The Happy Bottom Riding Club: The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes

A more unlikely minister's wife could hardly be imagined. Yet Florence Lowe Barnes (1901-74) was in fact married to an Episcopalian rector when she began training horses and flying stunt planes for Hollywood studios. As it turned out, however, the hard-drinking, hard-living, primarily male camaraderie she found there suited her far better than the well-mannered lifestyle of her affluent parents and undersexed husband. She acquired her nickname during a roistering 1927 trip to Mexico, and "Pancho" Barnes became legendary as a pioneering female pilot and a world-class party thrower with lovers to spare. (She was no beauty, but many men found Pancho's gusto and humor irresistible.) In the mid-'30s, past her prime as a pilot and looking for a business to support her free-spending ways, she set up as a Mojave Desert rancher near a tiny encampment of the Army Air Corps. Military and test pilots like Chuck Yeager flocked to Pancho's place--whether it was called Rancho Oro Verde, Pancho's Fly-Inn, or the Happy Bottom Riding Club--to savor her openhanded hospitality with food and booze, and to enjoy earthy stories about her past. Readers intrigued by Tom Wolfe's thumbnail sketch of Pancho in The Right Stuff will relish Lauren Kessler's full-length narrative of her adventurous life. --Wendy Smith From Publishers Weekly "Flying makes me feel like a sex maniac in a whorehouse," declares Florence "Pancho" Lowe Barnes in Kessler's colorful biography of the female flyer, raconteur and scandalmonger. Drawing on personal interviews and other primary sources, Kessler details Barnes's flamboyant life: her privileged childhood in Pasadena at the beginning of the 20th century; her disastrous arranged marriage with minister Rankin Barnes, 10 years her senior, and the birth of her only child, Billy; her years as a flying ace and sexual profligate; and her penniless end as a possible murder victim whose corpse was partially eaten by her numerous starving dogs. Barnes was encouraged in her love of flying by her balloonist grandfather, Thaddeus Lowe, who flew the first air reconnaissance for the U.S. during the Civil War. In the 1920s, she began stunt flying for Hollywood, no mean feat considering that in 1929 only 34 of the 4,690 licensed pilots in the U.S. were women and none but Barnes did such work. She tested planes for Lockheed; wrote scripts for director Erich von Stroheim; worked with Howard Hughes on Hell's Angels, his multimillion-dollar flying epic; and founded the Association of Motion Picture Pilots. In 1929, she broke the women's speed record; six years later, she established the Women's Air Reserves, organized along military lines for aid in disasters. She spent WW II catering to pilots like Chuck Yeager at her Mojave Desert ranch and nightclub, the Happy Bottom Riding Club, which may or may not have been a high-toned brothel. This intriguing tale of a foul-mouthed, hard-drinking former debutante engagingly evokes a woman who lived like she flew--fast and dangerous. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Pioneer women aviators had guts, and some of them grace, but none was like Florence Lowe Barnes. Plain and plain-spoken, she went through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless businesses, lovers, and lawsuits during her turbulent life. Taking up flying to escape a boring marriage, Barnes stunted in early Hollywood, became an instructor, then founded the club of the book's title. It became a raucous home away from home for actors, desert bums, and servicemen from the newly established Edwards Air Force Base. Increasingly eccentric, she was fondly remembered--if only by the flying fraternity. An award-winning author and academic, Kessler provides a lively and thoroughly researched addition to two existing small-press biographies and a 1988 TV movie. (Index and photos not seen.)--Barbara Ann Hutcheson, Greater Victoria P.L., BC Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Kessler seems to have written the first full-scale biography of 1920s aviatrix and party woman Florence "Pancho" Barnes, later best-known for her appearances in Yeager and The Right Stuff as den mother to the early generation of Edwards AFB test pilots. She has long deserved coverage, however, for she lived at full throttle from the moment she discovered where the throttle was. Born to wealth, she made an unsuitable early marriage, then rebelled to embark on a long, exuberant life course that included three more husbands, numerous lovers, several fortunes, careers as a racing pilot and a movie stunt pilot (in the latter capacity, she helped found the stunt pilots' union), much