Hammerhead

The characters in this story are Matt, Roy and yours truly.  The scene is Guantanamo Bay Cuba.  Matt is a Mexican-American from Texas.  Roy was from Worcester, Massachusetts and had a heavy New England accent.  He pronounced his home town "wousta".  Matt kept the books in the commissary and Roy was a butcher there.  I stocked shelves, drove a truck and operated a forklift.  The year is 1971.

Matt (with drink) and Roy at a Conch Race

The Gold Hill barracks sat oddly enough on a hill so half of its name is accurate.  If accuracy was the objective it would have been more appropriately called Dirt Hill.  Guantanamo sits on the southeast coast of Cuba and the base occupies both sides of the bay.  The bay is fed by the Guantanamo River and the bay dumps into the Atlantic Ocean.

View of Guantanamo Bay from Gold Hill Barracks

There are three main recreational activities in Gitmo, drinking, fishing, and adultery.  Sad to say this story only includes the first two.  All activities in Gitmo involve drinking.  Work involves drinking.  Sleep involves drinking.  Adultery requires drinking.  Fishing absolutely requires drinking.

My Gold Hill Barracks Bunk, Me with Scotch in Hand

Matt and I shared a room designed for four.  The picture above shows me on my bunk which is essentially one fourth of the entire room.  My open locker door is to the right.  On that door is my NAUI diving certificate and two (purposely blurred) Playboy pin-ups.  At the foot of my bed would be the door to the hallway and beyond that the empty bunk where some of this story takes place.

On this particular evening Matt and I made plans to rent a small boat from the Exchange and go fishing.  We got a supply of cold beer and rented a 12 foot boat with a small outboard.  We rented the fishing poles and bought some bait.  We navigated to the far side of the bay and began to fish.  Fishing was generally good here and we caught several small fish before long.  There was a center section below a seat plank that was used as a bait-well.  Sea water could be let into the bait-well and used to keep live bait.  We didn’t need that option so we just stored our catch there.

What we didn’t know was that the center bait-well leaked a bit so the blood from our recent catch was drizzling into the night water.  It didn’t take long before I hooked something big.  I had either hooked a large fish or a chunk of Cuban real estate.  Since it began to fight I guessed it was some form of seafood.  I told Matt to get the gaff ready.  The rented fishing tackle had one gazillion pound test on the reel so I could have landed Moby Dick.  Well, as luck would have it I didn’t land a great white whale. What Matt managed to gaff and pull flopping into the boat, was about a five or six foot hammerhead shark.  Realizing what he had just done our Navy boy from the deserts of Texas screamed in panic.  He threatened to go over the side if I didn’t get rid of this man-eater.

Matt was all the way up on the bow of the boat.  His hands were on the gunwale (top planking of the boat).  Our new arrival was doing his best to flip, flop and generally create panic for all aboard.  I got Matt's attention and pointed to one of his hands to show him why going over the side wouldn’t be such a good idea.  Just inches from his hand, and above the top of the gunwale, was the dorsal fin of a much bigger shark.  Given that we had at least ten inches of freeboard (distance from the top rail to the water line) this dorsal fin would be an indication that this particular shark was much larger than our boat. The movie Jaws was to be released four years after this incident, but I’m sure when Matt saw it, he remembered this night.

Hammerhead Shark

We didn't have to think twice.  The outboard took just a few pulls before it started.  We were quickly on our way home.  The now, small by comparison hammerhead, had settled down to just an occasional twitch and went to his reward somewhere before we reached the dock. 

Now, back on dry land and fortified with a little Dutch courage we consumed underway, we began the retelling of our encounter with the giant denizen of the deep.  We impressed the dock dwellers and I’m sure the shark that “got away” grew by several feet in the retelling.  I needed my Kodak moment with my hammerhead so we placed the shark across the hood of my 1963 Buick Skylark convertible and drove back to the Gold Hill barracks.

I climbed the stairs to the third floor to retrieve my camera.  While I was in our room I saw something that was not to be ignored.  I didn’t know what I was going to do with my new found knowledge, but I knew it was going to be big.

Downstairs we took picture after picture of the shark.  We had shark profiles, gaping shark, shark with Jack, shark with Matt, shark on the hood as an ornament, you get the picture…we sure did.

Then I asked Matt to grab one end of the shark and I led the way to the stairwell.  He asked why we were climbing up three flights of stairs with a dead shark.  I didn’t answer.  The questions continued until we got to our room.  Then Matt’s questions were answered in an instant as he asked another.  “You aren’t going to do what I think you are going to do?”  I just smiled.

Dead Hammerhead Shark

You see our friend Roy had been partaking of that other form of recreation, no not adultery.  He had come to visit and decided to wait.  He knew he was always welcome to our booze.  After all, alcohol was almost cheaper than water there.  A bottle of Smirnoff’s vodka was about a fifty cents. He had obviously enjoyed more than his share and had passed out on one of our spare bunks.

We pulled back the sheet to see Roy in his boxers.  We then quietly slipped the hammerhead in next to him.  We tucked in the sheet to keep them both cozy.  Matt and I moved to the other side of the room and began our own libation.  We waited a couple of hours in vain for Roy to wake up.  He must have been really plowed.  Eventually Matt and I went to bed.

Early the next morning the dawn broke and we were awakened to the terrified New England accented screams of Roy the butcher.  I awoke to see him on the floor at the foot of my bed twisted in the sheet, covered in fish slime, and locked in a loving embrace with the dead shark.  He was screaming and twisting and getting further entangled with the sheet.  I was quickly dressed and out the door with Matt on my heels and Roy’s screams fading into the hallway behind us.

