Chapter 14:

Bali ha'i...My Secret Island-d-d-d...

ME, AND "BILLY BUDD, FORETOPMAN," and James Michener ... we all got somethin' in common, you see: we all had "adventures" so to speak, in French Polynesia and only mine alone still lack for the telling. So you shall have it (or them), Gentle Reader – and you must make of them what you will...Sigh.

But we did not turn right around and depart for the South Pacific so soon as all that. We were (I still am) homebodies, and we poured a lot of treasure and a lot of living into our suburban Connecticut home. By now I was largely retired altogether and devoting a lot of time and effort to my late-in-life interest in traditional blacksmithing which I had developed. I had a neat smithy (or two or three) which I housed progressively in a log cabin I built, and later in a barn I built also. Aspects of this have been related elsewhere; if you are interested you can see some pictures and all at Blacksmithing

Mill was a high performer in a bizz she adored (office products) so she pretty much picked her own hours and bagged high-roller CEO's and Fortune 500 type corporate buyers for her firm. Her ancient stepmother kept house for us, and all in all...Life was Good. One of my last active accounts was a large swim pool chemical firm, so armed with the "know how" I had acquired via their merchandising programs and all – we sprang for a big swimming pool – a lap-type where you could really stretch out and swim. I graced it with a brick patio, grapevine-covered gazebo and a gargoyle "dolphin" fountain. Way to Go, Man! Way to Go!

The pool also let me test equipment and practice my scuba techniques. I had continued my jogging over the years 3 to 5 miles every other day, and between that and the (constant!) mowing, I kept pretty fit. We also had a large vegetable garden which was our pride and joy. Corn, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers – the works! The deer were numerous and they and the 'coons raided my corn nightly. Somewhere I read that if you took old panty hose and stuffed it with hair clippings from the barber shop sweepings, and strung these around your garden, it would deter these pests. Would you believe it: I decided to try it and soon had my garden plot ringed with same.

We never really got on with the neighbors down behind us: it was the builder who had built several of these houses and instead of pocketing his take and moving on (like most attuned builders do! LOL!), he decided to "brazen it out" and stay settled amongst at least some of whom felt they had not got their money's worth.. With us, it was more the intrusions of their fat brat on an ATV that rankled than anything about our house.

Anyhow, one day not long after, I was out working in the yard and here came this guy's wife – dragging something behind her – and a somewhat angry look in her eye. "Mr. Powell," she said indignantly, "you will never believe what our dog dragged home from your yard," – and with that she held up one of the panty hose containing all the stuffed hair... "Oh!", I replied, "that's okay. Sorry to have troubled you," and I retrieved it from her. "You see we have constant orgies up here and someone must have lost it couple nights back..." Something like that. I can still see her backside as she switched her way back home across the yard...LOL!

We also had remnants of an old apple orchard, maybe eight or ten trees left from the earlier farmstead that had been here long ago (we were right on top of a rise – the "Redding Ridge" as it was known locally). The first year the apple crop "came in" I was disappointed to see one tree covered with tiny green what I thought at best, were crab apples. But one of my friends knew better and tasted them and pronounced the tree a true "hangover" from earlier days – a Colonial favorite even – the "greening" apple and thus a prize, not a detriment, to have come down still bearing fruit for me! We often had pies baked from these greenings and they were very tasty!

But the itch to travel was again abroad in the land, and one day Millie asked me what I "thought" about the South Pacific – and I said I didn't much "think" about it a lot at all – but I could see where the conversation was heading.. LOL! – so not long after we booked for a South Pacific cruise... Tahiti to Hawaii... and many an islet in between...

We lay over in L.A. a day or so between flights, which gave Mill a chance to see Grauman's Chinese Theater and some other "sights" (I had seen them as a kid when my family travelled here one summer long ago). Then we took off for Tahiti, a very long flight over the blue Pacific that went on for hours and hours and hours. We landed in Papeete' where we had several days and were to pick up the cruise ship for the return by sea back across the ocean.

I remember as we deplaned, we had to walk in across the tarmac (Acapulco style – but no cucarachas this time!) and as we entered the small terminal, Polynesian girls hung "leis" of sweet-smelling frangipani flowers around our necks. It was my first experience of frangipani, and that is an odor you never forget. Now and then when we were still living in South Florida, I would run across someone or someplace where they had managed to grow some, and the odor always brings back memories of Tahiti.

Like all the Society Islands, of which it is but one, Tahiti is volcanic, of course, and the great central cone pokes skyward in the middle of the island. Actually, I think the upper part maybe is the weathered spine rather than the once-sheltering cone here – and it looks from a distance to harbor cliffs and vertical faces – and maybe even a few rockshelters – and I remember always examining it minutely (the way we look for rockshelters back home when site surveying for Indian ruins) but I never quite spotted anything. It is most impressive, however, and Michener himself no doubt was once inspired by same, not to mention Herman Melville – but his setting for " Typee" (Billy Budd) was actually the Marquesas some 500 miles or more northeast of us.

