So, over dinner Husbie had an opportunity to once again prove his intelligence and patience as I described in my words what it was that flew over the farmstead.  You know how they say men and women communicate differently?  Well, I was the poster child for that book debut!  Our conversation went something like this:

Me:  Lovie, the girls and I saw a really cool airplane fly over the house today.  I was hoping you would drive up in time to tell me what it was.

Husbie:  Oh yeah?  What was it?

Me:  I don’t know, but it was a big ol’ blunder bus looking thing.

Husbie:  Was it old or was it new?

Me:  Old.  And it had a huge belly as big as a bus.

Husbie:  Was it a C-5 or a C-135?

Me:  Nuh-uh.

Husbie:  Was it a jet or a round motor?

Me:  It was a round motor.  (Luckily I can identify the sound of those after hanging around Husbie’s friend who has a Stearman.)

Husbie:  Did it have one or two engines?

Me:  Two.  And the tail was really weird.  Instead of a normal tail that goes like this *insert vision of me making a plus sign with my two index fingers and Husbie’s eyebrows arching in bewilderment here*, there were two tails, one coming off each wing and then squaring off in the back.

Husbie:  Was it a nice shiny aluminum color?

Me:  Well, yeah, I think so.  Or it could have been white.  It was hard to tell against the color of the sky.  But it had some orange back by that square tail.  And the cargo area was huge, like a whale.

Husbie:  Did it have a stub nose or was it sleek and pointy?

Me:  It was stubby.  And it was huge, like a big ol’ blunder bus.

Husbie:  Well, it sounds to me like it was a C-119.

Me:  Oh.  Well, we’ll have to look it up on the internet and see if that’s what we saw.  *finished dinner amazed that Husbie could make any sense out of my description and hand gestures*

So at the first chance I got today, I Googled ‘C-119′ and waited for the images to come up.  Sure enough.  The big ol’ blunder bus that blundered over the farmstead was a C-119, lovingly coined the “Flying Boxcar.”  Blunder Bus.  Boxcar.  Yeah, basically the same.  Of course I had to read up on it a little, and there’s actually some facts that are pretty cool.  I won’t go into a history lesson here, because you can Google for yourself if you’re interested ~ but probably one of the coolest things I learned about the C-119 is that there were only approximately 1,184 of them ever built and today there are only approximately three that are still airworthy…how cool is that?!  One of those three flew over the farmstead.

Oh, and that big ol’ blunder bus I deemed as slow?  Well, it has a cruising speed of 200 mph.  Not so slow after all ~ especially when you weigh 39, 982 lbs empty!  Purely an example of how appearances can be deceiving.  Ha!  Who knew that Flying Boxcar would serve as a reminder to me to not be so quick to judge a book by its cover in this thing called life?!