Francis Meyrick

Note: Sometimes there is a conflict in a writer’s mind. He feels the need to honestly paint a TRUE scene with accurate, authentic brush strokes. At the same time, he doesn’t want to be seen to necessarily condone or approve of the behavior, ethics or values he describes. I mean no fundamental disrespect to anybody. Women, Native Islanders, or Oriental Values. It’s there, politically in-correct or not, and I describe it, truthfully. I ask you to bear that in mind. Sometimes we also cry when we laugh. The Absurdity of Man is well worth the mirth…

Part 15A: Beautiful American Film Star

For some odd reason, I remember every detail of those seemingly trivial moments.
I think it is maybe because I felt so stunningly alive. Aware. Living, thinking and feeling.
It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t anything major. But it has remained in my mind. If I shut my eyes, I can still feel the ship swaying underneath my feet, and the steady thump of the diesel engines. I was standing on the bridge, chatting with the captain, as I often did. I was leaning back against the teak wall, careful not to obscure the sight of Porcelain Andy, our shipboard Protector and Fish finder. We were a few miles out from the port of Wewak, Papua New Guinea. Steaming in, triumphantly, with a full load of fish. Caught in a record three days of fishing. The helicopter had performed well, very well, and had been a key factor in our hunting success. The sun was shattering peacefully off the calm waters of the bay ahead of us, blasting cheerful light rays helter skelter in all directions. The familiar distant mountains were still, even at this late stage of morning, mysteriously draped with cloud. Papua New Guinea lay ahead, land of plenty, land of poverty, land of old tribal traditions, land of struggling modernity. Land of Beauty, land of Ugliness. A place of Hope, and a place of Darkness. I was feeling contented, almost woozy. Pleasantly warm and mellow. The fact that I was now intimately wrapped around some of the captain’s best celebratory brandy probably had something to do with it. In a funny way, we enjoyed each other’s company. He was one of the Taiwanese star fish catchers, but he was also highly intelligent. A man whose education was self motivated. Had he been from a more privileged background, he would have gone to University, and become a bright and successful bureaucrat in some high rise office building in Taipei. I could imagine him in an expensive tailored suit, with polished black shoes, and a rainbow tie. He had always had the brains, but probably not the connections. And here he stood, a captain on a very successful fishing vessel, probably making a lot more money than many of those self important, preening puppets back in Taiwan….

The sea was more sheltered here, and the waves were less.
The smoother ride gave us more speed. I debated going up to the helideck, and watching the events from there. But I was enjoying listening to him. I shifted my position slightly, and settled down. Twelve knots… The engines sounded steady, unhurried.

By now we knew each other well. And we discussed many spheres. His knowledge and understanding of Men was astute. His crew and fellow captains respected, almost revered him. His authority and preeminence was unchallenged.

Once, when another Taiwanese ship became impounded for poaching, and was in danger of permanent forfeiture, it was to our captain that the vessel owner and the errant captain came running. I had watched them come on board, like penitents. Their downcast expressions, their humble entreaties for our captain’s wisdom and advice, indeed, his intervention on their behalf, had been a study in supplication. He, for his part, sensing opportunity, delighted in briefing me beforehand in detail about the wizard Poker hand he would play. His eyes were strong, and I knew his amazing ability to mold men to his iron will would now be brought to bear unerringly on a twelve million dollar crisis. He had greeted them sternly, with not a smile. Then he had sat down with them in his cabin, and I was allowed to quietly sit in a corner, and watch and learn. They were miserable, and almost in tears. They stood to lose a twelve million dollar vessel. The disgraced captain was treated to our captain’s frostiest treatment. The poor man sat cringing, staring at the table in front of him. He looked a simple fellow, an old deck hand, promoted through long years of service. He was way out of his depth in this crisis. With none of our captain’s political cunning and guile…

The radio crackled. Over the loudspeaker came the voice of the shipping agent, hailing us. A cheerful, helpful Australian. The captain acknowledged. The agent was worried. His lookouts had reported us coming in, so soon after departing.
“Ah, Captain, do you have a problem!? “
He wanted to know why on earth we were back so soon. Most vessels would be gone for anything from three to six weeks. I looked at the captain. He had the microphone in his hand, and from his studied expression, I knew he was carefully formulating his answer.
“Yes! We have BIG problem! “
The agent’s concern was evident.
“Oh dear! Captain, what happened? “
Our captain, ever the showman, waited a few seconds. He knew there would be many ears listening now. There were other ships, moored there and transshipping fish. But there were also other listeners, agents, functionaries, local businesses…
I could sense the ether transfixed. The Hsieh Feng 707 had a problem? The star Fish Catcher from Taiwan?
What problem?
He drew a deep breath, and then announced:
“My BIG problem is I have no more room to store fish! My ship FULL! “
His face was a picture, mischievous, delighted, proud. He glanced at me, pure devilment in his eyes, and I laughed out loud.
The two ship’s officers present caught the joke, and laughed as well.
Such a showman…

The fate of the impounded ship had instantly been transmitted around the whole fishing fleet. They had been caught fishing well within the six mile limit, and the locals, already hostile to foreigh fishing vessels, had actually rowed out and boarded the ship. Everybody knew the details, and speculation ran rife. The fact that the ship owner and the unwise captain had been to our Captain, imploring his help, doubtless would further have electrified the airwaves. But he, after the meeting, being the Poker player he was, promised nothing, and sternly bade them leave while he investigated the matter.
But no sooner had they left, than his stern face cracked wide open.
“Now Moggy! You watch and learn! You will SEE! I am BIG HEAD. I solve problem! “
“Yes, Captain ” I would say, meekly.
“You are a big head! “
He would beam in pleasure at my admission. There was a finer point of English language involved here, but it was one that I did not wish to point out. He saw it as a compliment, and I was loath to spoil the fun.

Now we were sailing in calm waters. I strained my eyes to recognize the other boats. There could be friends here. We would meet up, delightedly, and go to some strange bar. never knowing when we would see one another again. We would drink and eat, talk and laugh, and reminisce. The captain was at the helm now, aiming purposefully for a large refrigerated cargo ship. That was our destination, and the destination of our valuable cargo. He was smooth on the helm, purposeful, and inspired confidence. He was a stark contrast with another Taiwanese I had sailed with who was careless, rough, and who had, on one infamous occasion, embarrassed everybody by accidentally ramming the freezer ship, taking out part of the railing and tearing great gouges….

The officials had started to arrive on our boat to discuss the impounded ship. The first to arrive had been the lower echelon, noisy, argumentative, arrogant, the lure of easy money etched hard in their eyes. But the captain’s powerful presence soon subdued them It was in the icy strength of his eyes. He had told me beforehand that some would be looking for bribes. But that if he started to pay at the bottom, there was no knowing what the price would be at the top. It was important, he said, to deal courteously with the lower ranks, hold out the promise of possible FUTURE recompense “for services rendered “, but hold on to the green backs until he saw the King. He would enlist them, bend them to his will. And it had been fascinating for me to see how he applied his insight into men. How they would come in, brash and unpleasant. And how they would slowly sputter to a halt under the quiet steel in his eyes. They would cease their chattering, and there would be silence in the captain’s cabin. Sitting quietly in the corner, I would hold my breath, sensitive to the pin drop changing subtleties in the steady, remorseless psychology within that confined area. The stakes were high, there were millions of dollars in the game, and the arriving clerks would sit down in the assumption that they held all the cards….

With expert hand, he reduced thrust, and now we were closing smoothly and comfortably on the freezer ship.
He always made it look so easy. Even the way he spoke over the speakers, issuing orders to his crew on the decks, followed a well rehearsed ritual. There was a calm there, an unassailable authority, and the sailors eagerly jumped to his word.
The ropes were being readied. On the freezer ship, a distant metallic voice over their public address was similarly barking orders. There too, you could see men scurrying to readiness.
It was oddly pleasant just coasting on in. It was smooth. And there was a promise in the air. It was a sunny day, with a beautiful sky, calm, and I was waiting to see who else was in. Buddies, friends, mates. Bar room chat and revelry. Wild stories and funny anecdotes.
The way we were just coasting, so well aimed, so beautifully under control, with the light beaming down on us, I marveled oddly at the slow pace. The peace. The contrast between the hectic, the frenetic, the insane, the wild pace of humanity, and this, the slow pace of steady, deliberate progress. It was as if my own pulse rate matched the pace of the ship. Steady. Calm. Under control. A far cry from some of the previous frenzy in my little life….

Over a period of several days, the arriving officialdom had reflected higher and higher Authority. I knew who the captain wanted to see. He told me. But he never asked. He waited. Patiently. For the King.
All the messengers, the Acolytes, even if they arrived haughtily and intent on making demands, left thoughtfully.
All were swayed to the Captain’s iron will. He took names, phone numbers, addresses. He pointed out that the problem needed to be solved, could be solved, and would be solved. He implied, quietly, that “services rendered ” would not be forgotten. Of course. But not a dollar changed hands… Not yet.
First, he had to meet the King. The Top Dog. The Minister responsible. The Head Man.
Then, perhaps, the rewards to those, further down the line, who had been of service. The rewards for those who had, in the words of the captain, “cooperated to solve this unfortunate problem “.
It was interesting how everybody who left, penniless, but very well aware that their name and address was on a list on the captain’s desk, was eager for “the problem to be resolved “. How much they now liked and respected the captain. How much they enjoyed his fine brandy. How much they realized that their own best interests were -indubitably- best served by aligning themselves with the iron determination of this extraordinary man from Taiwan. The man with the steel eyes, unruffled, unshakable.
The man -strangely- in complete control of the proceedings…

We were alongside now, and the first ropes were being hurled across. Expertly, the sailors twirled the ropes, which were weighted at the end with lead, by spinning them round and round. Then they would release them, with remarkable accuracy, and they would gracefully soar across the gap between the two ships. On the freezer ship, sailors would grab, catch, and reel in. Heavier cables would then be slowly hauled across…

Sitting quietly in a corner, carefully sipping a fine brandy, ostensibly there to assist with translation, I was well aware that I was there in two roles. The smaller role was as translator. To help with English. But by far the greater role was to observe, and afterwards confirm to the captain his remarkable “Big Head “. I was there to confirm and admit his brilliance, his mastery, his unique stage management abilities. Frankly, I was impressed. If it had been a symphony, and he the conductor, I would have applauded warmly. When the King inevitably, as per the Grand Plan, made an appearance, and was ushered in to the Captain’s cabin, I knew the End Game, the Grand Finale, was at hand…

The heavy, steel cables had now been successfully transferred. The winches roared into life. Slowly, steadily, inexorably, steel gathered in steel. The two ships, slowly, inch by weary inch, started to move closer together.
We were coming to the end of this particular journey. This particular, unique adventure on the High Seas. Soon we would be as conjoined twins, fastened at the hip, and there we would stay, for three or four days, whilst sweating crew men commenced the tedious task of transferring 700 tons of frozen tuna.
For the lucky few, the ship’s officers, and the helicopter pilot, there would be shore leave, and the opportunity to explore locally. Buy fresh fruit, visit the shops, and dine out. For most of the crew, being in port was an eighteen hour day.
Toiling, uncomplaining, until late at night. Under arc lights, winches, and the ominous creaking shadows of cranes and cables.

