An airman's eye begins to gleam like bright sunlight on the snow when the weatherman paints his winter white across the roads and fields for the first time.

And such a day was Sunday. How the pilots flocked to the airports, anxious to catch a skyward glimpse of the breath-taking beauty of the first snowfall.

We made a party up in four airplanes; one each in two Taylorcrafts and two each in two Cessnas. That made six-one-half dozen mighty happy airmen. One by one the small ships pulled away from Warsaw Municipal airport and were lost in sight almost immediately in the snow flurries covering northern Indiana at that time.

In the aircraft were Don Engle, John Doyle, chuck Lackey, Ed Rife, Joe Carlin and your reporter.

Nosing southward toward Rochester, we followed the comfortable ribbon of roadbed left when the Winona Railroad was abandoned.

Strangely enough, we hadn't had a glimpse of our fellow birdmen until we entered the traffic pattern over Wayne and Helen Outcelt's neat skyport on the banks of Manitou lake. Then, just as suddenly as they disappeared in the snow flurries at Warsaw, all four of our tiny planes could be seen circling the field. One by one they touched down, raising white rolls of snow as the fast-moving wheels skimmed through the crystals on the ground. We trooped across the street to the airport grill for coffee, toast and eggs.

After a little debate on ways and means, we took off again for Valparaiso, heading northwest this time. In my ship, we decided to scoot westward down the railroad track over Leiter's Ford, Delong, Monterey, Ora, Bass and to North Judson. Here a couple of railroad tracks turn northwest and parallel each other to LaCrosse, Ind. We flew the iron beam all the way. At Wanatah, we squinted through the snow flurries and could see Road 30 just beyond; laid the plane over on its side and headed directly for Valpo. Once again, the three other ships began to materialize from the haze and we buzzed rather busily in a tight circle over Urshel Field, dropping in one by one.

After a coke apiece, we took off directly north. The town of Chesterton is always a surprise to me. In my imagination, Chesterton is just a burg, a hamlet. But from the air, it sprawls over quite an area, and I always have to look at it twice to convince me that I'm over the right town.

Flat fields suddenly change to wooded hills. Rugged, ragged, nasty looking terrain to an airman and we were over the great Indiana dunes, right on the tip of Lake Michigan. We swung the nose of our ship northeast up along the edge of the great lake and I began to look around at the magnificent view, rather hungrily.

That tremendous body of water always fascinates me. At this point, the snow stopped and the haze cleared. The moisture in the air collected itself into isolated cumulous clouds, floating majestically along one by one. Some big, some little. We climbed steadily to reach their level and found the round white balls at 2,500 feet. We flew around most of them, over some of them and directly under none.

To our left, the great lake lay as it always does, mysterious and never ending toward the horizon. It had changed color since the day last summer we flew over it. Instead of the b right picture-book blue of summer, the lake had changed into its winter dress of dull gray, sort of a pastel water-paint color. The broken cumulous clouds above caused irregular shadows of deeper gray to appear upon the water--and though I've seen them many times, for a moment I was puzzled by the mottled appearance of the water's surface.

As we passed over Michigan City, the view was best. At this point, square white fields were visible as far as the eye could see. Michigan City didn't look so big from half-mile up. The coast guard breakwaters had white snowy backs and contrasted prettily to the dull of the water.

Now the fields Sunday were not entirely covered with snow and the usual brilliance of snow falling was tempered by the tops of tall weeds and grass protruding through the snow. Fields and fence rows were well defined. Fence rows with their black posts every few feet appeared from the air like super fancy stitching neatly sewing together the many shapes and pieces of the landscape.

The farther from the planes we looked, the whiter the view became because the oblique angle hid some of the darker objects. But directly below us, rivers looked absolutely black against the adjacent fields. Lakes were not the easy landmarks they usually are for many of them had been covered by a think layer of ice--just enough to hold the snow. Many of them looked just like the many tillable fields of northern Indiana, or southern Michigan. Best way to spot those lakes which were solidly frozen and snow covered, was to look for the tell-tale border of dark trees, which gave the lake a shape no self-respecting field would ever have.

We passed over the twin cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor in a straight line formation --1, 2, 3, 4. The St. Joseph river splits the towns and empties into Lake Michigan. Twin piers jutting out into the water identify it easily.

And I might say here, that on a clear summer evening at around a mile high over Warsaw you can see the black smudge of those two piers against the brilliant mirror of the lake. That's in bright summer sunlight, though. And I suppose the same thing would be true of a frostily clear winter day, but I have never noticed it.

Benton Harbor has a big airport with crisscrossing black-topped runways of generous width and length. Really, they want to be, for the surrounding terrain is not good from a flyer's viewpoint. There is another oddity at the Benton Harbor airport. Two of the runways have been built up, way above the surrounding countryside. The ends of the runways jut out into marshlands like piers and there is a sheer drop off there; in an airplane you fly up. We always hope, anyway.

Once again, we trotted around the edge of the field to an airport restaurant for hot coffee and a few freshly fried lake perch. Then back to the planes and homeward bound. Everyone took a slightly different path, between South Bend and Elkhart, past Goshen, Milford, Leesburg and the familiar sight of Kosciusko county lakes told us we were home and our Sunday morning journey was over. We had been gone about three hours, traveled 210 miles by air, stopped to eat twice and twice more just to look. It was indeed a wonderful day.

Warsaw Times Union Dec. 21, 1948