Published: September 30, 2008 12:10 pm      

Saga of ‘Old Soggy’ shows Rodgers born to fly

Ed Bland was so obsessed with flight that as a youngster, he built gliders in basement of his family’s home only to leap from a cliff to experience those few seconds of birdlike ecstasy before the rough landing that would send him back to the basement for repairs. The pilots that my uncle and his U.S. Navy PBY flight crew rescued from enemy waters during World War II were most grateful that his obsession had brought him to the South Pacific. Towards the close of the war, he and his crew survived several days afloat on Pacific waters after being shot down. He flew all his life, logging hours on the very day he died. Flying was in his blood.

People gasped as Gene Brewer parted the clouds as a wing-walker atop a biplane over Dallas Love Field during the early 1920s. The grandfather of my wife, Sherry, was “the Daring Gene Brewer,” who performed stunts on the wings of airplanes that, as one of his pilots recalled, were enough to make “the skin on your back crawl,” quite a statement coming from Slats Rodgers.” Brewer, a barnstormer himself never wore a parachute while crawling from cockpit to wing and back towards the tail during in-flight acrobatics.

According to his daughter, Margaret, Brewer gave up the deadly aerial antics after a persuasive conversation with his wife, but Slats, well, that was quite another case. He, like Ed Bland, was born to fly.

Historic minute

As the sea slapped the shoreline on Dec. 17, 1902, a sputtering shadow reduced in size for a mere 59 seconds, but it could be said that no one minute since experienced has had such an impact on aviation history.

As their contraption sat idle on the ground, Wilber and Orville Wright put Kitty Hawk, N.C., on the map with the first successful powered flight, spanning 852 feet.

During the remainder of that decade, daredevil aeronauts donning flying apparel and goggles took to the air to experience the powerful sensation of lift and descent in air machines constructed of fragile wood skeletons covered in doped cloth and powered by crude engines.

The Wright brothers quickly became legendary, but beyond that they also became teachers to those who followed.



Beginning with model

Johnson County railroader Floyd H. Rodgers read materials written by them and others on the subject of flight. Rodgers built a small model aeroplane in 1911 and publicly displayed it on the water tank of his locomotive engine.

This stirred a lot of curiosity and brought onlookers trackside to view the contraption.

Money earned from the model’s appearance at a theater in Cleburne was his stake in the construction of a full-sized aeroplane that would come to be known as Old Soggy No. 1, also the title of a book co-authored by Hart Stilwell about Rodgers’s life, as told by the life-long flier.

According to Stilwell’s book, construction of the plane began in a building on Cleburne’s Main Street near the post office of that day. The project attracted so much attention it was declared a “public nuisance” by the city, and Rodgers was forced to relocate to a rented house in Keene, where the plane was completed.

In 1912, the aeroplane was brought back to a vacant lot in Cleburne, where he charged folks to look at it, netting a handsome sum at the end of a three-day run. In a field about three miles north of Cleburne, the first airplane to be built in the state of Texas took to the air but not right away.

As the old-timers used to say, Rodgers had gotten the cart before the horse. He had built a plane but had yet to learn how to fly it.

As a crowd looked on, he cranked the engine and powered it to movement but spent weeks wandering the weathered furrows of an empty field, rutting the soil with the fixed tricycle landing gear, unable to control the plane’s direction of travel.



First flight

Finally, after working with the airless craft for about a month and a half, he inadvertently left the ground for an extended length of time, rising some 30 feet into the air while attempting to avoid a ditch that lay in his taxi path.

The exhilaration of the momentary levitation entered his blood like an incurable virus.

Rodgers had gone from builder to pilot with the leap over a ditch. Those who witnessed the event, doubting Thomases, hecklers, curiosity seekers and all, stood in awe, their jaws dropping, along with the air machine that some said would never fly.

The right wing dipped, catching the ground and ripping away from the aircraft. The wheels befell the same fate as the plane came to an abrupt stop.

Rodgers repaired the craft and continued to battle the “soggy” right wing, correcting the malfunction by shifting his weight left as a counter balance.

After landing, confident he had mastered the beast, he refueled and took off again with no intention of cutting power. He was in it for the long haul.

Stilwell wrote that Rodgers recalled approaching the Nolan River and eventually setting the ship down in a cornfield with no resulting damage to “old Soggy.”

In days to come, Rodgers learned to maneuver his machine but never lost respect for the dipping right wing. He was contracted to do a flyover of the courthouse during a political speech and did so at a 300 foot altitude.

During an attempted take-off to do another special flyover of Blum the right wing dipped again. While trying to correct, he crashed, severely damaging the plane and injuring himself. He still managed to walk away.

He rebuilt the plane while he recuperated, flying it occasionally, but came to the conclusion it was time to retire the old girl.



Lost to time

By that time, others were flying in the area, and business thinned out for aerial exhibitioners. The first aeroplane to ever be built in Texas was parked beside the Rodgers barn, where it disintegrated with time.

The life of Slats Rodgers reads like something between an old dime novel and a Steven Spielberg script.

He was an aerial Indiana Jones, the ultimate adventurer with a rebellious spirit and a touch of tenderness.

Born in Georgia in 1889, his family settled in North Texas, and as a young man Slats became employed by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway, eventually becoming a locomotive engineer.

As mentioned in Stilwell’s book, he married and had four children but was later divorced.

His flying experiences led him to government service as a civilian flight instructor during World War I, a circus stunt pilot after the war, a barnstormer for hire, a crop duster, and a bootlegger during prohibition.



Life of firsts

He was the first to receive a Texas pilot’s license and the first to have it revoked. Eventually, he remarried and bought a sheep ranch in the hill country, and opened a steakhouse in Bandera.

He later moved to McAllen, where he ran another steakhouse. He sold it and moved to Falcon Lake near the town of Zapata, where he operated a fisherman’s camp.

The survivor of 29 airplane crashes passed away on July 5, 1956, and was buried in Mission. His colorful character and legendary antics remain behind as folklore coveted by a fan club, preserved by a historical marker, documented by books and photographs, and forever a part of Johnson County history.