* * * * * *

The restaurant was part of a hotel. It was named the “Windjammer Hotel “, and, in its own way, was something of a classic. A local land mark. A watering hole that had been around for decades.
The main bar had a hand carved counter, which finished in a spectacular crocodile’s head, mouth splayed, teeth grimacing in a hungry scowl.
It was a large room, and as we entered, other diners were already being waited upon by busy waiters.
We paused, six men, the ship’s officers and the helicopter pilot, guests of the captain, who had promised us a hearty celebration of a stunningly successful three days fishing. The Captain, at the head of our little party, the unchallenged leader, was taking in the situation. Calculating. Assessing. Nobody was taking much notice of us. I guessed the Captain was about to adjust that situation…
I was a bystander once more, quietly amused, wondering how this great Manipulator, this man with the intense will power, would deal with this apparent neglect.
I did not have long to wait.
He erected himself to his full stature, all five foot zero inches, and positively bellowed the words:
“WHO Head Waiter? ”
A small little black National, harassed looking, unhappy, swiftly sidled up. He looked tired, beaten. He inquired politely if he could assist. I watched, with interest.
The Captain looked the man quietly full in the face. There was a pause. Direct eye contact. You could almost sense the electricity. The transmission of a powerful message: “I am special. Treat me well. It will go well with you. “
A few seconds went by. Now the Captain now had the harried man’s full attention. Undivided. Dedicated.
The Captain slowly smiled. A brisk fistful of crisp twenty dollar notes suddenly appeared by magic in front of the head waiter’s face. A juicy fistful. There was the best part of two hundred dollars cash there. Maybe more. The head waiter’s eyes opened wide. How much wages did that represent? Three months? More?
“Best table! Best waiter! Best service! Number One! Later, maybe many, many more dollar for you! “
The Captain inserted the bills into the man’s breast pocket, and stood there, magnificent, magnanimous, supreme.
I watched the eruption of activity. Waiters appeared from all directions, even deserting other tables. We were swiftly escorted to the best table, chairs were pulled out for us in a hurry, and a bevvy of waiters plied us with our every wish.
An empty glass had merely to be wafted in the air, and was speedily replenished. The Hotel manager materialized, and never left our side. And the best food, the best brandy, the best wine in the house, regardless of paltry cost, was served up at record speed. Here was a Captain who had caught 700 ton in three days. At $1,700 a ton, he had brought in 1.2 million dollars worth of catch. He wished for everybody to know it.

The evening ex-ploded into one mighty shin-dig. The party to end all parties. A rip roaring, very loud, good humored, paint the town red black an’ flippin’ purple, and ‘who is your granny anyway’ kind of riot. Thick, juicy steaks and roast chickens were disappearing down hungry gullets by the trolley load. Good wine and strong port were also taking their effect. Through an increasing haze, I marveled at how this man now controlled the room. The other guests, robbed of their pre-eminence, far from exhibiting irritation, were quickly wooed by our Captain. He explained to everybody the details of his success, his “new record “. He bought everybody drinks, was charming to the ladies, and made the men laugh. Even as earlier diners were leaving, they came by our table to drink our captain’s good health, and thank him for his delightful company. Even the shipping agent, alerted by his spies no doubt, was quick to the scene. The Captain graciously bade him pull up a chair, and soon he too was part of the raucous party….

It was the Minister for Fisheries who had arrived on board eventually. A well dressed, quiet, thoughtful man.
I was once again asked in, to occupy my usual seat in the corner. Sipping a good brandy, I watched the proceedings unfold.
The ship owner was there, and the unfortunate captain. For the benefit of his powerful ministerial visitor, the Captain proceeded to slam the unfortunate captain and the equally unhappy ship owner. In no uncertain circumstances, he read them both the riot act. The Minister looked on, quietly. Both the defendants sat there, silently, heads bowed, penitents, the accused, miserable worms, placing the power of judgment in our Captain. Once the tongue lashing was over, they were curtly dismissed. They bowed obsequiously to both the Captain and the Minister. But even then, in a quick glance from the ship owner to the Captain, as the former was ushered out the door, I sensed…. the choreography. It was all an act.
A show… A high stakes performance, with a twelve million dollar pot.
The door had closed, and I had watched the Captain unwind the tension. Now he was buddies with the Minister. They were on the same side. There was much head shaking. A mutual agreement that the errant captain had been a stupid fool. A poacher, who deserved to be caught. All that remained now, was to settle the price. Keep everybody happy. Even the irate villagers. And the endless procession of minor players. Now there were smiles, even laughter. More brandy was consumed, more good fellowship was applied. Fine foods were brought in, and cigar smoke curled up to the ceiling. They were buddies now, friends, who would do more business together in the future. More mutually profitable business…

We were singing now. And I was dancing on the table with the Chief Engineer. The captain was applauding enthusiastically. I think we were singing an Irish Rebel Song. Or I was singing, and he was following on with a Chinese baritone, copying the unfamiliar words as best he could. It gave a strange stereo effect, which seemed to hugely entertain the audience. The Hotel Manager stood there, beaming, a drinks trolley at the ready…

A while later I remember I was trying to see if I could stick my head in the carved crocodile’s mouth, mounted at the end of the bar. I think I’d stopped singing at that stage. I’m not sure though. Or was it a dragon? I wasn’t sure of that either, but it seemed very important that I should see if my head fitted or not. The Radio Operator was there as well, standing in the queue, waiting to see if maybe his head, smaller than mine would fit…

The Hotel was making a fortune, and some of the finer drinks on the trolley cost ten bucks a pop. They didn’t care what we did, as long as we kept on eating and drinking. Short of burning the Hotel down, we could do no wrong. We were now dancing the Conga, my crazy idea, with all the hotel guests, and the waiters joining in. The bar tender was beaming, from ear to ear. The Captain had already shoved a hundred dollars his way, with a promise of more… The Captain’s control was one hundred per cent.

The atmosphere in the cabin was now relaxed, informal. Friendly. Gone was the icy sarcasm with which the errant captain and ship owner had been flogged. It was just the three of us now. When the pleasantries were finished, and the bonding had taken place, and the mutual interests were agreed upon… the safe was opened. And the money was counted out. In different piles, ranging from very big to small…
I lost count. It was a lot. Cash. It filled one very large envelope. And lots of smaller ones. Was it a hundred thousand? More? I wasn’t sure. But the Minister was beaming. The Captain was also happy. The problem of the impounded ship, in danger of permanent confiscation, was being solved. For a relative pittance. Carefully negotiated down, with charm, resolve, and an eerie insight into human psychology. The man was a genius…

I was back at the dining table, full, sated, supremely satisfied. I was having a problem standing, let alone dancing, so it seemed safer just to stay seated. The Captain was entertaining everybody. He turned to me.
“Moggy! “
(hic!)
“Yes, Captain? “
(hic!)
“Moggy, you get me two girls… beautiful girls! “
He flashed me two fingers. It looked like four, but two of them were kind of blurred.
Everybody looked at me. I was being charged with a sacred mission.
I thought about his imperious request. I knew his taste for women. In Guam, I had seen him with remarkably beautiful girls. Expensive girls. He had offered me my own. I had always politely declined. Now he wanted me to organize him two girls.
Hm….
“Captain! I am your hu-helicopter pilot, not your pu-pimp! You ge-get your own girls! “
He looked at me, trying to summon a stern look. The ship’s officers squirmed uncomfortably. I returned his stare with alcohol fueled, somewhat giddy defiance. The room was doing funny things. Swaying…
His face relaxed. Instead, he shook his head sadly.
“Moggy! Punn-tann! Stupid! No good! “
I remained defiant. He was amused. He knew my sensibilities. It was more of a teasing. He delighted in poking fun at my values. I could see it in his eyes.
“Waiter! “
Instantly a watchful waiter was at his side. The captain repeated his order, and the waiter nodded. A fistful of dollars changed hands, several hundred bucks, and the little waiter disappeared. I knew some families got by in the local barter economy on as little as a hundred dollars cash a year, and I wondered what kind of star buying power the captain’s greenbacks would command.
The party continued, unabated, and not fifteen minutes later, the waiter returned with “two girls “.

I gasped quietly. Oh, the visions of loveliness…
I couldn’t help my thoughts.
Hell, you guys redefine butt UGLY….
They were older women, carrying a “pronounced surplus of body fat “, with heavy jowls. They probably weighed in at close to two hundred pounds each. I guessed it was the old coconut diet problem. The milk of the coconut, and the white flesh, are notoriously rich in calories. It seemed that all the young, pretty girls, quickly grew up into truly massive ladies. This pair almost had hair on their teeth, in addition to the facial hair. Not to mention the wavy nostril branches…

“A fine lassie ” by David Friel

They had obviously been chewing betelnut, a mild narcotic. Their teeth were stained red. As they attempted to smile seductively, I sure wished to hell they wouldn’t. It was like the smile of a long dead, recently awakened, over cheerful vampire. The captain weighed a hundred and ten pounds, perhaps. A worry crossed my mind. If one of them hopped on top of him, bless us, he’d smother to death. And he was going to tackle two of them…!!?
I looked at the biceps on the one Madam, and surmised she could land a haymaker on any man if she was so inclined.
The only thing missing was a Swastika tattoo…
Feeling guilty, I tried really hard to extinguish my uncharitable and singularly unChristian thoughts. I’m a frustrated idealist, and I try to be a Kind Spirit. A well meaning sort of fool. I don’t approve of prostitution. It undermines local cultures. It shows a dis-respect on some level. It’s not a good thing. But I really…. despite my best efforts… just couldn’t help observing that these Female Juggernauts were so far removed from the captain’s usual high class taste, that it was hard to find words to describe the screaming disparity.
I looked at him, studying his reaction. I half expected him to decline. Recoil in horror. Me, I would have run a frantic, quaking mile, and gone into hiding. I’d still be quaking…

The little waiter stood there, beaming, flanked by the two waiting Buxom Behemoths. Probably his aunts.
From his happy demeanour,you’d think he’d located Miss Australia and Miss Taiwan.
To my taste, it was more like he’d located the Blubber Brigade. Intent on making an easy pile of bucks. I wondered if they had left their walking canes outside the door. At least they’d remembered to put their dentures in.
Holy smokes…
I could see the Captain studying them closely, expertly, as only a true connoisseur of Fine Art can.
His face showed no expression. I wondered what was going through his mind. What was the Master thinking?

I held my breath, curiously awaiting the outcome of his silent inner deliberations…

(to be continued)

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on March 6, 2014, 12:06 pm

Part 14: On holding hands, keeping your shorts on, rotor brakes, and smoking Pot

I have worked, on and off, for different charities.
That doesn’t make me a saint, or better than you. It just makes me a Seeker, a person who dreams of a better, kinder Society. More gentle. Less greedy. Maybe more spiritual. And who is often amazed and frustrated. A bit of a naive dude, always a bit behind the ‘eight ball’ of realization.
Duh…
Are people really like that? Holy cow. That wasn’t very nice. Wow…

Working with children, sometimes handicapped, physically or mentally (or both), I pretty soon learned a great many things.
Firstly, that people are much more human, warm, and spontaneous when they are young, poor, or hurting.
Secondly, that I could do very little, but that the little I did, somehow, counted a lot.
Thus it was with the simple act of ‘holding hands’.
Children, young people, and adults all, sometimes are at a loss to explain their feelings in words. They just can’t. They might want to, but powerful emotion, hurt, confusion… all may cause a prolonged, speechless, silence.
But then… they might suddenly slide a hand into yours. It happens sometimes when you least expect it. All of a sudden, a hand is burrowing into yours. And you look around in surprise, and you see these eyes looking at you.
It’s happened to me in the strangest of places. And at the strangest of times. It’s a humbling experience. You look around, surprised, and there are these eyes looking at you.