The bus tour took us around the island which didn't take too long. We saw a few abandoned Marae - the once-sacred platform grounds of the ancient Polynesian religion – but the guides really knew nothing about them, and we never stopped. The big to-do when we were there was to go eat at some restaurant in the interior of the island – I remember it as "Shipwreck Annie's" or something like that – and it was moreover supposed to have been "mentioned" in "Tales of the South Pacific" – but I cannot find any website listing or mention of same, and am further confused by mention of a "Bloody Mary's" restaurant on Bora Bora, another island a long way off to the Northwest of Tahiti and to which we never went.

But anyhow we went to this Shipwreck Annie's or whatever it was and it was a real tourist ripoff – it had the thatch roof and log stools and all – and good Maitai's or whatever and lunch and all – but it was all just a sort of cobbled-together affair. When we were done, and all went back out to the parking lot, the bus had already gone for some ungodly reason (I think to run in another group of tourists somewhere or something!). Anyhow we were told we could not a wait in the lot and must "wait" out on the highway. What a Chinese Fire Drill that was! There must have been at least fifty or more mostly Americans, and we had to line up on this narrow, sunstuck, tar-paved roadway, as the jungle came right up to the edges and we had to stand there for a very long time. Definitely uncool.

The next day I sort of harbored a desire to take a run up to Point Venus where the doughty Captain Jas. Cook, scientist and explorer extraordinaire', observed a transit of the planet Venus in 1769. But somehow we were late getting going, and could not get organized, and next thing I knew we were in downtown Papeete' going from one jewelry store to another – as Mill had taken an idee' fixe' that she had to have a Black Pearl. (Actually, she already had some black pearls back home, but one can always use another one – right? – so here we were at the horse's – make that the oyster's - mouth, will you, and so we best be peeping in Papeete'... Sigh). I was so tired anyhow I fell asleep arms folded under head on the glass case while Mill and the (usually) Chinese proprietors haggled over details...

(Which presents option to tell a little tale out of school: Mill had several pals in the diamond cutters district back in New York – down on 46th Street – and they could get you any kind of jewelry – firstrate stuff! – "wholesale." Once, not long after we were back home again, we were down there and one of them, David, greeted us and wanted to know where we had been. Mill said, "Oh, we just got back from a cruise to the South Pacific". "Yeah?", says David. "Whadda ya doin way out dere?" "Well," says Mill, "I was looking to find a nice Black Pearl or two". "Black Pearls!" says David. "Black Pearls! Why youse goin' to da Soud Pacific fer dem? Dey don' have Black Pearls in the Soud Pacific: WE GOT 'EM ALL 'ERE – da best dere is!"

LOL! No black pearls in the South Pacific! Dang! I knew we had been wasting our time...

So things were just kinda touristy in Tahiti, and I, of course, was determined to dive in this famous place and itching to get on with it. So a few days later, it was announced the ship would be departing for Moorea – an island northwest of Tahiti, which was not very distant at all as you could see it quite well from the Tahitian shore. So en route aboard the ship, I went down below to "register" at the "Dive Office" on some mid-deck or other below – to find it closed! – and so I roused out someone there and was informed that contrary to the advertised brochure and all, diving on this particular trip had been summarily cancelled, as – among other things – they had decided there were too many elderly passengers aboard and no interest!

I remonstrated – but to no avail. I stormed back up topside and blew my stack to Millie. The ship was making fast to the dockside at Moorea by now, so I said to her, "To hell with this bunch! I am going to get my mask and go ashore and see if I can't find some kind of dive party to hook up with!"

"I think that is a great idea," said Mill. "Have fun and I will go shopping on board while you are gone."

(These big cruise ships, you understand, often have regular supermarkets and mall-type stores aboard with shopping carts and all – for the shop-till-you-drop contingent...).

So I did, and wandered down the gangplank and had not gone far before a vivaceous young chick, in a scant leopard skin bikini, no less – detached herself from the crowd and said to me, in a marked French accent, "Oui, Monsieur! And would you like pleeze, to go the diving?"

I said, "You betcha! And how did you ever know?"

And she said, "Zee dive mask in your hands...."

Then she said, "Zat is my pickup truck over there: go get in the front seat and I will be along shortly – I want to see if there are any more."

So I did, and in a few moments here she comes with two more guys in tow – I recognized them both: they were from the ship's band that played in the ballroom every night after dinner – one was a guitarist and the other played trumpet. So all three of us squeezed in and our driver took off.

