had not heard from him since we had traded planes in Montana, and he stayed with me on the post that night while we exchanged experiences of the previous year. One of the interesting facts bearing on the life of aviators is that they rarely lose track of one another permanently. Distance means little to the pilot, and there is always someone dropping in from somewhere who knows all the various flyers in his section of the country, and who is willing to sit down and do a little “ground flying” with the local pilots. In this way intimate contact is continually established throughout the clan. (“Ground flying” is the term used to designate the exchange of flying experiences among airmen.) I had not soloed up to the time I bought my Jenny at Americus, although at that time the fact was strictly confidential.