Slats Rodgers and the Love Field Lunatics Jim Gatewood

When Slats was 18 he lied about his age and got a job with the rail road. His strong will and keen mind enabled him to slug his way from yard-boy to engineer. The young soldier of fortune discovered he could make money faster hauling bootleg whiskey in the cab of his locomotive. At the end of World War I, Love Field became a Mecca for gypsy barnstorming pilots and a flying circus was formed called Slats Rodgers and the Love Field Lunatics. The circus was used as a cover for the delivery of his bootleg whiskey. In 1933, Roosevelt repealed the Volstead Act. The sixteen year window of time for bootleggers slammed shut. Mexico beckoned to Slats and he became a gun runner involved in a small revolution and later he left Mexico, a rich man. With the gold he brought out of Mexico he purchased an airfield in Mission, Texas and went into agro crop dusting business.

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