By Phil Tortorici

Phil Tortorici
Freshman History/ Current Events
Dr. Thompson
20:Mar: 37

Harold Dennismore, discharged from the US army after the Great War, borrowed the money to start a small tool and die shop in Rhode Island. Harold did all the selling and the machinist work, and his wife, Edna, did the bookkeeping, at the kitchen table in their modest apartment, above his shop.

Dennismore Tool and Die enjoyed a moderate amount of success, during the early twenties, and Harold was looking to expand the business. He took in two partners- two other independent machine shops- and formed Dennismore, Baidsen, and MacGregor Machines, with Harold as the senior partner. Harold turned in his apron, and did the selling, his partners, and apprentices did the machine work, and Edna- well, she had an office now,- was still in charge of the books. All was looking up for the new company. Except, that Edna didn't trust the two partners. She kept this from her husband, who had no idea of her suspicions.

Harold liked selling, as he liked to travel, and on the longer trips, he liked to take his family with him. He had made several trips down the east coast, in a converted delivery truck, now serving as their motoring hotel . He was one of the many "tin canners"- tourists that drove down to Florida to enjoy the water and the sunshine, camping along the roadsides, with the other tourists, during the Florida boom years. The Dennismore family would stop and see the southern sights along US Highway One, and while the family was off doing something fun, Harold would take his trunk of samples and sell to the local businesses he could find. In spite of the growing political differences between the regions of America, this arrangement worked out well, for all involved. Harold was a big, personable sort, and represented Rhode Island, and his trade well. That is, until the influenza outbreak of 1927.

Harold was down in Florida, around Daytona, with his family, when his whole family took ill with the killer influenza. Edna, and his fifteen year old daughter Jane Lynne, recovered after a fitful two weeks. Unfortunately, Harold had succumbed to the disease. He was buried out side of Daytona.

The newly widowed Edna, wired the partners back north to let them know the bad news, and told them that she'd be heading back home within the week. The truck made it as far as the Florida/ Georgia border; there, armed Georgia State Police Officers were turning back motorists, to prevent the spread of the epidemic into Georgia. Edna didn't know what to do. It was obvious that she couldn't go back to Rhode Island, and there was really nothing for her here, in Florida. She thought of what Harold would do in this situation. Edna turned the truck around and headed back to Daytona. There, she would try to pick up where Harold left off. And she was running out of money. Edna wired the home office to get some funds sent down to her so that she and Janice could weather out the influenza epidemic, and the partners wired down some money. But not all of the money that she had asked. The partners were claiming that a downturn in business, and other problems, hurt their capital enough that funds were not readily available, to send to her. She thought that his was a bunch of hokum and suspected that the two were attempting to freeze her out of the business. A call to the family lawyer had freed up some more money, but Edna could see that the end of her association with the partnership was nearing. By the time that she could make it back to Rhode Island, the two surviving partners would have looted the entire corporation.

As the epidemic lessened, Edna was able to find a job as a part-time book keeper for a small machinist's shop in Daytona. The owner was reluctant to hire a woman to help him, but Edna was persistent, and since the owner had traded with Harold over the years, out of pity, she was hired. She immediately set to straighten out his books.

After many calls to her lawyer, Harold's estate was finally settled, their home was sold, and her records and valuables were shipped down to Florida. Only Edna received a portion of her share of the family business. While, after legal fees, it was a fraction of what it was worth, this part of the nightmare was over, for now. She now had to deal with a new life in Florida. Working for this machinist was difficult, and she could see no long term gains from it for the long term. She did still have possession of the fire insurance policy that Harold had taken out on the business. And she had contacts back home. A little over a year later, Baidsen and MacGregor Machines burned to the ground, in an industrial accident. The payoff was handsome, and Edna was now fairly well vested.

She did not want to rouse suspicions in her new hometown, so she arranged to have the money wired to a bank in another city, and then hid the money at her new home. Six months later, in 1929, came Black Tuesday. Florida had already weathered it's real estate crash in 1926, and was not hit as bad as other parts of the nation. But it still did hit Florida. Edna helped out as much as she could with the business even to the point of forgoing her salary and taking some of her "nest egg" and investing it into the business. Her boss thought that she was loyal employee, took the money, and said that he would return her investment with interest; Edna smiled sweetly and accepted his offer. She intended to cash out on it, when the time was right.

"Blind Willie", as her boss was called, was the owner/ operator of R. Williamson Grinding and Tools. Mr. Willamson got his moniker when a sliver of metal flew off of a piece of work and caught him in the corner of his eye. His vision in that eye was blurred after that, and he wore an eye patch to do fine work. Blind Willie was good with hundredths of an inch, but poor with hundredths of a dollar. He owed the bank, and the grocery store, and the mercantile, and others, and was real irregular with his price estimating practices. With the current state of dissolution of the nation, and economic depression, and as before, if someone needed a part made, Blind Willie was the man to make it. Willie didn't consciously try to cheat his customers; it was just when his creditors were banging at the door, his machine jobs were suddenly more difficult to do then he had originally thought, and the estimates had to, well, go up . He wasn't working for free, after all.

