Just Before the Moon, There Were Crop Dusters

Although I grew up during that famous decade when President John F. Kennedy dared the nation to get a man on the moon before 1970, and we watched as the space program grew from an idea to a successful and expansive new industry, we small time truck farmers had a whole another idea of exotic flying machines. What caught our eyes and dared our imaginations were the funky bi-winged air vehicles that flew over the fields, usually unannounced, and dusted our veges with insecticides, fertilizers or something that no one would tell us about. I was way too young to be involved in the dealings between the fly boys and our local farmers, such business arrangements done over beer and shots of whiskey in the local pub. Whenever we saw them come down out of the sky, it was always a surprise, a very welcome surprise.

Us little kids would run to the edge of the field to be dusted and wave and scream at the crazy pilots who would invariable do somersaults and barrel rolls and the scary free falls, billowing out some dust or smoke to make the exercise all the more dramatic. Surely and truly, these guys, all, were totally crazy and died-in-the-wool show-offs. The best thing about them is that they loved what they did. You could hear them hooping and hollering above the loud roar of their engines and the rattling of their wing struts. This was the circus coming to us. How we loved it. Hell, it was better than the circus and it didn’t cost us anything.

Whenever we heard a bi-plane buzzing over head, we’d stop and find it in the clouds and watch it carefully to see where it was heading, hoping it was coming over to our place. Sometimes they would just fly on past and disappear in the distance, but every now and then, they would bank over and come in over our fields, buzzing like an over sized bumblebee, just a couple of feet over the tomatoes or bell peppers that they were going to spray, to announce their arrival. We’d run ’round and tell all the other kids that one of the crop dusters were here, everyone, come out and watch, this was absolutely the coolest thing in the world. This is one thing the city kids never ever got to see, in their tract houses or at their ball games or in their swimming pools. The crop dusters never, ever went there.

As I remember it, the pilots would play it real straight at first, flying in low, straight lines, following the row patterns of the crop, and eject the clouds of whatever it was they were delivering, where, at the end of the rows, they pitch up, make a u-turn in the sky and come back over the field to deliver some more of their payload. Once they had covered the entire field, they might go over to some other nearby field that required a similar treatment and cover it in the same tight, precise manner. However, once the contract was fulfilled, the pilots just cut loose. They had done what they were paid for, now the rest of the day and the whole of the sky was left to their own whims and outrageous wildness.

Their acrobatics were nothing short of amazing and death-defying. They would fly straight up and then fall over backwards and roll over and waggle their wings up and down, teasing us as our eyes popped out of our heads, us flapping our arms like a flock of goony birds. They would spin like a cork screw, do barrel rolls, big and little. They’d buzz the ground so low you were sure they’d tear the wheels off the belly of their planes. They fly at full speed right for the wall of a barn or a stand of trees and at the very last second, they’d pull up and roll over and wig-wag us one more time. The spookiest thing is when they would fly straight up, almost until they were out of sight and then cut the power. There was this screaming silence as the tumbling plane was falling out of control, back to the earth. You would have to hold your breath as you waited for the inevitable to happen: start that stupid engine again. Hurry up, pull yourself out of that dangerous tail spin. Oh my god, maybe he really is . . . 

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