En route she explained, "My husban' ees the famous Moelle," (I had remembered it here as Moeller or something like that - and could find no links - and this is maybe 20 or more years ago...but I persisted and found it: Philippe Moelle! (More - much more, good buddies! - in just a few passages!). His "icon" when he stamped my Dive Log (which I managed to find again here the other day) was a scorpionfish.... He had been one of Cousteau's original group of divers as we understood, and is still billed in current web ads for "plongee' de Tahit" as the Senior Diver of all French Polynesia and "pioneer shark feeder" moreover (and that ain't all he is, either - by a long shot!). Cousteau is, or was, of course, a fixture hereabouts at one time it seems. I have figured out a quarter century later Molle's wife's name, too - I bet she is the "Marie-France" listed as Secretary or whatever of their dive associations (there's a link to same), though I knew none of this at the time. (Man! Ain't the Web the neatest thing going..!.). You can "out" anyone!

"My husban' runs a dive shop and beezness now from our home – it is eighteen miles there and we will be there soon."

So we bounced along over the backroads in "Marie-France's" pickup truck, and soon came to their place. For sure, now, we need a bit of "South Pacific" music to help set the stage:

Mon Dieu! Right out of a Gaughan painting or something. I'll never forget it. As we drove up I saw a fairly large "house" built of timbers and logs, with a huge, thick palm thatch roof. Both gables were open to the weather, and as we pulled in, a flock of bright parakeets flew out of one gable and took off squawking among the trees... At the same time, a large pack of hounds emerged as a group from under the house – it was up maybe four or five feet off the ground on pilings, you see. They too, set up a din of yapping and milling about. Best of all was a huge tuna fish – I'm not kidding! – it must have been seven or eight feet long, and it was hanging by a rope around its tail from a tree limb in the front "yard." Someone had sliced a number of steaks out of its side – but there was no mess and no flies about at all....

She hustled us inside. And Moelle made his appearance. He was a middle-aged guy, with wavy, silvery hair as I best recall. Tanned and fit. He was at least twice the age of his Missus. They set to work immediately outfitting we three. Buoyancy vests, snorkels, masks (I had my own because I had an optical correction in mine), weights, weight belt, the diver's usual "suit up" preparatory to a dive. Air tanks and harness next were fitted and we were buckled up. I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to the procedure (portent of events to come! LOL!), but it was all contrary a bit to the way we "suited up" as diver groups back home: there it was more each guy sort of did for himself and was responsible for his own fastenings and correct fit for everything. But here, Moelle insisted that HE be in charge of all "fits" and he bustled busily about with the three of us, checking here, tightening a buckle there, patting down a snap there, and seeing generally that everything was done right. (Or so we thought). I only thought, "Gee – this guy is pretty thorough! Back in the US of A, most divemasters figure the ultimate concern over whether you return to the surface or not, is yours and yours alone – that is why you learn to pay close attention in dive school"! LOL...

So we were all pronounced fit to go and clumped out to the little dock in the lagoon and got into his dive boat. This was about a 20-footer open outboard runabout with the dive tanks racked to one side, and all the gear neatly stowed forward. The beautiful, clear water in shades of emerald and lime and deep blue glided past as we crossed out over different reefs and bars. Away off across the lagoon some miles distant, loomed the Cruise Ship.... I hoped Millie was having a good shopping day. Finally, we came to the dive site and Moelle put down the hook. A few last minute instructions from our leader, and it was "blow and go time," as we divers say...

We each stood up in turn and dropped over the side. Our "buddy system" for the dive seemed rather automatic: the musicians each knew one another and in fact had often dived together, so they were a "natural" pair – and as for me... why, "lucky Bernie" got as dive partner one of Cousteau's original henchmen and the "senior diver in all of French Polynesia" Hot Dang!!

How ya gonna miss?

We were going to 80 feet today. Like most certified divers, I was trained to remember the 60-foot rule: the maximum depth to which you may descend and still make it back to the surface on one lungful of air, expeditiously expelled on the way back to the surface if there is any problem. So eighty feet was a new challenge for me in my dive experience, and I was all attention up-front...

On the bottom we regrouped and gazed around the bright, sunlit sand and coral rock. Then we started off, Moelle and I in the lead, and the musicians following. The first hint of mischief afoot passed largely unnoticed I guess (I just chalked it up to bad taste generally, and maybe just hi-jinks down below... didn't really give it much thought). Moelle, you see, had espied a large Sea cucumber - a bottom-dwelling member of the Echinodermata. Now these critters, which will never win a beauty contest – that's for sure – look like nothing so much as giant, warty male penises... (So you should pardon me already, yet!) Added to this apparent misfortune (see link), they have the rather disgusting habit of expelling a mass of milky "threads" which are really their stomach (and its latest contents), when disturbed in any way. The next thing I knew, Moelle had grabbed this cucumber, and stuck it between his crotch (!), at which point it "ejected" a large volume of milky stomach in our faces....!

