My week ends here. Tomorrow I leave for Newport and the sea. Last night, I spent several hours perfecting a scowl and memorizing several hundred sea-shanties. I'll be gone for about twelve days and, thankfully, miss this weekend's G-train service change. At least this time it's much more straight forward than last weekend's debacle.
In other news, I got the final lens of my budding collection in from Amazon.com this morning: the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens.
As I prepare myself for the deep blue, I look back to my favorite marine character, the incomparable Quint. Let the Quint-isms begin!
Y'all know me. Know how I earn a livin'. I'll catch this bird for ya, but it ain't gonna be easy... Bad fish. It's not like going down to pond chasin' blue gills or tommy cots. This shark - swallow ya hole. L'il shakin', l'il tenderizin', down ya go. Now we gotta do it quick, that'll bring back the tourists, that'll put all your businesses on a payin' basis. But it's not gonna be pleasant! I value my neck a lot more than 3000 bucks chief! I'll find him for three, but I'll catch him... and kill him... for ten! Now you gotta make up your minds. Gonna stay alive and ante up? Or ya wanna play it cheap, be on welfare the whole winter. I don't want no volunteers; I don't want no mates. There's too many captains on this island. Ten thousand dollars for me by myself. For that you get the head, the tail, the whole damn thing.
. . .
Here's to swimmin' with bow legged women. Excuse me chief. Can't get a good man these days for under 60! They're all goin' at least 35 years! 45 year olds with women!
. . .
Break it up will ya chief! Daylight's wastin'! Front, bow, back, stern. You don't get it right, squirt, I throw your ass out the little round window on the side! Come on chief, this isn't no boy scout picnic! I see you got your rubbers! Ha ha ha! Here lies the fire Mary Lee, died at the age of a hundred and three, for fifteen years she kept her virginity. Not a bad record for this vicinity! All right commissioner, fasten your safety belts, ha ha ha! If you see a shark Hooper, swalla! Ha ha ha!
And, no Quint-a-thon can be complete without the classic:
Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief. It was comin' back, from the island of Tinian Delady, just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn't see the first shark for about a half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen footer. You know, you know that when you're in the water, chief? You tell by lookin' from the dorsal to the tail. Well, we didn't know. `Cause our bomb mission had been so secret, no distress signal had been sent. Huh huh. They didn't even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, chief. The sharks come cruisin'. So we formed ourselves into tight groups. You know it's... kinda like `ol squares in battle like a, you see on a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo. And the idea was, the shark nearest man and then he'd start poundin' and hollerin' and screamin' and sometimes the shark would go away. Sometimes he wouldn't go away. Sometimes that shark, he looks right into you. Right into your eyes. You know the thing about a shark, he's got... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eye. When he comes at ya, doesn't seem to be livin'. Until he bites ya and those black eyes roll over white. And then, ah then you hear that terrible high pitch screamin' and the ocean turns red and spite of all the poundin' and the hollerin' they all come in and rip you to pieces. Y'know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men! I don't know how many sharks, maybe a thousand! I don't know how many men, they averaged six an hour. On Thursday mornin' chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player, bosom's mate. I thought he was asleep, reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up and down in the water, just like a kinda top. Up ended. Well... he'd been bitten in half below the waist. Noon the fifth day, Mr. Hooper, a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low and he saw us. He'd a young pilot, a lot younger than Mr. Hooper, anyway he saw us and come in low. And three hours later a big fat PBY comes down and start to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened? Waitin' for my turn. I'll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went in the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29, 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.
|