The Bromance.....

Everyone who knew about it greatly coveted a turn at the tiller of the outboard motor of that boat. It was high summer and the bottom of the sewerage lagoon that received patona city's innumerable flushings had turned-up. This is a common occurrence in/on small bodies of water but with a sewerage lagoon, the turning was quite obvious. The prevailing winds wafted the malodour directly toward the bypass highway's strip-mall shopping center so something had to be done and done fast.

The answer was a stalwart aluminium flat-bottomed boat of some fourteen length by a bit over three and a half feet width. The tiller that I alluded to above served as both the steering lever and the location of throttle control for the approximate 20 horsepower outboard motor. The task was simple. Steer the boat over and through the slimey, smelly chunks of peat-like sewerage that nature had released from the lagoon's bottom and was now floating and bobbing on its surface. Over and over, to and fro, back and forth..... both haphazardly and systematically. Separate the chunks small and great and render them smaller yet with the revolutions of the outboard's propeller until they sank back into the relative depths of the green water.

Despite the gagging stink, every little boy from 8 to 88 wanted a turn at the helm of the good ship "s.s. patona city" but there was an unwritten hierarchy. Since the pensioning of misters hoyt crook and his coloured sidekick butter macdonald, the command of the boat fell to the reigning captain of patona city's utility truck number nine..... booby moates (the certified lunatic amongst us) and razor hooey.

butter macdonald.....while still employed, had been quite adept at maneuvering the boat and chopping the blue-green slimey chunks of poo but booby moates simply lacked both the hand-eye coordination and nautical balances and systematic patience necessary for the job. razor hooey lacked all of the qualifications and was also afraid of water, not being able to either swim or float.

So the honour fell to euell ______ , otherwise known as pill.....uncle pill to us part-time youngsters. uncle pill must had been born with a miniature outboard tiller in his tiny fist or else teethed on one in his crib. From logan martin dam all the way east to the confluence in downtown rome....georgia, not italy, pill knew the coosa river like both the back of his hand and his asymmetric, ugly visage in the mirror. Lacking the shekels to possess a proper bass boat with center-steering mechanisms, pill made-do with lesser craft with inimitable skill. No one ever lived who could pilot a flat-bottomed boat with outboard motor like uncle pill.

But the municipal beaurocratic chain of command....one of either roscoe or woodrow scoggins, unidentical twin brothers, required the department head to at least be onboard so that put the stoutish and ungracefully rigid booby moates in the center seat. After a few test turn abouts pill came back to shore and requested someone up-forward for ballance. The superintendent waved the floppy antenna of his wireless and razor hooey reluctantly donned an orange flotation vest and awkwardly stepped into/onto the bow. Razor wasn't happy about this.....especially having to face backwards as the bow bench did not facilitate any other orientation but he could not project the least amount of cowardice or weakness in front of whitey, now could he ?

So they went about chopping the blubber-like chunks of poo until the 0845 break for coffee and biscuits containing the tasty sage and cayenne flavoured flesh of ground swine. By this time there had been work orders submitted to the scoggins from city hall headquarters of customers reporting sewerage stoppages. This gave booby moates a reprieve and put razor in the center seat facing forward which put me up in the bow.

Now here is the opportunity to hearken back to the era. Tricky dick had self-destucted and his veep had lost the election to the thick-lipped peanut grower. As far as entertainment went, the masses were either queer for princess leia or the flashing lights of ufos or massive maneating greatwhite sharks with greatwhite sharks and carrie fisher being almost neck and neck in the polls. Though almost all would allow that carrie fisher costumed in her scant bronze bikini (in the sequel) sent far more tadpoles down the tub drain than any alien spacecraft or toothy fish ever did.

It must also be reminded that razor hooey was a publican in the englisher sense of the title who presided at and tended bar and bounced uncooperative patrons at his home-based shot-house. He also showed stagg-films projected on a wall from his reel to reel contraption. Occasionally he obtained the loan of an unlicensed bootleg of a current popular cinematic production. The weekend nights previous, he had shown the extremely suspenseful shark flick and it had made a profound impression on him.

Back to the tale. The boat went around and around and there and yon until tiffin break. When we assembled back to the lagoon we were all punchy what with the august heat and full gizzards and greatly needing the protection of shade trees and a civil-servant traditional nooner-siesta but the bosses were there and back on the water we went.

Things progressed much faster this season than in others but there remained one sole incorrigible largeish floater that was too intimidating to hit straight-on. Pill kept hitting at it obliquely over and over gaining speed with each pass until one attempt was too fast and almost upset the boat. As the bow (with me there) went upwards and listed dangerously to starboard I spied a massive snapping turtle surface from under the floating biomass. Razor saw it too....at much closer proximity than me and it made and angry hiss of sorts from its beaked jowls.

Certainly he hysterically overreacted somewhat but razor made enough of a scene that pill returned to shore a bit early for our scheduled 1430 break where we sought for shade from the unrelenting sun and for some cooling beverages. There razor paced to and fro relating our recent adventure to all assembled there. In less than a quarter of an hour from the actual event, the snapping turtle had imaginatively changed to a great white shark and there razor adamantly regaled us with just how pill had saved our lives from it by his boat handling prowess.

And that is how the bromance commenced with razor and pill becoming ebony/ivory brothers and razor being eternally obliged to pill for pill saving his life from the vicious hungry shark.

roscoe even had to transfer razor from booby moates and truck #09 of the waste-water dept. over to woodrow and the potable water dept. so razor could ride shotgun with pill in truck #11.

The massive floater turned out to be nothing more than an upside-down moulded plastic kiddie wading pool covered in sewerage solids that had somehow infiltrated from the gutter-culvert-ditch stormwater system over into wastewater.