The Blunt Pool - Decision at Whistler's Hill

I knew I could catch President Davis at lunch because his writeup in the school’s alumni bulletin mentioned that he enjoyed having lunch at home. So I found myself at the front door to a house almost as lavish as my grandparents’ home, and I knocked on the door. His assistant came to welcome me, and I let her know who I was, and I gave a brief description about the business I was tending to. She led me to Dr. Davis anyway.

A short, solidly built man, with a balding head and a poorly tended comb-over, Davis’s tenure at The Goode School had brought significant growth and recognition. Many generations of successful alumni tripped over themselves to support the school in its scholastic and sports endeavors. Davis and his wife were another hugely popular part of the islands, and as a team they were perhaps the most adept and cunning political machine the island would ever know. All their actions served one purpose, the betterment and supremacy of The Goode School over all schools in the islands. If you were the admissions director for any top 100 college, university or institute, and you couldn’t speak highly of the graduates of The Goode School, Peter and Maureen “Morty” Davis would take it as a personal affront. To this day, their presence looms large over the school’s lush green grounds.

I followed Davis’s assistant through the high ceilinged, mahogany floored halls of the presidential home, with its airy hallways and naturally lit rooms. I envisioned walking into a colonial style dining room replete with white linen and crystal, as I had so many times at my family home. So it came as a surprise that Dr. Davis was dining in his own kitchen, on a stool, eating a sandwich of his own making. His similarly brilliant and politically astute wife Morty was at his side, eating breakfast cereal from a bowl. They were both reviewing paperwork as they noshed, with bifocals low on each other’s noses. I waited in the hall as his assistant forewarned them of my arrival.

Introductions were unnecessary, as the good doctor and his wife recalled my face from my early days at school. His photographic memory, my family’s history with the islands, and The Goode School made for an easy greeting. There had also been several recent and spurious articles written about me by the local paper. Those articles, written by a band of gossip hounds, sycophants, and sweet talkers who were known to stretch the truth for column space, had done little but publicize the firm’s name. I have enjoyed myself earnestly and often. And whether I am judged correctly or in prejudice, I have learned that no one really knows, or for that matter should know, the whole truth. Any press is good press. And if anybody would know that, it was these two.

I thanked the Davises for their graciousness in taking my unannounced visit and explained the situation. As expected, they professed sincere concern at my description of the railroading I thought Mark Nicholson was being subjected to. They also appeared surprised when I told them who I believed was the real thief of Louise Sinclair’s stash to be, and acted as though they were otherwise oblivious to the situation. I knew better. If Peter Davis didn’t know what was going on in the lives of such notable and prominent students, Morty Davis did. Together, their fingers knew the very pulse of the school. Any incidents that drew the attention of any administrator, including Bill Constanopolis, were relayed to the president immediately. And they were dealt with similarly.

As they sat, I continued standing and rested my bum against the counter next to the double kitchen sink. We began talking about the school’s response to the issue and its ramifications to all involved. I reached for my Rothmanns, and the ever gracious Morty slipped a large crystal ashtray from one of the cabinets, placed it next to me and returned to her husband’s side. As I lit the cigarette, I let them know that on a community level, they had a great deal to think about. I was telling them something they obviously already knew, but they feigned concern. I took a large draw from my cigarette and began going over the situation as I saw it.

“Nearly all of Tinny Gleason’s family has gone to The Goode School. I went to the semis with his uncles Kenny and Bruce. They’re a Goode School legacy family. They’ve been reliable and generous donors. The brothers’ albums have sold well and they continue to.” I reached my smoke down to the crystal and flicked the ashes in the faceted oval while I watched both of them take in my performance. “I think it would be a hard pill for the family to swallow if there were any publicly revealed responses to Tinny’s transgressions.” I emphasized ‘publicly revealed’ by bobbing my head and making a small hand gesture as I said it. “Such information might certainly be a small blight on the Gleason reputation in the entertainment community.”

I cleared my throat quietly and took another drag, focusing my thoughts. “Mark Nicholson, on the other hand, is the son of a quiet, yet mildly successful professor at the university. He’s seen a lot of hardship over the last two years, as has his father Bill.” They both nodded in sad agreement, still nibbling at their food and occasionally taking sips of juice. I continued, “Albeit not a stellar student, and certainly not one of the The Goode School’s most shining examples,” I shrugged subtly and waving my hand slightly for effect, “he’s innocent, and needs to be in school.” In the slight pause I moved to the other side of the kitchen sink and continued assessing their reaction.

Both the Davises quickly darted glances towards the paperwork on the counter that I was getting closer to. I slowly rolled a look at a re-sealable manila inter-office envelope that was lying by the fridge next to the milk that sat out. On it were written destinations to offices around the campus. The firm uses the same type of envelope all the time. The top six destinations had been crossed out with indelible markers. The only plainly visible line read, “Dr. Davis/Disciplinary Committee.” The line above it, though, scribbled out ineffectually with a ballpoint pen, displayed the previous recipient. It read, “Bill Constanopolis.” I smiled as my mind followed the chain of delivery. I turned my head back to the Davises, who realized that the gig was up. I took the last long, luxurious drag off my Rothmann while smiling at the gift that fate had dropped on my lap.

As I lightly tapped the half smoked cigarette into the crystal, I began my summation with new confidence. My eyebrows rose, and I couldn’t help but smile as I began. “I suppose this brings us to the only student who actually admitted to a breach of the school rules.” I began to subtly bite my cheek to suppress smiling openly. “Marijuana possession is hardly a capitol offense, but it does buck The Goode School rules. Offenders are subject to immediate dismissal. We all know Ranier Sinclair has done well in hotels and other ventures around the islands. He continues to do great things for the island community, and our national pride as a whole.” I paused, half-formulating response, and half for effect, “We know that although Sinclair didn’t attend school here, that four of his kids, including Louise, are long-standing students. Several of which have been athletes of some note.”

I paused again and continued, “We also know that the school takes a very serious stance on the use and possession of drugs.” My mind raced to formulate a path of easy resolution. “If certain indiscretions were left unmentioned, and certain activities were strongly,” deep inhale for tension, “advised against in the future, I’d imagine a firm and generous donation to the sports center endowment would go a long way towards removing the bitter taste of youthful indiscretion.” I paused briefly to gain eye contact and judge their reaction. To hammer my point home, I offered an alternative course of action, one that wouldn’t read so well for the school in the black and white of the island’s gossip-filled press. “If the school did chose to pursue the path of investigation and subsequent disciplinary action, the public, as well as the press, would surely find out about this absurd caper,” slight pause, “and nobody would be well-served. Excepting, of course, the lawyers.” I smiled, leaned my bum against their counter and lit another smoke. I crossed my arms over my belly and warily prepared myself for their reaction.

Peter Davis took the bifocals off his nose and rested them in his hands as he crossed his arms on the table. He remained silent and craned his neck to over his shoulder to his wife and confidant. She looked at him and tipped her head to the side ever so slightly. He looked back to me with a concerned look and asked, “Can Morty and I have a moment alone in order to talk things over?”

“Surely!” I said, nodding my head and grabbing the ashtray on my way out to the hall. I didn’t have to wait long. I had always heard that they were a great team together, and they were. Efficient, wise and fair, they helped to provide rapid resolution to my case.