Sometimes they are nervous, frightened, even tearful. Sometimes, especially with handicapped children and adults, they are not. On the contrary, they are challenging. I often have wondered if Nature compensates handicapped children on another level. The emotional, spiritual, intuitive level. How often have I met “handicapped ” people who, with their quiet and steadfast loving, were far less handicapped in that regard than I was?
Working with handicapped persons is often a privilege, and a joy. Put it another way, you’d be amazed how often you laugh your proverbial buttocks off. They can be really funny, in a harmless, mischievous, spontaneous way.

I remember working in a youth club. We had all sorts there. Some were from unhappy homes. We had one little girl there, who was about nine or ten. She had amazingly expressive soft brown eyes. But there was something strange in her expression. A blandness, a studied neutrality. She saw you, but yet she didn’t see you. She never spoke a word.
For a while, I noticed she would follow me. Wordless. If you spoke to her, she would not reply. Just stare at you. I made inquiries, and was told her family were having troubles. It was whispered her father was violent towards her mother. You’d wonder what those young eyes had seen. There was no way of knowing. The child herself, with that serious, intent face, studied me, but said nothing.
Then one day, I was talking to somebody else, and I felt a hand slip into mine. I looked down, and there she stood, fearfully, almost trembling. Waiting to be scolded, and shooed away. Waiting perhaps to be hit…
After that, she sought me out, and was never far away. She spoke hardly a word. Just that little hand. In mine.

One day, we were on an outing, about a hundred kids, and we were walking along through a playground. Both my hands had been hijacked. I had a child on each side. Including little Brown Eyes. She was like a shadow, quiet, always there. All of a sudden, there was a commotion beside me. I looked down, just in time to see an older boy, a seemingly tough kid, roughly pull her hand away from mine. Then he inserted his own instead. I looked at her, pushed roughly aside, and I was shocked to see one of the saddest faces I’ve ever seen. I’ve remembered it, all these years later. That brief look of incredible hurt, flitting across her face, piercing loss, fearful uncertainty, and then, almost worse, the struggle to re-arrange her face to neutral. To re-arrange her face to that bland, unfeeling, neutral stare.
“That wasn’t very nice “, I said to the seemingly tough little boy. He knew exactly what I meant. He shrugged his shoulders, and abandoned my hand. Little Brown Eyes just stared. I had to coax her to return. Slowly, she slipped back.
After that, her grip was tighter than ever.
I know I’ve remembered her. I wonder if she has ever remembered me. I doubt it, but I suspect, emotionally, there was a tiny boost there, a nurturing, a small act of kindness not forgotten?

When I went flying in the Tuna Fields, my own little (blue) eyes had seen plenty of Good and Bad. And I’m sure at times I also tried to hide behind a bland neutrality. Trouble was, my past always caught up with me. I think I’ve often tried to hide behind the seemingly protective facade of the weather beaten cynic. Heck, I’ve tried.
The weather beaten old pilot, who has traveled widely and ‘seen it all’. Hard as granite, tough as nails.
Untouchable.
Right…

Thus it was I found myself with some other Tuna pilots and mechanics waiting at an airport.
We were all in transit, to and from various boats and home destinations. A whole bunch of us. Tough guys.
We were on some tropical island. A stop over. I can’t remember which one. I’ve seen so many.
I noticed this young native Micronesian boy. He looked about fifteen. He appeared to be mentally handicapped. He was going around, trying to put his hand in other people’s. Everybody rebuffed him. Most showed annoyance, irritation. Hostility even. F..k off.
He had that same, strange, bland stare. He wasn’t begging for money. Or deliberately being a nuisance.
He was begging for something else.
For somebody to care…
I sighed. I knew how this party would turn out.
Sure enough, not ten minutes later, I felt the greasy paw hesitantly slide into mine. Oh well…
I left it there. And carried on the conversation with my pilot peers, as if nothing was wrong. Situation normal.
Humanity rules…
Here we are, leathernecks, hell raisers, Pacific Ocean cowboys, Tuna Hunters, beer drinking women chasing table thumping desperadoes, and I’m holding hands with a little black man.
Hey-ho… this should get the tongues wagging afterward…
Their expressions were comical to watch. Nobody actually said much about it. The little guy was my friend now, and stood there patiently and happily, wordlessly, for forty five minutes. Until my plane landed, and it was time to go.
He understood, and smiled a sad little smile.
Bye-bye…

It reminded me of Jean Paul, the abandoned little French boy I met while I was working at an institute for handicapped children in France. He had a deformed arm. He used to sneak up on me, with heavy dangerous objects, and beat hell out of me, any chance he got. He nearly cracked my skull one day with a hammer. And then, when I was finally leaving after six weeks voluntary work, he took me to one side and tearfully said: “Il me fait mal au coeur que tu pars… ” ( “It breaks my heart that you are leaving… “)
And then he cried his eyes out…
Gulp…
And then of course there was the young Chinese fisherman on one tuna boat I worked on. I’ll call him Chang. He was about twenty, perhaps, and was also obviously slightly mentally handicapped. The crew made fun of him, but they were often quite protective of him as well. Those rough, tough, weathered old Chinese sailors… I’m not sure if he was gay or not, and I’m not sure if he knew himself, but he was different, put it that way. I didn’t have the heart to shoo him away, and he would often come and sit with me on the helideck, and want to hold my hand. It’s also partly a cultural thing. I once saw a great photo of two Congolese soldiers holding hands. In their military dress camouflage uniforms, with their guns and belts, there they were, walking down the road, holding hands. No, in their culture it doesn’t mean they are gay. They’re just…
friends…
It’s something I understood, and on a human level, I am not totally without compassion. Let them be. It’s not for me to be aloof and cold, superior and untouchable. And it amused me a bit. The reactions of visiting pilots and mechanics, when we were in port, at times also entertained me. We’d be sitting somewhere, chatting, and up would come this young Chinese sailor, and sit down beside me, and place his hand in mine. Then he’d sit there, beaming happily, with not a clue in the world what we were talking about. In English.

I have two more tales to tell about Chang. One involves a Teddy Bear. The other involves paper prayers. But that is maybe almost another whole story. Maybe I’ll get around to writing it up one day. Suffice it for now to relate that I tried to behave like a feeling human being towards him and others, and not like some gung-ho television hero. I didn’t want to be a cloned Movie Android. Screw Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wasn’t obsessed with being a tough guy. Like so many guys are today. Call me a sissy for making the mistake of feeling. Go ahead.
There now. Do ya feel better and meaner now…?

There came the day I was leaning over the railing of my ship, quietly pondering a million thoughts. My mind was so far away, I never spotted young Chang sneaking up behind me. Quick as a flash, he yanked on my shorts, pulling them down around my ankles. Luckily my underpants had tight elastics. The event was witnessed by many of the crew, and there was loud laughter. Chang, delightedly, quickly scurried away. Okay…
I chased him round and round the ship. Very soon he wasn’t laughing anymore. He’d seen the grim expression on my face.
Now you’ve crossed the boundary, my little friend, and you’re going to see a whole different side of me…
It has always annoyed me intensely when my being ‘soft spoken’ gets misinterpreted as ‘weakness’. When my trying to be a feeling human gets warped in some people’s minds into the “anything goes ” alley.
Okay… Here cometh the Dark Side.
He was younger than me, and he could run like hell, but there’s only so far you can run on a boat. We passed through the bridge several times, and I noticed the captain looking more and more flabbergasted. Down the stairs,past the galley, out onto the lower working deck, and back up the stairs to the middle working deck. Nobody intervened. I caught the little blighter eventually, and now he was scared. He was even more scared as he found himself dangling precariously over the railing, upside down, about to be dropped twenty feet into the waves below. We were sailing along at twelve knots, and it would have been quite a splash. He was screaming and struggling, but it was no use, and he knew his fate was very much in my hands.
Heck, I was sorely tempted to chuck him in.
In my broken Chinese, I think I clearly indicated I was very displeased, and next time…. he was going overboard.
I had no more trouble.

A few months later, it was a beautiful flying morning.
We took off, two of us, and it was one of those days a tuna helicopter pilot dreams about. Whistling along in a Hughes 500, 500 feet, doors off, unlimited visibility, cool temperatures, and a big sky. A big sky, with some high altitude cirrus clouds, wispy, streaking, blown apart by equally high altitude winds. Into a succession of fans, a magical veil, transparent, eternal.
You just kind of settle into the hum of your bird. If you like driving a motorcycle along a quiet mountain road, just driving, for hours on end, dreaming, quietly, of Life, past, present, future…. then you will positively love a Hughes 500 streaking low over the Ocean. Wonderful… You just kind of lose yourself in Time and Space. Yes, you bank to look at this floating object, yes, you peer into the distance… but that’s only five per cent of you.

Ninety-five per cent of you walks the Lanes of Memory. The Tracks of the Future. Dreams. Wishes. Longings. Regrets.
And you fly on…
Faces float past your mind’s eye. People you’ve met. People you’ve loved. People who have treated you badly. People you try not to hate. Life can be so beautiful, and life can be so unspeakably ugly. But with the right torque setting, a gentle hand on the cyclic, sensitive feet, a tuna pilot can keep everything that really matters…. in the green. Engine oil pressure, temperature, main transmission readings, battery power… And that is all that matters. The stress is low. If you know where you’re going. If you have a mental picture of yourself sliding across meridians and parallels, if you can effortlessly calculate time and heading, if the thought of a GPS failure does not fill you with latent horror…. then, truly…
the stress is low…

And thus it was that we arrived, peacefully, quietly, at one with the world, enjoying the tranquility of Nature, at an area of the Ocean that was occupied by a whole gaggle of helicopters. We would see them in the distance, banking, swirling, swooping, like dragon flies on a warm summer’s evening.
There’s got to be tuna there…
We headed over, and now I could hear the ‘chat’ frequency come alive. There was a bunch of guys up. Eight, ten, maybe more helicopters. It seemed there was one truly big foamer, and everybody was wanting to have a peek at it. The observers would all be wanting to know the size of the fish, and the make and model.
Skipjack, Yellowfin or Big Eye…
They had a ‘stack’ going. A chimney of helicopters. With the new arrival entering at the top. And slowly working his way down. And the machine at the bottom, once observations were complete, scooting off low level.
It worked well, provided everybody knew the rules, and provided everybody communicated. There was always some unwitting newbie, who didn’t know the rules, and who didn’t know the chat frequency, maybe a foreigner on his first trip, a Virgin Landlubber, a Sprat Anchovy Head, who screwed it all up. That was a sure fire recipe for a dangerous situation.
As we drew closer, I announced our presence.
“Good morning, gentlemen, Moggy the Mighty approaching from the North, two miles to run…. “
There was laughter.
Several voices bantered back.
“Moggy! About time you got up! Where ya been? “
“Moggy! How ya doing? Long time no speak! “
“Moggy! Fuck off! No fish here! Go away! “
It was all good, rude fun. I replied in a vague way to all the unseen speakers:
“Oh, I’ve been busy. We’re just out of Honiara. But I’m baaaaack…You can lock up yer daughters….! “
Before anybody else could reciprocate, a harsh voice cut in. It was sarcastic, sneering, and loaded with contempt. No fun was intended. Just a belittling intent.
“I’ll just keep my shorts on, more like… “
Boom. Back to the Reality of Man. Harsh…
I sighed to myself. You could hear the loud pause. Everybody heard it. Everybody was listening for my reaction.
It had been a nice morning so far. I wasn’t going to let one cruel spirit spoil it. There were in fact, several possible replies at the tip of my tongue. But I just couldn’t be bothered… All I could think was:
Believe what you want…
I ignored it. No reaction. We checked out the fish, and I flew on…

A few nights later, I was feeling lonely. There were a bunch of ships moored nearby, and I could see their lights in the Ocean darkness. Maybe some buddies to chat with… An hour after darkness, a little later than normal, I climbed up to the helideck, climbed into my bird, and switched the radio on to the chat frequency. I discovered a whole heated discussion going on already. To my surprise, the subject under discussion was…. me.
My detractor of the previous day, him who was worried about keeping his shorts on in my presence, was holding forth against people telling him to shut up. He was telling everybody about the bed hopping on my boat. It seemed that from the Captain down, we all lived to do the unnatural thing with each other. A floating carnival of an ‘alternative life style’.
He was going on and on, and there seemed to be one or two enthusiastic supporters, lapping it up and encouraging him, and some others telling him to shut the f..k up. It was a pity, as there were some guys there I was looking forward to having a chat with. But I couldn’t be bothered waiting until my detractor ran out of steam. After a minute or so, I debated interrupting, and then I thought “Oh, what the hell… ” and switched off. Went back to my cabin and read a book instead.
For the next week or so, while that merry little lot were around, I didn’t even bother trying to come up at night on the chat frequency.
Believe what you want…
And I just quietly flew on.

