Unca Walt Story -- Bahamian Diving Rules

[Unca Walt]

Following Bahamian Rules Can Be Hard
© Walt C. Snedeker​

Your Humble Obedient has just returned from an exciting holiday in the Bahamas. I hope I recover soon. Dr. Scooter, Pucky, Carol, and the Fabled PC made up the rest of our quintet.

We make up a perfect team for vacationing. Each of us have strengths, and therefore responsibilities, that have been irrevocably appointed by Nature.

Dr. Scooter (a.k.a. “My-Son-The-Doctor” always spoken as a single word) is along to put the busted pieces of his old man back.

Carol (my adorable daughter-in-law), makes perfect Islamorada Coladas -- an absolute necessity in the tropics.

Pucky fulfills his duties as my number-two son by willingly bashing on with whatever foolishness I have proposed for the day.

And of course, the Fabled PC is along to make sure everything runs smoothly. We have no difficulty when my fiery redhead is about; she can intimidate Internal Revenue agents.

But they have new rules about catching lobsters in the Bahamas. The rules, I believe, were concocted by demented US Navy SEALs. They are as simple as they are difficult to obey.

1. You must be more than 400 yards from shore before you can catch any.

2. You cannot use any scuba equipment.

Sounds simple, right? So here’s what happened:

I awoke early one fine morning to at our glorious rental mansion in Marsh Harbor (where the highways are for golf carts) and gazed out the window at the calm ocean caressing the beach. Oh, boy! I’ll be able to nip out, catch a couple of bugs before the rest of the gang stirs, and be back in time for breakfast. What a great idea!

Frequently my ideas outpace my physique.

Down I go to the beach with my Hawaiian sling and snorkeling gear.

Being a law-abiding sod, I begin swimming out the requisite quarter-mile or so.

Just to be on the safe side, I added a couple hundred more yards, to about 600 before I thought of sharks.

So I didn’t think about them.

I looked down at the rocky coral below. Hm. Interesting. Pretty deep, though. Oh, tra-la... in for a penny.

With the biggest airgulp I could manage, I nipped a surface dive and headed for the bottom. My wrist gauge said 28 feet as I peered under the ledge.

YOW!

Lobzilla was sitting there, staring at me! But I was out of air. A dozen strokes, and I reach the surface, panting and excited.

You only get one really good breath-holding shot (ever try to hold your breath successive times?)

Down for another look, to see if he is in any kind of a position that I could shoot him. Yup! Ohboyoboy!

Back up again. Panting and puffing, I prepared my loins as it were, and dove again -- this time ready to shoot the Pineapple sling as soon as I spotted the beast again. Did so. HOOHAH!! The shot well and truly struck home. Back up way up) to the surface. Pant Pant Pant Snork Pant Pant Wheeze Pant...

Back down: the doggone bug was dragging my six-foot stainless-steel spear back out of sight under the ledge. Reach in. Got the very end of the spear. Oh, Jiminy, pullpullpull... aha! He came free! But I can’t get him all the way out from under the ledge with the air I got left.

Back up (way way up). Pant pant, etc... Really feeling beat up, now. And look! The cotton-pickin’ bug is pulling my spear back under the ledge again. I’ll kill him, so help me I will!! Of course, that’s what I was trying to do anyway, so I guess the threat was moot.

Back down again. Grab the spear. Look at the bug on the end. He’s enormous. But... Omigawd! His great granddaddy is coming out of the hole behind him -- curious as to what all the hubbub is about. He’s twice as big as Lobzilla! Back up (way... etc.). Pant Wheeze Wheeze Pant Wheeze Wheeze etc...).

Scrape the bug off the spear into the bag tied to my waist. Pant a hundred pants in a hurry. The Father Of All Lobsters is visible even from the surface, looking around interestedly.

Ignore the sharp pains in my heart from the myocardial infarction, ignore the numbness to the left side of my face from the stroke, ignore the tunnel vision from anoxia... down again, quick as a duck. Only a split instant to draw back the heavy rubber sling and shoot in the general direction of the monster.

Lookit! Lookit! Drilled the sucka! Heading back up, admiring how everything has gone so silent, and all the dark spots in front of my vision have prettily joined together to form a velvet night of calmness.

Air.

