That's a Lot of Pills

The last John Wayne is dying.

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, metastasized to various and sundry other organs and tissues. Primary liver cancer. Inoperative and widespread, a painful and indignant way for a cowboy to die, it reaffirms my own sense of outrage toward this disease. The body is now fighting itself, with him as the loser.

We all lose, with him dies a little bit of us all.

He’s emaciated and small, wasting away, and I am angry and helpless in life again. His son immediately took him to one of the finest cancer diagnostic and treatment centers around, where he’s been in and out of for the last two weeks. Soon it will be time to bring him home and let him go to the ranch one more time.

For now though, instead of jeans, boots and hat, he wears blue warm ups hanging limply from the hulk of a man who I long to hear roar with drunken laughter again, ever ready to lend a smile or a helping hand. Now his boots are replaced by moccasins, his head is uncovered, valunerable, and he's subordinate to the minions of doctors and administrators who attend him like so many techno-mechanics trying to repair an old totaled out pick up truck.

There's still some dirt road cowboy left in this man though.

Yesterday I waited with him at the reception desk where he was handed a pager, like the one we get whenever we eat over at the Pirates Landing, one that lights up with a UFO like circle of LED lights when they’re ready to see you. He hadn’t gotten the news yet, but I think for sure he suspected.

While we stood there waiting for the receptionist to input his information he spied a huge clear plastic bag sitting on a chair, stuffed with maybe thirty five or forty different amber plastic pill bottles, belonging to a cancer treatment patient. His eyes grew big as saucers, he swallowed and croaked in a sort of half whisper;

“Gawdamn that’s a lot of pills”. And then he chuckled.

He’s quiet now, digesting the knowledge that he’s looking at the last chapter of his life. He doesn’t speak much, the fire is gone as he tries to understand what’s happening, and how to handle it with dignity and style.

In the consultation room, the doctor reads his chart and states somewhat triumphantly that the cowboy "liked to drink beer". I detect just a hint of rancor in his voice, because cirrhosis is a big factor in liver cancer. As if making fun of the doctors attitude, he smirks and answers “I like to drink A LOT of beer”, to which the doctor queries; “It says here that some nights you drink as many as twelve beers?", again he replies in a voice strong and confident, eyes crinkling with laughter around the edges; “I like to drink as many beers as I can!”

Just for that brief moment, his spirit returned and I could again see the man in his dirty jeans, dusty boots and sweat stained cowboy hat, arms crossed, bellowing that infectious laugh, spitting in the face of his own death.

Wesley Van der Sloot

Post Hurricane Emily, and the heat has descended on us like a sick smelly old blanket, causing all life to slow down to a sticky, oozing molasses pace. The seawater is boiling, and the last vestiges of swell and wave are depressingly gone, replaced by a vast expanse of flatness across the Gulf. Water quality is off the scale bad, as tons of raw sewage has found its way down the Rio San Juan to the Rio Grande from distant Mexican towns like Monterrey following torrential rains and floods, courtesy of the remnants of Emily. The sewage plume has discharged from the Rio Grande into the Gulf of Mexico at Boca Chica, now transported by wind and current along our beaches where thousands flock to escape the oppressive heat, playing unsuspectingly in the water, always aware that sharks populate the ocean out here, but never realizing that tiny organisms like Enterococcus pose a far greater risk, lying in wait with huge bacterial teeth….waiting….waiting…..

My son has spied a feces or two merrily bobbing along in the swash zone, waiting to be deposited like nuclear sea beans on the shoreline, waiting for some unsuspecting jogger or beachstroller to run through it. He hasn’t got much time to look for that sort of thing right now because he’s working for the Murphies as a deckhand aboard the Hardbottom. He’s baiting hooks and removing fish for pinche fresas from Monterrey who don’t tip worth a shit.

The other day as we were watching “The Endless Summer” he told me about Wesley and Sara breaking up.

Wesley is just about one of the hottest young surfers on the coast, carving the waves to pieces, catching giant air, and pushing it to the extreme. Sara, his girlfriend is my sons girlfriends cousin. Wesley and Sara have been together for maybe six months or so, but in young adult time, that’s forever.

Wesley broke it off last week. Hooked up with somebody new. Sara was devastated, stopped eating and spent a night or two in the hospital according to my son, who’s pretty sick of the story himself right now. Said it’s wasting his time.

Of course the gossip lines are buzzing. Sara moved back to San Benito, where she continued to be devastated, as rumors flew from both camps. She and Wesley had held a joint bank account, which Sara, although devastated, had the presence of mind to totally loot after the breakup. This in turn devastated Wesley, who had been saving his money as a deckhand aboard an offshore sport fishing boat so that he could make the summers ritual trip to Mexico to get a fix of waves in places with names like Pasquales, Tikla and Punta Mita during this time, which is the flattest time of our season. So threats were made, names were called, and the trauma continued.

Last night my son told me that Wesley and Sara had hooked back up, and that it was on again. Oh, and by the way they’re going to go to Mexico to celebrate.

Profiles in Cowardice

" Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law?
Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty? "
~ Senator Ted Kennedy, 1973

The Eye the Hurricane Emily

As the bullet hits the bone.

Gored Again

We finally got everything buttoned down for the Hurricane that almost isn’t. The aforementioned, Emily scheduled to make landfall down south in a few hours. It’s windy here, and squalls are moving in. Yesterday we secured the lab, the buccaneer and Scott and Bonnies house down the street.

Today we woke up pretty tired, but I checked the web for the various forecasts, including Gores. Gore used to be our neighbor here, but moved about a year ago close to the jetties where he can teach surfing lessons and tend his webcams up on the pavilions in Isla Blanca. The guys a genuine dick, and usually lasts in one spot no more than than about two years. He came from Seaside, up by Houston, and I’ll bet his own bad karma ran him out of there too. So now he’s down here, along with his wife and hapless kids, making…I mean, riding waves. I keep threatening my friend Sean, who lives up there, to send Gore back, but Sean promises to buy him a house down here to keep him away.

Anyway, I checked his site, and as I was scrolling down, there was about a two hundred and fifty word tirade lambasting the Cameron County Parks system for it’s “unpermitted solid waste landfill”. He figures that the seaweed that gets pushed up against the dunes is full of trash, which constitutes a dump. I figure that he’s just being a jerk and is still pissed because the county won’t hire him to be a lifeguard, so he’s just getting a few sabots in, burning another bridge. Holy shit, he certainly doesn’t expect to make friends and influence people with rhetoric like this. Maybe he sees himself as some sort of modern day Don Quixote, but I tell you, I’ve tried that route, and it gets you nothing but an enlarged asshole.

We drove over to the lab, and of course the park is closed off. Totally. But since they all know us, we got the insiders treatment, and went through the back gate. After filling up about ten bags of ice from the labs ice machine, we left, checking the surf at the jetties. It’s already up to about ten or twelve feet, and the wind is blowing over 35 knots or so. On the way out, I ran into JV the assistant director of the parks.

I snickered and said “Hey, what about that Gore?” JV bristled and told me; “We gave that guy free run of the park…allowed him to put up his webcams on the beach, gave him permits to run his business…and this is the way he treats us”. He went on to say; “It started when this kid drowned, and Gore gave an interview to the local paper criticizing the county judge…said something like “how can he sleep at night, knowing people are dying on his beaches?” then he denied saying that, but wouldn’t send a letter to the paper, so…we had to cut our ties with him…it’s a shame it didn’t work out…”. I told JV; “yeah, the guys a surfer, and a damned good one…but he’s a shithead of a person, and doesn’t have a clue about what surfing really is…”

The conversation drifted off to the tasks at hand, and we all got back to work, but I couldn’t help muse over the fact that one of Gores biggest supporters is the Princess Ecstroment…another true shithead. The owner of the local tow boat franchise, this guy would sue his own mother for the ugly abortion that turned out to be him. A real piece of work. People like he and Gore are always beset by their own self created troubles, and yet the irony is that they never realize that they’re the cause, the root of the trouble. It’s always someone else’s fault. Pathetic representations and poor excuses of adulthood.

We’re finishing last minute preparations and waiting on the storm. Winds are now up over forty, blowing to fifty. Maybe this squall will blow bad rubbish like these folks out to sea, and make some substantial progress in cleaning up a couple pieces of unpermitted solid waste

Blowin' Like a Bandit

`Cause out there in the Gulf
The wind's blowin' like a bandit
I'm talkin' `bout a hurricane
and your riggin will not stand it
-Guy Clark

Sol Mate on our stern

Fourth of July: Never Moon the Game Warden

Fourth of July we went over to Port Isabel, over to the marina to go out on Sandras 35 foot Chris-Craft cruiser to watch the fireworks. We had run into Sandra and her Sister Judy about a week ago over at the Palm Street Pier and had many beers and fried oysters with them, and during the course of things, had conspired to accompany them out on the bay for the fourth. We were packing a big pizza for the kids, but no alcohol, because it’s a war zone out on the water this time of the year. Every agency is out in full force trying to drum up a little revenue, and I certainly wasn’t going to let them shake me down, not to mention the fact that the kids were along, so their well being was of course my first concern.

