Free The Man Called Brown Condor by Thomas E. Simmons Page A

began to trickle in. Most of the customers returned. It was evident to them that the quiet young man from Mississippi knew what he was doing. In the beginning, all his customers were black. Many of them could only afford to purchase used, run-down cars that needed a lot of work. By word of mouth, news got around that the work was good and the price was right. After a few months, white automobile owners began coming to his shop. Robinson’s Garage was going to make it.
    John hired an assistant named Jules Tuggle. As chance would have it, Tuggle had moved to Chicago from Mississippi. He was a self-taught mechanic, but John found him competent. Most important to John was having a trustworthy helper. It would give him a chance to get away for a couple of hours now and then.
    Robinson splurged and spent twenty dollars on a new suit and pair of shoes. He wore the outfit the first time he applied to the Curtiss-Wright School of Aviation located on South Michigan Avenue. His application was turned down. Not easily deterred, he kept applying. But each time his application was turned down. They never said being black had anything to do with it, and they had various excuses: “The classes are filled up”; “You just missed the beginning of a new class”; “Try us next spring.”
    John had heard it all before. He was angry but he could hold his temper when he tried. The rejections made him all the more determined. He discovered that Curtiss-Wright was starting a Saturday night ground school. He had left his home in Mississippi because, as he told his daddy, the only work he was likely to get at an automobile garage there was a sweeping job. Now he applied for and got a sweeping job Saturday nights at the Curtiss-Wright school. It wasn’t easy. Curtiss-Wright had a janitorial staff that worked during the week. John convinced them they needed one man part-time to clean up evenings on the weekend because they were starting Saturday classes and would need clean rooms to begin regular school on Mondays. He told the building manager he needed the job for extra money and would do it for whatever pay was offered to him. The building manager was impressed. John got the job and was paid twenty-five cents an hour for four hours work Saturday nights. On the way home, after his first night shift, Johnny laughed at himself. What would Daddy think if he knew I begged for a sweeping job in Chicago?
    There was method to his madness. He would close his shop late Saturday afternoon and rush out to Curtiss-Wright and tidy up all but the room designated for the ground school. Just before class John would enter the classroom and quietly do a little dusting and sweeping at the back. No one paid him any mind. The small class filled less than half the rows at the front of the room.
    John listened to every word of instruction. After the class was dismissed, he copied the notes, drawings, and figures that had been left on the blackboards before finishing up the cleaning, emptying the waste baskets, and sweeping the hall before heading home. The class members rarely took notice of him at the back of the room, but the instructor could see him. John approached him the first night and explained why that particular classroom was the last on his cleaning list. He was fortunate that the instructor had a sense of humor. Without his cooperation, John would have very likely been dismissed from his job.
    Sometimes the instructor would note John’s presence during class. He might look to the back of the room and say, “You got that, Johnny, or are we moving too fast for you?”
    The students would look back with amusement to hear John’s reply. “No, sir. I’m ambidextrous. I can move this dust cloth and my mind at the same time.”
    With friends who shared his interest in aviation, John established the Aero Study Group. On Sunday afternoons the group would meet and he would pass on the knowledge he gained while sweeping