Jets overhead promise and portend. Tenth of twenty-six posts in the April 2017 Blogging From A to Z Challenge on the theme “Whispering Chimneys: My Altamont childhood” — where my genealogy journey began. Wish me luck!
At Whispering Chimneys, two things represented the larger outside world.
Out front was interstate Route 20 on which I traveled by car with my parents and grandparents –and later by school bus to Altamont Elementary.
And then there were the jets overhead — striping the enormous blue sky with their long white trails.
Commercial flights were relatively new in the early 1950s, so spotting passenger airplanes was a novelty. But military jets from nearby bases seemed ever-present in those post-WWII years.
Sonic booms
I always looked up when the jets whizzed overhead, fascinated by their snowy vapor trails.
But at first I was terrified by the sonic booms that thundered over the countryside when they outran the speed of sound!
Fortunately, my parents and grandparents did a good job of explaining the startling noise — and after a while I got used to it.
Watching in wonder
I was a little post-war baby boomer when I gazed at the fighter jets streaking the sky — so I never thought about where they came from, where they were going, or what they were doing up there.
Then the jets’ glinting steel held the promise of flight, technology, and the wider outside world.
I never dreamed their airborne maneuvers might also portend a distant war in Vietnam that would profoundly affect my generation.
I couldn’t know about that then. All I could do was stare up at those jets with wonder.
Up next: Kindergarten culture shock. Please stop back!
© 2017 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.