The Best Lime I've ever Tasted

It was another bright, sunny Sudan day at our spray site on the western bank of the Blue Nile in Wad Medani. While finishing up a fertilizer contract in England, I had accepted a job spraying DDT on cotton in Sudan, Africa. How I got there is another story but there I was, living in an old British plantation house with all the other ‘croppers’ who had a seat spraying cotton that summer. Yes, it was a beautiful August morning, in the year 1981. The day usually starts with a fruit and egg breakfast, followed by a discussion with the chief pilot of the days spraying assignments. I was working with Paddy Mckay as usual. Paddy was a spirited little Irishman. He had flown the length and breath of the Sahara and knew all the tricks. We would dogfight between jobs. I got really tired of the sound of his “tika tika tika” in my earphones. He would come out of the sun, out of a cloud, from underneath like Albert Ball, straight down at me occasionally. Sometimes I would get on his tail, but then he would throttle back and throw out all his flaps and I would be in front of him again. "Tika tika tika" We would compete for first place on the strip, hot and dusty as it was, laughing with full throttle on takeoff while the other faded into the dusty Sahara behind. Paddy was a better flier though. At over 100 landings and takeoffs a day on some pretty precarious airstrips, we were all proficient. Cropdusters are among the best light aircraft handlers in the business. Patty was better than that for a number of reasons. It would be hard to describe in detail, but he just was.

Sudanese cotton fields are laid out within irrigation distance straddling the Blue Nile. There are no trees of any height, the telephone and electric grid setup by the British were in the advanced stages of disrepair and had fallen down long ago. In short there were few obstructions on the 90-acre fields in which the cotton was planted. Rather than spray one field at a time, we found it faster to dip into one field after another in a circular pattern, presumably ending up back at the strip with an empty hopper to land for a refill of insecticide. Naturally, we kept a weather eye on each other, hoping to make it back to the strip first, thereby making the other wait and laughing out loud during the entire takeoff run as the other sweats in his 120 degree cockpit whilst choking down propwash in tiny bits of the Sahara. So it was first to the loading bay that won this game of one-upmanship we played with each other. The stakes were high: Pride.

During one of these bouts Patty and I found ourselves returning at exactly the same time but on opposite ends of the strip. Patty was on the approach end while I was on the tank loader end. I dove for a downwind landing reasoning that the strip was long enough and that if I landed short and turned around quickly enough I would be between Patty and the loading dock in case he tried to pull any of his fancy flying tricks. I landed first alright and as short as I could. Stick forward with throttle and left brake got the tail off the ground and spun the aircraft around. I saw Patty close on final so I gunned the throttle to close the distance between my aircraft and the dock as quickly as possible. Not good enough. I don’t know where he found the room but the next thing I knew his aircraft started filling up the top of my windscreen. He plopped it down right in front of me, rolling it up and swinging it around in front of the dock. He took what I thought to be quite a chance, but the sight of him laughing, he was so loud I could practically hear him over the engines, said that it had never crossed his mind. I take comfort in telling myself that there are some things I never do and am still here to tell the tale, but it hurts to know that there are some things Patty will always do and is also here to tell the tale. Yes, he was better than me at this game, for sure.

So it is no wonder that what I experienced later that afternoon I would never have wanted Patty to find out. And he didn’t. No body did, not even the resident mechanics and line boys, for surely they would have told Patty and all the other pilots and I would have never heard the last of it. They didn’t though and I left the Sudan that year with my soul intact.

We had a well-oiled and truly motley crew that year in Wad Medani, Sudanese and East Indian line boys who would do anything for a buck. The mechanic was a Finn named Heike whom I once saw pick up the tail end of a Thrush 600 with one hand. In his off hours he read book after book illustrated with dead Russians. “Vee don’t like Russians Chuck”, he once told me when I inquired. Then there was the chief pilot, PerAne, who brought his wife. There was two blond twins from Sweden, whose memory is forever defined in a downtown houseoftherisingsun contrasted side by side with two embarrassed, young black girls. There were two wild Kiwis who were used to airstrips on the sides of mountains. Then Angus, the appropriately named Scot who moved to Sweden because “it’s the only place where the lassies get their knickers off quicker than Scotland Mate..” There was the Siek from India who flew with his headset wrapped around his headdress, and me who was “that crazy Yank who flew the Sahara alone”. Actually I followed the Nile River for the most part from Cairo to Wad Medani, so I don’t consider myself that crazy. Ok a little crazy but not die of thirst drinking camel weewee in the middle of the stinking desert crazy. Not that crazy.

On about my third load after lunch I had thought I heard a change in my engine. Crop dusting is flying with the head out of the cockpit. Everything is by feel with an occasional glance at the oil pressure gauge, but with 10 hours and a hundred power changes a day the ear becomes one with the aircraft environment. That day something changed. I couldn’t determine what it was but the engine sounded different. About the third takeoff I noticed a small oil leak. Not so much as to cause a serious loss of fluid but clearly, the 235 horses on my C model Pawnee were talking to me. I informed the load supervisor that I was heading back to base to have Heike look at it. I flew the 10 miles to the gravel strip, lined up on final. There was no one around. I hoped Heike was working in the hangar. I rolled up to one of the parking areas and pulled the mixtures to lean. The prop wound to a stop and I switched off the mags, pulled of my helmet and hopped out on to the wing. Heike was working on the wing of a Turbo Thrush just inside the hangar. I walked the 100 or so feet to greet him. “Hey Heike. My engine has developed a tic and I would like you to look at it”. “Nuting wrong wit dat engine Chuck”. He replied. I heard you land and roll up. How is your oil pressure, any fluctuations?” “No, nothing like that. The needle’s steady” “Ok vell gut to go den. I look at it closer tonight”
“OK. See you tonight Heike”.

