29
Earl Shaw’s Flying Circus
Santa Rosa, California * July 13, 1940
They left Sonoma and moved a little north, camping on the outskirts of Santa Rosa. Despite losing one of their two biplanes, the barnstorming group nonetheless pressed on, determined to salvage the flying circus. Louis and Harry attempted to come up with a new stunt routine using only one plane, hoping that if they made it daring enough, they could attract as much attention as before. But Hutch and Buzz found themselves at a more awkward impasse. While no one mentioned it directly, everyone was acutely aware of the fact that a flying circus with only one biplane only needed one pilot.
Harry immediately proposed a solution for this dilemma: He wanted to attempt a car-to-airplane transfer.
“Not only will we need a steady pilot, but we’ll need a steady driver,” he pointed out.
Buzz volunteered to drive, and the five of them—Buzz, Hutch, Ava, Harry, and Louis—tuned up Earl’s old Model A. They tried the stunt out in a wide, flat field early one morning, before the summer heat thinned the air.
“Drive ’er at an even pace,” Hutch advised Buzz.
“Hah, easier said than done over these rutted fields. Here goes nothin’!”
Hutch took off in Pollux, circled, and came in for a low, slow flyover as Buzz drove along in tandem.
“Now, Eagle! Lower ’er down!”
Up in the air with Hutch, Louis threw down the ladder they’d made out of rope and wood from a hardware store. It unfurled with a clatter and trailed behind the Stearman like a strand of long hair blowing in the wind, the bottom rung five feet or so above the roof of the Model A.
“All right, Crane!” Buzz hollered. “Time to fly!”
Harry climbed up out of the truck’s bed, then onto the roof of the cab. He raised his hands in the air, ready to catch the ladder.
Watching from a distance, Ava held her breath.
“That boy is plumb crazy,” Cleo commented, likewise breathless and riveted.
“He’s just trying to make up for Earl’s loss,” Ava said.
“Hah—maybe, but that’s not the whole of it, and you know it,” Cleo said. “That boy’s a born daredevil if there ever was one. Graceful, and never one drop of fear in him. He’s got a real rare gift.”
Ava was surprised. She had never thought her mother paid Harry much mind, and she was curious to know more about her mother’s opinion. But Cleo had already returned her gaze to the skies.
Just then, a hooting and hollering sounded. Ava looked back and saw that Harry had caught the ladder. Once it was clear that Harry’d gotten a grip on the lower rungs, Hutch pulled up on the stick and the Stearman lifted up, up, up, and away from the ground. For his part, Harry began to climb the ladder with easy, aerobatic gusto.
Ava realized: Her mother was right. Harry was a natural. There was absolutely no fear in him. No fear at all.
Once they perfected their strategy and execution, their single-plane-stunt barnstorming show wasn’t half-bad. Louis and Harry worked out a few additional stunts to include in their wing-walking routines, often performing simultaneously, one of them hanging off each wing.
But it was true that when it came time to sell rides, the flying circus wasn’t able to take as many people up for scenic tours as they had previously. It simply took too long; during the extra time it took to take the same number of people up as before, many spectators changed their minds, wandered off to eat and socialize, and decided to give it a pass after all.
Earl in particular was frustrated by the futility of the situation. His remedy for the missing revenue was to change the way the circus did business—in particular, their patterns of travel and advertisement. Ava had already felt that Earl was throwing caution to the wind when he began printing handbills to draw more spectators. Now he had more handbills printed than ever before, and ordered them to be flagrantly plastered all over the main streets of every town they visited: COME AND SEE EARL SHAW’S DEATH-DEFYING FLYING CIRCUS STUNT ACT!!! the handbills shouted at passersby. He’d also discovered that the earlier they announced their arrival, the more people would venture out to see the show. Earl often sent Ava, Harry, and Louis on ahead to the next town to paste up handbills a week or so in advance of their performances there.
“Builds the suspense!” Earl insisted. “Gives these poor farming families something exciting to look forward to!”
In addition to all this, they traveled closer and closer to San Francisco than they ever had before, and moved more slowly from town to town. Over the past few years, the flying circus had always kept brief engagements, moving on quickly and quietly. Now, as July gave way to August and finally September, Earl persuaded them to linger in the small towns that circled the San Francisco Bay, from the east side near Oakland, around to the little villages dotted around Marin County in the north and back again. They began to make a sort of familiar circuit, a horseshoe pattern around the bay.
“I dunno,” Hutch said, shaking his head. “We oughta be keepin’ our heads down in these parts . . . There’s Navy folks near the bay, and we’re cuttin’ it awful close to the city now.”
“City folks pay more money!” Earl urged. “They gossip to their neighbors and friends! After all, there are no riches in anonymity!”
In some ways Earl was right: Attendance ticked up noticeably. The crowds grew thicker and thicker. Folks remembered them, even began chanting out demands for particular stunts. They had only one airplane, but by stirring up enough fuss, they were making a living again as July turned into August and then September.