Stories From Under A Bootheel (Rants, Laughs, and Tears)

Chapter 7 My Dad Part 5 Barracuda Resolve

 "You say you're from Memphis and you have a disease?" It was two obnoxious drunks at the table next to us. They began laughing at what they thought was a clever gibe at my dad's friend who was dining with us and who was just trying to make polite conversation when he told them we were from Memphis Tennessee, as Memphis was the only large city near where we actually were from.  

We were at a rather exclusive restaurant in the Bahamas. The two drunks looked rather well to do which just goes to show that wealth is no guarantee of polite behavior. I was curious to see what my father's response would be. My father came from a very well-bred family and always knew the proper way to behave. My father was also very clever and no stranger to verbal repartee. His friend was less adept, and a really nice guy; so, I expected my dad to come to his defense. My dad just nodded knowingly at his friend indicating they should ignore the drunks and not stoop to their level. I was disappointed that I wasn't going to experience my father's wit, but I realized the wisdom of not confronting strangers in an unfamiliar environment. Ignoring rudeness and stupidity is usually, the best course.

How did I end up in such a fancy restaurant in the Bahamas? My dad had been sent to Nassau to begin construction on a Holiday Inn resort on Paradise Island. He had brought his friend over from our home town to work for him as a foreman. I was there for a free two-week summer vacation, staying at my dad's apartment, spending the days at the beach, and living on Ritz crackers, Swiss cheese and mustard, this combination was a delicacy my dad had introduced me to. They were practically the only foods in the apartment. We normally did not dine out, but my dad's friend had just arrived; so, dinner that night was special and not my usual fare. It was probably paid for on an expense account.

Being left on my own during the day wasn't that bad. In fact, I had my own private beach just a short walk from the main public beach. My beach was currently private property owned by Holiday Inn and the small inlet it surrounded had not been properly dredged yet, had very little sand, was rather rocky, and still had various wildlife I was going to learn about the hard way which is how I learn best.

Still, it was my own private beach. The land for the hotel had not even been cleared yet. My dad and his foreman were off making arrangements to begin the clearing. The inlet was about fifty yards across. It extended from the beach about twenty or so yards to the rocky outcrops on either side that acted as natural breakers that sheltered the inlet from the five foot or more swells of the open Atlantic.

One morning I spotted a native Bahamian out swimming in the open ocean out beyond my breakers. Although the waves looked very daunting, I thought if he could do it, I could too.

I swam out to the breakers, through the narrow opening and into the ocean swells. I quickly realized that ocean swimming was harder than I had thought. I was definitely in over my head. Not literally of course, but close enough, that I'm thankful to be here to tell the tale. It took all my strength to get turned around and headed back. By the time I got back through the opening and into my little bay, I was completely exhausted. I wasn't sure I could even make the twenty yards across the bay and onto the beach. I remembered that to one side, there was a rock shelf about a foot or two under water that extended most of the way from the beach to the breaker on that side. If I could just make it to that shelf and climb up on it, I could crawl through the shallow water to the beach.

I swam to the shelf to find that the water above the shelf was too shallow for me to swim over it and that the shelf itself fell off sharply like a steep cliff into the deeper water I was swimming in. Somehow, I had to hold onto the cliff and climb onto the shelf while wearing swim fins. I was too tired to come up with another plan. There seemed to be lots of cracks and small crevices in the cliff face so thankfully gaining a handhold was relatively easy. Gaining a foothold was another matter. As I pressed my one fin against the side of the cliff, I felt a sharp unimaginable pain as a needle pierced through my heavy rubber swim fin and into the arch of my foot. Anyone familiar with the ocean creatures that inhabit such rock formations, will have already figured out I had been stuck by a sea urchin.

I bore through the pain, made it up onto the shelf and crawled on my hands and knees to the beach where I collapsed in agony and exhaustion. From then on, I decided to abandon my private beach and use the safer public beach instead.

The beachgoers from the cruise ships didn't hit the public beach until about ten in the morning. Before then, I pretty much had the public beach to myself. Unlike my beach, this one seemed to stretch for miles. It had loads of sand and sloped gradually into the more placid clear blue waters on this side of the island. I could wade for yards and yards enjoying the waist deep water without exhausting myself swimming in ocean swells or concerning myself with threats from sea creatures. Or so I thought...

One morning before the crowds arrived, I was wading along in the waist deep water about ten yards from shore, when to my delight I spotted a pair of tropical fish like I had never seen before. They were swimming side by side a half foot or so below the surface of the shallow water about ten feet away. Their skins glistened iridescently in the tropical sun. They were long, maybe two feet or so and sort of round like a snake or a gar. I thought if I was really careful, I could get close enough to grab one and fling it up onto the shore so I could show it to my dad at the end of the day.

I wasn't sure how well the fish would hold up. I finally decided to leave well enough alone. I headed off in one direction and they swam off in another. That evening I was telling one of the locals who was working for my dad about my encounter in hopes he could tell me what kind of fish they were.

"You were very lucky, man," he laughed. "Those were barracuda, and in waist deep water, they go straight for your balls!" Barracudas are perhaps the fiercest and most resolute of all fish when pursuing something. I was very thankful that for once the barracuda's resolve had failed. The man just kept laughing. My story had apparently made his day. It made me decide I was done with the ocean!

My dad cleared the land for several Holiday Inn resorts in the Caribbean, but when it came to the actual construction, he had a falling out with those in charge. He had done his research and insisted they could not put up a building over four stories on sand base without using pilings. They insisted that a new compaction technology would be sufficient and of course much cheaper. My dad said the technology wasn't proven especially in regions subject to hurricanes. When it came to construction, my dad's resolve was greater than a barracuda's. He refused to be a part of what could become a tragic engineering disaster. Needless to say, they found a less principled contractor to take over. I don't know if the Holiday Inn resorts ever got built. If it was, it has since been torn down. I've looked at recent maps of Paradise Island and it looks like the Atlantis resort now sits where my beach was. I suspect it was built on pilings.

When it came to engineering, my father was very firm in his principles, as was his father before him and I like to believe as am I. When I was very young, my father took me to show me things my grandfather had built, Shiloh National Military Park, Riverside Drive in Memphis, Highway 18 across northern Arkansas, the Marked Tree siphons for flood control considered to be a major engineering accomplishment of its time. All of these are still in use today. Doing the right thing is not always easy or profitable, but it is very satisfying.