Cuban Village with Cockfight Arena Foreground

Matt and I drove around for a while to kill time.  Eventually we went to one of the "off-limits" clubs on the base, this one in the "Cuban Village".  Cuban workers had moved to the base after the Castro take over and were set up in their own village.  They had a bar and restaurant that were off-limits to the GI's.  The picture above shows the area of the village with some cockfight participants in the foreground.  The village may have been off-limits for most but we worked with several Cubans that lived in the village.  We were regulars at their bar.  The fact that Matt spoke Spanish was a help.  We had lunch and cocktails.  Matt related in Spanish, our prior evening's adventure to some other bar patrons.  We eventually went back to the barracks to clean up the mess.  We swapped the mattress with one from another empty room and disposed of the sheets.  We deposited the now quite smelly hammerhead in a vacant field near the chow hall.  Bad smells emanating from the chow hall were commonplace.

Me Next to Field, aka Hammerhead Burial Ground

We avoided Roy for a few days to let him cool down.  When we finally met up again, things were fine.  Roy’s account was that, as an "old salt", he had spent many a night in some of the raunchiest whorehouses in the Philippines.  On more than one occasion he had found himself in bed with a woman who had looked much better the night before.  But, in his words, to drift slowly awake to such a foul odor and then look over at his bed partner to see just one eye looking back, he knew he had outdone himself and that he would probably need counseling.  Or in Roy’s case just some more alcohol.  He too had a new story to tell.

Typical Philippine Whorehouse

Dynamite

I decided to unite the dynamite stories under one heading.  I will be necessarily vague in some parts as I’m not sure that the statute of limitations has run out on a few of these.  They all have explosive consequences and involve a common product, namely dynamite.  For those not familiar with dynamite, except for its occasional use in cowboy westerns and war movies, a little background is in order.

Dynamite is basically nitroglycerin in a stick.  Invented by Alfred Nobel of Peace Prize fame, it can be detonated with a blasting cap inserted within the stick.  The blasting cap can have a hollow end for a burning fuse or it can be the electrical type which requires that a voltage be applied to its contacts.  Dynamite is dangerous and unstable and should only be handled by a licensed professional.  It should never be handled by irresponsible idiots like in this story.

Flashback to the 1960’s, particularly 1967 Iowa.  As a newly arrived visitor I was casually asked if I would go into the hardware store and pick up three of sticks of dynamite, a couple  of blasting caps and a few feet of fuse.  Now, where I come from, firecrackers are illegal let alone dynamite.  I found out later that firecrackers were illegal in Iowa too.  But dynamite, no problem.  Any kid with a dollar in his pocket could buy all of the aforementioned explosive supplies.  I figured that I was about to be the butt of a joke but played along anyway.  I entered the hardware store.   I asked the clerk for the supplies and he told me to wait.  No one was more surprised than I when the clerk returned with the dynamite, blasting caps and fuse.

It seems that, in this farming community we will call Perry, dynamite was regularly used to remove large rocks.  These rocks seemed to rise up out of the ground in a previously plowed field.  At Big Jon’s farm we used the dynamite to remove one such bolder.  We drove the tractor out to our intended victim and dug a hole under one side of the rock.  We first used one stick of dynamite.  A pocketknife was used to hollow out a tunnel in the single stick.  We cut off a couple feet of fuse and stuffed one end into the open end of the blasting cap.  We then inserted the cap into the dynamite and shoved the entire thing down the hole.  We filled in the hole and lit the fuse.

I then saw Big Jon run for cover behind the tractor.  I didn’t know much about dynamite but that seemed like a good idea.  A loud muffled boom and the rock lifted out of the ground and then settled back into its home.

We repeated the process, this time using two sticks.  A few minutes later and pebbles were falling in Des Moines.  The large rock was no more.

I stayed in this town we will call Perry until just before Christmas when an incident hastened my departure.  It seems that someone dropped a quarter of a stick of dynamite into the stairwell leading down into the town’s police station.  This group of uncivilized youths had parked in the alleyway behind the station.  All was quiet on Main Street (Willis Ave?).  There was no traffic.  A patrol car was parked across the street and the lone officer appeared to be asleep.

One member of this nefarious group hurriedly walked to the railing above the open stairwell and dropped in the quarter stick of dynamite.  On his run back to the waiting car Denny, we will call him Denny, slipped on the ice and slid across the alleyway into a cluster of galvanized trashcans.  The sound was deafening.  It did not however arouse the sleeping patrolman across the street.  The tires slid and then gained traction.  We sped down the alley for several blocks and exited back on Main Street.  We turned in the direction of the police station and began the slow drive west.  A loud boom was heard and the sleeping patrolman jolted awake.  He knew something had happened but didn’t have a clue.  He flipped on his lights and sped down the main drag.

I recall this incident as it may have occurred if I had been one of the passengers in that two door black 1965 Pontiac Bonneville convertible with the 421 engine and three two-barrel carburetors.  I firmly deny all knowledge of the incident and have told this story as it could have happened….had I been there.

1965 Pontiac Bonneville

The explosion made the local paper.  In a small town I figured it wouldn’t take long to realize that the guy from Miami that had been buying all of the dynamite could be involved.  Even this police force could figure that one out.  I now had about ten sticks of dynamite, about a dozen blasting caps and maybe fifteen feet of fuse.  It was time to head home.

