Evening Star Newspaper, February 7, 1937, Page 49

Stage Part _Part4—8Pages and Screen he Sy Shed WASHINGTON, D. FEATURES C., SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 7, 1937. __PAGE F-1 AIRPLANE PLAYS STELLAR ROLE AIDING FLOOD VICTIMS Sound of Motors Has Become Rescue Music Along the Ohio and’ Mississippi—Aitlines Have Located Stranded Families and Ferried Food, Blankets, Serums and Mail. By Alice Rogers Hager. LOUISVILLE, KY. UT of the terror and distress O that have ripened like grim | fruit from the flood waters of the Ohio and the Missis- | sippl, there have grown side by side the good fruit of courage and com- | passion. Where there has been need | there has been pity to serve i | Red Cross, Army and civilia e | have taken their stand together against | s more fatal disaster. Bui no story of the battle that is being the line from Huntington to Memphis | is complete without the part that aviation has p d. Up and down the length and adth of these mad and muddy waters the sound of an airplane motor has come to mean aid and release. Other countries may deal death with their planes—we are deal- ing life with ours. Here in the airport of this broken city is an epic of devotion complete in chapter and verse. Cincinnati had never lost contact with the outside world, but her airport went under the river early, so that planes could not land there. The smaller towns were served indirectly through recon- naissance from the air in the location of stranded people and radio reports of their difficulties. Where landings ‘were impossible, medical supplies and food were in some instances dropped by parachute. As in the case of Island 35, above Memphis, rescue parties were guided by planes, which explored the roads to be sure they were clear so trucks could get in as far as possible, and then the motor boats led in. Chicago & Southern Airlines, flying its route from New Orleans to St. Louis largely along the course of the river, has kept its planes at low alti- tudes and its pilots on the lookout for suddenly flooded farms and homes, and is still on the job. But it has been here in Louisville that the heart of the situation was literally saved by the airplane. Leaving Washington late Saturday afternoon & week ago, I flew to Cleve- land, expecting to reach Chicago and go South the next day. The one day plane to Louisville from Washington had been full because of suddenly called for medicines and the port at Louisville was still reported unlighted for night landings. In Cleveland, however, word had just been received that the lights were working again and I was able to get a ship out that would reach Louisville shortly before midnight. There was only one other passenger aboard after we took off—a young electrical engineer who had come out after five days of strain, for, as he said, “a bath and some clean clothes.” There had been no water during that five days that was safe to use—he had even shaved in soda water. “When I got under the shower in my Cleveland hotel yesterday,” he said, “I couldn’t make up my mind to get out—it felt so good to be clean again. There still isn't any water to use in the flood area.” won along | 'HAT was the first statement of a situation that was to grow stead- ly to a crescendo during the time I have spent here. It seemed to be the one minor obsession that overshadowed all other discomforts—no water! In a world drowning in the brown liquid, you didn’t dare so much as to wash ofdirty pair of hands. We flew at first in blank darkness, but dramatically as we began to glimpse the subdued lights of Cincin- nati a pale moon appeared like a prima donna from behind a curtain of clouds and threw a faint radiance over the malignant body of water be- low us. We could see little else, save where a main highway wound into the spreading flood and was lost. Then at last we were down on a muddy field, where four different planes had mired because the air- port had no hard-surfaced runways. | The pilot Erought us in with cau- tion, and the stewardess hoped we wouldn’t find things too bad. Late as it was, the station was full of people—men and women and a few children, people with their heads up but with the brown smudges of fatigue deep laid around their eyes. The two offices, American and Eastern Airlines, were busy with ringing phones and questioners, while in the background the staccato voice of the radio kept up its incessant, queru- lous chant. The engineer found no car avail- able, and after various futile efforts at the telephone had a call sent into the beleagured city for some one to come and get him, one of the hun- dreds of calls being broadcast daily since the emergency began over the now-famous WHAS. I broadcast no call—the city was under quaran- tine and my quest lay in the airport itself. Even at that hour there was plenty to see. Details began to pile themselves together to form the pic- ture—all one had to do was watch and listen and lend a receptive ear to any one who wanted to talk. None bothered about formalities. A river had washed away such small matters. In the grimy little restaurant, where coffee and sandwiches had been the menu for five days, because there was 31, feet of water downstairs jn the kitchen, a gray-haired proprietor, who seemed to be affectionately known as “Pop,” was standing by for late- comers. He was helped by an equally gray-haired and plump Negro waiter, who chuckled as he asked a man sit- 1. New Jersey State police left for Louisville by air to patrol the flood area. 2. An air view of Louisville in the flood. —Photo by American Airlines from Wide World. 