Old Number Nine

At nine hundred miles an hour
Running far behind
Please don’t let me get careless
And to heaven before my time

I wrote this song about my airplane
They called her the old widow maker
A 3 million dollar jet engine scream
8 miles high in 90 seconds flat
40 thousand pounds of gasoline

She once held the world speed record
Mach two made her kinda strange
She’d swap ends twice in a second
Then turn around and give you little change

There must have been at least a hundred gauges
Staring as the crew chief strapped you in
It took thirty minutes just set the
Knobs and dials
To get to where
You could go again

I never felt the moan of those engines
Stirring as she came to life
Without thinking that the whine of a turbine
Cut to my soul like a knife

I never said goodbye without thinking
About the odds of getting back again
Many a good pilot has gone and bought
The farm
Many a good woman has lost a friend

But they’d finally say “cleared for take off”
And I knew for sure I was really gonna fly
I’d go to afterburner and gears and flaps
And I’d pull her back and head for the sky

(Rpt Chorus)