In which Duckie is a shameless Daddy's girl.
A couple weekends back, I found myself racing a Flying Scot with my father and uncle, cruising up and down the starting line and keeping an eye on the committee boat. A fog horn sounded, and the P flag went up, and across the cockpit from me Uncle Michael glanced at his watch.
"Four minutes."
At the helm, Daddy nodded. "I know." He was the skipper. He knew things.
My uncle had volunteered as crew. "You need a deck monkey? I'll deck monkey."
I was mostly ornamental, but occasionally I tacked the jib, and on the downwinds Uncle Michael gave me the spinnaker sheets. My brother does the same thing when he crews for my dad. Kenny and Uncle Michael have both noticed that Dad won't raise his voice to me, whereas with them he'll yell, "Trim. Trim, trim, trim! Now let it out until it curls. No, not like - wrong way. Wrong fuckin' way."
But this afternoon the air was light, and flying the chute had been no particular trouble. In fact, Dad and Uncle Michael were getting a little bored. They'd had a couple Heinekens between races and amused themselves by throwing a cuzzi overboard and performing a dramatic rescue.
With three minutes and thirty seconds left til the start, Dad propped his feet on the centerboard casing and announced, "I ain't no drinkin' man." This with a thick Loosiana twang and an empty beer bottle rolling around in the stern. "I tried it once, and it got me highly irregular and I swore I'd never do it again."
I stared.
Uncle Michael said, "Heh."
"But I promised my brother-in-law that I'd go up and watch his still while he went into town to vote," Dad continued magisterially. "It was right up on the mountain where the map said it would be. Friends, let me tell you one thing though, it wadn't no ordinary still."
"What?" I said.
"Listen," Uncle Michael told me.
Dad gazed off into the distance and shook his head wistfully. "It stood up that mountainside like..." He almost sounded like he was preaching, "...like a hu-u-uge go-o-olden opal. God's yaller moon was a-shinin' on the cool clear evenin'."
"God's little lanterns just a-twinklin' on and off in the heavens," Uncle Michael answered him with a church revival nod.
"I ain't no drinkin' man," Dad said, "but temptation got the best of me, and I took a slash." He mimed taking a swig from the tiller extension. "That yaller whiskey runnin' down my throat like honeydew vine water, and I took another slash. Took another and another and another. 'Fore you knew it I'd downed one whole jug of that shit and commenced to git hot flashes!"
"Dad, there's a boat to windward of you," I said, giving up on any of this making sense. "You see him?"
"Goosepimples was runnin' up and down my body, and a feelin' came over me like, like I was in love," Dad said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "In love for the first time. With any. Thang. That moved. Animate, inanimate, it didn't matter. It's like there's a great neon sign flashin' on and off in my brain sayin, 'Ken, there' a great day a-comin'!'"
And he leaned toward me with wide, earnest eyes and said, "'Cause I was drunk."
Uncle Michael cackled.
"Now I wadn't knee-crawlin', slip-slidin', reggy-youngin', commode-huggin' drunk," Dad assured me. "I was God's own drunk, and a fearless man!"
I might have giggled at that point.
"And that's when I saw the bear." Except he said bahr, and he shoved the tiller behind him to windward and threw us into a jibe without so much as a "Jibe, ho!" Jerk.
Uncle Michael and I ducked, and I loosed one jib sheet and cleated down the other, and in the stern Dad was standing up and saying very fast, in one breath: "He was a Kodiak lookin' fella 'bout 19 feet tall and he rambled up over the hill 'spectin' me to do one of two things: flip or fly, I didn't do either one." Huge breath. "It hung him up." Dad neatly ducked a boat coming in on starboard. "He starts sniffin' 'round my body tryin' to smell fear, but he ain't gonna smell no fear, 'cause I'm God's own drunk and a fearless man." Breath. "It hung him up. He looked me right in my eyes and my eyes was a lot redder than his was." He almost cracked a grin at Uncle Michael. "It hung him up."
"Two minutes to the start," I said.
Dad nodded pleasantly to the race committee as we passed by, and he never stopped talking. "So I approached him and I said, 'Mr. Bear, I love every hair on your twenty-seven acre body. I know you got a lotta friends over there on the other side of the hill. There's ole' Rear Bear, Tall Bear, Freddy Bear, Kelly Jair, Relly Bear, Smelly the Bear, Smokey the Bear, Pokey the Bear. I want you to go back over there tonight and tell 'em I'm feelin' right. You tell 'em I love each and every one of 'em like a brother and a sister, but if they give me any trouble tonight," and Dad puffed out his chest and said, "I'm gonna run every goddamn one of 'em off the hill!"
The P flag came down with another blast from the foghorn. "One minute," Uncle Michael said.
