November 2014-
Eddie taught me that it doesn’t take a lot to be happy, even though you land a little left of centerline.
I have a box in my garage filled with odds and ends collected over a lifetime of flying, a collection so bold as to humble any hoarder. There are yellowed handout sheets my first instructor gave me to learn the components of the traffic pattern, books that surely just missed Oprah’s book club (“Best Flying Vacations in Nova Scotia”), and of course, my very first little red jug, which met an untimely death after the cockpit heater burned a hole in it and caused a nasty, nasty mess. Everything that’s ever meant anything to me and aviation is mired in that messy box.
When I was a young pup of a pilot, for reasons to this day I do not understand, I convinced a man at the FBO that I should be the one who flew his charter aircraft, which consisted of an aging Cessna 206 and brand-new Piper Malibu. Some rich person had recently purchased the Malibu and put it on leaseback on our ramp.
That owner was very particular about when and how the aircraft was operated so we rarely got to fly it. Instead my boss would send his Stationair out on any kind of mission that would make money, operating somewhere between Parts 91½ and Part 135. I picked up boxes, flew sacks of potatoes—and occasionally, a real live passenger.
The airfield we used was at one time a military training strip for the Big War. There were lots of buildings falling to ruin, but somehow a hut with a row of showers and a bathroom was still operational.
In the afternoons when I’d return from a critical flight delivering toilet bowl gaskets or the like, I’d always hit the showers. With a fresh change of clothes waiting in my locker, it made it easy to get spruced up before the required postflight drinking.
One day I came into the shower only to find a man I’d never seen before, naked except for a blue baseball cap, applying his black body with handfuls of pure white baby powder. I turned on another shower a few feet away from him and immediately he began cursing at me under his breath: “Godmumblemumble son-of-mumblemumble…”.
I looked at him and apologized, thinking I’d perhaps splashed him, but he seemed too angry to even talk to me.
A few days later I learned from the A&P that the man’s name was Eddie. He’d been using those showers as long as anyone could remember, arriving in the late spring each year and gone before the first snow. He was homeless, a drifter, but perennially recognizable because of the blue cap he wore. For years in the warm summer months, he’d been making his home behind a dilapidated hangar.
Some of the stories claimed Eddie rode the country on freight cars, the last of the hobos. Others made him into an outlaw. And one story claimed he was running from the pressures of the huge fortunes he’d made in the textile industry. The one thing upon which everyone agreed was that Eddie was absolutely, positively crazy.
Over those summer months, Eddie and I shared the showers. Though I tried valiantly to get him to speak, the best I ever got was “Godmumblemumble son-of-mumblemumble.”
Sometimes I’d come to work early and find Eddie standing on our ramp, ostensibly giving our meager collection of aircraft the once-over. He would run his finger slowly over a leading edge, stopping to inspect the occasional june bug which had met its maker on the wing of a PA-38. And as a matter of routine, he would check the knots that held each plane in place.
No one paid much attention to Eddie’s wanderings because he’d been coming here for years, apparently—and, well, we all knew he was harmless.
One day I got news that I’d been waiting for all summer: I was going to get to fly the Malibu! It was already raining, a hard IFR day, but I was giddy with excitement. I had just enough time for a quick preflight in preparation for a short hop up the valley to pick up a passel of attorneys who’d decided to travel to the next county via air.
Apparently there were important documents that needed filing, and what better way to make an appearance in enemy territory than to arrive by chartered aircraft?
I quickly checked the oil, and found the big Continental to be several quarts low. Given the revenue stream at our FBO and the comparative high cost of a quart of aviation oil, this was not an uncommon experience with our fleet. I set the dipstick on a nearby chock and left the oil hatch door open, yelling to one of our line guys to pretty please add two quarts. I had to race back inside and update my weather.
Armed with my notes from my Flight Service briefing, I grabbed my clipboard and raced back outside, hopping over the puddles of standing water betwixt me and my mighty steed. Once inside the Malibu, I shook the rain off and took a look at the beautiful instrument panel.
Man, I was flying the Malibu! I stuck the key in the ignition, got out the checklist and quickly prepared for an engine start, pausing only briefly to wipe a clear spot on a foggy window. But no sooner did I create that spot when Eddie’s face slid right up in front of me. Scared me to death!
I looked at Eddie, and he looked back at me. Then he took his bony finger and pointed to the oil hatch. It was still open, and the dipstick still sitting on the chock, right where I’d left it. By the time I looked back, Eddie was gone.
That startling vision of Eddie played in my head the rest of the day. The line crew hadn’t made it over to get me any oil yet, and if it wasn’t for Eddie, I would surely have taken off without the dipstick. I kept having this fantasy of me flying along, IMC, with a boatload of attorneys in the back asking me what that long snaking stream of oil was running up over the windshield and splatting on the empennage.
When I finally brought the airplane back that night, I approached Eddie to try and thank him for saving my neck. He looked at me and said, “godmumblemumble son-of-mumblemumble…” and walked away.
Several times when I’d run across Eddie in the shower, I would attempt small talk. No dice. One day, in a final act of desperation, while Eddie was standing in the bathroom brushing his teeth, I turned to him and said, “Hey, Eddie, when you’re done, you mind if I use your toothbrush?”
To my surprise, he turned and looked directly at me. After a long and indignant pause, he finally said, “You are CRAZY!”
I grinned from ear to ear. Eddie had finally spoken to me!
Silly as it sounds, there was something about that moment that bonded me with Eddie, at least in my mind. Maybe we were both crazy. I flew little airplanes—which most everyone thoughts was nuts—and he happily roamed the countryside at will, had no mortgage, no credit card debt, never sat in rush hour traffic and couldn’t care less about the rise and fall of the Dow.
A big snow came early that year, surprising even the old timers with its arrival and severity. While I was cursing the snow—godmumblemumble son-of-mumblemumble—now he had me doing it—and scraping if off the 206’s windshield with a credit card, the A&P stopped his truck next to me.
They’d found Eddie this morning frozen to death behind the old hangar where he camped. This early winter storm had caught all of us off-guard. I went back around the old hangar that Eddie called home. Most of his stuff had already been hurled into the dumpster. But hanging from a fence pole, I saw Eddie’s blue cap.
The hangar where Eddie lived has long since been torn down, but that doesn’t keep his memory from floating across my mind from time to time. Eddie taught me that it doesn’t take a lot to be happy, even though you land a little left of centerline. That’s a valuable lesson to learn.
And I guess he was right: I am a little crazy because I still fly those little airplanes. Here in front of me was a lifetime collection of aviation odds and ends representing decades of General Aviation fun, now remanded to a dusty old box in the corner of my garage.
Despite the almost endless memories, it turns out to be fairly easy to slip most of it into a waiting trash can. But there’s one thing I’m not throwing away.
Yes, sir. I’ll keep Eddie’s cap.
Screenwriter, philanthropist and good guy Lyn Freeman has been writing aviation articles since before John Glenn joined the Marines. He is the former editor of Plane & Pilot magazine, founder and current chairperson of the Build-a-Plane organization, a master scuba diver, a championship table tennis player and an all-around Renaissance man. Send questions or comments to editor@piperflyer.org.
