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terrified. Odessa was her home, and we were getting pretty far from there. And she was with us. She had only us to take care of her.

By this time, we were pretty sick of Russian trains, which meandered rather carelessly. And the trip from Kharkov to Moscow by train took about 16 hours. I discovered by inquiring around that you could fly from Kharkov to Moscow in two and a half hours, also that I could buy plane tickets with my black market rubles. Mina had never been up in a plane. This was 1934. Harold said I was absolutely mad to even think of going in a Russian plane. He wouldn't dream of it. He was much more cautious than I was. Harvey had rejoined us by this time.

Did you have Walter Durante with you, too?

No, Durante stayed in Ordzhonikidge. He had promoted some assignment around there.

Getzloe and Harold flatly refused to take the plane, and I said to Mina, “I'm going to give you a treat. We're going to fly. You're going to have your first airplane trip. We're going to fly to Moscow.”

So we saw them off on the train, with my predicting, “We'll be in Moscow for dinner tonight. You'll come dragging your feet in about 11 o'clock tomorrow morning after another awful night on one of those slow trains.”

We got down to the airport at 2:30 p.m. with not a cloud