A young Portland girl, Carol Mangold, loaned her black cat, Alba Barba, to a pilot in the 1928 National Air Race from New York to Los Angeles. The pilot, John “Tex” Rankin, started flying with the number 13 on his Waco 10 biplane fuselage in the national race the year before, attracting more news photos and articles than other participants. He reasoned that by flying an airplane again with the number 13 and adding a black cat, ample publicity would flow again.
To find the blackest cat, Rankin delayed his departure and held a “cat audition” by convincing three Portland newspaper aviation editors to ask their readers to present their black cats. Cat day was a yowling, hissing and snarling event. Fortunately, no dogs appeared. A part Siamese cat, Mangold’s Alba Barba, meaning white whisker, was selected to become a famous flying feline.
By the time of the race, Rankin was an experienced pilot.
In 1916, Rankin joined the Washington National Guard, eventually finding himself in Europe. In France, the Army put him in charge of assembling American planes. After the Armistice, he returned to Walla Walla and opened a flying school. By mid-1922, he had graduated 70 students and performed in an air circus with a then-unknown parachutist, Charles Lindbergh.
Rankin eyed Portland for his school because the coastal beaches promised lucrative summer barnstorming. For 18 months during 1924 and 1925, he ran the Rankin Flying School out of Pearson Field. He left Pearson in 1925 when Mock’s Bottom along the Willamette River was up for lease. It was across the river from what would become Swan Island Airport years later. Rankin built a hanger and painted “Learn to Fly—$250” in large letters on its side.
