Silent Skies
Due to the actions of a few men five years ago which left the civilized world reeling, for the first five days in September the sky over my head was empty of aircraft, or so it seemed. I live less than five miles from a regional airport, but I heard no jet engines screaming through the air and saw no white contrails crisscrossing the peaceful blue heavens. I was thankfully aware, of course, that elsewhere, F-18’s and other alpha/numerically designated planes patrolled the skies, protecting our country.
For approximately sixty years I gave little thought to the presence or absence of airplanes. They were just a fact of life. I was fifty-seven before I had the opportunity for a plane ride, a nineteen hour closely packed but exhilarating transatlantic flight. A far cry from when I was three years old, standing in my Grandma’s Cullman, Alabama farm yard craning my neck to get a better look at the then unusual sight of an airplane moving through the sky above.
My parents, grandparents, and a teen-aged uncle or two were present, along with a half dozen siblings and cousins. All were gawking at the sky along with me. The time must have been early spring, 1942. Unthinkable acts had happened in the world at that time also, but it took one that cost American lives to goad us into action, exactly like 9/11/01’s deadly deeds. So very likely what we saw was a military plane from Fort Rucker or Fort Benning.
A team of mules stood in the yard, hitched to my Grandpa’s farm wagon, waiting to head out to the fields for the day’s work. Face turned to the sky, eyes following the plane, I moved backward across the dirt yard, almost into the legs of one of the team. Mules are not as nervous and fidgety as horses, but their hooves are just as hard. And a mule’s sharp kick can be as fatal as a kick from a horse. I would probably have landed on the other side of the barn if one of those hooves had connected.
My grandmother happened to look down just before my fate was sealed. She ran to me and snatched me out of harm’s way. Her own action was not without danger, as she was a very small woman, barely four feet tall, and very pregnant. But what fixes my first sight of an airplane so vividly in memory is the next thing she did. She spanked me soundly.
I was more than a little confused as all around expressed their thankfulness for my safety. My cries may have reached the crew on that plane, flying at a much lower altitude than planes do today! Having become a mother and grandmother myself in the years since that episode, I understand her action, though I don’t necessarily agree with it.
Some don’t agree with measures that are now employed in attempts to ensure our safety. Are they guaranteed to achieve that end? No. Are there other ways that might be more successful? Maybe. Working together with good will, determination, and faith in God, in whose care lies our ultimate safety, we’ll find those ways.
©2005 Sylvia Nickel
