I was a jet mechanic in the United States Air Force from 1951 until 1955. Inevitably, there would be adventure caused by air travel. On July 17, 1961, the Uganda Argus wrote, "A super constellation of Capitol Airlines, of New York, started her long flight from New York's La Guardia airfield and flew direct to Santa Maria airfield near Lisbon, a single hop of nearly 4,000 miles. She took off for Kano, where as the pilot brought the aircraft in to land, one of the port tyres burst." We arrived in Kano at three in the morning of July 16, 1961: the airline had to fly the tire in from Portugal. We were granted permission to go to the "old city" of Kano, we saw the mosque and were given permission, after some discussion, by "the master," a very old man colorfully dressed who reclined under a tree in front of the big, green-domed structure, to ascend one of the two high towers of the mosque. We went to the caswa, the market place, and I remember the dye pits.

And then, there was Cuba. January, 1971, he has a bomb in his briefcase. The young man boards the Northwest Airlines 727 plane in Milwaukee. I am flying to Detroit to visit friends in Ann Arbor. And he sits on the floor just in front of the door leading to the cockpit. The plane is packed, a lot of children, along with business people, tourists, others hurrying to get somewhere. He sits there, staring down the aisle at the rest of us; we are perplexed, nervous.  What is he doing there in front of the pilot's door, anyway? He holds the briefcase tightly to his side. Then, as we near Detroit, the pilot speaks on the intercom: the man is a hijacker, he wants to commandeer the plane and fly to Algeria. The pilot has talked him out of that, telling him that a crowded 727 airplane will not make it to Algeria. So we are going to Cuba. The plane lands in Detroit, taxies to a remote part of the air terminal where we refuel within a vortex composed of what seem to be hundreds of flashing red lights, police everywhere. No one is allowed to get off the plane. Everyone, including children, are hostages. At last, we are again airborne, and the interior of the plane is utterly, eerily, silent. The young man stands like a statue with his bomb, the people staring not at him, just staring...quiet. The plane lands at Jose Marti air terminal in Havana, and men dressed in Castro-type army fatigues board the plane and escort the hijacker off. Then the 727 taxies to the air terminal, we deplane, Swiss television is there filming us as we stream into the air terminal to have something to eat, and to learn what is to happen next. We are there for thirteen agonizing hours, are told that Fidel Castro himself will make the decision as to our fate. Finally, unexpectedly, improbably, we are granted permission to depart, and, after the plane is refueled, we are flown to Miami—where we are met by FBI agents who immediately take from us all the Cuban cigars and rum that we have purchased in Cuba.