I make a record and then I lecture on it. That’s where the money comes from. Until it’s time to make another record.” Pilot Winfield Kinner, Jr., stood near the runway at Burbank, listening to Amelia and his father, Bert, on a February day in 1933. The two men had just left a plane to be inspected and licensed when Amelia saw them and stopped to talk. Twelve years before that day, back at Kinner Field, schoolboy “Win” Kinner had marveled at Amelia’s skill as a contortionist but thought she “was inclined to make sloppy landings.” The last time he had seen her was in 1929 when his mother cooked pork chops for her the night before she flew back east in the little Avro Avian she bought from Lady Heath. The “Queen of the Air” was reminiscing with Bert as if she were still twenty-three years old instead of thirty-five. Her grin was the same but her blue-grey eyes were older and the fair, smooth complexion Win recalled was tanned and marked with fine lines from sun and wind.
