It was the Summer of
my Discontent. I Stole that from Hemingway.
The summer of 1975, I was 28 years old at the time. Single, had a good job, Science and math
teacher at Pea Ridge High school. I had
a brand-new Monza. This has nothing to
do with the story. A dear friend of
mine, and I must use a factious name to protect the privacy of my friend, even though I heard a Supreme Court Justice
say we had no right to privacy. We will
call him Sirrah. Please remember that is
a made-up name. Sirrah had a troubled
wife you can call her Yxes. She liked
Sirrah okay, but Sirrah was working three jobs.
There were some things that Yxes liked more than Sirrah. This likening led to a severe disagreement
that ended in a divorce. This divorce
left Sirrah with a 4000 square foot split-level house on about 100 acres and
her with the sheets and towels. This is
appropriate if you get my meaning. One
day my friend, Sirrah, calls me up and asks if I would like to play
tennis. We start playing tennis on a
regular base. One day he happens to ask
where I was living. I told him in Pea
Ridge, I was renting a mobile home. He
said that I could come live at his house if I helped him take care of the house
and the land. No problems there, things
are good to this point. Sirrah I might
add is rather wealthy by this time. For
one thing, he owns the Bowling alley in Rogers.
Sirrah has a friend in Little Rock who is the son of a more than rather
wealth family. This more than wealthy
friend calls Sirrah and asks him if he would like to take a cruise on his
daddies’ boat. They would go to The
Bahamas for a week. Sirrah the find
friend he is asks if I can go. This
friend said there is plenty of room.
Sirrah and I would bring dates, and He would go with his wife. This is too good to be true. A free trip to the Bahamas on a private boat,
a dream comes true. When everything is arranged,
the Little Rock friend calls and explains that his wife is filing for
divorce. This means no trip to the
Bahamas. Sirrah is determined to go
private boat or no private boat. The
next day the two of us get into my brand new Monza, and take off for
Florida. There is only one problem;
Sirrah will eat nothing but Asian food or McDonalds. For three days, we had nothing but sweet and
sour shrimp and Big Macs.
Let me concentrate on one thing
at a time. Many enjoyable things occur
on this trip. Life is short. In Panama City, we do a strange thing. We go to a travel agent. He has the greatest package deal. A cruse to the West End Hotel, we will have eight hours on a boat and then
five day and nights at the West End. All
for $99.99, no way you can beat this deal.
Airline tickets would cost that much.
.
We drive to the dock in East
Palm Springs. The boat is at the dock
ready for us. This is going to be a
wonderful experience. We show the
pursuer our tickets, and he welcomes us aboard.
We have a few minutes, so we explore the ship's amenities. This is 1976; this is no 3000 passenger cruise
ship. This is actually a refinished
Norwegian minelayer. The ship does have
some nice things though there is a room with Slot machines and a rather large
bar that can hold a hundred people at one time.
At the bar, we are introduced to the island drink, Yellow bird. It is one of those drinks that you need a lot
of experience. You think you are
drinking soda pop until the fifth, and you fall over out cold. This fact will become important shortly. Remember this bar holds over 100 people, well
at this time there is only maybe two couples and us. When time comes to leave nothing is happening. I ask the bartender “when are we leaving." He answers with the most ominous reply I
could think of, “We are waiting for a bus load of 100 people. Two things go through my mind. We are on this boat for eight hours with a
group of senior citizens or worse case situation we are on this boat with a
senior class trip. I put the senior
class trip out of my mind. How could a
high school class afford to go to the Bahamas?
I go to the outside deck and watch for the bus. Finally, it comes with a banner on the
side. P____ High School Senior Class
Trip, this cannot be happening. Look at
the bright side, we are 28 years old. There might be some cute 18 year
olds. I do not understand what happens
next. Those kids pile out of that bus
and as God is my witness, they were the ugliest bunch of kids I had ever seen. In the whole group, there were two attractive
girls, both married. All I can say is
the gene pool is this part of Florida is a swamp. As far as the ugliness goes through you would
have to be there to believe it. Do you
have any idea what happens when 100 high school kids get beyond the three-mile limit and there is a bar serving alcohol? It is beyond description. Remember what I said about the Yellow
Bird. Well, it does not take too long to
get five of them down. It takes eight
hours for them to come back up.
