Old Men and Grateful Gifts
Keith Nightingale
The stooped old man moved haltingly along the pier in the setting sun, gripped with many infirmities of age and a very active youth. He was paying the penalty for constantly pushing the envelope of physical capacity in his previous endeavors. He carried a green bucket filled with shrimp he had bought from one of the many trawlers that worked the Gulf. This was a weekly ritual all the locals had come to note for several years. The time was always the same but the color of the shrimp bucket might change. He finally made his obviously painful way to the end of the pier, raised the bucket and placed it on the railing, dipping his hands into the contents.
He patiently waited for something he had seen many years before. Shortly, he was surrounded by wheeling and calling gulls. They seemed to coalesce from all directions as they darted and swooped near the old man in what had become a weekly ritual for both. Just him, his bucket, the gulls and the setting sun. If you were near him, you would hear him say in a very hoarse but clear voice-“Thankyou”-spoken every time he flung a handful of shrimp in the air.
Shortly, the bucket would be empty, the gulls would dissipate and he would stand alone in his thoughts as the sun dappled the blue horizon with shimmering gold and orange streaks. Finally succumbing to the fading light, the old man would slowly turn, bucket in hand and make his painful way along the pier back to whence he had came.
For those that did not know him, he was seen as just another of the dissipated old coots who populated the coast and added color to the population. He was just an old geezer biding his time in God’s waiting room. After all, why does a perfectly sane and sound individual spend time flinging shrimp to seagulls? Surely there were better things for him to do. Hopefully, he had a caretaker.
Yes he did and his caretaker was all he needed. In fact, many people owed their lives to this old man and his caretaker. His caretaker, like that of many combat veterans were the developed qualities that resided within. This was Eddie Rickenbacker and he had about as many tests in personal resolution and leadership under duress that is humanly possible. His shrimp and gull ritual was his way of paying back what he had so gratefully received in a previous time and test of his and his charges endurance.
As a youth, his formal schooling ended in the 7th grade. He went to work to support his widowed mother and began a lifelong affinity for machinery and its nuances. As he learned about the nature of machines, he also learned about himself. He understood that machinery could respond in different ways to different controls and input. He seemed to intuitively understand the relationship between the machine and the man and how to translate machinery’s servitude to him and hence to Service in a larger cause.
As World War One began, Rickenbacker enlisted and was shipped to France as a mechanic. He pressed for pilot qualifications but was rejected due to lack of education. He finally forced the new aviation leadership to recognize his flying skills and was commissioned. By the end of the war, he was the leading ace for the US with 26 confirmed kills, was awarded the Medal of Honor and eight Distinguished Service Crosses!
Returning home and associating with General Motors, he convinced them to buy several small aviation firms which he converted into Easter Airlines. He was elected President and Chairman of the Board-positions he would not relinquish until 1959 and 1963 respectively.
As the US involvement in World War Two began, Rickenbacker offered his services in any capacity to assist the war effort. He was sent on several trips to Russia and the UK to inspect and report on aviation issues.
In late 1942, he was asked to visit General MacArthur in the South Pacific and provided a full B17 and crew for transport. Enroute across the huge expanse of water, his aircraft navigational system proved faulty and they had to ditch at sea. Captain (Ret) Rickenbacker, through force of personality, common sense and the respect of the crew, became the leader in this ordeal.
For 24 days, the rafts, tied together, drifted in the remotest part of the vastest ocean on the planet. Planes searched where he was supposed to have been, not where he was. By the end of the eighth day adrift, the survival rations were depleted. They were able to get water only from the sparse rain showers they encountered. On Day 19, the association between the old man and the sea gulls began.
The men were essentially catatonic from lack of food, dehydration, sunburn and collapsing morale. Captain Eddy, in an attempt to raise their clearly flagging spirits, held an informal devotional service. Then, wearing his service cap for protection, he fell asleep in the stern of his raft-the Captain’s position. He was startled awake by something on his head. It was a gull.
Carefully and with exquisite movements, he curled his hand behind his head and snatched the gull by its feet. The crew dismembered the bird and divided it into equal shares for all-tiny as they were. Rickenbacker directed the entrails be used for bait in the survival kit fishing rigs. Soon fish were being pulled in and the process repeated. The effect on morale was electric and new hope took hold where it previously had been absent. Captain Rickenbacker was clearly in charge and to his men, gratefully so.
Thanks to his wife’s persistence, the Navy continued its search for a week more than standard. On Day 24, the crew was spotted adrift and several Catalina Flying Boats dispatched to recover the crew. Every man interviewed noted that the oldest man in the rafts, Captain Eddy, had been the sole reason they were alive.
With the end of the war, Eddie returned to civilian life, managing the airline he created. In time, he retired and settled in South Florida. There, he began his weekly ritual with the shrimp and the sea gulls. People could see but not understand his actions. He and he alone understood that personal virtues are often dependent upon the actions of others and that they always needed to be rewarded. Shrimp were a small gift to repay for what so much had been granted.