The solution was obvious.
First of all, I positively could _not_ have been an aviator in World
War One. I was in my mid-twenties; anybody could tell that by looking
at me. The time was the late 'Fifties; anybody could tell that from
the blank-faced Motorola in the corner, the new Edsels on the street.
Memories of air combat in Spads and Nieuports stirred in me by old
magazines, Quentin Reynolds, and re-runs of _Dawn Patrol_ on television
were mere hallucinations.
Neither could I remember drinking bootleg hooch in speak-easies,
hearing Floyd Gibbons announce the Dempsey-Tunney fight, or paying
$3.80 to get into the first run of _Gone with the Wind_.
Only ... I probably had seen GWTW. Hadn't I gone with my mother to a
matinee? Didn't she pay 90ยข for me? So how could I remember taking a
girl, brunette, red sweater, Cathy, and paying $3.80 each? I couldn't.
Different runs. That was it. The thing had been around half a dozen
times. But would it have been $3.80 no more than ten years ago?