The incident, minor and somewhat distasteful, not to mention unkind and immature, had a strange sequel.
I subsequently bumped into one of my Kiwi buddies, who was mad as hell about it. I was surprised how annoyed he was about it. It was aimed at me, and I’d just shrugged my shoulders, and walked. It turned out he’d been wanting to talk to me about an early draft he’d been reading of “Moggy’s Tuna Manual “. Even then, back in the nineties, a group of us, appalled at the high helicopter accident rate in the Tuna Fields, had been talking about putting together a manual for newcomers.
A friendly guide with tips and tricks for new or potential Anchovy Heads. He thought it was great, what I had written so far, and he’d wanted to talk to me about some suggestions.
“Dammit, Moggy, I was up every night calling you, and you never answered. All I got was that f…ing motor mouth and his potty talk. I figgered you just gave up with him hogging the radio, and didn’t bother anymore. Right? “
I was kind of surprised at his insight.
Right…

We talked a bit, and he voiced something that had crossed my mind, in a vague sort of way.
“Ever notice he sounds like he’s tripping out? “
I didn’t know what to say. The dude was…strange. But then maybe we all were, to be doing what we were doing. An unquestionably dangerous job, thousands of miles from home, eating funky food and fighting cockroaches and isolation…
Maybe we all were. I shrugged my shoulders.

The Pacific Ocean is big, but the Tuna Helicopter World is small.
Time went by, and one day, in some port in Papua New Guinea, who did I bump into? Sure. Our friend with the lurid tales.
He greeted me like a long lost buddy. I thought “Bloody hypocrite “, but never brought up his night time ravings.
Later that day, we had both done quite some shopping, and been out for a meal, and we rented a primitive taxi to take us and our goodies back to the docks. We bumped along the rough roads, past the run down, dusty, shabby houses, and past the locals, unemployed, staring vacantly around them.
All of a sudden, he abruptly ordered the cab driver to pull over.
“Pull over! There! Beside that guy! “
He pointed to a local man on what passed for a side walk.
I was sitting in the back, and to me, over his shoulder, he passed some comment to the effect that he ‘had some business’ with the local. I didn’t pay any attention.
However, after a minute or so, I became slowly aware that the price they were haggling over concerned… pot.
I pricked my ears up. It wasn’t what our friend was saying. He was just haggling dollars. But what the local was saying…
“This good shit, man…. good shit… “
Duh….!?
My first thought was that it was a wind up. They were pulling my leg. But no… I was sitting in the back of a cab, in a foreign country, in the Tropical Rain Forest, and this dude is trying to tie up a drug deal????
“Excuse me! ” I said, crossly.
The negotiator in the front paid no attention. he was too busy haggling.
“EXCUSE ME! “, I said, more crossly, and a lot more loudly.
He looked around, in obvious annoyance.
“WHAT!? “
I was dumbfounded. I struggled for words. But when I found them, finally, they flowed fluently.
“ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR TINY FRICKIN’ MIND? ARE YOU TOTALLY NUTS?? “
I was pissed. Hell, it could be a set up, for all I knew. A stake-out. The cabbie could be in on it. Any second now the cops could come jumping out of the shadows… who the hell was going to believe me that I had nothing to do with it??
I told him in no uncertain manner that I had already seen the inside of a Papuan so-called “hospital “. With the ankle deep human waste in the toilets, earth floors, and rickety old Australian Army surplus cots. If that was a “hospital ” I sure as shit didn’t want to see the inside of a Papuan PRISON!
My indignation finally registered, and we drove away, the deal undone.
Fuxsake…

Time went by. Months. Or was it a year? I can’t remember. Time morphed. Into a flow of impressions, memories, some good, some not so good…
Next thing we heard, to everybody’s amazement, that our friend with the ‘strange fixation’ had experienced a catastrophe. Word went around the Tuna Fields like wildfire. The first version was that he had fired up his Hughes 500 with the blade still tied down. We all groaned. That was a recipe for disaster. The world over, helicopter pilots do that, on a regular basis. It simply cooks the turbine. In seconds. You can do so much damage in the blink of an eye.
A hundred thousand dollars or more. People have been killed that way. Blades have suddenly broken loose, tipping helicopters violently onto their side. It’s a matter of torque, latent energy released, and Newton’s Third Law.
Blades have broken at the root, and started whipping around, suddenly released, with all that torque, and beating hell out of the helicopter. Smashing in the windows, chopping the tail boom off…
There are endless tales of woe on this subject. It’s not good…
The next thing we heard was hard to swallow. I didn’t believe it initially, and said so. The story went that the captain was up in the crow’s mast, and saw what was happening. The engine was running, the blades were not turning, one was still tied down, and the pilot was staring intently at the gauges. The story went that the captain hurriedly climbed all the way down from the crow’s mast, ran across to the stairs up to helideck, climbed up to the helideck, and our friend was still sitting there, burning but not turning…
Staring at the gauges, trying to figure something out…
It was only the arrival of the captain that terminated the attempted… ‘start’!
To me, that didn’t make sense. Even an athlete can’t climb all the way down from the crow’s mast, and then up to the helideck, in less than a minute. It’s a long way. You mean to say a guy is going to sit there, that long, and not able to figure out his blades aren’t turning? Nonsense.
I was wrong.
I knew the captain, and he was later to personally confirm the whole story. But by then, our friend had long been fired. Dismissed. We could feel sorry for him. He wasn’t my flavor of the month, spreading absurd stories about my sexual predilections, but on a human level, I could still pity him. Hard luck.

Unfortunately… it wasn’t hard luck.
The next bit of news blew the lid off the box. The replacement pilot-mechanic, arriving on the ship (with a new engine and a set of rotor blades) had opened a book, and discovered that it had been hollowed out. To hide… a marijuana pipe.
A “bong “…
No wonder he sometimes sounded like he was “tripping out “. Good Lord. He was…
Speculation next centered on what in heaven’s name he’d actually been messing with. Pot? Or worse? Crack? Acid?
Nobody knew. But there was puzzlement, and a wonder. And whatever it was, it must have been pretty potent stuff.
He’d messed up a perfectly good helicopter.
And he’d even forgotten his drug implement…

There was much head shaking. The job is dangerous enough. But to add drugs into the mix?
Why on earth…
I was later to read about a fatal helicopter crash in Florida, where the dead pilot (with passengers on board) tested positive for cocaine. When I was with the Sheriff’s Office, we did some interesting drug raids, and that was another whole education in the field of drug abuse. Some more stories, maybe, one day.
Helicopter Pilots have tested positive for drugs in the Gulf of Mexico as well…

I have never done drugs. And simply never understood the mystique. I always drove motorcycles fast and furiously, requiring all my faculties.
Chasing beautiful Irish maidens was much more fun than popping pills or smoking ‘stuff’.
I soloed an aircraft when I was eighteen.
I started free-fall skydiving the same year, and drugs were so far away from what I wanted to do, that I can’t even begin to describe the distance…
I saw drugs as a “cissy ” thing. The preserve of the under achiever.
The neurotic.
I associated drugs with those funny little girlish cliques you saw hiding around at University in dark corners, reveling in mind enhancing LSD trips and all that nonsense. I was totally, totally disinterested. I couldn’t even begin to imagine doing a free fall skydive (No automatic emergency reserve openers in those days) under the influence of anything. Can you imagine?
Hey-ho….look at me!…. I’m a BIRRRRRRD!… I don’t need no stinkin’ parachute…
(Splat!)

Strange world. Strange people. What’s right to one is wrong to the other. What’s straight to one is crooked as hell to the other.
Amidst all the confusion, all the cacophony, all the multi-varied shades of opinions, life styles and dogma, I offer one solid suggestion.
I do believe this, with a passion…
(puts on Papuan-Jamaican accent)

Don’t smoke no shit and go fly, mon…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on November 6, 2009, 5:16 am

Photo by Francis Meyrick

Part 12: No Man is an Island

I have read stories and biographies that, in the final thrust, left me unable to identify, to connect, with the protagonist. It was as if the make-up team had been in. The dreaded publicist. Massaging the true writer away. With powder, and eye shadow, and a nip here, and a tuck there. Somehow, what was left, was no longer a flesh-and-blood creature. But a manicured, written-to-order, polished, perfect creature. An alabaster, porcelain, smoothly polished, soulless, bronze figure. Devoid of the one ingredient I was looking for. Humanity, warmth. And maybe failings, foibles, weaknesses. That which defines us as being alive, and thinking, and groping in the spirit. Luckily, I can’t afford a facelift, (physically, or in terms of my many literary warts and wrinkles) and, frankly, I couldn’t care less. It’s just a blog. I include this story, simply because it’s raw honest. No other attribute or merit. I was going through a rough, embittered patch, and struggling in my head. In a way, I wanted to reach out. And in another way, I sure as heck didn’t. Both the simple, but honest poems “Exile” and “I miss the Darkness of her Light” hail from that introspective, wandering time.

“NO MAN IS AN ISLAND”, they would say….

It was a fine theory. He knew the maxim, but he wasn’t sure if he believed the truth of it. He had spent countless thousands of hours… risking his neck flying alone in a small helicopter over the unlimited Pacific Ocean. Surveying wave after wave of infinity. Ostensibly searching for the elusive Tuna, but actually engaged on an inner quest of a different kind…
What did he care for Man? The less he had to do with Man, the quieter his life seemed to be. There were times when he felt an almost contemptuous dis-interest in his fellow Man.
They way they bickered and fought, and quarreled and lied. They way the arrogant and the brutish had no qualms in grabbing what they wanted, and then wrapping themselves in the mantle of self righteousness. The way Man’s heart was full of deceit, and his thoughts turned always to material possessions. The way Disguised Greed was their Mantra, and Envy their Mistress.
He, for his part, enjoyed the loneliness of the vast Pacific, the purity of the skies, and the comforting touch of the controls in his hands. He enjoyed the birds, and the whales. The dolphins, and the Marlin. He enjoyed being away from Man as much as he could, wrapped up in a silent contemplation of the vast Universe. He respected Time, and knew it was running out. Compared with his concept of Eternity and Human Mortality, the bulging bank accounts of the Rich and the Arrogant left him with nothing but a quiet distaste. The fools… how little they had learned...