Neither extreme cold nor extreme heat is a good storage condition for dynamite.  The trip home was through snow.  Summers in Miami would also not be good.  I needed to use up the dynamite.

Marty and I took it out into remote areas west of town and blew up stuff.  We even took dates out there and pitched dynamite into a canal tied to a rock.  The road would lift, the water would shoot up and the girls would look terrified.  To this day I can’t say that I understand women any better than I did then.

If you read the story titled The Christmas Hunter you already know the main characters of this next sequence of events.  The Hunter was also the recipient of this poorly planned prank.  If it were a separate story it could be titled The New Year’s Eve Hunter or The Dynamite Hunter.

Marty and I didn’t have plans for New Years and the old adage about idle minds and the devil’s workshop may have relevance here.  We had alcohol.  We had a car, an old Oldsmobile and we had dynamite.  What more do you need to celebrate the ringing in of 1968.  The Hunter was stuck at home that night as his parents were having a big New Year’s Party.  We decided to make it one they would all remember.

We cut off a quarter of a stick and fitted it with a cap and an extra-long length of fuse.  A quarter of a stick was the tried and true recipe that had passed muster at a police station in Iowa, if I had been there of course.  I had Marty drive my car and I readied the dynamite.  It took several passes as cars passing by and difficulties lighting the fuse stymied our efforts.

Finally everything clicked.  The fuse was lit and I pitched it over the roof of the car and into the front yard.  It landed far from any parked cars and away from the house.  A royally stupid act committed by two [insert your own adjectives here] individuals.

We drove far away as fast as we could.  We expected to hear the boom.  The windows were down but we heard nothing.  It could be that we were about ten miles away when it exploded.  Nonetheless we had no confirmation that we had been successful.  We were worried that it didn't explode and that someone would find it.  Someone could get hurt.  Yes, I get the irony here, now I worry about somebody getting hurt after I threw dynamite into someone's front yard in a residential neighborhood.  Being a college graduate doesn't make you smart.

We decided to prove the cliché and we returned to the scene of the crime.  We turned the corner about two blocks down from The Hunter’s abode and received immediate confirmation.   This confirmation came in the form of the large pumper fire truck, four or five patrol cars and the many individuals walking the street with flashlights.  There was a heavy blue smoke still hanging in the air.  The smoke made almost solid beams of the flashlights and headlights.  We drove slowly by and couldn’t believe the results of our handiwork.  The neighbors were either in pajamas or in party attire and appeared confused.  There was no center to their interest.  They were looking up into trees, pointing to other houses along the block and didn’t seem to have any inkling as to what had happened.  We quickly drove home.

Curiosity killed the cat but we weren’t cats.  The next morning we couldn’t contain our interest  and so we called The Hunter.  He invited us over.  The conversation dwelled on how much alcohol The Hunter consumed at his parents’ party but the reason for our interest wasn’t mentioned.  We tried to steer the conversation in our intended direction but to no avail.  The Hunter was still fuzzy from the previous evening’s liquid refreshment.  Just then someone in the neighborhood lit a couple of firecrackers and we immediately commented.

Then it all came back to him.  “Hell, you should have been here last night”.  “Those firecrackers are nothing.”  “Someone tried to blow up my neighbor’s house.”  It would seem that nobody could explain the loud explosion so the neighborhood rumor mill cranked up.  A neighbor across the street was the target of most of the gossip as she had something to do with the Playboy Club in Miami.  So mobsters were surely responsible for the explosion.

It didn’t occur to The Hunter or anyone else to just look at his front yard.  There, not fifteen feet from the walkway, was a large burned circle in the grass.  The epicenter of the dynamite explosion.

I think we told The Hunter years later but I’m not sure.  We eventually lost touch with him.  Early in 1986 I went into the Navy to get around being drafted into the Army.  The remaining dynamite was left in the loft of my parent’s house to sweat out the nitro in the ninety-degree heat.  Luckily my father found the now wet cardboard box and elicited the help of the Biscayne Park Police Department to get rid of it.  He mentioned it in one of his letters to me.

The Kid

This day started out innocently enough.  A regular day at work.  At the time I was working for the Miami-Dade County computer department.  It had various acronyms over the years as the department name changed quite regularly.  Computer departments love acronyms.  It makes them sound important.  On this particular day one of the department’s staff was leaving and there was a planned going away party.  We always liked it when someone left as it was an excuse to have an even longer lunch than usual.  I don’t think I knew her that well.  That never mattered when a long lunch was involved.

I drove my car to the luncheon and chauffeured two fellow employees, Mike and Alvin.  Now Mike was a normal sort but Alvin was a bit odd.  While Mike was properly groomed and could pass for an office worker Alvin looked more like the unabomber.  Alvin had almost shoulder length red hair and a full curly red beard.  He wore blue jeans with holes, one red sock, and one green sock for port and starboard.  He was a member of Mensa and a true computer genius.

We arrived at the restaurant called Dalt’s, maneuvered through the front revolving door and proceeded to a long group of tables that had been set up near the front facing window.  We ordered cocktails and placed our order for food.  The food arrived and more cocktails were ordered.  While Alvin was the more colorful of my two traveling companions, it was Mike who had the problem.  It seems that Mike wasn’t good at holding his liquor.  In his defense I have to admit that the joint we shared on our way to Dalt’s may have also been a factor in what was about to happen.

