Post by cnot on Jun 13, 2007 23:39:20 GMT -5
Figured I'd just start a whole thread for each time I come up with a story involving my bud Scott, aka "Smack".
Before I start telling them, I better clarify why we call each other "Smack". It's really quite simple, back in the olden daze, we tended to imbibe more than the gray cells could maintain a "normal" functioning manner, and on occasion would make a statement in front of someone, usually of female persuasion, that was, well, stupid. At that point, the non offender would say to the third party, "Smack him in the head for me." (Who exactly was the major offender, and first deserved the name is still a debate, but it was he that came up with some of he more "brilliant" statements in public. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)
One early Saturday morning, mid August if memory serves me, I woke to the rumble of the "Chicken" rolling into the yard. (Trans Am, big bird decal on the hood, need I say more?) I rolled off the couch/bed, cleared a few empty cans off the bar, fired the coffee pot, filled my pipe with Captain Black and waited.... A couple moments later the spring of the wooden screen door let me know that someone was easing it open, and a head poked through the curtains of the doorway to my "room".
"You're up, good...." Smack said as he stepped in. "Man the Swamp looks like hell, Barn party last night that I missed?"
Ok, I put that in the story for a reason. When I tell these old stories, I tell them from memory, and I sometimes slip into the old jargon. I want to get you on board in case I put something in a story and it makes no sense to you. (Ok, sometimes I wonder if the entire story makes sense... But, that's another matter to be covered at the end of each story... I'm talking about nick names and such again!) My folks had a rooming house, rather than let the kids take up rooms that were potential money makers as my brothers and I reached our teen years, we slept in the out building. It was shingled in red, with white trim. My brothers, 10 years my senior, dubbed the building "the barn". The name stuck, and just about the time I reached legal age, I decided it needed a bar in the "room wing". The building was originally intended to be a garage, had a center area where the intended car would pull in from street side doors, where the back door was the only other entrance with a wooden screen door that had no catch. If you opened the door fast, the spring would sort of"rrring", and if you let it go it would SLAM, slam, slam because it had no catch. Something that was not a design flaw, but a way for eagle eared parents to "keep an eye" on teenage boys not sleeping in the house. Easing it open became an art...The room area that I put the bar in became "the Swamp", MASH was big in those days, and the room often took on the appearance of its namesake.
"Yeah, a formal, let me know if you find my cummerbund. Coffee while you explain the crack of dawn visit?" I asked.
"Give me a cup, if you can find one without mold.Went to a party at home last night, girl I met wants crabs, told her I'd catch her some. You game?"
"Smack yourself in the head, of course I am. But I HAVE to be back by noon, one at the latest. It's a big change over day, my mom will want help with getting things ready for the new tenants when the others leave." I said as I rinsed a pair of cups with water from a bottle and pured some "disinfectant" in them before filling them with coffee. (The barn had no running water, so I kept water in an old brown jug. Filling the coffee maker the night before nearly exhausted the jug and I couldn't remember if anyone used the cups at the party, so it seemed the logical thing to do under the circumstances.)
"You bring pole?" I asked after coffee and we were making to leave.
"No, traps, bait and beverages. No fishing gear."
"Grab some off the wall, I'll get some squid out of the freezer. Small blues in the backwater have been hitting tipped buck tails over any thing else. Please tell me you have the raft, I lent mine."
"Got the old one."
The raft was needed because the place we liked to crab was an old dock in the water off of the Ocean view Highway from Cape May to Wildwood. When I say "in the water", I mean IN THE WATER. The thing was falling apart, and you couldn't reach it without something that floats.
The method went something like this. One of us would take the raft and paddle to the dock. The other would stand on shore holding the end of a rope tied to the raft. The person on the dock would have a similar rope, and we would ferry everything across pulling the raft back and forth. At low tide, the distance was not big deal, maybe fifteen feet of water from the mud bank to the dock. High tide was a bit more challenging, just because of the bank formation. It became closer to 50 feet of water. We thought we were lucky, the water was pretty low....
I forgot "the old raft" meant the one with he slow leak, and by the time I climbed up on the dock after ferrying the equipment across after Smack, the thing was looking pretty spent.
The crabs were on the bite, our peach basket was filling pretty quickly filled. Of course the fact that we had a half dozen box taps and twice as many hand lines in the water helped. (Hey, there was no limit on things in those days, and Smack brought enough chicken parts to triple that, so why not???) The snapper Blues were keeping us entertained between pulling the lines for a while, but stopped right about the time I said, "We better start packing it in, it's almost check out time at the house."
I'm not sure if we noticed that the tide had rolled in before or after we heard THE NOISES. First was a loud "SNAP" from a hand line being pulled from the piling on which it was tied.
"What the he..?"
And then the splashing in the area of one of he traps.
Making our way quickly over the broken boards of the decrepit dock we saw the culprit.
A fairly large Hammerhead was going after the crab baits. Well, he looked large Depending on which one of us you ask, and whether you ask us when we sit down or at closing time, you will get different stories. But, I will say that it was big enough for me to look at the distance from the dock to the shore and quickly decide that I would rather take the "bite" from my mother than risk the one from the shark.
What did we do while we waited for the shark to clear out you ask??? Weren't you paying attention??? Smack had the beverages covered, so we emptied the cooler. As we did so, we figured the best way to make sure the shark was gone was to start crabbing again and see if he came after the baits. He didn't, the crabs did.
After watching a beautiful sunset, we left the dock, and climbed into the Chicken before total darkness set in with a mess of crabs.
