Sometimes it hits very close to home.
Today I was attending the Aerospace & Arizona Days at Davis-Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona. Tucson is a bit special to me; I was born here. On the base in fact, during the time when long, skinny black jets (the Lockheed U-2 Dragon Lady) roared up towards heaven like arrows in flight and my Dad worked with them. I didn't stay here long since, as an Air Force brat, you never stay ANYWHERE for very long. Long story short my Air Force wife gets orders to D-M and I'm back where I started, as it were. And now I find myself on the flight line watching planes fly overhead. Very cool, eh?
So I'm waiting for the flying events to start when I hear the announcer list off the general flying schedule when he said something that sounded a lot like an overflight by a U-2 Dragon Lady. I looked at the guy next to me to confirm I heard correctly and that my liberal slathering of sun block on my pasty Irish flesh hadn't made my brain go all jiggly in the middle.
"Yep, that's what I heard, too."
Holy cow. I'm going to see a U-2. I never thought I'd see one outside of a museum and now there's going to be one in the air! Here of all places.
I caught my first sight of U-2R 80-1093 circling north of the base with the mountains underneath as she went about punching slow lazy circles in the sky. Then she made a final turn towards the base and, if I'm totally honest, I nearly screwed the entire moment up. You see, I was having trouble telling what my camera settings were because there were these big wet globs of salty water messing up my vision. Tears streaming down my face because I realized my Dad, now gone, stood on this base over 4 decades ago and saw a plane like this coming home; coming back to have her efforts whisked to a stench-filled room as long rolls of celluloid were worked upon in a wizardly fashion to eek out the vital details of a vision seen from the edge of space.
So I pressed the shutter release and hoped for the best.
A perplexed stranger next to me stared and said "Why the tears? It's just a plane."
Yeah, just a plane.
1 comment:
"Why the tears? It's just a plane."
This person must lead a very empty life!
I am the same with the Vulcan, I remember seeing my dad cry during it's last public flight(1992); the Vulcan was like a giant grey and green moth, it's howling thunder set-off all the car alarms on the airfield; this was before it's rebuild and return to the air 13 years on which he never lived to see, it was his favourite aircraft.
In the early 1960s he would pedal his bike to airshows, with me on a kiddy seat on the crossbar, and hoist me to the grandstand seat on his shoulders for the, then luminous anti-flash white, mighty tin triangle when it growled into view.
I understand exactly what your emotion is about, there is a big invisible banner of memories trailing behind each of these jets because we have the heart to "see" them!
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