I get a great deal of pleasure in flying to just most any city or town in Indiana, then digging up all the little known and interesting facts about the place.  The factual history of Indiana is a glorious story in the progress of our nation.  The legends which have been passed down about the famous characters who built our Hoosier state make good telling at any time.  Indiana can be proud of all of them, for our state has never been marked with acts of brutality nor greed, nor prejudice.

Sunday morning I haunted Municipal Airport for nearly an hour, watching the soupy weather until it cleared, checking with other pilots concerning their plans for the morning.  Mat Dalton was busy with Joe Carlin, discussing the new Dalton "Swift," a fine fast airplane which Matt will use on many a cross-country flight.  And Earl Parker, Warsaw electrician, was aloft on his first solo flight, piloting himself.

Dan Engle, my flying partner of two weeks ago, strolled out and warmed up one of the Cessnas on the line.  George Hauk and I rather naturally drifted together for the morning flight.

We agreed on a rendezvous at the Smith Airport, Fort Wayne.  With George flying and I just looking, we picked a straight course from Warsaw to Smith Field, only 37 1/2 miles by air.  You might be surprised to know that this straight course does not follow very closely to old U. S. 30, or the fine new road which is now abuilding.  The new right-of-way for Road 30 is a clear slash through woods, hills and low ground and very closely parallels the Pennsylvania tracks, passing close to Pierceton and Larwill.  You can see where trees have been felled, houses moved, barns torn down to make room for the road.

We quickly passed Churubusco and came out between Smith Field and the huge sprawling Irene Byron sanatorium north of Fort Wayne. We slid into a landing between another Cessna and a Bellanca on the black-top runways, taxiied to the airport restaurant.

Over toast and eggs, my mind wandered back through the pages of history, when the wilderness at the intersection the Maumee, St. Mary's and St. Joe rivers was known only to the Miami Indians.  Long before the white Man came to plague them with progress and eventually drive them away, the proud Miamis had a sizable encampment where the three rivers join.  Nearly 250 years ago, a young adventurer by the name of LaSalle visited the Miami Indians and other noblemen of the French court followed him.  LaSalle was there in 1670.  Twelve years later in 1682, the French built the first fort to be constructed in Indiana and called it Fort Miami.  It was located on the site of the present-day-Old-Fort Park in the north-east side of modern Fort Wayne.

 Its name comes from that colorful figure of early American history, General "Mad" Anthony Wayne.  When General Wayne was 49 years old, he defeated the Miami Indians in a decisive battle after clearing the Maumee Valley from Fort Wayne to Lake Erie.  He founded the first American fort in northeastern Indiana and appropriately enough named it Fort Wayne.  This was in the year 1794 early as American history goes, but even more than 100 years after the French had been there.

Another queer and loveable character of early American history is buried at Fort Wayne.  "Johnny Appleseed," father of the American orchard, lies in Archer cemetery in Fort Wayne, and to "Johnny Appleseed," whether true or not, goes credit for sprinkling the seed of his wonderful fruit over the length and breadth of the land.  His real name was John Chapman.

Fortified with coffee, toast and eggs, we left the interesting and historic city of Fort Wayne, flying northward toward Angola and the rugged hills of northeastern Indiana.

Just north of Angola is Pokagon State Park.  Its 938 acres stretch along the eastern bank of James and Snow lakes.  As if with a guilty conscience, we Hoosiers have named many of our parks and scenic places after the Indians who lived to appreciate them before us.  So it is that Pokagon was a haughty chief of the fun-loving Pottawatomie Indians tribes, who settled Indiana from its eastern borders as far west as Kosciusko county and boasted a federation of a sort.  An early Indian government for trading and mutual protection.

The happy laughter of the Pottawatomie's ringing through the hills of Steuben county have been replaced by youngsters peering perhaps for the first time at the huge buffalo now found in Pokagon Park, or the graceful deer and elk which are on display there.  Pokagon also offers a choice of scenic ski trails and a thrilling winter toboggan run.  I've always had a hankering to ride a fast toboggan down an icy hill, swooping, speeding 'round the high banked curves of the track and some Sunday I'm going back to Pokagon in the wintertime just to ride those sleds.

For at the Tri-State airport, where we landed for another cup of coffee, operator Dick Barber promises transportation to the toboggan run and the ski trails for aerial visitors.  Genuine ingenuity was shown when Tri-State airport was built.  In that hilly country it's hard to find 2000 feet of level ground to build a runway, but at Tri-State they sandwiched at least three different runways.  Speaking of sandwiches, here, too, the hungry airman can find food.  Mr. and Mrs. Barber live at the airport, and have a little restaurant and clubroom for their boys who fly.

Sam Oldinher(?) of South Buffalo street, is a graduate of Tri-State college at Angola, and he told me that they owned a glider once upon a time at the college and tried to learn to soar in the thermals--great up-drafts and down-drafts over the hills around Angola.  The down-drafts must have predominated for Sam said the glider crashed to fly no more.  While I'm thinking bout it, that's something else I'm going to do someday, then I'll come back home and tell you folks all about it.  Soaring like a bird, maybe?

If you have ever driven north and east to Angola and Pokagon Park, you will be able to appreciate the fact that it is only 48 miles from Angola to Warsaw by air.  We climbed to better than 3,000 feet as we left the land of the Pottawatomie Indians and just left the airplane have its head, as the saying goes.

With interest we noted the fishermen dotting Webster, the Barbees and Chapman lakes, those most nearly under us.  Many of the lakes, however, still have large patches of open water and the ice doesn't look too thick from the air.

We scooted back into Warsaw Municipal Airport less than three hours after we had left and were home for Sunday dinner at one o'clock.  The weather bureau never did give up its predictions and warnings of snow for Sunday and the radio carried it all day long.  That's an interesting thing to listen to especially when you are flying through skies as clear as water, as blue as paint.

Warsaw Daily Times January 4, 1949