I left the president’s home on Whistler’s Hill with a handshake and the promise that as far as The Goode School was concerned, Mark Nicholson would return to school Monday morning as if nothing had happened. That response was good enough for me, and I believed that it would serve the Nicholsons similarly well. When I got back to the office, I had Rebecca make the call to Bill Nicholson. Hers was a better conversational voice for him, and I was leaving for the club anyway. She let me know later that night that he was ecstatic, and relieved to hear the good news. She later mentioned that he did have questions about the speed of the resolution. She told him that he didn’t need to know how such things worked out, just that they did. And that little bit of magic, well, that was my job.

Sometime later, months after the Nicholson check had been cashed, I noted while reading the morning paper on Rebecca’s porch that construction for the new Ranier S. Sinclair Sports Center was to break ground in a very public service. Oddly enough, The Goode School had been given an enormous, tax-deductible donation from the Sinclair Corporation as a display of unyielding support and appreciation for the school, its sports program and scholastic integrity. In an oddly similar story on the Arts and Entertainment page, the Gleason Brothers were holding an Goode School alumni fundraiser at the amphitheater to gather donations for the replacement of the now outdated and obsolescent G.S. Keates II pool. How serendipitous, I'll save the date.

And that’s what happened.

Sincerely,
Gordon S. “Stumpy” Keates III, Esquire

Thanks again to MANVIL for the opportuntiy to use the space.

The Blunt Pool - series V

For any school as organized and well laid out as The Goode School, if you want to find out what a kid looks like, you approach the librarians. And part of a librarian’s nature is to want to know things. This library was no exception. I was directed towards the office of the head librarian by her staff; and as I entered, I recalled another part of a librarian’s nature, to be helpful. When I asked the diminutive, skirt clad Ms. Chun what Woody Lynnfoote looked like, she not only had a picture of him on file, she had a suggestion as well. “Why don’t you see for yourself? He should be in study hall right now, and he adores history!” She absolutely lit up when she said that. It was the kind of bright cheerfulness I couldn’t recall having ever known from a librarian as a kid. Then again, wildly-colored polyester skirts hadn’t come on the market when I was a kid, and Ms. Chun’s garb looked like a fiery explosion in a crayon factory

We stepped out of her office, and she led me through the expanse of the entry toward the history shelves. As I followed behind her, I began to notice that her body changed as she came into view of all the kids. She seemed to stoop a little, her shoulders rounded. Her face soured, and her voice, light and airy as we chatted in the office, became sharp, crisp and demanding as she asked other students where Lynnfoote was. As we closed in on the lad’s location, I could see a mop of blonde hair behind a large book with a dark, embossed binding. The once airy Chun seemed to hiss at the boy. “Woody, this man is here to see you about last week’s detention.” He stood upright from the bench, put the book down, and addressed me formally with a handshake, which made me uncomfortable. He seemed to be addressing his prosecution, and that wasn’t why I was here.

I smiled and clasped my hands together, facing the boy while rolling back on my heels. I turned my head. “I’ll take it from here, Ms Chun. Thank you.”

“Oh, you’re welcome. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help,” she said, returning to the light and airy voice I knew from her office. She made her way back to her cube.

As she did, I turned to Woody Lynnfoote opening my palms. As an icebreaker I tossed up a grapefruit of a question: “Woody, I’m not here about detention really. I’m just curious. Why were you late to study hall last Tuesday?”

For a kid just dressed down by a sherbet-covered, schizophrenic troll while being questioned by a heavy-set, tall guy with tired eyes and a loose fitting collared shirt, Woody Lynnfoote wasted no time explaining his terms. “I don’t want to stay in the library. I’ll show you what happened Tuesday morning, but I don’t want to stay in the library.”

I straightened up a bit to reclaim adult stature and reviewed the kid’s blonde head, furrowed brow and concerned look. Apparently he knew something I wanted to know, or so he thought. “Okay, kid, let’s hear it,” I said, pointing a thumb over my shoulder towards the door. It seemed that I was almost more eager to leave the library than young Lynnfoote. It didn’t hurt that I had seen Ms. Chun’s metamorphosis from happy butterfly to steely-eyed, slouching dragon lady. He returned his book to the shelves as I explained to Ms. Chun’s assistants at the checkout that I needed to talk to the lad about his university scholarship. They bustled with excitement as they bought the lie, and we left for the top floor of the building.

As we walked up the wide steps to his locker on the top level of the building, I explained the situation with Mark Nicholson to Woody, and he listened attentively to how the game had played out so far. He let out a chuckle and interrupted when I got to the part about Louise Sinclair’s small amount of pot. “First off”, he said, with some conviction, “Mark didn’t take anything. He wasn’t near Louise’s locker that morning, but I do know who was.” He paused, seemingly for effect, and continued, “And I’m not so sure I’d consider it a small amount of pot. She had a foot long, four-inch wide, Hello Kitty pencil box jammed full of reefer as thick as my middle finger.” For presentation, the kid deserved an award. I stood there slack jawed and wide-eyed, mid step for a good few seconds. In my mind’s eye I imagined a moon-faced kitty festooned box of ganja in a Givenchy handbag.

“Bingo!” I thought. Now all I needed were details, and young Woody Lynnfoote, in his bright red Izod terrycloth shirt, corduroys and dock shoes might have they all locked away in his head.“Start from the beginning. Where did your day start, Woody?” I asked as we got to the top floor of the donut pile building.

He began as he was leaving homeroom late to attend study hall. I lit up a smoke and listened attentively. “I came around the corner late from Mr. Oldreg’s homeroom at about 8:35 and went straight to my locker, here.” At that, he pointed at one of a wall-full of maybe a hundred, foot tall by a foot wide brown cubes with identical black and white combination locks on them. He pointed to his locker on the middle level. “I noticed two guys looking into Louise Sinclair’s locker. The lock was broken, and they were going through her books and stuff.” As he pointed to where he said the other two boys were, sure enough, there was no lock on one of the bottom row lockers.

“The halls were deserted, like they are now, and both guys looked at me a little weird. One of them was Tinny Gleason. I know that, but he was with some other kid who doesn’t go here. They were kind of quiet for a while. Then Tinny asked if I wanted any reefer. He offered me a box of white things that looked like large cigarettes.” He paused briefly, “They were about as thick as my middle finger and about three inches long.” He paused for a second to recheck the diameter of his middle finger. “Yeah, about this wide.” I asked him to go on as he innocently showed me his finger. He shrugged as he continued. “I told them pot was bad for them, and took off to study hall knowing that I was late.”

He waited for a bit to continue, and I asked him if he was sure he knew the boys who had broken into the locker. “Yeah. Tinny Gleason owns one of those new walkmen. They’re pretty cool, but they’re expensive! His family is pretty famous for their island music. And my mum loves his uncle’s new album.” I decided that he knew the right Tinny Gleason. The Gleason Brother’s albums were well received locally, and young Tinny’s third oldest brother Colin had once hired the firm to get rid of a speeding ticket for him. The Gleasons were a large, well historied old-island entertainment family. As happens often with prominence, the new generation was a batch of rascals. I was surprised that nobody at the school had put two and two together. High roller families seem to roll off the straight path in the same circle. Just ask my folks.