Oh, my, it’s wonderful stuff. Look down. The spear is gone. But I know where it must be. Big Guy has dragged it back into his lair. Meanwhile, the big bug in the bag (hey! alliteration) has gashed my leg in a dozen places. I steadfastly do not think of sharks. Sure.

Back down. Ignore the drag of the now-heavy bag tied to my waist. Look under the ledge. Can just reach the end of the spear if I sort of stretch under the ledge. Pull. Unh. Pull harder. Unh, Unh. Did it give a little, or did my arm stretch? Not sure. Back up -- the bag slows me down immensely on my endless trek up to the surface. The spots merge together at the halfway-up point this time.

Can’t remember getting back up, but here I am. Wheeze Wheeze Wheeze... I’m all out of pants. Back down. Now I see the problem. The big beast has wedged himself in the rocks sideways, and is holding on to them out of a truly thoughtless and monumental perversity. Pull hard on the spear. No joy. Might as well be trying for Excalibur. Back up. Oh, Lordy, hurry]!

OK. We now make a deal. We get him this time or stay down there with him. I am now out of wheezes. Back down. Grab the spear. Pull once, twice, three times... four times. Have to go up NOW.

No! Darn if I will. Pull with everything for the last, last time. The heavy steel wing breaks off the spear, and it comes free. Back up to the surface. The bug stays down there.

Now all I have to do is swim three quarters of a mile back to shore (uphill, too!), and have breakfast.

I tellya, vacations can be rough!

I’m going out to the Rocky Mountains (Colorado) to hunt elk next month. Maybe I can successfully perish from altitude sickness... I wonder if their game laws are as dangerous to obey as the Bahamians’?

 

[Unca Walt]

searcher mentioned my pilot-tude. Here's a flier:

The Day The Dragon Got My Shirt

© Walt C. Snedeker​

It was all PC's fault.

Aw, shucks. The trouble with a mind like mine is that it always plays devil's disciple. Sometimes I think that I'm the definition of schizophrenia. Hey: I'm good people.

So maybe it wasn't entirely my long-suffering wife's fault. But it sure as heck wasn't all my fault either.

But I don't want to let you think that PC is off the hook. Oh no -- it was the Fabled PC that brought it all to a head with a Christmas present of a sailplane ride at Lantana Airplane Patch.

When we arrived, there were little airplanes all over the place, looking so real you could just touch them. And it smelled good; that warm, semi-sweet exciting odor of prop plane fuel that I remembered from my early childhood visit to the Holy Observation Platform at LaGuardia Field, where the roaring propellers from the enchanted planes would, just for a second, blow that hot, exciting wind into your face as they left for Camelot, Valhalla, and other places of unknown mystery. Neato.

PC was as nervous as a spinster's fan, and was truly afraid that one or two of the planes might bite. But she is of noble blood, and stood there with eyes bright, head erect, chin firm, bowels dissolving. Holding the Glider Flight For Two Certificate in front of her like a talisman, she approached the Warlock In Charge.

The guy just glanced at it and said, "OK, let's go."

We were dumbfounded. We'd expected to have our bodies searched, or maybe have to produce passports, shot records, voter registration, or something. PC looked at me with those giant eyes she gets when she has just come back from the sandbox, and thinks maybe she should go back in again.

But, with a crushing grip that left my fingertips numb, my dainty bride held my clammy hand casually as we followed the WIC and walked out across a runway toward a bright orange and yellow sailplane laying canted over in the grass.

The first thing I noticed about the sailplane was that the hood on it didn't fit right. So I didn't notice that. We climbed in like lambs behind the guy now muttering incantations in the front seat.

Without any holdup or preparation that I could see, the plane ahead of us began to taxi, pulling us directly on to a runway which fortunately happened to be right there. Instantly, it seemed, we were rising steeply in the air.

Of course, right away I knew we were crashing, and the canopy that didn't fit began to make a sound like coal roaring down a chute. PC's grip on my hand increased to Mach 1.

The Dragon... waited.

For some totally unfathomable reason, I found myself resembling Ernie the Muppet, with a grin that was just as wide. I couldn't take my eyes from the world opening up out there ahead, below, and beside me as we climbed higher. Wow. I was immediately overcome with that peculiar but undeniable feeling of superiority that one gets in little airplanes. Lookit all those common people down there... hopelessly stuck in their pitiful yachts on the Intracoastal, jammed in their inferior Cadillacs on Route I-95.

