Shrewd

Above Valparaiso, Ind., an airplane scuttled, alit, scuttled aloft again, like a busy grasshopper. "That's Loewenstein's," exclaimed burghers out marketing and hastened to Morris Loewenstein's grocery store.

Like Alfred Loewenstein, shrewd Belgian financier, now dead by a fall from his plane, Valparaiso's Loewenstein uses his airplane to increase his business. To every customer who buys $25 worth of groceries for cash he gives a lengthy air ride--to the chagrin of his torpid competitors.

4,000 +

The Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce announced, last week, the existence of 4,134 civilian-owned airplanes, airships and balloons in the U. S. California skies are flecked with over 600 private aircraft, New Yorkers own 387. Other strongly air-minded states are: Illinois--350; Michigan--291; Texas--269; Ohio--231; Missouri--216; Pennsylvania--212. Rhode Island has nine civilian planes; Vermont, only three. Despite the heavy population of the East, Westerners and Middle Westerners are manifestly more eager to soar.

Record

Over 205 miles an hour was the pace sustained, last week, between Boiling Field, Washington, D. C., and Mitchell Field, Long Island, by Lieutenant Ford J. Lauer and Gordon P. Saville.

They flew separate planes and established a new record of 70 minutes for the 240-mile hop.

Oakland to New York

Starting from Oakland, Calif., for the first West-East non-stop continental flight, Colonel Art Goebel last week reached New York, 18 hours, 58 minutes later. Last August, he won the Dole prize for flight to Hawaii.

Gift

When Baron Ehrenfried Guenther von Huenefeld, Capt. Hermann Koehl and Maj. James G. Fitzmaurice arrived in Manhattan after their east-west trans-Atlantic flight (TIME, May 7) they received a noisy, elaborate burst of greeting. Touched by this fanfare, impartially accorded by the U.S. to a two-thirds Germanic achievement, they donated the propeller of their monoplane Bremen to the projected Museum of the City of New York.

Gallant, grateful von Huenefeld, speaking for himself and his companions last week, gave the Bremen entire, to the Museum. "The hand stretched out to us in Dure enthusiasm, and in warm, hearty feeling convinced us that the rift in friendship between the two nations . . . must never again occur. A bridge must be constructed capable of withstanding all storms."