I asked Woody to continue to retrace his steps towards study hall and we wandered the halls of the circular Rooke Hall chatting about school, sports and the surf. For a somewhat nondescript toe-headed boy, Woody had an affinity for the ocean, which is not surprising being that he lived on an island. He told me how he’d arrived late to study hall due to leaving homeroom late and fussing around with the Gleason boy and his un-named friend. We walked the circuitous route he took to avoid being caught by hall monitors. He also told about his disruptive behavior at study hall, which didn’t seem all that disruptive to me.

He then explained his trip to the principal’s office, which seemed like the culmination of the tale. “I signed in, went into the office, and Mr. Constanopolis was on the phone talking about the new sports center. I stood there until Mr Constanopolis told me to sit. Then I sat and waited until Louise Sinclair busted in with the clipboard in hand. She totally interrupted Mr. Constanopolis’s call, practically yelling that Mark Nicholson had stolen her dope.” He paused so I could take what he’d said in, which was good, because it was a lot to take in. ”Once Mr. Constanopolis heard what she said, I started to giggle, because it was crazy.” The young Lynnfoote looked at me with wide eyes, arms outstretched “I mean, who tells the principal their dope’s been stolen? It’s crazy!” Searching my face for a response other than my curious look, he continued, “So Mr. Constanopolis looks at me, then he looks at Louise, then he looks back at me, and he says on the phone ‘Peter, I think I’ve got a situation that might help. I’ll call you back.’ Then he tells me to go wait outside his door, and he tells Louise to sit down at his desk. Three minutes later Louise comes outside to wait with me. A bit later he called his secretary on the intercom and asked her to get Dr. Davis on the line for him.”

Young Woody went on for about three minutes more as he explained the rest of the morning’s events as he knew them, but my next two leads were set. If Constanopolis had been talking about the hypothetical new sports center with school president Peter Davis, then that was a lead, and a very good one. It also seemed like a visit to the Sinclair residence was a definite necessity as well.

“Am I going to be in any trouble?” he asked earnestly.

“I rather doubt that, but keep this to yourself.” I shrugged and smirked a little, “You know, you can tell your folks, but I think that’d just complicate things.” I handed him a ten spot, while reaching for my smokes. He peered at the money for a moment, and pocketed it hastily. “Take it easy Woody, and try to make study hall a less memorable event.”

I turned on a heel as the bell for lunch rang, and narrowly avoided a surge of 750 7^th and 8^th grade students as they bolted from the classrooms towards the cafeteria 700 yards across a grass covered field away. Woody Lynnfoote wandered slowly away from me amongst the rush until he took off to catch up with some friends and slowed when he caught them. He continued walking with them until I lost sight of him in the crowd. Constanopolis was right: He was a smart little bastard, and I almost bet he’d put as much together about the case as I had.

I didn’t want to have to deal with parking again, so I pulled a Rothmann and began my walk towards the house on the hill residence of Dr. Peter Davis, storied president of The Goode School, and quite possibly the future overseer of one of the finest high-school sports facilities in the nation.

I walked through the Alfred G. Neigh units, where grades one through four were taught, and kept looking for ashtrays. I eventually ended up snuffing my butt on a rock wall and throwing it in a toilet that looked to be used by Lilliputians. The small classrooms and curious layout almost got me lost, but I was finally able to regain my bearings as I came to an open roofed square near the grade school office. I continued through the maze of classrooms until I got to the bottom of Whistler’s Hill, base of the president’s sprawling home. I ascended the steep staircase slowly, feeling my face flush as I did. I should have driven.

Thanks again to the staff at MANVIL for letting me prattle on about this page in my firms history.

The Blunt Pool - series IV

The day after my meeting with the Nicholson boys, instead of heading to the office, I drove to The Goode School after breakfast. The landscape of tightly spaced, single wall constructed housing units with smaller yards and chain-linked driveways eventually gives way to the multi-level dwellings owned and reserved for the nearby national universities’ student housing. As you cross one very long block, the university housing comes to an abrupt stop, and all one can see from the road is a flora-covered wall interrupted intermittently by security entrances. Even today, The Goode School itself remains an enormous, and expanding compound surrounded by a stone wall draped with pretty but prickly plants that were chosen through no accident. Lush, green and beautiful to look at, but painful if approached without caution, the plants are a kind of natural concertina wire that blooms at night. Those plants do a lot to keep the uninitiated out, while allowing the students to escape with little hindrance.

As I turned the Rover towards the first entrance gate, I recalled my own frequent travails over that wall with any multitude of friends, including Gleise, Plipbst and Forsythe. We’d slip over the plants and huff it down to the bowling alley for fresh saimin noodles, a Coke and several rounds of ten pin between classes or instead of PE. My memories of the conservative-minded Goode School still intact, it confounded me why or how the administration could have become such a bunch of tight asses. It seemed absurd to me that after a little ado with a little pot, the Nicholsons should have to be hunting for the services of my firm. It was a heavyhanded response to a petty incident.

The reason I get stuck with cases this trivial and confounding is easy to understand. In a firm with 35 hard-driven corporate, maritime, and property lawyers doing casework that I still find dreadfully boring and tedious, it’s nice to be a legacy. My interest wanes easily, I can’t stand minutiae, and tedium gets in the way of living. Small cases are entertaining to me, and something long and drawn out rapidly becomes a burden I’m not interested in pursuing. I prefer my free time living by the often-misguided intentions that I have always held as a sacred rite. My liquor cabinet appears, often enough, to runneth over with libations that I have called as my sword and cipher. That, and for some reason, sometimes I get pretty lucky.

After finally finding public parking near the administration office, I wandered my way around the scenic campus. It had a multitude of beautiful grass fields spotted with large trees and pruned hedges, elaborate swing sets, battered soccer goals, basketball courts with crisp white nets on all hoops. Well-kept buildings edged the fields on all sides, and I walked and walked until I found the building Mark Nicholson told me to look for, Rooke Hall. A recent addition, it was supposedly shaped like a volcano to represent the ever-expanding mass of the school youth’s knowledge. Zeitgeist aside, it looked more like four crudely stacked old-fashioned donuts.

The building was awash in every shape, color and form of kid imaginable when I arrived. There were hundreds of them wandering the halls, chatting with friends, comparing notes, and generally being 7^th and 8^th graders. When the bell rang, though, the kids took off like they were rabid dogs roaming the halls. I looked at my Submariner. It was five ‘till eleven. Occasionally, a kid would sprint from one room to another; but at eleven sharp, the second bell went off, and the only movements visible were made by teachers and hall monitors.

Without the deluge of kids filling the halls, the principal’s office was easy to find. I walked through the glass doors and into the reception area with offices on either side of the greeting area. After asking for Bill Constanopolis, dean of students for the 7^th and 8^th grade, I sat, per his secretary’s request, just outside the dean’s office. I couldn’t help but feel empathy for Mark Nicholson as I lowered myself into the chair. It had been 35 years since I last sat waiting to see a principal at The Goode School. The thought was not a happy reminiscence. It meant I’d been caught in the midst of something, again. And who wants to remember that?

At about 5’10”, fit for his age, with a Brylcreem-wetted military haircut and a pronounced jawline, Bill Constanopolis might have made a foreboding image of authority figure to gangly Mark Nicholson. His gingham shirt, brown polyester pants and cheap loafers lost their effect on me, as I stand four inches taller and at least 70 pounds heavier. He shook hands well, was courteous and helpful in recounting briefly some of the details of the incident. As I followed him towards his office, he reached for a clipboard that was hanging by his door. He picked it up, turned to hand it to me, but he stopped as I reached to grasp the board. He smiled to himself, shaking his head, “Sorry, force of habit,” and he put the clipboard back on the hook by his door. It said ‘visitors log’ on it. He seemed to keep a pretty tight ship.

