Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, August 28, 2003
Planes descending over me
"It's not going to crash?" I asked him as it seemed to skim over the wide lot and then past the trees and out of sight.
"No, he's making a descent, but he's level," he said over the roar. Just then two new waves of roaring engines drowned us out again, and two more C-130's, slightly higher in altitude, followed their leader and swiftly disappeared over the horizon of trees on the other side of the lot.
"They're going to Fort Bragg," he told me. "Ninety miles away." He told me he had no idea why they'd come down that low, but they were flying just fine. "Kids like to see planes fly by that close," he told me in a slightly advisory way.
"I gave up being a kid decades ago," I told him. But I thanked him for explaining it to me. My knees shook all the way home.
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Today on the long walk from the office trailers to the gravel parking lot, I heard an ear splitting roar and became afraid. It was positively deafening. I look around, and just over the trees, bursting onto the scene like something in a badly filmed movie, a C-130 came soaring down, descending rapidly. I have never been so close to a plane in flight in all my life. It was huge! And loud, and it came right over the trees, smoke streaming from its engines in little ribbons of brown. I'm sorry that the first words out of my mouth were neither prayer nor praise. I thought he was going to crash. A man who walking to his car behind me told me not to be afraid; the plane is so huge that it was higher up than it appeared. |  |
"It's not going to crash?" I asked him as it seemed to skim over the wide lot and then past the trees and out of sight.
"No, he's making a descent, but he's level," he said over the roar. Just then two new waves of roaring engines drowned us out again, and two more C-130's, slightly higher in altitude, followed their leader and swiftly disappeared over the horizon of trees on the other side of the lot.
"They're going to Fort Bragg," he told me. "Ninety miles away." He told me he had no idea why they'd come down that low, but they were flying just fine. "Kids like to see planes fly by that close," he told me in a slightly advisory way.
"I gave up being a kid decades ago," I told him. But I thanked him for explaining it to me. My knees shook all the way home.
