Lobo,
When I was around 10-11 I saw the same sort of thing. At the time, I was living in Beach Park, Illinois, and I was riding my bike down by Beach Park School just after sunset. Directly to the west of where I was standing, was the Waukegan Airport. As I looked out over the Waukegan Airport, I saw a huge fireball in the sky. At first, I thought that a plane had exploded, but as I watched it I realized it was descending too slowly for it to have been an exploding plane. I watched the fireball descending in the sky for about five minutes, then I realized I had to go get someone else to see it. I peddled back to my house as quick as I could, and tried to get my parents to come but they wouldn't. I then tried to get my friend down the street to come but he wouldn't either. I gave up on trying to get people to come see the ball of fire, and I quickly peddled back to the spot where I had been because I wanted to see it again, but it was gone.
It puzzled me that this thing had been over the Waukegan Airport and yet no one else reported it. It wasn't on the news and it wasn't in the paper. While I don't think this was any sort of supernatural or UFO phenomena, it was an amazing sight. I remember a number of years later reading a book about UFOs, and in the book there was an a few pages dedicated to natural phenomena mistaken for UFOs. One of the things that caught my attention was an article on sun bursts, and how they can sometimes produce balls of fire in the sky. While I'm not sure if this is what it was, the explanation fits.
Edit: When I was around 10-11 it would have been around 1988-1989. Coincidence? I just did a search online, and found out that these sun bursts happen in cycles, and one of the peaks was 1989! Unfortunately, I couldn't access the NY Times article on it due to it being pay-per-view, but here is another link if you're interested.
http://www.riverdeep.net/current/2000/0 ... pots.jhtml
[url=http://www.czaple.com][img]http://www.czaple.com/image/forums/ps_sig.jpg[/img][/url]