My Town Monday: Grounded

There is an Air Force base just outside my town. When I lived here 2 dozen years ago, our rental house was under the flight pattern for B52 bombers — when one of those planes was overhead, all conversation was useless for at least 15 seconds.   It really was that loud!

Boeing B-52D Stratofortress

Can you imagine looking up and seeing that gaping red grin?

Showing its Vietnam-era personality

Those bombers are no longer flying over my house, although in my new neighborhood we regularly see planes for both the civilian airport and the AFB.

These photos were taken on a beautiful autumn afternoon last October and are just a few of the many pictures I took — hardly representative of the many planes to be seen on display on the Air Force Base, but probably the right number of photographs for this post.  I thought sharing them today, on Veterans’ Day weekend, would be appropriate.

Click on any pic to “embiggen” 

Veterans’ Day

Veterans’ Honor  rose

I don’t have a photograph of poppies to share with you today. Perhaps you could pretend that the Veterans’ Honor rose (above) was a poppy while you read the famous poem by Lt. Col. John McCrae, a Canadian physician during World War One…

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.