Big-a deal! I looked at the musicians, they shrugged – and looked at me. We all looked at Moelle... He was now beckoning us on to presumably new entertainments up ahead. We thumbs-upped each other and swam on...

Sigh! (Pardon! There is no "sighing" when "on tanks". Air waster! Strike that, please!)

Next, a large (for that species) 7-foot White-Tipped Reef Shark materialized suddenly before us and swam placidly on by... He (or she) was followed in time by a Scorpion Fish which also appeared before us – one minute it was not there – the next it was blocking the way, as it were – a Lionfish with its spines and fins rippling and radiating out in all directions. It, too, was a fair size – and while the books sometimes say it is "rarely fatal" to humans, any contact with its venomous spines is sure to be regretted, and Moelle who had swum around now behind it, was making wild gestures with his hands and arms that we were to pass it on by and not touch any part of it!

He then led us into a cave deep down under the reef, but with numerous conduits upward through the reef mass to the sunnier waters far above, so that plenty of light trickled into the cave. And this was some sight! For the entire bottom was paved solid with White-Tip Sharks lying side by side in a dense packed, slowly undulating mass! As the cave ceiling was not all that high – maybe eight or ten feet – it meant we were gliding silently by just above them... At such times, you must remember the diver's first rule: you must always continue to inhale and exhale regularly and rhythmically to avoid problems and never, ever, ever "hold your breathe!" But we made it back out, and it is a sight I will always remember...

Now the limiting time on a given dive is when your air tank meter reaches the "red zone." This is telling you that at that point you have abut ten minutes (or whatever it is) of air left and it is time to make preparations for ascent. Air consumption below depends on many things, age, size of the person, exertion, any anxiety, etc. etc. – but someone will always be first in a group to reach the red zone. It was my turn today. So I got Moelle's attention and pointed to my meter. Time for me to go back under the boat's shadow on the surface and start my ascent. But he just shook his head and indicated we had more yet to explore up ahead. And he extended to me his octopus and sort of put his arm around my shoulders, buddy-style, and indicated we should swim on together. Now this was not exactly to my liking, and counter to the way we were trained to dive in US. The "octopus" you see is an "extra" hose and regulator – a sort of "spare" or emergency line if you will – that is now mostly standard on serious divers' equipment. It's express purpose is to be able to offer just that – emergency air to a fellow in need. It is of course, not to be used for routine dives where two divers are exhausting a tank together.

By the time I had resolved this, and conveyed my misgivings to Moelle, my air indeed had run out and now I HAD to stay on his octopus. And in short order, the musicians swam up and indicated they, too, were in their red zones now - or past them. So Moelle grouped us all once again on the bottom beneath the splashing silvery streaks far overhead which marked where the dive boat was bobbing on the surface of the lagoon. He checked the musicians again, and then gave each one the nod and thumbs up signal to begin his ascent and they disappeared upward in clouds of bubbles.

Now it was just he and I on the bottom and he gave me to understand that he would "check out" my apparatus first to make sure I was ready to ascend - then I could "blow and go." Hey! He was the Divemaster and French Polynesia is not Long Island Sound or Cozumel for sure, so you go with the flow. Right? So I just sort of balanced there in what we call "neutral buoyancy" where you sort of "lie" at a 45-degree angle to the bottom, your toes just touching, and rising and falling slowly with each inhale/exhale. And Moelle "checked my fittings." As I looked about, there was something on every hand! Clouds of bright reef fishes, tridachnids (more later) beneath me, large dark shapes swimming by in the gloom. I gazed in rapture.

Then suddenly , I thought, "What in hell is taking so long here?" and became conscious of persistent fiddling and adjusting of my weight belt catches and tank harness down my back and so on. "What the hell is ..." – and it suddenly hit me! All the innuendos with the cucumber, and the over-weening attention to details (for all of us!) topside, etc. etc. – this guy was a faggot and he was trying to grope me!

Jeezul Cristos! I'll slit his guzoogle, I will! And my hand had started for my dive knife, holstered on the inside of my right calf – which knife I had bought at a Miami dive store some time before. And I stopped midway: for I suddenly remembered that dive knife – and its outlandish shape (!), for the dive shop proprietor had talked me out of the big "shark stabber" bayonet I had been diving with heretofore – telling me that such an implement was all "macho shit" and highly impractical, and what I REALLY wanted on the bottom was this knife he had there: about half the length of my bayonet, and it terminated moreover in a BLUNT POINT – like a giant screwdriver bit (which it sort of was) – suitable for prying open oysters, and giant tridachnids and Spanish treasure chests, and stuff like that. And it had notches and cut-outs and other frammis-stuff on it – kind of like a Swiss Army Dive Knife, if you take my meaning... And suddenly I began to laugh – expelling part of my last breathe as I did so - as I thought of fact here I was lying on the bottom of an Indo-Pacific Island lagoon midst the sharks and scorpion fishes, at 80-feet, dependent on some queer's spare airline for my very breathe – and I was going to stab him with a blunt dive knife shaped like a giant Boy Scout can-opener or something...

