Rotten Fish and Spearmint Snowballs
3/17/20
I learned a lot in the water right behind me. Until i was 18 I spent countless hours here on a sailboat. Sanding teak, learning knots, racing some. Sailing is a big part of why I live in the south. My dad took a job at a hospital in Biloxi, MS in 1978 and we moved from near Detroit, MI with our sailboat in tow. It was a decent enough opportunity i guess, but the big gain was year round sailing, my dads lifelong passion.
I learned that a spearmint snowball from the bait shop was awesome but turned your shit blue. I learned that the lightest kid in the family got hoisted 48 ft in the air on a wire to wiggle out the jammed halyard. I learned you always have one hand for the boat and you wear deck shoes only. I learned that playing ponderosa with Mezcal is a terrible idea, and threw it up down the side of the boat as proof.
Today on St. Patrick’s day, I stopped and walked down this dock to where our slip was. It’s been 33 years or so since I’d been here. It still has the same smell. Slightly rotten fish and sewage, the reason for my dislike of fish “taste”. To me fish tastes slightly like the harbor smells, and that, is a non starter.
Today my dad would have been 90. Thankfully absent was the hammer of grief from last week and I just drove along the beach thinking about him and the Gulf and the hours spent on the water. As I approached this harbor I almost kept going but then thought, what the hell else better do I have to do and pulled in.
When we first moved to Mississippi there was a family who had a decrepit old houseboat called the Dollywhopper. I think it had to have been a homemade monstrosity. Green and ugly lines and angles. It was owned by some folks from Poplarville, MS. I kid you not, the mans name was Pete Poo...from Poplarville. They’d come down and work on the boat and sit in the harbor most weekends. I never did see that boat move out of the slip.
One weekend they came all excited. Their son or someone close had invented a new product. This was the early 80’s and the original Incredible Hulk was a popular TV show. They had invented a Velcro shirt that tore away when you flexed. The sleeves and back would split as young kids everywhere channeled their inner Bruce Banner and declared “Don’t make me angry. You wouldn’t want to see me when I’m angry”. They had sunk their savings into the product but I don’t think it worked out for them. Seems that people kept opening them and trying them on in the store and after one fake ripping, put them back on the shelf and walked away.
4 slips down on the right were the Doyle’s. They had a homemade (I think), multiple mast sloop, also green. They were true sailors and their son Eric went on to sail professionally and won a world championship. Again, I think. I haven’t thought about much of this for 35 years. It’s fuzzy.
Today if my dad were here, I would have called him for a brief Happy Birthday, maybe a few words more, he , like me, didn’t talk a ton. He’d have told me that he loved me and we’d have hung up. I’m of course sad I didn’t get to do that, but thankful I took the time to remember the times spent here, eating snowballs and shitting blue.
#hugsandhi5s
