Plane Crash

Image via Wikipedia

In 1958 I worked for a crop dusting firm. This is where I learned to use a Spanish typewriter (quite different). Across the hall from my office was a farm office and the two girls working there and myself took turns going on trips when one of the private plane had to make a trip. It was my turn. They had to take two pilots on the other side of the Guadalupe Mountains to pick up two crop dusters from a cotton gin. We went in a four place Cessna plane. As we were landing at the gin, which was at the base of the mountain) we ground looped. Sometimes if you go into a wind tunnel when landing in a small plane (as we were in) it flips the plane. We lost one wing, the windshield popped ou and when the pilot opened his door it fell off. I could not get my door open nor could I get the seat belt off. One of the pilots behind me cut the belt with his pocket knife. All four of us got out without any one hurt. All of us were pretty scared because we had enough aviation fuel for the two planes we were picking up. It was in the luggage compartment. Not knowing if it might explode we

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

needed to get away from the area. The real fun part was I had to go back to the office in a crop duster plane. The crop duster was a Stearman biplane. The front seat had been taken out as that was where the dust was put to spray the crops. The guys washed it out real good and the guy at the gin gave us an army blanket for me to sit on. Remember I was dressed for the office. In 1958 tight skirts and high heel shoes were the only option or you were not dressed to go out of the house. I had to take off the shoes because I needed to climb on to the wing in order to get in and climb over the side into the plane in my tight skirt. I sat down into the front of the plane could not see out except straight up. Back across the mountains we went, scared you bet. Finally we landed back at the main hangers. And sure enough there were plenty of people to see us get out of that plane. Remember tight skirt climbing over the side and off the wing to the ground. But we were all safe.

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