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Fire Side Stories by Faith Pyle
Anna Sights Halley's Comet Anna was in Fallon, Nevada in 1910, and she remembers very well all the fuss and fuming about Halley’s comet. Now she did not remember the date she saw it but it was a school day and very windy. She was walking home from school as Cricket had other things to do that day. Anna and her friend were being blown all over the desert. “We could put our backs to the wind, sit down on it, and it would blow us all the way home! That is how windy the Nevada desert is.” She told us this often. This particular day her father had told the children to keep their eyes on the horizon as they walked to and from school and the ranch. Anna and her friend saw the comet and she had this to say about it. “ I thought it would be bigger and more to see. From the way my father and uncles talked about it, the comet sounded much bigger and brighter. Since it was normal sunshine in the afternoon it looked like a far away star but moving across the sky.” In 1986 when Halley’s comet returned it was in Anna’s 90th year. She thought it was a good thing to have lived long enough to see it return. However the only times the local news stations said it could be viewed from her home in Folsom California were just before dawn on several particular days. “Oh, I have seen it before and am not going to get up and look. I can see the pictures better on TV anyway.” However, Anna told me the real thrill had been viewing it the first time. She saw Halley’s comet while riding on the wind on an afternoon in Nevada when she was a 12-year-old. Remembered by Faith Pyle ©all rights reserved.
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