Sunday was a checkerboard day. From hour to hour an airman didn't know what square he was on, nor whose move it was. I had a perfectly enjoyable day. Talked with a number of pilots, shot the breeze and took two or three flights of no importance at all, but interesting to me.

We chopped a great big hunk out of Kenny Gable's shirt-tail Sunday. Kenny soloed an airplane. Therefore he had to undergo the customary initiation of those who have passed from the world of groundlings into the sphere of the airman.

After we whacked off his tail --with scissors, that is --we duly recorded the fact that one "Kenny Gable soloed on November 22," and nailed the piece of shirt to the bulletin board beside the many others.

Earl Parker, local electrician, was making ready to fold his more than six feet into an airplane to continue his lessons. Earl is learning to fly, and doing a fine job of it. He enjoys it very much. As every student does, he gazed with both longing and apprehension at Gable's shirt-tail going up on the board. Longing for the day when he would solo, and just a wee bit apprehensive concerning the time that he would look around and find the co-pilot's seat empty. Brother, that's the day when you are along and lonely. But shortly thereafter, when you know that you and you alone have taken an airplane aloft and brought it safely back to earth -- what a feeling!

It's almost as elegant as being a new father. I'm working around to congratulating Joe and Dora Carlin on their new baby. Joe operates Municipal airport, and dark-eyed, dynamic Dora keeps the business details in order while Joe has his head in the clouds. Funny thing about their two little ones. The first, a boy, is named Joseph Frederick, after his pappy, but they call him Fritz. The new girl was named Betty Joe,, so you see, they have Big Joe and two little Joe's in the family. Cute, isn't it.

I moised out to the field about nine o-clock. Inasmuch as I had forgotten to phone and tell them I wanted the plane, Charlie Purdum, of Syracuse, was winging his way to Grand Rapids and Flint, Mich., in it.

I was looking downcast and desolate when Joe eased up and whispered: "Let's take the acrobatic ship up. The clouds look good." A few minutes later we were bundled warmly, for the Stearman is an open-cockpit bi-plane, and we were taking off into the wind.

We climbed over Warsaw and took a look at the new WRSW radio tower, just west of Winona Lake. It points skyward 300 feet, and looks close to an airman even though we were a thousand feet above it.

At three thousand feet we found the overcast. There was a very thin film of gray stuff, which hid the true picture from the ground. As we passed through this filmy layer, suddenly we discovered great holes in the clouds, which beckoned onward into beautiful, clear blue skies on top.

In sheer exuberation, Joe snap-rolled us through one of the wholes and when our ship rolled over on top, the sight that met our eyes was beyond description. We had left the cold gray of the winter day below and found ourselves in the middle of fairyland and sunshine. This is a picture I really wish that every human could see sometime.

For on top of the clouds, of course, sunshine prevails. The sky is the color of Center lake on a warm, sunny day. Blue, bright, pleasant, warm blue forming a gigantic bubble, whose edges cannot be defined.

Immediately below the ship, the pure white clouds formed an artificial terrain. Flying along, observing the shape of various humps, hills and valleys, you are impressed with the fact that this might very well be a snow-covered land, gently rolling to mountainous.

For miles, there would be only smooth curves, like rolling swells on a great lake. Then we would come upon a giant of the skies --a dome of white that stretched thousands of feet upward, like a great mountain crag.

Every now and then, a hole would open beneath us and Warsaw would appear, or the cluster of our three lakes--Winona, Pike and Center --so close together from that altitude that we look like one with an island in the middle.

It was even warmer up there. In our new-found freedom, with the zest of the view feeding our devilishness, we began a series of maneuvers that makes your blood tingle like champagne bubbling in a glass.

Snap-rolls, slow-rolls, clock-rolls, loops and long, gently curving glides, then a powerful, surging climb for more altitude, with the motor roaring through the stillness around us.

Believe me, it was grand!

Warsaw Daily Times Nov. 23, 1948