Sir Captain Don
Guest
Library no. 429
© Bye Bye HOLLYWOOD
Copyrighted by the
®Wicked Mind's Eye of
Captain don/
Bonaire na.
-1947-
Wds. 2627
The War (WWII) had been over for several years. Searching for a new role in life, I moved to the West Coast. Grabbing odd jobs here and there while hanging out around Hollywood, I was secretly hoping to be discovered. I had done several school plays and naturally assumed that post-war Hollywood was hungrily waiting for this new kid on the block. I was reasonably good looking until I smiled.
Apartments were scarce and expensive, so I used my Navy mustering out pay to purchase a floating apartment, which I named after my last ship, the USS Persistent PYC 48. I had been the chief medical officer aboard. The mv Persistent 2 had a converted 1929 Model A gasoline engine. It wasn't much as yachts go, twenty-four foot in length and narrow as a woman's shoe, but the bottom leaked less than the cabin roof did. In retrospect, my choice of abode was not so much economic as spiritual. I was always drawn to the sea, and I still am. If humans crawled out of the ocean 20 million years ago, I must be a descendant from one of the last fish to grow legs. My ancestors were aquatic monsters with bad teeth.
One day while I was moored at the Los Angeles harbor, a fellow called Harlan introduced himself. Harlan, a dentist by profession, was looking for a boat owner who might share his interest in learning to SCUBA dive. I became aware that he was looking at my teeth, suddenly became self-conscious and kept my mouth shut. Then his attention went to my boat, and he said with a matter-of-fact attitude that he had a can of porcelain and a new pump-up dental chair. He continued to explain that a patient had given him some pages which told exactly how to do this SCUBA thing. He needed a ride to get out and try it. I was impressed... can you see this thing coming together? Hmmm ... a new set of teeth and a chance to dive in exchange for sharing my boat.
Jacques Cousteau and Emil Gagnon had technically invented the "Aqua Lung" a couple of years earlier, but that didn't stop hundreds of backyard inventors from attempting to create new underwater gizmos. Harlan explained that he had patients who were engineers at Lockheed Aircraft. They had devised some makeshift SCUBA equipment. None of this really surprised me. When I was a medic in the Navy, I had come to know many deep sea divers, the ones tethered to surface pumps and long hoses. They all hated the hoses. I frankly thought most of them demented, except for their dream of losing their tethers to be free to fly underwater.
Before dawn that next weekend, Harlan and I headed for Catalina, out across that wide channel in my very short boat. It was a hazardous journey at best. Harlan coaxed the small engine to continue making its revolutions while I was concentrating on navigation. Having been a medic, not a helmsman or navigator, I knew nothing of compasses, deviations of hour angles, and all the other intricacies involved in placing oneself on a fix somewhere on the globe. A dense morning fog had engulfed us, so thick I thought we might be lost. I was having trouble convincing myself that the compass was really telling the truth. I envisioned us out of gas and water, drifting aimlessly off the coast of Mexico, forever.
It seems that beginner's luck was kind, and we spotted the hills of Catalina some six hours later. We anchored in the lee of Indian Rock, which protected us from all but the easterly winds. The old engine seemed so pleased with itself that it refused to quit, even when the switch was turned off. Finally, I had to yank loose the ignition wiring to stop it. The sea was extraordinarily clear, especially when compared to Los Angeles harbor. It was filled with little orange fish called Garabaldies. Slimy kelp was everywhere. I looked at the masses of kelp and wondered if the stories about it dragging men down to their death were true.
Harlan was fearless, so none of this seemed to bother him as he attached his wrinkled hoses to a small yellow fire extinguisher. The whole rig brought to mind a garden spray can, which was to be to be strapped to his back with a rubber octopus spouting from the top. Then he pulled from a dark canvas bag a most interesting piece of equipment, which he told me he intended putting over his face. It looked like a short length of inner tube with a small glass porthole glued into one end. I had no trouble seeing the method of operation but thought it rather a clumsy device if it was intended to keep the water out of his eyes. Next, he displayed swimming fins, as he called them. They were rubber paddles, which I was to tie onto his feet right before he entered the water.
.
