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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB i , HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES jrT OF PEOPLE LIKE YO U R S E L F I "Stretching His Luck" HELLO EVERYBODY! Teddy was a wing walker. You know, one of those birds in a flying circus who does things on the wing of a plane you wouldn't try in your own parlor. They must need money mighty bad, you tell your neighbor. Teddy always was a runt. That's why he was a wing walker. You wanted as little weight as possible moving around out there on the fabric-covered wings of those Jennies Jen-nies the flying circuses were using right after the war. They weren't built for wing walking. But Teddy walked 'em, even in his sleep. It was old stuff to him. It was so old he began to look around for something new to thrill the gaping crowds. Something that gave them a bigger kick than hanging by your knees from the undercarriage of a speeding plane. He didn't know then it never pays to play the other fellow's game. But he learned. Well sir, it was in a town the flying circus was playing out in Iowa that Teddy came across the idea he was looking for. It came to him as he watched a human fly scale the walls of the tallest building. Reaching the topmost story, the fly somehow attached an ordinary inner tube to a window, sunk his teeth in the other end and hung there in the breeze. Teddy saw the stunt "got" the crowd. And it would knock 'em cold when he pulled it on a plane a thousand or so feet in the air. Human Fly Coaches Teddy for New Job. When the fly came down to earth, Teddy introduced himself, invited him to supper. Maybe they hoisted a couple. Anyway, the fly warmed up enough to tell Teddy how it worked. Before he went to bed that night, the wing walker bought himself a couple of brand new inner tubes. The next day, out at the flying field, he rigged them as he had been instructed. High up on a wall he fastened fas-tened an end of one. Then, climbing on a chair, he took the other end in his teeth and kicked the chair away. The darn thing stretched so far his feet touched the floor. He moved the tube a couple of feet higher and everything was fine. Day after day Teddy religiously practiced hanging from that tube to strengthen the muscles of his jaws and neck. It was a heavy strain to put on the front upper teeth that were bridge-work, bridge-work, but they held. And six weeks later Teddy was prepared to strut his stuff. Before we go any further I had better tell you Teddy is Theodore Davidson of Galesburg, M. They still call him "Dare Devil" Davidson, this new member of the Floyd Gibbons Adventurers' club. He was all of that on a sunny afternoon, in September, 1919, in Mo-line, Mo-line, 111., where the flying circus was putting on its show, making those The tube sta-ted stretching and stretching. Jennies do things they were never built for. The weather was perfect So was the gate. And the performers were feeling pretty good as they took to the skies. Especially Teddy. He was going to pop their eyes out with -a brand new, death-defying stunt, performed for the first time in any land. It never occurred to him tlv.n, this would also be the last time. The inner tube was fastened securely to the axle of the undercarriage of the Jenny. And every ihing went oft" according to schedule until Teddy began lowering himself down that wriggling, slippery, flabby length of rubber. Fails to Figure Effect of Air Resistance. "Right then," Teddy says, "I could see I had stretched my luck too far." Right there, too, he began learning a painful lesson in simple physics! He had failed to figure what effect the air resistance of his body would have upon the tubiag. Hanging below the plane, moving mov-ing 70 miles an hour, the drag of the air en Teddy added some 30 or 40 pounds to the weight on that big rubber band. "That tube started stretching and stretching," says Teddy, "and it was like a live thing as I slipped and fought it!" The more It stretched, the harder it was for a wing walker frith a bright Idea to hang on. It had never acted that way In practice. Would it hold? Could it hold? What was he going to do about it? Teddy says he was too dumb to climb back. That was probably because he was too busy holding on. Well sir, that's one of the darned'st fixes I ever heard of. And it became worse. After rassling for 10 minutes with that flexible support his arms tired. He slipped lower. Finally, he just had to let himself down to where he could sink his teeth into the gadget attached to the flapping end. His jaws clamped down on it. The rest of him was limp with weariness. His head forced back, he saw the tube stretch alarmingly as gusts of wind put more pressure on his body. There were six feet of it between him and the landing gear. In practice, it had never stretched to more than threel Rests Arms to Climh Rack to Safetv. Teddy tried to relax as the plane circled 1,500 feet above the grandstand. grand-stand. His aching arms were folded, resting for that long climb to safety. safe-ty. He wasn't sure he could do it. But he was not permitted to dwell on the idea for long. There was a wrench, a crunch, a shoot of pain Id Teddy's face. The bridgework that was Teddy's front uppers had crushed! The ends of the mouthpiece, however, were tacked away back where they were gripped by molars on both sides. Still gripping it, Teddy began inching his way upward along that thin, twisted, tough tubing that had been put to such strange use. Well, boys and girls, there is no use prolonging the agony. "I made it, too," Teddy says, "but by such a small margin 1 decided then and there to be satisfied with my old bag of tricks." Teddy's story closes on a note of sadness. Those artificial teeth of his vanished into thin air during the minutes he strucgled up that yielding rope of rubber. All the dough he made that dizzy day went to buy a new set. Copyright. WNU Service. |