Skywriting Today

I can't remember the last time I saw any skywriting. It's been many decades. At some time back in the day it was a fairly common way of promoting events when we were growing up and as a young person. Today I was surprised to be sitting in a chair under a tree in our backyard when I heard a strange buzzing sound coming from the sky. It sounded something like an aircraft but different. We had been hearing a lot of airplanes flying over our house this summer because of the runway construction and diverted flight paths at the Buffalo airport but this was something different. 

I had only been sitting outside for a few minutes when that weird sound made me look up. The buzzing was coming from a very small airplane very high in the sky with white smoke trailing behind it. The movements of the plane were making letters and there were lots of them across the sky. Apparently the plane had been doing this for some time but it was a windy day and the white cloud letters were getting blown away. Only the very recently completed letters were readable and that was just barely. There were a lot of letters but the earlier ones were just more white clouds in the sky. I watched for a bit and then went back to reading my book. Every now and then I looked up but I still couldn't read the message. The letters were also backwards from my point of view. The Parkside neighborhood in Buffalo was obviously not the target for the message.

Then a little later the plane stopped writing letters and started making smiley faces. I then took my phone and looked online for skywriting in the Buffalo area and saw that it was a promotion of the upcoming Batavia Air Show this coming weekend. Later I saw some people were discussing the skywriting on Facebook but few people seemed to be able to read the message. Most just saw the smiley faces.