WRIGHT
BROTHERS Aeroplane Company
| From
Sheepshead Bay, Cal angled north to Brooklyn, then flew across midtown
Manhattan at an altitude of 800 feet. In New Jersey, a special train with
a sleeper and a "hangar car" to carry spare parts, began to
follow the aircraft. The Vin Fiz and the Vin Fiz Special both
arrived at Middletown, New York that evening a little over a hundred miles
from Cal's starting point. On take-off the next morning, he snagged a tree
and completely wrecked the airplane. Cal was dazed by the accident, but
unhurt. Despondent, he poked through the wreckage and found the bottle of
Vin Fiz unscathed. Taking it as an omen, he told his incredulous entourage
that this was not the end of the line. "Fix her up, boys. I'll be
ready." It was a phrase they would hear over and over again
throughout the adventure.
The Wright Company sent its best mechanic, Charlie Taylor, to help rebuild the Vin Fiz. Taylor had built the engine the Wright's used in their first aircraft and had been with them ever since. Now he would accompany Cal Rodgers most of the way across the United States. With Taylor's help, Cal was back in the air by September 21. He broke the skids when landing at Hancock, wrecked upon landing at Elmira, and smashed the machine again on take-off from Redhouse, New York. There were more major crashes in Huntington, Indiana, Spofford, Texas, and Pasadena, California. The engine exploded over Kyle, Texas, and again over Imperial Junction, California. Cal was lost over vast stretches of Pennsylvania, Indiana, Texas, and Arizona. He was nearly electrocuted in a thunderstorm in Indiana. But the bottle of Vin Fiz survived every mishap, the boys kept fixing up the airplane, and Cal kept flying. If the flight of the Vin Fiz was a heroic tale, the story of the Vin Fiz Special was a soap opera. Near the beginning of the trip, the train picked up Cal's twice-widowed and indulgent mother, Mrs. Sweitzer. Cal's mother had little regard for Cal's wife Mabel Rodgers, who was also along on the trip. Mrs. Sweitzer didn't think that Mabel was good enough for her son � and she had no qualms about saying so. Mrs. Sweitzer left the adventure when it reached Chicago, rejoined it again in Kansas City, and left it again in San Antonio. When she joined it for the last time in El Paso she had a "traveling companion" in tow, Lucy Belvedere, a 22 year-old heiress. It soon became obvious to the Vin Fiz entourage the Mrs. Sweitzer thought Lucy would make a more suitable daughter-in-law than Mabel. In the wilds of the Arizona Territory, after Cal had paid Lucy just a little too much attention to suit his wife, Mabel stuffed Lucy's designer gowns in a trunk and put them on a train going east. Lucy soon followed her clothes. |
Click on a
photo to enlarge it.
The "hangar car" on the Vin Fiz special. It carried spare parts for the EX as well as the Wright Model B in which Cal learned to fly.
|
 Cal and his wife Mabel Rodgers. Mabel had to contend with both her mother-in-law and the Vin Fiz for her husband's attention. "Sometimes," she said, "I suspect that Calbraith thinks showing affection to a woman would be unfaithful to his machine." |
 Cal and master mechanic Charlie Taylor rebuild a wing of the Vin Fiz. Charlie, who had worked for the Wright brothers since 1901, left their employ to participate in the Vin Fiz adventure. |
 Cal and Charlie Wiggins ("Wiggie") look over the remains of the Vin Fiz after it wreck in Huntington, Indiana. After Cal's death in 1912, Wiggins married Mabel and flew the Vin Fiz at exhibitions. |
 The hangar car also carried a Palmer-Singer automobile, the official chase car for the transcontinental trip. Whenever Cal would go down, the train would stop and the crew would unload the auto. Then they'd drive around until they found him. It usually wasn't hard -- news of an airplane landing traveled fast in 1911. |
