It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant, orange ball sliding into the blue ocean.
Ed strolls along the beach to his favorite pier, Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he has the world – devoid of fear and death – to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers along the beach. Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with this thoughts…and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, it if one were to listen closely, you could hear him quietly say, “Thank you. Thank you.”
In a few short minutes, the bucket is empty, but Ed doesn’t leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along the pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they too, fly away. And old Ed quietly makes his way down the end of the beach and on home.
An onlooker may look with critical eye at what seems odd or different behavior. Perhaps though, an observer may show love and compassion to a stranger that may seem like a quirky old man. Still others may brush it off with the thought that old folks often do strange things that only they may understand.
If one were sitting there on the pier with his fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like just another old codger lost in his own weird world with a bucketfull of shrim feeding the seagulls. Most of them would probably write old Ed off, down there in Florida.
That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better – this quirky old man.
His full name is Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a WWI pilot – America’s first ace. He also flew missions with combat pilots in WWII