3. Bundles being sent to flood sufferers from Washington. 4. Three loads of Philadelphia policemen went to the stricken area by airplane. 5. Aerial photographs such as this one of the levee at New Madrid, Mo., are used by engineers. —Wide World Photo. 6. Unloading Red Cross supplies for flood relief at Louisville. ting on a stool near mine, “What kind of Camel cigarettes you-all want? We ain't got none anyway.” Outside a long row of cars was parked. I wondered, since the engi- neer’s lack of success with the trans- portation problem. A friendly woman | - having a cup of coffee said: “We're' sleeping there tonight—Ilots of us. My husbend and I came in from our farm to find some of the family and this is cars every night.” intendent, Lieut. A. H. Near. | outsiders. | reason for coming. “We haven't much the only warm place with lights any- where around. There are people out there who come here to sleep in their TBE clack of the radio went on. A tall, broad man, his clothes a good week from a tailor’s iron, his face dark with two days’ beard, came by Pilots Have Been Working All Hours and Landing on Unlighted, Muddy Airport—Airmen Have Shaved in Soda Water. Morbid Sightseers in Chartered Planes Grounded. Friday, the 22d, when he had returned from a hasty trip to Washington, he had lived at the station, on duty prac- tically 24 hours daily. He was still able, however, to care for bothersome “There’s no cause for you to sit up all night,” he said when I stated my | to offer, but you can probably get| some sleep.” ‘The “not much” proved to be an empty, unfinished waiting room on the second floor, lighted by a kerosene lamp, heated by radiators and with two wooden park benches put together to make a bed. The lieutenant even dug up a battered “relief” fur coat, which, wrapped in a newspaper, made an excellent pillow. I never before suspected a park bench could be so comfortable! Daylight of & watery Sunday morn- ing found the lines of would-be plane passengers already beginning to form. Mostly they were women and children, and materialized into the port super- Since with husbands and fathers to see them off. A sick physician, who hadn't taken time out from his rescue work to heal himself, was sitting dumbly at a table in the restaurant, a huge yellow blanket around his shoulders, his wife | beside him trying to coax him to eat. | Shortly men brought a cot and spread | it in a corner for him, where, in the noise and scurry of the crowds, he lay | uncomplainingly until time for the ship that would take him to a city with a hospital Between constant demands, the | lieutenant tried to piece together a connected story. “There is no doubt about it,” he told me, “the airplane saved the day for us here. When we were cut off completely, with no lights, no gas, no water, no knowledge of how far the disaster would spread, the planes were our only link with the outside world. With the tide of hysteria rising in the city, we broad- cast every few hours to the people what they were doing. When there was fear of a food shortage we told them that a ton and a half of bread had just come in by one ship and that the Army was flying 6,000 pounds of MAGIC SIGHTS IN THE CRYSTAL BALL—SEES ALL, KNOWS ALL! |Riches Promised for Seven Dollars Keep Reporter in Clean Collars. By William A. Bell, Jr. T A total cost of $7 I've just had my soul bared by three A of Whashington’s licensed for- tune tellers (including palm- ists, clairvoyants, spiritualists and other practitioners of the so-called occult arts), and, if I am to believe what I'm told, my alleged literary career is coming to an abrupt halt almost any time now, to be replaced by a life of ease and comfort, mean= ing no work. So much money’s com= ing this way, in fact (or fancy), that my $7 investment will rank as the wisest ever made. Maybe that's what one of the oracles meant when she told me that for a small down pay- ment the opportunity would arrive “to make a fabulous sum.” Predictions of future financial sta- bility counteracted the alarming in- formation that I was to sire three children—two boys and a girl. I've got it all figured out: With this vast wealth that’s heading toward me, I'll send the boys to