Sandras Chris-Craft looks like a cigarette boat, long and mean, twin 350 Chevy engines, an interior of white rolled naugahide topped off by a racy looking bimini, and a small cockpit capable of holding about 10 adults comfortably, A real cherry 1980’s vintage cruiser. Mark says Sandra wants to sell it, get about 35 grand or so, but I reckon it’s not worth half that. Age and deterioration are beginning to set in, just like it is on all of us. Personally, I'm a little saltier and more barnacle encrusted with each passing season.

Getting across the causeway was a bit of a challenge, people were already driving erratically, like amateur stunt drivers after a long day of drinking and sun on the beach, and my traffic temper was beginning to flare. I felt obliged to cut off some stupid fuck towing an ancient eighteen foot tri-hulled boat with an aging sears seahorse engine when he started to weave in and out of traffic like a damn Ferrari or something, causing a wake of chaos behind him. I found myself hoping that my subtle demolition derby driving would cause one of his paper thin 12” trailer tires to burst, throwing the hulk and its tow driver over the rail of the causeway and into the whitecapped waters far below, where it would promptly sink to the bottom, alleviating us of another brainless fuck and his giant motorized nunchuck. But, he managed to sneak by, heading for some unknown destination.

We finally got over to the Anchor Marina around seven thirty or so, and were the last to load up. There was a temporary shortage of life jackets, so we dug around and got enough for us and the kids prior to taking off. We crossed the rail, and came aboard to a cockpit brimming with about 15 adults, some obviously "three sheets to the wind". Mark was behind the wheel, drinking a mountain dew, and his kid was below already attacking the food. Marks brother in law, Rick, a stereotype trailer trash ape, replete with sleeveless tshirt, redneck mullet haircut, ever present cigarette dangling from the corner of the mouth, and tall boy bud light in hand, was already belligerent and overconfident….a classic picture of white-trashism. He shouted to Mark that we had the proper number of PFD’s, and with no further hesitation, we untied the dock lines, and headed over to Thompkins channel.

Just outside of our channel, the port engine starts to run hot, Mark switchs it off, and we creep along about 10 knots or so heading towards the island, through a choppy brown bay as the sun makes its departure from the world. Disco music blaring from the radio, and the din of empty beer cans and bottles and loud laughing drunks make me think twice about my decision to go along. We make the turn east of the causeway and head up Thomkins. I turn around, and behind us is Sol Mate, all decked out for the fourth, banners and flags flying, a picture of class and civility.

We find a spot near the fireworks barge and ran the bow of the cruiser up on the spoil bank. Around nine fifteen the show begins, an awesome display lasting about a half hour or so. Big booming, thumping pyrotechnics, lighting sky, water and boat in a surreal kaleidoscopic glow. The drunks aboard grow dim and background, although at one point, Rick comes back from the front deck to get a bunch of Evian water bottles to clean up a spill of red wine on the white fibergalss foredeck.

I become temprarily lost, introspectively mulling over the idea of freedom, contemplating the meaning and implications of a word so broad in scope that I sometimes am unsure of what exactly it means.

The fireworks die out in the sky, and all that remains are the smoke trails. I am rousted from my musing by the shouts and screams of drunken revelers, most of them unfortunately, aboard our boat. Mark fires up the Chris-Craft, and grinds off of the shallow spoil bank, heading west towards Port Isabel. About midway to the causeway opening, I see the flashing red and blue lights reflected in the helm console, I tell Mark….”Hey, we’re gettin’ pulled over”.....

Next thing I know, a kid TPWD game warden climbs aboard, over the transom. The kid says “I’m making a courtesy check, could I see your lifejackets?” We oblige, but there’s only sixteen for the eighteen persons aboard. He writes a routine citation, worth about a hundred fifty dollars or so, pretty minor, and I figure we’re pretty lucky with all of these drunk people aboard, and god knows what other violations the boat holds, but apparently Rick doesn’t think so, and begins to lip off to the guy in true trailer trash style. Mark keeps his cool and as the Captain of this vessel, advises the officer to finish his job and once done, depart.

The warden eventually slides back to his boat, and we continue towards home, the mood a bit more somber, but I can sense hostility among the drunks on the fantail, hot like the overheated engine we shut down earlier . I hear various curses and taunts being directed loudly, hurled like empty beercans over the side toward the TPWD skiff, still on our stern. The all of the sudden, the lights come back on, and I glance over to starboard, and now there’s THREE MORE TPWD SKIFFS ALONGSIDE!

Lots of TPWD guys clad in bulbous orange life jackets, cowboy hats, gray cop suits, hands on holstered guns. "Pull over" one of them shouts authoritatively. Damn, Walker Texas Ranger couldn'tve made a better appearance. Now I'm thinking; "Shit, we're really in trouble.

I hear somebody sarcastically say to Rick; "well, if you hadn’t mooned the goddamn warden, we wouldn’t be getting pulled over again". Mooned the fucking warden? What did he expect to happen? Dumbass. Fuckstick.

Chaos, shouts of “pull over now!”, TPWD guys with hands on their guns, and I’m thinking, “jeez now we’re really in trouble”. Mark says; “nah….I’m heading back to the dock”…TPWD lets us go saying; "OK, let him go to the dock”…we creep toward the channel marker 17, flanked by four TPWD game warden skiffs, all with lights flashing. A bit much…but we haven’t even seen the best yet. As we turn into the fingers, overhead a helicopter hovers, turning on the midnight sun light, illuminating the entire harbor. I see three Port Isabel constabulary waiting on the dock too. All the while, Rick has sequestered himself in the head, not coming out at all, but I still hear muffled curses emanating from behind the closed door, just below my perch on the control deck.

We tie up, and Rick pops out of the head and oozes towards the starboard rail. It looks like for a moment, he's gonna bail, make a run for it, but TPW and the cops are too thick, so they sit him down on the bow, but he's still acting like a dick. Now TPW is riled up too, and an old fat possum cop gets in Marks face and accuses him of lipping off, cussing out his guys…he starts asking a lot of detailed personal questions, and Mark decides it’s time to call his lawyer.

The cops let us go, told us we obviously weren’t involved, but they handcuff three of the most noxious drunks, as well as Mark, hauling them all off to the PI jail. Dee, the girls and I go over there and meet with Marks lawyer, a true expatriate who lives on a 26 foot Hunter there at Anchor Marina, a refugee waiting the inevitable collapse of society. Society doesn't collapse this night though, and we finally leave around two AM, when it seems that there's nothing else we can do.

Fourth of July is always a busy time on the Bay. Every agency is out in force, and besides sunburns and hangovers, a lot of people go home with other souvenirs of the coast, a little mordida for the man, and maybe if they’re real ill-behaved a short visit to the graybar hotel courtesy of the local cops. By morning the next day, Mark and the drunks were free men again returning to the sanctity of the harbor. The game wardens had dispersed, the night cops had gone home to bed, and life had pretty much returned to normal.

Surf Stars

Hunters gift means a fun time for all ages....

Hunters' Gift

All kinds of people surf out here. They come from all over the valley, from as far away as the desert area of Rio Grande City to slide the waves that are best in the Gulf of Mexico. Waves that more resemble those of California than the typical mushburgers of the shallow Gulf.

But even then, we go through extended periods of flat, especially during the summetime, times when the waters go placid and blue, not even a hint of ripple over the expansive Gulf. Ironically, it's this time of the year that tropical weather moves through the broiling waters, stirring waves that sometimes get to be world class.

During this indecisive time of waves-no waves local surfers often travel south, to the west coast of Mexico. It was during one of my Southern sabbaticals that I first met Hunter. I was going through a pretty wicked divorce (who doesn't in this day and age, it's considered cliche not to now I think), I had just returned from Mexico, and was enjoying a late spring swell on the beach during spring break, when I ended up over at the Tequila Sunset having a few cuba libres with Hunter, talking waves, surf spots and of all things, farming.

Hunter is the son of a successful farmer over in Willacy county, and that's his life. Farming and surfing. He ended up getting married not long after we met, and we only saw one another on certain swells, and occasionally in other settings, like once when I was giving a rotary club presentation for the Watermasters office, who I was working for at the time. Among surfers though, there's always a bond that transcends friendship. It's the bond of the tribe, something that excludes non surfers, people of the land, and friendships just picks up again no matter the time passage.

In 2001 after September 11th Hunter put together the first Kids Fourth of July Surf Challange in order to give local children the opportunity to focus on something healthy, something other than the turmoil of that terrible day. The contest was free entry, with prizes donated by local businesses, and trophies were given to all kids who participated. Hunter and his wife gave freely of themselves, attacking the event with a passion, and the event has flourished. Donations are accepted, and they are given to needy local causes. Last year, a family who was devistated by an auto accident, this year a local spinal chord injury victim.

About 150 kids participated in the event on Saturday, including the twins. More than a story of success, more than just an event this is about one mans vision and persistence, and the desire to provide something for the kids and community that Hunter loves. He doesn't ask for anything, doesn't look for any kind of recognition for himself. In his low key get-it-done way, he simply does something....something good.

As I write this there's a tropical storm in the Gulf, and more on the way from deep down south. We'll soon have waves, hopefully big clean sets, peeling far offshore, crashing on the beach, ending their long journey from exotic places. I'll more than likely see friends from long ago, people I rarely get to see this time of year. I hope Hunter will be able to take a break from plowing and cultivating cotton and join us. He deserves it.

