Hit’s A Good One

That Mississippi Delta day was ideal for a crawfish cook, and my boyhood best friend and mentor, Jaybird, could boil them to perfection. When my friends and I visited him, the old black man said just what we wanted to hear: “Dat rain last night is just what dis cotton crop needed. Hit’s too wet to work, so let’s cook some crawdads and enjoy a little country-style cuttin’ up.” Our favorite place to undertake excursions into crustacean culinary conviviality was at Skeet’s crop-dusting strip, known locally as Redneck International.

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We men set up cooking equipment, while the women arranged tables, chairs, and coolers filled with soda pops and adult beverages. I kept a Piper Cub at Skeet’s strip. Providence was peering over Mr. Piper’s shoulder when he designed this tandem-seat trainer. No aircraft is more fun to fly. The Cub was nicknamed “Freddie” in memory of my flight instructor, Fred Frazier, a legendary crop duster who trained military pilots during World War II. Jaybird’s cooking skills attracted eaters from all over, and while he prepared the feast, I took kids for plane rides in the Cub. Every pickup had a few shotguns in its rear window rack, and one of my hunting buddies came up with the idea of using empty cans for target practice, as they floated down from the heavens. After strapping a can-filled bucket in Freddie’s front seat, I climbed several hundred feet and dumped them above the waiting can killers.

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Since Cubs are piloted from the rear seat and the doors can remain open in flight, dumping the bucket was easy. When the cans floated within range of my armed amigos, they would blaze away, and I’d land to refill the bucket. Mr. Fred wore a huge ring that he rapped on students’ heads if they made dumb mistakes, one of which was failing to apply carburetor heat to avoid fuel starvation when landing. That day, he would have given my noggin a painful rap. Turning toward the strip to land and get more cans, I forgot to apply carburetor heat. Two hundred feet above the runway, the engine died. My only hope was that altitude — a pilot’s best friend — wouldn’t desert me before I reached the end of the strip — precisely where the party was in progress. Its engine soundless and propeller motionless, the airplane swooped toward the revelers, causing them to flee in panic, like prairie dogs beset upon by a hungry hawk. The Cub’s wheels banged the ground, after missing by inches the tables and cooking pot. Freddie jack-rabbited skyward, fluttered a few yards down the strip, flopped to the ground, ping-ponged a few hops, and lurched to a stop, all in one piece. I apologized to everyone for my carelessness and for the catastrophe it almost created. Realizing how embarrassed I was, Jaybird’s comment made us all laugh and return to the merriment: “Jes’ remember what Mr. Fred always said: ‘Anytime you kin walk away fum a landing, hit’s a good one.’”

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