I walked back out to the aircraft noting that it was exactly as I had left it. Not a soul around. “Hmm, wonder where the line boys are? Heike must have them off running errands, I thought.”In the next few moments I would wish that he had them off running errands. “No sense doing a walkaround “ I thought. No one around and I had only been gone for 5 minutes. Mixtures rich, mags on, on start the oil pressure came right up to 80lbs. I taxied to the strip, did a mag check, set the trim to neutral and applied full power. On roll out the tail didn’t want to seem to come up. I had plenty of runway so continuing the takeoff run I eased her back a little and the gravel runway fell away behind me. I was holding full forward stick and still climbing out. A large serving of forward trim eased the pressure on my palm. Something was certainly off kilter here. Full forward trim meant the ship was tail heavy. I turned so that the aircrafts shadow was visible from the cockpit side window. I tied my tail to that shadow every night. That steel weight we tied our tails to every night was now a shadow dangling from its chain off of my tail. “Damn those overly helpful invisible line boys.” I thought. Surely one of them ran out and tied my tail down as I was walking toward the hangar. If I turned around and landed either Heike or the line boys would spot me and my dangling embarrassment for sure. My best bet was to land at the strip and hide it. I saw Patty off in the distance winging his way through his sequential pattern of fields. It looked as though I would be able to reach the strip before he arrived. I lined up on final and made a quick landing, hoping that the iron plate dragging behind behaved itself and didn’t bounce up and sucker punch my fuselage. “Lucky Me”, I thought as I climbed out of the cockpit and rushed back to the tail to see the steel plate lieing impotently at the end of its chain. A quick scan of the horizon did not show Patty any where in sight. I unhooked the chain and hid it behind the loading tank; the Sudanese loading supervisor gaping at all of this with a questioning look on his face. “Surprise for Captain Patty”, I said. “Please don’t spoil his surprise by saying anything about this”. “Yes Captain Chuck. We will surprise him good!”, he said smiling.

“Ok great, now to load up” (and act normal). The next trick will be to get it loaded and back to the strip at days end without any one the wiser. .. We had a great afternoon, Patty and I. The wind was slightly out of the East, just enough to encourage a good drift of the chemical on to the crop and out of our way on the next spray run. Ordinarily, on still days I snap my cockpit vent closed during the run then pop it back open for the turn. Yes, that afternoon went well. The sun came to rest on the horizon and off in the distance I began to see aircraft heading back to the strip. I wanted to be last..the very last. I planned on loading the steel weight into the cockpit and standing it on edge on the floor beside me. I fiddle farted around, wasting as much time as I could without raising suspicion and finally saw Patty heading for the home strip. I landed and loaded the steel up onto the wing and then into the cockpit. It was a good thing I was young and in halfway decent shape. The weight of that metal threatened to push through the thin sheet metal floor of the aircraft. It had to weigh over 100 lbs. Sun getting orange in the distance, I took off and headed back. By the time I had landed all of the pilots and mechs were on their way back to the house. I knew they wouldn’t wait if I was late enough. If you dallied at the field or flew just one more load no one was going to miss their shower for you. As I surveyed my approach to my parking space, the Indian line boy ran out and began guiding me in. As if I needed guiding in. The line boys were certainly overly helpful at times. Today was one of them. As soon as the prop stopped he ran over and opened the cowling for engine cooling. Before he left that evening he would tie the aircraft down, check the oil, clean the cockpit and check the tire air pressure. After he opened the cowling he ducked his head into the engine compartment. I reached in and grabbed the steel with all my might. I knew he was probably looking at the engine oil leak and would not be paying much attention in my direction. I lifted the steel to my chest and heaved it toward the tail as hard as what little strength I had left in me would permit. It landed with a thud. Out came his head and he looked up at me . “What was that?” “What was what? “ I replied. “That noise like a cow falling down” said he. “Noise? I didn’t hear any noise like a cow falling down” He looked around curiously then looked up again with an exasperated look on his face. “I am telling you and telling you and telling you I heard a noise like a cow falling down and there is no cow around here to fall down. I am not crazy, but I am telling you that I heard a noise like a cow falling down”.
“ Well, I’ve never heard a cow falling down so I don’t know what it sounds like”.
“ In India we have lots of cows and when one dies sometimes it falls down. That’s what it sounds like Captain.”
I climbed down from the wing and began the lone walk home. The sun was already set and the lime trees that the British had planted years and years ago were heavy with fruit. I plucked one and turned around to see the line boy tying the aircraft down. He would never know why he heard a cow fall down in Wad Medani on the western side of the Blue Nile in Sudan Africa where there were no cows around--and neither would Patty.

Patty could come out of the sun or the clouds at me with his rat-tat-tat in my headphones. He could do Immelmans and his infernal loops to get on my tail, he could land over me to a short roll up to the loading dock, but he would never know about the cow falling down. Nothing is sweeter than winning the final battle. I chuckled at the thought as I sucked on the hole I had punched in the lime. Yes. In so many ways that lime tasted of victory, success, with a little tang of luck. Yes it was a good day in the Sudan on August 2nd of 1981.