fire balls seen in calif.

(this happened many years ago and the dates are approximate.) 
two friends and i were walking to one of there houses at about 7 or 8 pm. it was just getting dark and it was a warm clear eavning, i think it was somewhere around august of 1982 or so, i was about 13 or 14 years old at the time, i am 44 now!  anyways...while walking on this quite night i noticed something in the sky and told my friends to look up at what i saw!... there was 3 balls of fire flying about 200 yards away just above to the right a bit of us. they were in almost a V formation, traveling very slowly and from roughly a south to north direction.  they were so low that we could hear the fire blowing in the wind as they moved through the sky. they had small trails of fire behind them and as we watched, one of the fire balls went out compleatly but we could still see it flying with the other two. they were round, about 10 to 20 feet across and dark in color except for the fire of course...  they were way to low and traveling way to slow to be meteors or comits.  they wer! e not planes or helicoptors and were silent except for the wind blowing through the fire. my friends and i just watched as they kept on ther way untell we could not see them anymore,(about 6 to 8 min.)
Witness indicates that the date is approximate.  PD