I was on my way to Denver to see my son. I had decided to fly because he lives to far away to drive by myself. 

Delta Flight 995: Atlanta to Denver is a three and half hour flight. I had just found Gate D10 In Atlanta after taking the underground train from Gate A31. I looked at my printed boarding pass and it said First Class 1C.  This didn’t seem like the seat number I had booked in Comfort Plus. Maybe saving my Delta points on my credit card had paid off. 

It was time to board the plane. I jumped from the crowded seating area as the horde of eager passengers were wanting to get on the plane. The gate agent announced First Class passengers to board. But in the back of my mind, I was thinking there had been a mistake somewhere and I was going to be shuffled back to my Comfort Plus seat that I had originally booked.

Seat 1C. Row one. It was the first row. The first seat on this Airbus A320 aircraft. As I walked onto the plane I was still expecting to be moved further back in the plane.  No, I was in the first row of First Class and my seat was on the isle.

 Ok, I had received an email requesting what I wanted to eat a week before travel, but I thought Delta was really going all out for its Comfort Plus passengers. A flight attendant approached with an arm full of white linen towels. She motioned for me to pull my tray table up out of the seat pocket on the side of my seat.  The 1C seat is in front against the bulkhead and does not have a pull-down-tray.  These trays are beside you neatly folded into the armrest that holds your bottle of water that was waiting for me.

I got my tray table set up and the flight attendant covers the tray with one of those pristine white towels. I had chosen a meal of beef tips, mixed vegetables, salad, and dessert.  Could this really be happening?

 This had to be a dream. I really enjoyed it. I was going to see my son and I was sitting in First Class. 

 On the first leg of the flight from Orlando there were several movie options for me, and I chose a very funny movie with crusty old Robert De Niro called About My Father. It was about a father and son relationship. And I was going to be with my son. I related to much of the movie, but the plane landed in Atlanta before I could finish the movie.

 But, now I am sitting in First Class section of Flight 995 from Atlanta to Denver, and I was able finish watching the movie About My Father.  So, I had about two more hours in the flight, and I pursued the selection of movies. Not many titles were of my liking, but I chose a movie I had seen before. It starred Tom Hanks. The movie was
A Man Called Otto.

 A reviewer said the movie was a heartwarming story about love, loss, and life. The main character Otto, played by Tom Hanks, had loss his wife six months prior and he wanted to end his life to join his wife.  

 In the movie, I wasn’t identifying with wanting to end my life, I was identifying with the major flashbacks of how he met his wife and what their relationship had been. I was openly crying with big tears running down my cheeks.  It was a love story that I wanted to be a part of.

The movie was just half over, and I had to use the restroom. Being in seat 1C, I was just a few steps away, so I paused the movie.  

 As I got up, I looked at the flight attendant who was sitting on her jump seat. She had noticed that I was watching A Man Called Otto and, she said, “I had the same reaction when I saw that movie a couple of days ago.” She had watched it on one of her deadhead flights.

 With six steps I got to the bathroom and could hardly squeeze into the space. If you have ever fantasized of

Here I was traveling again. I’m not on an exotic cruise or an adventure in Antarctica, no I was on another road trip to my home town of Chillicothe, Illinois. I was averaging thirty five miles per gallon and thirty semi-trucks per mile.

Chillicothe is a small town just outside of Peoria, Illinois on the Illinois River. It has two railroad lines. One is the old Rocket Island Line with a spur-track from Peoria to Chicago. The second is the main line for the Santa Fe which is now the Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway. 

Before Amtrak took over the railroad passenger business, there used to be great passenger service on Santa Fe Railroad. You could get on a train in the morning and go shopping in Chicago for the day and then come home the same evening on another Santa Fe train. 

When I was younger in the summer time, entertainment in the evening was for families to get in their car and head to the train station. The excitement was watching the trains come in, it was fun fantasizing what it would be like to get on one of those luxury trains and head west.

The Santa Fe Railroad Depot used to be a wonderful place to see many celebrities like Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and some remember seeing Walt Disney coming from Chicago heading to Hollywood on The Super Chief.  There were other famous trains like The El Capitan, The Chief, and The Grand Canyon. Great classic trains of that era all came though Chillicothe every evening of train watching. 

Several of my friend’s parents either worked for the Santa Fe or they commuted to East Peoria and worked at Great Yellow Father: Caterpillar Tractor Company.  

There was a big event taking place in the small town that I grew up in. The weekend of September 22 and 23rd 2023 was Homecoming for the High School. 