Typical Dalt's Restaurant

At this point in the story Mike decided it was time to visit the rest room.  He attempted to stand up, got dizzy and began a backwards on his heels stumble across the room.  He made it as far as the first row of tables behind where we were sitting.  The surprised customers watched as Mike proceeded to fall backward on to the nearest table full of food.  Mike, food, plates and silverware went flying and then crashed to the floor.  The Three Stooges couldn’t have done better.

Realizing what had just happened, Alvin and I attempted to rescue Mike.  We got him to his feet with lots of support.  We ushered him toward the front door.  This part is a bit fuzzy in my memory because to this day I’m not sure how we accomplished this next feat.  We got Mike out through the front revolving door when he couldn’t stand on his own and each door compartment only held one person.

Once outside Mike informed us that he still needed to pee.  We told him we weren’t going to back through that door so Mike did what drunks have been doing for years, he took matters into his own hands.  He spun sideways, leaned on the front restaurant glass window, pulled down his fly and began to relieve himself.  This was much to the dismay of the people in the restaurant who opted for the window seating.

It was unanimous; Mike couldn’t go back to the office.  Alvin informed me that he knew where Mike lived and suggested that we take him home.  I followed Alvin’s directions and we arrived at Mike’s house.  Mike was now asleep in the front passenger seat of my car.  We checked him for house keys and found none.  Had we searched the rear seat where Mike had been sitting on the ride to the restaurant, we would have found his keys clipped to the hanging seat belt.  That however would have ruined a good story.

We decided to break in to the house.  I went to my trunk and got a large screwdriver.  We went to the front porch and found a double hung window with a visible latch.  I worked the screwdriver behind the window frame and flipped the window lock.  I raised the window and proceeded to step through.  I had one foot on the inside floor when Alvin tapped me on the shoulder and said, “This is the wrong house.”

In less time than it takes to yell, “You dumb bastard”, I was in reverse backing out of the driveway.  I was at least sixty feet from the house when the word “bastard” was heard by Alvin.  This next part I will have to blame on the alcohol because no one in their right mind would have bought Alvin’s next line.  He said that we just turned in too early and now he remembers where Mike really lived.

I followed the new directions and drove several blocks away from the last scene of horror.  We pulled into the driveway of a house that I had to admit looked similar to the last one.  Being extra cautious this time I had Alvin describe the backyard.  He mentioned a pool and screened in patio.  While that description is basically a 50-50 proposition in Miami it was reassuring when we arrived to find a pool and screened patio at the back of the house.

We easily entered the screen enclosure and proceeded to the window that led from the kitchen to the patio.  By now I am a B&E pro and the window did not stand a chance against my large screwdriver.  I crawled through the window only to hear Alvin say, “If this is Mike’s place he has a dog.”  What came into the kitchen next was not a dog but a small horse that had lost his rider.  I’m not sure of the breed but it put both paws on the kitchen counter and looked me in the eye.  I was still sitting in the kitchen sink at the time.

Luckily I’m generally good with dogs and this one was a sweetheart.  A couple of pats on the head and we were friends.  I found some envelopes on the counter and read Mike’s name on the front.  I can now relax; we are in the right house.  I told Alvin to go check on Mike and that I would walk through the house and open up the front door.

I pulled open the door and was now looking down the barrel of a very large revolver.  The man holding the gun yelled, “Freeze and drop your weapon.”  I guess the large screwdriver was the weapon to which he was referring but as weapons go I would rather have his revolver.  I dropped the screwdriver about 30 feet from where I was standing in the doorway.  The police officer ordered me outside the house.  I calmly explained that this was Mike’s house as I gestured to the sleeping passenger in my car.  I was wearing a shirt and tie and Mike, drunk as he was, also had on a shirt and tie.  The police officers had started to relax when Alvin, looking like Redbeard the Pirate, walked on to the scene from behind the house.

The two officers then had us, just like in the movies, place our hands on the hood of the car as they checked our ID’s.  They ignored Mike as it was obvious he wasn’t a threat.  By this time the neighborhood had come alive with onlookers.  While the adults stayed off in the background the neighborhood kids came in for a good close look at the action.

Then a second patrol car showed up, this time with a male and a female officer.  The male officer from the second car began to take over.  He got our story.  He then pointed at one of the kids standing nearby and asked while pointing to Mike, “Do you recognize him?”  The kid looked carefully and then said, “Nope.”

The female officer from the second car then entered the driver’s side of my car and leaned toward Mike.  She shoved what looked like two broken ammonia capsules under his nose.  Mike jerked awake like he had been electrocuted.  He then belted the female cop right between the eyes.  The female officer flew out the open car door and fell backward onto the grass.  Nightsticks were drawn and just before batting practice could begin I heard a bullhorn voice basically telling everyone to stand down.  We had been saved by the arrival of the shift commander.

The newest arrival quickly got our stories and the summation from the officers.  The shift commander then asked one of the neighbor kids, “Do you know the guy in the front seat?”  The kid said, “Yeah, that’s Mike, he lives here.”  The first officer who had asked the same question could have exploded.  He found the kid he had asked and yelled, “I thought you said you didn’t recognize him.”  The kid said, “Yeah, I don’t know him because I don’t live around here.”

With Mike’s ID validated we felt relieved.  One officer whispered to me that he would be waiting down the block for us to leave.  I lied and told him that I was spending the night.  The police hung around for a bit longer.  Mike’s girlfriend arrived and we all sat around and drank a few beers waiting for the coast to clear.  Mike slept on the couch.