According to his logs, an apparent carryover from his days in the service, at 11:45 on a Tuesday the 16^th Louise Sinclair entered his office and explained to him that Mark Nicholson had stolen her marijuana cigarettes. His notes stated further that Nicholson was summarily removed from the cafeteria and assessed of the situation and its scholastic ramifications. Mark’s father had been called, and he removed his son from campus before the lunch break finished at one o’clock. I’d met with the Nicholsons at two that afternoon.

“What happened to Louise Sinclair? Was she disciplined similarly?” I asked, wryly smiling at the audacity of bringing any amount of pot on campus in the current political climate. “Oh, yes, she’s on administrative leave as well, until this is sorted out.” He nodded, adding quickly, “ She left at the end of the school day on Tuesday and has been gone ever since.” I appreciated his candor, and figured that’s how he saw it. What Constanopolis didn’t know is that the Sinclair Corporation had helped bankroll a film set to open in LA this very evening, the 18^th. According to neighbors of the family, whom Rebecca had talked to late last night, the producer, Gerald Sachs, had personally asked the Sinclairs to be at the Hollywood premier of “Kerrigan’s Wake,” and the entire family had been off island since the morning of the 17^th. Constanopolis didn’t need to know this, and Sinclair’s staff had quietly left it out.

Still curious about the fairness of being subject to the administration’s persecution, I asked, “Is the punishment for mere possession as severe as the punishment for Mark Nicholson?” I leaned back and reached for the pack of Rothmanns in my chest pocket so I could judge his response from behind a plume of seemingly uncaring objectivity. As I slid my smoke out and reached for my Zippo, Constanopolis was already lighting his Players and finishing with the flourish of a quick flick to extinguish his Ronson. Smoke escaped from his lips as he began to speak, as if he were trying to spit the answer out in Indian signals. “The school looks at theft as more of a damnable offense than possession. The actions taken by Mark were--”

“Not proven, just accused,” I interjected.

He leaned his head to the side, took another drag and exhaled. “The two of them were an item earlier this term; although apparently not anymore. And she thinks it was him. As you know, Ranier Sinclair is her father, and let’s just say Mark’s not coming from a position of sainthood.”

“Or standing” I thought to myself.

I knew what Constanopolis was getting at, but he wasn’t making progress swaying my opinion that young Mark was being railroaded. I continued looking around his office as he kept talking. I needed to find a witness who could provide a simple, reasonable alibi for Mark Nicholson. I remembered the sign-in sheet by the principal’s office.

After some time letting my mind race around his sparsely furnished office, I recognized that Constanopolis was about to finish his rambling about the relationship of the Sinclair girl and Mark Nicholson. I feigned attention until he’d finished, dumped my butt in his “Guam is Good” ashtray, shook his hand and asked if I could get a copy of his office registry for the morning of the 16^th. He gladly obliged, stating from memory that the only kid he’d seen that morning prior to Ms. Sinclair was a quiet, unremarkable 8^th grader named Woody Lynnfoote. As he recalled the kid, something in Constanopolis’s look caught my eye. I’d seen that look before, in both my exes’ faces, and on the faces of some of my former clients. It was the look of someone who realized that they had said more than they’d needed to. Constanopolis had apparently just been too smart for his own good.

He turned on his heel crisply to return to the confines of his office, while dredging his pack of Players from his pants pockets en route. As he left, I asked Constanopolis about Lynnefoote. He turned his head and blurted, “That boy’s got a good brain, but he never applies himself. This was his first visit to my office, ever.” He continued to the comfort of his office. and the door slowly shut behind him. It clicked like it had been pressed firmly; not a slam, but a focused, concentrated display of controlled force. According to the log, the Lynnfoote kid signed in a mere three minutes before the harried signature of Louise Sinclair. I’d need to talk to him; and if the schedules were right, he’d be heading to lunch soon. I intended to buy him his overcooked teri-chicken sandwich, but first I had to figure out what he looked like.

My client MANVIL lets me use this site to further my own ambitions and hair brained pursuits. Check them out, they're good people.

The Blunt Pool - series III

Instant messaging in 1979 would have meant I was in the office, within earshot of Rebecca at the time of Nicholson’s frantic call. I’ve never lived comfortably with a schedule, so I wasn’t there. I prefer my mornings to begin when I say they begin. And in my line of work, for what I do and how I perform best, I try not to plan that far ahead. Within an hour or so of the Nicholsons’ call, Rebecca was able to chase me down to the Belbrae Terrace enjoying a chicken liver omelet, some refreshments and a coffee while reading the dailies. Roberto was kind enough to stretch the phone out to me as I knocked off the last of my second bloody and my third Rothmann. How she managed to find me with such ease after checking my several other usual morning haunts still strikes me as mystical and somewhat unearthly. I think her ability to foretell my actions is what made it so easy for me to make Rebecca Mrs. Keates IV, but that’s another tale for another time. All I knew was that I had a client meeting in several hours, and a very brief rundown of the situation at hand. I've already told you how that meeting worked out, what I missed was the preamble.

My father was a brilliant lawyer, but an even more adventurous businessman. He made his money in condoms in the late ‘40s as the baby boom was breaking into full stride. For pennies on the dollar his seemingly absurd and expensive purchases of factories in post-war Asia began making money to the extent that he was able to step away from my great-grandfather’s law firm. He and my mother left the family compound by the beach where I live now, and live very comfortably in the lush valley behind the Goode School.

The place in the valley was miles away from the riffraff of the nouveau riche hotel magnates, advertising reps, insurance men and international pornographers; so most of my parents’ brood of seven sporting, handsome children grew and moved on to greater things. Like light off the sparkle of their relationship reflected over seven continents, my older brothers and two very strong-willed sisters rapidly spread the globe over. Being last in line and far from interested in stirring the pot, I chose to get an education at a lesser school while not leaving the confines of the commonwealth’s protective influence. The law school by the Charles was not a big stretch for me, as I was a fourth generation, continuing legacy, but it was boring, and hot, and their sailing team was coached by an a-hole. I will say though, that they can drink there. They can drink like professionals. Like gentlemen. That’s where I learned, and I currently consider myself somewhat adept at it.

Rebecca’s sensible planning allowed me to make it from breakfast at the Terrace to the office after a quick chat with some of the old boys who were on the administrative board of The Goode School. I found Ben Forsythe, ‘Hotfoot’ Gleise, Jordie Plibpst and some mustachioed pommie bastard on the clay courts en route to the parking lot. Sun-browned, half nude and caked in sweaty dust, Forsythe and Plibpst were more than happy to take time out from their 'friendly' round to chat. By the looks of it, Gleise and the Brit were killing them.

Amid glasses of water, Forsythe and Plibpst stressed rather vehemently that the school regs looked unfavorably upon any drug use on campus. They assured me, with crossed fingers, that their kids surely wouldn’t know of such nefarious activities. A Sandhurst grad, intense, tall and with a shot of grey at his temples, Gleise seemed to break into a steely-eyed, cold sweat at the mere mention of drugs and booze on campus. He’d apparently forgotten the youth he’d shared with us entirely. Forsythe and Plibpst sort of held their grit-covered hands in the sky as a sign of admonition to a deity who wasn’t watching. It seemed ironic to me that the book-read scholar Nicholson would have his kid judged by the peers of the effete local social elite and an unsupported, sweaty junta.

