BLITHERING, BUMBLING, AND RAMBLING #10
SANTA AFTER HOURS
When my kids were small, my brother-in-law ,Mark, offered to arrange for a Santa visit for my kids, at home. He had a friend who volunteered as Santa at the schools and city functions in Lincoln, and the guy said, sure. My kids were about 6 (Kari) and 2 (Erin) years old, and we thought it was a good idea to surprise them.
So, one night after we had finished decorating for Christmas, my brother-in-law, Santa, and Santa’s helper,(a guy named Billy who was his ride over) showed up on our doorstep. We told the kids we had spotted Santa coming up the driveway, and their eyes got real wide, and they were speechless.
As they entered the room, Mark introduced them. Santa slowly approached, Erin quickly moved behind Kari and hung onto her tightly. When he called them by name, Erin nodded, but never spoke. Kari whispered back softly, so Santa slowly knelt down and spoke gently back. He told them he had heard good things about them, they were on the good list, and he wished them a very Merry Christmas, having made the sleigh ride down just so he could meet them.
The kids were in awe. If I remember right, he gave them candy canes or something and told them to expect good things in their stockings Christmas morning. Mark explained that Santa and Billy had a long ride back to the North Pole, so he and Santa were gonna grab a quick drink, talk to the kids parents and be off. We took some pictures of Santa with the kids, and Mark headed into the kitchen.
As Debbie was telling the kids it’s time for bed, Mark handed Santa and Billy a cold beer. WHOA-THAT wasn’t in the script! We thanked the guy, told how special it was for the kids, talked with him for a few minutes, and then they left. Thankfully, they got out of there before the kids asked any tough questions, like, where exactly did you park the reindeer sleigh?
The kids went to bed that night and we could hear them talking back and forth, unable to sleep yet. Well, sure, they just met the big guy first hand. And since he’d given them the all clear on the naughty list, well, good times were coming. Expectations ran high.
While my wife and I were watching TV later that night, she said that we better have a talk with the kids in the morning. We don’t want them telling other kids Santa stopped off for a chat and a brewski at our house on the way back to the North Pole, she said. Hmmmmm, yeah. Could lead to a lot of questions. And if it got around the schoolyard there might just be some kids asking their parents if they could leave out some Bud Lite and cookies for the big guy filling their stockings.
We never did hear any feedback from the school or neighbors. And I always wondered if the kids just sort of ignored that part, or just assumed that sure he had a beer, but hey! The guy’s off the clock! This was a social call!
FLY THE FRIENDLY SKIES
Back in the mid 1970’s when I was in college, I had a Venezuelan roommate my freshman year. When Easter vacation came, he and the other foreign nationals on campus had nowhere to go. So I invited him to come home with me. My parents and friends found him interesting, and he was curious about all things Californian. So he told me, come Christmas break you can come to Venezuela and meet my family. Yeah, wow.
As it got closer to Christmas, he explained that all the Venezuelan students had a special rate on a charter plane, that, if I wanted, was available to me as well. After that, housing, food, and transport would all be covered by him and his family. I was 19 years old. The drinking age in Venezuela was 18. Tee hee heeeeee- no brainer!
I had never been out of the state in my life. As we were flying into Caracas airport, I was asking my roommate, Luis, what if they ask for my ID at the first bar we walk into, will they accept California ID? Do I need to show my passport? He laughed. You are a very tall guy, he said. Venezuelan’s aren’t that big. NO ONE will ask a big guy like you for ID.
As we got off the plane, which aside from me and about 5 other Americans, was filled with nothing but Venezuelan college students, I couldn’t help but notice that I was in fact head-and-shoulders-above almost all of them. Hmmmmm, OK then.
So. The next couple weeks were spent visiting bars, discos, attending a wedding of Luis’s brother, New Year’s Eve partying in Ciudad Bolivar, and ordering drinks wherever we went. It was, for a 19 year-old country boy from East Nicolaus, South American Heaven. Noooooobody asked me for ID. I don’t know why the thought ever came up.
And then………
We were back in the Caracas airport to catch our flight back to California. It was about 20 minutes past takeoff time. Then an announcement came over the loudspeaker telling us the flight would be delayed. Well, duhhhhhh.