With one roll – I shoved Monsieur Moelle to the side – his startled, worked-up gaze apparent behind his steamed -up dive mask – and kicked off for the surface.

I broke right beside the gunwale, and grabbed it and heaved myself in – to more craziness and upset: I had stuck my brand new pride-and-joy video cam onto a pile of towels right beneath the thwart I had been sitting on on our way out. This thwart was made of slats. And First Trumpet, who had preceded me, had hoisted himself in over the rail at the same spot, and now stood erect on the slats, draining saltwater down all over my $2000 camera stored beneath!

"Shit!"

I was some flustered, you might say. As I came in over the side, I was trying to decide whether I should knock the Gay Person from the Deeps in the head with his own boathook when first he broke, or should I just push this nerd of a musician over the side instead....

Molle slid in over the gunwale and immediately there was yet another hub-bub: it seemed we had all overstayed our time on the bottom and were now running dangerously out of time. The game plan had been when we surfaced for Molle to run us back across the lagoon direct to the Cruise ship, and we could enter at the waterline service door. That way we didn't have to go back to his dock or face the eighteen mile trip back over the island roads. But now Mr. Guitar contributed his two-bits to the commotion: it seems that when we came out, he had left his pants (and wallet!) back at Molle's place by mistake, so now we had to retrace our voyage and retrieve his trousers and all...

More Chinese Fire Drill.... Back across the lagoon we roared, and "Ms La Belle France" or whomever she was, greeted us dockside. She sidled up to me and took my arm...

"And how, Monsieur, deed you like the dive?," gazing all the while into my eyes... (pause)... And then, "And would you like to come back and dive weez us again?"

LOL! At this point, I thought what the hell: we might as well have a few laughs here, so I said in my best American naivete',

"Oh, yes Maa'm! Indeedy we would! It was just wonderful, it was." The musicians nodded ascent – Were they also "coming back again" to dive anew, I wondered ? Mon Dieu! We were become some kind of menage' a trois...

"Monsieurs," she said, "Come! I vill show you where you stay!"

(Huh? What about the need to get on the road here pronto?)

So we three following, nothing would do but what she took us off on a quickie "tour" of their exclusive dive facilities. Listen! You think these Florida crackers around here are into "laid back living" – you haven't seen anything till you see how it is when you "go native" in the South Pacific! She showed us one big room with about six or eight bamboo bunks built up against one side:

"Here is where you will stay," she said gaily. Then added, "I cannot take more than six or eight zee mens at a time you see..." (Indeed! I thought: this day was proving a revelation to me more ways than one....).

Anyhow, First Guitar retrieved his pants and wallet, we settled with the expressionless Divemaster, and once again we were bouncing back over the roads – hoping the Cruise ship would not leave without us...

We skidded to a stop at the foot of the gangplank and bade Adieu and all that stuff. Then I started up the gangplank, and I swear to God what follows now is true: There was Mill at the head of the way, watching for my return. "Hi!" she yelled. "Did you have a good day?"

And I stopped in mid-plank right at the top and turned and faced her: "Mill!", I said. "I have found what I want to do or be in Life at last!" She looked kinda quizzical.

"I am going to return here as soon as this cruise is over, and I am going to live forever in the South Pacific, with a bisexual French Divemaster and his voluptuous young consort, and two musicians from the Ship's band – the Trumpet Player (who now owes me a new video cam) and the Guitarist and and and... we are going to dine nightly on raw tuna which hangs in the trees, and and and... go diving every day in the lagoon and and and..."

She just looked at me and said, "You should hurry now and shower... I heard the gong for First Seating just a short while ago."

We had one more day in Moorea till the Ship sailed. So we both signed on to a Ship's Outing in a sort of flat-bottomed party boat with a canvas awning against the Tropic sun. It took a party of us out to some lagoon where we anchored and snorkeled (no scuba) for much of the day. This was a beautiful place, I remember: the giant volcanic cones inland, the tropic green foliage right down to the beaches – and the high-breaking plumes of wild surf far out where it broke on the fringing barrier-reef. Inside, in the lagoon, there was hardly a ripple on the surface. It was about 15 to 20 feet deep I would guess – just right for idle snorkeling, floating face down on the surface and examining the bottom down below at leisure. When you saw something, you just dipped under and kicked down to it...