Mack...he's back in town! 

Mack the Knife

About a month ago there was a derelict houseboat at the marina over by the buccaneer. Big old flat-bottomed nasty thing, corroded outdrive units encrusted in a six inch thick layer of barnacles and oysters, sitting forlornly against the dock. I had a brief wondering from sanity, probably driven by the heat and humidity and thought about offering a few bucks for it and starting a restoration job, maybe turning it into a bit of rental property, or better yet a poor mans getaway condo, anchored out in the bay, up by Three Islands or somewhere. Sanity soon returned though, and I decided against it. It’s hard enough maintaining any vessel, let alone another project.

Someone else bought it, but it turns out the guy was a major con artist who mostly paid his way with hot checks, including one for the houseboat. By the time the local authorities caught on to him, he had convinced a property owner to let him tie up the scow over in the shallow water area of the Port Isabel fingers. This area is notoriously shallow, and even skinny draft bay boats can hardly access it except on big high tides. It’s been a constant battle with the City, the Corps of Engineers and the owners to try and get this spot dredged deeper, but to no avail.

That’s because the local dredger is a pirate too. The problem is, no one around here ever wants to do things according to the regulations. And in my experience, almost all coastal communities are like that, so it’s not just Port Isabel. BK the local dredger was just shut down over on the Island for dumping dredge material into an area of sensitive dune vegetation where he promised he wouldn’t. Sea oats, sea purslane and beach croton, with its pretty yellow flowers all now under a blanket of sand, mud and rubble. Now BK has to obtain a five hundred dollar permit so that he can legally bury sensitive beach vegetation. BK moans the fact that the Army Corps of Engineers makes it so hard for him to obtain permits to do anything. “They’re picking on me” he says.

All coastal communities are a tidal gathering of pirates, bandits and thieves – individuals on the endangered species list. I finally got the complete story of the guy who bought the boat, told to me by my friend Mark who owns the Marina. Mark is the quintessential optimist ready to help out anybody in need. So he gave a job to someone he met in church, in Sunday school who wanted to learn to be a draftsman, but who really wanted a construction company of his own. But what he really wanted was a derelict houseboat that he could make payments on, using hot checks. When they closed down CRC marine across the harbor, the boat showed up, and Mark warned him about it, but he made an outside deal with the owner, paying in rubber checks. When his rubber check writing extended to almost all facets of the community, he fled town and the houseboat sunk at the dock over on the shallow side, creating an oil slick and alerting the Coast Guard, Texas General Land Office and others dedicated to preserving the quality of the coastal waters. They were all waiting ready to pounce, collect some revenue to line their own pockets with, but there was nobody to pay the bill.

So the owner of the condo commissions the infamous Yamaha John, better know as “Mack the knife” to handle the problem. He figures, “hey, out of sight…out of mind, at least the fucker ain’t in my backyard anymore”.

Dirty deeds…done dirt cheap. You only hire Mack the knife if you need to creatively take care of a problem without an obvious legal solution. Like right now, the City of South Padre Island is in a quandary about what to do for an upcoming event where they need the use of a boat ramp that’s currently silted in. This event involves the media, local and national, ESPN and lots of potential revenue. But first, the ramp needs to be dredged, the whole thing depends on that. The organizers have been screwing around, figuring ways to make money off of the thing, so now, there’s insufficient time to obtain the necessary legal permits. They’ll probably hire Mack the knife to do a bit of midnight dredging. Most likely, he’ll drive an old boat on a trailer with a big old powerful hulk of an outboard engine down to the ramp in the middle of the night, back the whole thing down into the water and begin work, shoving and revving the motor in and out of gear, while still attached to the trailer, progressively backing deeper and deeper as the prop wash cut gets deeper and wider, throwing a churning, boiling plume of sediment visible all the way across the bay, extending to the shores of Port Isabel, slick in the moonlight, scouring out the shallow area so that the boats can get in and out. Problem solved.

Mack the knife decides to take the old girl out into the Laguna Madre somewhere and just let nature take its course. Maybe up around Three Islands, an area that’s becoming a repository of homeless boats, in fact, I’ll bet Mack the knifes handiwork is already part of this area, which reminds me of a marine-mafia graveyard. Anyway, he has some of his cronies pump the boat out, getting it to finally float again, and starts to pull it out of the fingers, edging towards the open shallow lagoon, when to nobodies surprise, out pop the agencies like a bunch of flies on cowshit. Swarming all over Mack the knife, they demand to know where he’s taking the boat. Mack thinks fast, and tells them he’s just towing it over to Southpoint Marina.

The constabulary calls Southpoint, who of course doesn’t know anything at all about it. Out come the handcuffs, and they take old Mackie off to the graybar hotel, leaving the boat on a sandbar just outside the channel entrance where we always bring Le Menagerie in and out of the Bay to our slip in the deepwater part of the fingers. A mute testament to how things are done in coastal communities. An effigy to the individuals, pirates, thieves and scoundrels, who I would much rather see inherit the coast, rather than regulators, bureaucrats and politicians, who are the true pirates, thieves and scoundrels. I hope the houseboat gets left there as a monument to this dying breed, till it eventually falls apart, claimed by the tides, wind and salt, but I know it won’t.

Jerry Garcia Lives

My friend Bob is Jerry Garcia. He looks exactly like the departed leader of the Grateful Dead, and has the same laid back mannerisms. He’s a good musician as well, which leads me to think that maybe Garcia, like Jim Morrison and Elvis faked his death too, and is living in relative anonymity on South Padre Island.

Bob’s the only person I’ve ever known who has run with the Bulls in Spain, and I have a great amount of admiration, and derive a certain sense of inspiration from him. Retrospective vicarious living can be a good thing. He was the quintessential world traveler gypsy vagabond who would probably still be studying flamenco guitar or folkloreco dance in Guadalajara Mexico…except that he inherited beau coup from his late father. His late father was a doctor, who married many wealthy women and subsequently purchased some prime real estate here on the island, and in other places, including a three room condo on the bayside and a fourplex over by Boomerang Billy’s club on the beach. Bob and his wife Stell own and manage these properties, dividing their time between Edinburg and here. His fathers ashes, and those of his final wife reside on Bobs piano at his house in Edinburg, one in a cardboard box, and the other in a four hundred dollar plastic urn that the funeral home soaked him for.

I’ve known Bob about ten years or so, ever since we met at a TPWD safe boating instructors course. We’ve conspired on about a dozen or so projects which have never taken off, but remain the best of friends. Projects ranging from offshore funerals involving mixing the ashes of the dearly departed with cement, then depositing them over the same location to eventually create an artificial reef to eco tourism adventures and the latest, bally-hooing. Ballyhoo are a prime bait species that are best collected at night using a small skiff, nets and a powerful spotlight. The bait shops pay about a buck and a quarter apiece for them. We’re supposed to go out for them over at Thompkins Channel this evening. We’ll see, Stell keeps a pretty tight grip on Bob, and he isn’t often allowed to play with folks like me.

Bob’s a sailor too. He’s sailed everything from windboards to pretty large craft, and tells a story of sailing a Sunfish out on the bay one afternoon, when he was struck by the divine notion to do a bit of tacking to windward au natural. So he tied the mainsheet off, and kicked back, sans speedo. As luck would have it, a side chop knocked him off of the boat, which kept sailing along. Trying to be helpful, a head boat pulled up alongside Bob who was frantically swimming towards the rapidly departing Sunfish. Assessing his condition, the captain swung to starboard and kept going with the fishermen now pointing and laughing on the stern. He said that hurt more than trying to catch up with the pilotless boat. The Sunfish eventually struck a shallow bar, and turned over on its side, Bob finally reaching it, naked, gasping and out of breath. I didn’t ask the final outcome.

But I did ask Bob what he was going to do with the ashes on his piano. He told me he was going to take Dorothy (His fathers’ final spouse) up to Kentucky where she has family. I suggested that we make a pilgrimage via motorcycle, just put the urn in a saddlebag and go, a la the great European motorcycle trip that he once took, but he said nah, he’d probably just go in a Winnebago. Then he briefly mused about going on a moped, for the sheer artistic bent of it, a trip that would be akin to sailing, but the Winnebago thing just finally won out. Creature comforts become important when we get old.

His fathers ashes were a different story. Bob said he once asked his father what he wanted done with his final remains, and he told him; “just do whatever you want”. So, Bob thinks that maybe he wants to spread part of him in the Pacific Ocean, out near Point Loma California where his Dad practiced medicine for many years as a hotel doctor, swimming in the ocean every night, and spread the rest of them at the top of a mountain peak in Montana where his father once stole a poem which resided at the summit, later lamenting the fact, and admonishing Bob to replace it. Bob says his father loved those places and deserves to be there, but Stell nixes the idea, concerned that if the ashes aren't in the same geographic location, then the eventual resurrection of the body might be a bit, problematic. She says it's unethical.

Hell, I’m too dumb to know anything about that, but judging from the stories that Bob tells, I’ll bet his dad wouldn’t mind his legs and arms stroking out in the night, in the cold Pacific water, and his heart and eyes looking down from a high vantage point in the northern Rocky Mountains, giving his blessing to all of this madness.

