Peruse her biography:

"Eschewing standard modes of transport, Emily signed on as a wingwalker with a group of barnstormers known as the Flying Freakshow. She worked the barnstorming circuit in a World War I Curtis Jenny, and kept her distance from Igor, the Human Wind Sock."

--The Indigestible Years

Emily left London, Ontario for the last time in October 1923. Scholars have implied that she chose flight as her mode of transport because of her penchant for the neoteric, but the real reason is a matter of debate. Recent investigations have revealed a letter from Emily to her longtime friend, Bidy O'Bight, the new leader of the Celtic Union of Non-Testosterone Sybarites (CU):

November 3, 1923
St. Catharines, Ontario

Dearest Bidy,
Well, I've left London for good this time, and who knows where I may blow next? I feel a huge sense of relief that I've finally left that parochial town behind. For the moment, I'm staying at the King's Arms outside of St. Catharines. I've signed on with Captain Pugwhit's Flying Freakshow as a wingwalker, but the leader of our gliding grotesquerie has just lost a pilot.

So, once again I'm going to get a chance to put my hands on the stick. Oh joy! I love the floaty feeling you get just after you put the tail to the ground and the nose in the air, and it then reverses position. The wind in your hair. The freedom to ignore two-dimensional space. The bumpy landings.

The flying is fun too. As they say nowadays, "it's the bees knees!" The other benefit is that I'll be in the cockpit instead of a stuffy train carriage, and my little intestinal problem will go completely un-noticed.

Well, I must dash. Say hello to the rest of the CU for me, and on a related note, do see that Venery is kept in cheese. I've enclosed some money for that and the girls. Wish me luck, we're off tomorrow to Buffalo and the Dry Lands.

Yours in flight,
Emily

The show was a curious mix of barnstorming aerobatics and an old-fashioned circus freak show. Most of the pilots were, like Emily, veterans of the Great War. The show consisted of ten planes all Curtis Jennys except for Captain Pugwhit's aircraft, which was a Scout Experimental 5 (SE5), the plane once flown by Canadian ace, Billy Bishop. (1) Pugwhit's SE5 was a nimble gazelle to the bloated hippos of the Jennys, and Emily desperately wanted to fly it.

Pugwhit (2) was a keen observer of human nature, and he knew a good bet when he saw one. Initially, his hope was to try Emily as a wingwalker, but when one of his pilots Leper Man, The Disintegrating Flyer lost all his fingers starting a colleague's plane, he knew that she was a godsend. Though not really freakish (Emily did not tell Pugwhit her actual age, or her suspicions about the Flannigan genome) Pugwhit did detect a certain odour around Emily. He convinced her to sign on as The Farty Canadian, on the proviso that she got to fly the SE5 every third travel day.

Two of Captain Pugwhit's flyers take a break between shows.

The Freakshow consisted of nine pilots and nine bona fide freaks, plus two geeks. Pugwhit excelled at recruiting pilots that were unfortunate enough to have lost a limb or to have suffered a hideous injury of some kind in their training. Most of his pilots had washed out of the US Army flying corps, and had the scars to prove it. For instance, there was "No-Nose" Denny, "Lefty" McGraw, and "Half-a-face" Reynolds. The freaks were much more colourful and off-colour.

There were two bearded ladies Miranda and Sophie plus Tiny Tina, the World's Scantiest Woman. (In addition to being very small, Tina did not wear much.) The Freakshow had a strongman in Lugam LaRoche, who was also helpful in turning planes around for takeoff and pitching tents. The Magnetic Man and his Rubber Lady were the only "talent" in the group. (The former a magician and the latter trained in the spongy art of yoga.) There were also the two Mana Maniacs transplanted tribesmen from New Guinea. Pugwhit had neither found a translator, nor explained the concept of flight to the Maniacs, so every time they took off the poor tribesmen would scream in abject terror, and continue to do so until they landed again or blew out their vocal cords. Generally, the Maniacs were rotated amongst the pilots, though Edward "Earless" Earl didn't seem to mind ferrying them between show grounds.