The small atoll that came in to view, a thousand miles from the nearest land, had surprised him the first time when he had seen the neat rows of thatched houses. It seemed that every single portion of the atoll had been given over to human habitation. The tuna fleet had descended on the area, and over the next few weeks, he would fly over the small atoll many times. People would wave at him, as he flew over, and he would wave back. Often he debated landing there. It would be nice to have some human contact, to interrupt those long, lonely flights. Perhaps he could do some trading. Perhaps the girls would be pretty. Perhaps he could spend the occasional night there, and make some friends.
But… he was wary. Some instinct told him to stay away. Some gut feeling warned him against landing there.It was nothing he could put his finger on, just a vague premonition.
Yes, it seemed they were friendly. But were they?
Then he would feel guilty for being so suspicious. Perhaps if was just his paranoia. Perhaps it was just his alienation from his fellow man. Maybe he should learn to trust more. Maybe…
And then he would beat himself up, feeling guilty....

A few weeks later, one of his friends tried landing there, to trade some items for lobster perhaps. The locals locked him up, and impounded his helicopter, claiming that he had landed without “clearance”. The drama went on for weeks, with the ransom demands for the release of the helicopter steadily being reduced from three hundred thousand dollars to a mere fifty thousand bucks. The story went around like wildfire, and caused much bitterness amongst the tuna helicopter legionnaires.

He heard the story too, and snorted contemptuously. Just as he had thought.
Man and his Greed. Man…

and his Folly.

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on March 19, 2014, 2:03 pm

Part 13: The Lady in Blue

I try hard, not always successfully, to live by my own maxims.
One of these goes like this:
never mock what you don’t understand.
It has to do with respect I guess. Other people’s religious and spiritual beliefs may seem strange, unreal, but if they are their cherished beliefs, then who are we to cast forth mockery and doubt. We should respect a sincere faith, not because we share it ourselves, but because another human being does so. Admittedly, there are limits. But that applies to the inevitable extremists. In my own experience, most folk who revere the Virgin Mary are far from extreme. They come from all sorts of walks of life, ranging from the simple to the most educated. My own oldest brother, an acoustical engineer, was a devout Roman Catholic. With what the Catholics call a ‘special devotion’ to the Virgin Mary. I well remember his excitement on the phone. They had collected enough funds to build a brand new church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. I tried to keep my big mouth shut, and listened to him, happily chattering down the phone.
I refrained from asking why they so desperately needed yet another church in Holland. In fact, I seem to remember I said as little as possible on the subject. All I know is that the Bible never elevated Mary to the status the Catholics do. So it seems a bit… maybe over the top? But what do I know? Not-a-lot.
Oh, well. To each his own.
Never mock what you don’t understand…

I remember working on a Korean boat. I went for my first exploratory ‘walk about’ on my new home. Holy Smokes! There was a shrine to the Virgin Mary. It was along a corridor. Shadowy, with an eerie flickering of lights and candles. I paused. Curious. My irreverent thoughts were puzzling as to what in hell’s name the Virgin Mary was doing on a Korean boat? Obviously, the lady can go where she pleases, but I imagine she would be more welcome some places than others. A shrine? Complete with a four foot statue, lights and candles? On a Korean boat? Well, maybe they were Catholics. And with that infernal curiosity of mine, that has got me into endless troubles all my life, I had to go and ask.
I finally located the Korean radio operator. I asked were they Catholics? No. How about the shrine to the Virgin Mary?
He looked blank. The phrase ‘Virgin Mary’ meant nothing to him. Our Lady? Blank look. Mary? Another blank look.
Eventually. OH! “You mean Lady in Blue “?
Yes, I mean Lady in Blue. That one. What’s the scoop?
He answered carefully: “Before. American ship… Crew…. Portugal. Lady in Blue… belong to them. “
I thought back to the immaculate, clean shrine. Not a speck of dust or dirt. The candles, glowing in the half light. The obvious respect from the Koreans for the ‘Lady in Blue’. I got the picture. The Koreans on this boat lived by the same maxim. Don’t mock what you don’t understand…
The ‘Lady in Blue’ may have been an inherited accoutrement, dating back from when their company had first purchased the ship, but they weren’t about to pitch her in the garbage. As far as they were concerned, she had done a damn fine job, and kept everybody alive and the boat intact. They showed the “Lady in Blue ” every respect, kept the shrine immaculate, dusted her off when needed, and kept the candles lit. They knew nothing about her. And yet, they knew everything…

A year or so later, I was in big trouble. We all were. There were about eighteen of us, pilots, mechanics, and some other crew members, all packed into this open launch. It had an outboard engine, way under powered, struggling to make headway against gale force winds. All around us, the waves were increasing in size, eight foot, ten foot, and spray was flying. None of us wore life jackets. There were none on board. At the helm was a young Solomon islander, a teenager perhaps, and his face showed strangely white. I was sitting in the bow, getting soaked, looking aft, and I could sense he was scared. The boat was quiet. Normally, when you have three Tuna Dudes together, never mind eighteen, you have wise cracks and ribald humor, piss taking and practical jokes. Not here. Everybody was aware of land -Honiara- disappearing behind us. Ahead of us, in what roughly passed for a bay, but what was actually more of a slight curve in the coast line, there lay our various destinations. Tuna purse seiners, waiting for us. They had finished offloading their cargo, whilst we lucky ones had gone ashore, three days earlier, for some beer drinking, tall story telling, women chasing, whoop-dee-dooo.
In the meantime, the weather had started to go to hell. There was a low coming through, and these vicious gale force winds were buffeting our little craft like the proverbial turd in a commode. Not good, getting worse. It had been pleasant and calm a few days earlier. None of us had thought to bring life jackets. Not that they would do us much good in these weather conditions. We were now several miles offshore, in an open boat, and the sea state was non survivable. Nobody protested.
A psychologist, writing a Ph.D. dissertation on male pride and ego, testosterone and pure stupidity, would do well to include a paragraph on what we were attempting here.
It was going to get worse. Much worse.
We arrived, with great difficulty, in the approximate neighborhood of the first purse seiner. The Winfar 666, as I remember.
I say “in the neighborhood ” because the wave action made it quite impossible to stay in any one location. We were bobbing helplessly around an area the size of a football pitch. Every so often our little vessel would make a half hearted pass along the Winfar 666. With the little outboard going like a demented sowing machine, we would shush by the ladder.
Briefly, before being swept away again.
I yelled at the pilot who was trying to get off there. He was crouching, in a braced position, ready to try and grab hold of a rung as we careered crazily past.
“If you fall off, we’re not going to be underneath you! And the rung may be pulled out of your grip by the roll of the ship! “
I knew what I was talking about. I’d experienced it myself. When the weather is rough, the ship can be rolling with such force, that you lose your grip on the rung. No matter what you do.
He shrugged, determined to try anyway.
No life jacket…
On our fifth momentary pass, he made a desperate lunge. Instantly the launch was swept fifty meters away. There was nothing we could do except watch in horror. He had one bad leg anyway, from a helicopter accident. It was weak and deformed. He held on with his hands, amazingly, but the inertia from the motion of the launch passing by at speed, meant that his legs went flailing wildly off the steps. He couldn’t get his feet on the steps…
The ship was rolling wildly. Still he held on by his hands only, desperately trying to get his feet located.
A few seconds that seemed like an eternity. He managed it, and clambered quickly up.
Had he fallen, there was nothing we could have done to help him.
That was one down, by the skin of his teeth… now the other seventeen. And that was the closest ship to shore. Some of the others were a mile further out, where the sea state was doubtless going to be worse. Much worse…

All of a sudden, it hit me. I don’t know if it was a Holy fire, or an Un-Holy fire, but all of a sudden, I know I was filled with it. What erupted from me I do know was Un-Holy. Most Un-Holy. I stood up, a dangerous feat in a rocking boat, and let rip at full lung power:
“This is F@#$!!n CRAZY! Boatsman! Turn this GODDAM TUB around NOW! Take us back to Honiara! This is BULLSHIT! And don’t ANYBODY DARE ARGUE WITH ME! “
This last comment was directed at the full complement of passengers.
The teenage captain looked at me, pale and unhappy. Now he was really scared as well. Of me. The bearded freak yelling like a demented madman. He nodded, his head bobbing up and down vigorously like some plastic toy.
Everybody looked at me. Everybody saw the dangerous look in my eye. Nobody spoke one syllable. Nobody even moved a muscle. There was going to be hell to pay if we didn’t make it to the boats, The captains would be mad. I didn’t care. They could blame it all on me. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d caused total chaos. F…’em. We were turning around and going back. Right there, if Muhammad Ali, him of the boxing poetry and all, had barred my way, we would have slugged it out, knuckle against knuckle.
I’ll give you a dance like a f#!!kn butterfly…
I might not have lasted long, but I’d have gone down swinging.
I was that mad. At myself, for having played along with this insane,suicidal game for as long as I had.
It was a silent ride back in. A long, bumpy, wet, cold, hairy ride. Nobody made a single protest. Nobody wanted to try again. We landed at the quay side, nobody spoke a word, and we all trooped off to our various hotel rooms.

The next morning, I was sitting at breakfast, early and alone. Wondering if I had done the right thing.
I knew I had, but there is always this voice of the Doubter.
What’s your problem? You chicken or something? Huh? Scared of a few waves?

A Philippine mechanic shuffled over to my table. Older gentleman. Helluva nice guy. I liked him a lot.
I paused, between mouthfulls of bacon and sausage, as I noticed his odd expression. He stood there, sheepishly, holding his cap in his hands. Like a penitent. It was strange. This older gentleman, a father with a large family, approaching me, all humble.
Whatdafuk…?
“Mister Moggy “, he said, quietly.
“Mister Moggy, I want to thank you for saving my life… “
Duh…?
The thought came into my mind that it was a wind up. The guys were pulling my leg. They had put him up to it.
We pulled those pranks all the time.
But no…. he was sincere…
“Mister Moggy, I think I never see my children again. I think I never see my family again… “
There were tears in the old man’s eyes. I had an overwhelming desire to place my arm around his shoulders.
I held my breath.
“I pray to Jesus and the Virgin Mary… I am frightened… and I pray to them that they save me… and then… “
He paused, and looked at me, in a dazed sort of awe.
“And then…YOU stand up… and you say ‘turn this fucking boat around’… and…Mister Moggy… you save my life. “
I gulped. His sincerity was pure as gold.
“Mister Moggy, I thank you… that I can see my children again… “
Any doubts that I might have had about my actions the previous day, evaporated.
I thanked him awkwardly, humbled in a strange way. And he shuffled off.

I look back on that event, I am really not quite sure what to make of it. The true believers say God works in mysterious ways. Amazing Faith. I envy that. I admire it also, in a way. And very often these believers are remarkably kind and gentle people. The doubters, the half crazed semi-cynics like me, don’t know what to believe. Maybe we’re just too rough. Too blind. Spiritually impoverished.

I was humbled by his sincerity. And I don’t mock what I don’t understand. But you have to admit, there is also an irony there. It kind of amuses me. No target too sacred, you know. There were eighteen passengers in that boat. If the Virgin Mary was answering his desperate call, and used this hopeless sinner as the instrument of her will… Then I must respectfully thank the ‘Lady in Blue’.
For using me in such a way.
But I must admit I’m a bit puzzled.

Why me, ma’am? Of all people? Errrr…..

