(*snork*) It's Starkey. And if the Beautiful Witch finds out the Starkey Stories are getting out, I will most ricky-tick get in deep trubble. I gotta keep my Teddy Bear on.
"With deep stupidity goes deep responsibility." <-- I want that on my pyramid.
Wait. I could tell the Showdown In The Pulqueria! <-- If I could ever find it again.
Dammit. I cannot find anything on my scattershot computer. I do have a fun consolation prize. This is a magazine article written many years ago. If it takes too much bandwidth, feel free to bomb it, mods.
Post Script Add: I just read this for the first time in years - made me laugh out loud.
Turnabout Is Fair Play
c Walt C. Snedeker
Jerry and I stay even. That may well be one of the cornerstones of a friendship that has lasted and grown for over five decades. That is not to say that we are gentle with each other. On the contrary, we wouldn’t dare treat ordinary people with the same lack of boundaries that lay out our interactions. But the freewheeling, safe, and well... loving mayhem that has gone on between us has made for fun that has sometimes reduced one or the both of us to stomach-hurting laughter.
Sometimes, it starts innocently. On both sides, it seems always to be spontaneous, without long and careful planning.
Take the time when PC and I lived in the big trailer in the woods...
Jerry and his Southern belle (clang-clang, you-all) bride were staying with us, blending into our lives as comfortably as old shoes. PC was fixing breakfast with the exquisite Fleek, I was sitting on the porch, watching the sunlight dappling away the morning shadows. Jerry was in our tiny bathroom, comfortably ensconced, reading the Sunday funnies.
He’d been in there too long. Zing! The funny bug bit me. I really didn’t think; no planning.
I just went into the bedroom, picked up a firecracker that happened to be laying there, and walked into the hallway. Matches were conveniently to hand on the gunrack.
Now, you might know that the internal doors on a mobile home have (for some arcane reason), a clearance of almost an inch from the floor. Great. So I lit the firecracker, and tossed it under the door, expecting Jerry to see it and maybe even scoot it back out.
Nope, alas, it worked better than that. Jerry’s pants were down around his ankles, and the funny papers spread out wide as he studied his way through Prince Valiant. The firecracker, as Luck and Fortune would have it, came to rest perfectly centered between his feet.
With me chuckling impatiently outside the door, and with Jerry in blissful ignorance on the throne, a timeless eternity passed while the fuse burned down.
KABOOM!
“WAAUGHH!!!”
Perfect. Fleek and PC came running, I fell against the wall laughing like an *****, and Jerry was silent (after the first scream) for about a minute as he repaired himself.
The bathroom door opened to the gaze of the two ladies and one *****. Jerry emerged from the smoke-filled space with his glasses on crooked, to announce that he had torn the funnies in half.
“Hoo boy! You got me good. I think I might have broken my pucker string. Gee-Manitti!”
Helpless laughter.
“I mean, I was just sittin’ there, and that bomb went off in that li’l crapper, and it nearly took the walls down.”
“You
know I’ll get you for this, Walt.”
More laughter. But the seed was planted. It was Jerry’s turn.
Jerry built a kayak. Then he goaded me into using the same plans to build one also. Since Jerry insisted on helping, my kayak came out beautifully (I failed “Blocks” in kindergarten). He’s always been much handier (and considerably more ambitious, I must admit) than I am.
On the other hand, I’m one of those right-brain people. More into art, visualization, balance. So my kayak looked like it was going fifty miles an hour as it just sat there; fancy swooping red-and-yellow paint job, edge detailing, and the like. A real showpiece. Jerry’s looked like he used second-hand mud to paint his.
PC and me and the kayak went down to Georgia to play with the Edwards.
My red and yellow racing-stripe kayak sure looked nice next to my pal’s rot-colored one. We trekked ‘way back into the Georgia woods to a nice little stream called the Dog River, untied the kayaks from the car, and set up to go exploring.
Of course, being a Yankee, I was definitely wary of infestations of cottonmouth moccasins hanging from every branch that loomed over the turbid water. Jerry was, of course, a great help; he related apocalyptic stories one after the other of horrible death attributed to the Dog River breed of snakes.
I think he had a pistol with him the “shoot them out of the trees before they drop on your neck -- they like to go for your neck.”
We never saw any.
Things went fine for about an hour and a half. The Dog River is not the Colorado, and the few swift water passages that we encountered were easily handled. We were definitely becoming more confident. Too bad.
Jerry was in the lead, and I was just moping along, enjoying the unpopulated boondocks, when he paddled over to the shore. We could hear a thundering.
We beached the canvas boats, and started climbing over rocks toward the noise. After about thirty yards, we just sat down and looked. It was nearly Biblical. The entire stream funneled through a narrow corkscrew of boulders. Each boulder was about the size of an automobile, with about five feet of dry vertical surface. It looked like a hundred yard long rat maze laid out by a vengeful goblin.
Jerry struck first.
“Uhhh... I’ll do it if you’ll do it.”
One of my lifelong problems with Jerry is that I will do things at his bidding that would
never occur to me to do under my own steam. We can out-macho each other unto utter destruction.
I looked at the cauldron, walking along the rock tops as far as I could. It really didn’t look possible, but Jerry said that he was willing to try. After me. Hm.
My mind kept wandering as I stood there, because I couldn’t see how the kayak would fit through a couple of places. Ah, well, what the hell.
“Okay, Lily Liver, your Big Brudder Waltie will show you how it’s done so that you can feel safer.”
Boy, did I lay it on.
Back to the boats. Jerry said he would climb the high rock in the middle to watch and “go to school” on me.
I paddled out into the center, aiming for the first funnel. The hot Georgia sun sparkled the water beyond the rocks.
That was the last thing I did that had any control. The front half of the kayak dipped down sharply -- vertigo! -- and the space between the rocks turned out to be perfectly positioned to grab my two-bladed paddle, slamming it against my chest to snap the paddle into two totally useless pieces; one in each hand.
Then the Dog River demons took over. An instant, involuntary 90-degree turn, and I passed directly under Jerry in tight-lipped terror. Somehow, the kayak stayed nose forward with no help from me, but careened over a boiling sluice directly at one of those automobiles.
There was no time to fearfully anticipate the next action. It happened as a continuation of the first rush. The kayak was nose down at about a 30-degree angle, moving just as fast as if it had been pushed out of the fourth story of a parking garage. Here came the Buick-shaped rock:
CCCRRR--AAAACCKKKK!!
The nose hit the rock squarely. The force of the water made the kayak break and fold upward in the middle, climbing almost to the top of the rock.
But there was to be no respite. The swirling current pulled the rear of the kayak around, and off we went -- backwards, with the kayak flexing like a flag. It was this flexing which enabled the pair of us to get through some of the roaring maelstroms.
Since we have now covered the first ten yards of this story, let’s skip the next ninety yards with the summation that it was more (and worse) of the same. I was still afloat, although abraded, soaked, and limp, when the demons released my lovely little boat and me into water quiet enough for me to stagger ashore.
I looked back at the cascade I had survived. I think I could tell what Katherine Hepburn was supposed to be feeling when the African Queen went over Zambezi Falls.
Here comes Jerry.
“Okay, I made it. Your turn.”
“What the hell, do you think I’m stupid? It’s a wonder you’re still alive. I’m not gonna wreck
my boat.”
We were even. By the way, twenty years later, he still has the damn’ thing. Fink.