Hunting Rabbits, Part B

The rabbits were safe that first night but we hadn’t given up on our plan.  What else could go wrong?  We had already had our run in with the police which is damned near essential for any well thought out hair-brained idea.   We laid low for a couple of days.  We weren’t totally stupid.  Some opinions may differ on that last point.

Several nights later we exited our apartment, flipped on the headlights of our respective cars and had at least a half a dozen brown hoppers frozen in our beams.  We fired off about ten dollars’ worth of arrows, which is to say all of the arrows we had.  We didn’t hit even one rabbit.  Not one of them even moved.  They didn’t have to.  The safest place for them was right where they were.  Eating grass.  In fact, if they had jumped or moved they might have run into one of our well-placed missiles.  You could almost hear them laughing.  I know rabbits don’t laugh but I swear I heard little bunny laughter.  It sounds just like the little muffled squeak emitted during a stifled sneeze.

We spent about an hour the next morning in daylight trying to find even one arrow.  None to be found.  We were now arrow-less.  We had to assume the rabbits worked all night hiding them.  Probably had a little rabbit bonfire or something.

It was time for Plan B.  We didn’t have one but we knew something would come up.  After all we were college students.  Hell, I was about ready to graduate.  No gang of hoodlum rabbits is going to outsmart us.  It was time for the big guns, so to speak.

I owned a .22 rifle that could shoot shorts, longs or long rifle ammunition.  We determined that the shorts would be lethal enough and would make less noise.  With the nearest neighbor about 75 or 100 yards away we doubted they would hear anything.  It was decided.  We would follow in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt, Earnest Hemingway, Frank M "bunny" Allen, and Ramar of the Jungle, and go big game hunting.

I went back to Miami one weekend and brought back my .22 rifle.  That first evening I started my car and turned on the headlights.  We started Marty's Comet and turned on his lights too.  The laughing rabbits were everywhere.  Taunting me with their little brown eyes.  They still remembered the now infamous bow and arrow debacle.

There was a pop, pop, pop, pop and there were four dead rabbits.  The rabbit laughter had stopped.  It was time to collect our prizes.  Out in the field we picked up each of the rabbits and then stacked them next to a nearby telephone pole.  The pole had a street light which made a good reference.  We went deeper into the field to see if we could spot more game.  After several minutes of searching we decided to call it a night.

Then we saw why we should have called it quits a bit sooner.  Flashing blue lights meant that someone had called the police.  We were easy to find in this darkened section of town as the only lights around were on the telephone pole and the four headlights attached to a 1963 Skylark and a 1960 Comet.

We instinctively hid.  Our finely honed survival instincts told us to do so.  We positioned ourselves behind a clump of scrub palmettos.  The two police cars pulled into the dirt driveway of The Armpit and drove up on either side of the still idling Buick and Comet.  So now there was the equivalent of eight floodlights aimed in our direction.  Except for the cactus, broken beer bottles and probable collection of target arrows, you could have played a night football game on that field.  We remained in our hiding place looking like, like, well just like a couple of scared rabbits.

The two cops were looking intently in our direction.  Then one of them returned to his car and began driving out into the field.  We knew if he ran over one of the aforementioned sharp objects and got a flat tire it would be much harder to get him into a forgiving mood.  Many thoughts flashed through our minds.  Napoleon at Ulm, Cornwallis at Yorktown, Robert E Lee at Appomattox.  Yes, we decided to surrender.  We would surrender but we would do so with style.  Placing the bolt action .22 rifle on my shoulder we marched single file out of the darkness and into the light.

The moving patrol car stopped.  We stopped.  I was told to lay down my weapon.  Then we were told to get our butts over to the patrol car.  Asked what we were doing, that infamous phrase was uttered yet once again, this time in perfect two-part harmony, “Hunting rabbits”.  The cop, with a puzzled look on his face and after a brief pause, began to list the possible charges.  Discharging a firearm within the city limits, public endangerment, hunting rabbits out of season.  He then uttered words that would first put us at ease and then cause panic.  He said, “The only reason I’m not going to charge you (relaxation) with anything is that you didn’t kill any rabbits (panic).  Not 25 yards from where we were standing sat a pile of rabbit fur, under a street light no less.

We continued listening to the wise words of the officer while not hearing even one.  We wanted him looking at us and not in the direction of the street light.  Einstein theorized that time slows down as a body approaches the speed of light.  I now had another theory.  Time was ticking slowly, loudly, much like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.  It seemed eons before we were told to pick up the rifle and head back into our apartment.  We gladly did as we were told.

Once inside the apartment we did the only thing we could do, we drank some beer.  We watched the patrolmen talking casually among themselves.  We tried to listen to what they were saying but we could only hear the laughter of the rabbits.

This would have been the end of the story but as they say on the infomercials, “wait there’s more”.  The cops eventually left the crime scene.   We waited a reasonable length of time which turned out to be about three beers long.  In such instances time is more easily measured in beer.  We then returned to the scene of the crime to gather up the rabbits.  It was too late to clean them so we decided to tie them up in a melaleuca tree that grew just past our door.  We returned to our apartment and continued with the beer drinking.  It only seemed right after our latest adventure and brush with incarceration.

