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arrival at Long Beach, on March 1, 1943, Cornelia wrote to a
friend:
If ever I thought I was busy in Wilmington, I was very wrong.
Two weeks ago my transfer orders came, while I was on a Cana-
dian trip. I wangled a day in Nashville en route (and went fox
hunting in a blinding snow storm) and arrived here in time to
spend the afternoon on the beach. There is the miracle of aviation.
Hunting one day in a blizzard and relaxing on the beach 3,000
miles away the next.
That was my last relaxing. We were checked out in BT-13's (450
h.p.) in the minimum allowable time the following morning. I had
a hour in a C-78 (twin Cessna) on instruments. I was tremendously
pleased to find that my work in the Link stood me in great stead. I
had a lot just before I left Wilmington, and I think it is 100%
harder than the same thing in an airplane....
I just got in from my third delivery. Had terrible carb. ice over
Guadalupe Pass-La very unhealthy place for ice. Limped in to
Midland, an Army base. Ran into an old friend there and spent the
night with he and his wife. Texas apparently doesn't lack for
steaks, for we ate three enormous ones.
I know the route to Dallas so well now I've cut a groove in the
sky. I only used my radio 30 minutes out of 10 hrs. flying, and that
for calling in to stations....
Went to dinner at a place called Leilani. It made me acutely and
unexpectedly homesick for the islands. It was very much like
Trader Vic's. Tapa covered walls, Hawaiian scenes and real
Hawaiian music. Such a lost, beautiful world.46
Cornelia soon learned that her days would not always be so busy.
Little more than a week later, she wrote her mother:
I haven't gone out again since last I wrote because of an idiosyn-
cracy of the factory. Toward the last of the month they almost
belch out planes, planes lacking instruments and otherwise in-
complete simply so that their month's production record can be
complete and as large as possible. Consequently at the first of the
month there are none for us to fly and there is an enormous waste of
pilot-man and women-power.
Pilots were dismissed early on Sun., so I went to Pasadena to
have dinner with Janie Wilson, who sent you her best. We had din-
ner in a cunning little French restaurant called the Stuft Shirt, a lit-
tle panelled room built around an open fire, for charcoal broiling,
presided over by a chef in tall white cap.
Yesterday was a very eventful day-I bought a car, a dream car
this time instead of a junk heap. I felt so helpless without one and
distances are so tremendous out here. This is a gray Chevrolet con-
46Cornelia Fort to John A. Koons, Civil Air Partol, c/o Fleet Postmaster, San Francisco,
California, March 1, 1943.
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