On a transcontinental flight, the flight crew suffer from food poisoning and become incapacitated. Now it's up to one of the passengers to safely land the plane.

When aging newspaper Editor Frank Miller is fired after decades of service and replaced by a computer, he cannot take this fate quietly. Frank becomes enraged and starts writing letters to his son, Richard, expressing his fury.

A disenchanted young Professor of Semantics at a California college learns of a distant relative's death in Missouri. He journeys cross-country to the funeral, then decides to spend the summer there and work as a laborer for a power-line company. In time, he meets a girl and falls in love but then faces an important decision as to which direction he wants his life to go.