Aiken, St. Pauls, Harvard, Oxford and the Sorbonne, and the girl to Foxcroft, a Swiss fin- ishing school, and Wellesley. Assuming an expression like one of Benda’s tragic masks, I made my first call to & “psychic” with “mystic television eyes.” I was admitted to the house—a large and ancient red stone affair—by a colored maid in neatly starched blue uniform with white cap and apron. Another col- ored maid was Jolling a carpet sweeper across & floor, which goes to show that even in the housenolds of persons in touch with the infinite there exist the chores of this work- aday world. I suppose the cave of the Delphic Oracle occasionally had to be subjected to Spring house @ cleaning. It probably had plenty % v big, furry Delphia cobwebs for bats and spiders to cavort among. ‘The mystic was busy with another client; so I was shown into a parlor that was a veritable nudist colony of gilded cupids gracing gilded furni- ture. The room gave the impression of infrequent use and the chairs were arranged like those in a museum’s display. Maybe I was in the spirit’s sitting room. I half apologized to one of the eerie fellows as I sat down gingerly on what may have been his favorite chair. On a red marble-topped' table, be- tween the figures of a youth, whose only clothing was a pair of china wings, and a china barefoot maid with a cracked jug over her , Was & metal sign saying, ‘No #fin&" ON THE OTHER HAND-—DR. WHITE WHY do people go to crystal gazers, etc., such as I have described? That they do go—and in great numbers—is attested to by the fact that each legally operated fortune-telling establishment pays, in the District of Columbia, an annual license fee of $250. ‘The answer is supplied by Dr. William C. White ,the famous psychi- atrist-psychologist at the head of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Dn White says people have “mental blind spots here and there,” comparable to the optical blind spots which exist in every normal vision. ‘These blind spots are related, says Dr. White, to some very great need in the lives of individuals, some disappointment, some sorrow. ‘The clientele of fortune tellers, spirit mediums, etc., is not composed entirely of ignorant or gullible persons—“suckers”—not by any manner of means, according to Dr. White. Large numbers of highly intelligent men and women patronize commercial and non-commercial clairvoyants, he says. Their recourse to such practices can be explained, usually, by some tragedy of their personal lives. A famous British novelist, for ex- ample, resorted to mysticism to “communicate” with a dead son. He sought forgiveness for their mortalzquarrels. The psychic, according to Dr. White, provides a substitute for “the deprivations life has placed upon us.” “Man is an ingenious animal,” he said. “If he cannot get what he wants in this world, he'll find it in another.” I asked Dr. White whether crystal gazers actually see anything in the crystal ball. Some, he replied, do. They have visions just as most of us, as youngsters, discovered exciting figures in grate fires and Summer clouds. What they see has some relation to their experiences in life. The person who has such visions attempts to interpret them according to his own needs or the needs of others. Dr. White believes the variations in the “spiels” of the commercial fortune tellers are “probably very slight.” “Most of them have, say, a dozen or s0 $2 speeches, or $3 speeches, or $10 speeches, They look you over, see which one fits you best and recite accordingly. “There is s0o much sadness in the world that people are anxious to grab at anything. They grab at these predictions like straws. It looks foolish and ridiculous to the man on the sidelines, but it is genuinely a sad scene. One can’t help but be saddened by the credulity of the peo- ple wbnugotolortmeumn,thehopaolpeoplenenmeommnin This evidently was to keep tobacco fumes from getting into the “mystic television eyes.” A 3-foot oil painting exhibited a solemn-visaged brunette with no top garments, tossing & cupid on her finger tips while cupe’s twin brother seemed to be snatching at the lady's semi-detached chemise. A:Doonapemdlndlwueon- fronted by the seer hijself, For Al the information of those who are interested in soothsayer styles, she wore a black dress with white collar such as is worn by a thousand women in offices and homes. Her finger- nails were lacquered a salmon shade of pink. The “television eyes” were nice, friendly brown ones. The voice was soft and very Southern. Seated at a table, facing the psychic, I was asked which would I have—the $3, the $5 or the $10 Now, if the television eyes could have seen into my wallet, their owner would have known instantly that I would take the $3 reading. But I had to supply that information myself. The seeress handed me a pack of cards, with predictions and advice printed on the faces, and I was told to shuffie them and