Word: racers
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...some 30 years ago who was willing to try anything once or maybe twice. He had a thin-lipped, reckless mouth, downslanting 'possum eyes, the name of Bert Hall and the makings of a hero. After a few years on Mississippi steamboats, he became a dare-devil automobile racer, drifted to France. There with Aviation Pioneers Henri and Maurice Farman and Louis Blériot he learned to fly. In the Balkan War of 1913 he received $100 a day as pilot first for the Turks, then the Bulgarians. In the World War he was one of the eight...
...meet's first fatality. Just after noon 27-year-old Roy Liggett of Omaha went up for a trial run. Nosing his plane into a 25-mile wind, he was making 200 m.p.h. at about 500 ft. when his left wing suddenly dropped off. The little red racer rolled over, dove cock-pit-deep into a cornfield. The fabric ripped from a wing of the yellow-&-red G. B. racer as Florence E. Klingensmith, 26, of Minneapolis was driving it around a pylon. The plane tottered into a ravine throwing Miss Klingensmith to death in sight of the grandstands...
...fill a dozen Spoon Rivers-people like Dr. Trefusis, whose grandiose Gothic house was one of the town's sights; Big Mary, an amiable, immensely efficient Negro cook, who refused to exchange her status of "accommodator" for steady employment; Johnny's Uncle Robert, a champion bicycle racer who was killed in a railroad accident when, during a wild thunderstorm, his train plunged into a ravine. Sharpest of all is the picture of Johnny's Grandfather Willingdon who came home to Johnny's house when he was an old man. He lived, embittered, eccentric and alone...
However uninspiring, the 280 m.p.h. mark earned an additional $1,135 for Roscoe Turner, the able, gaudy flyer who collected $5,050 last fortnight by winning the transcontinental Bendix Trophy Race. Last week his Wedell-Williams racer flashed off a 249 m.p.h. lap downwind...
...Amsterdam and the Spaniards were dead in Mexico. Then a rainstorm cancelled the Sunday program. Before a capacity crowd next day Johnny Livingston, credited with winning more races than any other living pilot, added $2.250 to his two-year total of $56.000 by nosing out Art Davis, another crack racer, for the Baby Ruth Trophy. He whipped his flaming yellow Cessna around the 35-mile course at 183.7 m.p.h...