I bid my old chums adieu, and wiped the clay off my loafers before trotting to the Rover, mindful of the time. I drove home, left the truck in the portico, kicked the morning’s paper through the front door, grabbed a shower, shaved, and dressed to be presentable. Opening the garage with the wall switch, I hopped in the Mercedes for the run back downtown, leaving a somewhat disconcerting plume of blue smoke behind. It took twenty minutes to get through island traffic, around the park and into the heart of downtown. Even then, after the lunch rush hour, things seemed to be busier than usual downtown.

I needed leads to build Nicholson’s defense for the board of The Goode School disciplinary committee, and Plibpst and Forsythe provided them easily. The disciplinary committee was a tripartite blend of arrogant narcissists with too much time on their hands, well meaning but easily swayed PTA mothers, and the old island guard I knew well, but as a childless bachelor could never be a part of. Thankfully, I could count on Plibpst and Forsythe to stall the hearing for a few days as they had ‘previous engagements’ which would take them off island for a few days. They’d be hunting wild turkeys at “Tats” Taylor’s estate, as they had every year since our freshman year. If Tats’ wife weren’t still pissed off about Mrs. Keates III and I, I’d probably be joining them.

Again, I give my thanks to MANVIL for the opportunity to press this cathartic tripe from my memory.

The Blunt Pool - series II

Bill Nicholson sat uneasily; distracted in a manner that was befitting a scholar in a bind. He surveyed my office wall hangings, the diplomas, the expensive artworks that my exes had purchased at charity auctions. His eyes roved over cabinets, curios and hardwood bowls won years ago when I gave a bigger shit about cricket, rugby and competitive sailing. We all just sat there; me in my chair surveying them, they in their's surveying my stuff. Not a word was spoken. I enjoyed a nice draw off the Rothmann as I sat surveying at them, my eyes darting over the averted eyes of them both as they searched for something other than the subject at hand.

As I exhaled through the smoke, I spoke first and bluntly, “Bill, can you step outside and let me talk to Mark in order to out what the hell is going on?” Wide-eyed, Bill Nicholson got up quickly; seemingly glad to be verbally ushered out of the room, relieved to be recused of his responsibilities to his son. As the door slowly closed behind professor Nicholson, I heard Rebecca begin to chat him up about the weather and billing information. ‘Good girl,’ I thought, ‘let those sweater covered C-cups tame that confounded beast.’

It was only when the door closed solidly and the pin clicked completely shut that Mark Nicholson exhaled deeply and leaned back in his seat. Brushing his mop from his face, he said, in a serious, half pleading tone, “I didn’t do anything to Louise Sinclair’s weed. I was at P.E. all morning, and then I had to go to study hall. I didn’t do anything! I swear it on my mum’s grave.” His eyes welled and he dropped his hands to his lap. He looked straight towards the cream-carpeted floor with a still shaking head. I leaned back in my chair to gain perspective.

I hadn't asked him anything about anything, much less anything about Louise Sinclair's marijuana. He volunteered names and alibis. How tough could this be? I thought about the cast as I knew it.

I knew the Sinclairs, and a little bit about their daughter Louise. Ranier Sinclair was one of the island hotel magnates my mum couldn’t stand. He had a Midas-like touch for hotels and their placement that the visiting Japanese tourists loved and paid well for. His successful ventures speckled the islands like paisley on a Boston lawyer’s tie. Sinclair’s gambles brought him vast fortunes; and as such, he was well liked by all those he knew. He was active in eleemosynary pursuits, gave often and richly, and it seemed his second marriage was more a profile in successful teamwork than the tentative and faithless grab for wealth. Like several I’d known.

In all, Ranier Sinclair was a great asset to the community in which he lived. His step-daughter, Louise, was a 16-year-old party hound with a doting, but loving mother, and a step-father who could, and would, buy her out of every youthful transgression she’d ever face in life. After considering the situation, and discussing a bit more of the tale with Mark Nicholson over another Rothmann, I figured that the lad’s involvement in this affair was non-existent. To cover my bases, I thought I’d pay a visit to the Sinclair estate and perhaps to Ranier Sinclair’s corporate office. In a small community it’s always nice to flex the threat of concerned curiosity.

Young Nicholson and I talked more about the supposed theft of Louise Sinclair’s marijuana stash. And although I thought the school’s current policies swayed a bit to the right of national socialists, I didn’t think they’d go as far as to make something up out of the blue to sack a kid’s scholastic career. I had an idea what Mark was going through. Not the longhaired, disenfranchised and skinny part, but having been a fairly studied lagabout at The Goode School myself, I felt a kind of kinship with him. He was a kid who didn’t stick out, pro or con, and he was being cornered by an administration that preferred to label him early and harshly, rather that really learn who he was. I could empathize.

From a business standpoint, though, kinship and empathy doesn’t make a case work. A lawyer can like a losing client all he wants and never take his case for any multitude of reasons. One thing I did know about Mark Nicholson was that his mum had been dead since New Year’s Eve two years prior due to an asthma attack brought on by firework smoke. To me, his oath on his still freshly lost mum’s name wasn’t to be taken lightly.

Through the coconut wireless, I also knew that old Doc Nicholson had just done very well negotiating a deal to sell a Perth golf course to a Japanese consortium. Rebecca had checked Bill Nicholson’s finances and showed me his statement on a slip of paper. It looked for all the world like a local phone number. In a rare cooperative effort, my heart and my wallet wanted the case. I decided to take it.

The button on the squawk box clicked loudly, and I asked Rebecca to show Bill Nicholson back in. Moments later he entered my office somewhat sheepishly, realizing that he’d left in a hurried manner. I addressed him directly, occasionally pointing at his boy with the two fingers clenching the smoking Rothmann. “Bill, I don’t think Mark’s done anything,” I said, leaning both my hands on each other making a lazy, inverted ‘v’ on my desk. Nicholson looked awkwardly at the boy, almost apologetically.

Raising my eyebrows to show an air of uncaring I continued, “I’ll take Mark’s case, and I’ll straighten this out with The Goode School. All said, Mark’s gonna stay in the school. Your name’ll be kept out of the papers. Nothing will come of anything.” With a mild look of skepticism, Bill Nicholson looked to me and thought for a moment. He too raised an eyebrow and looked at his son, who was now looking a lot less frightful and a little more relaxed. Nicholson senior blurted while nodding his head, “Whatever you say, Mr. Keates,” followed by words I always have a laugh at when I hear them: “We trust you.”

“Not implicitly, I hope. I like my clients smart,” I replied, smiling wryly while snuffing my cigarette. We grinned to each other a little, the first smiles from either Nicholson I’d seen all day. Mark looked at us like we were quite possibly crackers.

As I lead them to the door, the mood appeared to lighten up between father and son. I was shaking Mark’s hand as I told both he and his father, “I’ll be contacting you soon to see what other information I can learn from you about this situation, but at this point I think I have enough to go on.” With that, they turned, waved a conciliatory goodbye to Rebecca and wandered down the hallway past the regular staff lawyers’ offices and through the lobby, searching all the while through their pockets for the parking voucher Rebecca had given them earlier. Academics, who can stand them, unless they've got deep pockets.

