Looked like a large meteorite ablaze

When I was a kid and about 10 a bunch of us kids used to lie on the grass and look at the sky for shooting stars.  Once, a large object came from over the horizon directly at us not REAL high that was ablaze and was going FAST!  I remember I thought It was a meteorite, but it came at too flat of an angle to come directly from the sky.  It appeared and was gone in an instant.  It seemed like only the front was ablaze