CHAPTER FIFTEEN

                 I pulled the Nebraska road map out of the pocket in the back of the front seat and opened it to see if I could determine exactly where the town called Sanger was located. I was surprised to find how many miles it was north of my intended route and planned fuel stop at Omaha. If I continued my present heading, it would take me to Sioux City, Iowa which was more along the route to Oshkosh.

            I hadn't kept a record on the amount of fuel I burned out of the wing tank before I landed at Sanger and hadn't checked it before takeoff, so I had no idea how much fuel remained in that tank. The only certain amount of fuel that I had aboard was the main tank which was full. I decided to switch back to the wing tank and run on it until it ran out before switching back to the nose tank. That way I would know that I had nearly twelve gallons of fuel remaining which would provide almost three hours flying time, enough to take me several miles away from Sanger and toward my destination.

                 It finally dawned on me that if I had slipped back in time to 1946, then why was I still thinking about going to Oshkosh. I wouldn't be due there for forty years. My first instinct was to reverse course and return to Colorado, but that would also be back in the direction of Sanger where the sheriff and his drunken mob of vigilantes were waiting for me. I wanted to get as far away from them as possible before I had to land for fuel. Also, if it was 1946 everywhere, then the home that I had built in Colorado wouldn't exist. In fact, the town of Black Forest where I lived didn't even exist in 1946.

                 My next thought was to turn toward Texas where I had lived in 1946, but what would I do when I got there. Evidently, it was also 1946 there because the operator had obtained the telephone number of my parents. She would probably tell the sheriff that I had tried to call someone with the same name as mine and that would be the first place that the police would look for me. The other thing which really bothered me was that if I was now 57 years old, then did I also exist someplace as a 17 year old.

                 I finally decided that the best thing for me to do at this point was to continue on course as originally planned and try to decide my best course of action. Considering all the problems that the difference in money had caused in Sanger, I was certainly going to have to be careful in order to keep the same thing from happening again. I might not be lucky enough to escape the next time. Sitting in some federal prison as a counterfeiter would be a terrible way to spend the rest of my life.

                 I had no idea how I was going to go about buying gasoline once that I got to Sioux City since trying to spend 1986 style money would probably bring the police down on me again. I had credit cards for all of the major suppliers of aviation fuel, and since they were clearly marked with the brand names, I might be able to convince the airport operator that credit cards were something new and get him to sell me fuel on credit. One thing for sure, I wasn't going to be able to fly around forever while trying to decide what to do, so I swung the nose of the Cub a bit to the left and settled back in the seat.

                 The eastern sky slowly turned to a rosy pink and suddenly a thin slice of the sun stabbed between the earth and the overcast. As I flew on, the band of blue grew wider and for a brief period of time, the sun appeared as a red ball sandwiched between the ground and the clouds. I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face just before it moved behind the cloud deck. A few miles further, I looked up through the skylight to see a patch of blue through a hole in the clouds above me. I was coming to the edge of the overcast. I pulled out the map and began to climb higher in order to make locating my position easier.

                 From about two thousand feet above the ground I could see several small towns scattered out in front of me and I tried to relate them to the towns on the road map. The main problem associated with flying across the central plains is the fact that most of the rural towns are all the same size and all look alike from the air. The problem is further complicated by the fact that nearly all of the roads are laid out either north and south or east and west. Ground features aren't shown on most road maps whereas aviation charts will show many of the references such as small streams and lakes, making pilotage much easier. It took about half an hour of checking the various towns against the map before I felt sure of my position. I had passed Norfolk off to the right which put me about forty miles from Sioux City. I corrected my course slightly for a direct route there and within about fifteen minutes, I began to see the outline of the Missouri River and then a large city ahead.

                 From a distance, all cities look the same. There will be a tight group of tall buildings which indicate the core of the city and then they slope off toward the outer edge of town. Off to one side, usually near a river, will be the rusty industrial area belching smoke and haze. Trees are a good indication of the social and economic status of certain parts of the town, with the largest trees located in the most affluent locations. Newly developed areas will appear as stark as strip mines in Appalachia. Tentacles of urban growth follow the main highways as they stretch out from the body.

                 I could make out the tree lined banks of the Missouri River as it meandered toward St. Louis and its juncture with the great Mississippi. I began to search for an airport as soon as I was close enough to be able to make out details such as highways and railroads. With the sun now up, rotating beacons would have been turned off but it is usually easy to spot runways and hangars because they have a very distinctive shape and size.

                 The road map indicated an airport south of town and just east of the river so I began to look for the usual signs. I wondered if it was there in 1946. When I was about ten miles away, I could see that a long line of the town extended along the highway so I began to descend slowly and look for signs of an airport.

                 When I was about a thousand feet above the ground, I spotted a speck in the sky which turned into an airplane which seemed to be climbing as it headed westward. By retracing his angle of climb back to the ground, I was able to pick out a long open space with what appeared to be a number of large buildings along the side nearest the highway. This was the unmistakable signs of an airport. As I came closer, I could see a paved runway as well as a number of airplanes on the ramp. I looked along both sides of the runway for a control tower as the last thing that I would want to do is come puttering across the middle of a controlled airport. I had completely forgotten all about having a radio in my back pack. Seeing no sign of a tower, I changed my heading slightly in order to bring me across the middle of the field where I would be able to see the wind sock and be in a position to enter downwind for whichever runway was being used.

                 The wind sock was hanging limp and since there was no wind, I would land on the runway from which the other airplane seemed to have come and was also closest the main offices of the airport. I scanned the traffic pattern for other airplanes and seeing none, pulled the carburetor heat on and turned into the downwind leg of a landing pattern. Just after I passed the end of the runway, I turned base and checked to be sure that there was no airplane on a long final approach, burped the engine and banked into a short final.

                 I glided over the huge numbers 17 painted on the end of the runway, eased the nose up and let the fat tires scrunch against the pavement. I turned off the runway at the first intersection and began to taxi past a long line of parked airplanes. It was only then that I realized that I was passing nothing but airplanes with nose wheels, then I spotted a Piper Navajo, an airplane which wasn't built until well into the 1970s. I was back in 1986! A man stepped from a building with a Shell sign and directed me to an empty tiedown space.

                 "Fill both tanks with 87 if you have it and Aero Shell 30 in a red can if it needs any oil," I told the line boy as he pulled tiedown ropes through the rings at the outer ends of the lift struts. I got my shaving kit out of my backpack and headed for the terminal building. When I emerged from the rest room, I was washed, shaved, combed and feeling much better about life.

                 "Is there a restaurant on the field?" I asked the lady behind the counter.

                 "No, but there is a Ho Jo right across the street," she answered.

                 Even though I had been awake all night and should have been dog tired; a good breakfast, several cups of hot coffee plus an over-supply of adrenalin from the excitement of the previous night had me ready for the eight hours of flying which still lay between me and Oshkosh. During that long day of puttering across the nation's corn belt, I had ample time to reflect on what had taken place in that little town in Nebraska.

                 I decided that when I handed the ship over to John, I would simply tell him that the hole in the window had come from a stray bullet while the ship was tied down, avoiding any attempt to explain what had really happened. I still wasn't totally sure if all of those things really did take place or if it was just a very bad dream. If it was simply a dream, it was the most vivid one that I'd ever experienced.

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