world travel, and, of course, her stint as proprietor of the watering hole for test pilots. She managed all that despite increasingly poor health, a totally feckless attitude toward money, and, in due course, becoming a character equally unsuited to aviation history or gender studies. Kessler does a fine, readable job of rescuing Barnes from oblivion--not that she wouldn't have clawed her way out of it sooner or later anyway. Roland Green Advance praise for The Happy Bottom Riding Club "The hard-drinking, sexually promiscuous pilot and adventuress Florence 'Pancho' Barnes exploded every feminine stereotype on the books. Thank you, Lauren Kessler, for telling her story with the grace and exuberance it deserves."xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0---Barbara Ehrenreich"Pancho Barnes is an unsung American eccentric who helped keep the 'wild' in Wild West. With tremendous zest, insight, and intelligence, Lauren Kessler has given us a compelling tale of a great woman who wasn't afraid to make life synonymous with risk."---Karen Karbo, author of Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me From the Inside Flap s was a force of nature, a woman who lived a big, messy, colorful, unconventional life. She ran through three fortunes, four husbands, and countless lovers. She outflew Amelia Earhart, outsmarted Howard Hughes, outdrank the Mexican Army, and out- maneuvered the U.S. government. In <b>The Happy Bottom Riding Club</b>, award-winning author Lauren Kessler tells the story of a high-spirited, headstrong woman who was proud of her successes, unabashed by her failures, and the architect of her own legend.<br>xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0 <br>Florence "Pancho" Barnes was a California heiress who inherited a love of flying from her grandfather, a pioneer balloonist in the Civil War. Faced with a future of domesticity and upper-crust pretensions, she ran away from her responsibilities as wife and mother to create her own life. She cruised South America. She trekked through Mexico astride a burro. She hitchhiked halfway across the United States. Then, in the late 1920s, s Advance praise for The Happy Bottom Riding Club "The hard-drinking, sexually promiscuous pilot and adventuress Florence 'Pancho' Barnes exploded every feminine stereotype on the books. Thank you, Lauren Kessler, for telling her story with the grace and exuberance it deserves."xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0---Barbara Ehrenreich"Pancho Barnes is an unsung American eccentric who helped keep the 'wild' in Wild West. With tremendous zest, insight, and intelligence, Lauren Kessler has given us a compelling tale of a great woman who wasn't afraid to make life synonymous with risk."---Karen Karbo, author of Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me Lauren Kessler is the author of nine books, among them Stubborn Twig , which received the Frances Fuller Victor Award for the year's best work of literary nonfiction. She directs the grad-uate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon in Eugene, where she lives with her husband and three children. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. It was the summer of 1929, and for the first time in history, women pilots were racingxa0xa0against each other in a cross-country derbyxa0xa0-- 2800 miles and eight grueling days, from Santa Monica, California to Cleveland, Ohio.Pancho Barnes had taken up flying only a year before, but she thought she had a good chance to win.On the dirt field that August afternoon, the airplanes were strung out in two long lines as a crowd estimated between 100,000xa0xa0and a quarter of a million waited in the dust and searing heat for the radio-relayed pistol shot from Cleveland to cue the starter on the field. One of the largest aggregations of newspaper reporters, photographers and newsreelers ever to assemble on the west coast was there.xa0xa0Movie and stage comedian Will Rogers, an aviation enthusiast, presided over the ceremonies, entertaining the crowd -- but not the leather-jacketed flyers -- by referring to the entrants as "flying flappers" and "petticoat pilots."xa0xa0In the press tent, a reporter turned to his colleagues. "I don't care what you guys write about their bravery, their skill, their sportsmanship or their adaptability to goddamn aeroplanes," he said.xa0xa0"What I'm gonna say is, 'Them women don't look good in pants.'"xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0At precisely two p.m., the pistol shot in Cleveland sounded over the loudspeaker in Santa Monica, and at one-minute intervals, each contestant took off at the wave of the starter's flag.xa0xa0The first afternoon's flying was a sixty-mile, get-the-bugs-out