Read Online Flight of Passage: A True Story by Rinker Buck - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rinker Buck
Ads: Link
on the plane. And I was happy too.
CHAPTER 3
The winter that we worked on the Cub was snowy and cold. Arctic blasts from Canada blew down every couple of weeks, loading the barn corners with powdery drifts and the roof gutters with ice. The frozen landscape outside seemed to establish the need for four walls against the world and to lock us inside with the plane. Over the long Christmas recess from school, Kern and I worked on the Cub for ten straight days. After that, we spent nearly every school night and every weekend out in the barn with the plane.
Kern considered the blizzards a godsend. From the moment he came up with the idea for a coast-to-coast flight, his biggest worry was money. My father offered us $500 toward rebuilding the plane, but we knew that this was money he probably couldn’t spare, and Kern felt that this really wouldn’t be “our plane,” “our trip,” if most of the funds came from my father. But several times during the storms classes were canceled up at school, and our Willys was equipped with a snow plow and hitch. Kern decided that we should go into the snow-plowing business together to raise our “Cub money.”
Kern approached our new trade like a seasoned Junior Achiever. On our first day, as we rumbled out of the drive in the middle of a raging snowstorm, he bubbled over with various ideas about the brilliant “sales techniques” and “pricing strategies” we could try out on our customers. Mostly, however, these were a crock of shit. Our sole sales technique, as it developed, was that I stepped out into the biting wind to shovel and sweep the walk whenever someone agreed to let us plow their place—the “competition wouldn’t think of this,” Kern said—while he cleared the drive inside the warm cab of the Jeep, listening to Cousin Brucie on WABC.
As a businessman, Kern completely fell apart when it came to customer relations. He was too shy to knock on someone’s door to solicit business or collect money. That became my job too. At first I was annoyed about this, and it revived all of my worries about Kern. But over the winter I gradually began to appreciate that Kern and I worked quite well together, a realization so shocking to me I treated it as a major revelation about human character. Vastly different personalities could actually complement each other, backing and filling over their respective deficiencies. This was stunning information, a breakthrough for me. Not despite our differences, but because of them, we were merging into a winning pair, the “team” my brother so desired.
Everyone appreciated the earnest, conscientious way Kern approached a drive. The plowing job had to be perfect. If he couldn’t angle the plow close enough to a garage to clear every last inch of powder around the doors, he would send me over to shovel it all out by hand. The flagstone walks had to be immaculately swept. A lot of our customers were these rich old Protestant ladies who lived in the big houses up along Silver Lake. Ever since the Kennedys came along, they had all begun entertaining these ridiculous notions about the wonderful, virtuous things that happened in large Irish-Catholic families like ours. When I stepped up to the door to collect, I would wait for old Mrs. Babcock or Mrs. Hart to start gushing about the “super” job we had done on her drive, and then I would yes-ma’am and no-ma’am her to death before I went in for the kill, charging double and sometimes even triple what Kern told me to ask. Until he got used to it, Kern was indignant every time I came back to the Jeep with the money.
“Rink, you screwed that old lady! Forty bucks. Jeez. I told you to charge $20. You screwed her.”
“Ah fuck it Kern. That old bag is rolling in it. I should have charged her $50.”
So the snow season went. In January, there were a couple of big blows that netted us $150 a day, and by the end of the month we’d already raised $600. We made more than enough with the
CHAPTER 3
The winter that we worked on the Cub was snowy and cold. Arctic blasts from Canada blew down every couple of weeks, loading the barn corners with powdery drifts and the roof gutters with ice. The frozen landscape outside seemed to establish the need for four walls against the world and to lock us inside with the plane. Over the long Christmas recess from school, Kern and I worked on the Cub for ten straight days. After that, we spent nearly every school night and every weekend out in the barn with the plane.
Kern considered the blizzards a godsend. From the moment he came up with the idea for a coast-to-coast flight, his biggest worry was money. My father offered us $500 toward rebuilding the plane, but we knew that this was money he probably couldn’t spare, and Kern felt that this really wouldn’t be “our plane,” “our trip,” if most of the funds came from my father. But several times during the storms classes were canceled up at school, and our Willys was equipped with a snow plow and hitch. Kern decided that we should go into the snow-plowing business together to raise our “Cub money.”
Kern approached our new trade like a seasoned Junior Achiever. On our first day, as we rumbled out of the drive in the middle of a raging snowstorm, he bubbled over with various ideas about the brilliant “sales techniques” and “pricing strategies” we could try out on our customers. Mostly, however, these were a crock of shit. Our sole sales technique, as it developed, was that I stepped out into the biting wind to shovel and sweep the walk whenever someone agreed to let us plow their place—the “competition wouldn’t think of this,” Kern said—while he cleared the drive inside the warm cab of the Jeep, listening to Cousin Brucie on WABC.
As a businessman, Kern completely fell apart when it came to customer relations. He was too shy to knock on someone’s door to solicit business or collect money. That became my job too. At first I was annoyed about this, and it revived all of my worries about Kern. But over the winter I gradually began to appreciate that Kern and I worked quite well together, a realization so shocking to me I treated it as a major revelation about human character. Vastly different personalities could actually complement each other, backing and filling over their respective deficiencies. This was stunning information, a breakthrough for me. Not despite our differences, but because of them, we were merging into a winning pair, the “team” my brother so desired.
Everyone appreciated the earnest, conscientious way Kern approached a drive. The plowing job had to be perfect. If he couldn’t angle the plow close enough to a garage to clear every last inch of powder around the doors, he would send me over to shovel it all out by hand. The flagstone walks had to be immaculately swept. A lot of our customers were these rich old Protestant ladies who lived in the big houses up along Silver Lake. Ever since the Kennedys came along, they had all begun entertaining these ridiculous notions about the wonderful, virtuous things that happened in large Irish-Catholic families like ours. When I stepped up to the door to collect, I would wait for old Mrs. Babcock or Mrs. Hart to start gushing about the “super” job we had done on her drive, and then I would yes-ma’am and no-ma’am her to death before I went in for the kill, charging double and sometimes even triple what Kern told me to ask. Until he got used to it, Kern was indignant every time I came back to the Jeep with the money.
“Rink, you screwed that old lady! Forty bucks. Jeez. I told you to charge $20. You screwed her.”
“Ah fuck it Kern. That old bag is rolling in it. I should have charged her $50.”
So the snow season went. In January, there were a couple of big blows that netted us $150 a day, and by the end of the month we’d already raised $600. We made more than enough with the
Similar Books