The Venezulean students, figuring the delay could be quite awhile, decided to open up their carry on bags and start in on the provisions they had packed for the ride home. They ate their snack foods, and drank whatever beverage they had packed. The majority of them had packed Cacique Rum.
Luis, fantastic roommate that he was, offered me a drink from the bottle he had in his bag. Of course, I said, thinking this was just possibly the best Christmas break from college, ever. Half an hour later, the plane arrived on the tarmac outside. Everybody lined up for boarding and we headed outside to the ramp.
Jeeps with armed soldiers pulled up and blocked the ramp and the tarmac. Our line came to a stop, the soldiers started barking orders that Luis translated “turn around and head back”. No problem. Arguing with armed military in third world countries was not my idea of a good time. And just like in the movies, they never smiled, just shouted and pointed.
Announcements came over the loudspeaker that now the airport was on lockdown, because, waiiiitttt for it……. The VENEZUELAN PRESIDENT’S PLANE WAS LANDING. Ahhhhhhhhh. Thinking this was a very exciting moment I said “Wow” out loud. Thinking it WASN’T so exciting, the Venezuelan college students started muttering and grumbling that the Head Honcho’s plane was an irritating obstacle in their path. I noticed that they said it softly in Spanish, but much louder in English, probably because the soldiers were nearby, and as I said, not stimulating conversationalists.
Handbags started opening back up, and Cacique rum followed. We were backed up another 45 minutes as the president’s plane landed, taxied to the terminal, and all passengers and his entourage were escorted to his motorcade and out of the airport. Not knowing how long this would drag on, Luis wisely said we should hold off on further drinking until we were at least on board. I agreed. But all around us, the Cacique flowed, and the Spanish I was hearing was getting a little slurred.
We boarded the plane. The noise level was the equivalent of a downtown bar on Saturday night, with a band. The Venezuelans had been drinking for over two hours. And the ride was just starting.
An hour into the air, they announced they would no longer be serving alcohol on the plane. The passengers got quite rowdy, before and after the announcement. I had NEVER heard of that happening, and we had 8 more hours to go. Some heated arguments broke out, some pushing and shoving had to be broken up by the flight crew several times. In a one word description: tense.
I felt uneasy since I noticed only one other obvious American passenger, and my Spanish knowledge was limited. It was my first trip out of state, on a plane full of drunken south American college students, midway across the Caribbean. Sounds like the beginning of a disaster movie, right?
Three hours in, the heavier drinkers started to nod off. A calm started to take over. Luis decided we could have some more Cacique.
We clinked drinks and had our last rum over international waters. He was right, they don’t ask the tall Guys. When we got back I was telling my friends about Cacique rum. Let’s get some and try it, they said. We couldn’t. By the time the plane arrived on US soil there wasn’t a drop left on it.
When asked about what South America was like, I always said, It’s party city, and I never felt so tall in my life.
It wasn’t until 1983, that I got on another international flight, this time to London. As I was sitting down next to a guy from England who was going home, he asked me if it was my first flight. No, I replied , but it’s been 8 years. Pretty exciting going to the UK, he said.
‘Ooooohhhhh buddy, let me tell you about my last flight.
THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY
Several years back, I went on a fishing trip to Alaska with my wife’s 2 brothers. It was the first trip up there for all three of us, and we were there to catch fish for a solid week, and haul as much of it home as possible.
When we arrived at the fishing resort, on the Kenai River, we were given a quick tour of the facilities, then taken out to the river to fish. They took us out to the bank of the water, which was only about 100 yards from the cabins we were lodging in, handed us some fishing poles, and all the new arrivals, (about 8 other folks) and us formed a line along the edge and started casting for salmon. GREAT start.
We all had been provided waders and fly rods, and the guides were nice enough to bait our hooks most of the time. We waded into the water about knee deep and casted away. It was less than 5 minutes later the first person pulled in a nice silver salmon. Now, THIS was what we came for. It was exciting.
For the next hour, fish were getting hooked, and the majority of the time landed and caught, about every 5 minutes. My in-laws, Mark and Jack, each caught one, and hooked into more as time went by. All around me people were excitedly shouting “ Got one!” Or, “Need the net over here” and the guides would come over with the net and help you extract it from the water. Everyone, that is, but me.
