Earthrise (3 page)

My younger brother, Jay, was born seven years after me. When Jay was older, he and I would often do our chores together. During the winter months the chores let up a bit, and my homework always came before my farm work. My parents insisted I work hard in school, and this was okay with me because I enjoyed learning new things.

Wild West Roundups

Land seemed to be ever plentiful in the Pecos Valley, and we eventually bought a 4,000-acre ranch near the small town of Hagerman, New Mexico, which was about 20 miles from Roswell.

In addition to our many heads of cattle, we always had a lot of horses. We had big, muscular Belgian horses to pull our feed wagons, and leaner horses like mustangs, quarter horses, and Appaloosas for roping and herding the cattle. The wide-open, grassy plains of our ranches afforded me a lot of land where I could take off and ride my horses as fast as I wanted to go.

Cattle roundups were a vibrant and challenging part of working on the ranch. By the time we were in Hagerman, I’d been riding full-grown horses for many years, and I was very skilled at being in the saddle and racing across the fields to rope the cattle or chase a stray. I loved the speed, the intensity of the work, and being good at moving the herd to where it needed to go. I would move cattle from one pasture to another, to a holding pen for vaccines, a chute for branding, or to a special dipping vat where the cattle would swim through medicinal treatments.

Dad would always let me know when it was time to herd. I’d gallop out to the field and take my place with the other cowboys alongside the cattle. Once we took off, a lot of dust would fly as we used our horses, our ropes, and our voices to get the cattle moving. The cowboys would whistle loudly, yell and hoot, “Hey! Hey! C’mon girl! Yup! Yup!” And when the herd started to take off, it felt like a powerful wave of energy as hundreds of hooves pounded across the plains.

Naturally, it wasn’t all fun and games. I remember difficult times like being thrown from my horse, going for hours without much water in the blazing hot sun, and coming across a rattlesnake or coyote on my path.

As our cattle business prospered, my dad and uncles also decided to go into the business of selling large farm machinery to the ranchers in the area. Dad eventually opened a farm machinery dealership in Roswell, and then a second one in the small town of Artesia, located about 40 miles from Roswell. Sometimes during summers or on weekends, I would help out at one of the dealerships and work in the machine shop. I learned how to repair large pieces of equipment such as tractors, trailers, threshers, mowers, hay rakes, and balers by carefully taking them apart and putting them back together.

Working on these large pieces of machinery and learning about their engines gave me an important confidence I would later put to use as a pilot and an astronaut.

Family Time and the Great Outdoors

We had a tight-knit family, and when we weren’t busy working we had many happy times together.

Music was always played in our home and was a big part of my life. Mom loved playing the piano, and when I was about seven years old she encouraged me to take violin lessons. Since I was left-handed, my parents had to have my violin reconfigured (from right to left) so I could play it. I wound up playing the violin for many years in the Roswell and Artesia youth orchestras. Later on in junior high and high school, I also took up the viola, piano, sousaphone, and trombone.

It was always great when the entire family piled into our Ford truck to go camping somewhere in New Mexico, Colorado, or Texas. We would usually set up a few tents next to a river or a stream to catch rainbow and cutthroat trout or smallmouth bass. At the end of the day we’d make a big fire and roast the fish we’d caught for dinner. It smelled so delicious and tasted heavenly. Mom would always bring along her signature biscuits and blackberry jam for dessert.

At night I liked to sleep directly under the stars in a sleeping bag. This was a very special time for me. I’d crawl into my sleeping bag and take out a flashlight and my comic books so I could read about my favorite science fiction superhero, Buck Rogers. In the comic series, Buck was a young man who had fallen asleep from radioactive gases in the 20th century. When he woke up 500 years later, Buck and his buddies, Wilma, Buddy, Alura, and Dr. Huer, often found themselves fighting evil invaders from Mars throughout their many futuristic, space-age adventures.

As I drifted off to sleep, images of ray guns, rebel robots, jet packs, radiophones, satellites, rockets, flying saucers, spider-ships, and the Land of the Golden People flooded my mind.

A SWASHBUCKLING SPACE HERO

In 1929, superhero Buck Rogers hit the spotlight in the highly popular newspaper comic strip
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Created by author Philip Francis Nowlan, the fictional Buck Rogers character was depicted as a former US Air Service support pilot stationed in France during World War I. After returning to the United States from Europe, Buck became trapped in a Pennsylvania coal mine where he fell asleep from bizarre radioactive gases. When the young man awakened, it was nearly 500 years later. Buck was immediately thrust into a whole new world of ray guns and evil space people about to take over Earth. Along with his newfound friend, Wilma Deering, Buck ventured to futuristic cities where citizens traveled around in flying saucers and jet packs, ate synthetic food, and used space-age gadgets as everyday tools.

The
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
comic strip was later featured in radio, television, and motion picture shows, and is credited with bringing the concept of space exploration into popular culture. Tarzan, Popeye, and Tintin were three other comic strip superstars who also debuted in 1929.

Barnstormers, Flying Machines, and UFOs

“The desire to fly is an idea handed down to us by our ancestors who, in their grueling travels across trackless lands in prehistoric times, looked enviously on the birds soaring through space, at full speed, above all obstacles, on the infinite highway of the air.”

—Wilbur Wright

I
was only four years old when I had my first ride on an airplane. Dad and I were walking through a cotton field he sharecropped with my great aunt in Texas, when we spotted a plane in the sky one afternoon. The plane was a Curtiss JN-4 “Jenny” biplane that had two sets of wings built one on top of the other. Because it was so unusual to see aircraft at this time, we couldn’t take our eyes off the plane.

