Well, Gents, it has been a awhile since I added another post but I have had a couple of weeks where I was fucked up beyond all recognition (FUBAR)…that is the acronym for FUCKED UP BEYOND ALL RECOGNITION…so What’s the Secret, Dad?
or What does it mean, Dad?
So let me tell you…FUBAR because I just went through a process and personal journey that included losing all my remaining teeth (except two each on either side of my lower jaw) and replacing them with dentures…which meant that I stopped smoking for four days (twice in one month)…which meant that I had to be OK with losing most of the teeth that had got me through the last 65 years…which was traumatic, to say the least…I do not know what other people go through when they reach this event in their lives but I do know what I went through to get to this point and Boys, that is why I have told each of you: do whatever it takes to hold onto to your original teeth as long as you can…this means regularly having them cleaned by a dentist etc. etc….well, enuff about me and my teeth…
it is now March 10th, 2024 so we begin another journey down memory lane with my parents…so moving the needle of the Wayback Machine to the mid-1950s…as I said earlier, we were living in Seattle, on Mercer Island when Mom and Dad decided to go in with friends (the Brockhouse (sp?) family, the Moats family, the Keyes (sp?) family and the Davie family and buy a huge house on the Hood Canal on the upper peninsula of Puget Sound…the house sat on a huge cliff, overlooking the wide expanse of the Sound…
below is a map depicting Hansville and Mercer Island
the four families chose to call the house and surrounding acreage Bro-Mo-Ke-Da (BMKD), a combination of all our families last names…as you can see from the map, we would travel from Mercer Island to a ferry in Seattle which then would put us on the Peninsula and we would drive to Hansville and hence, Bro-Mo-Ke-Da…all four families would vacation there simultaneously because the house was big enough to house us all, at the same time…counting everyone including adults and kids, we numbered about 8 adults and 10 kids, so a total of 18 people, all at once, at the same time…we loved our trips to the house and the Puget Sound…all the families would all pitch in with supplies for a week’s stay at BMKD…I cannot remember if we had electricity at BMKD because we lit everything with Coleman Lanterns which hissed with their glowing webs of light, powered by kerosene…I think we had running water at the house but I know we did not have toilets inside only an communal outhouse which was fine by us kids since it was like camping out…there was a huge cut in the cliff-face that led down to the beach so being free-range kids, we were always going back and forth between the beach and the house, running at full speed…the beach there was magical to us kids since it was full of driftwood in all shapes and sizes, marine creatures and various treasures we would find and pile up to look at later after we had thoroughly combed the beach…every time, we went there, the beach was different with new schtuff for us to explore and remark on…but I guess my most favorite thing was crabbing with the adults…
so just what was crabbing, you ask?
Crabbing was a tradition at BKMD and it required special equipment which was a broomstick fitted out with a thick wire rim which was formed into a circle about three feet across at one end…this was then covered with a chicken wire netting over the frame of the wire rim and a bushel basket which would float…these were the tools of the trade when it came to crabbing…so we would wait for low tide which meant we would have to hike out to the water across the now-exposed sand and when we got to the receded water edge, we would wade out into the water which was waist deep, at this point, spread out and hunt for crabs…the water was crystal clear so we would scuffle our feet along in this waist deep water and look for crabs who were scuttling along trying to stay away from our feet…when we spotted a crab doing this, we would use our broomstick and scoop up the scuttling crab who then would latch onto the chicken wire…once the crab did that, we would lift it up and bring it over the floating bushel basket which was tied to your waist by a rope and shake it off the chicken wire and bingo, we had another crab…so this activity would go on for quite some time while on the beach, everyone else would start a driftwood fire and start digging for clams…the clam digging went on while we were crabbing…
