Howdy. Its been a while, huh. Good to see you. It seems that stormy Monday mornings were made for blogging. I'm just back to work following a fantastic July 4th weekend. On Friday I flew with Bert, who is one of my enthusiastic and talented students. We were doing touch-and-go's and he was flying the plane so well through the first few legs of the pattern that we kinda got to talking. Our conversation would reach a hiatus just before we were abeam the numbers on downwind and would start where it left off as we turned cross wind after takeoff. It was a natural and almost imperceptible transition, though; talking about fishing on downwind and about pitch, power, trim, and flare, on approach and landing. I'm not sure how the topic of fishing came up. He owns some land in southeastern Kansas on which lies a pond or two that are stocked with fish.
"My brother caught a hundred fish there the other day," he told me.
"That's awesome! First notch of flaps, trim for 85 knots," I replied
"Cessna 4 Papa Delta, you're number two to follow the Maule on about a one mile final," the tower called. He sounded really bored.
"Number two and looking for the traffic," we answered, but Bert looked confused.
"I see the plane on final, but where was the other one?"
"What other one?"
"Well, he's number one, but where's number two?"
"We're number two."
"Who's number three?"
"There is no number three."
"Why did he tell us to follow them all, then?"
"The Maule," I laughed. "Not them all! Maule is a type of airplane!"
He laughed. There was about a four knot right crosswind on runway 18. He was doing a great job on the slip right up to the flare, at which point he would level the wings and drift to the left during touchdown. Despite my demonstration and encouragement that, "It is OK to touch down on only the upwind main wheel first!" I could tell he still felt uncomfortable touching down in a bank. It got better and better, however, as the lesson progressed. That sensation must feel really unnatural to the uninitiated as I've had other students who have displayed apprehension at landing in the slip.
I'd planned on going to the airshow on saturday, but the weather was crummy; thousand foot ceilings and low visibility. Bert had told me that any time I wanted to go fishing on his land to give him a call, so I did just that. He gave me directions and asked me to keep track of how many fish we caught and which bait they were taking. He also asked me to check on his barn. So with that, Kevin came over, we packed up the car and headed south. We drove about an hour and turned off the highway and immediately the road turned to gravel. The road was narrow and winding and I was enjoying the slight negative G forces as we crested the small swells that pass for hills in Kansas. It reminded me of a Stephen King short story where a couple tries to take a short cut and the road gets too narrow and filled with ruts to turn around so they press forward and end up in rock and roll Hell. By outside appearances it was a happy little pastel American town out of the fifties, but it was inhabited by demonic versions of Joplin, Hendrix, Presley, etc. (I think the devil in that story was a sailboat salesman...) I wouldn't have been too surprised if we had met a similar fate, but instead we found Bert's barn and pond and it was perfectly picturesque. Big round bails of hay served as perches for songbirds in the adjacent field, and just to the east lived a forest that begged exploration. My spirit rejoiced to be in a place far enough from the city that all I could hear were the birds singing and the wind blowing through the trees. To beat it all, I caught a fish in the first five minutes or so and kept catching them here and there throughout the afternoon. I caught about ten fish in all, more than my previous lifetime total. About half of them were blue gill or crappie, and the others were small bass. What a hoot! I took a break for a little while and went back into the woods just to see what was there. To my pleasure, I found a gurgling little creek and quite a few wild blackberries. I couldn't resist trying a few of the ripe ones. God, they were good. There were only a few ripe ones though. In a couple weeks when the rest ripen up, a person could go down there and fill a bucket. Tempting. Kevin wasn't as lucky with the fish. He was setting his sights higher as far as the size of fish he wanted to catch, so his lures were a bit large for the little crappie and bass that seemed to be biting on my rooster tail spinners. Kevin finally caught a fish around 6:30 in the evening, so we thought we'd call it a day. We went to Fort Scott in search of a homestyle meal, and found it at the Cowboy Kitchen. The Cowboy Kitchen was a horrendousley tacky place with a big TV in the corner that played country music videos. The country fried steak hit the spot though.
I got home and it was time to clean the fish (I had only kept one). This was a momentous occasion since I'd never attempted to slaughter an animal before. I'm not all about the "gotta kill stuff and eat it to be a man" mentality, but there was something sort of fulfilling about the whole idea of eating this fish that I had caught. I was happy to see that no one else was home to witness the disembowelment of the innocent. I found a cutting board and a sharpish looking knife and tried my best to do as kevin had said.
"Cut from head to tail on top and on bottom and then cut around the head," he had instructed.
It sounded so surgical, but there was nothing surgical about what was about to happen. I felt like Rick Moranis chopping up Steve Marten in "Little Shop of Horrors." If there had been enough blood, it would have been spraying about. I did end up finding a few reasonable sized pieces of meat, but not enough to have it make sense to save it for a meal. So I resolved to cook it right then and there. I'd never cooked fresh fish either. I crumbled up Light Pringles in a bowl with onion salt and pepper and tossed in the few chunks of meat I'd managed to scrape off of Steve. The pringles didn't seem to want to stick to the fish, but a few crumbs did and I figured that qualified as breading. (I've since learned about the "coat the fish in egg" trick) Once the oil was heated up in the skillet, I tossed in the chunks and they made a delightful sizzle. I was very proud of that sizzle. It was the best sizzle I'd ever heard.
Once it was done, I ate it and it was actually not bad. I'm thinking of writing a cookbook full of recipes and other applications for pringles. I'm sure wonderful things could be done with the flavored varieties. I'm betting sour creme and onion would add a pleasing zip to fried bass or just think what fried chicken would taste like if breaded in pizza flavored pringles. I know, I know, I'm a genius.
Sunday cleared up and I found myself at the last day of the airshow with my good friends. Kevin and I were both eaten up with chiggers from our fishing trip. It was all Kevin could talk about. His ankles were practically covered in blistery bumps and mine were almost as bad (still are). Wes had the good sense to park in a parking garage overlooking the airport. We watched the whole show from that shaded vantage point. It was perfect. Highlights were the Thunderbirds and the Army skydiving team. Both were awe inspiring.
Last night, we went out to the mall for the local fireworks display, which rocked. Ashley had come to dinner with my mom and brother and I. Then we met up with Kevin after dinner and we caught up with Ashley's folks at the show. By happenstance, it was the first meeting of Ashley's parents and my mom. Mom saw this as good reason to break out the "Adam didn't like to wear underwear as a kid," and "I don't like children," and (my personal favorite) "I had a dead cat in my garage all winter one year," stories. ahhh. It actually seemed to go pretty well. It was one of those evenings that you savor as ideal for the weather and the atmosphere and all the people you care about and even mom's uninhibited story telling. I laughed harder than I have in quite some time. So what if the stories are a bit odd. I'm grateful for the Maule.