Couldn’t you have picked a Catholic?

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on March 22, 2014, 9:00 pm

Part 11) Plastic, War, and Manta Rays

In my little life, I have frequently witnessed distressing events, man-made, that made absolutely zero sense to me.
No rhyme, no logic, no sense. I’d be left thinking… why on earth… do people do and say-such incredibly silly things?
Do you have to be an enlightened soul to be able to think for yourself? To dream? To wonder? To long for something higher and better? Do you have to be super clever to realize the stress our little planet is under? Can’t everybody see?
Are we going to be like locusts? Breed and breed into huge mindless swarms, insatiable, intent only on devouring and destroying? And then to move on, until there is no more place to move to, to devour and destroy?
And then… we turn on each other?

America, my home. my work place, gives its citizens every opportunity to educate themselves. If you want to learn, anything, you can. Rich or poor. The Internet alone, affords just about everybody, except maybe the poorest of the poor, the opportunity to question, to ask, to seek, to reach out, to explore… and to come to the awareness of the fragility, as well as the breath taking beauty, of this tiny, insignificant corner of the Universe.
Why then is it, that in my local parish the illiteracy rate, if you include functional illiteracy (very, very limited skills), is estimated at sixty-five per cent? How is this possible?
I live in a nice country area. A big old rambling house, on eight and a bit acres. We have super nice neighbors.
We don’t have a whole lot of traffic past our house.
But on a regular basis, I put my work gloves on, take out a large plastic rubbish bin, and laboriously pick up, from outside my house, the empty beer cans, bottles, fast food cartons, paper bags, plastic bags, pieces of timber, pieces of cardboard…
and the odd, abandoned, and very hungry puppy….all thrown out of passing vehicles.
We live beside a bayou, and the stuff that gets thrown off the bridge, presumably under the cover of darkness, but maybe not, would fill a waste container a week. It has included cooking stoves and refrigerators, which are items the local waste management company will collect for free, if you just bother to call and ask.
It has also included three dead donkeys…

I scribble the paragraph above, with a purpose in mind. It serves as an introduction to what follows below.
It was Jesus who is reported to have said:
“He who is without sin may cast the first stone… ”
I always thought that was a remarkable statement. Very insightful. Interesting dude, that Jesus fellah.
Even an Atheist should at least admit that.

In the environmental awareness league, unless it has changed suddenly since 2000, I have to rate the Tuna Fishing Industry with a gigantic red ‘F’. All fu-fu-f…ed up. They are clueless. Simply… on another planet.

I would protest at times, and receive these blank looks of non-understanding. They liked me, I liked them, we got along fine, but my environmental concerns baffled them. Thus, for instance, plastic and garbage went straight over the side. Including the dreaded plastic “rings “, which secure beer cans in a six pack. A known and terrible entanglement for many marine creatures. Nothing got burned. It all went hoppety-splosh right into the sea. And not just the fishing boats did this.
I was on some tropical island somewhere, I don’t remember which one, and here were these tourists, lamenting all the raw garbage being tipped overboard from their luxury cruise liner. Un-believable. Small wonder then that you could fly across the Ocean, a thousand miles from the nearest land, and watch all kinds of rubbish floating in the Ocean.
What kind of dumb creature soils its own nest?
I couldn’t get the point across, and I couldn’t explain the environmental harm. They were simply not on that wave length.

I remember walking along the beach of Tarawa. The site of an epic World War Two battle I had read about.
But reading is one thing, being there, and sensing the echoes of long dead ghosts, their turmoil still ongoing, is quite another. This site was where the Marines, stubbornly trying to come ashore, in a hail of murderous machine gun fire, were mowed down with a detached, industrial efficiency. I walked past the long silent gun emplacements, and it was as if I could still hear the killing machines firing, the screams of the wounded, and the desperate pleas for help. They say the waters of that calm little bay turned red with blood. And I watched the beaches, once fine and sandy, before they were covered with the blood of the dead and the dying. Now covered with garbage, and trash, plastic, old oil drums, empty paint buckets, aerosol spray cans…
And I wondered what Our Mother thought of that. Mother Nature, Jesus, Allah, Porcelain Andy… whatever name people chose to bestow upon Our Mother, she was still hurting under this.
Time and time again, in every locale, all over the Pacific Ocean, on deserted atolls, on the most outlandish, foreign, remote beaches, I could swoop low in my helicopter, and study the trash on the beaches.

I remember, years later, walking along a beach beside the Gulf of Mexico. And watching this group of angry young -incredibly privileged- Americans, drunk, quarrelsome, swearing and shouting. They were frightening other beach goers away. When a man finished his booze, he would lob the brown bottle as far and as hard as he could. There would be jeers and laughter. When, every so often, a bottle smashed, there would be loud cheers. I stupidly walked over, outnumbered, ten to one, and asked them -politely- to stop. I explained to them that children play there, and they were likely to cause someone a serious injury. One of them, high on Crystal Meths, (I had seen it all before when I worked for the Sheriff’s office), got in my face. He was emaciated, unshaven, hyper, and psychotic. I knew he wanted to fight. I said nothing, walked back to my truck, and returned with a plastic bag. Slowly I walked around, picking up their discarded bottles. And the broken pieces of brown glass. There were jeers, nasty laughter, some threats. Then the Meth head, in a fury, threw a bottle right at me. It whizzed past my head. I stood up, and gazed him hard in the eyes, without saying a word. I thought of my gun, my Glock Semi-automatic, that I had deliberately -and wisely- left in my truck, in its usual hiding place. What he had done constituted the beginning of an assault.
I wonder if the situation would escalate, and if I would regret my decision to return to the scene unarmed.
His mates grabbed him, dragged him into their truck, and they sped off, whooping and screaming, doubtless adding DUI to their littering and intimidating achievements.

And I wondered, then and now, if the privileged youth of America, with all their access to information about the environment, couldn’t care less, or give a tinker’s damn, then who...
…dares criticize those simple Chinese, Korean and Taiwanese fishermen….?
And what… does Our Mother think of it all? Nature has a strange logic, which we ignore at our peril. Any species that gets to be too dominant, too plentiful, too burdensome on its surroundings, sooner or later gets clobbered.
Some way, some how.

I remember many instances that happened on the boats. I often sure wished there would be a viable independent observer program. For instance, every so often a whale shark would get in the nets.
They are huge creatures. They look fearsome, with incredibly wide mouths. In fact, they are pussy cats. Harmless.
And endangered. The net would be brought in, until the whale shark was beginning to suffocate. The crush of fish, the lack of oxygen in the water. Panic, stress. Eventually, limp and lifeless, a sailor would hop in and attach a cable around its tail. The crane would be brought to bear, and slowly, slowly, the lifeless shape would be hoisted up. They were massive. Usually they were unceremoniously dropped back in to the water, outside the net. On two occasions I remember they first swung it, suspended, over the deck. So everybody could look at it first, and satisfy their curiosity. Then it would be casually tossed overboard. The creature they so admired, briefly, was now dead. The irony never seemed to strike them.
On one occasion a whale shark was swung up, that was so large and heavy, that it broke the crane. There was a horrible screeching noise, and it juddered to a stop. It was like that for hours. The weight on the end caused them some serious difficulty. It was a strange revenge.

Sharks were frequently caught. Their valuable fins would be quickly cut off, and the still living but now helpless creature would be kicked and pushed overboard. Once you have seen a shark’s desperate struggling and wriggling, as it sinks deeper and deeper, you will never order shark fin soup again. Sharks too have their rightful place in the complex eco system of the world’s Oceans. Disturb the balance, pay the price.

Dolphins, of course. Nowhere near as many as in the Western half of the Pacific. Where we fished, in the Eastern half, dolphins and porpoises did not follow the tuna. They were therefore rarely caught in the nets. Maybe two here, three or four there. It probably amounted to thirty or forty dolphins every six months. I have a story to tell some day, about being in the water trying to save some dolphins. I risked my neck, and all to no avail. The fishermen couldn’t care less. I’ve seen dolphins killed for very, very small catches. Maybe two tons of fish. I would ask the captain if they couldn’t just let the nets go. Save the dolphins, and make me happy. I’d promise them the next day I’d find them a much bigger foamer. They’d look at me as if I was strange in the head. None ever obliged me. Strangely, on the one occasion that I can remember that we did have an observer on board, a young, ragged Papuan, the crew couldn’t have been more obliging. They’d let the nets go with a hundred ton of fish, if there was a single dolphin trapped.

Manta Rays were routinely caught. They would be dropped on the deck, alive, where they would make these swimming motions. They could survive on the deck for remarkable long periods of time. Fifteen and twenty minutes, even more.
Dry swimming. A beautiful motion. Almost like a ballet. I would ask the crew if they couldn’t save them, and push them over alive. Nobody did. Nobody cared. It was by catch. They were just a nuisance. There was no beauty there.
And so I would watch these amazing creatures slowly die. The working deck was far too dangerous a place for me to be during the net recovery. There was nothing I could do, except watch them struggle to swim off the deck. I can see them still, endlessly repeating their swimming motions. I have scuba dived with Manta rays, and they are awesome to watch.
The worst day I remember we had five Manta Rays on the deck. Ranging in size from huge to small. I was standing on the intermediate working deck, watching, looking down. By some weird quirk, all five were facing towards me. And all five were trying to swim out of their distress. They were making these amazing swimming movements, over and over again, all five of them. A Manta Ray has no expression. They can’t smile, or show terror. But you knew they were stressed. Dying.
But still, over and over again, like a cheerleader squad, they made their movements.
Rhythmic, trying to swim.
Rhythmic, trying to swim.
Rhythmic, trying to swim.
I couldn’t leave. And I watched them all die, slowly. And I sensed something, that day. It’s hard to put into words.
A call for help. A plea.
Maybe it was my imagination, but I felt guilty. As if I was a murderer.
There was nothing I could do, but I vowed that one day I would tell their story.

A neighboring ship caught a turtle one day. In the middle of the Ocean, a thousand miles offshore, a single solitary turtle. Repeating an ancient journey, tens of thousands of years old, to or from a beach somewhere, one particular sand dune, there to lay its precious eggs for future generations. The disgusted helicopter pilot told me afterwards they force fed it with red wine. When he asked why, they told him it was to improve the flavor. Then the cook killed it, and they all dined in grand style on a stupid old turtle. Which has no value other than one good meal. And tastes of red wine.
Most whales were too big, but one day we caught a small one. It too died of stress and suffocation as the nets were being brought in. They hoisted it up on the deck, and cut large chunks out of it. The rest they dropped overboard.
The following night I was eating some tasty meat. It was really remarkably good. It took me a while to figure out I was eating whale meat. I knew if that ever got out, that GreenPeace would print up a ‘wanted – dead or alive’ poster of me.

In fairness I have to say, the toll of damage inflicted upon Our Mother by the purse seiner fleet, probably pales into insignificance compared with the environmental banditry of the long liners. It is a strange experience, to be in a helicopter, and to see for yourself how it works. They trail out long lines, miles and miles in length, with hundreds and hundreds of baited hooks. Whereas the purse seiners at least target tuna, and make their set on tuna, the long liners are wholly indiscriminate. Anything and everything that is hungry and bites, gets dragged along and drowned. Including penguins.
It seems insane to me. But what do I know, I’m just a helicopter jockey.

