I declared last Friday as Friday Fun Day and my Dad, my sons
and I went to the woods.
We were geocaching on Eglin Reservation not too far north of
Hurlburt Field and not long after we got into the woods, they started a
training mission at Hurlburt.
Ospreys and several other types of planes were circling the
base and we could hear a lot of munitions going off.
Living next to Eglin, their training missions don’t even
phase us because we hear weapons going off and our windows shake during bombing
practice almost daily.
We’d been in the woods, hiking and hunting caches for about
an hour when I heard a really loud, wailing sound.
We stopped and listened.
Over the sound of the machine guns going off we could
plainly hear that strange sound.
What is that?
It dawned on Dad and I about the same time that we were
hearing an air raid siren.
Now, I understand that a lot of places in the country have
them as tornado sirens but we don’t and to be honest I’ve never heard one.
Uh oh, sounds like Hurlburt Field is being attacked.
Right about then my Mom called my Dad’s cell phone.
He handed the phone to the Oldest Island Boy and told him to
answer it.
He’s my son so naturally when she asks what’s going on he
tells her that Hurlburt Field is under attack and then held the phone out so
she could here the siren and guns going off.
Before she can say anything he tells her she needs to go
look at the news right away.
He did a good job and would have been believable if my Mom
hadn’t been married to my Dad for almost 50 years. He’s where I got my sick sense
of humor from and I seem to have passed it on to all three of my kids so she’s
been dealing with stuff like this for years.
“Well, good! Are y’all having fun?” she asks without missing
a beat.
After they hung up the Youngest Island Boy asked me what to
do if you hear an air raid siren.
That’s a good question.
We can hear one right now and yet we continue hiking down
the trail.
“Well, I guess you need to assess the situation and then
either duck or run.”
“In the mean time, climb up that rickety old tower and tell me if
you can see any smoke from the bombs going off.”
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