Flying Home Page #4

travelling alone for such a long time,

I suddenly had substantial back-up.

The two elderly engineers took me to

the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City.

There was no stopping Dale and Bob

on their trip down memory lane.

And the result of my research in Kansas?

A hybrid car that was never completed,

and two small inventions, in which

Walter Wyss was apparently involved.

Not exactly much.

5 August 1948.

It seems to be cursed. Nobody is

interested in the project any longer.

Mami, I don't know what it is,

but I think that if you

had not kept writing to me,

I would probably never

have written again.

24 January 1949.

Dear Mami,

There is something inside me

which prevents me from coming home.

I wish I knew exactly what.

It is all the more so,

when I think of seeing you again.

Still, you are the only reason for

my visit to Switzerland.

In the spring of 1949,

Uncle Walter bought a plane ticket

to Switzerland.

He had hoped to come with news of

his breakthrough at Beechcraft.

He was 38 years old -

and he came home alone.

7 May 1949.

After ten years as an American,

I flew back to Switzerland,

in 20 hours,

from New York to Zurich.

The pleasure at seeing my

dear parents again was great.

I had always wished

for Walter's hopes of success

with the Plainsman to come true,

his revolutionary hybrid car, which was

invented half a century too early.

But in August 1949,

the Beechcraft company

dropped the Plainsman project.

One month later,

Uncle Walter lost his job.

He stopped enjoying

his work as an engineer,

sold his war bonds,

and invested his money in securities.

Walter began to live off

playing the stock market,

and turned to his hobbies:

Photography, languages, and travel.

Los Angeles, August 1950.

Dear Mami, I do not think that

I can continue to live alone for long.

But finding a woman

with whom I will fall in love

and wanting to marry her,

is a huge problem.

If I send you letters of

former girlfriends...

I invited a girl to dinner,

another to a show.

The one I liked best

is getting married in a month.

We drove around in her big car.

The more I think about it,

the worse it gets.

Dear Mami, My last interesting

girlfriend is a black woman,

whom I met on the plane

from Mexico to L.A.

She will give birth in two months,

and is called Martinique.

What an experience

for a bachelor like myself.

I had already met Walter's former

girlfriend in Los Angeles in 2003.

Six years later,

I visited Martinique Landois a second time.

The former dancer was now over 80,

and lived with her son, Raoul.

When I asked Martinique

during my first visit,

how her love story with Walter

had actually begun,

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