From the Skidmore New Era newspaper, September 29, 1910

During the first exhibition on Wednesday morning, "after making a flight of some 200 feet high and about three quarters of a mile long, the aviator lowered his machine and in making a short turn one of the planes struck the ground breaking it badly, and it was some hours before it could be repaired. Thursday morning Captain Evans announced that his ship was in perfect shape and as soon as weather conditions were right he was ready to 'set sail.'"

The paper goes on to say, "From the very start the managers of the Punkin Show realized that their greatest difficulty in getting the crowd here would be to convince people that we would have on exhibition a real aeroplane and not a fake, but that was impossible to convince them of this fact before the machine flew, as the largest cities of the country had signally failed in this undertaking and it seemed the height of egotism in a town of 800 to announce to the people that they were undertaking to do what only a very few cities of the United States and Europe had actually accomplished."

"Thursday noon witnessed the largest crowd perhaps ever in town estimated all the way from 6,000 to 8,000 people. Some came out of sheer curiosity, doubting in their own minds that they would really see a machine fly through the air; others to see the unlimited gall of a little city the size of Skidmore that had the nerve to advertise that they were going to give an exhibition equal to that which is now exciting the attention of two worlds. Perhaps revolutionizing the science of war and causing multimillionaires to take their places on aviation field of some of our large cities and stand from 7 o'clock in the morning to 7 in the evening in order to see a machine, heavier than air, governed at will by its manager, as an automobile is controlled on the ground by its driver."

"When 2 o'clock came Captain Evans announced that he was going to fly and the large crowd as one man, went to the aviation grounds, most of them stopped at the gate on the hill, where they could witness the flight from a distance without costing them a cent preferring to save their 'two bits' to buy popcorn and red lemonade, rather than spend it to see a scientific theory demonstrated, besides that times were too hard to spend their money on flying machines and such trash and they anyway needed it to buy tickets to the minstrel in the big tent. But when Captain Evans took his seat on his little craft, placed his hands on the steering wheel and pressed the button with his foot that turned on the current on the motor and set the great propeller in motion which caused a buzzing sound that could be heard a quarter of a mile instantly the crowd that stood on the 'free line' broke through the fence like the rush of a mighty avalanche, and the guards who were stationed along in front of an incline, that is going up, as to keep it on the level, but of course the higher he gets in the air the greater danger to the machine or himself should any thing happen, and when we remember that the sum of money he received in Skidmore is small indeed, compared to the thousands aviators are getting in larger cities we should congratulate ourselves that he did what he did, and that we have had the rare pleasure of witnessing heavier than air flying machine an aeroplane in flight of the most modern type. The same kind of machine that Capt. Baldwin is winning such fame with in St. Louis."

"Much credit is due to W.J. Skidmore for the free use of his clover field for the aviation grounds, also to M.A. Sewell for the free use of his pastures near his residence for to place auto mobiles and teams during the Punkin Show."