And in the last sixty seconds before the start, my dad rattled off:
"He took two steps backwards and didn't know what to think. Neither did I, but, being charitable and cautious, well, hell, I approached him again. I said, 'Mr. Bear, you know in the eyes of the Lord, we're both beasts when it comes right down to it. So I want you to be my buddy. Buddy Bear.' So I took ole Buddy Bear by his island-sized paw and I led him over to the still. Now he's a-sniffin' around that thing 'cause he's smellin' somethin' good. I gave him one of them jugs of honeydew vine water. He downed it upright, looked like one of them damn bears in the circus sippin' sasparilly in the moonlight. I gave him another and another, and 'fore I knew it, he'd downed eight of 'em and commenced to do the bear dance. Two sniffs, a snort, a fly, a turn and a grunt; and it was so simple like the jitterbug it plumb evaded me."
Talking faster and faster, he went on: "And we worked ourselves into a tumultuous uproar and I's awful tired, went over to the hillside, and I laid down, went to sleep, slept for four hours, and dreamt me some tremulous dreams. And when I woke up, ohhh, there was God's yaller moon a-shinin' on the cool, clear evenin'. And God's little lanterns just a' twinklin' on and off in the heavens."
"Five. Four. Three. Two."
"And my buddy the bear was a-missin'!" Dad yelled.
The foghorn sounded, the class flag whipped down, and Dad sheeted in hard and steered us off the starting line on a smooth beat. I cleated down the jib sheet, and all three of us got our weight as far forward in the cockpit as we could.
"Yeah," Dad muttered once he was satisfied the Scot was as close to the wind as he could get her. "You want to know somethin' else, friends and neighbors? So was that still."
And he and Uncle Michael both started cackling like crazy men, and they threw a high-five, and Dad bounced the tiller extension up and down on the fiberglass, he was so pleased with himself. It even surpassed the awesome of the cuzzi rescue mission.
And for the next two races and the long windward leg back to the harbor - three and a half hours - they refused to explain to me what had just happened.
Back at the yacht club, when I'd gotten myself showered and changed, I met my mom for dinner in the bar, and no one minded when my underaged self ordered a gin and tonic. Yacht clubs are like that. (They say their drinking teams have sailing problems.) My parents have known each other since they were sixteen, so I figured if anyone could explain Dad's brief fit of crazy, it would be her.
Indeed, she could.
"Oh, no. He didn't," she said when I told her. "God's own drunk and a fearless man?"
"And God's little lanterns a-flickering on and off in the heavens," I said.
"Jimmy Buffet recorded that song in the seventies," she said, rolling her eyes and smiling anyway. "Your dad saw him perform it live a couple times, and he learned the whole thing when we were dating, and it just... It's 'God's Own Drunk,'" she said helplessly. Fondly, she murmured: "And he commenced to do the bear dance."
From Jimmy Buffet's 1974 album, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, it's God's Own Drunk (6:22).
I could not make this shit up.
"Four minutes."
At the helm, Daddy nodded. "I know." He was the skipper. He knew things.
My uncle had volunteered as crew. "You need a deck monkey? I'll deck monkey."
I was mostly ornamental, but occasionally I tacked the jib, and on the downwinds Uncle Michael gave me the spinnaker sheets. My brother does the same thing when he crews for my dad. Kenny and Uncle Michael have both noticed that Dad won't raise his voice to me, whereas with them he'll yell, "Trim. Trim, trim, trim! Now let it out until it curls. No, not like - wrong way. Wrong fuckin' way."
But this afternoon the air was light, and flying the chute had been no particular trouble. In fact, Dad and Uncle Michael were getting a little bored. They'd had a couple Heinekens between races and amused themselves by throwing a cuzzi overboard and performing a dramatic rescue.
With three minutes and thirty seconds left til the start, Dad propped his feet on the centerboard casing and announced, "I ain't no drinkin' man." This with a thick Loosiana twang and an empty beer bottle rolling around in the stern. "I tried it once, and it got me highly irregular and I swore I'd never do it again."
I stared.
Uncle Michael said, "Heh."
"But I promised my brother-in-law that I'd go up and watch his still while he went into town to vote," Dad continued magisterially. "It was right up on the mountain where the map said it would be. Friends, let me tell you one thing though, it wadn't no ordinary still."
"What?" I said.
"Listen," Uncle Michael told me.
Dad gazed off into the distance and shook his head wistfully. "It stood up that mountainside like..." He almost sounded like he was preaching, "...like a hu-u-uge go-o-olden opal. God's yaller moon was a-shinin' on the cool clear evenin'."
"God's little lanterns just a-twinklin' on and off in the heavens," Uncle Michael answered him with a church revival nod.
"I ain't no drinkin' man," Dad said, "but temptation got the best of me, and I took a slash." He mimed taking a swig from the tiller extension. "That yaller whiskey runnin' down my throat like honeydew vine water, and I took another slash. Took another and another and another. 'Fore you knew it I'd downed one whole jug of that shit and commenced to git hot flashes!"
"Dad, there's a boat to windward of you," I said, giving up on any of this making sense. "You see him?"
"Goosepimples was runnin' up and down my body, and a feelin' came over me like, like I was in love," Dad said, closing his eyes and shaking his head. "In love for the first time. With any. Thang. That moved. Animate, inanimate, it didn't matter. It's like there's a great neon sign flashin' on and off in my brain sayin, 'Ken, there' a great day a-comin'!'"
