FRIDAY

At 12:03 noon, we took off for Memphis, Tenn.  This is Eddie's cross-country dual lesson.  He is to fly this leg of our trip without assistance or bother from me, and he'll do it!  The red river is under us now.  The two Red rivers meet at Fulton.  The soil and mud are red.

At 12:43, just east of Sparkman, Ark., a twin-engine army plane passes us and tips his wings in salute.  We reply.  Pine Bluff is just ahead now, with it's three airports.  Take your choice. However, we are just passing through on our way to Atwood, Indiana.  There is a big camp just north of Pine Bluff.  The town itself is on the Arkansas river.  I can see the levees below which keep the river under control.

Below us now at 1:23 p.m. is a delta within a loop of the river which must overflow frequently, benefiting the soil with a deposit of silt.  This is the famous Arkansas river valley with much better farms than we have been seeing. I think this is cotton country.

And now the trees are gone and there is nothing green except an occasional wheat field.  Stuttgart is to our left.  A very nice looking city.  Some fields are covered with water.  At 1:48 the Old Man River is again in sight.  We are now over Aubrey, Ark.  The Mississippi is to our right about 20 miles and we can see the water.

One hour and fifty-nine minutes after leaving Texarkana we are over Mississippi state 210 miles.  And at 2:23 o'clock this afternoon, we land at Memphis Tenn., after crossing the corner of Mississippi.

We take off from Memphis with our destination Paducah, Ky.  We won't have time to make it to Evansville and sleep in Indiana tonight.  Tonight is New Year's Eve and I'll bet we have a hard time finding a room.  At 2:59 the Mississippi river is still to our left and will be for another hour or so.  Just ahead, our airplane flying a straight course will cross back into Arkansas and from there to Missouri.  The we are first on one side of the river, then the other.

We have crossed back to the east side of the river into Tennessee at Carruthersville, only to cross and re-cross into Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Illinois.  We are now on the same path we made last Sunday forenoon when we started south.

SATURDAY

Well, the New Year arrived with a bang and found us in the Irvin Cobb hotel in Paducah, Ky.  The airport attendant was to call for us at 7:30 but when he didn't arrive we took a taxi to the airport and took off for Indiana at 8:30 o'clock Jan. 1, 1949.

Well, here's Indiana again at 9:08 a.m.  The old Ohio and Wabash meet and the three states come together --one wing of our plane is in Illinois, the right wing in Kentucky and Indiana is under the nose.  Good old Indiana!

There's Mt. Vernon county seat of Posey county.  They're in the oil business.  Posey county has some of the finest farmland in Indiana.  Tour our left is Solitude, home town of Gene Dawson, of the Indiana News.  I stayed all night there with Gene last summer.  To our right is Poseyville at 9:25--home town of the former Warsawan Jim Frazer, brother of the late Theodore Frazer.  To our left is Stewartville, home of Louis Demberger, a member of the state fair board and to our right, Cynthia.  I landed in that field there northeast of town and paid a visit to the local editor, Floyd Owsler, and his fine family.  We can see the Wabash river to our left.  We are now passing over Johnson, just 8 miles east of Mt. Carmel, Illinois.

They've had a lot of rain here lately.  Many fields are covered with water over which there is ice.  We have been in the air one hour and three minutes and are about three miles southeast of Carmel, Ill.  The White river just ahead flows into the Wabash at Mt. Carmel.  Below us on both sides of the White river are gas flames burning the surplus gas from the oil wells. To our right a few miles is some pretty rough country-- coal mines and hills. We are flying up the valley.  We will be over Vincennes before long, then up past Terre Haute, a bee line for Rochester, where we will take on some gas.  I don't want to land at home with empty tanks.  This Indiana soil is the best we've seen since we left home last Sunday.  Best, too, because it's our state, but also for a lot of other reasons.

Well, right ahead is Alice of Old Vincennes, the old church built in the 1700's--the George Rogers Clark Memorial, the bridge joining Indiana and Illinois.  Passing Vincennes at 9:48. 

To our left at 10 o'clock is Oaktown.  The sun is shining for the first time today.  To our left and ahead about 10 miles is Sullivan, home town of Will Hays and his brother Hinkle.  To our right is Linton.  We are near the county line between Sullivan and Greene counties.  At 10:23 we are almost to Brazil. They make a lot of fine ceramic tile there.  We have just passed over a lot of territory that has been stripped of its mineral wealth.  What is left are called waste banks and consist of parallel ridges.  We are right over the courthouse of Brazil at 10:25.  We are flying at 1,400 feet, making 115 miles per hour, and  I can see the shadow of our plane on the ground.  We have now left behind us the mines, the hills, the woodland and the barren areas of the southwest.  This is Indiana with her variety of soils, mineral wealth, industries, her fine schools, her fine people.  There is New Market under our left wing at 10:41 and Crawfordsville is in sight now.

There lives Nod Shaver, president of K. B. Co. And down there is Wabash college which is justifiably proud of the accomplishments of its greatest.  We have several graduates from our county-- Jack Rovenstine, Ted Williams, Pete Thorn.

At 10:54 we are now crossing the NYC railroad between Clark's Hill and Stockwell.  There goes Highway 52 just under us-- Lafayette to Indianapolis road.

We are now 2 ½ hours out of Paducah, Ky., and find ourselves over Wildcat Creek, just south of Ockley.  At 11:14 we are over Logansport and the Wabash river.  Just south of Fulton we notice our first snow on the ground.  We are running into our first bad weather of the trip less than a half hour from home.

With the luck of airmen, we must turn back to Logansport to be on the save side, where we will wait for an hour or so for the skies to clear again.  We touch down at Hooten field for the first time in seven days in Indiana.  We have seen some marvelous scenery, but this looks the best.  After all we are Hoosiers and this is Hoosierland!

Warsaw Daily Times Monday February 7, 1949