I liked the guy the minute I saw him, even though he was a complete stranger.  Clean shaven, with a thick shock of silver metallic hair, and eyes that looked like they had seen more miles of life than I ever would.  They were friendly eyes; even kind, although it didn’t take any imagination to see them turn piercing and stern, once I heard what his occupation had been for the past 30 years.   His cellphone ring can only be described as a very deep croak from a bull frog.  Several years later, I saw him in the local parts store, and his phone rang.  Still the same ring.

He told me his name was Bruce, and he wondered what it would cost to put a sprinkler system in his yard.  We walked over his yard, while I explained how we did things and offered him a bid.

“Ok, when can you get to it?”  I told him a couple of weeks.  “Ah, c’mon.  I need you to start today!  My wife is fixing to throw me out of the house if I don’t get this done!”  I saw an onery twinkle in those eyes;  I told him to plan on two weeks, and if it worked out, we’d be there in a week and a half.

We were back within a week and a half to get started and after the first morning on the job, I asked him how he had spent his life up to this point.  I guessed him to be in his mid-sixties.

He told me he had been a career stone crab fisherman. 

“A What?”

“Yeah, I just moved back here about a year ago.  Born and raised here.  Tried to farm with my Dad.  Didn’t work out, so went to Alaska to try my hand at King Crab fishing.  Didn’t know a thing about it.  Bought a boat and got started.  Spent a couple seasons there and found out the competition was too stiff.  So, I moved my family from Alaska to Florida and started up Stone Crab Fishing.  That worked, and I’ve spent the last thirty years out on the water.”

He went on to detail how he set his route up in a 9 mile run with crab baskets spaced in distance by how fast an average man could hoist up a basket, pull the crabs out of it, use his thumb to pop off the main claw, (they grow a new one back), toss the crabs back into the water, bait the basket and grab the snag pole to snag the next basket buoy they were coming up to, winch it out of the water and replace it with the one just previously cleaned, repaired and baited.  He said it took a strong man and glancing him over I could tell he wasn’t speaking lightly.

“So now I came back here to see how much money I can lose in farming,” he finished up saying. 

It felt rather surreal to be talking to and working for a guy like him out here on the flat plains of Western Kansas.  Felt like I was in the presence of a man among men.

He worked with us all day, every day, helping dig holes and by the second day we knew for sure we liked this guy.  The boys weren’t in their teens yet, still pretty young and were thoroughly enamored by him.

One day, Austin looked up to a plane flying over and shouted out, “Hey Dad!  A V-Tail!”  And sure enough, it was.  Bruce looked up also and concurred, then asked us if we were interested in planes. 

We told him we had a small very basic RC plane that we sometimes flew successfully but most of the time crashed more successfully. 

“Well, I’ve got a plane.  Would you like to go up with me sometime?” Bruce said.

We instantly took him up on his offer.  He told us he’d make the call when it suited him based on weather and work. 

We waited about a month, and finally I called him to see if he was still thinking about taking us up. 

“Oh, yeah, I haven’t forgotten about you, just too busy right now and too many thermals would make for a pretty bumpy ride.”

We told him that was fine, and to call us when he was ready.

Ready for him was longer than I imagined it would be.  In fact, so long I had forgotten about it, and we were getting on into October when my phone rang midmorning on a midday of the week.  I recognized his number and called him by name when I answered, figuring he had sprinkler trouble.

“Hey, looks like a pretty nice day.  Thought I’d see if I could get the Skyhawk fired up and take you all for a ride” 

Three guys, all acting like kids, including the oldest one, ran for the truck, dropping everything right where it was.  We got to the hanger and there was Bruce, smiling at us.  But the plane was still in the shed and nothing doing.  Bruce told us he thought the boys would like to learn how to do a preflight check and so had waited to fire everything up for that reason. 

He painstaking went through each check, and had the boys do the manual part of it, even down to getting a fuel sample from a special valve on the bottom side of the wing, to see if there was any water in the fuel.  Of course, the boys didn’t know what they were looking for, but after he showed them, you could see them light up and swell with importance. 

Now it was time to help Bruce push the Skyhawk out of the hanger, get in and fire her up.  She was light and it was easy pushing with the four of us.  So easy, that we overdid it coming over the lip of the door and the tail flew up a bit and the front wanted to drag for a way.  Once out, we piled in and kicked her over.  But she didn’t start.  And the battery was not going to last long at this rate.  Bruce mentioned she often did this on cold mornings like it was, and that we may have to charge the battery and come back another day.  But, wonderfully, the motor caught once he realized he was running the choke too far out. 

Now it was time to do the run tests while taxiing out to the runway.  Bruce handed the checklist manual back to the boys in the back seat.  I was up front with him in the copilot’s seat.  He told them to start reading the checklist off to him and he would check the things as they read them.  He briefly looked at me and told me I could taxi it out to the runway, explaining I needed to steer with my feet.  I said, yeah.  He said, “Oh that’s right, you have an RC.  You know all this stuff.  While you are taxiing out there, get a feel for the resistance on the throttle by running it in and out a few times.  This one is a bit sticky at a couple of places.” 

I was too dense, or too excited at the moment, to catch on to the portent of his words.

It was only when I had the bird lined up with the center strip that he looked at me, and in that no nonsense voice that I’m sure had captained his crab trawler told me, “When you’re ready, take her off.”

It was then I realized, albeit a little too late, what he meant by getting a feel for the throttle.

But I seized my chance.  Bruce had to help me a bit on steering while taking off because the rudder pedals, which steer the front wheel, were attached to it by springs so there was a lag I didn’t know how to account for. 

In seconds we hit our target speed and I eased back on the yoke, making sure to hold level as I did so.  We climbed steadily for a half minute or so to give enough ground clearance and eased over to the left towards our place.  Bruce had waited for a morning that had a few fluffy clouds hanging here and there.  And he was in his element.  Since he didn’t have the controls to worry about, he was often half turned around in his seat, pointing out things of interest to the boys. 

The next hour was deliriously fun.  After buzzing our place, we cavorted around like kids in the park.  We carved out channels between clouds, gauged the height of the next one and summitted it with ease, or swooped stealthily sideways along the shadowy side of a cloud and then popped around the sunlit side to surprise whatever our imagination had waiting for us.  Or, we buried ourselves in the thick of that white cotton, just for the fun of it.

I started using more and more rudder and aileron as I got used to it, turning tighter and tighter figure eights, until Bruce directed my eyes to the back seat.  I saw one normal colored face and one very green face behind me and knew that it was probably time to ease up a bit. 

We soon headed back towards the home runway. Except I had a hard time finding it, since it all looked so different from the air.  Bruce pointed it out to me, and I lined up to land.  I had it all in the bag, or so I thought, until I was 20 feet off the runway and just skimming along.  I knew what the problem was but was too afraid to do anything about it.  I was riding on a bubble of air generated by flying that close to the ground.  This bubble is often referred to as ground effect.  I was afraid that if I nosed down anymore, I’d pierce that bubble and jam the front end of the plane into the ground.  Bruce chuckled a bit and with one hand eased us down, all the while giving a running commentary on what he was doing.   

Find yourself a stone crab fisherman for a friend. 

Life is interesting up there.