I turned in my seat and looked back over my shoulder. Cape Girardeau Regional Airport receded as we gained altitude. The Mississippi River glinted in the morning daylight, representing a silent but formidable boundary between Illinois and Missouri.  The Bill Emerson Memorial Bridge, with its signature H-bone pylons, punctuated the skyline.

The view was gorgeous. We were climbing to 2,500 feet, and the open-cockpit Fairchild PT-19 offered 360 degrees of unobstructed observation. At 7:00 in the morning the air was cool, but comfortable. I was wearing jeans and a light sweatshirt, which offered all of the protection I needed. We were flying southwest toward Arkansas, and it was April. Farmers were gearing up for spring planting. The trees were bursting into yellow-green blossoms, and the pasturelands and waterways were bright green with lush, early grass. Spring flying is always a treat, and this morning’s flight was no exception. I leveled the airplane at 2,500 feet and scanned the gauges. Everything was running normal, with no hiccups or coughs. The 6-cylinder Ranger engine roared with smooth resolve, as though it was as determined to make it to Corpus Christi as I.

The only source of concern on this otherwise fine April morning was the headwind. We were barely creeping along. I glanced down at the ground, using the leading edge of the wing as a point of reference. On the ground, a car pulled out of a driveway. I watched the wing slowly overtake the car. Within seconds, the car emerged from beneath the wing and drove on ahead. We couldn’t even keep up with traffic. Our slowness was frustrating, and according to the GPS, our flight time had exploded from an estimated 8 hours, to nearly 20. At this rate we would never make it to Corpus Christi, Texas by dusk.

I sat back and weighed my options. Every once in a while a gust would buffet the PT, but overall the flight was quite smooth. Landing would not be a problem — I had checked the forward areas of our route, and no airports along the way were anticipating winds on the ground in excess of 15 to 20 miles per hour. I keyed the mic and announced my thought process to Paul, “Hey, this headwind is terrible. I’m going to go down to about a thousand feet to see if it’s better there.”

With that, I nosed the PT-19 towards the earth, leveling off at 1,000 feet. Our groundspeed picked up, ticking hours off the estimated time enroute. I enlarged the view on our GPS, and crosschecked with what I saw on the ground. Without any prompting Paul announced, “Looks like there’s a tower ahead, just off to the left.” Paul was fiercely opposed to using a GPS, or any technology for that matter, and so followed along on a paper map. We had traced our route prior to departure, so we could navigate using two sets of eyes.

I altered our path as necessary to avoid obstacles and urban areas, and I found myself enjoying the adventure. The wind was gentler at this lower altitude, shaving hours off our flight time. We would have to stop a couple extra times for fuel, but should comfortably make Corpus Christi by evening. My dad used to sing, “When you have time to spare, go by air!” Meaning, don’t fly an antique airplane someplace if you are in a hurry.

We crossed into Arkansas, running parallel along a state highway. We were steadily overtaking traffic at this kinder, gentler, altitude and making much better progress. Paul called out another cell phone tower, and I veered right. The tower passed silently to our side and below. It looked like a needle sticking out of the earth.

The state highway emptied into a small town. I flew overhead, looking down at this collection of lives. People were outside, taking advantage of springtime. Some were hunched over their landscaping, while others pushed lawnmowers and strollers.

A few people stopped what they were doing and looked up. I imagined the scene from their point of view; an otherwise quiet April morning interrupted by a low-flying antique airplane. One man in particular stood out to me. He was working in his yard. As the PT-19 passed overhead, he lifted his head and stopped what he was doing to watch. He stood there, shielding his eyes from the sun, watching this unique airplane pass overhead. In those brief few seconds, we watched each other and our two worlds were connected.

I raised my hand and waved from the cockpit. He raised his hand and waved back. I was low enough, we could clearly see one another. And then, he was gone. The town dissolved into farmland. The state highway resumed its crawl. We were still overtaking traffic. Still, I thought about the man in the yard.

I like that our two worlds were briefly connected with a passing wave.

— Dan Wegmueller is the owner of Wegmueller Farms and his column appears regularly in the Times. His website is https://www.farmforthought.org.