Murphy

Dave

Haven't seen, or heard anything of late and hope he is making good progress.

Murphy

I also hope Jim T is getting better please keep us informed

Murphy

That, and every last one of us has an inner 12-year-old that we sometimes let out to play.

-AaronB

My dad wrecked his Harley a couple summers ago at 78. Broke his neck as well and knocked something loose to make him deaf in his right ear (he had hearing aids already). Some other minor injuries but he always wears his helmet and was lucky enough he was going fairly slow when a truck stopped short in front of him. I told my wife about Jim and she said “what is it with these ‘old guys’ crashing things?

Faint electrical noises emited from the submarine as the various propulsion and manoeuvring jets were tested. It was gently urged against side of the barge with cushion bumpers between as the same two deck hands who had facilitated the its deployment fastened it securely alongside. The engines on the barge.....there were two, the barge's diesel propulsion below and the smaller petrol four-stroke powering the hydraulics and/or cables/pulleys of the turret and boom/bucket were both extinguished.

Just then an airhorn or two or three blared from a flotilla of bass and ski and pontoon boats up to almost yacht like craft upstream. While downstream clamoured a cacophony of bells, both the electronic buzzer type and real brass clappers jingled and clanged along with the piercing shrieks of multiple old-fashioned internal pea whistles from a ragtag mass of canoes, kayaks, jonboats and inflatable rafts.

In less time than it took to type that noisy description above, I found that myself and my kayak had drifted in amongst the other watercraft and no one was the wiser that I was an intruder. The first thing that I noticed was that most of the boaters, maybe two-thirds or better were outfitted in swimwear and scuba gear with a few here and there clad in proper complete wetsuits along with very professional, higher-end scuba stuff.

On the bigger boats were a mix of those previously described along with between a dozen and a score of well-dressed folk, the men in dark suits and semi-nautical billed caps and the women wearing dark dresses and hosiery and something less than stilleto high-heels that hinted more at mourning than at popular fashion. Some were even spookily costumed in antiquated widow's weeds and heavily veiled bonnets.

As I looked on in disbelief I had unconsciously stowed my double-ended paddle in it's clips and instinctively grasped the gunnel of a bobbing aluminum jonboat to my left and the safety poly-line of a fellow kayak to my right. In the jonboat an enormous, literally refrigerator-sized coulored fellow in black and silvery satin and purple semi-clerical livery with matching flotation vest (I kid you not, the life-vest actually had tuxedo cumberbund frills) stood with difficulty on account of the swells of the river. He boomed from a bullhorn in that ubiquitous southern negro sing-song cadenced diction of the Sunday pulpit and anytime there were a convenient race-riot with news cameras recording ......

"Dearly beloved. We are gathered here together to both mourn the passing and celebtate the life of......etc., etc."

After about twenty plus minutes of that the eulogist resumed his seat with a look of relief that he had accomplished his mission without drowning. He fetched from between his feet a heavy looking silver cremains urn and handed it to one of the many scuba divers while they all donned masks and bit onto their respirators. Not all simultaneously but like lighting a whole pack of 04 july "black cats" they all flipped over backwards into the river/pickwick lake just like they had seen old Jacque Cousteau do on the telly, some with flippers but many without.

One of the pontoon boats had putt-putted alongside the yellow submarine and a very elderly lady in black, obviously in her trembling, palsied dotage was being assisted onto the craft and through the hatch and down the ladder followed by a not quite as elderly or dotty gentleman and a lady both in mourning black but he with a billed yacht cap. The hatch was closed and dogged with a spin of of the wheel by one of the barge's deck hands who had by this time donned a sunday suit coat over his worn, holey jeans and bare, sun-browned hairy chest. The yellow submarine sunk out of sight under a gurgle of bubbling green water, The very ancient mourner's eyes, in anxiety seemed as big as snuff cans through the plexiglass bubble as she fell from view.

There were only a dozen or so of us still on the surface. Those without scuba gear had voluntarily stayed behind to man the boats but there were not a few of the smaller craft empty and loose. So we rounded them up best we could until the bubbles erupted all around of as the divers bobbed-up as erratically as they had dramatically submerged. A few minutes later the yellow submarine appeared with angry hisses. and the wobbling lady, even more wobblier than before was extracted with some difficulty and safely seated in comfort on a pontoon boat's cushioned divan.

Needless to say, I was in a daze. Keep in mind, I could not feel my feet. I had been sitting in the kayak for what seemed an eternity. I was fagged with dehydration and exhaustion and too much sun and wind. Then there was the funk of low blood sugar as it had been hours since my last snack.

Though raised a good baptist and normally adamantly abstemious, when the cool cans of the foamy sudsies were tossed about by folk on the larger craft, I drank long and deep. Someone on the reverend's jonboat had both the perception and kindness to insist that I eat some nutty, oaty trailmix and a protein bar and a stick of jerky along with the three or four cans of beverages that I was obviously not inured to.

How I got back to my truck in the waning dusk without capsizing and drowning is a mystery. I knew I was not in any condition to drive but I had the prudence to hide my truck keys in the bilge of the kayak before lying down beside it in the bed of the truck. I knew to be found in my condition inside a vehicle with or without keys was a very serious chargible offense. I woke-up at about 0230 and felt safe and alert enough to drive the nearly three hours to home.