Then came the main event of Harlan's magic show. From his sack he pulled out a flimsy mass of rubber, a handful of blown motorcycle tubes he called a dry suit. He had to wear a suit or he'd freeze. I handed him a pair of long woolen underwear that was to be worn under the suit. Now he produced an enormous can of talcum powder which he shook liberally into the gaping wounds of the rubber tubes. The excess filled the air with a white cloud, bringing to mind our early morning fog. This grown man assured me that covering himself head to foot with baby power was necessary, according to the instructions of his diving patients.
I was really interested in just how he was going to get into the thing. Harlan said he had never tried it on, but the guy he had borrowed it from was about his size. Anyhow, it was rubber and would stretch.
And if he was bigger than you? I questioned, the boat looking as though the white fog had rubbed off on it. "Harlan! Are you sure you want to go through with this?" I was beginning to wonder if he really would.
"You bet, and we're gonna eat fresh fish tonight," he said, thumbing the barb on a new stainless steel spear. Looking at the stainless steel and the excellent workmanship, I saw more inspiration from the Lockheed engineers.
"Thanks, but I don't eat fish."
"They're small, so we need a lot of them," he replied, ignoring my comment.
"Garabaldies?" I asked.
"You bet"
Harlan, I dont eat fish. It came out as a holler. I looked at him in near despair. "Okay, Harlan," I pushed. "Let's see you get into that thing," and I pointed to the pile of rubber at his feet. He sat on the stern bench, put his feet into a round hole that was just about stomach height and started wiggling in. It was really something to watch, like a guy climbing into his own ectoplasm. The powder actually worked as a dry lubricant. When he was in, Harlan sealed the front as if he had had his umbilical cord severed with a dull ax and tied off with soft baling wire.
"Harlan, you're mad," I told him as he squirmed about in his body condom, talc liberally spewing from around his ankles, wrists and especially from around his face. The hood appeared to be too small. Harlan's pudgy face squished out, forcing his lips into a grotesque pucker.
"Don, diving is the newest sport, just wait and see. You can try it after I finish." Harlan was the oddest mixture of body and gizmos I had ever seen.
I replied, "I can't wait. I like water... in my whisky, to swim in, and to wash my car with, but I'm just enough of a mechanic not to like what I'm seeing."
"But Don, what if it works?"
I didn't respond, but the thought excited me. Wow! Float among the creatures of the sea, free, with no clumsy hoses to the surface. I'd read about Cousteau. Would this be my day to return to my aquatic ancestors? No, this diving stuff was just too preposterous.
The sun was parboiling Harlan like a hotdog wrapped in a gigantic garden hose. He pleaded for the cool water, so I quickly struggled him into his tank harness, tied the paddles onto his feet, and strapped on a large belt with lead weights attached. Then, with great effort, he stood up and I backed him up against the gunnel, shoved the mouthpiece into his mouth and pushed him over the side. As I watched, I instantly became intrigued by the bubbling. The glass in his mask had so badly fogged I could no longer see his eyes. A thought occurred that perhaps little wipers could be a solution.
Harlan was incoherently babbling something about those rubber paddles I had tied onto his feet. However, there was another obvious problem; the suit had acquired a large air bubble which was slipping about under the rubber around his shoulders, making it impossible for him to submerge. I watched him for a moment, then with our long boat pole I simply shoved him down, forcing his hunch bubble to belch out of his hood. As he sank, I kicked myself for not having thought to ask him to clean the bottom of the boat as long as he was down there.
I settled down for a long wait. Half an hour later, a fishing boat trolled on by, waking me from my semi-dozing state. I didn't think that Harlan could be down much longer. A few minutes later, whop! The fishing boat had hooked poor Harlan. Luckily, the three-inch hooks only ripped the suit, not his hide. Harlan was left bobbing on the surface just a few feet from my boat. When he looked up at me, I saw nothing but fogged glass, half filled with bloody water with snot floating on top. In a few years, all diver trainees would learn how to clear their ears and equalize the pressure on all of their air spaces when descending. Harlan's patients hadn't explained these techniques, leaving Harlan with a broken eardrum.
