My cousin Benet Ripin in the late 1930s at an airfield near Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.

Benet is standing in front of his brother Robert's plane, a Boeing Stearman Model 75 biplane, first built in 1934.

One of the main uses back in the late 1930s and the early 1940s of the Stearman (Boeing) Model 75 biplane (also known as a Kaydet) was as a military trainer aircraft. Over ten thousand were built and it served as the primary trainer for the Army Air Corps, Navy and with the Royal Canadian Air Force throughout the war.

By the mid 1940s thousands of surplus aircraft were sold on the civilian market and became popular as crop dusters, sports planes, and for aerobatic and wing walking use in air shows.

You can still see some of these aircraft working the fields along Highway 5 when one is heading up or down the great center agricultural alley of California from Salinas to Bakersfield. But keep your eyes on the road, watching the planes swoop and dive and arc back up can be mesmerizing.