And he leaned toward me with wide, earnest eyes and said, "'Cause I was drunk."
Uncle Michael cackled.
"Now I wadn't knee-crawlin', slip-slidin', reggy-youngin', commode-huggin' drunk," Dad assured me. "I was God's own drunk, and a fearless man!"
I might have giggled at that point.
"And that's when I saw the bear." Except he said bahr, and he shoved the tiller behind him to windward and threw us into a jibe without so much as a "Jibe, ho!" Jerk.
Uncle Michael and I ducked, and I loosed one jib sheet and cleated down the other, and in the stern Dad was standing up and saying very fast, in one breath: "He was a Kodiak lookin' fella 'bout 19 feet tall and he rambled up over the hill 'spectin' me to do one of two things: flip or fly, I didn't do either one." Huge breath. "It hung him up." Dad neatly ducked a boat coming in on starboard. "He starts sniffin' 'round my body tryin' to smell fear, but he ain't gonna smell no fear, 'cause I'm God's own drunk and a fearless man." Breath. "It hung him up. He looked me right in my eyes and my eyes was a lot redder than his was." He almost cracked a grin at Uncle Michael. "It hung him up."
"Two minutes to the start," I said.
Dad nodded pleasantly to the race committee as we passed by, and he never stopped talking. "So I approached him and I said, 'Mr. Bear, I love every hair on your twenty-seven acre body. I know you got a lotta friends over there on the other side of the hill. There's ole' Rear Bear, Tall Bear, Freddy Bear, Kelly Jair, Relly Bear, Smelly the Bear, Smokey the Bear, Pokey the Bear. I want you to go back over there tonight and tell 'em I'm feelin' right. You tell 'em I love each and every one of 'em like a brother and a sister, but if they give me any trouble tonight," and Dad puffed out his chest and said, "I'm gonna run every goddamn one of 'em off the hill!"
The P flag came down with another blast from the foghorn. "One minute," Uncle Michael said.
And in the last sixty seconds before the start, my dad rattled off:
"He took two steps backwards and didn't know what to think. Neither did I, but, being charitable and cautious, well, hell, I approached him again. I said, 'Mr. Bear, you know in the eyes of the Lord, we're both beasts when it comes right down to it. So I want you to be my buddy. Buddy Bear.' So I took ole Buddy Bear by his island-sized paw and I led him over to the still. Now he's a-sniffin' around that thing 'cause he's smellin' somethin' good. I gave him one of them jugs of honeydew vine water. He downed it upright, looked like one of them damn bears in the circus sippin' sasparilly in the moonlight. I gave him another and another, and 'fore I knew it, he'd downed eight of 'em and commenced to do the bear dance. Two sniffs, a snort, a fly, a turn and a grunt; and it was so simple like the jitterbug it plumb evaded me."
Talking faster and faster, he went on: "And we worked ourselves into a tumultuous uproar and I's awful tired, went over to the hillside, and I laid down, went to sleep, slept for four hours, and dreamt me some tremulous dreams. And when I woke up, ohhh, there was God's yaller moon a-shinin' on the cool, clear evenin'. And God's little lanterns just a' twinklin' on and off in the heavens."
"Five. Four. Three. Two."
"And my buddy the bear was a-missin'!" Dad yelled.
The foghorn sounded, the class flag whipped down, and Dad sheeted in hard and steered us off the starting line on a smooth beat. I cleated down the jib sheet, and all three of us got our weight as far forward in the cockpit as we could.
"Yeah," Dad muttered once he was satisfied the Scot was as close to the wind as he could get her. "You want to know somethin' else, friends and neighbors? So was that still."
And he and Uncle Michael both started cackling like crazy men, and they threw a high-five, and Dad bounced the tiller extension up and down on the fiberglass, he was so pleased with himself. It even surpassed the awesome of the cuzzi rescue mission.
And for the next two races and the long windward leg back to the harbor - three and a half hours - they refused to explain to me what had just happened.
Back at the yacht club, when I'd gotten myself showered and changed, I met my mom for dinner in the bar, and no one minded when my underaged self ordered a gin and tonic. Yacht clubs are like that. (They say their drinking teams have sailing problems.) My parents have known each other since they were sixteen, so I figured if anyone could explain Dad's brief fit of crazy, it would be her.
Indeed, she could.
"Oh, no. He didn't," she said when I told her. "God's own drunk and a fearless man?"
"And God's little lanterns a-flickering on and off in the heavens," I said.
"Jimmy Buffet recorded that song in the seventies," she said, rolling her eyes and smiling anyway. "Your dad saw him perform it live a couple times, and he learned the whole thing when we were dating, and it just... It's 'God's Own Drunk,'" she said helplessly. Fondly, she murmured: "And he commenced to do the bear dance."
From Jimmy Buffet's 1974 album, Living and Dying in 3/4 Time, it's God's Own Drunk (6:22).
I could not make this shit up.