. Merry Christmas
We threw ourselves wickedly upon our toboggans and began another race, down the big rounded hill behind the lighthouse, through the small cut in the trees by the creek, through the flume of the creek bed with its sharp, high bends like two bobsledders and then by the shore,
spit out onto the frozen lake and another hundred feet by the time we stopped. Ernie won.
"That makes thirty-two for you and Twenty-Five for me", I counted since the snow had fallen.
Behind me, Ernie was looking at something - Ernie had sharp eyes and when I turned around I could barely make out a speck of a small airplane heading our way from North along the rocky coast.
It was moving fast and right away we could make out its low single wing and retractible undercarriage, then we could hear the unmistakeable radial engine and then it was right over us, about two-hundred feet up, a streak of dark blue, a gold stripe, the sound of thunder echoing across the lake. He pulled up steeply and circled around - we could see the landing gear slowly extend for almost a minute, then the trim little blue monoplane settled onto the ice and rolled to a stop, not too far away from us. We left our toboggans behind and by the time we reached the spot where it had stopped, the pilot had shut off the engine and stepped out.
In 1937, for two young boys, this was a very unusual sight. Though we had seen the common
biplanes and currogated steel Trimotors and even strut braced high wing monoplanes, This was smooth and sleek, and fast. The pilot introduced himself as Guisseppe, asked if we were having a nice Christmas day, puffed on his pipe, and told us all we wanted to know about his airplane - a radial engined Cruiseair.
As we absorbed every detail, the afternoon gave way to dusk, and haveing rested himself long enough he got ready to go. We stood back and waved goodbye as a few prop blades swung by and with a puff of smoke and a cough, the radial engine came to life.
With a short run from the ice, the cruiseair was in the air. We could see the undercarriage slowly retracting as he circled over the lake. He passed directly over our heads, low down, turning sharply, one wing pointed to the ground - then two small boxes tumbled out of the pilots window and landed in a drift of snow. He wagged the wings and soon was just a speck to the south.
We ran for the precious packages and found inside each a small pewter pin that looked just like the little blue airplane. We pinned them on our snowsuits, ran for our toboggans and hurried home to show our families our unexpected Christmas gift. Before we parted Ernie said to me "I'm going to have one of those one day" and I said "Me too!". Outside we could smell a Christmas turkey - We ran inside to tell our folks.
Merry Christmas.