The Long Night

Soft, spent, and the producer of radio's outstanding theatre of thrills, the master of mystery and adventure, William N. Robeson. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly and once more. No, this is not a caprice. It is a thoughtful precaution.

Fill your lungs well now, for you will be holding your breath for the next 30 minutes as you live through the long night with Frank Lovejoy. a tail well calculated to keep you in back united 404 this is Rockford Tower maintain present altitude until further advised over united 404 Roger Rockford over nine Rockford radio this is delta

318 over delta 318 this is Rockford radio go ahead delta 318 request permission over delta 318 you stand in the airport control tower are ninety feet up in the sky over Rockford Field waiting to go on the night watch.

And you'll listen to the babble of voices that fill the crowded room in an endless series of requests. Requests for altitude change, requests for landing permission, requests for the weather. Here is the nine o'clock weather, low-sprayless clouds over the entire Mississippi Valley, spreading out over the central states, visibility two miles, sealing twenty-two hundred feet

and lowering steadily, smoke and haze. smoke haze and fog and a ceiling getting lower every minute. You look out through the tinted glass windows into the misty night and you think of the strangers overhead in and above the clouds.

And you wonder if they too feel the hush as the long night begins. You wonder if the strangers with a throb of engines and a harsh rasp of many voices in their ears can feel the stillness.