One Summer: America, 1927

high schools and bridges – all were named after him. In Chicago, plans were announced to erect a 1,328-foot-high commemorative Lindbergh Beacon with a beam that could be seen three hundred miles away.
    More than 3.5 million letters were sent to Lindbergh – primarily from females, it was noted – along with 15,000 parcels containing gifts and mementoes. Many of his correspondents included return postage – about $100,000 worth altogether, it was estimated – in the patently deluded hope that he would find time to reply. Western Union received so many messages that it had to assign thirty-eight employees full time to manage them all. One message from Minneapolis contained 15,000 words of text, 17,000 signatures and stretched 520 feet when unfurled. For the less imaginative, Western Union offered twenty pre-written forms of congratulatory message that people could choose from. Thousands did.
    In Hollywood, a young cartoonist named Walt Disney was inspired to create an animated short feature called Plane Crazy featuring a mouse who was also a pilot. The mouse was initiallycalled Oswald, but soon assumed a more lasting place in the nation’s hearts as Mickey. Robert Ripley, author of the syndicated Ripley’s Believe It or Not newspaper feature, received 200,000 furious letters and telegrams after he ungraciously pointed out that sixty-seven people had crossed the ocean by air before Lindbergh did. (Mostly in dirigibles. A later, more careful count showed that the number was actually closer to 120.)
    At least 250 popular songs were written for Lindbergh and his flight. The most popular was called ‘Lucky Lindy’ – the term he hated – and was often played at dinners he attended, ‘much to my embarrassment and annoyance’, he later recorded. The ‘Lindbergh Hop’ became a popular dance – ironically, since the virginal Lindbergh had never danced with a girl.
     
    Meanwhile, in Paris the delirium was no less intense. At Le Bourget on the morning after Lindbergh’s arrival, cleaners gathered more than a ton of lost property, including six sets of dentures. Under Herrick’s benign tutelage Lindbergh did everything right. Stepping on to the embassy balcony to greet the crowds after rising on his first full day in France, he waved a French flag, inducing delirious joy in the uncountable thousands who thronged the street below. Then he and Herrick visited Nungesser’s widowed mother in her tiny sixth-floor flat on the Boulevard du Temple near the Place de la République. It was two weeks to the day since the disappearance of her son. Although the visit was not publicly announced, ten thousand people filled the street for Lindbergh’s arrival. Also on that busy first day, Lindbergh called home on the new transatlantic telephone line, becoming one of the first private individuals to speak across the Atlantic as well as to fly it, and visited sick soldiers at Les Invalides.
    In the days that followed, he went to the Élysée Palace to receive the Légion d’honneur from the president, Gaston Doumergue – the first time a French president had personally bestowed the nation’s highest honour on an American – addressedthe Chamber of Deputies, was fêted by the Aéro-Club de France, had a parade witnessed by up to a million people, and received the key to the city at the Hôtel de Ville. Whenever he spoke, it was with modesty and aplomb, and he never missed an opportunity to praise the accomplishments of French aviation or the kindness of the French generally. His achievement, he made clear, was merely a small part of a large collective effort. In weepy joy, France clasped Lindbergh to its bosom. They called him ‘le boy’.
    No foreign visitor to France had ever been so extravagantly honoured. The American flag was hoisted over the Quai d’Orsay, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – the first time Old Glory had ever flown over that hallowed building. A striking feature of Lindbergh throughout this busy period was his appearance. Everything Lindbergh wore over the next few days was borrowed – and not too many people had clothes that would fit such a tall and lanky frame. Though reporters were too tactful or overawed to remark upon it, it was obvious that Lindbergh was going about Paris in jackets that fell short on his wrists and trousers that didn’t reach his shoes.
    Five days after his flight, crowds of a million people still lined the streets wherever he went. He smiled a good deal in those early days