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Show Pennsylvania Turnpike Aids 'Flight Strip' Boom C..:!: i Super-Highway Serves as Ideal Emergency Landing Field for Planes; Postwar Advances Ad-vances to Emphasize Need for Runways. By BAUKHAGE News Analyst and Commentator. WNU Service, Union Trust Building, Washington, D. C. The great bomber was in trouble. The pilot knew it. One engine was coughing like Camille in the last act. He looked down. Below him lay sleepy Somerset country, Pennsylvania. Pennsyl-vania. On the far horizon was a smoky blur he knew was Pittsburgh. He had been following the long, brown Tibbon, wide and straight as a string for many hundreds of yards before it gently curved with hardly a grade the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Turn-pike. The pilot picked a wide green field beside this highway, dropped down, made his landing and his repairs. A quick call to the state police and the road was ready, for it is a de- fense highway now, a vital part of the arteries of transportation of war supplies. But here was a new use for this wild dream that has become be-come a stern reality. Traffic was stopped, the great bomber taxied out of the field and onto the highway. The pavement made a perfect runway. The straight-way was of sufficient length, the cuts were low and the wing-spread wing-spread passed over all appurtenances. appurte-nances. The good ship rose and was on its way. This was no flight of the imagination. imagina-tion. It was a real flight which took place and was described a little over ayear ago by Representative Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, one of Washington's air-minded congressmen. con-gressmen. And so a super-highway becomes an adjunct of what is to be America's Amer-ica's super airways. More than 35 planes, Mr. Randolph tells me, have taken advantage of this emergency landing highway. have talked "flight strips" for years know, what the development of these runways will mean. As Fred Schiepfe, special engineering en-gineering consultant to the administrator adminis-trator of the Federal Works agency, says: "The congress, the state highway high-way departments, and the contrac-' tors are pulling together toward the end that the projects will be 'built in the shortest possible time," About Poached Eggs And the Awe of a Kitchen Only recently, when my wife was away for some time, did I learn to poach an egg, and in so doing, at last lost my awe of the kitchen. It was my early training that gave me that awe. Neither my grandmother nor my mother would permit "men in the kitchen" unless they had specific spe-cific masculine business there. "No, you sit down in the corner and read the paper to me. I can dry the dishes quicker without you helping. And there won't be any streaks on the cups." Of course, there were times when a man's presence was permitted. Naturally, when he was allowed to eat there or when the kindling had to be brought in or the coal hod filled. But even then, only when Milana, the young Scandinavian giantess who was the hired girl, was otherwise engaged. en-gaged. When I was quite small, I was allowed al-lowed to play in the kitchen when traffic was light. But that was a special privilege. The bare scrubbed floor was excellent for tops. And, of course, was that much nearer the cookies, and if I was present during the early stages of cake-baking, there were the odd pieces of sweet dough that I loved, and sometimes. New Chapter Opens And so a new chapter opens in American roadbuilding. A new reason rea-son for the development of the countryside coun-tryside that is to come after the war must come if we are to meet the demands of tomorrow's transportation, transporta-tion, of tomorrow's demand for public pub-lic works to take up the slack after the war until industry can absorb the returned soldier and the jobless ' -i warplant worker. In spite of the many pressing war needs, congress is more awake today to-day to the needs of the air and the collary developments on the ground than it ever has been before. Today, a Pennsylvanian, transported trans-ported to Washington, cons the press and listens to the radio each day (he is retired from an active business busi-ness life in which he has amassed a modest fortune) for word of some new benefit that child of his, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, has given to the country. He is Walter Jones. The Turnpike was a peacetime venture. ven-ture. He obtained funds from the $29,250,000 federal grant and the Reconstruction Finance corporation purchased bonds amounting to $40,800,000. The first issue was oversubscribed over-subscribed by the public by 60 per cent. The Turnpike is a toll road and the first year of operation, the revenue was nearly three million dollars. No wonder. It was an engineer's dream come true and a motorist's, too. As near a curveless, gradeless, intersectionless, straightaway that one could wish. When war came with the overtaxed railways, it was a Godsend for it opened a veritable Volga of trucking from Pittsburgh, its western terminal, to Harrisburg. Dual Purpose "I feel confident," says Representative Represen-tative Randolph, "twenty years will liquidate the RFC loan." So much for that highway which may well be the father of many. It has served another purpose. The emergency plane landing merely symbolizes what can be done by the highway for the plane. The answer is the "flight strip" for whicn congress appropriated ten million dollars as experimentation. What is a "flight strip"? Officially Official-ly defined, it is "an area of land with clear approaches located to an adjacent highway for use as an auxiliary aux-iliary landing area for aircraft." The war advantage of this new institution is obvious. We know what to expect in the Increased number of planes after the war. We know the limitation In matter of space of the airports. We can guess what the men who a chance to "lick the pan" which was not as unsanitary a practice as it sounds. It really meant a chance to scrape out the dish after the frosting frost-ing had been mixed. But there were bitter memories of cake-baking time, too, the stimulant stimu-lant for which added to my respect for the kitchen. Once, coming back from school, I leapt into the room and started to stamp the crisp snow from my rubbers. There was (oh culpa mea!) a cake in the oven. It fell and soon my pride followed for I was placed in a most embarrassing embarrass-ing position a horizontal position I might add. Other Reasons There were many reasons why my love of the kitchen was mingled with a respect that has not quite gone even though the graceful curves of the range whose covers could glow like a summer sun and whose isinglass isin-glass eyes beamed so cheerfully, has long since gone. The kitchen table with its white oilcloth, with only a few scars at one end another why men weren't allowed in these sacred precincts "Now who has been cutting cut-ting bread without the breadboard again?" I am not, of course, describing the spacious room of the farmhouse when I talk about my kitchen memories mem-ories for I lived "in town" although the orchard began just beyond the back fence and fields, an easy walk beyond the place where the sidewalk side-walk became two parallel planks with a space between (perilous to maneuver on a bicycle) and then ended in a pathway. No, mine was not the spacious kitchen where half a dozen could eat at once. But it took care of the family with a little crowding on Sunday Sun-day nights around the remnants of last night's baked beans and the other oth-er delicious leftovers. Souvenir Calendar We had room for the little rag rug under the rocker by the window and the Journal's bright "souvenir" calendar cal-endar adorned the wall thdt "annual "annu-al gift" of the newsboy is about the only thing left in today's white kitchen kitch-en where you caq't tell the sink from the gas stove or the cabinet or the ice box. That and the dotted Swiss curtains in my kitchen. But you may break, you may shatter shat-ter my dream if you will, when you open one shiny door, the scent of the spices cling about it still. I have lost my awe of the kitchen but loving lov-ing memories linger and latterly It has, in a measure, increased my self-respect. At long last, no one to stop me, I have learned to poach an egg. |