In no time at all, it seemed, we were up far enough to be cast loose. The sailplane fell like a rolly coaster. Just long enough for PC to go catatonic. But now we were free, no longer towed. Wow. Wow.

You could see all the way to tomorrow. We swooped and soared and circled and turned. I couldn't feel my hand anymore, as PC's grip had far exceeded the best that Hulk Hogan could ever have achieved. But I didn't care.

The Dragon moved closer. I whooped and shouted, wishing only that I could hold the controls as we swept through the sky. There was a puffy little cloud below me. It looked firm enough to stand on.

I happened to notice PC sitting next to me, snow white skin and scrunched-closed eyes. She seemed to be enjoying herself immensely.

Suddenly, it was time to take our one chance to land. As luck would have it, the runway just happened to be in line with the nose of our spaceship at this point. This was when our pilot decided to end it all. I could see that he intended to take us all with him, as he was doing a creditable Stuka imitation--coming down vertically, or nearly so. I guess he changed his mind at the very last instant, though, because when we were about four feet from the ground, the plane was suddenly level, tootling along about ten miles an hour.

Rumble-bump-bump. We were in the grass right where we had started about two years ago. PC woke up.

We got our pictures taken, standing by the tow plane wearing WWII aviator's helmets that I had gotten somewhere. PC was unable to get me to leave the great expanse of concrete. There were little airplanes everywhere that I could peek into.

Now here's where I say that it's really her fault: As I was walking around, licking the wings of the planes, peering in the windows at the eldritch knobs and buttons and things, she said, "If you like it so much, why don't you learn to fly?"

The Dragon roared and pounced.

It is now a couple of years later. What's left of my shirt, the one the Dragon got, has my flight instructor's congratulatory note scrawled on it in magic marker, and hangs on the wall. As with most pilots, I suffer from bankrupture as I try to save enough pennies to pay for just one more hour of magic flying time.

And it's all PC's fault.

 

[Bushpilot]

Dam Walt, I really enjoy your stories!

 

[Unca Walt]

St. Augustine was just mentioned recently. I caused a Moment there: The merry-go-round was running, and nobody was on it. Lovely evening. So I got on. I used my hat to smack my horsie as we went around. A crowd gathered, with folks laughing.

Next thing you know, a guy climbs on and says, "I'm glad you did this! You looked like you were having so much fun, I decided to get on, too." Ten revolutions later, the merry-go-round was full, and there was a huge crowd of folks watching. My Beautiful Witch (AKA: PC) rode with me.

So here is the quieter side of St. Augustine:

St. Augustine Ain’t That Bad

c Walt C. Snedeker
​

I was out in the back yard the other day, playing frisbee with my neighbor’s dog. Boy! Did he make a weird noise... Anyway, The Fabled PC called me in to inform me that we were going to take a vacation over a long weekend, and that we were going to St. Augustine.

When I pointed out that it might have been nice to check with me first to see if:

a.) I had the time available to go, and

b.) Did I want to go

--She stated emphatically that we had discussed the whole thing at length, and that not only had I arranged for the free time to do it, but St. Augustine had been my idea in the first place.

Now, I knew that behind those perky little eyes resides a diabolically one-track mind, and that she was simply not correct in her statement. I forebore pushing my correctitude in the matter, partly because I felt that there was no sense in being pessimistic (it probably wouldn’t help anyway).

One other trifling item was the signed letter purportedly written by me that she was waving about in her slim, dainty hand to the owner of the Whale’s Tale Bed ‘n Breakfast requesting a room for the weekend.

“Oh, no?” she snorkled archly.

So rather than argue about it, I decided to acquiesce and cooperate in the matter. I referred myself to Waltie’s Rule About Women #221: “There are two ways to handle women... and I don’t know either.”

To reestablish my proper verbal superiority (verbal is all I try for), I smugly told her a fundamental truth:

“There is no known case of a double affirmative being used as a negative.”

“Yeah, right.” she answered. Sheesh!