The Elusive Cussing Man

Drifting in the summer tide

The Cussing Man Strikes Again

We had dinner with George and Scarlet the other night. They invited us over because they had a woman there from the Audubon Society who has done three years worth of Plover studies here, collecting data on nesting and distribution. They wanted us to meet her, and maybe share some professional insight.

Turns out this woman was the archetypical tree hugger type. She tried to deny it, but I knew different. First of all, she was wearing Birkenstocks. Then, although she professed a love of meats (beef in particular…but maybe it was just the beefstick that she was into….ah, but I digress), I noticed that she carefully picked out all of the scallops from the linguine, and openly left the mushrooms, so I figured, yea…it’s another damn vegetarian.

There were a number of conversational thrusts and parries, back and forth concerning philosophy of preservation, something only mildly challenging to me as a scientist. Judicious development of resources, and the idea that being a responsible shepherd to our environment entitles one to the privilege of living well. It’s just my position, but one I defend vehemently.

Besides, we make a living assisting clients interested in the prudent development of coastal areas, and I certainly won’t bite the hand that feeds me. This woman was bound and determined to speak with a realtor who is developing a large tract of land north of town here on the Island. The tract lies within federally declared critical habitat for Piping Plover, so at some point they will have difficulty with the project, but this particular realtor is well connected politically, and has pockets that are deep. Not the kind of person that I would want to challenge. So in the course of our conversation, I was asked; “How does Mr. F. feel about eco-tourism?” I snickered and replied; “He could probably sell one condominium unit and make more money than a bunch of bird watchers would bring him in ten years”. Well, this didn’t sit too well, and she told me rather belligerently that she would fight this guy tooth and nail to protect her little birdies (which aren’t even protected here at all). Fine. I asked her for her shoe size, because probably sooner or later with an attitude like that they might just be outfitting her with cement booties.

Now I’m as much of a conservationist as the next guy, and I’ve studied this place long and hard. My own reasoning is that, hey, it’s a sandbar. Sooner or later all of this shit will get blown off of it and they’ll have to start over again. Meanwhile, the species that can compete- will, new areas will be utilized and things will carry on.

So anyway, eventually the topic finally turned from the ethereal, from the controversial to the current and concrete.

The cussing man is at it again.

George told me that last weekend the cussing man was occupying the nice shady breezeway between the Laundromat and Jakes. He was trying to sleep, but the door to Jakes was squeaking. George said that the cussing man asked the management of Jakes to please fix the squeak, but they shined him on, so he got sort of loud with them. I guess the management called the police, and when they showed up, the cussing man cussed them out too. He’s had to find new accommodations now, but at least it wasn’t a hotel with steel bars. The cussing man told George that he “just hated it when things were left unfixed, like that door”…he also lamented having cussed out the cops, said he probably shouldnt’ve done that.

It’s the wrong time of the year to get evicted from anywhere shady. The daily temperatures hover in the mid 90’s, and the beachwater is as warm as soup, not even a chance to cool off here. The entire coast is holding its collective breath. Hurricane season is on us, full swing.

Al Qaeda T Shirt Shops

Like most Gulf Coast resort towns, the main street of South Padre Island is crammed with businesses and vendors lining the boulevard in a seemingly never-ending mass of gaudy Day-Glo facades. There’s the requisite head shop, surf shop, sandwich shop, shell shop and countless T shirt shops lining both sides of Padre Boulevard, separated by the black searing strip of asphalt that ushers the pasty white tourists in from their inland lives to frenetically spend their hard earned vacations in overpriced condominiums and hotels. They come from places like Dallas and Houston, San Antonio and Waco, leaving in a few days with souvenirs and sunburns.

T Shirt shops advertise things like “Going out for Business Sale”, “ 4- T shirts for $20”, and “Free decal with purchase”. Giant football field size edifices, they rarely have more than one or two customers at a time, you can’t help but wonder how they can afford to stay in business, how the hell can they even afford to pay the air conditioning bill?. All the same, exactly the same, only the names change, names like “Wings”, “Surf Stop” and “Jaws”

And business on the island comes in pulses. There’s the big two; Spring Break and Semana Santa, and then the weekend holidays; Forth of July, Labor day, Memorial day and a few others. Between the tourist invasions, the island is a quiescent place, lying in wait like some giant Venus flytrap until the next meal of fresh meat, borne in on Padre Boulevard on the petroleum tide.

The owner of On the Beach was wondering why his dumpster was always full, especially during that time in 2001 when the causeway was down, and there wasn’t hardly any business anywhere on the island. Curious, he checked the contents one day and found sacks and sacks of cash receipts from an adjacent T Shirt shop.

My friend George told me about fires set way out in the empty dune fields, fires set to bales and bales of T Shirts.

You see, the T shirt shops are all owned by middle eastern characters. Characters right out of a bad Hollywood conspiracy movie. Paranoid characters, speaking in hushed tones, eyes furtively plotting….plotting. Turns out these T Shirt shops are nothing more than money Laundromats. It’s common knowledge here. I have a friend who got into trouble punching out a banker during the bridge-out for putting up with this bullshit. I’m certain the government knows about this, and sometimes I wonder about how much they’re actually a part of it.

Call me paranoid.

And we’re not all Islamophobic. Far from it. But there’s too much conincidence, and too many stories

Yesterday a lawyer friend of mine (yes, I actually have a few friends who happen to be lawyers) told me a story about an incident that happened a couple of years ago. A friend of his, a federal agent about to retire was assigned Port Isabel as his final station. One dark evening, a boat came charging into the Pass between the Jetties, only to be intercepted by Customs. The boat was full of cases of automatic weapons, machine guns. The crew and cargo were transported to the Coast Guard base here on the Island until charges could be filed in Brownsville. When the agent returned to the base with the appropriate paperwork, the weapons were gone, and the crew had been released. He was told not to ask any questions.

On the evening of September 10th, 2001 my oldest daughter and I went up to the Circle Jerk to get a couple of items. While we were there, we both noticed a small compact car. Three mid eastern men got out of that car and entered the store. We both noticed their moods, moods so nervous that we were afraid that they might be thinking about jacking the place. We got out of there in a hurry.

We thought about that curious incident a lot over the course of the next few days when paranoina and speculation ran rampant. Coincidence or contrivance? You decide.

The Fish of a Lifetime

400 pounds of pure energy

The Fighting Chair

Locked in the struggle...

Sol Mate

My friend Gary called and invited us to go fishing on his new boat, Sol Mate. Gary was my first client with our bidness, and we became friends in the course of a three month long environmental study of his property. During that time he replaced his older version of Sol Mate with a brand new Australian custom offshore sportfisherman to the tune of about a million point two dollars. Nice boat. So when he called Monday afternoon and invited us to go fishing for yellowfin tuna, we didn’t hesitate to accept the offer.

Gary also owns the Blue Marlin, an IGA grocery store here on the Island. In fact it’s the Islands only grocery, and in my way of thinking, the only grocery store period. It’s an institution. Over in Port Isabel there’s a new Wal-Mart super center, and an HEB, both large impersonal conglomerates, both threats to the neighborhood grocery, and consequently the community way of life. That’s why we patronize the Blue. It’s the least that I can do to try and stem the tide of faceless big business, hell bent on slaughtering the American dream. And beside, the food at the Blue is better quality and a whole lot more interesting. The store is like the neighborhood bar, everybody who works there and a lot of the patrons know who you are. So that’s where we mostly shop for groceries, it’s a comfort zone for us.

We took off about seven AM in a glassy calm morning, heading east, offshore to the continental shelf break, an area called “the canyon”, about forty miles out. Sol Mate is the perfect vessel, powered by two giant Caterpillar diesels, she makes about 30 miles per hour over the sea. D and I sat up on the flying bridge with Gary and the two other fishermen that Gray had invited to go along.

Outside the Brazos pass, the morning dawns bright, cloudless and calm, the seas placid and blue, with no hint of whitecap. We talk a little and sip hot coffee, although like any fishing trip, pleasure or commercial, there’s always a sense of anticipation and uncertainty, and maybe even a bit of anxiety. Before long we are all lost to our own wonderings, lulled into a semi hypnotic trance by the throb of the big diesels, the slicing of the boat through the gentle groundswell and the warmth of the morning sun straining to climb the blue sky. We’re on our way out, out to the kingdom of turquoise water and the giants who dwell there. There’s no telling what might happen.

I think about the different stages of this disease we call fishing. In its initial stage, you want to catch every fish in the sea. As it progresses, you just want to catch the biggest fish. In stage three, one wants to catch the most special fish, species like sailfish and marlin, tarpon, snook, bonefish, permit and peacock bass. At this point, size is pretty irrelevant. Finally there’s the last stage of the illness, where it’s simply the experience that counts, and it’s not necessary to catch anything at all. Its fishing that’s important, catching is secondary. By this time someone else catching fish, someone in a lower stage of the disease, is as satisfying as actually catching fish, because we know that this creates the collective memories we share. That’s where I am, and so I feel blessed just to be out here, a player in this collage of memories.

