As it were…

I was reminded of this story today, and I can’t believe I never posted it. When I was a kid we lived near Wurtsmith Air Force Base, which was a SAC base. That means they had B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers. B-52’s had 8 engines, and when they took off they had all of them running full blast. It is amazingly loud. We lived about 25 miles from the base, so by the time they were over my house they had a couple thousand feet under them, and it was merely impressive. I had friends who lived at the end of the runway.

You may recall that I grew up without electricity, which means we lit the house with kerosene lamps. They give off a wonderful warm yellow light, we never really had white lights in the house at all. Car headlights would shine through the front windows sometimes though, and light up that room for a few minutes.

One night I was laying in bed about 10pm, ready for sleep, when my room was lit with a bright white light, just like headlights. I knew this to be very wrong however, since my window faced the garden and the woods.

I jumped out of bed and looked outside, and just over the trees was a very bright light, hovering there. About 5 seconds later though, the angle changed and I was able to see that it was the landing lights of a B-52. A couple seconds after that the house shook with the roar as it flew right overhead.

I don’t know why it was flying that low that night, and it never happened again, but it was quite the experience.

Vaguely related, the bombers would often come in off Lake Huron in their landing pattern. They would come from way out, and fairly low, headed straight at the land. They looked for all the world like UFO’s, hovering over the lake for about 10 min. before they were close enough to tell what they were. Every spring the cops would get calls from people that had just bought cabins on the lake, and weren’t aware of the situation, as it were. The cops always said “If they’re still there in 10 minutes, call us back.” Of course, they never got called back about that. And the people quickly realized why their cabin was so cheap.