Faint Memories of a Disaster
Hear the boom from above. A memoir by JD Clapp
Disclaimer: The following story is factual and depicts disturbing images. Reader discretion is advised.
Between first and second period, standing by a fence on the lower field, we heard the boom from above. I watched the burning jet cartwheel, wagging a tail of fire and smoke, spiraling, somersaulting, earthbound. A remember a stoner kid pulled my arm. Look, he screamed. I turned just in time to see the jet plummet into the ground. We felt the boom and a shudder strong as an earthquake. We watched the fireball, then the mushroom cloud, first orange, then black as oil.
For a minute, the world seemed to stand still, silent like the woods when a predator is hunting, silent like the pause before your first kiss. The stunned silence gave way to screams, followed by loud nervous banter.
I went to an all-boys Catholic school. Kids came from all over San Diego to attend. I remember the handfuls from the neighborhood running home in panic. I remember priests and teachers jumping into cars, racing off to help, to rescue the rescuable with tires screeching.
Smoke, thick and greasy, blackened the sky. It was eerie. A Santa Ana breeze carried the acrid, hot stench of burned rubber, jet fuel, and woodsmoke.
Sirens erupted all morning. I remember waiting with nervous speculation. We stood outside for hours milling, watching it unfold. We waited for some instructions, for some updates, for anything that would make this normal.
Then, the kids and teachers began to trickle back, shell-shocked, looking like zombies. They reported bodies still strapped to their seats hanging in trees, burned corpses, smoldering appendages strewn everywhere for blocks. There was luggage in trees, smashed through the roofs of parked cars. They described the burning metal, the melted cars, the horror. Horror.
Then the rumors started. A stoner kid took a severed hand so he could steal the diamond ring on it. They said he stashed it in his locker.
Some senior grabbed a piece of the plane and was showing it off behind the gym. My buddy, Rolo, said he saw it. Some sophomore kid who lived in the neighborhood ran home to find out his house was just gone—a hole in the ground. His mother and baby brother were gone too. They even said the local divorcee, the one all the neighborhood boys’ thought was hot, burned to death. Her house was flattened by the jet.
Then, the body bags arrived on a never-ending assembly line. Seniors, teachers, cops and fireman, all pitched in. Our gym served as a makeshift morgue.
There were helicopters landing on the football field, news trucks parked on the grass. Around noon, we were declared safe to go home. But there were no cell phones in 1978. The landlines went down with the jet. The power went out for half the city, snarling traffic, and making essential news updates difficult. All the roads in the area were closed anyway. So, we walked to the bus stop. But there were no busses running because of the plane crash. So, we kept walking. All the kids in my carpool walked together. We scampered on for miles. We finally arrived home five hours later.
Our parents asked if we were okay and if anyone was hurt.
We were okay, but we were not really okay.
That week, Time Magazine put our school on the cover. School was closed for a week. Maybe more. I honestly can’t remember. I do remember teachers and older kids coming back with PTSD, before PTSD was a thing. Some of them left the school, some of them could never fly again, stuck forever in the long shadow of PSA Flight 182.
The morning we resumed class, we had a mass for the dead in the same gym that housed them just days earlier. The priests read 144 names. These names, smells, and horrible sights are my first memories of high school.
JD Clapp is based in San Diego, CA. His work has appeared in 101Words, Micro Fiction Mondays Magazine, Free Flash Fiction, Wrong Turn Literary, Scribes MICRO, Café Lit, and Sporting Classics Magazine among several others. His story, “One Last Drop,” was a finalist in the 2023 Hemingway Shorts Literary Journal, Short Story Competition.
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Very powerful writing about a horrible event. When I first started reading this I didn't realize exactly when this plane crash happened, and then it hit me. My older sister's friend was on this flight-- the only Canadian on board. My sister had passed away in a car accident two years before this. They both had gone on a trip to Cuba together when Cuba first opened for tourism. Two young women in their early twenties. Such a tragic waste of lives. You did justice in your writing to this horrific tragedy. The dead should be remembered.
Susan R. Morritt