The next morning we were awakened by a loud pounding at our door and an almost unintelligible tirade of heavily accented words.  We quickly dressed and answered the door.  There she was, our nemesis, Beulah Ligocky (insert horse whinny here).  Bedecked in her finest flowered housecoat from the Ligocky Collection and with her uncombed dyed brown hair all askew and backlit by the morning sun, our landlady was in exceptionally fine voice this beautiful Florida morning.  We couldn’t immediately make out the words.  Her eastern European accent was more prevalent when she was upset.  Our eyes followed her outstretched arm and crooked pointing finger over to a foul site.  There, hanging in the melaleuca, were four basketball sized fur balls covered with flies.  Thoughts of a delicious rabbit stew quickly vanished.

We agreed to take care of the mess and also realized in that moment that the neighbors probably didn’t call the police.  Beulah was the closest neighbor.  Later that day we buried the decaying evening’s carnage in the same field where they met their demise.  We gave up on the idea of rabbits and went back to our seafood.  Late at night we could still hear the laughter of the rabbit herd outside our window.

Laughing Rabbit

Hunting Rabbits, Part A

This story will be in two parts, neither of which directly involves alcohol.  A little background is in order here.  I had at this time moved off campus to a dump we affectionately called “Armpit Acres”, aka “The Armpit”.  I say we since I had a roommate, Marty, aka “mini-kid and “teen-king”.  The mini-kid handle was due to his height as he was the shortest in our group.  The rest of us went from 6’-2” (me) up to 6'-8” (Big Jon).  

If you are wondering I was called “foghorn”.  This moniker was bestowed after several boating excursions where, trying to find a good dive spot I would be towed by a ski rope over the reefs.  When a good spot was found I would drop the line.  Someone was supposed to carefully watch me so the boat could be stopped in time to return.   When this the watcher failed in his duties it could be several minutes before they would notice I was no longer being towed like bait.  The search would begin.  When I would spot the returning boat I would bellow out like, you guessed it, a foghorn.

Since we were responsible for our own food at The Armpit we needed to be creative.  We had but a limited budget and we needed all we could save for beer.  Well, I thought this story didn’t involve alcohol.  Our main source of sustenance was spearfishing on the nearby reefs.  This was a regular activity and we had every manor of seafood available.  We had snapper, grouper, blue runners, sting-ray, turtle and the occasional Florida lobster.  We had fish and rice and fish and instant mashed potatoes and sometimes just plain fish.  The point here is, we ate a lot of fish.

Whenever we would return to The Armpit after dark we would park our cars facing the large overgrown lot next door.  As the headlights would pan the field we would see rabbits hopping about.  Normally I wouldn’t have ever thought of killing the Easter Bunny for food but we were getting tired of fish.

How to catch a rabbit?   We all had seen the old cartoon trick with the cardboard box, a stick, some string and a carrot.  As kids we had all at least believed something that logical should work.  But now, at the ripe old ages of 19 and 20 we knew we needed a better plan.  We knew we could do it.  After all we were in college and we were very tired of eating fish.

We analyzed the situation.  We were about 75 to 100 yards from the nearest neighbor.  The rabbits were no more than 25 to 50 feet away from where we parked our cars and they seemed to freeze in the headlights for at least a minute or two.  The decision was easy.  We would go native on the tasty little fur balls.  Bows and arrows it was.

Our next weekend trip back to Miami we both picked up our old fiberglass bows and regular target arrows.  We surmised that the rabbits couldn’t be any more elusive than the large center circle on the targets when we went to camp.

It was Sunday evening nearing dusk.  The lighting would be perfect.  The rabbits wouldn’t know what hit them.  We decided our first rabbit hunt would involve speed and stealth.  A literal blitzkrieg attack on the little varmints.  We had to use increasingly harsher descriptions of the rabbits in order to feel like they needed elimination.

We stopped my 1963 Buick Skylark convertible two blocks from our turn into the driveway.  The top was down.  Marty got out as planned and strung his bow.  He grabbed a fist full of arrows and walked to the front of the car.  He hopped on the hood and placed his feet as best he could on the narrow bumper.  The Buick had never had a hood ornament before, now it did.

1963 Buick Skylark

With one arrow properly notched Marty moved the bundle of extra arrows to his mouth.  Securely clenched in his teeth the spare projectiles would be instantly available.  Now with Marty safely atop the center of the hood, with bow and spare arrows at the ready, I put the car in gear and slowly drove the final two blocks.  As this street was way out in a thinly populated section of town we didn’t expect to encounter any traffic.  Certainly not the Boca Raton police car that drove by us in the opposite direction.  At this point it was like I was watching a film in slow motion.  I was doing maybe 5 mph and the patrol car wasn’t going much faster.

In anticipation of the inevitable I stopped the car.  I could see in my side mirror that the patrol car had done the same.  The back-up lights of the patrol car came on and he backed slowly up next to my car.  The officer exited his vehicle and walked very slowly to the front of the Buick.  His head was down as he walked.  He stopped in front of Marty who now really looked like a hood ornament for lack of any movement.  Marty’s eyes stared straight ahead.  His bow and notched arrow pointed forward.  The patrolman raised his head at an angle (picture a David Caruso CSI Miami cocked head turn) and stared at Marty.  Marty returned the stare.  After a seemingly long silence the officer said in a soft voice, “What are you doing?”

Marty with his teeth still clutching the bundle of arrows grunted, “Huntin’ rabbits.”  Another long silence.  The officer then lowered his head and very slowly walked back to his car.  He put the car in gear and slowly drove away.  We could only surmise that it was the end of a long day and he didn’t relish the thought of trying to figure out what to put on all of the paperwork he would need to fill out.

We drove into the Armpit parking area and went into our apartment.  The rabbits were safe for another day.