But suddenly, to our amazement and alarm, we watched as the plane began to take a serious nosedive. It even looked as if it might crash.

Somehow, the pilot straightened out the plane and managed to land it on a makeshift runway among our rows of white fluffy cotton plants. Dad grabbed my hand and we ran toward the plane to see if the pilot was okay. The young man looked a little shaken but was grinning from ear to ear. He told us he was a barnstormer and had run out of gas, and he apologized for having to make an unfortunate but necessary pit stop on our farm.

Barnstormer
was the term for daredevil stunt pilots who performed all sorts of tricks and maneuvers with their planes. Barnstormers were a rare breed of entertainers in America, and many of them had been combat pilots during World War I. These pilots came up with creative ways to earn cash by performing aerial stunts at local flying fields and circuses, or giving people plane rides for a few bucks here and a few bucks there.

Barnstormers seemed to be a fearless bunch of aviators who could do nearly any feat with their planes. They could fly a plane upside down, do a big loop-the-loop in the air, turn a barrel roll in the sky, or even walk on the wing of a plane. It was risky, high-stakes entertainment that was sometimes deadly.

To lend our cotton field barnstormer a hand, Dad drove into town and bought some gas for the pilot so he could refuel. As a way to thank us, the man offered us an exciting ride around the field. The three of us climbed into the two-seat plane, and as I sat on Dad’s lap I could feel his strong arms wrap around me, holding me tightly.

As we roared down the cotton field, my stomach swirled and I felt the rush of excitement as the plane lifted up, up into the sky. I felt a little nervous until I looked out the window and saw my world from a whole new perspective. I could see our cotton fields that now looked like big squares of white snow. I could see the clay-colored earth dotted with scrub brush, the tops of trees, and a few tiny-looking horses and cows. It was fantastic.

The 1920s and 1930s were often referred to as the Golden Age of Aviation, and the wild and woolly barnstormers helped American civilians learn to accept and even come to love aviation. But for me, my first ride in a barnstormer’s plane planted an important seed in my mind—flying was incredibly fun.

WWII in my Kitchen

I was nine years old when World War II began in 1939. We didn’t have a television to show us what was happening during the war, but there were plenty of articles and photographs in newspapers, magazines, and radio stories to paint a vivid picture in my mind.

My dad and uncles were of draft age and could have been required to fight. But because they were farmers, cattle ranchers, and food producers, they were not subject to the draft. Basically they were told to “stay home and produce food for our country and not go to war.”

Although Roswell was basically a small farming town, strangely enough, it was also a key military hub for World War II. Two years after the war started, Walker Air Force Base opened in Roswell as a military flying school. I remember looking up at the skies over our ranch and seeing warplanes flying in formation or in training patterns. It was mind-boggling. One minute I’d be riding a horse; the next minute I’d be watching a bomber fly by.

World War II planes fascinated me, and I liked the Pursuit airplanes like the P-51 Mustang, the P-39 Airacobra, or the P-40 Warhawk. Fortunately, companies started to sell aircraft model-making kits that featured these planes. So, on many days after school and when my chores were done, I began to put together wooden model airplanes at the kitchen table. The models came in a small box and all the parts were made of a light balsa wood. Once I’d studied the detailed plans and instructions, I’d carefully put the planes together with glue and then use a small brush to paint them.

Over the years I made all sorts of models like the Curtiss Fighter, the Curtiss Falcon, the Fokker Triplane, or the Boeing Bomber, to name just a few. I’d then fly the ones I could, or I’d hang them with fishing line from my bedroom ceiling.

Flying Solo

In 1944 when I was 14 and about to start high school, my dad decided to move our family to a town called Artesia. He wanted us to be closer to the farm machinery dealership he’d opened there, and closer to the ranch we owned in nearby Hagerman.

Once I started at Artesia High School, I met a lot of new classmates as well as my lifelong friend, Tommy Brown. Tommy and I had many great times together, from shooting basketball hoops to riding on his Cushman motor scooter. He and I would ride all over Artesia and the surrounding towns, and it was a great way to get around.

One day we decided we wanted to get jobs and earn some extra spending money. We took his scooter and rode over to the Artesia Municipal Airport, and straight to the maintenance hangars. We quickly got jobs as flight line boys; we were hired to haul out buckets of hot, soapy water and clean the soot, grime, grease, and bugs from the airplanes. Our pay wasn’t in cash; we earned 30 minutes of flight time for our hard work.

Whenever we could, Tommy and I would ride out to the airport to wash planes. Sometimes we’d also fill up the planes’ gas tanks, check the oil, or check the tires for air pressure. The time raced by and it didn’t even feel like work.

About a year later I had stacked up so many flight hours, I decided to use the earnings to learn how to fly. A flight instructor named Herm agreed to teach me, and I began my flying lessons in a single-wing, two-seat, bright yellow Piper J-3 Cub prop plane. The plane’s tandem seating, one seat in front of the other, allowed Herm to sit in the back and guide me as I sat in the front with my own instrument panel and control stick.

At first I learned about the plane and the dials and gauges on the instrument panel so I knew what buttons to switch or knobs to control. I was taught how to move the control stick forward or back to control the elevators on the tail, which moved the plane up or down. I learned how to move the control stick from side to side to control the ailerons on the wings so the plane could turn right, left, or fly in a circle. I was so eager to learn, I would listen intently and focus on everything Herm told me as we flew the plane together. “Keep the wings absolutely level unless you’re turning,” he’d always say.