I struggled to pull Harlan on board. Then he patiently waited for me to shuck him of his gear. I was fascinated, staring down into his mask which was now commencing to leak from under the flap, down over his upper lip and into his mouth. When I lifted the mask, it was like peeling a scab from a wound. Blood was leaking from his nostrils and an ear. I thought of tales about deep-sea divers being compressed into their helmets by sudden pressure changes. "Harlan, you're a mess."
"Ooh, my ear, and my back," he moaned. "Yet it was fantastic, Don!"
I was more interested in what was happening to his face. I had been to autopsies where the subjects looked better than this. The entire area previously covered by the mask was now turning beet red as if severely sun burned.
At that moment there was a flash followed by a roar as a highly varnished inboard Chris Craft flew around the point. They headed directly towards us, coming fast. The load of Hollywood wannabes, rejects, screaming and waving, circled our boat, jugs of firewater held aloft. Their wake had our boat dancing like Frisco in the 1906 quake. Then they stopped some 30 yards away. The blonde doing the driving screamed, "We're having a party and looking for a place for it to happen!"
"If there is a nurse with you, come aboard," I hollered back. They laughed and the driver hit the throttle. Their engine screamed and they disappeared around the next point, dragging their noise behind them.
"What the hell have you done to yourself, Harlan?" I struggled him out of his equipment. It was far more work getting him out of the gear than into it. This effort left him panting, laying in a swill of rhubarb colored talc. When I bared his back, I knew I had made a medical discovery. The Nautilus and the great squid came to mind as I looked at the welts that splotched his back. He sat naked in the center of the cockpit, looking as if he had just been removed from a day on the rack, pink gravy oozing from under his butt, ugly red welts racing across his back, and little ripe cherries staring up at me from his blood stained face.
Better shut your eyes, Harlan, or youll bleed to death!
With a weak smile, Harlan apologized for not spearing any Garabaldies, nor catching any lobsters, but he proudly held up an abalone, explaining that we were to have fresh meat after all. "I don't eat this stuff you know," I reminded him. "And I dont really think you need it either." I placed the abalone on my hand, noticing that it barely covered the palm.
"It was worth it, Don. God, it was worth it."
"Next year maybe I'll try it, Harlan." I couldn't help marveling at his enthusiasm. What in heaven's name could be so "worth it"? Despite all Harlan's pain, and his blood leaking everywhere, this nutty dentist had experienced something so marvelous that he could ignore his considerable discomfort. Forget it! Not me.
I delivered Harlan back to the dock just a little after dark, leaving him standing in the dim wharf light, the remnants of his gear piled at his feet. He insisted on driving himself to a hospital, where he was treated and released in an hour. I moved out into the channel's basin and reached up, turning the engine off. It obediently stopped, which surprised me. Then quietly drifting in thought, I looked out across the quiet harbors black water, eyeing a darkened freighter, a sailor pissing over the rail. As I listened to the sleeping harbor's noises, I wondered about what I had experienced that day and thought, could I be as nutty as Harlan?
Hell no, this SCUBA diving was nuts. I would be wary of divers I might meet in the future. Then I thought about the events of the day and was surprised to realize that I was getting a little pissed at Harlan for cheating me out of my turn.
Harlan returned to dive again, though. The dry suits forgotten, we simply dove in our clothes; after all, we told ourselves, the water wasn't that cold. Yes, we! For that entire summer, I matched him dive for dive. We found some books and learned more than the original pamphlet had mentioned, like how to clear our ears, avoid mask squeeze, and watch for trolling fishing boats. With the pain gone, it was only the cold that was a concern. Still, there were rumors of a new rubber material that could be fashioned into a suit of sorts, a wetsuit it was called. At the end of the summer, Harlan moved on, but not before keeping his promise about my teeth.
That was well over 50 years ago. Despite my glistening new white teeth, Lloyd Bridges had already upstaged me and ended my Hollywood career before it began. The little mv Persistent caught worms and sank at the dock. Still, Harlan pointed me in a direction that still prevails today. What I'm saying is that it was a bunch of time ago ... a lot of ocean ... and a thousand miles of swimming, but this episode, which literally hooked Harlan, also hooked me for life.
don/
© Bye Bye HOLLYWOOD
Copyrighted by the
®Wicked Mind's Eye of
Captain don/
Bonaire na.
