She was as a demure as a Sunday school teacher...but could have the mouth of a trucker.
But, on this day, the constables got Miss Elizabeth….Sunday school teacher.
"Why hallo officers," she smiled, offering ice cold lemonade, "how may I help you two handsome young men?"
Trying to keep a straight face they explained the complaint and asked just who had been at this beach party.
"Well", said Miss Elizabeth, keeping a spectacularly straight face," there were many people"...
Promptly she started rattling off name after name...and then said " Would you like to interview…all of them?"
The young policemen sipped their lemonade and quickly made the smart decision." No, Miss Elizabeth...that will be fine", said the senior of the two, "I can't believe any of your guests would have done such a thing."
"Well there were some kids playing on the beach," said Miss Elizabeth innocently.
Miss Elizabeth reported back to the boys who were enjoying their afternoon swim.
The boys just laughed...they’d defied many things in their long lives…would they have the audacity to defy the “...man on the hill…" disturb his happy hour with an occasional whiff of smoke or a drifting spark?
Not these heroic boys of summer.
YES HE IS A PIRATE
You could tell the guy was a pirate...He was sitting in a beachfront bar in the Caribbean…drinking rum…oh, and yeah, he had a jaunty eye-patch.
With a parrot on it...
Every happy hour I saw this man in one of my favorite watering holes on Tortola…It's a bar and restaurant called "Myett's" where the trade winds blow...and seem to blow in a good mix of locals, tourists and just plain wacky characters. Every time I saw the "pirate" he smiled and said "Hi"...
Finally we started to talk...
"Tell me the tale of the eye-patch", said I after buying him another Mount Gay...And the tale he told was an inspiration…
A genetic disease had attacked his left eye leaving him almost totally blind in that eye...and then had started to attack his other eye. The only hope, his doctor told him, was a radical operation...followed by an even more radical recovery period.
For six weeks after that operation he would have to keep his head forward…perfectly still...twenty four hours a day...seven days a week.
In pitch darkness.
Our "pirate" had the operation and then told me how he learned to sleep leaning forward…in fact live his whole life for those six weeks hunched forward... He could not move and he could not see.
Finally, he told me, came time for him to return to his doctor's office to have the bandages removed. The doctor warned him not to hope for too much...Even if he had vision in that one eye it might be very fuzzy, said the doctor, "maybe just shadows and shapes."
Slowly, he said, the bandages were unwrapped...but he was terrified to open that eye. He might be blind...He might never see again...He might be confined to a life of "shadows and shapes."
As a tear welled in the unpatched eye our "pirate" said he opened his good eye...and in the words of Johnny Nash yelled " I can see clearly now..."
"I kissed the doctor...I kissed his assistant...and I bawled like a baby", he told me," then I decided to enjoy every single moment of the rest of my life."
At 75 years of age our "pirate" bought his ticket to the BVI's swearing to take in every spellbinding site in that spectacular technicolour you only seem to find in the tropics.
At that moment the sun started to set over Jost Van Dyke.
My "pirate" buddy and I toasted that spectacular scene and he grinned like a five year old.
To me the sunset was beautiful…to him it was a miracle...
The “pirate's" name is Dick Swain...we dubbed him “Insane” Dick Swain. Since that incident he has endured a bout with stomach cancer but now he vows to return to Tortola for more and more months every winter.
Last winter he had the remains of his hair braided with beads. People would laugh and have their pictures taken with him with his pet, wooden, parrot Marty, perched on his shoulder.
We hope to watch many...many ...more sunsets with a true...brave...pirate...
"MON...DAT BE ICIN'!!"
The year was 1993 and my favorite ice hockey team, the Los Angeles Kings had had a great season. Wayne Gretzky had joined the team and the old LA Forum was rocking every time the Kings hit the ice.
Hockey had gone from a sport with a small group of die hard fans to the hottest sport in the Big Orange.
Every game, at rinkside, you'd see Stallone...Goldie Hawn and Michael J .Fox. Best of all we had a pair of season tickets for all the action.
Now my LA Kings had never made it to the Stanley Cup Finals but, ever the optimist, I would look at the schedule and figure the possible very last championship game if they were to go all the way…and then book our trip down to the Caribbean
And that's what I'd done in 1993.Except there was a short labour dispute delaying the whole season a couple of weeks. No big deal…right??
Months later the Kings were barreling their way to the Stanley Cup Finals. Game seven of the semi finals against the Toronto Maple Leafs was an amazing nail-biter. The Kings won...I threw my beer all over the folks in front...everybody hugged and high fived...my voice was gone...the Kings were going to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in their history.
And, because of that two week labour dispute, we would be in the Caribbean.
After years of suffering...we would miss the big show.
Now being in the islands is not exactly suffering but…
So I gave my hockey tickets to my very best friend (although they were worth a fortune by that time) and we jetted down to Tortola.
But, on the night of that first of the finals I was a man on a mission. I had to find a bar to watch the game.
"No problem, Mon," said my buddy Sandman at Myett's on beautiful Cane Garden Bay, "I find it for you."
And find it he did. My wife Candace and I sat there, drinking cold beers and cocktails and yelling at the screen. Slowly our local friends came over.