….Still somewhere inside each of us lurks the predatory instinct that causes us to become fishermen in the first place. It’s man against the ultimate aquatic species, and I think we hold on to the idea of catching the fish of the lifetime somewhere within the course of this lifelong disease. We hold on to the idea of the zenith of the experience. Some try and force this with expensive adventures and trips, but I think it comes without warning, striking as suddenly as the fish of a lifetime, and the odds always remain the same.


At about eight thirty we’re in deep water adjacent to the canyon. Whenever I hear that sound, the sound of big engines slowing down, an instinct takes over from past days in the Alaskan seas. I instantly jerk awake, eyes wide open, body in high speed mode, ready to put out the gear. Today is no exception. Garys’ crew, Roach and Marcos are already rigging the outriggers and the five big game rods for trolling as I descend the ladder to the fantail deck.

We choose rods, and the baits are strung out with teasers and flashing lures in between, forming the spread. I tell D, “You never know what might come up and take a hold of one of those baits, so just keep an eye on the spread. Billfish slash at the lure with their bill, they’re real easy to recognize”. Inside though, I figured we’d be real lucky to hook into some tuna or maybe a Wahoo. It’s still early for billfish, and they’re certainly not a common critter anywhere on the planet. Some people chase them for years before even getting a flash at the bait.


The other two fishermen go topside to chat with Gary on the flying bridge, D and I stay below with the deckhands watching the baits skip along just below the azure surface of the water as we troll toward the canyon, still several miles to the east. My lure, trailing along on the port side in the middle of the spread, a big pumpkin colored skirted jig snags a small floating pile of Sargassum, and Roach unclips it from the outrigger, quickly reeling the thing in, shaking off the clump of golden weed, and then lets the bait drift out behind the boat again, to its designated spot. Just as he’s doing this, I hear D shout. “Billfish”….”There’s a fish on”. A moment of immediate confusion ensues.

And then…..

An eternal moment before I realize, Holy shit.... It’s MY rod sitting in the holder on the port rail, the same lure that Roach is putting back in the spread that this fish has decided to strike. The pool cue thick rod points in an arch toward the fish, as line tears off the reel at lightening speed. We all began to bring in the other baits and teasers. I flop down in the fighting chair and Roach hands me the rod like a priest passing a sacred torch. I place the butt end into the gimbel and I hear the snap, snap of the harness securing me to the whole setup, I have become a biomechanical extension of the gear, but still a very necessary part of the equation. Now glancing down at the reel, I see that it has been heavily hit. More than three quarters of the five hundred yards of one hundred thirty pound test has been stripped, the fish a long way off and heading rapidly, south. Gary works to slow the boats forward progress as the fish continues to tear line from the reel, then Sol Mate begins to back down and I reel the line in, gaining a foot at a time, sometimes less. The morning is already becoming hot, and I have gone from zero to ninety in a heartbeat. I lift the rod slowly up and down, pumping and gaining more line, but it’s like those dreams where you’re trying to run away from something, running in slow motion, feeling like you’re encased in gelatin. Only this is real, and it hurts. Every muscle straining, aching against a mass that feels like a runaway freight train, I hang on, throat dry, clothes soaked.

About thirty minutes into the fight, the fish wallows for just a split second on the surface and dives deep again, stripping precious line from the reel. My arms ache, hands almost losing grip, I cradle the rod, hugging it close, just trying to hold on as the fish throbs and strains, seemingly oblivious to the hook, moving away from the boat in a lumbering lurching dive as Gary keeps backing down. I hear people debating the fish. “Didja see it?”, “What was it?”.. “tuna?”….”No Marlin”….”I think it might be a shark”. No, it’s a fucking MONSTER.

I don’t give a damn. By this time, I’m hurting and tired, gaining little ground. I think about quitting, just handing the rod off to someone else. The hell with it, this fish will never break the water. It’s going to be a long time till I see the swivel that marks the leader. This is stupid. I’m already scheduled for elbow surgery at the end of the week, why hurt it any worse?

But, I dig down deep and find resolve. No fish has beaten me yet, and this one ain’t gonna be the first. And I’ve caught some big ones too, fish well over two hundred pounds. But this monster is like nothing I’ve ever hooked. So I fight grimly on, sometimes only gaining six inches. I rest, the fish rests. I press on, and so does he. It’s a stubborn battle. After almost an hour, the leader comes close, and Roach grabs it. They can see the fish below, but can’t quite make out what it is., but it’s big. I kick back in the chair, taking out the slack, anticipating….anticipating, ready in case the fish decides that this really isn’t the end.

And it isn’t.

The big fish dives again, and Roach lets go of the leader. More line peels off. Determined, I fight him slowly towards the surface. I can sense his fatigue too, hanging on the end of the line. There’s no manhandling this fish. It comes when it wants to. The leader breaks the surface again, it’s too far away, so I strain to gain a little more line…..just a little more and that’s it….and the fish sounds again, but less deeply this time. The leader breaks the surface one final time, and Roach has a hold of it.

It’s a Blue Marlin. All I can see the tail and about three feet of the creature behind the boat, iridescent blue, the most beautiful blue I’ve every seen, like an electric sky, almost neon, glinting in the sun. It’s about six or seven feet long, and the crew estimates its weight at around four hundred pounds.

I hold the rod ready again, but this time Roach and Marcos have a firm grip on the bill and pinning the fish alongside the boat, they quickly dislodge the hook just as several photos are hurriedly taken. The fish lies on its side, shimmering, stunned, finning in the Caribbean blue water for a moment then suddenly it turns upright, regaining enough energy to swim slowly off, back into the blackness of the deep.

I sit there also stunned for a moment, like the fish. Shaking, soaked in sweat, muscles crying in unison, in pain, hands stiffening like two claws at the end of my spaghetti like arms, I have become a sea monster without gills, attached to the element by monofilament line, connected forever to that Marlin, the memory of the struggle indelibly etched, tattooed in my temporal lobe. Finally, I ascend the ladder to the flying bridge to thank Gary for the experience of catching the fish of my lifetime, but words could never mean enough, never be enough, never even come close, though I try. Gary understands. He too is in the final stages of the disease we call fishing.

Coming back down the ladder I thank the fish swimming somewhere down there, far below us. I glance out at the spread, once again dancing along on the waves, pulsing in the sun.

Running Lights Required

Le Menagerie sails off of the anchor

Le Menagerie Logbook: 05/21/2005: Island Times

Wind: 12-22 SSE, higher gusts / Air Temp: 85 / Water Temp: 83 / Tide: Falling / Skies: Clear / Water: Off Color, Whitecapped /Seas: 2-3'/ Depart: 1300 Arrive: 1900.

Been promising the twins all weekend that we would take them fishing on Menagerie. Of course, that’s an excuse to get in a good sail trip too. Packed an icechest full of supplies and another full of ice for the fish and headed out to the Marina around noon. Winds were picking up. I shortened the tiller about 8” and took care of the crack at the rudder attachment, and moved the camcleat over about 3”, and redrilled it into the cabin top the previous night so the boat was ready to go.

At the marina talked briefly with our friends Jim and Janice who own Island Times, a new 37 Island Packet. Beautiful boat. Yankee cutter rigged with two headstays and in mast furling, all of the bells and whistles. Jim is taking off next Monday for Rio Dulce Belize for the hurricane season, then points south and west, through the big ditch and then up to the Sea of Cortez. He’s not coming back. Jim said his son called last week and told him “you should’ve done this 20 years ago”, he told him “the hell with it….I’m doing it NOW”. He’s 62. Former Huey pilot in Viet Nam, then with the US Geodetic Survey in Central America, he owned land in Panama and just sold it to down pay the Island Times. Said he’ll be making payments until he’s 82, but what the hell, they’re only 70 dollars a month more than his social security check, and it’s all done direct withdrawal. No insurance..... no guts, no glory. I wish him well, and can’t help but let my envy show.

Underway it was a circus just backing out with all of the public boat ramp jokers jockeying to and from the ramp, and after banging Menagerie around somewhat rudely in her slip, I finally got her spun around and headed out of the harbor.

On the outside, we reefed the main, and put out about 35% of the big genny, and were cutting quite a rug; three or four tacks and we were at the Pirates Landing pier, Kelani balled up in a lump on the cockpit seats, screaming and carrying on, a real drama queen, back to the old song and dance about not heeling…..

I missed the line under the causeway, and relined up, drew out a little more genny (the winds are blocked off and light near the bridge), and shot the gap, about halfway through, when all of the sudden, the starboard sheet tore out of the jamb cleat and we had to wrestle canvas for a second to get it back under control. It was a bad time too, because the gap is so narrow, and the tack so tight, and we ended up almost next to the western concrete pilings on the way out to the southern part of the bay. Just a few long tacks on the choppy south side, and we were in the shallow water near the remnants of the old causeway. We dropped the canvas, and I put the hook over, and the girls got ready to fish.

Kelani had quit her histrionics now, and she and Savannah grew intent on fishing. I rigged their rods, and immediately they had bait in the water, eyes glued to their rod tips.

We ate a bit of lunch, and I went below in the shade and passed out on the port settee in the heat, only stirring when I heard the lid of the ice-chest open and a fish flop inside. And then another, and another.

