Excerpts
If you knew anything about flying boats, which I didn’t, you knew that
the flying boats, those that flew out of the inlet in Atlantic City, were
examples of state of the art air ships of their day.
When I was young, really young, I experienced a cold winter, a really
cold winter. Please believe me when I tell you that the Atlantic Ocean
really froze up, the first 1,000 feet of it anyway.
Nineteen-thirty-five was a good year for someone growing up in Atlantic
City. There was a Depression so most of us in school didn’t have money
but that really didn’t make a lot of difference to us.
Don’t blame me. The High Brass decided that we would put on an air demonstration
over Tokyo on Columbus Day. It was a good idea. We had lots of aircraft
that moved up to Japan after the “collapse.”
My Mom was a piece of work! A woman who, after being double crossed
by her best friend, after her best friend married a guy with loads of money,
prayed to the Lord that she’d [my mother] never have money.
About the Author
Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Sid Crane was the second of four children
in an immigrant family, born to parents who independently came to America
from different countries in search of the American dream. At three months
of age his family moved to Atlantic City, where most of these stories take
place.
A depression child who was told at an early age
that college was not for him, left school early and learned from the environment
that surrounded him, be it the wide open resort town, the Air Force Bases
and foreign travels of a World War II Pilot, or over fifty years as a builder
and confidant to the movers and shakers at his corner of the world, where
the rest of the world came to play. This unique set of circumstances in
an otherwise firm family setting, gave Sid the latitude to experience the
adventures and achievements herein reported.
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