"What's that??" said Shadow, an elegant local rastaman.
"Ice hockey," I said and started to explain to my very confused pal just what was going on.
A couple more friends joined us...and Shadow started explaining to them what was happening on the ice.
Til then the only ice these guys had seen had been going into blenders for Pina Coladas and Painkillers. These guys know their basketball and they love cricket but a bunch of crazies flying up and down a sheet of ice with a stick and a piece of rubber was totally alien to them...or so I thought.
The game ended and the Kings had won...and suddenly we had quite a little group around us talking about the marvel they had seen by satellite beamed in from frigid Montreal
"Manpot...when's the next game?" asked Shadow. I told him it was in a couple of days.
"Okay", said Shadow...and everyone in the group nodded.
Two days later we were back at the bar watching the pre-game show. Then Shadow arrived, then Boots and Daddy Magic. I looked around and suddenly there were about twenty of our local friends all staring at the screen.
Now back in '93 Myett's had rows of bleachers at the edge of the deck...so everyone grabbed their drinks and took a seat with a perfect view of the screen.
Suddenly Shadow shouted: "Mon...dat be icin'!!"
And he was right...a Montreal player had fired the puck down the ice to delay the game. Next thing I knew Shadow was describing the icing rule to the assembled locals.
As the game went on the crowd got more and more animated.
"He hook he"..."Mon that be roughin'"...the comments came thick and fast and were usually right on the money and, if they weren't, who cared.
These guys hated anyone in a Montreal uniform. Overnight there was a whole new Kings booster club down in the Caribbean.
My crazy island buddies had fallen in love with ice hockey, and "their" Los Angeles K
ings.
Every time Gretzky jumped onto the ice with his trademark "99" jersey they cheered. Every time anyone wearing the red, white and blue of Montreal touched him...they booed
At the end of the game Kings player Marty McSorley was called for playing with an illegal stick and, if those Tortolians had been in Quebec, they would have stormed the ice!! The Kings lost...but there would be another game.
By game three the bar was packed with local hockey fans. They yelled, they screamed...and they almost cried when the Kings lost.
The Kings went on to lose the series...but they won the hearts of a really great band of sports fans down in Cane Garden Bay, Tortola.
I started putting together a treatment for a movie about my new rabid hockey fan buddies…
"The series is over but they are such fans they decide to form a team...and build an ice rink.
"They clear an area of sugar cane and bamboo...flood the land and using an old diesel generator manage to make an ice surface...With dreadlocks jammed up under their hockey helmets the 'Tortola Tropics', or maybe the 'Cane Garden Bay Crushers' take the ice. No organ for these warriors…Pan Vibes plays the 'charge" chant on steel drums.
"Suddenly there's a breakaway and Shadow dressed in the team's Rasta colours of red, green and gold, flies down the ice..."
But then I knew it wouldn't work….after all someone had come up with the ridiculous idea of a Jamaican bobsled team entering the Olympics and given their movie the very title that would have been so perfect for mine…" Cool Runnings..." A Jamaican bobsled team??
Now that’s a really silly idea...
THE MILLION DOLLAR CHAISE LONGUE
It's hard to imagine how that most humble piece of garden or beach furniture, the chaise longue (or "lounge" in Americaspeak), could cost a million bucks.
Maybe if Cartier was given the assignment and used 24 carat gold and diamonds and covered the whole thing with fur from virgin minks it could be achieved.
Or you could just buy a garden variety chaise longue in the Caribbean.
It all stated innocently enough…a trip to St Thomas to one of those sprawling stores where they all wear orange aprons and forced smiles You see, the house on Little Apple Bay had finally been completely remodelled and now seemed a little stark...besides now there was this huge balcony off the master bedroom overlooking the ridiculously blue sea just crying out for a couple of chaise longues.
So to St Thomas I went with my neighbour on the ferry.
Forty two dollars roundtrip and a rental car for the day.
I found everything we needed for the house including two very nice chaise longues for a mere $195 each.
And then I discovered something else...the export desk.
"No problem, Mon", said the nice man behind the counter," just bring us everything and we'll ship it to Tortola for you...we deliver twice a week."
"There's a modest shipping fee," he added.
It had to be pretty modest, I figured...just slinging a bunch of household goods on a boat called the Bomba Charger and less than an hour later tossing them onto the dock in Tortola. The plan was to return on the summer trip and buy everything...and buy everything we did.
There were those two chaises and a load of other bits and bobs...not much change from a thousand dollars but the house would be much better for it. The biggest items were those $195 chaises.
Of course there was another forty two dollars ferry fare...and one hundred bucks for a cabbie to run us around for four hours. But think of the money we'd saved by shopping in a big store in the US Virgins and not in the small local Tortola stores with little variety.
So everything was taken to the export desk and I was told "No problem, Mon...be shipped next Tuesday."
And sure enough next Tuesday I got the phone call saying the stuff...and those $195 chaises...had arrived.
But the call wasn't from that big company in St Thomas...it was from a shipping company in Tortola...They wanted $155 "shipping fee..."
"But I paid a 'modest' 'shipping fee of '$74' to the big company," said I.
