One of my favorite former co-workers from the crazy Caribbean Days managed to track me down in a new watering hole last week.

He had always been a persistent sort of fellow with a streak of weird timing and strange luck that at one time involved time zone miscalculations, misread nautical charts (which is an interesting characteristic for a navigation officer), and while he couldn’t find  the Panama Canal 20 years ago and found the wrong war zone, in the wrong country, with a really wrong cargo, he found me in a redneck juke house in DeSoto County.

A redneck county line bar is a potential war zone in itself, so it was like a family reunion in some respects.
We observed Buck knife packin’ locals and recollected the Monkey River down in Belize where everybody in any given household carried a machete and had a spare on the porch.

We discussed and cussed the discomfort levels of Mexican jails we shared and toasted Colonel Oliver North and President Ronald Reagan for making it all possible.

Our outlaw boat changed colors and profiles on a weekly basis and registered countries of origin about the same. We dry docked her in Galveston once because we had so many layers of paint on her she couldn’t be depended on to respond safely while evading pursuit.

We agreed there is no substitute for horsepower and cubic inches on a blockade boat, and sobriety was  mostly a handicap (one of several that we seldom bothered with).

On a pristine sea, the Daisy could break the speed limit that any highway in Mississippi had to offer and she always appeared to be what she was not.

After 20 or so years since Crazy Jake and I last laid eyes on each other, we only wished that the same could be said of us.

Unfortunately, we were exactly what we appeared to be—old, tired, stressed, sick, maimed. Slightly psychotic in his case, neurotic and despondent in mine. We caught each other up on what had happened to us since that McNairy County hooker blew the bathtub out from under him down in Isla Perez. I had noticed a few more scars he’d picked up and the fact that he walked with a cane that he obviously needed.
I didn’t ask questions or make comment on that particular disability figuring he’d get  around to it.

After catching me admiring the crutch for the third time he “paid up” and this is what I got:

“Well, Harp, it ain’t  what you’d expect from me, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but a tame and gentle horse lost her stride and rolled on me.”

He’d once been a rodeo bronc buster and it hurt his pride that he’s allowed his daughter’s peaceful pet nag to cripple him.

“The saddle cantel got me and broke my pelvis bone right down the middle. When she recovered her feet, I was still booted to the saddle. At no point below my belt line did anything feel anywhere close to right.

“I rode her back to the house and tottered to the porch. My britches seemed about two sizes too small. I unbuckled my Levis to inspect the damage and it seemed like my butt spread all over the porch.

“The doc looked at my x-rays and asked if I’d delivered any babies lately. I said ‘no’ and told him as far as I knew, I hadn’t even been exposed within a gestation period or two,” Jake stated.

The doctor then studied the charts a little longer while Jake cranked out the details of what is now known as “the last ride.”

“Folks my age  and with my luck ain’t got no bizness on a horse—pet or not. That much at least is clear to me now,” he said.

The doc hummed around a while and then asked, “Mr. Laughter, do you realize you have four bullets in you?”

Jake laughed and said, “Why, of course I do. I’ve had ‘em for 20 years. It ain’t likely they’d slip my mind after all this time.”

The scars were old and had nothing to do with the current catastrophe, but the Doc was curious and Jake was happy to explain.

“Well, Doc I was married to an Apache woman that somehow developed the same attitude about me that damn horse had this morning and she was better armed. If that witch had had a better gun, she’d have saved that horse a lot of trouble.”

I was happy to hear that Jake had been surviving the same type of good luck I’d been blessed with for the last 20 years.

After one last toast to Col. North, who brought us together, and then one to Ronald Reagan, who briefly financed our run, and then one to the outlaw boat Daisy May, who’d been running around too long, we staggered off into the sunrise.

I was thinking that while life hasn’t always been fun, we’ve sure had a lot of it and it mostly has been.

If there is anyone reading his column who has ever crewed on the D.M. Griffin or any boats like her in the later 1970s or early ‘80s, contact my Facebook page.

Traveling in time,

Ricky Harpole
(Contact Harpole at www.facebook.com/harpolive or www.colespointrecords.com)