hop to San Bernadino.Louise Thaden landed first, twenty-seven minutes later.xa0xa0Marvel Crosson was second.xa0xa0Pancho clocked in with the third fastest time.xa0xa0She felt confident as she flew over familiar southern California turf that first day.xa0xa0She had spent several weeks in June flying the entire course all the way to Cleveland, so she knew well what lay ahead and felt prepared for it.xa0xa0She had not done as much cross-country flying as some of the other women, but what she had done, she had loved.xa0xa0She loved the challenge to wits and stamina, the feeling that she was alone and in charge.xa0xa0That night, the pilots were first feted at a much publicized banquet and then sat through a lengthy briefing on the next day's flight.xa0xa0It was not until after midnight that they were able to go to their rooms and go to sleep. Fatigue, it would turn out, was almost as great a hazard as the flying itself.xa0xa0They were up at four a.m. and in the air by six.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0By mid-morning of the second day, flying across the desert toward a refueling stop in Yuma, Arizona, the temperature soaring to the triple digits, the women sat in their open cockpits in their leather jackets flying east into the sun feeling woozy.xa0xa0Landing at Yuma, Amelia Earhart ran into a sand bank and damaged her propeller.xa0xa0Flying over the Gila River country of southern Arizona, Marvel Crosson was overcome by the heat and the turbulence.xa0xa0She suffered a severe bout of airsickness and parachuted out -- too late and too low.xa0xa0Her body was found two hundred yards from the wreckage of her plane.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0The other pilots heard about Marvel's death at their scheduled stop in Phoenix that night.xa0xa0Pancho had flown the fastest leg and now led the field in elapsed time, followed by Louise Thaden, Gladys O'Donnell and then Amelia Earhart.xa0xa0Stunned by the news, the women nonetheless wanted to carry on.xa0xa0Flying was risky.xa0xa0The women knew and accepted that.xa0xa0But the American public was less ready to.xa0xa0Race organizers were immediately pressured to end the event.xa0xa0"Women have conclusively proven that they cannot fly," one newspaper editorialized the next day when it reported on Crosson's death.The women held firm.xa0xa0"It is now all the more necessary that we keep flying," Earhartxa0xa0told the press. "We all feel terrible about Marvel's death but we know now that we have to finish."xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0The next day, again battling the desert heat, there were more mishaps.xa0xa0One pilot damaged her biplane in a forced landing.xa0xa0Another ran out of fuel in flight and struggled to bring her plane down safely.xa0xa0A third discovered a fire in the baggagexa0xa0compartment of her plane, landed quickly on a mesquite-covered ridge, put out the fire by throwing sand on it and took off again.xa0xa0On the leg to Pecos, Texas, Pancho made an unscheduled landing near a small town, discovering to her chagrin that she had drifted off course and landed in Mexico.xa0xa0She managed to get airborne again before the authorities had a chance to detain her.xa0xa0But later that day, her luck ran out.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0She was flying into Pecos just seconds from touching down at the airfield when she hit something.xa0xa0She had no idea what it was.xa0xa0The airfield had looked clear to her.xa0xa0The approach was smooth.xa0xa0The landing seemed to be routine.xa0xa0But as she came within a few feet of touching down, she heard a crash and a grinding noise as her landing wheels hit and then caught on something.xa0xa0She had no time to react.xa0xa0Her right wing hit whatever was out there, spinning the plane around.xa0xa0Then her left wing hit.It was only after she jumped from the cockpit and got clear of the plane that she saw what had happened.xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0xa0The speed cowling on her Travelair was so bulky that it created a blind spot in front of the plane as it nosed down.xa0xa0What she couldn't see, directly in front of her on the runway was an automobile crossing the field.xa0xa0It wasn't there when she scanned the field on her approach, and it shouldn't have been there at all.xa0xa0She and the driver were both shaken up but unhurt.xa0xa0The Travelair, however, was a wash-out.xa0xa0The right wing was demolished, and the supports on the left wing were broken.xa0xa0The plane could not be repaired on the field.xa0xa0It would have to be loaded on a train and shipped to the Travelair company in Wichita for extensive work.xa0xa0For Pancho, the 1929 derby was over. Read more