I'll post more later when my client at MANVIL can deal with it. Next up, the investigation begins with drinks.

The Blunt Pool

As I slipped under the awning bearing my great grandfather’s name, dressed in local business formal, an Aloha shirt and khakis, I smiled as Rebecca met me in the expanse of the greeting area. It’s easy for me to recall my father meeting his secretary Corallee the exact same way, all smiles and warmth. Except I rather doubt dad was screwing Corallee. She was sixty at the time. A post-war battle-axe, and built like a modern parking meter. Weird angles and a curiously flat head. She was, however, very efficient, and as kind and supportive to the entire family as any person I’ve ever known, including my ex-wives Mrs. Keates II and III. When dad left the firm, Corallee left with him. According to her Christmas cards, she’s now living quite comfortably in a retirement home in the state of Washington on the US mainland. Apparently she’s taken a lover, but I digress.

I chose to follow my father in this profession on account of my sharp wit, practical mind and lack of drive. It didn’t hurt that my last name is above the office door. My great-grandfather’s firm has had an office in these islands since before this chain was even a protectorate. His arrival to these balmy, palm-laced shores as the child of a missionary family predates the colonization of the islands. I often wonder if he’d recognize its current harbors brimming with gunboats and installations of well-dressed, well-armed, yet courteous troops, all lying in wait for an insurrection that the native islanders have grown too complacent and racially diverse to put into play.

Rebecca bought me a few minutes to sit, review her phone notes and find my ground as she got both Mr. Nicholson and his decidedly mop-headed boy a water and a parking voucher. Upon my arrival she’d also given me a tape to listen to. It was this morning’s recorded conversation with Doc Nicholson taken over the V-REC the firm had installed after the Paniolo Pines money mismanagement case. For a scholar of finances, the mild, bespectacled Bill Nicholson had a mouth on him like an enraged barrister. I listened to his clamor on a headset. I could hear Rebecca trying to guide his derailed train of conversation back on track. His rampant curse ladenned, stuttered and slurred diatribes against the school and the constant belittling of his son did little to inspire me to help him. Despite this, I eventually gave Rebecca the green light to let the two of them in.

The two Nicholsons entered the office quietly; the anxiety and anger of the long 15-minute drive of shamed arguing from their valley home to the office still lingered between the two of them. Young Mark Nicholson’s eyes were red and moist from rubbing and emotion. Both looked completely fatigued. They were frazzled to the point where comprehension was losing ground to either complete rage or, in Mark’s case, near exhaustion due to fear. I looked at the lad sitting rigidly upright across from me while quietly reaching into my desk for the pack of Rothmann’s I’d borrowed off Rebecca’s fridge. As I went to light up, Mark Nicholson’s eyes followed my hands. He didn’t fidget. He didn’t pose. He just sat as a witness to something out of his control. His brown Hang Ten tee hung from his snot and saline covered shoulders. The short sleeves stretched from use as a tissue. The shirt looked like a brown cotton sack on a scarecrow. He watched my fingers tap the Rothmann on my inkpad and then roll over the Zippo.

Details of this new case were blurred at first, but, apparently, the heat from the school administration was on young master Nicholson, and the school wanted blood for the wellbeing of their donors and reputation. There was mention of cannabis, the well-known ‘gateway’ drug, and the school just couldn’t be party to such things. The snips for cutting mediocre grapes out of The Goode School vineyard was being sharpened, and Mark Nicholson’s scholastic standing, as meager as it was, was on the block.

Bill Nicholson was a tenured professor of international banking at the university, and he was frantic when my secretary Rebecca had taken his call. He was circling the wagons in order to ensure that nobody got wind of the situation. He wanted this issue resolved as quickly and painlessly as possible, and he was doing his utmost to ensure that his scrawny son didn’t end up in a public school amongst the GP.

The islands were renowned for few things beyond beautiful, coral white beaches, good surfing, sugar cane production and unspoken racial tension. The public schools were a sad display of the populous’ despair over the country’s inability to provide for its people. Mark Nicholson’s release into this despair would surely drop him from the ranks of his well-heeled peers forever, and with him in this fall would be his father’s reputation at the commonwealth’s university. With little effort, and in her skilled, professional manner, Rebecca was able to get the very excited Mr. Nicholson calmed down by the time she had set up my appointment.

Coming up... the crime explained.

Many thanks to my client John Swanson at MANVIL, who allows me to use this space in order to lance my soul's blisters of the injustices I have seen.

Ask a silly question....

There is a person I think we all know. He or she is the one with the most toys in our cadre of friends, neighbors and/or countrymen. This person, usually on the cutting edge of the tool game,  is the one we can be sure to turn to as we look to for a 'real-time' review of something. 

"The new electronic gizmo? Oh, **** knows it well, but he went with the other brand because it interfaces better, has a longer battery life and looks better."

"The new Bosch/Craftsman/Makita/DeWalt/Milwaukee/whoever tool for ripping out floors under cabinets? ****** knows the one, and she knows how it compares to the competition. She bought brand X months ago and loves it."

"You should ask ***** or **** about the new Abu Garcia steel head reels, they swear by them."

These folks have a willingness to explore things that otherwise would be a bit out of the common realm of curiosity. They're just a little more refined in their purchases. They'll stretch the boundaries of sensibility to be the lead resource in their lifework/hobby's field. If we ever have questions. They're more than happy to help, and for that we should be eminently grateful. They researched all the cool stuff so we could follow them and look good.  They have the knowledge and skill set to find exactly the right tool for the puzzle at hand. 

Occasionally, though, there are other near perfect fits that aren't quite in the game book but are still completely viable. 

My friend Tad and his bride Leslie held their reception party at a golf course. I'll take this time to add that it is a very pretty golf course that my buddy Tony and I had never spent any time on and we were interested in seeing it all. As part of the deal Tad and Leslie had with the club, the golfers finished up around three PM and were supposed to have cleared out before five just as the reception was coming into full swing. Suffice it to say that there were some stragglers coming in late, and apparently the golf cart staff was very protective of all of their carts. As the last duffers left the course I watched the cart guys grab all the keys from the carts and lock them in an overnight safe before they ran past the reception to their cars.

A bit chagrined at the turn of events with the cart staff, my buddy Tony and I sat down in the first EZ-Go we came across. With beers in hand we began to discuss golf cart production concepts to wrap our heads around the situation. We figured that if a company makes golf carts, it would be almost impossible for that company to also manufacture the golf cart wheels and tires, unless it was a huge company. These carts weren't made by a huge manufacturer like GE, I think they were Hungarian EZ-Go knock-offs. In that line of production thought, the golf cart manufacturer would also have to sublet the manufacturing of ignition locks to another company. If the ignition lock were sublet, then chances are, they'd make only one style of key. Between the two of us, we had ten ignition keys and ten more house keys. (Tony was a bit of a car farmer at the time, and I was driving company trucks for work.) We tried them all and none worked.

 (Deductive reasoning - 0 / golf carts - 1.)

 It looked like it would take the perfect tool for the job, and as fate would have it, I already had the perfect tool. I didn't have to turn to any of my good friends who's tools I have used and enjoyed over the years for the production of MANVIL's cards

I took the tiny Swiss Army knife my dad gave me, and jammed the finger nail file in the ignition and jiggled. We were off in a flash. By the end of the night Tony, Tad, Leslie, a batch of other guests and I left the reception to safari on the open veldt of the Eastmoreland Country Club as fast as five carts could get us around.* 

Final score: deductive reasoning - 5+ / carts - 1.

