Word: acosta
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...suspended his license for trying to fly under a bridge in the centre of his home town of Naugatuck. In 1929 he was fined $500 for low flying and stunting in the same State. When he failed to pay the fine, the Department of Commerce revoked his license. Unchastened, Acosta was arrested by State troopers in 1930 for flying without a license in Connecticut...
When medals and decorations which had been showered on him by cities and States began turning up in pawn shops, Acosta explained they had been "stolen." In 1930 his wife had him jailed for nonsupport. When that failed to regenerate him, he was sentenced to six months for abandonment. On his release he was welcomed with open arms by his wife and two sons. Said the warden: ''He was the best man we ever had in jail here...
...Acosta was fined $10 for throwing empty liquor bottles at passersby. Same year, he was arrested for tipsy driving but later exonerated. Backed by ex-Junkman Charles Levine, he started Acosta Aircraft Corp., was charged by New York with selling stock fraudulently. When his wife sued another woman for alienation of affections, and Acosta was named corespondent in a divorce suit, a New York Supreme Court Justice growled: "If it could be arranged to keep this aviator in the air at all times, it would be safer for the homes in this community...
Strong as an ox in a fight (he weighs over 200 lb.). Acosta got into many a drunken brawl. When he was fined $10 for public intoxication in 1933, his estranged wife paid that sum to save him from jail. In 1934 he was arrested again, given three months. For all his difficulties with the law, oldtime pilots still rated him top, considered him ''just a big, easygoing fellow with a genius for flying which cannot be used in these regulated days...
That he still had genius there was no doubt. At Roosevelt Field one day the builder of a rickety homemade plane was unable to get it off the ground. Other pilots gave the contraption up as utterly hopeless. Acosta, who had not flown in a year, climbed in, took off with ease, put the ship through vertical banks, dives, zooms, wingovers...