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OYB presents Robb White!
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Here's an excerpt that I consider classic, worth
the price of admission alone, from the chapter called "The Reynolds"
on growing up along the Gulf Coast of Florida, where they had an old Reynolds
aluminum rowboat...
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The old Reynolds was only twelve feet long and built out of aluminum
so thick that it might as well have been lead. It took us all to get it
to the water, but then, after we clamped the motor on, like Where the
Wild Things Are, the wild rumpus began. We were a hard-charging little
crew. I was the oldest, so I was the boss. There were a variable number
of my cousins, both boys and girls, some almost babies, and my two sisters
and the girl (best friend of the oldest sister) who would wind up as my
wife. Altogether, the whole bunch of children at the coasthouse averaged
around seven or eight, and usually all of them wanted to go. As I said,
we were not supervised by our parents at all--didn't even have to come home
for meals, but if we did, there it was, if we could find it. We were even
exempt from evening muster and often stayed out all night rampaging up and
down the wild shore in that old Reynolds. When we ran out of gas, we just
rowed and towed. Five little boogers on the towline are just about equivalent
to five horsepower--better than that in the shallow water of the flats around
here.
It would be easy to pass judgment on our parents and say
that they were negligent. Of course, memory is selective, but I can't recall
any time when we were in any more danger than if we had been "properly"
supervised. Children who know that they are on their own are pretty cautious,
and there were so many of us that the chance of a little one drowning, unnoticed,
was pretty slim. Besides, around here, shallow water is more of a problem
than deep. As they say, "On the flats, a man would have to dig a hole
if he wanted to drown himself." We were always so busy going where
we needed to go that there was no fighting or meanness. All we wanted to
do was to facilitate the progress. Those grown folks going on with their
own doings weren't negligent, not at all. You know, taking the whole summer
off to go to the coast wasn't all that unusual in the Deep South back before
megalomania and AC. Corn has made roasting ears before June, so the farming
is over until fall. Besides, the sweat doesn't run into your eyes quite
as bad down where the sea breeze blows. The grown people mostly stayed in
the shade around the house but not us. We tried to wear out the water.
The whole Reynolds business took up several years and we
all grew up while it happened. Little girls, the tops of their bathing suits
hauled way down below their nipples (my skinny little wife-to-be, too) by
the hard charging, had to change their ways. The intensity of our progress
through the shallow water from one important destination to the other was
such that the little ones usually wound up naked. There was one very persistent
little fella. We tried to leave him at home because he was so slow, waddling
along behind, but just about the time we would be getting in the boat, here
he would come down the path from the house, hollering, "Wait the boat...
Wait the boat." When towing time came, he refused to be a non-participant
and just ride in the boat. We dragged him while he held on to the painter,
little naked body trailing along behind, diaper long gone, short legs working.
We did that so much with that little boy that he had calluses on his hands
before he was two, and because he always trailed along the same way on the
towline, he was darker on one side than the other, kind of like a flounder.
At least his bottom eye didn't drift around to the dark side. He still lives
around here. Says his whole life has gone downhill since those days.
As I said, these expeditions sometimes kept us away from
the house for a long time. Though we always took, at my mother's insistence,
five whole gallons of ice water in an old galvanized cooler with a ceramic
liner (a heavy thing), the food usually ran short. The deformities of our
civilized tastes disappeared in the face of plain starvation. We squatted
like varmints on oyster bars, silently at work with our screwdrivers. The
kid with the bathing suit loved the little oyster crabs and ate them raw
. . . just chewed them up whole, sand and all. We had to open oysters for
the little naked ones, but they didn't mind a little grit. We ate, immediately,
every scallop we found--mantle, viscera, eyes, and all (to me, even now
that my experience has broadened, there is no better snack). The whole time
we were moving, we caught crabs and towed them along loose in the bottom
of the boat, along with all the seashells that the little ones thought they
had to take home (there is a modern "shell midden" where we dragged
that old Reynolds up in the yard of that old house). When we got to a good
stopping place, we would dip up some sea water in a foot tub, build a fire
around it and boil all of those crabs. It was every man for himself when
they got red. Sometimes, somebody nice like my wife-to-be would pick out
some for the little naked ones, but usually, they did it for themselves.
The little ones ate so much shell that their excrement looked about like
that of coons or otters. One little four-toothed boy developed a strong
liking for the contents of the crop and stomach of the crabs--called it
"goody." If I had known then what I know now, I probably would
have stopped him. At least it didn't hurt him in the long run, and who was
I to decide what it takes to make the time that is the pinnacle of a man's
whole life?
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