The whole way home I was vaguely conscious of something tightly gripped in my left hand. How I paddled several miles and loaded the kayak and slept in the truck bed and drove all that way to home and puked and dumped and disrobed and showered and redressed and prepared and ate a decent hearty breakfast with that folded paper still gripped in my left hand and still relatively dry and legible is yet another miracle or sucessions of them.

It was the obituary of the soul of the mortal clay in the silver urn of the dredge barge and the yellow submarine and the funeral wake flotilla and as bizarre a cast of characters as in any of g.k. chesterton's works . I won't bore you all with the details of the obituary but just a few of the pertinent facts......

Percival Cyril Puckett of Taluca aged 83 was gathered unto his fathers in the tradition of his branch of the Pucketts. The family plot of graves was one of many that were unable to be exhumed from the environs of the town of Riverton before the waters of the river impounded by the electrical authority covered them and indeed the whole town and surrounding river bottom farmland and woodlots.

His immediate antecedents and previous generations who had passed on to eternity since Riverton's inundation had been interred with their cremains sunk over the estimated location of the Puckett gravesites under approximately 35 feet of water with little ceremony from simple small craft on the next full moon night as was convenient after the remains were prepared.

However, Cyril had had the means and network of friends necessary for a suitable interment of class and style. Cyril, who was childless as far as is known, is survived by a favourite ex-wife and husband-in-law and his 117 year old mother.

There I was in my kayak and drum fishing.....that is to say angling for aplodinotus grunniens. With one hand I was holding onto (for dear life) a rusty mooring stanchion set into the electrical authority's concrete on a wing wall below Wilson Dam. The other hand was busy trying to land at least a twenty pounder. How I managed to hold on to both the iron ring and my fishing rod and be able to turn the reel handle is still a mystery. But in fullness of time I unhooked and released the slimey, scaley beast to finally ken just what was causing the perilous (or do i mean treacherous?) swells of green water that threatened me. A self-propelled dredging barge on a bigger barge was exiting the westbound lock and I guess the lock gates opening had caused the sudden current.

Everything had almost settled down when the tugboat pushing the barge(s) engaged its props or screws or jets and my kayak dropped just enough in a trough that I lost hold of the ring and had to resort to the paddle. Then I just as quickly rose about five feet on a crest. Thankfully, that ridge of water was wide enough that I could paddle thus riding it out instead of being swamped by the chop. So there I was sort of involuntarily following in the wake of the tugboat. With many grunts and much farting, I managed to paddle away from the pull and reach water that was slack enough to finally veer southward to where my truck waited.

Bust a gut or die as they used to say, I surely wanted to know where that dredging barge was bound and what it was about when it got there. But as obtuse as I can oftentimes be, for once I had the sense not to follow in/on the kayak. So it was just happenstance I guess that about an hour later I spied from the highway the same barge and tug but the barge was now empty. That barge must have been of the floodable variety with a bow drop-ramp and the smaller dredging barge had to be loose, presumably back upstream a distance.

After some thinking, I made a u-turn and luckily found both an adequate place to park the truck and a safe place to get the kayak back into the river. In just under a half-hour of more grunting and farting assisted paddling upstream, I rounded a bend and spied what I took to be the dredging barge ahead. As I neared enough to get a better view I exclaimed aloud to no one in particular but myself, "There's a 'shurnuff' yellow submarine !" Kid you not ! Just aft of the dredge cab/turret and attached boom -arm and two-part clawed bucket-pincer lay a bright shiny efficient looking mini-sub.

After the surprise and wonder at encountering the unexpected I remembered back, after the barge had first cleared the lock gates, seeing something rectangular hidden somewhat under silvery tarps. The tarps and the underlying framework that had draped them had obviously been now removed, revealing the submersible contraption.

The river current here was not too bad and I soon got near enough to see and hear activity onboard the barge. It appeared to be anchored to the river's bottom with a substantial bow-chain and there were 5/8 or 3/4 inch lines, aft and starboard, limb-hooked to trees ashore. The barge was just large enough and of an age to have an internal engine as there were no visible outboard motors. Nor could I see any sort of bridge or helm or coxain's console. I assumed that the throttle and rudder steering controls must have been self-contained in the cab/turret and amongst the boom and claw/bucket levers and pedals.

No matter, there was at least a crew of four rough and sun-browned fellows on deck and another visible inside the dredge cab who seemed to be in charge of the operation. The whole turret swiftly swiveled 180°s and the boom deftly dangled the bucket some distance above the submarine as two of the crew hooked chains to both the bucket above and the submarine beneath. Those chains tightened as the submarine rose and was swung outboard free of the barge and lowered to float on river with the two brave souls who had chained it gracefully riding down with the thing.

Just enough slack was given the chains to facilitate unhooking the sub but not quite enough to pinch the men's fingers as the chains retightened and the two men were raised aloft and swung safely back aboard the barge, riding the chain's lower hooks on the arches of each one's right foot. Best I could tell, the submersible operator must have been already onboard it as a face could be seen behind its clear bubble and an equally clear hatch with quick-acting dogging wheels internal and external was raised open.

To be continued.....

I spoke to him last about a year and a half ago. He has had various health issues over the past few years, but seemed to be holding steady when we spoke.

He is one of the first guys I met from the original boards, our first face to face was probably around 2000, maybe 2001. One heck of a gentleman, and I should strive to communicate more often….

Otony