The wind had picked up to about 20 or so, and long fetch whitecaps rolled by. Every now and then big boats plowed close by, and we rolled violently on the anchor. Around 1830 we decided to pick up the hook and head back. I lit only the genny about 65% on a dead downhill run, and we sped toward the causeway channel. We made a single jibe, lined up and cruised through, never missing a beat. On the other side, we jibed again and took it all the way back to marker 17, dolphins accompanying us off the starboard bow. The tide was so low that a large trawler style sportsfisherman was aground on the right side of the channel as we passed the green entrance buoy and stowed the canvas for good. We made the slip about 1900, weaving our way through the dayboaters again. Washed Menagerie down as the girls fished in the marina. They’re a couple of fishing fools those twins.

The Aplysia Scam

May is rapidly drawing to an end.

The uncertain winds of the early month have switched to the summer pattern, and soon the jenn-aire effect will be upon the island and its eclectic residents. There is a certain resolve to survive another tourist season, another hurricane season, to slay the torpid days of summer by immersing ones body in the equally torpid waters of the Gulf, cool drink in hand.

It’s the time of the season when a mans fancy turns to….Aplysia.

Aplysia brasiliana, commonly called sea-hare are a critter that shows up right about now, and hangs around till fall, disappearing before the winter temperatures cool the Bay and Gulf. Where they go, nobody knows, and fewer care. Locals call them inkfish, though they are anything but fish. They’re really a snail without a shell, a true sea slug, a gastropod. The brown gelatinous creatures are all over the place this time of year, slowly flapping modified appendages that look like wings, undulating and gliding on top of the water, in a blind and mindless search for seaweed. Poor swimmers, some get caught in the surf, and eventually end up on the beach where they lay in puddles of purple ink, to decay in the hot sun. The ink they produce is harmless to humans, though irritating to other marine life, this substance seems to be their primary defense mechanism. When disturbed or threatened they exude ink profusely, turning the surrounding water, clothes and hands a beautiful, deep purple.

My friend Sara, who has devoted a good deal of her academic career to trying to understand these animals (and again, I’m not sure why) says they aren’t worth a shit to eat. No matter how you fix them. Personally, I couldn’t bring myself to try a mouthful of this gooey, nauseating critter, and I’ve eaten just about everything that swims or grows in the sea. Along that line of thinking, I’d probably never consider eating a jellyfish either, common sense just sometimes prevails.

They do make nice aerial fodder though, especially when lobbed or launched from water ballon slingshots at unsuspecting victims, either in the water or on the beach. They hit with a most satisfying wet splat, exploding in a fine mist of ink that’s pretty awe inspiring. An unprovoked, unexpected Aplysia bomb attack truly strikes terror, and sometimes anger in the uninitiated. Fortunately, the stain is not permanent.

Neurobiologists love Aplysia, because the animal has a giant nerve axon, one easily studied. I imagine that a great deal of our collective understanding of nerve function and disorders has come from studying this lowly organisms responses to the variety of tortures that this branch of biology conjures up, but like the tunicate, it isn’t nearly as glamorous, or controversial as stem cell research, so you’ll probably never see anything about it on CNN or Fox news. Dr. Mengele I presume?

For us, Aplysia have always been a windfall. In a former time, we’d load the old four wheel drive with an ice chest of beer, an empty ice chest, and our surfboards, and head down to the condos on the bay. In the course of a drunken evening, we’d paddle around in the Thompkins channel, collecting Aplysia on the nose of our longboards, periodically transferring them to the empty icechest (now with seawater in it) waiting on the lighted docks. The beer chest would get progressively lighter, and the Aplysia ice chest heavier, till the beer finally ran out and we had a few dozen Aplysia which we’d hurry back to the lab and put on life support, the aerator. The next day we’d call UTMB in Galveston, and they’d immediately send a little white haired faggot down to take our icechest of Aplysia back up to Galveston, and pretty soon, in a week or two, we’d receive a check for a hundred dollars or so. I think we were getting something like two fifty each for the little buggers. Our dedicated field collecting allowed the Dr. Frankenstein types a perpetual fresh stock of innocent critters to run their experiments on. This worked out pretty good for us, and it kept us in beer for a few days, whenever they needed the critters anyway. I never thought much about the Aplysia scam after I left the lab that time though.

Today, I collect Aplysia with nets on the jetties, risking jetty rash from falls on the slippery algae covered granite. I’m a salaried employee now…I make the big money so I’m informed that I can’t make that extra check anymore. This benevolent entity wants to keep me fully locked in indentured servitude. We keep the Aplysia alive here, feed them the amazing Gracilaria that I culture, clean out the tanks whenever too much shit accumulates, and ultimately cull them out and package them up, each individually weighed, bagged with seawater and oxygen and carefully packed in a Styrofoam shipping container, taken to FedEx and given a first class ride to Houston.

Aplysias are big business too, there’s even a place in Florida growing them in vitro just to provide enough for the researchers. There was a scare a couple of years ago when many researchers switched to using laboratory rats, but apparently, they just couldn’t get enough of the ol' Aplysia, and switched back again to their tried and trusty brand. And, the scam has been elevated to a quasi-legitimate bureaucratic undertaking, complete with invoices, requests and accounting sheets, there’s gold in them hills!

But, now someone else makes ten bucks apiece for the bastards, this place makes a cut, and yours truly, the humble narrator of the Eye of the Hurricane gets the big weenie. I guess that’s Karma or some shit. Ah, for the good old days….

And if that isn’t bad enough, the neurobiologists want these animals in a certain size range, and not kept at the lab for anything more than a few days. I’m wondering if maybe they want them with cute little nametags too, maybe tags that say things like “Hi, my name is Admiral Alfred the Aplysia, won’t you be kind to me and feed me just 6.5 grams of either Gracilaria or Ulva a day, keep my quarters clean and free of shit, and promise to pay attention to me?” Just wait till the fucking things start getting scarce. I bet they won’t sing that song then.

Three Hundred and Fifty Miles of Line

Pot hauler visible on the right, mid-upper corner behind the "seven by" crab pot. This monster is why I now have to have another joint surgery.

Those Who Came Back, and Those Who Never Did

The winds are blowing out of the southeast today about 25 knots. No sailboats are out, and most of the swell is blown flat. It’s not the day to surf or sail. It’s hot. About 90 degrees hot. I’m trying to tie up a lot of loose ends, so it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m a slave to this fucking computer because in about two weeks I have to go in for a surgery on my left arm, which will leave me more useless than usual, being as I’m left handed. I’ll probably be on sabbatical for the whole month of June.

The knife count to date is two knee surgeries, a surgery to the right elbow, and now one on the left. And probably both wrists before it’s over. In another life, in another line of work we used to joke about this, saying; "right now, somebody is paying me for this, but someday I’m gonna pay for this”.

It appears that someday has come.

Last night I watched “ Deadliest Catch” or some such shit on the Discovery Channel. It’s another reality series, this one about crab fishing in Alaska.

Years ago, after I got out of the Coast Guard I stayed on in Kodiak Alaska, and like many 22 year old kids then I didn’t have a clue about what I wanted to do. In order to make ends meet and bankroll my bad habits I had to make money, and some of my bad habits took lots of money. Since Kodiak is a fishing town, the easiest way to make money is doing something in the industry. Kodiak touts itself as "the town where crab is king".

So first I started working in the canneries during crab season, unloading crab from the holds of the boats that were coming in. Burrowing down through mountains of live King and Tanner (“Snow”) crab, loading them into a never-ending string of two thousand pound buckets to be hauled up into the busy, steaming processing plant where they are summarily killed, gilled, cooked, frozen, boxed and shipped out to eventually find their way south, to grace the tables of consumers rich enough to pay for the delicacy. Boat after boat, day after day was backbreaking and boring work that paid about minimum wage, but that was the place to be in order to get hired on to a crabber. You just had to wait until somebody got killed, hurt, quit or fired.

Crabbing is what most guys wanted to do at the time. It was an opportunity to make real money in short order, hopefully enough to live on for the rest of the year without having to do any real work. Besides, crabbers were cool, they held the top of the dockside food chain, the macho order of the northern lights.

Eventually I got hired on. No, I actually lied my way onboard a big crabber, the Express, a 135 foot vessel skippered by an old ex-coalminer with blacklung named Sam Jackson. Years later after I left the industry I heard that the Express sunk in the Gulf of Alaska just south of Kodiak. So I lied my way into a job, told them I could coil.

Crab pots are big square cages made of welded steel rebar, usually three feet deep and seven feet by seven feet square, covered with netting and weighing seven hundred pounds, unloaded. They rest on the seafloor in about six hundred feet of water waiting for crabs to crawl in for the bait. Hauling the pots off of the bottom is done by passing the poly line through a big round hydraulically powered sheave ( a roller device that funnels, or jambs the line) called a powerblock. The uphauling line then gets coiled on the deck until the pot is landed on the pot launcher, picked, rebaited and ready to launch again. Before the advent of the mechanical coiler (“Kinghauler”) the job was done by a crewman, and it was an artform. The line exits the powerblock at around a fathom (6 feet) per second, and in a smooth rhythmic hand-over-hand motion the coiler lays it into a nice neat pile as the other crew stands by ready to land the pot. It was an artform that some could and some couldn't do, deckhands who could coil were always in demand, and the attrition rate was high. So I lied my way onboard by saying I was proficient at the art. Thankfully, one of the other crewman was a friend of mine, and miraculously, the deck boss was patient once he learned the truth, and amazingly enough, after just a few turns at a half speed block, I had it down. I could coil, and before the trip was over I was as good as any.