What intrigued me most were the Tridacnids - the family of large clams which includes Hippops hippos, the "Giant Bear Paw" clam, oft portrayed in Hollywood Grade B's as trapping and "holding" hapless pearl divers and others – which is, of course, a total fabrication. Here on the bottom at Moorea, were thousands and thousands of smaller species of tridacnids – averaging I guess maybe about a foot long. These peculiar critters lie all but buried vertically in the sand, with just their shell parting line exposed at top. Surrounding it and often sort of extruded from same, are their mantles: the waving tissues that catch and strain out the plankton, and small organisms upon which they subsist. But the really striking thing about them is that , as we were told, the mantles are all charged with concentrated masses of different species of highly iridescent bacteria. As you swim over them down on the sometimes shaded bottom, these iridescent mantles shine forth in the gloom just like "lights" they are so intense... just like a lot of high-intensity fluroescent glowing tubes on the bottom, if you will. There are electric blue species, and intense emerald green ones, and glowing orange-colored mantles and all these different hues shine forth as you dive down amongst them. It is really bizarre – and quite awesome.

And so we spent the day, admiring the tridacnids, and several octopii, and other highly-evolved and specialized reef fishes adapted to this eco-zone.

Later that night, we sailed. For Hawaii.

Or sometimes "Christmas Island", again in deference to that intrepid explorer, Cook, who brought so much of the Pacific to the attention of English-speakers. Kiritimati is one of the so-called "Line Islands" – named for their bearing from or towards the Equator – techically, Kiritimati is a "Northen Line Island" - which you may note in your log if you like – and I believe it is 1400 miles from Pago Pago – but we are not going there anyway, so you can forget that datum.

Cook is recorded as having discovered same on Dec. 24th, 1777. It is one desolate looking place and its very interesting history (see link) sure bears this out – as every scam and every rascal who ever frequented these waters seems to have visited here. And then there are the multiple atom bomb tests of the 50's... Sigh. "Ship-wreck Bay" where we steamed by, is strewn with hulls dating back to nearly Cook's own time... I recall a lone fighter plane fuselage visible on shore – I think they said it crashed in WWII...

So once again we were steaming across the broad Pacific swells. A vast, watery waste whose very size dwarfs the mind. Sea and sky is mostly all there is. And now and then a group of porpoises suddenly will all rise into the air at the same instant – pinwheel in the sun - one distant jumping group – just visible way off the starboard quarter – and then no more. Leaves you sort of wondering if you really did see something or not... Afternoons I jogged my regular 3-mile run around the upper deck – all in the middle of the ocean!

Our first albatrosses showed up! What a thrill! Hour after hour, day after day following in our wake – skimming effortlessly just inches above the surface – up and down the huge swells. I held impromptu "lectures to any within earshot: most of the company being of the opinion that the albatrosses "roosted" at night somewhere out of sight in the superstructure, when no one was about. I told them the birds either soared – or now and then plopped down right in mid-ocean: they were not "roosters."

So our impromptu Nature Group decided to stay up one night, eschewing the gaming tables and other delights below decks, and see if we could "catch" an albatross "in derelictu," so to speak. This led to the discovery of the Southern Cross – duly pointed out – and the usual "Naysayers" who doubted all. I stuck steadily to my guns. In fact, this night, we were due to "Cross the Line" around midnite, so I thought it proper to introduce discussion of the celebrated Coriolis Effect into our chat. Man! What a mare's nest that brought on! I began with Foucault's Pendulum and a few pricked up their ears. Then followed on with why bullets and cannon shells don't travel in straight lines and so on. Then shifted into the water swirling down open drains – noting the actual reversal would likely not be visible "all at once" because local conditions in pipes and plumbing often obscured it, etc. etc. But the doubters now shifted to the other hand, and began to hold forth that the water MUST change instantly from swirling one way to swirling the other – IF there were any validity to Monsieur Coriolis' observations at all. Someone ordered a round of drinks as our little group sat pleasantly on deck 'neath the star canopy of the famed Southern Seas.

And then another round. Etc. As midnite approached, it was decided by all hands that nothing would do but what we go and actually observe some water going down a drain to settle this vexsome issue once for all. Yours truly to the rescue: I volunteered our cabin as an appropriate place – and with one accord the company rose and down below we trooped en masse.

Mill had actually retired early: I think even the gaming tables had failed to stir her that nite. So she was fast asleep when just at midnite, I, along with my newfound (drinking) buddies, popped in at the little cabin door. We trooped into the miniature bathroom – and soon water was gurgling merrily in the basin, the john was being flushed over and over, and someone had turned the shower on for good measure.

Mill sat bolt upright in her bunk. "Is everything okay?" she sleepily asked. "We are not sinking or anything are we?" Several strangers near at hand assurred her all was well – and that her husband was in the throng watching the water go down the drains in the bathroom. "Well, that is fine," she said. "My husband loves to show those things to people and talk about them. And all..." She trailed off sleepily and fell back at once. She always was a good sport, Mill was.