to get the clams, you had to walk out on the now-exposed low tide sand with a shovel and look for bubbles coming up through the sand and start digging, right there until you found the clam making those bubbles which usually was about two or three feet deep beneath your feet…crabbing and clamming until everyone felt that we had enough to feed us all…we would walk back to the beach with our crabs and the clam crew would meet at the fire which by now, had heated a huge pot of seawater…the crab crew and clam crew would dump our separate catches into the water together and wait while the crabs and clams cooked and then we all would feast on the bounty that the sea and sand had provided us…it was magical, this communal feast
we performed this ritual communal feasting every time we all stayed at BMKD…there were many things that defined our shared times at BMKD but this one ritual was, in retrospect one of finest and deepest I experienced there, as a kid but since this Log Book is about Mom and Dad, there is one incident that stands out and that is my first asthma attack at BMKD…
so it went like this: one year, we had gotten to BMKD first in advance of all the other families, I decided after we opened up the house that it would be a good idea to bounce up and down on the mattresses of the bunk beds…what I did not know and neither Mom or Dad knew that I was highly allergic to kapok which some of the mattresses were stuffed with…this mattress jumping raised dust up from the kapok and I started to have difficulty breathing and I mean life-threatening difficulty breathing…I was in bad shape so Mom and Dad dropped everything and began to help me breathe as best they could…so Dad got on the phone and started calling all the towns nearby to look for a doctor who could administer an epinephrine shot to me which would restore my ability to breathe again…finally, Dad got a hold of a pediatrician in Bremerton, Washington about a 45 minute drive from Hansville and he would meet us at his office with the epinephrine…so Dad put me in the backseat of the car and laid me down with pillow (non-kapok) and started driving…I can remember this drive distinctly, to this day…I was laying in the backseat, looking up at the trees as they passed by us through the back windshield and thinking I might die and this would the last thing I saw with Dad desperately driving trying to get me the shot that would allow me to breathe again…I really did have this thought as a seven year old kid, experiencing his first full-bore asthma attack…
so we all know now that Dad’s desperate drive that night really did save my life…we got to Bremerton, met the doc at his office, got the epinephrine shot and all was well for me and Dad, that night…
Among all the memories of BMKD, another one stands out and this one is of Mr. Moats…Mr. Moats was an attorney in Seattle and I always got along with him because he was a really great guy…easy to get to know as a kid and he was always fun and full of surprises…so one year, I remember him talking to my parents to see if I could go on an overnight cruise with him and his family to an island in the Puget Sound…he owned, at the time, a cabin cruiser that he and his family would use to explore the the Sound…so it was a big deal when Mom and Dad, said sure…I was excited beyond belief that I got permission from them to go with the Moats family on this overnight cruise…this cabin cruiser was probably, in retrospect, about 30’ or 40’ feet in overall length and big inside…so Mom took me to the marina where it was docked, we boarded and set our course for the Puget Sound…a great adventure in the offing…
cruising the Sound was fascinating to me and I had a ball, looking the at the charts to see where we were, looking out for shallow water and just generally, having a ball being on the water with the Moats family…later, the next day, after spending the night on some island where we stayed at a hotel, we were cruising along in open water when Mr. Moats turned to me and asked me if I wanted to take the helm…I jumped at the chance…there was a little stool under wheel which I stood on so I could see the bow and the way ahead including the gimbal mounted compass…Mr. Moats gave me a compass heading to steer by and I was in heaven…as I continued to get the feel of the boat and finding out about currents and other items I had to pay attention to while steering the boat, Mr. Moats said: “Alex, look back at your wake in the water.” which I did and saw that my wake was all crooked and wavering which was a result of me trying to maintain the compass heading he had given me…Mr. Moats then said to me: “You can always tell how good a skipper is by the straightness of his wake.” The lightbulb went off in my kid-brain as I understood what Mr. Moats was teaching me…so from then on, that day, I tried mightily to keep a straight wake while still correcting for the wind and currents and in staying on course with compass heading…all in all, great days on the water with the Moats family..
so I will close this out now and let y’all read
Daddio On The Patio