She used to sit out there on her beloved back porch, gazing into all the other unfenced backyards of the houses around our home there in Sun City. Perched over her morning coffee, she would listen to the b-l-a-a-a-a-s-t of fighter jet engines, a racket emanating from nearby Luke Air Force Base.
Oh, how I hated that noise.
It bothered the Hell out of me: the ungodly roar of those damned war planes. But I would try to hide that, so as not to pi$$ her off.
She would simper on: “Ohhhh, it’s the sound of fweedom!”
Uhm…right, Mom. It’s the sound of World War III, comin’ our way.
Of course, I dared not say that to her. She’d have knocked me into the middle of next week for showing any disrespect to our honored country and its honored military. The weird thing was, she didn’t seem to care.
She didn’t care that it was the sound of death, damnation, and destruction. Of a war that would denude the planet. Of inescapable hate, fear, and death.
Amazing.
That always puzzled me: that she didn’t appear to recognize that what she was hearing was the oncoming engine of death, destruction, and catastrophe.
Luke is located some miles to the west of Sun City, which itself occupies large residential tracts to the west of Phoenix’s westernmost suburbs. Halfway to California, it sometimes seems.
Though…no: Sun City and Luke were nowhere near the California border.
Every now and again, a plane or a phalanx will fly out of Luke and roar over the city of Phoenix. That’s what occasions this morning’s little scribble: RRROOOOOOAAAAARRRRR over the house. Gawd, but I hate that noise. And yeah, I get it: without it the Russians are gonna blow us all to Kingdom Come.
Right?