*not the real name

Heavy duty dining... kinda

The last time I was strolling through the aisle at REI I was taken by how small things have gotten in the camping department. Compact LED flashlights now weigh less than the D-cell batteries that we used to carry for over-nighters. The new sleeping bags that keep folks warm in lower temperatures stuff compactly to smaller volumes than my old socks could, and the camp stoves are about as cool and small as one could every ask for. Curiously enough, the freeze dried food hasn't gotten any lighter, and I'm not sure it has begun to taste any better either. I'd imagine that the same saying applies to camping today as it always did, the best tasting food is the stuff in the pot at the end of the days hike. (That adage has subsequently been refined in my book to describe the best beer: It's the first cold one at hand after mowing the lawn.) 

Trail camping, as opposed to car camping or tailgating, suggests that the lower the weight of any tool, the better. If you've actually hiked anywhere to camp overnight, this is pretty obvious.Trundling up or down a trail can be arduous and unpleasant, especially if you're carrying a heavy load. The new stoves with their variable fuel sources are light, compact, powerful and eminently store-able. A stove's ability these days is measured similarly to an oven, and for camping, that's awesome. Soon enough, we'll be hiking around with self-heating pots and canteens that will keep water hot or cold depending on our whims. As far as the MANVIL tool of the week goes, it may be an old school tool, but this dinosaur from Coleman is still being produced today. So I think it is still pretty valid as a tool you should know.

Before there were light and compact aerosol fuel tank stoves this 12 pound monolith was where large meals were cooked. Of course you could wander around, collect dry firewood, make a sooty mess of your pots, food and campsite, and potentially set the forest ablaze, but we had one of these so we used it. Sure some poor sucker would have to get stuck carrying the hulking mass in their pack, (That guy was usually me) but nobody wants to blow all that energy hiking just to eat cold PB&Js for dinner. With an extra white gas fuel tank, or two, this stove could heat up water for coffee or a dehydrated meal bags, cook a meal, and be broken down and jammed back into a pack in under an hour. For about five days of cooking you could get by on a gallon and a half of fuel, and that's pretty good when you're hiking on trafficked routes where the firewood and kindling is at a minimum.

With all the big green stove's setbacks, (girth, weight and fuel consumption) I should take some time out hand a bit of praise to it. I've been white-water rafting with one, and damn near drowned it as well as myself, but it sprung back to life after a bath and some time alone. My buddy and I ate a great meal of rib eyes and onions on it not an hour after it was completely submerged. With the proper seals and planning, we didn't even lose any fuel either.

As far as tailgating or car camping, the big green box holds another advantage over smaller stoves, it's got this big flat bottom. The kind of bottom that finds a place to sit and hunkers down. To date, I have yet to see a camp table that is actually level. I don't mean this as an insult to the parks division, every small stove I've seen has that as its' downfall. No large bowl of hot water will stay put on one if there is a slight tilt. No pan full of bacon will remain upright if the compact stove has even a minor list. No dutch oven will remain balanced on a mini if the stove top isn't solid and level. At least none that I've seen, and for this reason alone there will always be a place in my garage for an old school green camp stove, but there are other reasons.

I've watched the warm summer sun come up over Mount Hood while making breakfast on a big green camp stove. I have watched the sun go down brilliantly in that same place as somebody cooked me dinner on that stove. My folks used their green camping stove to make dinner when they were remodeling their kitchen as a younger couple. My favorite fishing memories all include that drab hunk of tin, and although I have no remembrances of me with a fish, I still love the idea of going fishing. 

Finally, I recall that every time I ended up carrying the stove when I was hiking with friends, nobody ever started a meal without me. I'm not sure that same could be said today. I'm still a pretty pokey hiker compared to everybody else, but today, they'd all be carrying their own stoves. Maybe the burden wasn't quite as big a detriment as I used to think.

Beginner's luck...

It's been said that the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. It could also be said that the belly flop off a high dive begins the same way, and that's why today's tool is the pipe cutter. 

When I was a little snot, and indeed we all were at some point, one of the bathrooms in my family's house began to lose hot water pressure. Upon investigation, my father deemed that the issue was a small, but terminal (for the pipe anyway) patch of corrosion around the joints in the pipes from the hot water heater. The entire line would need to be replaced soon due to the corrosion.

Now, there may be folks who would call a plumber to take care of this sort of thing, and for some that might be well advised. We weren't that family though. My folks were the kind to buy a house, turn it into a home, and then move on when the time came.  If my father really needed the help, which he rarely did, he had the option of turning to my mom or my older siblings. This time however, my sibs had moved on to their own houses so he turned to me, the youngest.

On the next available Saturday, with ample time to work after declining his weekly 2 PM tennis game, my father enlisted my help. After breakfast dad began assessing the situation to me and going over the tools involved. (Sort of a precursor to the MANVIL cards) The first forty minutes of the project included learning the requirements to complete the task, and a quick lesson on soldering and pipe cutting. With the wheels set in motion, and the water system turned off, he handed me a tape measure. Grabbing a small notebook and a pencil, he prepared to ask me for dimensions. 

As we both looked into the dark, dirt covered crawlspace underneath the house that held the workings of the plumbing from the hot water heater to separate parts of the house, I paused. My father had once been hospitalized by an enormous centipede bite, so we were both kind of cautious about diving into the dark.  My dad looked at the dark passage, looked at me, and nodded. "You should be good, centipedes like warm places, it's kinda cold a barren in there." Just then, my mom chimed in that there was a call for my father. With a quick shrug and a roll of his eyes he wandered upstairs to get the call. "I'll be right back" he said.

I decided not to wait. I crawled through the basement access door under the house with a flashlight, the measuring tape on my belt and a small notebook stuffed into the pocket of my old "Hang Ten" tee. Wriggling on my back over the dirt, between the cold dark dirt and the 60 year old redwood floor joists I was able to shimmy out to the rotting ell joint that turned the pipes up into the bathroom. The place was confined, and a bit chilly for Hawaiian standards, but not too bad to get a round in. 

As my eyes adjusted to the unusual combination of refracted sunlight and flashlight glow I began measuring the length of the pipes. I marked lengths and measured, made notes and slowly crabbed my way back to the light of the basement. When I got back through the access door to the crawlspace I dusted myself off a bit, grabbed the pipe-cutters and crawled back in to get the old pipes out. 

With little real effort, but a lot of awkward maneuvering in tight spaces, I was able to get the old steel pipes separated and ready for removal. They were badly rusted at the joints, and in fact the ell that had elbowed the pipe up into the bathroom failed completely when I applied pressure to it. We had evidently chosen the right weekend to do the job. The pipes and their pieces were corralled and eventually dragged to the basement. As I cut the pipes down to be thrown away for scrap my father returned from his phone call. It had been work related, and he wasn't excited about the intrusion on his spare time. (It should be noted that 'mobile phones' at the time were only owned by the government, hotel magnates and the cartels)

"You're done measuring?" he asked, with some concern in his eyes.

"Yeah, I think so." I replied, not sure what I possibly could have missed. I offered up my notes in order for him to verify that I'd covered my bases. 