The freaks were rounded out by a pair of geeks -- performers who weren't really freakish, but did freakish things -- the Toad Twins. And of course, the show had Igor the Human Windsock. Igor was the secret weapon of the Freakshow. In addition to his complete fearlessness when it came to wing-walking, Igor was burdened with a most shockingly shaped and sized manly apparatus, which of course, gave him his stage name, and made him a huge "pay extra" draw.

Emily avoided him. In a letter to Bidy she confided: "In addition to his always partially engorged "ego", Igor has the most repugnant body odour that not even my worst flatulence can cover."

The speculationist and aviatrix soon found her place with the odd assortment of entertainers. For the most part she found them friendly, fine folk, but she saw the exploitation of the "freaks" in the group quite distasteful. Still, she could not condemn Pugwhit. The Captain, as everyone called him, was fair to a fault and had a generous profit-sharing plan.

The other flyers and freaks would hang on Emily's every word as she described her adventures flying in the Great War. They knew that she was a writer and naturally imagined that she was inventing all of it, but Pugwhit seemed to respect her more after she told the story of shooting down Baron Von Richtofen, and let her fly the SE5 every other traveling day.

Tragedy struck the freakshow in Schenectady.

Emily fell into a happy rhythm as the Freakshow made its way east across the state of New York, stopping near Rochester, Auburn, Syracuse, Utica, Amsterdam, and Schenectady. In Schenectady, tragedy struck the show. Shortly before landing outside town, one of the Mana Maniacs finally decided to live up to the 'maniac' part of his name. After two years of mind-numbing terror, the less adaptable of the two Uklada decided that it was time to escape the demonic flying machines.

Pugwhit always liked to put on a bit of a show as they landed, and they usually had one group of planes do a flyover as another group landed. It proved disastrous. Uklada, who was flying with "Earless" Earl in the flyover group, launched himself out of the Curtis Jenny, falling directly through the left wings of George "Stumpy" Roger's plane below, causing them to buckle. "Stumpy" was one of the Freakshow's best pilots, but even he was able to compensate for the catastrophic loss of a whole set of wings. His passenger was The Rubber Lady, who decided to jump out of the plane instead of going down with it. It is some testament to her yogic skills that she survived the crash.

The loss of a plane, a pilot and one freak was nothing compared to the impact this disaster had on the morale of the Flying Freakshow. The other Mana Maniac Ukguda was inconsolable, and fell into a catatonic depression. But they were stout-hearted folk, and the followed the vaudeville maxim that "the show must go on," though they took little joy in it. Despite this the show was appreciated by the citizens of Schenectady, who were mourning on of their own: Charles P. Steinmetz, inventor and "wizard" of General Electric.

In the Schenectady Weekly Toiler, the review of reporter D.I.P. Somania was breathless with excitement and rich in 20s slang:

Forget the giggle water! Captain Pugwhit's Flying Freakshow is more fun than getting jammed, jiggered, juiced or stewed to the silly hat! The Freakshow isn't just for jazz babies and jellybeans ordinary folk will enjoy the aerobatics and gawkers will go goofy for the freaks. A warning to all you Dumb Doras out there don't go see the Human Windsock unless you're totally copacetic!

The Schenectady Sentinel (or the Stuffed Shirt as the Toiler called it) was a more conservative paper, and its five-word review summed up its feelings on the spectacle: "Flying Freakshow is Flying Filth." Despite the condemnation of the Sentinel, the show did well until the weather turned ugly in late-November.

A young Maureen O'Sullivan (Jane in the 1930s and 1940s Tarzan movies) was inspired by Emily's presentations: the "Future of Women" and "Why I Fly."