-1947-
Wds. 2627
The War (WWII) had been over for several years. Searching for a new role in life, I moved to the West Coast. Grabbing odd jobs here and there while hanging out around Hollywood, I was secretly hoping to be discovered. I had done several school plays and naturally assumed that post-war Hollywood was hungrily waiting for this new kid on the block. I was reasonably good looking until I smiled.
Apartments were scarce and expensive, so I used my Navy mustering out pay to purchase a floating apartment, which I named after my last ship, the USS Persistent PYC 48. I had been the chief medical officer aboard. The mv Persistent 2 had a converted 1929 Model A gasoline engine. It wasn't much as yachts go, twenty-four foot in length and narrow as a woman's shoe, but the bottom leaked less than the cabin roof did. In retrospect, my choice of abode was not so much economic as spiritual. I was always drawn to the sea, and I still am. If humans crawled out of the ocean 20 million years ago, I must be a descendant from one of the last fish to grow legs. My ancestors were aquatic monsters with bad teeth.
One day while I was moored at the Los Angeles harbor, a fellow called Harlan introduced himself. Harlan, a dentist by profession, was looking for a boat owner who might share his interest in learning to SCUBA dive. I became aware that he was looking at my teeth, suddenly became self-conscious and kept my mouth shut. Then his attention went to my boat, and he said with a matter-of-fact attitude that he had a can of porcelain and a new pump-up dental chair. He continued to explain that a patient had given him some pages which told exactly how to do this SCUBA thing. He needed a ride to get out and try it. I was impressed... can you see this thing coming together? Hmmm ... a new set of teeth and a chance to dive in exchange for sharing my boat.
Jacques Cousteau and Emil Gagnon had technically invented the "Aqua Lung" a couple of years earlier, but that didn't stop hundreds of backyard inventors from attempting to create new underwater gizmos. Harlan explained that he had patients who were engineers at Lockheed Aircraft. They had devised some makeshift SCUBA equipment. None of this really surprised me. When I was a medic in the Navy, I had come to know many deep sea divers, the ones tethered to surface pumps and long hoses. They all hated the hoses. I frankly thought most of them demented, except for their dream of losing their tethers to be free to fly underwater.
Before dawn that next weekend, Harlan and I headed for Catalina, out across that wide channel in my very short boat. It was a hazardous journey at best. Harlan coaxed the small engine to continue making its revolutions while I was concentrating on navigation. Having been a medic, not a helmsman or navigator, I knew nothing of compasses, deviations of hour angles, and all the other intricacies involved in placing oneself on a fix somewhere on the globe. A dense morning fog had engulfed us, so thick I thought we might be lost. I was having trouble convincing myself that the compass was really telling the truth. I envisioned us out of gas and water, drifting aimlessly off the coast of Mexico, forever.
It seems that beginner's luck was kind, and we spotted the hills of Catalina some six hours later. We anchored in the lee of Indian Rock, which protected us from all but the easterly winds. The old engine seemed so pleased with itself that it refused to quit, even when the switch was turned off. Finally, I had to yank loose the ignition wiring to stop it. The sea was extraordinarily clear, especially when compared to Los Angeles harbor. It was filled with little orange fish called Garabaldies. Slimy kelp was everywhere. I looked at the masses of kelp and wondered if the stories about it dragging men down to their death were true.
Harlan was fearless, so none of this seemed to bother him as he attached his wrinkled hoses to a small yellow fire extinguisher. The whole rig brought to mind a garden spray can, which was to be to be strapped to his back with a rubber octopus spouting from the top. Then he pulled from a dark canvas bag a most interesting piece of equipment, which he told me he intended putting over his face. It looked like a short length of inner tube with a small glass porthole glued into one end. I had no trouble seeing the method of operation but thought it rather a clumsy device if it was intended to keep the water out of his eyes. Next, he displayed swimming fins, as he called them. They were rubber paddles, which I was to tie onto his feet right before he entered the water.
.