Later, I wrote a story about this incident, which got published in the Alaska magazine, my first attempt at writing a short story, my first submission for publication. They paid me something like 350 dollars, and I think it was as ecstatic a moment as when I coiled my first pot at full speed block.

My crab fishing days lasted for three long seasons, seasons that stretched from November through March from Cape Chiniak to far out the Aleutian chain. We worked what seemed like twentyfour-seven days, the only rest to and from the gear, catnaps between endless strings of crab pots. I figure that I coiled something like 350 miles of line all told. It was brutal work, and I think most of us were scared shitless a lot of the time, but we never really knew it because we were always too busy or bone weary to feel it. Even the biggest boats are mere specks in the jaws of the bitter Alaskan waters. One season, eight people I knew never returned from the sea to drink with the rest of us in the bars.

I ended up falling in love with fishing. The sea, the fish and the crustaceans became a powerful drug in my bloodstream. So I fished more than just crab, I fished for shrimp and halibut, become a bonafide floating predator, and eventually skippered my own small halibut boat.

Eventually I left Alaska, bound for my first attempt at college when commercial fishing took a big downturn because of resource depletion, and season wages fell to poverty levels. It was a doldrums that lasted a good many years for the crabbers of Alaska. I eventually got my education, but my heart always remained on the fishing boat deck.

Ultimately, the repetitive motion of coiling, handling pots and fighting a bucking deck probably KO'd the majority of my joints, cartilage and bone. And, this has made several orthopedic surgeons a few dollars off of my insurance, but I can still coil a line and you should see me tackle a mighty garden hose or the anchor line to Le Menagerie.

Three years ago, I had the opportunity to subcontract on a sixty five foot double-rigged shrimper up at Aransas Pass. The boat was specifically rigged to catch and relocate sea turtles as part of a US Army Corps of Engineers dredging project requirement. I accepted the job, though it was difficult to go offshore now that I had a family.

The captain and crew were Hispanic and it didn’t take long for Spanish to become my own dominant language, and I found myself comfortable speaking no English. Besides taking my turn on the deck, I took my turn in the galley cooking breakfasts of migas con huevo and making ceviche from freshly caught cobia. I developed an immediate friendship with all on board. Cliché, but true, there is kinship and commonality among all who go to sea, regardless of where you’re from, where you’ve sailed or fished.

As the on board biologist I quantified and identified bycatch- everything from sharks to starfish, and of course any seaturtles that might get hauled aboard in the specially modified shrimp nets. I worked in twelve hour shifts along with another biologist, which was reminiscent of other commercial fishing I had done, things like shrimp and halibut. I worked the night shift, which was even more reminiscent of my commercial fishing days, working under the glow of the sick yellow halogen deck lights. The only thing missing was the freezing spray and the pitching twenty foot seas. I didn’t miss that part. I even enjoyed handling the nets, pulling the lazy line and shooting the big trawls back into the inky depths. The job evoked a world of emotions and sensations long buried. Sleep was deep and restful against the hum of the diesel engine, the sound of deck machinery and the smell of the salt air. I remembered, for a vague instant another scene, passing through the Shelikof Straights as the sun sank over the western horizon, mountains turning from brown to gold in the last dying remnants of the day and asking the question among ourselves, as we lined the rail watching this passion play unfold, “Why would anyone want to work on the land?”.

The job though was prematurely cut short when the dredge sucked in a Kemps Ridely turtle, and was shut down. I returned home on a bus.

Today, I get my fix of the sea as often as possible aboard Le Menagerie, the drone of deck machinery and diesel replaced by the song of the wind in the sails and rigging, and the sound of the water slipping by the hull. Each time, my soul reaches back from the present and reconnects to something, probably much older than I am. And sometimes when we're out there, and the sun is setting, lighting up the water in the same way, I say a prayer for my friends from the sea, those who came back, and those who never did.

Who Polices the Police?

I hope you will take the time to read this carefully before dismissing it as another one of my rants. Since you will not listen to me, let me try and enlighten you to a few things in writing. First, the police are not your friend. By the very nature of the word, "police" indicates a condition where one loses freedom to authority. It is quite easy for that authority to become corrupt and self serving. When the police want your "consent" to search you, it is usually due to the fact that they have no probable cause to do so. It is an open door to government mischief. Whether you have anything to hide or not, giving them consent to "search" you, or your property is a basic violation of the 4th amendment of the US Constitution, which states:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Probable cause has a narrow definition, and MUST be legally supported, it is seldom a judgement call on the part of the street police, but rather one decided higher up, by a judge. That's how our system works. By giving them permission without strict adherence to the constitution, we basically give authorization for our constitutional right to be violated. A right that many have fought and died for. This is not cooperation. This is abdication. It has been my long standing belief that this country is heading in two directions, both with the same result, both for the same reason; corruption of the constitution. By not making the constabulary accountable to the constitution, we enable them to set precedent which will eventually come back and haunt us. Remember, we are only a few steps from a gestapo state, and things like 9-11 have hastened that condition. I get outraged when people are ambivalent or mypoic to this. It is up to us as citizens to police the police, police the government, and this is our sacred responsibility it is not an option. By allowing them to corrupt the constitution, your rights and my rights, we pound another nail into the coffin of freedom.

The Back Roads

I rolled out west on my scooter Friday to visit my dad. He's 86 years old and a source of inspiration to all of us aging pirates. He lives alone, has a girfriend ( he can't get her to play strip cribbage though), and still drives ( but I don't know for how much longer) his big old white caddilac all over McAllen and the surrounding towns.

I got a notion to take the day off, the winds were pretty light, and skies blue and I had the option to sail, but it'd been about a couple of months since I've seen the old man. D was substituting over at the elementary school, and called just as I was getting ready to take off so we met at Manuels for a quick breakfast of chorizo con huevos before I rode, and with a fueled body, I fueled the iron pony, cranked the power on, heading west out the back roads.

The back roads run through towns that pretty much resemble the Rio Grande Valley the way it was when I was a kid. Back in the 1960's there was little urban development, the area was mostly agriculture, and going to the island was an all day experience, once here there was little to do except play in the Gulf of Mexico or fish. Miles of farm fields, brushland and small towns, untouched by progress separated our family home in Mission from the coast. It was an endless expanse of flat two-lane blacktop running east to west, north to south. It's as if the original designers had no concept of anything but the cardinal compass points.

I turn north on Farm Road 1847 just past Bayview, gunning the two wheeler about sixty five, just humming along, all systems go. At FM 106, I turn left (west), and roll along past some of the remaining orchards, some still in blossom, the early morning air heavy with the scent of orange. When I was a kid, learning to drive, it seemed like most of the Valley was orchard, and it was easy to get lost. It was like driving in a maze, and since many of the roads were poorly marked, there were times when I actually was lost, which was OK in those days because gas only cost something like thirty five cents a gallon, and besides, it gave me an excuse to push my grandmothers bald-tired Buick Skylark at insane and unsafe high speeds along the lonely, neverending straight road, always searching for that one different road, the road that led home.

The air begins to turn hot, and then hotter, the farther from the coast I ride. I find myself slowing down for the towns of Rio Hondo on the Arroyo Colorado, Combes and Santa Rosa, all puctuation marks in an otherwise open throttle ride. At the town of Santa Rosa, there's a north joggle where 106 turns into 107. I always wondered what the reason was for this apparent right angle joggle in an otherwise seamless highway. I found out many years ago when taking the first of many geology classes, the professor explained that the surveyors, coming from Cameron County had surveyed FM 107 on magnetic north and the surveyors coming from the opposite direction (Hidalgo County) had surveyed FM 106 on true north, and where they met (Santa Rosa), well....there had to be a compensation for magnetic deviation. I think I would've joggled the roads in less than a ninety degree angle of meeting if I had been the planner. Just a perverse sense of doing something different, maybe show my prodgeny that I really do know more than just the cardinal compass points.

Riding a motorcycle is a sensory experience, as addictive as cocaine or heroin, but driving a car is a mindless job, something best done on internal autopilot. Driving (as opposed to riding) is a brain numbing experience that isolates you from the world, with life as a surreal movie played out in fast forward just on the other side of the windshield. No matter what the commercials try to tell you, the average person usually looks for ways to escape the task at hand when driving in a car, especially in the city. Too often I find myself locked into the jeep, air conditioning on, talk radio jabbering incessantly, the rest of the world blowing by, pretty much unaware that I'm stuck in a steel shell rocketing through an unfelt, unexperienced world with the only sense of travel being the motion of things going by, lost forever just outside the windows.

