Salinas Race Track

The Salinas Race Track and Rodeo Grounds served as the setting for one of the most extraordinary episodes in the Hamilton family lore: Olive Hamilton's prize airplane ride during World War I. Olive, the narrator's mother, had become a champion seller of Liberty bonds, and the Treasury Department awarded her a ride in an army airplane. The event, scheduled at the race track, transformed a civic honor into a harrowing personal ordeal that revealed Olive's iron will and her profound, almost metaphysical, disbelief in the very machine that carried her aloft.

The Prize and the Preparation

Olive Hamilton's ferocious bond-selling campaign had caught the attention of the Treasury Department. After quadrupling her already fabulous sales record, she was awarded the fairest prize of all: a ride in an army airplane. The flight was scheduled to take place at the Salinas Race Track and Rodeo Grounds. The family was driven to the track in an army automobile, feeling more solemn and golden than at a good funeral. Olive's husband, Ernest, was working at the Spreckles Sugar Factory, five miles from town, and could not get off, or perhaps did not want to, for fear he could not stand the strain. Olive, however, had made arrangements, on pain of not going up, for the plane to try to fly as far as the sugar factory before it crashed.

The Ascent and the Ordeal

When Olive arrived at the field, the plane was appallingly little and flimsy—an open cockpit biplane with wooden struts tied with piano wire and wings covered with canvas. She went to its side as an ox to the knife. Over the clothes she was convinced were her burial clothes, two sergeants slipped on a padded coat and a flight coat, and she grew rounder with each layer. A leather helmet and goggles completed the transformation, making her look like a goggled ball. The sergeants hoisted her bodily into the cockpit and wedged her in. As they strapped her in, she suddenly came to life and began waving frantically. She tugged at her flight glove, freed her hands, took off her engagement ring, and handed it down to her daughter Mary. She set her gold wedding ring firmly, pulled the gloves back on, and faced the front. The pilot climbed into the front cockpit, and the little ship taxied away, roared down the field, and staggered into the air. The plane became a speck in the sky toward Spreckles and disappeared. Then, to the horror of the onlookers, it seemed to stagger and fall, caught itself, climbed, and made a loop. It barrel-rolled, made Immelmann turns, inside and outside loops, and turned over and flew upside down. One of the soldiers said quietly, "I think he's gone nuts. She's not a young woman." The airplane landed steadily enough, and the pilot climbed out, shaking his head in perplexity. "Goddamest woman I ever saw," he said. It took four men and quite a long time to get Olive out of the cockpit; she was so rigid they could not bend her. She was taken home and put to bed, and she did not get up for two days.

The Misunderstanding and Its Meaning

The full story emerged only slowly, pieced together from the pilot's and Olive's accounts. They had flown out and circled the Spreckles Sugar Factory as ordered, and then the pilot thought of a joke. He shouted something, and his face looked contorted. Olive could not hear over the noise of the engine. The pilot throttled down and shouted, "Stunt?" Olive saw his goggled face, and the slipstream caught his word and distorted it. What Olive heard was the word "stuck." She thought her death had come. Her mind flashed to see if she had forgotten anything—will made, letters burned, new underwear, plenty of food in the house for dinner. She wondered whether she had turned out the light in the back room. Then she thought there might be an outside chance of survival. The young soldier was obviously frightened, and fear might be the worst thing that could happen to him in handling the situation. If she gave way to the panic that lay on her heart, it might frighten him more. She decided to encourage him. She smiled brightly and nodded to give him courage, and then the bottom fell out of the world. When he leveled out of his loop, the pilot looked back again and shouted, "More?" Olive was way beyond hearing anything, but her chin was set and she was determined to help the pilot so that he would not be too afraid before they hit the earth. She smiled and nodded again. At the end of each stunt he looked back, and each time she encouraged him. Afterward he said over and over, "She's the goddamest woman I ever saw. I tore up the rule book and she wanted more. Good Christ, what a pilot she would have made!"