Then came the main event of Harlan's magic show. From his sack he pulled out a flimsy mass of rubber, a handful of blown motorcycle tubes he called a dry suit. He had to wear a suit or he'd freeze. I handed him a pair of long woolen underwear that was to be worn under the suit. Now he produced an enormous can of talcum powder which he shook liberally into the gaping wounds of the rubber tubes. The excess filled the air with a white cloud, bringing to mind our early morning fog. This grown man assured me that covering himself head to foot with baby power was necessary, according to the instructions of his diving patients.
I was really interested in just how he was going to get into the thing. Harlan said he had never tried it on, but the guy he had borrowed it from was about his size. Anyhow, it was rubber and would stretch.
And if he was bigger than you? I questioned, the boat looking as though the white fog had rubbed off on it. "Harlan! Are you sure you want to go through with this?" I was beginning to wonder if he really would.
"You bet, and we're gonna eat fresh fish tonight," he said, thumbing the barb on a new stainless steel spear. Looking at the stainless steel and the excellent workmanship, I saw more inspiration from the Lockheed engineers.
"Thanks, but I don't eat fish."
"They're small, so we need a lot of them," he replied, ignoring my comment.
"Garabaldies?" I asked.
"You bet"
Harlan, I dont eat fish. It came out as a holler. I looked at him in near despair. "Okay, Harlan," I pushed. "Let's see you get into that thing," and I pointed to the pile of rubber at his feet. He sat on the stern bench, put his feet into a round hole that was just about stomach height and started wiggling in. It was really something to watch, like a guy climbing into his own ectoplasm. The powder actually worked as a dry lubricant. When he was in, Harlan sealed the front as if he had had his umbilical cord severed with a dull ax and tied off with soft baling wire.
"Harlan, you're mad," I told him as he squirmed about in his body condom, talc liberally spewing from around his ankles, wrists and especially from around his face. The hood appeared to be too small. Harlan's pudgy face squished out, forcing his lips into a grotesque pucker.
"Don, diving is the newest sport, just wait and see. You can try it after I finish." Harlan was the oddest mixture of body and gizmos I had ever seen.
I replied, "I can't wait. I like water... in my whisky, to swim in, and to wash my car with, but I'm just enough of a mechanic not to like what I'm seeing."
"But Don, what if it works?"
I didn't respond, but the thought excited me. Wow! Float among the creatures of the sea, free, with no clumsy hoses to the surface. I'd read about Cousteau. Would this be my day to return to my aquatic ancestors? No, this diving stuff was just too preposterous.
The sun was parboiling Harlan like a hotdog wrapped in a gigantic garden hose. He pleaded for the cool water, so I quickly struggled him into his tank harness, tied the paddles onto his feet, and strapped on a large belt with lead weights attached. Then, with great effort, he stood up and I backed him up against the gunnel, shoved the mouthpiece into his mouth and pushed him over the side. As I watched, I instantly became intrigued by the bubbling. The glass in his mask had so badly fogged I could no longer see his eyes. A thought occurred that perhaps little wipers could be a solution.
Harlan was incoherently babbling something about those rubber paddles I had tied onto his feet. However, there was another obvious problem; the suit had acquired a large air bubble which was slipping about under the rubber around his shoulders, making it impossible for him to submerge. I watched him for a moment, then with our long boat pole I simply shoved him down, forcing his hunch bubble to belch out of his hood. As he sank, I kicked myself for not having thought to ask him to clean the bottom of the boat as long as he was down there.
I settled down for a long wait. Half an hour later, a fishing boat trolled on by, waking me from my semi-dozing state. I didn't think that Harlan could be down much longer. A few minutes later, whop! The fishing boat had hooked poor Harlan. Luckily, the three-inch hooks only ripped the suit, not his hide. Harlan was left bobbing on the surface just a few feet from my boat. When he looked up at me, I saw nothing but fogged glass, half filled with bloody water with snot floating on top. In a few years, all diver trainees would learn how to clear their ears and equalize the pressure on all of their air spaces when descending. Harlan's patients hadn't explained these techniques, leaving Harlan with a broken eardrum.
