[Rhodes22-list] A BUCKET OF SHRIMP GREAT STORY AND TRUE

[Caesar Paul]

Thanks Rummy.
For a great story that provokes reflection, and personal expressions of gratitude.
Caesar

--- On Sat, 3/28/09, R22RumRunner at aol.com <R22RumRunner at aol.com> wrote:


From: R22RumRunner at aol.com <R22RumRunner at aol.com>
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] A BUCKET OF SHRIMP GREAT STORY AND TRUE
To: rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org
Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009, 6:22 AM













This came to me today from A friends father, now a retired Naval  chaplain in 
Pensacola, FL..

Rummy




Many sailors know this story. I once told it in a sermon  on CURRITUCK AV7. 
I'm not certain I ever told it again.  A number of  years earlier, during the 
Korean War, Eastern Air Lines returned a number  of what the Navy called R5Ds, 
to the US Navy to reclaim them for cargo  planes to support the war effort. As 
a young AT2(Aviation Electronics  Technition second class) I did not know why 
this was so, but was told  that Eastern had leased them from the Navy and 
were now returning  them to be used in the war effort. I suspect the truth may 
have been a bit  different from that, but it was a good story; it broke my heart 
to take  those wonderful radios out of those beautiful passenger planes and 
install  some haze grey boxes to take their places. I was in flight test at O & 
R at NAS Corpus Christi Texas and flew in most of those planes during  
flight test after retrograding them. Sometimes when my inspection was done  I would 
sit there in the radioman's chair and imagine Eddie Rickenbacker telling me 
that story  over and over about those days in the raft starving to death when 
the  seagull saved their lives. I have always had a soft spot in my heart for  
seagulls. I am grateful for Nate and Sandra Dishman sharing it with me. It  
brings back lots of good memories of flight test, R5Ds, and the greatest  
seaplane tender ever. Now I have shared it again with a number of good  friends. 
Wayne























A  BUCKET OF SHRIMP GREAT STORY AND  TRUE  







         

         


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.  Invariably, one of the  gulls lands on his sea-bleached, 
weather-beaten  hat - an old military hat he's been wearing for  years. 

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 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, 'a guy 
that's a sandwich  shy of a picnic,' as my kids might say.    To 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  Rickenbacker.  He was a famous hero back in  World War 
II.  On one of his flying  missions across the Pacific, he and his  
seven-member crew went down.  Miraculously,  all of the men survived, crawled out of 
their  plane, and climbed into a life  raft. 

Captain Rickenbacker and his  crew floated for days on the rough waters of 
the  Pacific.  They fought the sun.  They  fought sharks.  Most of all, they 
fought  hunger.  By the eighth day their rations  ran out. No food.  No water.  
They  were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew  where they were. 

They needed  a miracle.  That afternoon they had a  simple devotional service 
and prayed for a  miracle.  They tried to nap.  Eddie  leaned back and pulled 
his military cap over his  nose.  Time dragged.  All he could  hear was the 
slap of the waves against the  raft. 

Suddenly, Eddie felt  something land on the top of his cap.  It  was a 
seagull! 

Old Ed would  later describe how he sat perfectly still,  planning his next 
move.  With a flash of  his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed  to 
grab it and wring its neck.  He tore the  feathers off, and he and his starving 
crew made  a meal - a very slight meal for eight men - of  it.  Then they used 
the intestines for  bait.  With it, they caught fish, which  gave them food 
and more bait......and the cycle  continued.  With that simple survival  
technique, they were able to endure the rigor of  the sea until they were found and 
rescued (after  24 days at sea...).   

Eddie  Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that  ordeal, but he never forgot 
the sacrifice of  that first lifesaving seagull.  And he  never stopped 
saying, 'Thank you.'  That's  why almost every Friday night he would walk to  the 
end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp  and a heart full of  gratitude. 

Reference: (Max  Lucado, In The Eye of the Storm, pp.221,  225-226)

PS:  Eddie was  also an Ace in WW I and started Eastern  Airlines. 












































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