The Wild Blue Yonder

A single engine airplane has been flying over the vast fields that surround our acreage. My guess is it’s a training plane or a very adventurous solo flier. The same thing happens each time it appears overhead. First we hear it, then locate it up in the sky. It begins the same aerobatics each time, a steep vertical climb until it can not go any higher, the plane turning over and beginning a plunge straight down, wings spinning, cutting the engine as it drops faster, plummeting toward the ground until the engine restarts and the plane evens out, flying horizontal again. Along comes a barrel roll, some normal flying, then flying upside down, then the vertical climb and plunge again. For around half an hour it repeats these maneuvers until it flies off to the north from where it came, only to reappear in a few days and do it all over again. If I am outside I can’t turn away from the show, I have to watch it flying about. The most thrilling part is when the engine is cut and the plane begins twirling straight down to the ground and you are convinced it will crash into the corn or bean fields and send up a huge Hollywood explosion until, bbrrrrrrr, the engine starts again and the day is saved. Maybe my fascination with all of this goes goes back to a favorite film of mine when I was a kid in the 1970’s called The Great Waldo Pepper. The air scenes in the movie used real aircraft, which gives a realistic dimension missing from films using models or CGI. A young, handsome Robert Redford is in the staring role as a barnstorming pilot during the 1920’s. Now, years later, I can look up and watch my own Waldo Pepper.