"No Mon," said the kindly shipping company lady," that was the 'shipping fee'...to ship your stuff from the store to the dock in St Thomas".
Now silly me...I thought "shipping" usually involved...well ships...but no. That ten minute truck ride from the store to the dock cost a cool $74. Now I'm sure that truck was loaded to the gills with other customers "exports"...so someone probably collected about a thousand bucks for a ten minute truck run.
Nice work if you can get it.
"OK", said I to the kindly shipping lady," I'll come, pay my fee and get my stuff."
As I was about to find out...that's not quite how it works.
Lucky for me right at that moment my buddy Desmond, who'd done the remodel, showed up in his pickup. I explained I needed to collect the household goods...including the two $195 chaise longues.
"No problem, Mon" he said.
Now Desmond's truck's not in the best of repair and not all the gauges work too well.
I noticed his fuel gauge needle was firmly on the "E".
"Have you got gas, Desmond?" asked I.
"No Mon", said Desmond.
Well the least I could do was fill up Desmond's truck. And when he said he had no gas he wasn't kidding. Fifty dollars later we were back on our way...not to the dock but into the backroads of the capital of Road Town.
"Got to go to the shipping office," said Desmond.
"OK Mon," said I.
Now without Desmond I would never have found the shipping office...I mean not in a million years.
There was no sign and no street name...It was down a potholed backstreet jammed between a couple of auto body shops where, it seemed, Suzuki jeeps came to get their last rites.
The lady behind the glass smiled and gave me the bill...I gave her the $155 (cash only please)...and she smiled again.
"No problem Mon," she said.
"Let's head to the dock and get my $195 chaise longues," said I.
"No mon," said Desmond," we've got to see Lazareth."
Well the only Lazareth I'd heard of before was some guy who rose from the dead in biblical times.
But, I discovered, in Tortola Lazareth is a man who can also achieve miracles. For a "modest fee" he can fill out the necessary paperwork to free up your goods...including my pair of $195 chaise longues.
We found Lazareth in his office. Desmond explained about my shipment.
"No problem, Mon" said Lazareth.
And for the next ten minutes he carefully filled out sheet after sheet of paperwork. All for two $195 chaise longues and a few household goods.
Finally Lazareth handed me the sheets of paper and a bill for $75 (cash only please).
"No problem, Mon," said I.
"Let's get to the dock and get my $195 chaise longues," I said to Desmond.
"No Mon," said Desmond," we've got to go to customs."
Of course...how could I foolishly be thinking I was going to get off so lightly...Not a chance.
Time to pay the British Virgin Islands Government their due, Together we walked into customs and up to a large lady behind the counter. I gave her my papers.
She looked at the papers...looked at me and smiled.
"No problem, Mon," she said "come back in two hours."
I looked around the room. We were the only ones there; I looked at her in despair.
"But", said I, "my friend Desmond here's doing me a huge favour and he has to get back to work….on the North Shore."
"No problem, Mon," she said, "take a seat."
Ten minutes later she gave me another pile of papers...and a bill for $200...duty (cash only please).
"No problem, Mon," said I, handing over another pile of notes.
In the words of Jack Nicholson..." I was moments from a clean getaway..." when she called after me...
"There is one thing," she said with a smile...holding out a large can. "We are raising money for our basketball team and w
e'd love a contribution."
Of course...she'd let us go right to the front of the line, although we were the only ones there. She had accomplished in ten minutes what normally would take her two hours...how could I turn her down.
"No problem, Mon", said I smiling and stuffing a twenty into the can.
Finally we could pickup my two $195 chaise longues and those assorted household goods.
And I could see them...right there. All we had to do was back Desmond's truck up and load them in. Yeah right.
As I walked up to my two $195 chaise longues and assorted household goods a man walked up to me with a smile.
"Just picking up my stuff...that's it there", said I pointing.
"No problem, Mon," he said, "just pay the forklift fee."
"Forklift fee???" said I.
"Yeah Mon," said he smiling," got to pay me to pick them up on the forklift and bring them over here."
"No problem, Mon," said I following him to his small office in the warehouse.
For five minutes the man filled out an intricate receipt, finally proudly handing it to me with the bill...$5...forklift fee (cash only please).
"No problem, Mon," said I handing over the last of my cash.
We then watched as the driver carefully manoeuvred his forklift into position and gently lifted my two $195 chaise longues and assorted household goods.
He moved them the twenty feet to the pickup.
"No problem, Mon", he said smiling.
Well worth the $5 forklift fee.
Finally we were on our way. I was happy to have my pair of $195 chaise lounges and assorted household goods...I was even happier that they were being weighed down in the back of the pickup by the hitchhiker Desmond had picked up.
Now I lay on one of my wonderful $195 chair longues looking out at that spectacular view and it all seems worthwhile.
OK...so maybe the "million dollar chaise longue" is a bit of an exaggeration but...someone had to buy the house on the Caribbean beach to put the chaises in...and then there's the agony of a remodel and building that balcony where they can reside in splendour...and when you tack on that $5 forklift fee(cash only please) there ain't much change from a million large!!
Manpot's Tales of the Tropics Page 3