Anyway, we hopped in our motorized Spam can, and began our trek. By eleven o’clock, we were really ready for breakfast. Then misfortune struck. I happened to notice a guilty looking billboard sign sniggering about a “chocolate factory” just up ahead.

Luckily for me, stupidity isn’t painful. Without even thinking, I nudged my dainty bride, and asked if she wanted to see a chocolate factory.

“Ooh, yes! Ooh, yes! Oohyesoohoohyesooo!!”

I suddenly realized from her reaction that I had once again stepped on the Landmine Of Stupididity. I have oft observed (and most always belatedly) that life is fraught with opportunities to keep one’s mouth shut. But rising to the peak of dimwittedness by asking my starveling chocoholic if she wanted to go into a chocolate factory before a delayed breakfast... well...

We bought a one-pound slab of delicious milk chocolate. One day later, it was gone. I got one small piece. Perhaps The Fabled PC was protecting me. I don’t know why though, because I’m immortal... so far.

One problem’s for sure: if I gain any more weight, I will have to let out my living room. I tried to distract my copper-topped darling with such clever aphorisms as, “Dear, fat sort of snacks up on you.” And, “Gee, I’d better make sure we don’t eat all this chocolate up really quickly, ‘cause I’m so fat, my blood type is Ragu.” Didn’t work. Ever see a gorgeous redhead with an ear to ear chocolate smile? It has its appeal, but kissies are sticky.

Did I mention St. Augustine? We got there about six at night. PC and Your Humble Obedient &tc. always travel very light with luggage. We learned this the hard way, by straining gizzards carrying useless stuff all over Europe. Now we pack a single suitcase. That way, we are almost certainly missing something important, thereby livening up any trip.

The owner of the B&B looked at the single suitcase clutched in my drive-cramped hand and managed to look obsequious and suspicious at the same time. Pretty tricky. He reached for it, (I think he wanted to join his dog sniffing it) but I wouldn’t let him carry it upstairs.

I was feeling very Rocky Mountain, having showed up at the impossible street address of the Whale’s Tale without the slightest problem. I explained that I always carry my suitcase, ever since the folks working the Hubble telescope announced that they had discovered that the rings of Saturn were composed of lost airline luggage.

Actually, the place was really quite easy to find. It was just that the street it was on was only twelve feet wide -- and that included sidewalks. We weren’t sure that we were even on a bona fide road, when bingo! There it was.

Inside, it was squeaky clean, with lots of knickknacks and things in our lovely room (with a nice little balcony overlooking the rent).

We went wandering about, shivering in the night chill. We stopped at a nice looking bar-cum-restaurant for a cocktail before dinner.

As luck would have it, there was a lady on my left at the bar (PC on the right) who kept staring at me. When I finally broke down at looked at her, she volunteered:

“H’allo. I am from Cologne, Chermany. I am here without a car or any money and I do not know anybody. I do not know how to get to Orlando International Airport from here. I leaf Zunday night for home.”

“Yikes!” I thought. I looked at PC. She looked back at me with those big blue eyes that were saying, “WHUT?”

At that moment, the waiter came over to tell PC that our table upstairs was ready. She got up and headed toward the stairs.

Ever the easy touch, Your Humble Obedient &tc. snaffled a twenty out of my wallet, and pressed it on the lady.

She was stunned. “Oh, I haf credit cards, I do not need any money. That iss very kind of you, but no, no.”

“Well, I hope you can get to Orlando OK. Good luck.” I was truly nonplused. I had sincerely thought the pleasant looking woman was, well... bumming. Not so. Just lonely and worried. I reached the table upstairs where PC was already sitting.

“You gave her money, didn’t you. I know how you react to ladies with problems.” After 50+ years, folks know the folks they are married to.

“I would have, but she wouldn’t take any.”

So the Fabled PC got another star in her crown. She absolutely went downstairs, took the German lady by the arm, and brought her back up to sit and have dinner with us. And she offered that we would drive her to Orlando on Sunday. And so we did. She was a very nice person, and it turns out that we got her out of a real pickle. Some fink of a guy she knew for 20 years just drove off and left her. There’s no figuring some folks.

The Fabled PC and Your Humble Obedient &tc. drove all the way home from Orlando feeling quite smug and noble. ‘Tis a nice feeling.