Well we crossed the Line in good standing, we did. Father Neptune in costume I think came round the tables the following day in the dining room. None were shaved, and none were dunked – primitive practices of ancient times. Also, the water test proved indecisive – someone who had wintered once in Australia came forth to say the water went down the "same ways always" – just like back home – and that was that, and "Scientists don't know everything anyhow do they", and stuff like that – so in the interest of shipboard amicability and all – we returned next day to our Albatross and frigate-bird-watching station topside. (Fortuantely, none were ever caught "a-roost" behind the lifeboats or anything, so I managed to maintain some of my cachet as Shipboard Naturalist...).

Some days later we raised Hawaii, and docked at Maui, is it? – the posh island with all the impossible toney hotels! You never saw the like! Trees growing in lobbies – fountains and waterfalls, too – soft lights at night – rooftops open to the stars: we took it all in. (We, of course, always slept aboard the Ship...). We went to the "Old Whaling Village." This was very interesting – a sort of transported reconstruction of an early New England whaler's town – as once stood here in the great days of the whaling industry when those doughty New England seafarers hunted Leviathan upon the "Great South Grounds."

It was here I heard a shoreside rumor of a dive expedition about to get underway for a day's dive offshore – and today – Hooray! – there had been early reports of giant sea turtles "out there" and these could be played with, and would take you on roller coaster dives and all if you held on to their shells.

I hastened back aboard for my gear and returned – but missed the damn dive boat by a hair! Didn't make it, and it has always been one of my regrets in Life! Dang! I woulda liked to ride one of them there turtles!

We then took a tour around the Island and to show the abrupt way the "climate" changes there: you literally go around a bend in the road (which skirts the sea) and as you pass from the "dry" side of the Island to the "wet" side (rain shadow) you go from almost xerytic conditions to a rainforest with waterfalls and all. Very interesting!

But mostly, in my book, Hawaii is much over-rated. Not the least unattractive feature in my mind was fact that later we sailed to Oahu – the Big Island – and docked in the harbor at Honolulu. But we were right offshore from a tank farm it looked like, and industrial buildings and maybe a rusting junkyard or two; out our porthole it looked for all the world like Jersey City! Yuk!

We took a trip up to the Volcano Fields and the great craters and that was interesting, but it was a rainy day and much of the crater was shrouded in fog and mist and obscured the view. But the big seismograph station there I found quite interesting and talking also to some of the personnel... (Long years before I had been "into" seismography and indeed, once did an article on How To Make Your Own Seismometer" for the giant newsstand mag, Popular Science...).

Another "crater" is the extinct one called The Punchbowl which names the National Military Cemetery of the Pacific. Thousands of U.S. Servicemen who died in the Pacific War are buried here... including, no less, Ernie Pyle the noted War Correspondent of that long gone day, who was killed by a Jap sniper's bullet. It is another solemn place, to be seen as such and visited as such. Here is why they are still "Japs" to me: the day we were there, the place was over-run with swarms of young newly-marrieds just arrived as tourists from Japan (this sort of mass-migration thing is bigtime way to go in their culture...). They and their cameras were all over the place. A group of them had the gall to climb up on top of one of our monuments there and do a little sort of hokey-pokey tapdance - while others down below photographed them. That wrapped it for me!

I went over and said (since the most of them spoke English) that I was planning a trip to their land - soon - and intended to visit Hiroshima. And while I was there I intended to seek out the brass gong marker or whatever it is that I have read is mounted at Ground Zero - and climb up on it - and dance a little dance while having my picture taken! No one said anything - not even one "Hah-So!" - they just sort of slid down and wandered off - and that is why they are still "Japs" to me...

And once we went out to the USS Arizona where she lies at Pearl – and this was a moving experience. I have elsewhere written of my experiences there and the hordes of Japaenese tourists underfoot...).

And the Black Pearl Bug had bitten once again, so nothing would do but one day we went all the way out to just across from Waikiki Beach –(just visible beyond is Diamond Head) and smoked out some jeweler who was supposed to have fine examples of pearls. Of course, he was Chinese (most of the merchants in the Pacific wherever you go, are Chinese). But Millie could haggle as well as the best of them, and since hagglers sort of have a noblesse' oblige' spirit amongst them, and do each other many courtesies, Papa San brought in his whole family to participate in the proceedings and pulled the front window shades down, and closed shop for the day (there weren't too many shoppers afoot anyhow). And they drank tea and brought out trays of stuff and Mill (who had her own jeweler's loupe – she was no amateur, believe me!) was engrossed in it all.

And once again I folded my arms and slept on the glass counter (we have seen this before you recall). When I woke, it was already dark, and I never got over the last 100 yards to Waikai Beach – would you believe it! LOL!

The following day or so we sailed for Los Angeles and home.

