A is for Air Force

I really waffled about entering the A to Z Challenge this year, but here I am.

That wasn't terribly enthusiastic. HERE I AAAAAAAM!!!

I didn't have it in me to do another year of Pinterest challenges, so I decided I'd just write about whatever. So here is my first whatever installment in the Challenge, two stories about me and the Air Force:

I grew up near Richards-Gebaur Air Force Base outside of Kansas City (which is ALWAYS in Missouri, not Kansas, unless otherwise stated - learn it). It closed in the late 1990s, but until then, it was an active military base, home to cargo and transport planes, plus some fighter jets. Sixty miles to the east of us was Whiteman Air Force Base, where both fighters and bombers were stationed (and now includes the Stealth B-2), plus it was host to the Minuteman ballistic missiles. It was the height of the Cold War.

The little 1950s tract home that I grew up in had a nice, fenced backyard. We had a back door that led to it from the kitchen. There was a step down from there onto the patio. When I was a toddler, my mom could watch me play from her seat at the formica dinette set, often while having coffee with a neighbor. It was the picture of early 1960s America, until the peace was shattered by me shrieking at the screen door and trying to get inside when I wasn't tall enough to reach the handle. My hands would be clamped over my ears as I screamed, and my mother always knew I wasn't hurt, hadn't gotten bitten by anything or fallen down.

I had seen a puffy cloud develop in the clear sky, and I knew that it would be followed by a horrific noise, otherwise known as a sonic boom. My dad even installed a door handle of my own on the screen door, made with an empty spool, so I could let myself in when I saw the poof.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When I was a few years older, my next door neighbor and best friend was named Cherie. She was a grade ahead of me in school and had two brothers and a sister who were several years older than her, so I saw her as pretty knowledgeable. 

Cherie and I spent a lot of time playing outdoors, especially in the summer. We climbed trees and played on the swingset and set up pretend houses in the shade. With our proximity to the air bases, there were often planes flying high overhead (although the sonic booms had ceased, thank GOD). One time, as we were playing in our back yard, Cherie pointed to a plane that was flying high above us and looked something like this:

"See that box at the back of that plane?" she asked me, indicating the piece that joined the tail sections of the plane. "That's where they put the people going to Heaven."

Made sense to me, and some time later, when I was 7 and my grandmother passed away, I took some comfort in knowing how she would be transported to Heaven.