In our post-9/11, pour-out-your-water-bottle-before-you-reach-TSA world, this feels impossible: a 12-year-old boy slips unnoticed onto a major airline, curls up among pillows and wakes up half a country away.

But that’s precisely what happened in early April 1940, when a Washington state boy ended his joyride in Fargo, with the police and quite a story to tell.

I spotted the tale on the Fargo Police Department’s Facebook page.

As the department marks its 150th year, it’s sharing “remarkable, unusual and groundbreaking moments” from its past.

This one is both remarkable and oddly sweet.

Some readers asked what became of the boy, Gordon Mullen. I wondered, too. So I took my own trip through the archives.

It all began on Monday, April 1, when Gordon left his home in Renton, a suburb of

See Full Page