Tri in the Sky

As I was wan­der­ing to the whole food store tonight I heard the dron­ing of an air­craft I couldn’t identify. There was the beat of a heli­copter blade, but I could identify the comingled drone of a heavy engine. Then as the sounds grew closer a huge Ford Tri-motor roared over the trees a block away. The Tri-motor was cruis­ing at no more than 1000ft accom­pan­ied by a heli­copter shoot­ing video. It was an amaz­ing sight. The sun was at a lovely even­ing height giv­ing a won­der­ful orangey ambi­ence, the sky clear and I was trans­por­ted to another era. I was drawn back to a time when an air­plane was the nov­elty (rar­ity) that the Tri-motor is today. What would it have been like to have seen this virilely power­ful metal beast soar­ing over a small town bring­ing the hope/promise/threat? of a faster com­mu­nic­a­tion and trans­port? The sheer size and mech­an­ical won­der must have inspired an awe even more sub­stan­tial than my serendip­it­ous amaze.

The heli­copter buzz­ing about the lar­ger ship seemed like a hawk being men­aced by a spar­row or two. Espe­cially as another heli­copter came shoot­ing across the sky­line head­ing in for a closer look as well. I will have to find out where the mag­ni­fi­cent beast was head­ing. A new addi­tion to the Cana­dian War­plane Her­it­age at the air­port per­haps. Given that only 18 are known to still exist, I was blessed with a rare exper­i­ence tonight.