We docked in L.A. and by previous planning, picked up our Cady which we had had shipped across the country while we were out of it. The occasion was the retirement party of one of my only two best friends left inthis world: old "Skinhead" Shepherd, he of the cannon donation caper, now hanging up his spurs after a career as pilot for American Airlines. (My other buddy being "Iron Pony" La Jeunesse, and we have met him briefly before too, in the Mountainman link. Both these guys are old Mountainman buddies; indeed "Skinhead" is the one who got me into the dadgum, crimmnal pursuit in the first place - LOL! And both are now all but totally blind with macular degeneration and much restricted living...

Anyhow, "Skinhead" was living down at San Diego then, so we left the ship and drove on down the Coast Highway. Along the way we took in Hearst's Castle, which Mill had never seen - truly one of the wonders of the "American Scene." (And now that I think on it, we must have diverted north a ways out of our way to see it - or was this some other time? To tell the truth, when you don't put stuff down right at the time, "details" can get away from you in later years...).

Shep (Skinhead) lived near Old Town, which we "did", too - and this brought back memories of my even much earlier visits there with my (late) first wife, Jean, and all - and of "Father Junipero Serra's statue" on the grounds of his Mission there (the link relates an interestng fact about these multiple statues...) and how we back then had driven up and down the Coast visiting many of the old Missions ourselves - which we were both much interested in (historically, that is). (I even have a handful of small beads I once just picked up off newly spaded dirt around Father Serra's statue... early glass types - maybe which functioned as "Pater Noster" types for early parishioners there...). Who can say?

Shep, being Senior Pilot for the whole airline now on this the eve of his departure (that is how you work up to reitrement as a flyboy and are ushered out with a gala dinner and all - was the Star of the Evening and we sat on his righthand at the honored guests' table, and "Old Shep," one the tightest-buttoned-up and knot-hard dudes I ever knew (he was feared and respected by one all - and the stewardii trembled at his approach! LOL!) gave his "speech" and let it all hang out about passengers who carry guns on board, and simpering stewardesses (and bossy ones!) and why women shouldn't be in the flight crews anyhow, and on and on and it was a hoot! His compatriots assembled, rose at the end and gave him a rousing "three times three" - and little enough for a guy who had flown Mustangs and slithered bombs bombs sideways into mountain tunnels to blow up whole trainloads of Vietnamese soldliers... He finally returned to Iowa where he was born; sure would like to see him once again before we both go belly-up...

Then we drove back East again along I-10 - the more or less "modern" equivalent of "Route 66" the big east-west highway of the Texas Panhandle of my youth, along which we used to stand and wave at the Okies going by in their flivvers... And since we were already "thinking" of maybe retiring somewhere else than Florida, since neither of us were completely "sold" on the Sunshine State (to know it is to hate it - LOL! - and by soujourning there every year long before actual retirement, we had so-come to "know" it, you see...), we "checked out" some California properties, too and then some in Arizona, and again at Santa Fe, New Mexico (where I stood at Kit Carson's grave - a shrine to all us wannabe mountainman types, and was even offered a job as blacksmith at the reproduction forge there (I shoulda tuk it!). But Mill actually didn't like the earth colors and bright mud everywhere (it rained on us the whole time) and the Indians, to boot - so we kept on. We went through Amarillo, too, and I could show Mill where I had lived as a kid. We even visted Palo Duro Canyon, and true to form, my eyes teared up once more... Sigh.

It's tough to be from everywhere you see, and actually from nowhere...

I showed her where we used to ride our bikes out to the Canadian River (a good pull against the constant Plains Wind...). And an early cemetery on the Canadian: a stark, board tombstone recording only that, "Cowboy died of pox - thowd rope ovr boots and drug to this place."

Farther on Near Little Rock, AK we found a place we kinda liked but the first of a damnable pattern that dogs me yet, was beginning to emerge: always there seemed some "indefineable" (or outrageously defineable!) aspect to everywhere we looked such that we would "nix" it...).

Back once more in New England we settled into our regular lifestyle. I was increasingly active in the (serious) Mountainman movement and devoted much time and talent to participating in re-creation activities and in learning to make (and use!) many tools and guns and artifacts of the era. About this time, too, a local guy introduced me to HMS Rose re-creation down at Bridgeport, and I was soon "signed aboard" as a blackpowder cannoneer. We conducted many re-creation sea battles in the Sound off Bridgeport and further up the New England Coast. These were fun-filled and active days. Millie wrote her own ticket as to work (I was totally retired now) and our "gentleman's farm" prospered and flowered.

We threw many backyard parties and "cook-outs." We often barbecued whole pigs onrotating spits and would have 30,40, 50 or more guests up - family and friends - on weekends. One gala was my daughter's wedding - complete with candlelights floating on mock lily pads in the swimming pool! Some folks just know how to live, I guess... And so the years went by. But Mill was reading the travel brochures once again, and there was to be yet one more grand tour before life veered off on another tack and a Sea Change came over me...