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The Lindberghs' Summer Excursion: Part II

© Earl Rickard

Charles Lindbergh flew the seaplane Sirius through the Arctic fog, while Anne Lindbergh sat behind him with her head down listening on her earphones for good weather news from Point Barrow. All she heard was static. Suddenly, her head snapped up --"Darr-dit-darr; dit-dit-dit-dit." Anne's pencil moved slowly over the pad: "Fog---lifting---fast...don't--think---u---have---any---trouble---find---lagoon." Anne happily passed the message forward to her husband. Soon the fog dissipated; the gray coast became visible, then a dozen red roofs, a church steeple, and a radio mast -- Point Barrow!

After landing the Sirius Charles and Anne were invited to a "Thanksgiving diner" at the home of Point Barrow's lone doctor. Entering the house, Anne noticed "the flavor of an American home -- chintz curtains drawn aside, pictures of 'woodland scenes' on the walls, bright pillows on the sofa, and there, in the window, a box of climbing nasturtiums." Anne walked up to another window and inspected a tomato plant; a single green tomato hung unripend. The doctor's wife said, "That tomato won't ever ripen, you know -- it hasn't enough sun -- but the leaves grow and we can smell it. Even the smell of growing vegetables is good to us."

Besides the Lindberghs, the other diner guests included: the little hospital's nurse, the school teacher and his wife, the radio operator and his wife and their nine-year-old daughter and six-month-old son. Also present was an old scottish whaler, a 40-year resident of Point Barrow, who had never seen a telephone or an automobile. A goose someone had shot provided the main course and a few cans of vegetables and fruit complemented the unlucky fowl -- a sumptuous repast at the top of the world.

The Lindberghs waited at Barrow for the weather to clear before starting the next leg of their journey: the long flight to Nome. On the day the Lindberghs departed, Charles was pulling on his flying suit when he felt a lump in the pocket -- an orange given to him earlier in the trip. He offered it to the doctor's wife. Anne said the woman looked like a girl receiving a birthday coin. "She held it in her palms for a moment as though warming her hands by its glow." Smiling, she said, "We'll give it to the baby!"

As the Sirius flew south, darkness returned to the calculations. "Dark -- that curfew hour in a flier's mind," Anne wrote, "when the gates are closed, the portcullis dropped down, and there is no way to go around or squezze under the bars if one is late." The gates were dropping on Nome. A message from that city warned the Lindberghs of overcast and approaching darkness. When Charles saw fog ahead he decided to put the plane down immediately before all light was gone. The Sirius descended toward the frigid water. "How can he see anything!" thought Anne. "Spank, spank, spank. There we go -- I guess we're all right! We were down -- we were safe. Somewhere out on the wild coast of Seward Peninsula." The Lindberghs made a bed in the baggage compartment and went to sleep. The next day they flew on to Nome.