My debut with Eastern Air Lines was in May of 1939, on a flight from Atlanta to San Antonio in a DC-2. My captain was a brave man; he gave me a landing. We survived and I turned around to taxi back. Then the real work began. Flying a DC-2 was child's play compared to taxiing one, with that hand brake and rudder pedal combination. I went lurching along, over-controlling right and left, in a demonstration of how not to taxi an airplane. Finally I asked the captain if he would like to take it.

"What for?" he said.

I think he was really surprised. "To keep from stacking the passengers in the isle!" I replied.

"TO HELL WITH THE xbzlfpf PASSENGERSI" he shouted.

Of course what he really meant was that I had to learn to taxi a DC-2 sooner or later, even if it was a rough job at first. But I don't think the cash customers approved of my on-the-job training.

Some weeks went by. (I had learned to taxi a DC-2) I was co-pilot on a flight from San Antonio to Atlanta with scheduled stops in Houston, New Orleans, Mobile and Montgomery. The weather was routine except at New Orleans where it was socked in tight: WOXOF. Nobody was going to land there until the next day, at the earliest. But we boarded three or four New Orleans passengers in Houston, off-loaded them in Mobile and refunded them the price of a railway ticket back to New Orleans. They were not pleased. I heard one of them express himself to the captain. He wanted to know why he had not been informed of the New Orleans weather before we boarded the flight in Houston; he would have taken the train in the first place. By then I was beginning to suspect that we didn't always put our best foot forward in the public relations department. In fact, as I was to learn in due time, many air travelers regarded us as a gang of rough and ready barnstormers with little concern for passenger comfort or convenience and I have to concede that in those primitive days we did sometimes give them reason to form such an adverse opinion.

But there was another side to that coin. Very definitely, I think Captain Rickenbacker would have said that our policy was to deliver a better product and let it sell itself, meaning, of course, a superior flight operation - in fair weather or foul. And what a job our "rough and ready barnstormers" did when the weather separated the men from the boys! On Eastern, the captains enjoyed wide latitude to do their own thinking. It was a regular practice to fly to a destination in marginal weather and then - sometimes with the aid of a timely special weather observation - complete the flight, when other airlines were not operating at all. "The weather is stinko; nobody is flying but Eastern!" was an industry-wide cliche. And it was not just an idle figure of speech. Most of our older, retired captains will remember a notable occasion, before weather minimums were established by the C.A.A, when the weather in Chicago socked in tight and stayed that way for a week or more, and not a single flight operated in or out of Chicago except Eastern, and Eastern didn't cancel a trip! This was before my time with Eastern, but I have verified it with a senior, retired captain who remembers it well and knows whereof he speaks.

It may have been along about that time that we became known as "Rickenbacker's Flying Circus;" I don't know. The first time I ever heard that term was after I had been recalled to active duty with the military in 1942. I was associated with other airline pilots who had also been re- called. After we had become well acquainted, we used to needle each other occasionally about the alleged merits and demerits of our respective airlines. I could always hold my own. All I had to say was, "On Rickenbackers's Flying Circus we specialize in flying." They always accepted it in a friendly way, with maybe a touch of envy, I think. In fact, it always seemed to me that Eastern was something of a puzzle to the pilots from the other airlines. They hadn't quite figured out how we managed to get by with some of the things we did. On one occasion, a pilot from another airline asked me if it was true that Captain Rickenbacker always carried a pocketful of ready cash to reimburse any captain who was fined by the C.A.A. for violating weather minimums!

There was one amusing occasion when, through no fault of my own, and in fact, without even thinking about it, I was regarded as "another low weather Eastern Air Lines performer." It was in the summer of 1943, when I was stationed at the Sedalia, Missouri Air Base with a Troop Carrier Unit. The Troop Carrier Command Headquarters in Indianapolis ran a daily, round-trip shuttle between Indianapolis and Alliance, Nebraska with stops in Sedalia and Omaha. One of my junior officers, who was not a pilot, had been weathered in at Omaha for several days and I needed him in my office. I contacted a friend of mine at the Sedalia base, who had been a class- mate of mine in the Army Air Corps Flying School and after that a co-pilot and a captain on a major airline.

"Luke," I said, "I know you are familiar with the Omaha approach. 'How about making me up an approach plate. I've got to go and get my lieutenant who is stymied there."

He did, and I did. My lieutenant told me later that he was in the control tower when I was on the approach. The tower operator wanted to know, "What's an Army flight doing coming in here when (Brand ABC) Airlines is passing us up?"

My lieutenant knew all the answers. -"This is an Eastern pilot!" he said.

Of course there was nothing fair about the comparison. Nobody thought that my Eastern background had imparted to me any knowledge or any skills that the other airline pilots didn't have. (Also, the weather at Omaha wasn't as low as it had been reported). So I got some unearned credit. But I didn't object.

Those days are ancient history now, and the airline business is a different ball game -- all a matter of pushing buttons, the modern pilots tell me. Well, I'm glad that my flying was done in the old days, like, for example, when I was a co-pilot on a DC-3 from Atlanta to Chicago with the late J. Shelley Charles, early in 1940. Shelley was one of our most spectacular captains. Our Indianapolis station called to inform us that the ceiling there had gone to 200 feet. In those days, the standard minimum was 300 feet, with the limited landing aids that we had at the time.

"Tell 'em we'll be right down!" Shelley said, with positive delight.