The Cartwrights welcome an old friend to the Ponderosa. Sidney Blackmer plays an army major from the Civil War who is part of the experimental balloon corps. The Union and later the Confederate Army did use balloons for long range scanning.
But Blackmer has bigger plans than that. He sees fleets of big air balloons crossing the oceans with passengers. To bad he wasn't born in Germany. He also might have envisioned the Hindenburg.
He's got a daughter whom he thinks is back east Diana Millay. She doesn't share her father's vision and what's more she knows that Dad is AWOL from the army.
Blackmer also has two assistants Stuart Nisbet and Burt Douglas and Nisbet also doesn't really share the vision and has a more practical idea for the balloon that Dan Blocker has become fascinated with.
A nice story about a man whose dreams literally get control of him.
