And You Will Find Love

Mohave's Main Street was Highway 58, so even though sleepy-eyed from her long drive, she could not miss it. She had seen larger towns in cowboy movies with John Wayne and The Three Mesquiteers.

How did I ever get out here in Death Valley? she asked herself, pulling into a gas station in "downtown" Mohave. Then she remembered. She carried with her a letter of introduction Red Olafson had given her to one of his old Lafayette Escadrille flying buddies who owned an airport near there.

"A woman's touch is needed in aviation," he told her.

"Especially at Red's."

At first she had not caught the innuendo, but did soon after arriving.

When she asked if it was bigger or smaller than his airport, all Olafson would say was, "It's a going business."

First, she worried whether it was going up or down, then figured it didn't really matter. She had seen the breadlines from Chicago to Mohave. But with hardly more than the homeless had in their pockets, she never went to a soup kitchen on her drive West, not wanting to deprive someone who needed it even more. The Depression and drought that followed, devastating America's farmlands, made jobs of any kind almost impossible to find, in towns or in the fields. She doubted there would be any work at all for women fliers. If worse came to worse, she knew she could iron shirts, like her mother had.

At a one-pump gas station just after pulling into sleepy, deserted-looking Mohave at hot, 110-degree high noon, Barbara asked the attendant to fill the tank and check the water in the radiator, Maybe there'd be a glass of cold water for herself. He obliged first with the water for her and she drank it like her throat had been on fire since sun-up, which it had been.

The thin old man's face was so red from the sun and lined from it and the wind, it looked like one of the dry, cracked river beds she had seen in the desert.

"How many people live in Mohave?" she asked while he pumped gas.

"About half of them," he said without cracking a smile. He spit out some chewing tobacco, aiming it just a fraction away so he didn't get any on her or her car.

Before her radiator got a good drink of water, Barbara heard one of the other favorite lines old-timers gave newcomers to Mohave: "It's not the edge of the world, but you can sure see it from here."

Okay. But she was a sucker for a straight line. "This is supposed to be Antelope Valley. Where are all the antelope?"