This view of Pepper Lane shows the field where the Piper Cub pilot landed his plane.
It was right about this time 60 years ago that a bunch of us on the playground at Saratoga Grammar School watched in fascination as an airplane gently descended in the general direction of Los Gatos. It was obvious that the plane was not in trouble; it was just landing.
Our teacher, being entirely familiar with my passion for airplanes, let me leave school early so I could seek out the landing place on my bike. I figured there was only one logical spot, and sure enough, that was it: the vacant field on the west side of Pepper Lane, extending from about Park Drive to Sunset Drive. It was there that the late Dr. Charles Duisenberg, then a college student, had landed a Piper Cub after flying down from Palo Alto. It was a trip he made several times.
Saratoga had no airport as such, but there were a number of open fields where people could and did land airplanes. One of these was on the east side of Fruitvale Avenue, just off Saratoga-Los Gatos Road. I can still recall the thrill I experienced at about age 6, when I was with my dad and brother driving back from Los Gatos and an Army plane made a forced landing there. I'm told that a private pilot also used that field for his own plane, but I never witnessed a takeoff or landing.
Airplanes, as I mentioned, were my passion in those years, and although I knew I could never be a pilot--aviator was the common term then--because of my poor eyesight, that didn't stop me from fantasizing. I built models and collected books, magazines and pictures, most of which I still have, and I'd run outside the house to look skyward every time a plane passed overhead, trying to identify it as a Stinson, or Travel Air, or Curtiss Robin, or Waco, or one of those new 10-passenger Boeing 247s that flew between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
When it came to vicarious flying thrills, nothing could beat the spray planes that appeared for a few years during the late 1930s. Usually, pesticide spraying of the prune and apricot orchards that covered this part of the valley was done with spray rigs pulled by tractors or horses. But there was a brief period when this work was done by airplane for some of the larger spreads such as the Quito Ranch and Walter Seagraves' orchards. The spray nozzles were on pipes mounted under the wings, and the planes would fly practically at treetop level. It was like having an air show in your own back yard.
As to aerial activity in general, there really was nothing that could match the comings and goings of the dirigible U.S.S. Macon during the 16 months it was at Moffett Field. When it arrived in October 1933, a bunch of us kids hiked to a hilltop near Saratoga and watched the spectacle of the landing. The ship was big enough--785 feet long, 132 feet maximum diameter--that we could watch everything from what amounted to grandstand seats.
Since Moffett Field is only a little over 10 air miles from Saratoga, the ship would be low enough during its arrivals and departures that we could get a good look at it. The air was clear then, and there were fewer tall trees in the way, so from the school grounds, we could look over to the big hangar and, when the doors were open, see the shadowy form of the huge fins.
Flying is different now. Jets are great for getting places in a hurry, but it would be nice to see a Ford Trimotor again.
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, April 16, 1997.
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