Bud's Bar

You will find a common thread with many of these stories; they all seem to involve alcohol.  This is no exception.  College days in Boca Raton, Florida were no picnic.  What can you expect from a town with a name that translates to rat’s mouth?  The average age of the local residents was around 102 and the main attraction was the Bibletown Auditorium.  The drinking age was 21 but fake ID’s were pretty easy to make out of the center carbon copies of the original of a Florida driver’s license.  Once placed inside a dirty wallet picture holder they would easily pass a casual glance.

While most bars in Boca Raton were upscale clubs catering to the wealthy locals, Bud’s Bar was a dive near the railroad tracks that catered to day laborers.  The barmaid was legally blind with shot glasses for eyewear.  A perfect storm for underage drinking.  On this particular evening there were about eight or nine of us who arrived in two cars.  One of the cars of note for the purposes of this story was a 1957 Buick Roadmaster convertible.  It was driven by Hank the Nazi.  Now the Nazi’s political leanings are not relevant here but for the purposes of accuracy let me say he was a card carrying member of the American Nazi Party and looked remarkably like Abe Lincoln.  Beyond that it is his car that bears mentioning.

1957 Buick Roadmaster Convertible

Bud’s Bar was a two story building that was probably a converted residence.  In fact there was an apartment upstairs.  Since our group represented about 95% of the evenings clientele things started getting out of hand pretty quickly.  Someone decided they wanted a barstool for their dorm room.  With a nearly blind barmaid as the only responsible adult in the room the barstool quickly vanished.  After a few beers several of us thought it would be funny if we played a joke on Hank the Nazi.  We found a storage shed at the side of the building with some old aluminum beer kegs and some rusty garden tools.  We loaded them into the Roadmaster.  Several trips to other areas of the bar produced a number of relatively worthless items that got piled into the convertible.  A quick trip up the outside stairs provided access to the upstairs apartment complete with a passed out drunk.  A table, a nightstand, a small dresser were carried down and all piled into the Buick.  We thought about carrying the drunk downstairs for placement in the Buick but sane heads prevailed.  I don't know who had a sane head at the time but it surely wasn't me.  We left just the driver’s seat vacant and piled everything in the back and front passenger seat.  The pile now was well above the top of the doors and way too high to put the top up.

While Gary and I went out to the front porch to purloin a neon Budweiser sign, someone at the bar decided they needed the peanut machine.  Gary and I had to find a screwdriver to unfasten the neon sign and in the process of so doing, time passed.  When we finally worked our way around the building with our new sign we discovered we were pedestrians.  The two cars were gone.  The only things that remained were a couple of pieces of furniture that had fallen out of the Roadmaster as it made a hasty escape.  We would find out later that the blind barmaid discovered, while wiping down the bar that the big money maker, the peanut machine, was missing.  She called the police and everyone bolted.

Gary and I decided, not knowing the urgency of our situation, to casually walk back to campus.  We were about a block away when Gary stopped and realized that he hadn’t said goodbye to someone who had bought him a beer.  He insisted that he had to go back.   I told him I would wait for him next to the vacant lot where we happened to be.  Gary walked back and no sooner had he entered than two of Boca Raton’s finest drove up to Buds and entered.

I quickly evaluated my options.  I used my earlier developed Boy Scout training and decided to hide.  I walked into the vacant lot and placed the neon Budweiser sign in some tall grass next to a small palm tree.  I walked a little further and found a large cardboard box about the size of a water heater.  Perfect.  I curled up in the box and waited.  I must have nodded off because the next thing I knew someone was kicking my box.

Now Gary was the only one who knew where I was so I immediately assumed it was him.  I yell whispered, “Go find your own damn box, the cops are here.”  I heard laughter.  I crawled out the top of the box into the light of a huge flashlight, the kind cops carry.  It was in fact a cop.  Gary thought the cops were just being kind and were giving him a free ride back to campus.  As kind and conscientious as he was he couldn’t let his good buddy Jack walk home.  The cops didn’t have to search very long once Gary told them that I was left next to the vacant lot.

We were still in sight of Bud’s Bar when another car pulled up.  It was the bar’s owner who was irate.  That damned peanut machine was worth hundreds of dollars and he was going to prosecute us to the full extent of the law.  I was instantly sober.  Cops have that effect on me and the threat of a criminal record finished the job.

The wheels were spinning.  I asked if I could speak privately to the bar owner.  I guess the owner thought I might want to bribe my way out of the situation so he agreed to listen.  I did try to bribe him but not in the way he expected.  I told him about the eight or nine of my friends who I would call as witnesses.  He wasn’t interested until I told him that, except for Hank the Nazi, all of them were minors.  He quickly added up the per capita fines that he would be risking and weighed that against the $300 peanut machine.

When we returned to within earshot of the waiting police he was all smiles.  He now understood that it was all a college prank.  He would drop all charges if we would return the peanut machine.  On the way back to campus one of the cops turned and asked me, “What did you say to that guy to have him change his mind?”  I just smiled.

We made it back to the dorms and they let me go up to find the rest of “the gang”.  As expected they were all gathered in one room.  I explained what happened and said we needed to return the peanut machine.  

There was a slight problem.  It seems that Hank the Nazi drove his car to some remote area and dumped all of the stuff in his car, peanut machine, beer kegs, everything.  He then drove back to campus, parked his car way out in the campus lot and called campus security to report his car stolen.