If that is not bad enough things,
get worse. First thing, I forgot to
mention. I had a swelling on my neck
that had been hurting me since we started.
I should have gone to the doctor earlier, but I was going to enjoy my
Bahamas trip. Actually, I thought the
swelling was probably cancer, and I would not make it to 29. I did not let it worry me. As we come up to the boat landing for the
hotel, I could swear I had seen this in a horror movie from the 40’s. We disembarked from the horror ship. To find ourselves at a Hotel that is out of
the thirties. The hotel is spooky. At the front desk, we find that our rooms are
in the beach house. Well, that is just
about the coolest thing that has happened so far. We walk out to the beach house and find it is
a long cinder-block building with 20-foot ceilings. The carpet is like what you would find in an old-time
movie theater, and the building had the smell of an old-time theater. Kind of smelled like dry urine. The rooms, all I can say is they are not
luxurious. Nice and comfortable and
spacious, all the facilities you would expect in a beach house, I guess. The water was undrinkable and green.
You could tell they had us trapped. Everything was at least twice the price as on
the mainland. In the morning, one of the
first things we wanted to do was play tennis.
The Sign of the gate to the tennis court, “Whites required at all times
on the tennis court. Who is their right
mind would think that there would be a place where they would require whites in
1976. No tennis, so we go to the beach
and rent a seat and a towel and walk into the water that is bath water warm and
has green algae floating all over the place.
Go to the swimming pool, filled with drunken kids. This will be a wonderful five days. To escape from the hotel, we rent a car. We drive to the other side of the island where
all the nice hotels are and the casinos.
We get to Freeport at 4:30 and go to the casino. Sign on casino door “no beach wear or shorts
allow after 6:00. That is just great
because we both have on shorts, and it is at least 50 miles to the hotel, and I
do not think we had any long pants at all.
If at this point you are not ready to slash you wrests, it gets worse.
We did meet a couple of girls. They needed a ride to the airport. We took them in our $30.00 a day blue 1960 something
Nova. They drive on the wrong side of
the road in the Bahamas. It is real fun
to drive a left hand drive car on the right lane of the road. Finally the last nigh comes. I go to bed early probably 10:00. Sirrah calls me at 11.00 and says he has to
have something to eat. I tell him
everything in the hotel is closed. He
says there is a little town just outside of the hotel compound and maybe they
will have a place to eat. Okay, we walk
to the town and do find a place to eat.
This is the last straw. Get a
picture of this town, all the houses are
cinder block. The streets are dirt, there are no streetlights; it is practically
midnight. We walk into this establishment,
and I nearly fall of my butt because the floor is so slippery. We sat at a wood table and our server comes
to our table. We ask if they have anything
to eat. She says yes we have boiled fish
or Conk chowder. Conch chowder is the
national food of the the Bahamas. It is nothing
but a big snail. No way will I eat Conch
chowder so we both order the boiled fish.
In too short of time she brings the fish out to us. I look at mine, I look at Sirrah, and I say,
“There is no way in hell; I am going to eat this”. It is boiled all right. It is whole fish and when I say whole fish, I
mean whole fish. In the south, we would
say this fish has not been cleaned. It not
only had scales and fins and eyes it had not been gutted. Just about that time, a group of conch
fishermen comes in to eat. Picture this,
these people are carrying M1 rifles, knives pistols, and God only know what
else. I realize the prognosis, if I
offend these people; I am shark bait in the morning. I eat that fish. I do leave the bones, guts, fins and eyes, but
I eat the flesh. In the morning, we get
on the boat and have a wonderful trip to the main land. West End is still open; you can look it up in
the internet.
:)
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