Results: Look! Up in the sky...

One of the surest signs of spring when I was a kid was the arrival of kites at the local dime store. You could bet that as soon as we noticed a neighbor kid's kite soaring above the school yard, we were begging for a kite of our own. Did you fly kites when you were a kid?

My first sighting of the Goodyear Blimp was when quite young. It looked like some strange prehistoric flying fish as it made its way across the sky. Have to confess that even though it's an unfair comparison, I never see the iconic blimp without thinking of the Hindenburg disaster in 1937. Have you ever seen the newsreel footage of the Hindenburg?

My earliest childhood home was a small suburb filled with young families- many of whom were headed by veterans. Some, who like my father, stayed in the Dayton area when their service at Wright Patterson AFB ended. When a jet flew by everyone- children and adults- stopped to watch until it was out of sight. Even though these days it's more likely to be a FedEx cargo jet- recognizable only by the distinctive colors of the logo- flying into the Memphis Hub, I still stop and marvel. Do you stop and watch when aircraft come into sight?

Like any right-thinking child, I knew that the Moon belonged to the night sky. And somehow it just seemed wrong when it would appear during the day. Many years would pass before I learned that during a full Moon the Sun is directly opposite the Sun in the sky and the reflection is bright enough to allow us to see it. (It is actually visible for half the month if you know when and where to look) Do you ever notice the Moon during daylight hours?

Smoke trailing from the back of the small plane obviously meant trouble. And then I saw what looked like letters being formed by that trailing smoke. It looked as if the pilot was writing the word "HELP." But no. Too many letters. Torn between running across the street to tell my folks and staying to decipher his message lest it be lost, I sat alone, frozen on the school yard swing. When the plane finally flew off, I walked home. Told no one. The message? "Eat Wonder Bread." Have you ever seen a plane while it was sky writing?