1982.10.TARPA_TOPICS

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with him to promote their new Butterfinger candy bar Roy came to be called "Butterfinger Hunt". Harold was to have yet another anxious time before the show moved on. Ben Howard had flown down from Kansas City with his wife, Maxine "Mike" in Harold's Monocoupe, and had to get back to work his scheduled NAT flight Monday. The sod field was in poor condition, very wet, and the Monocoupe had wheel pants. If they were to become filled with mud it would retard acceleration, or possibly bring the takeoff run to a sudden and disastrous halt. The field was long enough, but upgrade to near the very end, where it leveled off. Harold watched with growing anxiety as his maroon colored Monocoupe continued to run uphill without breaking free of the ground. He thought, and might even have said out loud, "There goes my Mono-coupe", but near the very end of the field, where it was level, the Monocoupe took to the air. Harold had been gone from home three weeks when he lifted off from Oklahoma City the next morning at daybreak, bound for Kansas City, where he would drop off the Ike and continue on in his Monocoupe for a day or two of home life before the next show. '82 It is a bright, cold February Saturday in the Kansas City suburbs. Harold Neumann sits in his study, surrounded by pictures of friends, trophies, old and recent flying awards, and warm mementos from his many years of flying. He's bringing these stories to life from his 1933 logbook, and reflects on how he's looked forward to going home all his married life. '27 When Harold was a young unmarried man the social event was usually a dance, and he'd attended many in the neighborhood. He didn't consider himself much of a dancer, but he enjoyed the company and the prospect of company as he ventured to dances farther from home. At a dance one night in Moline, a lively group came in whose standout leader, in Harold's eyes, was an energetic girl named Inez Johnson. He was happy she responded to his signal requesting a dance, but she was a popular girl and he couldn't get a date with her. He made eager inquiries, found she lived on a farm just outside of town, and flew his Jenny over one day and circled her house until the airport manager, thinking he was a lost aviator, flew over to bring him to the airport, and became upset when he found who it was and what he was up to. He was lost, all right! His intention from the beginning was marriage, and Inez soon understood this. It seemed to Harold like it was a long time coming, but from the day she finally decided to make him her man, it was to be that way ever

TARPA TALES

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