Friday, February 9, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Up, up and away
I am the Lord, your God; hear my voice.
Andi invited us to dinner. At the table Miles asked me, “Grandpa, tell us stories about hot air ballooning.” We had spent the last hour up in their room, where Miles and Jasper were finding helicopters flying with my Flightradar24 app and then zooming around rescuing boats on fire in one ocean after another. The boys have walkie talkies, so they moved from room to room, piloting their fire rescue helicopter, jumping into the water (sometimes the Pacific, sometimes the Antarctic Ocean) after donning their scuba gear, and sometimes taking injured people to the hospital.
I mostly muddled with my email.
So dinnertime was a change of pace. I told them about the time my balloon named Adagio was launched in February on the ice of Lake Wisconsin during a festival, and about twenty people were holding it down after we got it inflated. Our red 1964 Volkswagon with its homemade trailer waited with the chase crew to track the balloon and pack it up once it landed, in an hour or two.
“Ok! Let go!” I shouted, and all twenty of them did. Adagio flew so fast up into the air that it might have burst. Later I saw a picture of it, compressed into the middle more than it ever had any business doing. But I had no idea.
A minute or two later an unexpected fog blanketed the sky, and I was completely invisible, and the ground was invisible to me. I freaked out a bit – how was I ever going to land in fog like this? How would the chase crew in our red VW bug find me. As I cooled off the balloon, however, I descended out of the fog and into clear air. I had shot up into a cloud, so fast I didn’t realize it. Sigh of relief in 1974 that I remember still.
My adventure wasn’t over. As I floated south west I noticed what turned out to be the Badger Army Ammunition Plant, mile after mile of flat simply constructed warehouses. Alfalfa siloes and dairy barns gave way to this military industrial complex. Built in 1942 and making ammo for three wars, it was inactive when I flew over it. It had been pegged as a likely target for a nuclear bomb in the mid 60’s, but I only found that out later. I was mostly a hippie. I had no idea it was there.
Nobody shot at me, and nobody knocked on my door the next day. But I felt just a little special, having survived a crazy takeoff and a flyover of the place that made most of the ammunition for the Vietnam War’s M16, every year of the war and then some.
Afterward, as we ate from a pan of grilled sausage, broccoli and potatoes, Margaret told them about her trip with me as copilot of the “largest balloon in the world.” Then Andi told us about her skydiving, and Aki told us about his, and suddenly we were done with supper and ready for dessert. Watermelon. Later as we left Margaret said, “If a kid is bored with adult conversation, all he has to do is ask us about what was exciting in the old days. “Tell us some stories, Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa.”
The days are all new to Miles and Jasper. For them, the days are just packed. And when they aren’t we can help them fill in some of the sleepy spots.
I am the Lord, your God; hear my voice.
(1 Kings 11, Psalm 81, Acts 16, Mark 7)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
#
