Benedicamus Domino. Deo Gratias.
Let us bless the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Memories. Memories. My granddaughter send a picture via facebook of Endeavor on its last flight, as it was piggy-backed over Orange County, California. I watched on television as it approached Los Angeles. It brought the usual tear to my eye and lump to my throat. At least she was fortunate enough to get a picture of it.
In the early 1980s Discover was flown piggy-back to Vandenburg Air Force Base in Lompoc, California. At the time I was head of the children's department at Santa Maria Library and lived in that city. We knew that the flight was coming and the approximate time. It was not a work day for me. I went outside to watch for it. Lo and behold, there it was in the distance and it was coming directly over my street. One of my sons was in the house. I yelled for him to get the camera and come quickly. He snapped away as the flight came really low right over our heads. Again, the usual goose bumps, tears and lump in the throat enveloped me.
Yep! You guessed it. In those days we didn't have digital cameras. There was no film in the camera. Talk about disappointment.!
When my best friend's daughter was getting married, her husband asked me to take pictures of the bride going down the aisle with him, the bridesmaids, etc., and to get as many candids as I could. I snapped away like crazy. And yes, he had forgotten to put film in the camera. Sigh.
Tyler, Texas was fortunate to have one of those traveling exhibits of WWII aircraft just this last weekend. Tyler Pounds Airport was the venue. This morning about 9:30 a.m. I was in our front yard, filling the hummingbird feeders. I heard a roar of engines and it brought back a lot of memories of that time in my childhood. I recognized that it was a bomber. I looked up to see it coming directly toward our place from the direction of the airport. It flew at low altitude directly over our house and I waved like crazy as it headed north.
The plane was a B29 Superfortress, a four-engine heavy bomber, just like the Enola Gay from which the A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The name of this one was Fifi, and is the only B29 still flying after all these years. And, of course, I had a lump in my throat, tears in my eyes and goosebumps.
It's strange though. Now that we see huge jet airplanes for commercial flights day to day, and the B52s from another war era, the B29 seemed, and in truth, is, small by comparison. It was a monster plane way back in the day.
Just a piece of ephemera: During WWII we children were able to get cards with the shapes and sizes of all the war planes of every nation. There were different sized holes in the card that would show us at what altitude the planes were flying. We could identify our own and enemy planes easily by looking at the silhouettes on the card. Squadrons and squadrons flew over Los Angeles often. I would hear the roar of hundreds, and I mean hundreds, of planes coming, would run to get my card, so that I could see which planes were in the squadrons and how high they were flying. It was usually bombers accompanied by fighter planes. They most often were flying at about 5000 feet and the noise could be deafening. I always got the same feeling. The goose bumps, tears and lumps were and are caused by pride in our country and what all of these things stand for.
Something funny just popped into my head. I remember a Danny Kaye movie. He was in the army and regaled his buddies with a story about "Smiling Jack." The pilot hero was always smiling. Of course, Danny wove a tale of derring do and danger, always hilarious. The part I remember is of his impression of war movies. The good guys' planes always had this pleasant, humming sound (which he managed to imitate), while the enemy planes always sounded angry and raspy. I never forgot it, and tried to see if I detected that difference in the next war movie I went to see.
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