Needless to say, I had to be very good at the art of opening the screen door to leave the barn for quite a few nights after that trip.
Before I start telling them, I better clarify why we call each other "Smack". It's really quite simple, back in the olden daze, we tended to imbibe more than the gray cells could maintain a "normal" functioning manner, and on occasion would make a statement in front of someone, usually of female persuasion, that was, well, stupid. At that point, the non offender would say to the third party, "Smack him in the head for me." (Who exactly was the major offender, and first deserved the name is still a debate, but it was he that came up with some of he more "brilliant" statements in public. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)
One early Saturday morning, mid August if memory serves me, I woke to the rumble of the "Chicken" rolling into the yard. (Trans Am, big bird decal on the hood, need I say more?) I rolled off the couch/bed, cleared a few empty cans off the bar, fired the coffee pot, filled my pipe with Captain Black and waited.... A couple moments later the spring of the wooden screen door let me know that someone was easing it open, and a head poked through the curtains of the doorway to my "room".
"You're up, good...." Smack said as he stepped in. "Man the Swamp looks like hell, Barn party last night that I missed?"
Ok, I put that in the story for a reason. When I tell these old stories, I tell them from memory, and I sometimes slip into the old jargon. I want to get you on board in case I put something in a story and it makes no sense to you. (Ok, sometimes I wonder if the entire story makes sense... But, that's another matter to be covered at the end of each story... I'm talking about nick names and such again!) My folks had a rooming house, rather than let the kids take up rooms that were potential money makers as my brothers and I reached our teen years, we slept in the out building. It was shingled in red, with white trim. My brothers, 10 years my senior, dubbed the building "the barn". The name stuck, and just about the time I reached legal age, I decided it needed a bar in the "room wing". The building was originally intended to be a garage, had a center area where the intended car would pull in from street side doors, where the back door was the only other entrance with a wooden screen door that had no catch. If you opened the door fast, the spring would sort of"rrring", and if you let it go it would SLAM, slam, slam because it had no catch. Something that was not a design flaw, but a way for eagle eared parents to "keep an eye" on teenage boys not sleeping in the house. Easing it open became an art...The room area that I put the bar in became "the Swamp", MASH was big in those days, and the room often took on the appearance of its namesake.
"Yeah, a formal, let me know if you find my cummerbund. Coffee while you explain the crack of dawn visit?" I asked.
"Give me a cup, if you can find one without mold.Went to a party at home last night, girl I met wants crabs, told her I'd catch her some. You game?"
"Smack yourself in the head, of course I am. But I HAVE to be back by noon, one at the latest. It's a big change over day, my mom will want help with getting things ready for the new tenants when the others leave." I said as I rinsed a pair of cups with water from a bottle and pured some "disinfectant" in them before filling them with coffee. (The barn had no running water, so I kept water in an old brown jug. Filling the coffee maker the night before nearly exhausted the jug and I couldn't remember if anyone used the cups at the party, so it seemed the logical thing to do under the circumstances.)
"You bring pole?" I asked after coffee and we were making to leave.
"No, traps, bait and beverages. No fishing gear."
"Grab some off the wall, I'll get some squid out of the freezer. Small blues in the backwater have been hitting tipped buck tails over any thing else. Please tell me you have the raft, I lent mine."
"Got the old one."
The raft was needed because the place we liked to crab was an old dock in the water off of the Ocean view Highway from Cape May to Wildwood. When I say "in the water", I mean IN THE WATER. The thing was falling apart, and you couldn't reach it without something that floats.
The method went something like this. One of us would take the raft and paddle to the dock. The other would stand on shore holding the end of a rope tied to the raft. The person on the dock would have a similar rope, and we would ferry everything across pulling the raft back and forth. At low tide, the distance was not big deal, maybe fifteen feet of water from the mud bank to the dock. High tide was a bit more challenging, just because of the bank formation. It became closer to 50 feet of water. We thought we were lucky, the water was pretty low....
I forgot "the old raft" meant the one with he slow leak, and by the time I climbed up on the dock after ferrying the equipment across after Smack, the thing was looking pretty spent.
The crabs were on the bite, our peach basket was filling pretty quickly filled. Of course the fact that we had a half dozen box taps and twice as many hand lines in the water helped. (Hey, there was no limit on things in those days, and Smack brought enough chicken parts to triple that, so why not???) The snapper Blues were keeping us entertained between pulling the lines for a while, but stopped right about the time I said, "We better start packing it in, it's almost check out time at the house."
I'm not sure if we noticed that the tide had rolled in before or after we heard THE NOISES. First was a loud "SNAP" from a hand line being pulled from the piling on which it was tied.
"What the he..?"
And then the splashing in the area of one of he traps.
Making our way quickly over the broken boards of the decrepit dock we saw the culprit.
A fairly large Hammerhead was going after the crab baits. Well, he looked large Depending on which one of us you ask, and whether you ask us when we sit down or at closing time, you will get different stories. But, I will say that it was big enough for me to look at the distance from the dock to the shore and quickly decide that I would rather take the "bite" from my mother than risk the one from the shark.
What did we do while we waited for the shark to clear out you ask??? Weren't you paying attention??? Smack had the beverages covered, so we emptied the cooler. As we did so, we figured the best way to make sure the shark was gone was to start crabbing again and see if he came after the baits. He didn't, the crabs did.
After watching a beautiful sunset, we left the dock, and climbed into the Chicken before total darkness set in with a mess of crabs.
Needless to say, I had to be very good at the art of opening the screen door to leave the barn for quite a few nights after that trip.