I was flying as a passenger on one of the airlines once, going out to
Wichita to take delivery of a ship I had sold. Will Rogers was a
passenger on the same ship.
When we stopped at Columbus, I managed to engage Rogers in conversation.
I had always been curious about whether he talked in private life as he
does on the stage and radio, and if the poor grammar in his writing was
deliberate or natural. He talked to me exactly as he does on the stage
and radio, and his grammar was just as bad as it is in his writing. So I
decided that, if it was an act, he was carrying it pretty far.
I noticed that he made certain movements with difficulty. He seemed to
be crippled up a little. I asked him what was the matter. He said he had
fallen off his horse before he left California and had broken a couple
of ribs. I thought that was kind of funny, because I had always supposed
he was a good horseman. I told him that, and he said it was a new horse
and he wasn't used to it. I still thought it was kind of funny, but I
let it pass.
I managed to bring out a little later in the conversation that I was a
professional pilot myself and that being a passenger was a rare
experience for me. He said he could tell me the truth then. He said he
really had had an airplane accident the day before. An airliner he had
been riding in had made a forced landing, had nosed over pretty hard,
and had banged him up a little. That's how he had broken his ribs.
He said it hadn't been the pilot's fault that they had cracked up, that
the motor had quit, and that the pilot had done a good job considering
the country he had to sit down in. He said that only a good pilot could
have kept from killing everybody in the ship, and that he was the only
one who had been hurt.
He said he had told me that story about the horse in the first place
because he thought I was a regular passenger. He said not to tell any of
the rest of the passengers, because it might scare them and spoil their
trip.