and were out and living on their own while he was still a boy. His only constant companion was his mother.
Evangeline Lindbergh possessed a very negative image among the townspeople. She was considered aloof, pretentious, and patronizing. She often rode horseback alone through the area and few would even speak to her. On one occasion when riding through town with Charles, Jr. shots were actually fired at Mrs. Lindbergh by townspeople. They were aimed to frighten, not harm. Her young son grabbed his .22 rifle and fired back at those he believed had done the shooting. Although he did not hit anyone, his return shots came much closer than the original ones had to Mrs. Lindbergh.
Incidents such as these prevented anyone from attempting to develop a friendship with Charles, Jr. For her part Evangeline did not encourage him to develop relationships with anyone but herself and would quickly express her disapproval if he began to do so with other children his own age. Yet her own relationship with him was cold and somewhat formal. She would shake hands with him when they parted and when she put him to bed.
Discouraged or prevented from peer friendships, Charles, Jr. became fixated on machines. His autobiographical writings are filled with accounts of how he learned to drive an automobile at age 11, and of his subsequent love affair with a motorcycle. Conspicuously absent are tales of personal friendships. Nor is there any evidence that as he entered adolescence he had any interest in females.
Charles, Jr. invariably played alone on the Minnesota farm. He demonstrated a natural proclivity at an early age to construct items from wood. A raft by the river and a garden shed were two projects of which he was most proud.
When his father was home from Washington they occasionally hunted or swam together in the Mississippi River. During one such excursion, while playing on the riverbank at a spot where the current was especially swift, young Charles fell in. In order to teach him to be tough the elder Lindbergh refused any help to his son, thereby forcing him to learn to swim in order to avoid being swept downstream.
When Charles was ten his father bought their first automobile. Although neither of his parents was mechanically inclined, by age 11 Charles was driving it regularly.
During the summer of 1915 Congressman Lindbergh took a six week leave of absence to undertake an expedition on the Mississippi. He was to write a report following his journey on the efficacy of the system of dams then in existence. He took his 13 year old son with him.
It was a long and arduous journey. Traveling in a small boat powered by an outboard motor, they camped out along the way with Indians and farmers while contending with relentless insects. Despite the conditions young Charles held up well. To spend so much time with his father was an unusual experience which he revelled in. For his part the father took the occasion to talk of the great trials ahead for the nation, of the possibility of war, and of his own political ambitions.
Those ambitions were soon to be dashed because in 1916, after having announced his intention to give up his congressional seat to run for the United States Senate, Charles Lindbergh, Sr. was defeated in the primary. In the next two years the elder Lindbergh increased his opposition to the war and set his eyes on the Minnesota governorship. It was an ugly campaign filled with virulent attacks against Lindbergh, particularly for his stance on the war and for what was perceived to have been antiCatholic sentiments expressed during the previous campaign. He lost the gubernatorial race, and this effectively marked the end of his political career.
During this period, Charles and his mother, along with her brother Charles Land of Detroit, decided to drive to California. In 1916 the roads which existed were hazardous and frequently subject to the whims of the weather. The trip, which was supposed to take two weeks, lasted forty days. Young Charles drove the entire distance himself in a recently purchased Saxon Six.
In California mother and son rented a cottage on Redondo Beach where Charles enrolled in High School. There he was little interested in school, made no new friends, and frequently was truant. He was arrested in California for driving while under age and without any headlights. When his mother appeared at the police station she let it be known that her husband was a Congressman, and when Charles appeared in Court with his mother, he was let go with a warning.
Evangeline received word that her mother was ill with cancer and they quickly returned to Detroit with Charles, underage or not, again driving the entire distance. Eventually Mrs. Land was brought back to the farm in Little Falls where her daughter looked after her until her death in 1919.
In the winter of 191617 Charles and his mother prepared to stay on the farm, a new experience for them. Charles reluctantly reenrolled in school but his heart was not in it. Instead he actively prepared the house for winter habitation by installing storm windows, a wood furnace, a new well and plumbing. His father gave him permission to stock the farm with livestock and he set about this task with relish. He bought cattle, hogs, sheep, chickens and geese. A seventy year old retired lumberjack, Daniel Thompson, lived in the tenants' house and helped with odd jobs.
As he entered his senior year in high school he worried about the final examinations he would have to take to graduate. For the first time the realization that his low grades and lack of academic interest would be detrimental, troubled him. Fortuitously, the high school principal announced that anyone who wanted to work on their farm in lieu of attending school would be given full academic credit. Because of the war effort, and lack of farm laborers, the government had encouraged such a program to maintain food production.
Charles leaped at the opportunity and launched himself full time into the farming effort. The alternative program provided him not only with a chance to work on the farm but also to leave school where he had considered the other students, even those his own age, as "kids." He became a good and dedicated farmer, working from the crack of dawn until late at night, often in subzero weather. He also slept in the cold, preferring a bed on the screened porch piled high with blankets with only his dog as company.
Several years later he would write, "Farm work enabled me to combine my love of earth and animals with my interest in machinery. Each day was an adventure: taming cattle fresh from the range, breaking pasture for more cropland, dynamiting stone islands out of older fields."3
But he also found himself thinking of the future. "If war continued, I would soon become of military age, and soon afterward I would probably be in the Army. If peace came first, I would be faced with problems of college and examinations far more difficult than those I had avoided by farming in the war emergency."4 Neither was a happy prospect.
On November 11, 1918, word came by telephone at a farm auction he was attending that the war was over. Lindbergh continued farming for a few more months until, at his mother's urging, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was to study engineering. Never happy about this arrangement, he did so only because his parents, and in particular his mother, desired it. He never graduated and except for a few occasions, never again lived on the family farm in Little Falls.
During the one year he did spend in college, he made few friends. His mother secured a teaching job in the Madison area and rented an apartment close to the University where Charles continued to live with her. His academic difficulties continued. Rather than studying, he was much more likely to be found riding around the area on his motorcycle.
He also began to exhibit a tendency towards reckless endeavors. He delighted in racing through the woods and hills surrounding Madison on his motorcycle. When the two other motorcycle owners who were attending the University would join him, he would taunt them if they could not keep up. If they had to push their bikes over difficult terrain, he would turn and drive his motorcycle around them in a circle, all the while challenging their abilities to ride a bike.
Once, when these same acquaintances were standing at the bottom of a steep hill near the home of the college president, they told Lindbergh it