The day came I thought even the sailors, the perpetrators of so much unnecessary environmental carnage, would realize the folly of their actions. And take remedial steps.
We were fishing in an area where there was simply an outlandish amount of plastic floating about. As I flew over it, all you could see was plastic, plastic and more plastic. In the middle of the Ocean. Somebody must have dumped whole containers full of the stuff. Most of it was in a form of sheeting. It was remarkably thick, but it was also oddly brittle. The pieces ranged in size from several yards square to only inches square. There were thousands of pieces. I have no idea of the origin.
Well, the ship made a set on a foamer, and a huge amount of this stuff got caught up in the net. I pulled up a (plastic) arm chair on the helideck, and watched the farce unfold. Firstly, the net retrieval was greatly delayed. They kept having to stop the winch, to give the crew a chance to clean all the plastic rubbish out of the net. This of course started to fray tempers. Everybody became more and more cross. The winch would bring in a few more yards, and would have to stop. And the crew would be collecting yet more plastic. And so on, and so forth. The working deck was covered with the stuff, to the point people were falling over it. The captain was yelling in the microphone. Everybody was mad as hell.
If ever… there was a chance to do something environmentally sensible, then this was the moment.
To wit: collect the pernicious stuff, and burn it. Once and for all. It would have taken a while, but it sure would have done some good.
Nope…
Wanna guess where it all went?
Yup. Straight back over the side…

A few days later, we made another set in the same area. We caught more of that awful plastic. Not nearly so much, but still enough to slow the job down, and make everybody mad. You could just imagine their frustration.
The question they would all be asking each other.

What blithering idiot could have thrown all that stupid plastic into the Ocean?

Francis Meyrick
(c)

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Last edited by Francis Meyrick on May 19, 2016, 6:05 am

Part 10: “Burning The Garbage; Moggy, Moggy, what you DO?? “

Looking back, I know I elevated naivety to an Art form, truly worthy of the Guinness Book of Records.
But I plead innocence. After all, I mostly meant well. That is probably what I shall be telling Saint Peter outside the Pearly Gates as well one day. I just hope he does not repeat back to me the often heard admonition from my family members, namely that ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions‘. If that truth holds in the Appeal Courts of Heaven, then, basically, I’m going where it’s hot. Real hot.

I was on my first tuna trip. I had landed the evening before, it was my second day aboard, and it was all a grand adventure to me. We were still enroute to the fishing grounds, and there was no need to go flying. I had done my first ever tuna boat landing, and I had yet to perform my first ever tuna boat take-off. I was strolling around the ship, exploring, and I was surprised -and pleased- to discover that the Taiwanese were, in fact, ecologically sensitive and aware.
I had discovered…. a refuse incineration system. Damn, I was impressed.
It wasn’t exactly hi-tech. It consisted of a large oil drum, on the intermediate working deck, with the top cut out. Looking into it, you could clearly see the remains of old rubbish and plastic stuff they had previously burned. I resolved, in my usual well meaning, bumbling way, to fully partake in this project. Namely, to keep Mother Nature, all Our Mother, free from trash and especially plastic garbage. I had already put together quite a little stash. The previous pilot and mechanic had obviously been slobs, and I had filled a large plastic refuse bag full of foul smelling produce. There was plenty of plastic, old newspapers, and empty cartons.Since I had cleaned out the refrigerator as well, I had stale yoghurt, sausages growing some kind of green mold, half drunk Pepsi bottles, a dubious green cheese that was once yellow, and the pride of my collection, a remarkably foul smelling substance casually wrapped in a torn waxed plastic roll. In better days, I think it might have been patee foie. Regardless, the idealist in me, the Earth savvy tree hugger, knew better than to simply chuck that lot overboard. It would be all lovingly stored, until such time as it could be properly disposed of.

In the event, I did not have long to wait. That very afternoon, as I went for another amble, there they were, burning the garbage can. Cool. The captain was there as well, and three or four of the ship’s officers. It was good to see that they took this matter seriously. Off I trotted back to my cabin, and I soon proudly returned toting my large refuse bag of odious smelling yukky stuff. I marched up to the burning drum, and peeped in. Good, there was plenty of room. Their smelly stuff was burning beautifully. In a quick move, I tipped the whole bag in. I distinctly remember giving them a broad, righteous grin as I did it. GreenPeace loyalists would have applauded me…
The reaction was not quite what I had expected.
I wasn’t expecting applause. But maybe a mild acknowledgment that I was doing my bit for Mother Nature? My bit for Planet Earth? Instead of silent approval…. I got total consternation!
There was an immediate babble of obvious protest. One of them almost screamed. A pained sort of “ai-ai-ai-Aye…..!! “
Two of them dove in, and started pulling my stuff out. I watched in bewilderment as they started throwing MY junk overboard! Plastic cups, empty containers, green cheese (poor fishes…), even the purported patee foie. The whole lot went sailing over the rails, into the Ocean Blue. I have to confess to being flabbergasted. The most illogical reasoning attempted -briefly- to make sense of it all, and failed miserably.
What….? My rubbish ain’t good enough for you guys’ rubbish?
The hostility, the furious looks, and the angry Chinese babbling reminded me what a nice place my cabin was. Peaceful, cool, private, and zero furiously angry Chinese… I backed away, nervously, intent on making a definite escape.
The captain came over to me. In his broken English, he exclaimed:

“Moggy!!!? Moggy! WHAT YOU DO???? “

I hesitated, thinking that, truthfully, it was frickin’ obvious what I thought I’d been doing. I’d been dumping smelly rubbish in the bleeding burn barrel. What the hell else?? I found myself stammering:
“Duh… I was just…. dumping rubbish…. I see you burn trash…. so I add my garbage….. “
For some reason I felt seriously bewildered. Behind the captain, the crew members were still busy furiously rooting through the burning garbage, and chucking my crap overboard. Into the blue Ocean. It wasn’t meant to be that way. I was sure it wasn’t. What would GreenPeace say?
He was not pleased. The expression on his face clearly communicated that emotion.
He pulled a small Chinese to English dictionary out of his pocket, and flicked impatiently through the pages.
“Moggy! You LISTEN! This NOT…. rubbish! “
I couldn’t believe my ears. That crap ain’t rubbish??
He frowned, and pronounced the next words carefully and with emphasis.
“Not rubbish! This…. HOLY…. RELIGIOUS… CEREMONY! “
I gulped.
“WE OFFER PRAYERS THAT WE CATCH MANY FISH! AND YOU….YOU…. “
I winced.
“YOU THROW RUBBISH ON PRAYERS!!! “
(Ooops….)

For a whole week, we fished and caught nothing. I swear. And every time the net came in empty, a long and labor intensive task, I saw these malevolent looks cast in my direction. I knew I wasn’t the flavor of the month, and I could only hope the God or Gods concerned would forgive me for the smelly green cheese and the putrid patee.

After that I tried hard to figure the religious thing out. Heck, I’ve been doing that all my life. Having probably really ticked off the Christian God in my prior Life, now I had come to the Orient, and also offended the Taiwanese God. Or Gods.
I didn’t want to screw that one up again. I resolved to be more culturally and spiritually sensitive.
Thus it was that I became a careful observer. And I soon discovered this dude on the bridge. He stood in a special alcove, behind the helm, and he was about two feet tall. I asked several people what his name was, but nobody seemed to know.
He (or she?) had the body of a man, but the face of a child. He stood there with arms outstretched, a bit like Jesus I guess. Except that I don’t think Jesus would have been seen dead in the strange frilly outfit. It reminded me of something an over doting grandmother would insist her grandchild would wear. The sort of laced, pretty, stringed up costume with colorful bows and stuff. Anyway, there he stood, and he was very important, and I knew I must not tick this porcelain dandy off anymore than I already had. Unfortunately, it took me about a week, and there I was, in big trouble again.

We were sailing along, and there were about five of us standing on the bridge. It gets tiring, standing for a long time, with the ship rocking and rolling, so I found a quiet spot, and leaned back luxuriously.
Ah….that’s better….
No sooner was I comfortable, than the Chief Engineer came over, and pushed me quite hard. He was an older gentleman, in his sixties, and I was quite taken aback.
What the heck…?
He had been rather nice to me up to this, and I was surprised he should wish to push me about.
Embarrassed, I tried to ignore it. And him. I assumed my previous position again, and stared fixedly out of the windows.
Within a minute, the big bully had shoved me again…
Sumbitch…!
I was getting cross. Why the f…ck can’t you leave me alone, you dozy Chink….!
I went right back to my previous position again, leaned back in the same way, and tried to suppress an irresistible urge to engage in a great cultural insensitivity. To wit: smack the Chief Engineer in the lughole…
Now I was noticing disquiet on the bridge. I was getting funny looks. Now what???
It was the Radio Operator who came over and explained to me, quietly, what I was doing wrong this time.
I was standing in front of Porcelain Andy, and that meant that I was blocking his view! The God of the ship couldn’t see the fish apparently. Coming on top of my previous faux pas, the trick with the green cheese and the patee de foie, now I could see why I had upset the Chief Engineer. I thanked the Radio Operator for his help and spiritual guidance, and moved aside for Andy. After that, I was careful not to block his view again. If he was able to screw up their fishing, imagine what he might do to my helicopter.

Of course, being me, I couldn’t help wondering how smart this dude was. If he couldn’t even see through me, what kind of God was that? And we were relying on him to catch fish? Fuxsake. But then I felt guilty about my irreverence, and I decided I needed to quit being so obtuse. I bowed my head, and resolved to go with the flow…
Unfortunately, the seeds of doubt and heresy had been sown in my mind. I was soon to notice two more strange aspects of this Deity.
The first was a unique custom , whereby the crew made offerings to Andy, such as boxes of chocolates, packets of cigarettes, chewing gum, fruit, and other delicacies. They would leave these magnificent gifts at his feet. I wondered if they later burned these gifts in the… holy religious ceremony… but, no, they did not. After a day or two, they just came along, and casually retrieved their offerings.
The first time I saw this occur, a sailor walked up to Andy, nonchalantly picked up an apple, sank his teeth into it, and walked of chewing contentedly. I watched Andy carefully, but he didn’t seem upset at all.
From a doctrinal point of view, I had to deduce that Andy was possibly remarkably generous. Maybe he was just real pleased to see the worshipful sailors enjoying the fruit and the chocolates, smoking the cigarettes, and chewing their (his) gum. But then if that was the case, that he was just a great old soul, and pleased just to stare at the good stuff for a while, before they took it all back…. how did that sit with the mean, moody old shit who prevented us from finding any fish just because I innocently dropped moldy cheese and smelly patee on his holy ceremony? I couldn’t quite figure that one out.

The second aspect I noticed had to do with the prayers they offered. They didn’t speak any prayers. They didn’t have to.
All the prayers you could ever need were already written down. On thin, brightly colored paper. Yellow, orange, red. Each piece of paper was two inches tall, and three or four inches wide. And printed on them, was the prayer you needed. The prayers came in a pack. The pack was six inches thick, compressed, and contained hundreds and hundreds of prayers. The pack came out of a cardboard box. This box contained dozens and dozens of packs. So thousands and thousands of prayers. Of these boxes, the ship had hundreds and hundreds of them. So millions and millions of prayers.
Now the neat trick was this: you didn’t have to read or study the prayer. All you had to do was BURN the blessed thing. That counted as a prayer! Brilliant system. Imagine if the Catholic Church was to bring in that sytem. Saying the Rosary would never be the same again. All those Our Fathers and Hail Marys I painfully struggled through when I was a kid.
Could have saved a ton of trouble with that system! Oh well…
Anyway, once I learned all this, I understood the mysterious workings of the Holy Religious Ceremony. What I had mistaken for mere tut and garbage, burning away in the Holy Barrel, was in fact the essence of the prayer cycle:
The conversion of the printed prayers, through fire, into the real thing.
I really understood it now.
Sort of.