Jesse MacNaird didn't like this. MacNaird's Crop Dusting has used Blind Willie's services for many years, when Willie was doing more fixing than tools. MacNaird used to run moonshine out of his company's airstrip, and Willie- as he was known back then- used to keep his old plane running for him. But the prices kept going up and down, and Jesse finally called him out on it. A fight broke out, and Jesse found another wrench turner, and Willie opened the machine shop. But Jesse still needed the odd part made from time to time, and had to pay top dollar for it. Jesse disliked having to trade with Blind Willie, and now, his bookkeeper wanted to talk to him. Edna was politely persistent, and insisted that she had an idea for a business venture that should flourish in this troubled economy. He didn't want to talk to her, but as a business man, Jesse was always interested in hearing about any new deal. He figured that if he heard her out, she would leave him alone. After all, what could this woman offer him? Besides the obvious, of course. He sat behind his desk and listened, patiently at first, then with attention, and then with a smile.

You see, Edna was Blind Willie's bookkeeper, and knew the exact state of his tool business. His business was running smoother now that Edna handled his accounts. The ups and downs had leveled off, but Willie was still a difficult boss. Though he owed less money than he had ever done before, being told to watch his spending, bothered him a lot. He resented the truth, and would curse out his bookkeeper- accusing her of trying to take over his business. Later, after a drink or two, he'd come back and apologize. Edna would smile, and everything would be fine until Willie need extra money again. It was worse during the Depression. Edna had convinced Willie to sign a promissory note for the return of the her money. Willie figured that the only time he had to pay her back was when he felt like it. He was happy with this arrangement. He didn't know all of the details about the interest. All he knew was that he was still in business.

Daytona was a bootlegger's stop-over during the brief period of Florida's prohibition. It was pretty busy in the smuggling days. Now, after alcohol was decriminalized planes rarely flew in and out of the city. There were many abandoned airfields, and aircraft was rusting in hangars, from disuse. Things were starting to change. First, some of the old bootleggers tried to set up a smuggling network of shipping the more well-heeled tourists back home. After the borders were closed off due to the 1927 influenza epidemic, many tourists, like Edna, were stranded in Florida.. This didn't pan out as real profitable. 1929 saw more trade restrictions and, finally, the stock market crash. With the successions happening in 1930, the nation was plunged into disarray. The Tin Can Uprising didn't help matters much. What Daytona had, but didn't realize as of yet, was the next major national business boom - Air Freight. Air technology was developing at an alarming rate because that was the only way to get goods and people, between the new American countries. On top of this, some of the old bootlegger pilots were returning to the area. A few of the old moonshiners were boasting about their planes in the good old days of prohibition, and a little friendly competition had started among these men. It first began as a friendly competition, but as the spectator draw increased, a set of rules and regulations were hammered out and Daytona started to earn a reputation, as in Darlington, and Talladega, as the place to go to see the best and the brightest race their stock planes, in the air races. Many of the first air racers were stranded here in Florida after the decriminalization of alcohol and during the epidemic; like the Tin Canners, these pilots wound up settling in and among those in the Highway One area, looking for work.

None of this was lost on Edna, as she listened intently to this unfolding scenario on the radio, and to the chatter around the machine shop. If Jesse and Willie could patch things up between themselves, they could start shipping machine parts out to the various places in the new confederacy. By airplane. Other freight could be trans-shipped at the same time. It could make Edna well off, and Harold proud, if it were done right. Edna had enough in her nest egg to help to bankroll this new venture, but if she could convince Jesse to put up most of the initial money, she'd come out ahead, if it failed. Harold always said that spending other peoples' money was better than spending your own. Blind Willie was the only bad part of her plan. This is why she was sitting in Jesse's office, with the promissory note, in her purse, and a tale, on her lips, to convince him.

Nobody knows what happened between the two on that day, but some how Jesse wound up with the promissory note. Blind Willie wound up working for Jesse again, and with a second-hand Ford Tri-motor that Edna purchased from Florida Airways, MacNaird Air Freight was formed. Edna, of course, handled the accounts, as a limited partner, this time. She started to contact all of the businesses from Harold's records, and flights started to come and go from Jesse's air strips. They bid on a contract for delivering Dixie's mail, but didn't get it. This is where the trouble began.

The air freight business wasn't going as well as Edna had hoped, and more and more of her savings was being drained to prop it up. It was taking longer than she had figured to co-ordinate all of the pickups and deliveries, and the downtime was costing them money. The on-duty pilots and personnel had quarters at the airfield- that Jesse reluctantly had built- and the overhead was slowly drain the company. Their big break came at the expense of others, starting with an emergency call from a cargo airship. Janice Lynn was at the radio, working on her correspondence course, when the call came in from an airship in distress. The Pride of Leesburg was under attack by air pirates, seventy miles south of Jacksonville, and the Captain was frantically begging for someone to help. Janice made a quick call to her mother, and then to Jesse, and rousted three pilots, and got three planes into the air - all within fifteen minutes. Air piracy was rapidly becoming a problem, and the fledgling company had to fly a fighter, or sometimes two with their cargo planes, to keep them safe. This meant even more overhead.

The three planes crossed the twenty remaining miles, between the stricken airship and the airfield and within the hour, the attackers were driven off.

The Pride of Leesburg limped into the Jacksonville Aerodrome with a fighter escort. And soon after, a contract was awarded to the freight company, for running fighter escort and pirate interdiction. The fighters flew from as far south as Morrison Field, in the Greater Palm Beaches to as far north as Savannah, Georgia. The three pilots in this incident were former rum-runners who were stranded in Florida; they used to call themselves the Tin Canners, after that fact, and the condition of their planes. It was by this name that the rescued airship first knew them. MacNaird Air Freight was now transformed into a multi-plane air militia- with a sideline in air freight- and it's name was officially changed to the "Tin Can Posse", in 1931.