We left Hank to “un-report” his theft and one of the other guys led us back to the peanut machine.  The following day I returned to the vacant lot and retrieved my Budweiser sign.

That Budweiser sign adorned my dorm room and subsequent domiciles until it was eventually broken in storage in my Mom’s garage.  I was told of its demise while I was in the Navy.  I was upset but then relished the memory of my night at Bud’s Bar.

The Christmas Hunter

During my college days I would try to find employment for the Christmas holidays wherever I could.  I delivered flowers once, but this particular holiday I got a job at a local department store, Richards.  One of my friends, Bob, was known as The Hunter.  This was at a time when everybody our age had a bestowed nickname.  I’m not exactly sure how The Hunter got his handle but it sort of fit him.  Picture a large burly kid with thin reddish blonde hair and a bit of a pot belly and you have The Hunter.  He was about six feet tall and weighed in at around 240 pounds.  His skin was dry and appeared wrinkled.  He looked older than his years.  When we were too young to buy beer we would send The Hunter in and he was rarely questioned.

The Hunter also got a job at Richards for the holidays.  As seasonal help we filled in wherever they needed someone.  On Christmas Eve the word was passed among the employees that there was food and beverages being served up in the furniture department.  I guess nobody thinks to buy furniture as a present so this department was nearly vacant.  Back in one corner a dressing screen had been pulled out to provide some form of visual security to the baked goods and punch laid out on one of the dressers.  In a dresser drawer there was a full complement of hard liquor.

The Hunter and I made regular trips to the third floor furniture department throughout the day.  The store closed early.  We had been invited to a party by one of the girls at the store so we picked up one more character, Marty and made our way to the festivities.  Shortly after arriving it became apparent that The Hunter was not going to be able to stay long since the alcohol seemed to be having its way with him.  He was giggling and acting funny.

Not long after leaving the party we started our fateful journey home.  Our trip took us by one of the first topless bars in Miami, The Tomboy Club featuring “Bambi the Body.”  Someone, not me, announced that club as our new destination.  Whoever it was didn’t have to do too much arm twisting and we soon found ourselves, on Christmas Eve, facing a topless dancer in a cage behind the bar.  The place wasn’t busy and our fake IDs didn’t get too much scrutiny.

Postcard From the Old Tomboy Club in Miami

 

Marty and I made the mistake of carrying on a conversation and not paying attention to The Hunter.  He was sitting eerily quiet staring intently at the half naked dancer before him.  The music was playing and we were just thrilled to be there.  To paraphrase Twas the Night Before Christmas, “when all of a sudden there arose such a clatter.”  The whole thing seemed to happen in slow motion.  The Hunter made an incredible athletic move that defied his large frame.  He had jumped from his stool and, steadying himself with one hand on the bar, had managed to grab one of the ropes that were the dancer’s cage.  He was going to have his way with her, or so it would appear.  He then released the rope and his outstretched arm groped for a handful of dancer.  It came up with a fist full of air.  It was here that he lost his balance and fell in a heap behind the bar.  Seconds later all three of us found ourselves in the parking lot.

Marty and I came to our senses and decided it was time to get The Hunter home.  The Hunter lived with his parents along with a younger brother and even younger sister.  It was late and the house was dark.  The Hunter was now half asleep and groggy.  We searched for his house keys and came up empty.  After a slurred Q&A period with the prodigal son we learned of a spare key at the side garage door entrance.  We did our best to steady The Hunter and got him to the side yard.

We found the key and opened the side door only to discover that, in addition to the known family members, they had a Dachshund.  Not just one female Dachshund but also a small herd of little puppy Dachshunds.  They all bolted through the open door.  We now had a drunken Hunter lying very Gulliver-like in the grass surrounded by a gaggle of Lilliputian sized wiener dogs who were heading for parts unknown.

A roundup of yapping wiener dogs would be difficult enough in daylight, sober.  Try to imagine doing it in the dark, drunk.  After much wrangling and perhaps twenty minutes running around in the wet grass we managed to get the herd under control and locked in the garage.

Literally exhausted we then got The Hunter vertical and into the living room.  We deposited him on the large couch and slipped away.

Marty got the panicked call the next day.  He then called me and just told me to pick him up.  We had to get over to The Hunter’s place.  We knocked on the door and were greeted with the embodiment of the former Hunter.  He looked horrible and smelled even worse.  He had a note pinned to his undershirt.  We entered the house.  The living room looked like spring break Sunday morning at the frat house.

We put together a chain of events helped out in part with the note still hanging on The Hunter.  The Big Guy awoke during the early morning hours and was disoriented.  He needed to get to the bathroom in a hurry.  He stumbled over the coffee table and several of the Christmas presents that Santa had left for his younger siblings.  He then wound up crashing head-first into the Christmas tree.  The toppled and smashed Christmas tree then became the epicenter for what had to be some major projectile vomiting.  He had very quickly "decorated" the tree, the walls, the presents and in fact anything within a six foot radius.  His parents awoke to find the apple of their eye drunk on his ass in the middle of their Christmas tree covered in vomit.

The note then provided the postscript which was that the parents, fearing years of psychiatric counsel for his siblings, gathered them up and headed to the airport to enjoy Christmas with the grandparents.  The note went on to say that the house needed to be restored to its pre-vomit condition or that he would suffer the consequences.

We then did what friends do in such instances.  We found a convenience store that was open on Christmas, bought a couple of six packs and returned to cheer on The Hunter with his clean up.  I think I remember helping hose down the Christmas tree in the back yard.