Cruising now at 2500 feet due northeast from Lone Rock, within minutes Kat came onto Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen at Spring Green.
While circling once over to get a better look, she decided her destination of turnaround would be Merrimac, a small town located at the edge of Lake Wisconsin 34 miles away. To be able to later tell her friends Howie and Asta, fellow diner owners of Fitz's on the Lake,
that she buzzed over their place on a surprise solo flight would be her own personal contribution to local aviation lore. She also decided, as she climbed back up to 3,000 feet, that the rolling hills and natural stone structures of the landscape below were not the same as a pilot
as when a passenger, that was for sure. A short three line dedication to the awesome beauty of the Baraboo Hills from the pioneer days came to her like a refrain to a song:
Our spirits fill with the glory of your rocky bluffs
We tremble with awe at your green valleys
Sweeping across the countryside to join the hills.
what came to her were names of other Sauk pilots she remembered from stories told to her by her grandfather.
It sent a brief tingle down her neck to think of old Cecil Hess, an aviation pioneer and early
"Barnstormer," of the sad day and fatal story of Peaches Lamar. Back in the 20's, Cecil used to offer rides to locals on his Waco GX for a penny a pound (up to $2.50). He was an early stunt pilot performing at many southwestern Wisconsin fairs and rural farm gatherings.
A self-proclaimed "seat of his pants" flyer, he didn't fly with parachute or compass. His favorite maneuver was the "whip stall" he once told an interviewer. "You almost make the plane stand on its tail and drop down. Then you turn on the power and up she goes." It was just such a celebration fourth of July 1930 that his parachute jumper Evelyn Holman decided that this was not the day for her to jump, so Hess forced a quick landing and recruited a young jumper in the crowd by the name of Mae Rox, who went by the professional "jumper" name of Peaches Lamar.
She accepted. "Miss Rox had jumped the day before, but strapped on the equipment anyway and was soon on her way to 1,500. The crowd buzzed with excitement as the plane again circled the field. 'There she goes' shouted a spectator as Rox appeared below the plane." A local newspaper report continued the story the next day, "Down, down she fell and then silence settled over the crowd as realization seemed to come to everyone at once that something was wrong. Down, straight down, seemingly without a struggle fell Miss Rox and vanished behind a fringe of trees beyond the cornfield, into the marshland southwest of the airport." Peaches Lamar, sadly, was found 18-inches in the soft soil not far from the landing. "It was speculated that she had fainted upon exiting the airplane, failed to pull her ripcord and never knew what happened."
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