Slats Rodgers and Old Soggy No. 1

This morning we had breakfast at the Beacon Restaurant at Hicks Field in Fort Worth. It's always pleasant to enjoy an omelette and a cup of coffee while watching the small planes take off and land. Being around the little airport, which was originally used as a World War One training facility, I got to thinking about Slats Rodgers, the first person to earn a pilot's license in Texas and also the first person to have that license revoked. To his credit or discredit, Slats was a stunt pilot, a bootlegger, a flight instructor, and a smuggler.

Slats was also a real character. He built his own airplane, Old Soggy No. 1, based on books he'd read in the library, and in 1912 he started flying. He survived 28 plane crashed.  Interestingly enough, one of the survivors of his many crashes happened to be Bonnie Parker.

Slats and the other members of the Love Field Lunatics, a stunt flying group of which he was a part, used their acrobatics show as a cover for their smuggling operation. Slats' story, in my opinion, is absolutely fascinating. Why he has not been the subject of a major motion picture is beyond me.

Here is an article from Air and Space about Slats Rodgers.

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/slats-and-old-soggy-no-1-248527/?no-ist