I graduated, yes, I did graduate from Chillicothe Township High School, but now they constructed a new high school building, and moved it out into the country, renaming it Illinois Valley Central High, known as called IVC.

I would not be attending many of the homecoming festivities, the real reason I am traveling is attend to my Class of 1963 small reunion. There was a meal at one of the new bistros in town on Friday night after the annual homecoming parade and Saturday night we met at the old Grecian Gardens where we had full blown reunion twenty years ago.

The reason for the smaller reunion was not many of us are left and I am not sure how many had said they would try to attend.

We were a class of one hundred students in 1963. I would have to say, everybody knew each other. Bob Cusac was the son of the grade school principal, Larry Mills was an all-star pitcher on the baseball team, JoAnn Viloa was Miss Teen for Illinois as a senior, and Kathy Shepard always had at hard time adjusting her reeds on her oboe. We weren’t all the best of friends, but we knew each other. And our parents knew each other as well, keeping us in line as we grew up.

I hung around the band because the band was one hundred players strong from all the four grades in the school. We prided ourselves on the band’s performance every time we were in a parade or on the football field. 

My baritone saxophone was too heavy to march with and it didn’t really help the sound of the marching band so; I took up the bass drum. 

Amazing thing, band director Marlin McCutchen discovered new wooden mallets that would make a better thump on the bass drum. I really got into keeping the beat and my thumping went through two different bass drum heads. Yes, I broke the bass drum twice. I loved marching onto the football field every year in high school pla

So, I have lived in the Clermont, Florida area since 1998.  
 (I know I live in Trilogy or is it Cascades of Groveland, but I still say I live in Clermont.  Old habits never die.)

But before that I lived in Melbourne, Florida for two years and I worked in Cocoa, Florida from 1982 – 1984.  Then my wife Meg, my son Josh and I moved to the Chicago area for fourteen years awaiting my final call to come back to Florida in 1998.

I know too many dates.  On with the story!

Has a number ever saved you money?  
 Well, this story saved me some money when I needed it.

When I first moved to Florida in 1982, I was freshly married to my bride Meg.  She stayed in Lincoln, Nebraska to finish her college work. I drove the used Honda Civic which we called the Blue Bomber from Lincoln, Nebraska to Cocoa Beach, Florida.  I was to take a new job at the National Christian Network which was called NCN based in Cocoa, Florida and set up the house.

Now I have to tell you about the National Christian Network.  It was a great place to work.  Television production was at its finest with all the very latest expensive production equipment.  It was located in an old bowling alley on King Street in Cocoa, Florida.  

I have to borrow this from Wikipedia, “The NCN was founded by Ray A. Kassis in 1975, and he was a great character. (I had never seen a guy on the phone being hounded by bill collectors and smiling as he was being harassed.  It seemed that Mr. Kassis owed a lot of money for this satellite transponder to RCA and they were always threating to pull him off of the transponder and his answer was, pull me off and I have no way of making the payments) He just smiled when he was saying it.

 The network was the fourth satellite-fed Christian network to be launched, and was a competitor to the Trinity Broadcasting Network, the PTL Satellite Network, and the Christian Broadcasting Network.

Now here is the unique thing about NCN.  NCN shared the same satellite transponder with the Playboy channel.”  

It was Christian programing from 6 am – 6 pm and then the Playboy Channel took control of the satellite for the next 12 hours. 

As the story was told to me by Ray Kassis, he had fought for another satellite transponder and lost  his bid several years earlier to a guy in Georgia named Ted Turner.  Allegedly President Jimmy Carter favored Turner, a Georgia native as well, and the transponder was awarded to Turner, and he created CNN.  

So Kassis had to settle on this RCA Satcom 1 satellite and be the fourth Christian Network and find other avenues of revenue to support NCN besides sharing a transponder with Playboy.

One of the ways of producing additional revenue was the production side of the operation and that is where I came in.

I was introduced to two very famous individuals while managing and directing the production work.

One was Al Gannaway.  He was a film director, producer, and screenwriter.  In the 1950s he had filmed a television series call Stars of the Grand Ole Opry.  The unique thing was he had filmed it in color way before color television was fully developed.  So, Mr. Gannaway had the film transferred to video tape to preserve the quality of the programs.  At NCN we edited new shows just by rearranging the artist in a different order.  You my have seen one of those news shows.  (Someime I do with one of my shows called From Stateside.)

The sec