I struggled to pull Harlan on board. Then he patiently waited for me to shuck him of his gear. I was fascinated, staring down into his mask which was now commencing to leak from under the flap, down over his upper lip and into his mouth. When I lifted the mask, it was like peeling a scab from a wound. Blood was leaking from his nostrils and an ear. I thought of tales about deep-sea divers being compressed into their helmets by sudden pressure changes. "Harlan, you're a mess."
"Ooh, my ear, and my back," he moaned. "Yet it was fantastic, Don!"
I was more interested in what was happening to his face. I had been to autopsies where the subjects looked better than this. The entire area previously covered by the mask was now turning beet red as if severely sun burned.
At that moment there was a flash followed by a roar as a highly varnished inboard Chris Craft flew around the point. They headed directly towards us, coming fast. The load of Hollywood wannabes, rejects, screaming and waving, circled our boat, jugs of firewater held aloft. Their wake had our boat dancing like Frisco in the 1906 quake. Then they stopped some 30 yards away. The blonde doing the driving screamed, "We're having a party and looking for a place for it to happen!"
"If there is a nurse with you, come aboard," I hollered back. They laughed and the driver hit the throttle. Their engine screamed and they disappeared around the next point, dragging their noise behind them.
"What the hell have you done to yourself, Harlan?" I struggled him out of his equipment. It was far more work getting him out of the gear than into it. This effort left him panting, laying in a swill of rhubarb colored talc. When I bared his back, I knew I had made a medical discovery. The Nautilus and the great squid came to mind as I looked at the welts that splotched his back. He sat naked in the center of the cockpit, looking as if he had just been removed from a day on the rack, pink gravy oozing from under his butt, ugly red welts racing across his back, and little ripe cherries staring up at me from his blood stained face.
Better shut your eyes, Harlan, or youll bleed to death!
With a weak smile, Harlan apologized for not spearing any Garabaldies, nor catching any lobsters, but he proudly held up an abalone, explaining that we were to have fresh meat after all. "I don't eat this stuff you know," I reminded him. "And I dont really think you need it either." I placed the abalone on my hand, noticing that it barely covered the palm.
"It was worth it, Don. God, it was worth it."
"Next year maybe I'll try it, Harlan." I couldn't help marveling at his enthusiasm. What in heaven's name could be so "worth it"? Despite all Harlan's pain, and his blood leaking everywhere, this nutty dentist had experienced something so marvelous that he could ignore his considerable discomfort. Forget it! Not me.
I delivered Harlan back to the dock just a little after dark, leaving him standing in the dim wharf light, the remnants of his gear piled at his feet. He insisted on driving himself to a hospital, where he was treated and released in an hour. I moved out into the channel's basin and reached up, turning the engine off. It obediently stopped, which surprised me. Then quietly drifting in thought, I looked out across the quiet harbors black water, eyeing a darkened freighter, a sailor pissing over the rail. As I listened to the sleeping harbor's noises, I wondered about what I had experienced that day and thought, could I be as nutty as Harlan?
Hell no, this SCUBA diving was nuts. I would be wary of divers I might meet in the future. Then I thought about the events of the day and was surprised to realize that I was getting a little pissed at Harlan for cheating me out of my turn.
Harlan returned to dive again, though. The dry suits forgotten, we simply dove in our clothes; after all, we told ourselves, the water wasn't that cold. Yes, we! For that entire summer, I matched him dive for dive. We found some books and learned more than the original pamphlet had mentioned, like how to clear our ears, avoid mask squeeze, and watch for trolling fishing boats. With the pain gone, it was only the cold that was a concern. Still, there were rumors of a new rubber material that could be fashioned into a suit of sorts, a wetsuit it was called. At the end of the summer, Harlan moved on, but not before keeping his promise about my teeth.
That was well over 50 years ago. Despite my glistening new white teeth, Lloyd Bridges had already upstaged me and ended my Hollywood career before it began. The little mv Persistent caught worms and sank at the dock. Still, Harlan pointed me in a direction that still prevails today. What I'm saying is that it was a bunch of time ago ... a lot of ocean ... and a thousand miles of swimming, but this episode, which literally hooked Harlan, also hooked me for life.
don/
