Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-12-02
A SAILOR OF THE AIR
Roy Knabenshue Coming to
Washington to Reside.
SOME OF HIS STUNTS
WILL START A BALLOON FARM"
DOWN THE POTOMAC.
Young Aeronautist Does Not Claim to
Have Solved Problem Of Aerial
Navigation.
SOME OF HIS STUNTS

Young Roy Knabenshue the aeronautic
cloud dodger and sailor OF the circumam-
bient, whose stunts with his fish-shaped bag
have made a lot of talk and speculation in
the world during the year its last
leg, is going to come to Washington to live.
He sent his manager here the other day to
look the ground over Knabenshue's idea
is to start balloon farm" on a piece of
ground that he IS going to buy somewhere
down on the Potomac within easy hitting
distance of Washington. where he intends
to live
Knaaenshue doesn't really intend 70 grow
balloons on this balloon farm" although
he certainly intends to raise them there.
The young aerial navigator has tired Of
TOLEDO, his home town. He wants to be
near where It is That's why he's COM
ing TO Washington. He will probably be
building b1lloons-airships, that Is 10 say
and experimenting with them on his Poto-
mac farm by next spring. He meditates get
ting one of his hsh-shaped bags rugged with
sufficient power by next season to enable
him TO take little aerial ride from Wash
ington TO New York and back, with or
against the wind-for a head wind isn't of
much consequence to young hnabenshue
when he's sailing the air. He gets there
anyhow.
In New York last August Knabenshue
sailed of his bags ali over the town,
from the Flatiron building to Harlem and
back, describing circles and squares ana
all sorts of trgonometrical figures, and
swapping his fingers at the strong breezeS
that prevailed Capt Kidd of uncovered
memory used to snap his fingers at the
tornadoes and lightnings of the Spanish
main the while he stood on his piratical
quarterback and ate glass and detied om-
Impotence.
In Toledo on June 20 and July . of this
year l was hand when young Knaben-
shue achieved first a distinguished success
and then a failure with the bag he was
then using, the same one with which he did
the flying over New York later on. On the
first occasion he started from the Toledo
fair grounds, went up a thousand feet or
so, poked his air ships nose right into the
teeth of strong wind, and sailed to the
town, where he gently lit on the roof of
the tallest office building in Toledo. He re-
turned TO the fair grounds with the wind
in just about jiffy, so manipulating his
machine that he settled on the ground as
gently as an albatross settles from flight
on the bosom of a placid sea.
His Motor Baked.
But two days later--July 2-in the pres
ence of a tremendous crowd of Toledo
folks that had assembled at the fair
grounds on the Sunday afternoon, the
young aeronaut got into wha, might have
| been serious trouble with his big bag. He
| didn' penetrate far enough into the
| mazarine vault of immensity to leave
any lingering aroma of motor gasoline In
the spacy void. In fact, the nervy young
a!rship operator didn't ascend more than
500 feet into the blue eynpyrean. At this
modest altitude his low-power motor baked
at its job of pushing the big billowy bag
against a twenty five-knot breeze, and the
propeller stopped dead about five minutes
after the airship left the ground. With
dead motor Knabenshue had no control
| over the bag, and the big fish-shaped cylin-
der of inflated silk settled in the top
| branches of a tall oak in little WOOD west
| of the fair grounds.
The start I'D was sufficiently suspicious.
| for there was but a gentle breeze on the
| ground But when the big bag once got into
| the first stratum Of wind II began to exc
cute sulky sidewise motions Ike a balky
horse-sort of a headed Pegasus-and
| with all OF his maneuvering knabenshue
couldn't make particle of Roadway his
propeller wasn't making as many reVolu-
| tions as the aerial dope called for, owing TO
| the crankiness of the motor. After few
| minutes of backing in the face of the breeze
| the chug-chug of the motor suddenly ceased
| entirely, and the immense crowd on the
| grounds saw with alarm that that highly
necessary piece of mechanism had gone on
| a strike.
There was only one thing for the gritty
young chap sitting astride of the swayng
| framework to do then, and he did 1t. He
simply sat back in an easy posture or let
| ergo anticipation, and waited to see where
| the crazy old thing was going to land. IL
| waved and slumped back on its launches.
| so to speak, and it was pointing tan down
| ward when it lummoxed into the top of the
| tall oak tree and remained Graded there,
| like big, loNing, tired baby.
Never Lost His Nerve.
! Knabenshue never lost his nerve for a
| minute. He took the stupid and dangerous
! seeming performance Of his oyergrown toy
| with entire equanimity, and promptly pro-
ceeded to disentangle the framework and
l
| the branches. With a little pulling and
pushing and tugging Knabenshue succeeded
| in clearing the fouled gear from the tow
| ering branches, whereupou the big bag
| gently swayed itself to the ground in the
| middle Of little clearing that looked good
| enough to have been made to order for such
1 a gentle termination of an abortive aerial
| voyage. Several thousand men from the
| fair grounds were on the spot by the time
| the airsnip made It's somewhat gnominious
| descent, and about a hundred of the Will
! ing ones put their shoulders under the
| framework and carried the whole contrap-
| ton about three-quarters of a mile over
| fences and bitches back to the fair grounds
| Enclosure and under the roof of the air
| ships shelter tent. The cheerful toters OF
| the still-inf1ated weight of the outfit the
| huge bag looking like some stupendous
| swaddled Nero reclining on the shoulders
| Of his slaves for an airing.
| An hour after that fiasco I fore
| gathered with Knabenshue at dinner at
| the Booty House in Toledo and 1 found
| him to be very uncommon individual from
| several points of view.
| Roy Knabenshue has the look out of his
| eyes of a man born to do something I'M
| usual in the world. His eyes. of greenish
/ blue, with fecks and facets of gray to
| steady their keen and impaling CLINT, are
4 the eyes of a man to whom fear Is a thing
| inexpicable You could picture those eyes
| gazing with steadfast scorn into the very
| open NAV of death. And yet there is an
7 utter absence of brayado about the young
| gentleman.
The daredevil in this wholly placid and
| self-contained acknowledging Knabenshue
| youth is a spirit OF accomplishment and
| not Of destruction. He will risk his
| own life as If 1t were a fig, but he doesn't
want yours. The steady, desperado-Ake
steeliness of his eye isn't, In this case,
| an expression of predatoriness nor or lai-
| ent savagery. 1t Is simply the cool, nara
| gaze of a young man TO whom the world
/ and death and all are nothing unless ne
| succeeds at the thing to which he has lald
his hand There is nothing OF the sWag-
ger of the bogus chance-taker about MIN,
/ but In the acutest sense he is an exempll-
| fication of Kipling's type of young Ameri-
can who would be willing to match with
Destiny for the beers
Risks Even on the Ground.