Emily took the opportunity to write several short stories, none of which were published, but some of which survive in the Tundra Collection: "The Turkish Bastard," "Dwarfmeat!" and the Norwegian-sounding, "The Nose Lord of Nilfheim." She was also invited to speak to the several colloquia at Union College. (3) While there, a young Maureen O'Sullivan snuck in to hear Emily describe the "Future of Women" and "Why I Fly." If Emily had known this would inspire the impressionable youth to play Jane in a series of Tarzan movies, further entrenching Emily's light-fingered paramour (see Wenches in the Trenches) as the author of an American icon, she might never have opened her mouth. The success of the colloquia led the owners of the radio station WGY to ask Emily to read some of her work on the air. (4)

Emily wrote a special piece for her appearance, called "The Invasion of the Brownshifties." A loose adaptation of her novel, East of Eton, the piece purported to be a regular musical show, which was "interrupted" by a news broadcast announcing the landing of a number of "spacecraft" that looked like inverted Norse longboats. From within their shells emerged the "Brownshifties", horrific creatures out of a nightmare, on earth to eat the brains of the people of Schenectady, and do worse things to the captains of industry at the headquarters of General Electric.

The entire Freakshow helped Emily produce this little radio drama, each flyer and freak playing parts or creating realistic sound effects as their talents allowed. They had a great time, mimicking the horrified screams of the GE managers as the Brownshifties "probed" them for data. Unfortunately, most of the local population had not heard the warning at the start of the program that "The Invasion of the Brownshifties" was a work of fiction.

A commercial run in the Schenectady Weekly Toiler the week after Emily's broadcast. The wag who paid for the ad also worked for General Electric.

Panic resulted, as the good people of Schenectady packed the roads, hid in cellars, loaded guns, and even wrapped their heads in wet towels as protection from Brownshifty poison gas. The only casualty of the evening was Morton Pigswindler, a manager at General Electric, who after the hearing a lurid description of what the Brownshifties were likely to do to his nether regions, glued an unfinished casing from their new line of Thermo-Electricware onto the area most likely to be assaulted. Apart from spending several weeks in the hospital to have the casing removed, Pigswindler ruined his best pair of pants. (5)

Emily had not intended to fool anyone, but some citizens of Schenectady were quite upset by the broadcast. Though Mayor C. A. Whitmire was a tolerant man, he and his city council had had enough of the Flying Freakshow and their infamous Farty Canadian. A delegation was sent to the makeshift aerodrome on the outside of town to ask Captain Pugwhit to leave, but the sailing side show was already gone. (6)

Pugwhit led his motley crew of pilots and pitch-artists through the rest of New York state: Albany, Coxsackie (Igor's favourite stop on the tour), Rhinebeck (made Pugwhit feel at home), Poughkeepsie (excellent show for the anal-retentive Magnetic Man) and finally, they landed in the Bronx, in New York City.

Emily bid the group adieu, and arrived in Manhattan by New Year's Eve, early enough to check in at the Hotel Chelsea and meet Anais Nin.

--"Scholarship" by The Squire

Back to Emily's Biography...>

Notes:
1) The Curtis JN-4 or "The Jenny" had a twin seat arrangement ideal for training purposes. After World War I, hundreds of the trainers were sold on the civilian market. The airplane soon became the mainstay of the "Barnstormer" of the 1920s. [back]

2) Pugwhit was actually an Austrian ace -- Franz Rudorfer who had eleven confirmed victories, mostly on the Italian front. Rudorfer was never known as a good pilot (he only earned his pilot's license after the war had ended) and his fellow flyers of Flik 51 called him Weird Rudorfer because of his unconventional landing techniques. After the war, Rudorfer wanted to emigrate to America, but he knew his war record would likely prevent this. He faked his own death, and became Franklin R. Pugwhit many Americans mistook his thick Austrian accent for an English accent, and he never corrected them. [back]

3) On tours of that old campus, Emily never realized that she was walking on the same grounds where her step-cousin, Squire Whipple went to college (1826-1840). Other famous grads included Presidents Chester A. Arthur and Jimmy Carter, and several distinguished Norwegians. [back]

4) On the cutting-edge of almost everything, Schenectady also had one of the first and most powerful radio stations in America. [back]

5) It is interesting to note that because of atmospheric conditions perfect for skip propagation that night, it is entirely conceivable that an eight-year-old and massively impressionable George Orson Welles heard this radio broadcast in Chicago. [back]

6) In once sense, Emily never really left the town, having forgotten the script for "The Invasion of the Brownshifties" at WGY. This is the only complete Chesley work housed at the Institute for Chesleyan Studies, in Schenectady. [back]