Yeah, I watched literally everybody catch a fish and stockpile it on the bank, while I got just a couple tugs, and one brief jolt on the line that, for the 2.5 seconds it was on the line , was really exciting. The only fish I saw, were the others. Each time I got a tug or jolt, I never brought it back to the surface with anything but an empty hook.
It was getting close to dinner time and a few people wandered off to go eat. Mark and Jack came over to compare fish stats and gave me sympathetic looks and told me to hang in there. I finally hooked into a fish that I brought to the surface and jumped off my hook. Progress? Didn’t feel like it.
One of the guides came over and told me it was just a matter of time. He watched as I snagged one, briefly, and it escaped. He offered some advice. ‘Yank the pole way back, “ he said, “ to really set the hook’. He added that I should start backing up to dry land as I reeled in, to keep the tension on the line. Hmmm. Made sense, I guess. But I pointed out that by my usual standards, by the time I got out the words “get the net”, the fish was usually off the hook and 20 feet downstream.
“Don’t wait for the net”, he said “launch it toward shore”. Uhhh, how ‘s that? He tells me if I can’t pull it out with the pole because there’s too much slack in the line, keep moving on to land. But, if the fish cuts in towards you, and up to the surface, give the boot onto shore. Yes, he said kick it up onto the bank. Izzat right? Yes, he says give it “the boot”.
Ok, 10 minutes later, F-I-N-A-L-L-Y I hook into a fish, and this guy ain’t gonna come in quietly. He leaps out of the water hook in his mouth, I back up toward shore, pulling him towards me .So it surfaces a couple feet in front me, having done a zig zag cut down and under. I am caught off guard and realizing this means some slack is on the line, I don’t wanna be a slacker. So, I give it THE BOOT.
I make a sideways kick with my left foot towards the dirt, which is 5 feet away. I squibbed it, (yeah, that’s a word-work with me here!). The fish goes airborne, but at an angle towards a tree sticking out of the bank to my left. The trajectory of the fish took it too close to the tree, and the fish bonks into the tree, then at a downward angle falls to an extended tree root which it bounces upward from, and back towards the water.
Calmly, in a microsecond I realize I have to kick again, off-balance. CRAAAAPPP!!!
I turn right and lean into it, trying to bring my left foot in a roundhouse sweep sideways towards the bank. Sure, it’s hard to imagine, but I am trying to shift into a move that would be challenging to an acrobat half my age. Sounds desperate, uh huh, but remember, I was the only guy who didn’t have a fish yet.
My leg sweeps towards the fish, which, I should mention at this point, is a beautiful silver salmon, wriggling sideways in picturesque form, which I wish I had on video to show the Man vs. Fish classic confrontation. BUT….
The salmon does a sideways-pretzel-twister-backflip, almost like he (or she) knows my boot is launched. I miss, and slide off balance and backward into the Kenai river. Just to describe the sensation here- waders are filling with cold water, everything from the waist down is getting soaked, and somewhere downstream a relieved silver salmon is telling all his fish buddies at the river bottom bar how he outsmarted the doofus from the lower 48 who tried the old BOOT.
I struggled to shore, feeling ridiculous. I tossed my rod aside, told the guide to leave it there because I’d be right back. I sloshed over to my cabin, changed clothes,got new boots, and called my wife. Telling her I was the only one catchless at this point, but determined to get one before dinner so I would have a fish story at mealtime, she ever-so-politely told me that It sounded like my dip-in-the-river-after-the-one-that-got-away was probably gonna be the conversation starter later on anyway.
Yeaahhhhhhh, she was right. 15 minutes after I got back out there, I finally landed a fish, to the amusement of my brother-in-laws. The catch being not nearly as interesting as my boot adventure. They laughed as we had dinner, and told me repeatedly, to not listen to the guy who thought salmon were soccer balls, and that you shouldn’t fish with your feet. Point taken.
And if I ever get the chance to catch Salmon in Alaska again, I’ll check every one for boot prints. Just on the long shot chance that I’ll spot my boot mark and get to say, “Sooooo, ‘FLIPPER’, we meet again!”