He Never Spilled a Drop

OK Littleman, this one's for you.

Back in 1995 I worked at the Lab on special assignment. I lived in an old, leaky 1970's vintage, 35 foot travel trailer about two streets over from the lab in Isla Blanca Park. My trailer mate was my friend Ray.

Ray was from Combes Texas, near Harlingen, about 25 miles away from the island, and we were surfing pals. Through the years we became unconditional friends, and today still are. Ray's married now and in the Border Patrol over in Arizona where he keeps us safe from the tonks.

That summer when a job opportunity at the lab opened up, I saw to it that Ray got a shot at it, and sure enough, DH hired him. I knew then that things were going to be interesting. Real interesting.

It was a summer of madness. I had just suffered the double whammy. My mother died from cancer that prior March, and I had won a vicious court battle with my ex wife and her white trash friends. The winds of change were howling all around me, and I was looking to misbehave badly. So, living on the island seemed like the only thing to do. It's the one place where infantile behavior in the middle aged is not only tolerated, but encouraged.

We flew a pirate flag over the trailer, and manufactured all kinds of mischief. We surfed a lot, fished a lot and drank and smoked our way into oblivion almost every day.

About two or three times a week we'd load up the little Boston Whaler with a mini trawl net and head out to the bay to collect critters for the aquaria. Sometimes we'd catch flounders, and stranger bottom fish like stargazers and toadfish, and sometimes we'd haul interminably heavy bags full of sea urchins, or other bottom treasures like bricks and tires.

We'd usually pack along a couple of single line sampling devices too (fishing rods) and squirrel away a little rum in the ice chest- ice chest (the other ice chest had water and an aerator for live specimens), well hidden under the ice, cokes and limes. The Boston Whaler wouldn't go all that fast in rough water, but when the bay was smooth, the little 25 horse Evindrude would pop the thing up on top, and we'd plane along over the transparent shallow waters at about fifteen or twenty miles an hour, prop throwing a white foamy wake like the head on a good beer.

On almost any given day, we'd shut down in the middle of a school of speckled trout, and cast lures at them, always taking a few back to the trailer for dinner, to be blackened or fried. We rarely bought food. It just wasn't a priority when you could catch enough fish to fill your belly before going uptown to drink until the early morning hours, then catch a little sleep before having to go back to work, beginning the cycle again.

Since the Whaler steered with the outboard engine tiller, Ray would usually stand up on the bow scouting for fish while I blasted the thing along at full throttle. Sometimes scouting for fish involves smelling for them, and Ray was a good bloodhound. Speckled trout feed by gorging, regurgitating their stomach contents to attract more small fish so the whole school can feed, causing slicks that smell like watermelon. So it's either spot the slick, or smell the watermelon smell, and then you know that you're in the neighborhood.

Late one afternoon, we were scooting along, cuba libres in hand looking for a school of fish. Ray spotted a slick off of the port bow and pointed. Without backing off on the throttle, I spun the little boat over on a hard 45 degree turn. At that exact instant, the chine strake caught an errant little wave, and bucked, launching Ray up and over the high side into the water. I countinued making the turn, only instead, I kept going in a 360 to retrieve my friend. I was a bit worried that he might have gotten injured in an incident vaguely reminiscent of a bad Evil Knievel stunt.

So, I was amazed to see Ray standing in water almost up to his eyeballs, drink held high, in a classic Statue of Liberty pose.

I backed off of the trottle and threw the skiff into neutral, coming alongside and Ray handed me his drink, climbing aboard. Glancing into the huge blue plastic cup, I was amazed to see the lime chunk, ice and dark frothy rum and coke, all intact, with no apparent spillage.

Such an impressive act of drink preservation takes courage, talent and the proper concern for priorities.

We set up our drift from there, and as I recall, caught a couple of fat specks for dinner, but the rest is lost in the fog, although I have a lingering impression of a surreal moment, that moment when the entire universe holds its collective breath for just one second, just before the big red ball drops over the western shoreline, and the bay turns from blue to black.

But what I remember most is that he never spilled a drop.