On the steel horse, experiencing the outside is manditory and without question, you're an integral part of it. Every buffet of the bike in the wind, each gust on your chest, the noise of it in your ears along with the drone of the engine lets you know that you are alive, bound to this world, you are a player in this world, not just traveling through it. At low speeds, the smells and sounds of the world filter through, untouched by glass and air conditioning, some sucked in to the carburetor destined to become the explosion of fuel and air that produces the power that propels you down the road, others sucked into your brain in the explosion of senses that evoke distant or maybe new memories, energy that propels you through life . Just past Santa Rosa, the sugar mill is operating, and I can pretty much taste the sweet odor of sugarcane being processed in the morning air already hot and redolent with the smell of tar and asphalt, blooming wildflowers and native brush which line the searing road, all flashing by in a kaleidoscope of bright color.

I slow down for the towns of Edcouch and Elsa. These towns date back to the early 20th century, when a local gringo developer, Ed Couch named the two nascent cities after he and his wife, Elsa Couch. For many years they were small farm communities north of Weslaco, roughshod composites of little tacquerias and cantinas lining the dusty street, with maybe an auto parts store or a llantaria (tire repair) breaking the monotony of the otherwise unremarkable, flat landscape. From here, the world is truly flat. Today I notice a Pizza Hut, a Stars, a Jack in the Box and a Whataburger all lining the main street of Edcouch. And of course there's the requisite Circle K (Circle Jerk) Wells Fart-go Bank and Auto Zone. Progress marches on.

Nearing McAllen, the traffic begans to mimic any other big town I have ever been in, ever had the misfortune to live in. Consturction, filth and inconsiderate driving, buildings jammed up against buildings, apartments, houses and businesses all within whisper of each other. People living an arms distance from one another, never knowing one another, doors locked, hearts locked. I am claustraphobic, agorophobic, wanting to flee before I finish the task at hand. Why would anyone want to live there? Almost immediately I begin to long for my island, for my stretch of the coast, the endless expanse of wind and wave. I think about just turning the bike around and pointing it east towards the water, where I know we both want to return to, but I complete the journey at my fathers doorstep.

An eternal afternoon spent with the old man, saying adios in the late afternoon heat, sinking into the saddle of my iron pony, once again rolling the throttle on, and with the sun on my back, head east, thankful to be going home.

The New Sheriff in Town

My friend Ken stopped by this morning to visit. I noticed his white 4WD truck parked at the lab when I got back from turning on the baypump. Ken works for the National Marine Fisheries Service as an agent, and he's the new sheriff in town. We became friends last winter during the Christmas freeze when green sea turtles stranded on the shoreline like so many lawn ornaments, and we ended up having to babysit about 18 of them.

The Corps of Engineers in its infinite wisdom was opearting a dredge at the time in Brazos Santiago Pass, under the rationale that they would do less damage to emergent seagrass beds during the winter. Never mind the fact that our reptile friends are lethargic and much more prone to being sucked up in the dredge intake, to be belched out on the beach along with tons of muddy dredge spoil in a process called "beach replinishment".

Beach replenishment is a scam that the city of South Padre Island came up with along with the Corps of Engineers to deal with the tons of unwanted dredge disposal material, mostly bottom muck and mud. This spoil is always a problem whenever a dredging project is undertaken, and our one pass between the Port and the open Gulf, the Brazos Santiago Pass is no exception. Although the Brazos Santiago is a natural pass, or cut in the island, it requires periodic dredging to maintain an average depth of around 35 feet which allows large vessels access to the Port of Brownsville. So every two years a massive project is undertaken to accomplish this. The City contracts the Corps of Engineers to pump the freshly excavated mud on the beaches in the hope that this will slow the erosion caused by natural and man made process, things like knocking down the primary dune field in order to build condominiums and hotels. They pay the Corps something like a million dollars each time they pump their otherwise unwanted spoil on the beach. I suspect somebody, or a group of somebodies much higher up is profiting from this exercise in futility, but I'll refrain from speculating, or the Eye of the Hurricane and its author could very well disappear from the planet.

For a little while though, the beach appears wider, although much muddier, and I guess the throngs of vacationing winter Texan tourists thoroughly appreciate this effort to save our beach. Because the dredge spoil consists of mostly mud sediments, natural erosion in the form of the longshore current quickly picks it up and carries it northbound to be eventually deposited along the coastal eolian sandplain, replenishing miles and miles of deserted and unspoiled beach, shoreline and inland potrero in a process thoroughly appreciated by vacationing whitetailed deer, coyote, rattlesnake and Santa Gertrudis cattle.

So I met Ken when the dredge rudely deposited a turtle on the beach during that cold period, and he caught wind of it. Of course the dredge operator denied that this happened, but was more than a little embarassed when Ken went to talk with them on the beach, and right then as they were talking, the dredge outlet spewed another fricasseed tortuga verde on the beach. Although caught apparently red handed, the upper echelon of the NMFS failed to successfully prosecute the dredge operator. That's the way it is, one arm of the government rarely polices another. It's all on the wink and nod system.

I know that frustrates the hell out of Ken. Of all of the feds that I've known, he seems to be one of the rare ones who understand the long term consequences of greed. Whether it's overfishing or consumer fraud, Ken goes after them like a bulldog. He's the new sheriff in town.

One of the new sheriffs latest frustrations is with wholesalers who are dumping a species of Atlantic fish that are commonly called redfish. Completely unrelated to our own redfish (red drum), this species of ocean perch is inferior in quality and size to our own native fish, but since one of the vernacular names is redfish, these unscrupulous marketers are selling it under that moniker, at a substantially lower price than true redfish. The restaurants buy it at a lower cost, and sell it to the consumer in the form of "blackened redfish", charging the same price they would if they sold the real thing. The irony is that just about anything tastes good blackened. You could blacken the sole of an old shoe and it'd probably be allright, maybe a little tough though. So although not illegal, it is nevertheless, unscrupulous, and I'm sure if the consumer knew what was going on he'd be pretty pissed. Of course to do anything about it would take a hefty effort on the part of the NMFS legal staff, and they're unwilling to make that effort as long as thing remain status quo. They told him though, if it generated a lot of publicity (the squeeky wheel kind of thing), they might be more inclined to react.

I just talked to the new Sheriff on the phone, and we're going to get together and sit on the back deck of Le Menagerie, drink a few beers, eat some fried chicken and watch people try and trailer their boats after a long day of drinking and fishing on the Laguna Madre. Should be fun. Last time I enjoyed that form of entertainment, somebody ripped the axle off of their trailer when they backed too far down into the water.

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.

The Cussing Man

Early May on the third coast is a strange time of the year. Spring has generically passed, but summer isn't quite fully developed with it's scorching south wind and brain dissolving, crippling sun. In May, the winds don't know whether to blow from the north or from the south, and one day the water is chocolate milkshake brown, the next day, azure blue.

It's a time of the year when people can't quite seem to find their balance. A truncated season of schizophrenia and neurosis. People fight and bicker, usually with little or no reason or purpose. I always want to sail away this time of the year, escape to the coast of Mexico, some place like Papantla or Tuxpan, where nobody knows my name.

Then there are the characters who populate the boulevard like so much flotsam and jetsam tossed up on the beach by the indecisive waves to slowly ripen in the May heat, characters like the cussing man.

The cussing man drifts up and down the street all day long from the Bahia Mar to Isla Blanca Park, a distance of about seven or eight miles, borne along by some unseen current, some internal rhythm. He's always dressed in a pair of blue jeans rolled up to the knee, like knickers, without shoes or a shirt except in inclement weather, when he breaks over and puts on an old faded gray hooded sweatshirt pulled up over his head, cinched down , eyes always on the pavement, slowly shuffling along.

Every now and then the cussing man stops at any one of the local businesses, appearing to be another engineered and designed fixture, like maybe a wooden display case or a decrepit lamp poised just behind the legitimate customers, the yuppies and tourists who come here this time of year to escape their own paranoia. Once inside, he rarely says anything at all, but when the medication isn't working, or maybe the moon and tides are in just the right phase, he has an uncontrollable penchant for letting out melodious, unctuous strings of profanity. I guess it's something like tourettes syndrome or some other disorder du jour, but to me, it's an art form. I marvel at a well executed sailors tongue, disorder or not. Sometimes I wonder where the cussing man came from, what his history is, what storm deposited him on our beach.

Sometimes the cussing man hangs out at George and Scarlets Nature Center over by On the Beach, and George and Scarlet being the gentle people they are seem to keep him in check while he's there. They have to because they often have school groups, families and the requisite Red-Eared northerner milling around in the center, viewing their collection of marine life and photos, who might not find his flawless recitation of profanity as interesting as I do. At least I've never heard of any antics that the cussing man has performed there.

Les told me one time the cussing man unleashed and wagged his penis at the female clerk at the Circle K across the street from the Nature Center, and went directly to jail for a little while. Les also tells me he lives on some kind of penchant or disability. He thinks the cussing man just fades into the endless dunes or under a boardwalk when the sun goes down. Les knows a lot about folks. He assembles these facts like bits of madness on cocktail napkins for later reference when he sobers up.

Lately I think I might have contracted tourettes syndrome, or maybe some other cussing disorder. I figure now I can just unleash profane outbursts with impunity, blame them on something beyond my control. I could go up to people who piss me off, people like my jerkoff, exlandlord and say things like: "goddamn sunufabitch muthafucking shitpile dickwad pisssucking ball licking bastard", and just walk away, smirking. I wouldn't follow the cussing man as far as pulling out my own penis and shaking it at anyone though.....