It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the
sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the
blue ocean.
Old Ed came strolling 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 almost has the
world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers on the beach.
Standing out on the end of the pier, Ed is alone with his
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, if you listen closely,
you can hear him say with a smile, ‘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, fly away. And old Ed quietly
makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the
water, Ed might seem like ‘a funny old duck,’ as my dad used to
say. Or, onlookers, he’s just another old codger, lost in his own
weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very
empty. They can seem altogether unimportant, maybe even a
lot of nonsense. Old folks often do strange things, at least in
the eyes of Boomers and Busters.
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.
His full name: Eddie Rickenbac
Sometimes It’s called Trial and Error! I met a Medal of Honor winner once, over beer’s at an NCO Club! I asked him how he *ucked up bad enough,that he had to get one of those to get out of it! He laughed, bought me a beer and explained that it was his Lieutenants fault!