I was often, on future days, on different ships, to stand on the helideck and watch the Holy Religious Ceremony.
I would wonder about the Great God, Porcelain Andy, however He worked things. I would watch the prayers turning to fire. And the fire turn to smoke. And the burnt pieces of paper, twisting and twirling in the heat, rise up out of the Holy Barrel, get caught in the wind, and blow overboard. An orgy of prayer, disappearing over the waves.
I would wonder about Mother Nature, however we should call her. And I knew we should honor her. I knew we should take great care not to destroy our home, our only home.

This small Blip in the Universe, we call Earth.

Francis Meyrick
(c)

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Last edited by Francis Meyrick on January 27, 2015, 2:48 pm

We were all ship mates.
In our own way, despite different nationalities, cultures and priorities, we often relied on each other. I was learning Chinese, and I often chatted for hours with the crew members about their lives, their homes, their goals in life. They showed me photos of their wives, their girl friends, the house that they were building back home in China…
I didn’t look down on them. Why should I? And they sensed that. They said as much…
They told me they disliked some expat pilots and mechanics. “But not you, Moggy… You OK! “
As time went by, I was touched by the trust that some built up in me. To be called upon by name, when a man is in distress, is a strange honor. A compliment? I don’t know, but the following stories tell you something of the instinctive, human calling out for help. When a man is in dire trouble, and he calls out for the fellow he thinks is best able -and willing- to help…

Part 9: Deck Boss have big problem

I got along real well with this cook.
He was funny. He smiled a lot, and was very good to me. We would chat about things. Very often he would have served a hot meal, and there would only be him and I. The rest of the crew were still on deck, working. If the net wasn’t in yet, the crew worked until it was in. Then they ate. If there was a problem bringing the net in, the crew worked. When the problem was solved, they ate. The Chinese work ethic is simply awesome. No wonder their economy is booming.
Funny thing is, I don’t recall I ever heard anybody complain. Oftentimes, by the time they got their food, it was stone cold.
Not a grumble.
One night, there was a big tear in the net. It was quite badly damaged. The weather was awful. The wind was blowing, the spray was flying, and it was chucking down rain. It was kind of unusually cold as well.
I was sitting in the galley, looking at all the empty rows, and the steaming tubs of hot rice, untouched. I wasn’t eating.
The cook came in.
“Moggy! Why no eating?’
“Err…. duh… I feel BAD. Everybody working on deck! Only me! Pooh-how! “
I felt guilty. There was no way I could help with the net. I would have been a hindrance and a liability rather than any assistance.
“Moggy! You are stupid! Pun-tann! Tomorrow you fly! No eat…?? “
And with hand gestures he mimicked a helicopter taking off steeply, flopping upside down and crashing. The sound effects made me laugh.
I ate.

Another time he cheerfully bowled into my cabin with a Playboy magazine. He wanted me to take his photo, posing proudly with his Playboy! Maybe it was a status symbol or something. Something he could send back to his village back home to prove how well he was doing. He just made me laugh. The rest of the crew liked him too.

Then came the day I heard this wailing outside, and frantic banging on my door.
“Moggy-Moggy-Moggy!!!! “
Surprised, I opened the door, and there stood my buddy the cook, all pathetic and child-like, sheepishly holding up his thumb. There was a nasty arterial spurt of blood coming out, and he was trying to hold a finger on it. His face was white. He had been slicing something in the kitchen, and accidentally half chopped his thumb off. I grabbed a first aid kit, and quickly got him sorted out. He was exceedingly grateful.
Afterwards I heard he had caused consternation on the ship, as he erupted, yelling, out of the kitchen, bowled past many of the crew, up the stairs to the bridge, past the surprised Navigator and the Fish Master, to go see his trusted friend, the Mad Irishman!
I was honored. And kind of touched as well.

On another time, another boat, we were in port in Papua New Guinea. A few days offloading fish, and the chance to go ashore.
Buy some groceries, see the sights.
I was reading a book in my cabin one morning, lying on the bunk and relaxing. A knock came on the door.
“Moggy! Come to bridge! “
There was a note of urgency. I sensed trouble.
I swung down, and wondered idly what was going on.
The captain was on the bridge, microphone in hand, looking puzzled. The Navigator was there as well, looking equally non plussed. It was the Navigator who spoke to me.
“Deck Boss have big problem! You talk with ship’s agent! “
I took the mike, and keyed it. I knew the ship’s agent very well. He was a cheerful, obliging Aussie, who assisted us with everything from supplies, customs, documentation, and even unhappy deck bosses.
“It’s Moggy! What’s up, dude?’
He sounded perplexed. He had received a phone call from the local hotel. All they could tell him was that our Deck Boss, who had gone ashore the previous day, was in dire straits. Apparently he refused to come out of his room, and was screaming for me.
“He’s doing what!? ”
It didn’t make much sense. Due to the language barrier between the guest and the hotel staff, all the receptionist could tell the agent was that he was very upset. Hiding in his room. And screaming for “Moggy! “
I conferred with the captain. He was not pleased. He shook his head, in disgust, and told me to take the helicopter in to the beach, and find out what was going on.

It was only a short flight, across the harbor. As I flew along, I reflected on this strange, wild country of Papua New Guinea. Blessed with natural resources, lumber, minerals, even diamonds. Cursed with exploitation, corruption and mismanagement. The few outrageously rich, politicians mostly, and the many, many impoverished.
A strangely violent society. With endless tales of murder, rape and robbery.
I myself had found the people mostly friendly.

If you smiled as you passed, many smiled back. The children either laughed or hid behind their mothers. Occasionally you met only dark scowls. Some of the groups of young men, standing idly on street corners, unemployed and unemployable, gossiping and chewing betelnut, would scowl en masse. Their ever present, ever razor sharp machetes would gleam in the sun.
Then I would sense something, something ugly, feel uncomfortable, and walk quickly on by. But mostly, I got along fine.

I banked hard above the local airfield, my blades slapping the humid air. I could see the bomb craters, dating back from World War Two. The airfield had been built by the Japanese, and had suffered heavy bombardment by the Allies.
Small bomb craters. And medium sized craters. And a few really humongous pits. Maybe the Allies had gotten frustrated one day. And let rip some jumbo jobs. Whatever it was that they had dropped, presumably in a hail of gunfire, it must have deafened the defenders when it went off. I was flying over History. The scene of suffering. Brutality. And premature death.

Another Just War in the name of Compassionate Mankind. Amazingly, all the Good people were on one side, and all the Bad were on the other.
The Japanese were all militaristic, fanatics, sub-human. Just like President FDR, the great war hero president, encouraged Americans to believe. There were no Japanese soldiers who were there reluctantly. No musicians, writers, poets, doctors, dreamers, and humanitarians.
Stinkin’ Japs…

But now… it was also the scene of children romping along the beach. Playing in the sand. Running in and out of the surf.
It was they who had won. Not the guns, or the bombs, or the bayonets.
Everybody lost World War Two.
Except Time. Time triumphed. And made a mockery of FDR’s great speeches.
As it was to make a mockery of his ‘New Deal’.

A new Day. A new Dawn.

I landed beside what passed for a control Tower, and got a ride to the Hotel.
The receptionist seemed relieved to see me, and quickly gave me directions to the right room. I walked down the hall, past small, faded photos of a bygone colonial era, and further along, past huge, gawdy technicolor posters touting some fizzy drink. The hotel was a strange mixture between old and modern. Intricate carvings and murals, beautiful hand woven rugs, and plastic vending machines. A maid smiled at me, I smiled back. And an very old gentleman, a caretaker or a carpenter perhaps, was on his knees, repairing a wooden bench. He looked too old, too frail, too silver haired, to be doing such work.
It was a job for a younger man. I thought of the gangs of youths on the main street, idle and dark, chewing betelnut and spitting the road red.

When I knocked on the door, I immediately heard footsteps.
They came, almost running.
The door opened a crack, and there, eyes fearful, stood our Deck Boss. Wrapped only in a sheet.
Immediately he swung the door open.
“Moggy! Moggy! “
He was upset, I could almost see tears in his eyes. His relief at seeing me was palpable. He was speaking in Chinese, way too fast, and I couldn’t follow.
“Slow down….What happened? “
“Girl! Bad, bad girl! No good, no good, pooh how! Saitee! “
Eventually he managed to explain. Going ashore for a night on the town, our hero had found himself a local girl. He had plied her with beer and wine, flashed his wallet at her, and enticed her back to his room. There he had enjoyed his wicked way, satisfied the urge, exercised the old relic, hammered one for Moriarty, and generally had a great time. Then, overcome by the effort of love making and the effects of wine and debauchery, he had… fallen fast asleep.
Upon waking….
No girl. But what was worse…. no wallet, and no clothes. Not even his under garments.
You can steal a man’s wallet, and that’s bad, but to steal his trousers and knickers… now you’re dealing a double blow to the poor sailor’s pride. Hence it was, that the unfortunate man’s only recourse was to stand behind the door, peeping out, scantily (and most unheroically) clad in a once white sheet, shouting for help.
“Moggy! MOGGY! MOGGYYYYYYYYY! “

It was an old prozzie dodge. It was not the first time I had heard of this happening. Randy sailor, with money in his pocket, meets poor island girl, with little money to feed and cloth her extended family. It’s an explosive combination. The oldest trade known to Man lives on, and will for as long as certain hormones course freely through our veins.
I felt sorry for the Deck Boss, and I understood his anger and frustration. He told me indignantly that a Chinese whore would never do such a thing. Presumably their customer P.R. was on a higher level. The whole boat was angry and indignant on his behalf, and I’m sure the sense of injustice was a righteous one.
How-ever…

I alone could see it also from the other side. From the two-faced whore’s side. What was that story the eye witness related, in “Hard Times “, that classic, piercing study of the American Great Depression, by old Studs Terkel?

“The NYA was my salvation. I could just as easily have been in Sing Sing… Just every bit a chance. Hell, yes. Everybody was a criminal. You stole, you cheated through. You were getting by, survival. Stole clothes off lines. Stole milk off back porches, you stole bread….. it created a coyote mentality. You were a predator. You had to be. The coyote is crafty. He can be fantastically courageous and a coward at the same time. He’ll run, but when he’s cornered, he’ll fight. They’re mean… but how else does a coyote stay alive? He’s not as powerful as a wolf. He has a small body. He’s in such bad condition, a dog can run him down. He’s not like a fox. A coyote is Nature’s victim as well as man’s.
We were coyotes in the Thirties, the jobless…. ”

The whore, Nature’s victim as well, lived in a society where primitive barter is the dominant source of income. Where many families survive on little more than $100 a year. Where a sailor with a thousand bucks in his wallet is as rich as a king.
In a society where women have few rights. Where they are often beaten, and made to do all the work.
The impact of Modernity on those old cultures is probably a devastating one. For all the good that came with the white man, much harm came along as well.

She didn’t do right by our crew’s standards. But she probably provided for her family for months afterward.
Or else her husband beat her, took it, drank it, and peed it all against a wall.
It makes you wonder.
And, given the fact that the locals were tall and thin, don’t you also just wonder a little bit…

Who got to proudly wear the fat little Chinaman’s trousers?

Francis Meyrick
(c)

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Last edited by Francis Meyrick on December 24, 2014, 9:07 am