Did I mention St. Augustine?

 

[nickndfl]

Best day we had was 36 bugs off Dania at night.

 

[Unca Walt]

One more... I went bear hunting.

Grin And Bear… Hunting

© Walt C. Snedeker​

The Fabled PC and Your Humble Obdn’t &tc just got back from 8 days of travel and bear hunting. The Dainty One stayed in Charlie and Sandy’s cabin, and did not actually take part in the mountain festivities, but instead opted to spend the last of our retirement money on endless bargains at Mennonite Places Of Fleecing Visitors Mall.

Bear hunting is NOT what you might think, Gentle Reader. PETA would be proud. Nobody does anything at all to the bear.

The reason? I quote: "Well, if we shot the bear, we wouldn't be able to chase him."

Here's what happens, and TIG***: ***This Is Gospel

About 20 guys in $85,000-plus pickup trucks, each with three or four stupiddogs in a cage in the back show up at an agreed on spot in Dogpatch, Virginia. In the bleedin' dark. It is so dark back in the mountain forests of Virginia that it looks like a total eclipse at midnight in a coal cellar. Oh… and it is perishing cold!

All the stupiddogs are "Oh-wooo-woooooing" incessantly. Each of the pickup truck drivers is going around, smackin' the heads of the stupiddogs where they stick out of the cages with their camo hats, and shouting:

"Ah TOLE ya ta SHUT UP!!"

Now, why they would have to all wear regulation camo hats escapes me. At no time are they going to sneak up on anything at all. But, back to the racket at the trucks:

Charlie, my hatchet-faced buddy that continually gets me into fine messes, and Your Humble Obdn’t &tc were watching the backwoods types smacking the dogs, and commenting how it seemed to make absolutely zero sense. I mean, how the heck is one stupiddog s’posed to remember to “Shad-DAP!” when forty-three others are hoo-hooing excitedly? It escaped us both, but was quite entertaining. This hat-whacking, rhythmic cussing activity goes on for a half-hour, until at some unrecognizable signal, all the Cadillac-costing pickup trucks begin to wind their way up the vertical dirt road of the mountain.

There is relative silence for about six minutes, when suddenly, all the stupiddogs go absolutely bonkers.

The trucks all stop (15 or so of them). And the owners get out and enthusiastically shout at the stupiddogs to be quiet “I tole ya!” while they unlock the cages and take out one of the three or four stupiddogs in each cage. That is, they try to. The problem is that since ALL the stupiddogs want to go play, it is carnage -- and about half of them escape in the darkness, "woooooo-hooo-woooing" off the side of the road and down the near-vertical mountainside.

All except one inevitable stupiddog, which invariably runs up and down the road with five camo-hatted idjits tryna catch it and send it the right way. The dour-faced and evil-demeanored leader of the men studiously looks away as the embarrassed stupiddog owner tries to get his stupiddog caught. Nobody says anything about the ONLY dog that does not go running to chase the bear. It is safer to malign the guy’s wife and kids than to mention that his dog is a jerk.

Back to the chase.

All the stupiddogs have radio collars on them. Within five minutes, the "woooo-hooooooing" is no longer audible, and the radio direction-finders come out.

"There's Darla, over in the holla past the turnoff.” "Daisy and Buck are above the sod ridge." “Poke an’ Bingo look like they’s are follerin’ the cutoff to Mankey’s Bluff. Dang!”

And so on; all the guys compare notes. (Stupiddogs are all over the state by this time.)

After four hours -- and the release of ALL the stupiddogs piecemeal -- they begin to try to catch the dogs. This takes...

...TIG!!!! (see above for TIG definition)

...several DAYS.

Never saw a bear. Nope. Not one. I got to drive a gazillion-dollar brand-new pickup truck that positively retched of wet stupiddog odor, in order to save a guy from having to walk from Utah (or maybe somewhere in the Sierra Madres) to Virginia. It was fun, once my nose was dulled and my stomach was emptied at the side of the road.

Bears 3, stupiddogs and mountain men 0.

On the positive side, The Fabled PC managed to fill up the car with wood carvings and kettle-popped corn to bring back home to the wonderfully flat ground of Florida.

 

[Bushpilot]

Now Walt, nothing wrong with some kettle corn! Lol