Thinking of Bunk.

Jim Bunke was alive today, in my thoughts, as I drove from my home to my work.

While driving along the ridge of bluffs, I watched a small, propeller plane circle over Lake Winona, banking sharply, straightening out, and picking up speed, then doing it again. And as I watched, I recalled the time Jim offered to take me up in a plane he often flew.

"Don't eat too much before we go," he warned me. "Sometimes people get sick."

As if to taunt Bunk, I not only ate, I ate a homemade stew -- something that would look no different coming back up as it did when it went down.

Maybe he took it easy on me, maybe he just didn't want to have to clean out the plane, I'll never know for sure, but Bunk did send the plane into a steep dive and a few sharp turns, as if testing my metal and my stomach, but rather than being nervous or frightened, I laughed and whooped. I just loved the feeling of freedom that riding in a small craft plane provided.

We flew down the Mississippi River, then back up over territory that I might now recognize as my current home, but was then as foreign to me as any territory over-seas might have been.

I don't remember coming back, I don't remember driving home. I remember simply feeling good.

This is my best memory of Jim Bunke. I'll never know why he asked me to go flying with him, it was only that one time, but it was an honor to share with him one of his obvious joys -- flying.

And now I've gotten to enjoy the moment twice -- once, when it happened more than twenty years ago, and again today as I relive it through memory recalled.