I know how it was in that time sixty years ago when roads seen from above were little more than two thin tracks through grass.
My mind has heard the noiseless roads cutting unfenced fields, passing cherry groves, skirting steepest hills and flat lakes, making settled burgs where roads cross.
I know how it was in that time when many-handed harvests, sweet smells and back breaking work were wrenched away without referendum.
Wrenched away by Ford's cast iron. Wrenched away without option of staying to enjoy the scale of day-long trips on foot, in wagon or buggy.
Our innocent grandfathers too, wrenched away, not unwillingly, from plowfields, to be told by newspaper and newfangled radio of the one-day Atlantic crossing.
I know how it was in that time. I've seen it from three or five hundred feet; the quick shadow and lake-mirrored image of fabric covered wood and wire.
I've gently flown, pocketa, pocketa, in that time; in a ship as much a product of those shifting decades as of its tinkerer/ designer, builder, pilot, Pietenpol.