divide the pack into four heaps. I was diverted by an anatom- ical chart with zodiacal symbols, but that must have been for the $5 or $10 readings, so, unquestioningly, I did as I was told. “Now, lemme see your palm,” com- manded the mystic, picking up a magnifying glass to enhance the vision of the teleyjsion eyes. Alter a momengs inspection of my Future Holds Naught Terrifying If Seers Are Not Err-ifying. right palm she turned my hand over and examined the back. “Oh, oh,” she said, ominously, “some one bites their fingernails.” Well, she won & point there, all right. In fact, the aid of the magni- 1ying glass was quite superfluous. The mystic began flipping through the card deck, predicting as she flip- ped. I loved the water and I was go- ing to get a yacht. My girl loved me and was going to get me. We both loved children and were going to get three. I was going to be very suc- cessful. I was going to have my own business. And so forth and so on. “Now, whut'’s troublin’ you?” she had asked in her pleasant drawl. “What troubles most young men?” said I, looking very forlorn. ‘The mpystic smiled an omniscient smile. “Love!!” that. I nodded with a motion that sug- gested disillusionment, disappointment and disaster. “Ah, I knew it!” said my interview- er; then, encouragingly: “But she loves you—she loves you, all right (do you hear that, Susie?). And she’s going to marry you. But before she does. you are goin’ to have a vio- lent quarrel, a disagreement. It'll be over something trivial, and you'll make up, but before you do you'll pass through a period when you won't speak to each other.” “We don’t now.” “Don’t what?” “Speak to each other.” “Why?” “I do all the talking.” When was this lovers’ squabble going to take place, I wanted to know. she revealed—just like potatoes over from Bolling Field and from Wright at Dayton. United Aire lines brought us down a planeload of rubber boots; Transcontinental, Weste ern Air added to the number of our visiting firemen; Stokeley Bros. of | Indianapolis had their private plane bringing canned food, especially canned baby food. Their pilot, Marvin Althouse, who grew up here in Louise | ville, took his license here at Bowman, | and so knew the field intimately, made six landings one night in mud and | without lights, when none else dared }mmo in. Every manner of medical supplies, serums, nurses, doctors, over 300 policemen, reporters, ne\\ sreel and cameramen came in by air.’ I:LOUIS SEELBACH, member of the Air Board and the Mayor's Coma= mittee, working with the lieutenant, added his word: “During the first two days of the emergency,” he said, “American and Eastern Airlines, who run regular schedules into Louisville, did & magnificent job. I don't know what would have happened to us if they hadn't taken over as they did. They are still carrying on. After the second day the big Army transports began bringing in troops and supplies. The local Air Corps Reserve unit has done everything it could, particularly in flying serum to towns in other parts of the State, helping to make maps and getting people out of tight places.” I finally managed to get J. C. Thompson, district traffic manager for Eastern, away from his line of refugees long enough for an interview, and later, over a sandwich, D. A. McCone nell, station manager for American, for another. All through the telling the planes kept coming in and the numbered refugees would dwindle for a while as the lucky ones scheduled for that flight were taken aboard. Then the crowd along the fence oute side the station building would break into animated talk that died away when the plane soared into the sky. “On January 23, Saturday,” Mr. Thompson told me, “with the city shut off except for the airport, Eastern began bringing in extra ships. We had five in between 1 in the afternoon and 3 the next morning. The field was terrible, wet and soggy, but we managed. On Sunday it was so bad no one could operate, but Monday we and American began again. Every ship in came loaded with serum, supplies, food or personnel. Every ship out took as many women and babies and sick as it could carry. Our normal passenger load on these ships is 14. But, by leaving off freight, we added seven or eight children to each load of adults. Women without children held the extra ones of the mothers Wwho had two or three. It didn’'t make any difference whether they had the money to pay or not. We took checks, promises, anything, just being sure the need was real and that they had some place to go when they landed. One mother with a sick child showed me her purse. She had $5, and that was all she had, but she offered it all if we would take her out with her baby. She went, but she kept the $5. “Sunday we lost our lights, but we had a portable receiving and sending radio set hooked up to a plane—the only one in Louisville. On Monday (Continued§n Sixth Page.) (Continu#d on Sixth Page),