I played in the backyard with my two girls. My older daughter was 3 ½ and my younger girl was just 7 months old. We played in the back on one of those big playground swingsets that you buy the lumber and put together with instructions from a kit. I spent the last half of that summer building that behemoth it had the obligatory slide, 3 swings (one was an infant swing for my younger daughter), plus a slanted plastic rock-climbing wall, and a roof over the clubhouse. I worked my ass off to build it, but it was worth it to see them play on it.
Being mid-September, the weather was quite mild. The summer heat had broken and it was almost cold enough to require a sweatshirt in the early evening. The sky was still light past 7:00, which provided ample time for me to play with the girls while my wife made dinner and relaxed after she got home from work. We both hurried home from work more often this week. Even at work, it was hard to concentrate. Everyone had radios on, listening for news, wondering what would happen next.
Just south of us there’s a small, metropolitan airport. Mostly Cessnas, Beechcrafts and the occasional Lear or Gulfstream fly in and out of there. Ever since my older daughter was about 2, she liked to look up and see airplanes as they flew by. Occasionally, we’d see a big jet flying overhead to land at the "real" airport about 20 miles away.
So now, playing in the backyard with my two girls, it was really strange not to see any planes. What is even stranger, is not to see any contrails no clouds.
Literally, there was not a cloud in the sky. I could not remember ever truly seeing that before. Granted, people would say,
There’s not a cloud in the sky.
But that wouldn’t ever really be true. I think there was always some high altitude contrail, or the drifting wisps of contrails somewhere overhead. At least, there may have been one hour, or one afternoon, in one particular place where it may truly have been cloudless. But generally speaking, I daresay there had not been 2 consecutive such days.
But now the sky was cloudless.
Boeing’s first commercial jetliner, the 707, entered the market in 1957. In my mind’s eye, from that year forward, the skies on a daily basis became littered with white whisps trailing from the wings and exhausts of those mighty jets. Those engines of commerce. Those modern day clydesdale horses, trucking man and material to every corner of the planet. Those trails of cloud even spawned conspiracy theories about government plans to spray various chemicals over an unsuspecting populus. Those artificial clouds were part of us.
But now the skies over my backyard, over my children, were literally empty. The geese were even reluctant to risk the wrath of the FAA, for they too, seemed forbidden to fly.
Those empty skies juxtaposed two scenes. One, the skies of the midwest in 1956 before the arrival of those metal beasts of burden. The last year that the skies were empty. America the strong. America the great. America the potential. America the hope. We were still learning the role of a superpower, suffering some growing pains as we explored our limits. The world was smaller, in a sense. We knew our enemies as well as our possible enemies, and at times, even joined with them.
That sky stood in contrast with the sky I saw that week, the same sky from 1956, devoid of any sign that jets even existed. America the strong, but shaken. America the great, but hated. America the potential target. America the hope, but object of resentment. We are still a superpower, but no "super" power can protect us. The world is indeed smaller, now with the information technology that we have today, anyone can reach anyone anywhere anytime. And we do not know our enemies, our possible enemies, and sometimes, we don’t even know our friends. We want to join with them, with all of them, for our protection, but many do not want to join with us.
Even the issue of protection, here in my backyard with my girls, harkens back to the days before jets. Neighbors kept each other safe. Neighbors knew each other – really knew each other. Knew not just the names of their kids, their dogs, their cats, but birthdays, jobs, tools, medical conditions, even knew secrets. That knowledge helped keep everyone safer. Things had a pattern, so a disruption in the pattern was noticed. And was suspicious. There was security in that pattern.
The empty skies were a disruption of the pattern. Caused by a failure of protection. Caused by a failure of us to protect ourselves. A failure to know ourselves.
Now, playing in the backyard with my two girls, I cannot look at the sky as I did before. I see the contrails now, and remember that they were not always there. The world is not as it was when the first jet flew. It is not as it was when the jets briefly stopped. And it will not be the same again.
