How to change a Field Type in a query?

I have Access Table with columns [Variable] and [Contents]
Contents is of Type Text
I could have this data in my table:

Variable  | Contents
Name      | Joe
SubDate | 10/1/2008
Name     | Mary
SubDate | 10/5/2008
Name     | Tom
SubDate | 10/2/2008
I need to query for SubDate but convert the results to DateTime.
Is such a query possible?
If not what might be a work around?
I have thought of using a compound query that first appends SubDate to a Temp table TempDates
and then joins TempDates.SubDate to another query returning SubDate as a DateTime.
This is trying to populate a GridView from a date range and it seems I need to be using DateTime
and not Text for SubDate.