He studied my numbers for a bit, scratching his chin and furrowing his brow in attention. His focused eyes arose with a kind of bemusement."Well, alright. Let's go to the store and get what we need, and maybe we can wrap this up before dinner." It was about 10:30 AM.

After the quick trip for copper pipe, welding material, a series of pipe fittings and more gas for the torch we were back in the basement in an hour.  As we unpacked and I organized the material, my dad re-approached my notes and did a bit of mental math in his head. He shrugged, smiled and shook his head while smiling in a sign of agreement. He then excused himself and wandered out to help my mom with gardening as I set to work placing and soldering pipes before their installation. 

Within an hour, with the pipes soldered and installed, I was ready to subject my project to a pressure test. My dad was as anxious for success as I was, partially for the fix, but I also suspected he would be able to make his tennis game if there was success with the plumbing. As I watched for leaks from under the house, dad cautiously turned the water back on and yelled for my mom to turn on the sink. I could hear the water in the pipes as it first passed over me in towards the bathroom. 

As we tried putting stress on the system, none of us saw any signs of failure. I reviewed every joint under pressure, and without pressure. The entire system worked without a hitch, and every joint was dry. It was 1:30 PM. If he'd hustled, my dad could have made his tennis game. Instead, the three of us went to lunch at the beach, which was pretty cool, but not as cool as hearing my dad say I'd done a good job. I got lucky on the start of my journey.

The four foot by four foot deck

A few years back, I received an emergency phone call from a friend's wife late on a Thursday night. Apparently my friend, Tony, had managed to slip down and destroy the small rear steps from his mud room to his driveway, and in doing so suffered some damage to his knee and lower back. In order to enter his house Tony could only use the front door, and that door had a series of steps to it that were playing havoc with his back and knees. Tony's wife, Anne, asked that I join another buddy of ours, Greg, to venture up-state to help replace the four by four landing to the mud room. Without much consideration I cancelled my weekend plans and loaded an overnight bag to go help. How hard could it be? A small landing coming out of the back door with some steps down to the driveway, it'd be a breeze. We'd be doing for a four hour job, and spending the rest of the weekend drinking beer and shooting the breeze with Tony, Anne and their neighbors. No big deal.

Greg loaded his tools in my rig and we set forth late Friday afternoon. Now Greg's never been one to slack on tool ownership, but after talking with him about the weekend's plans and comparing the plans to the number of tools he was bringing, I figured I might have missed something. We loaded three hundred pounds of tools into the back of my Land Cruiser, and for a small job, that seemed like a lot. I gave Greg the benefit of being over-prepared, and we got on the road. Three hours later we were standing in Tony's driveway looking at the project, and as the light was fading for the evening, I noticed the large stack of untreated decking wood hidden under a tarp near the garage. Uh, oh. 

As I was reconnecting with Anne, Greg and Tony were talking amongst themselves in somewhat hushed tones. The way their hands were scoping out the hand drawn plan seemed to show a more vast footprint than a four by four step. They looked like a pair of architects from a Bechtel ad pointing dutifully into the future, with clear vision and chest pockets full of protractors. Something was afoot, and I could see the gears turning in Tony's head as he bobbed and weaved about the job site. Greg continued to survey the site and measurements as I approached Tony.

"You're pretty flexible for a man with a bad back and wounded knees" I said. 

"Ooh , ahh, yeah. I used a batch of tiger balm this morning. It stunk like crazy, but I feel better." Tony blurted

"I've been shanghi'd, haven't I?" I replied, smiling wryly and accepting an 'on cue' beer from Anne.

"Well, the plans have expanded some since last night. But nothing too drastic." He impishly looked to the heavens and threw his hands apart as he said that. As long as we had been friends, which was quite a while, I've always enjoyed Tony's willingness to begrudgingly accept responsibility for under-estimating his plans. It was going to be a long weekend spent with good friends working on a big plan.

Up at 6AM on that Saturday, the remnants of the old landing came out easily enough, although dragging the cement bases out required tying them to the Cruiser with tow straps. The twin pergola came out the same way, torn from the earth in low gear. Before 10 AM Tony and Greg were off to any of the five DIY stores within forty miles as Anne and I set up an assembly line to stain the decking wood. We were 3/4 way through the ordeal before Tony and Greg returned with more wood, concrete and decking hardware. We worked as a team pretty well once we were all on board with the plan, and by 7PM Saturday we had the foundation in place and had finished staining all 200 deck pieces. We wrapped up work for the evening with great food, a few cold ones and catching up with old friends. The plans had indeed changed, enormously, but the new plans made for a great deck experience for the future visits.

Bright and early Sunday morning Greg brought out the finish nailer in order to get us started framing the deck. As we all set out and began to work, progress was occasionally set back by visits from neighbors and other friends, (some of them really could have used the MANVIL cards) but we kept on working through the day until it was time for Greg and I to decide to return to our homes down state. We loaded up our bags, but left the tools with Tony and Anne in case they wanted to work through the week.

The deck project itself took two more weekends to finish. Greg and I made it back up to Tony and Anne's with smiles on our faces and pride in the eventual solution to Tony's deck needs. We were fed like kings, worked like dogs and have subsequently enjoyed many a fine meal on that twenty foot by twenty foot deck. Our friendship grew exponentially, just as the deck did, and that makes light work of any of the effort.

The journey to the sea starts with one shovel

After seven consecutive years on the oceans between Oahu and every other island in the Hawaiian chain, a shipping barge begins to show a little age. In order to ensure that this barge doesn't give up the ghost mid-journey, thereby sullying the Hawaiian seas with an assortment of used up rental cars, garbage, next week's milk, and a dizzying array of folding beach chairs, the barge is taken out of the water, and inspected. 

In order to inspect the barge, a hole is cut in the bottom of each 40 foot section of the four section vessel. The cavernous interior of each section is fully sand blasted and further inspected for any metal fatigue. This hole, in order to keep structural integrity of the section, is small. It is a pill shaped opening about two and a half feet by one and a half feet. It is big enough to allow access for one person at a time, with room for a few sand blast hoses and maybe an extra extension cord for lights and good keeping. Once the roughly 15 tons of sand blast grit is blown into the bowels of the barge to get a good look at the interior hull, that blast grit needs to be removed. 

When I arrived at my new assignment at the Kapolei shipyard, I didn't know what to expect. After four weeks on the job, I had been reassigned from the small and enjoyable assignment at the 'in-town' shipyard, where I'd been learning the practical uses of the forklifts, to the out of town yard. Little did I know that the out of town yard was the busy one, with all the refitting work.

I climbed out of my car on that beautiful cloudless day, and began to trek across the arid crushed coral of the parking lot. The white coral lot and the clear blue Hawaiian sky almost required sunglasses, and it was only 7AM. As I entered the yard and began looking for my new supervisor he saw me from across the yard, and yelled my name. I must have been the only haole under 250 lbs. who was not wearing an Aloha shirt and khaki pants, so it couldn't have been too hard to spot me. 

I try not to pre-judge anybody before I've actually met them, but this guy was perhaps the most muscular, no BS, bald, 'not thrilled to see a haole college boy on my jobsite' fellow, I've ever met. To make matters worse for me, his name was Melvin, and he could not have looked more unlike a man named Melvin. Mel, I could have seen. Vin, I could have seen. If he'd have said his name was Thud I could have accepted that too, but he said Melvin with such conviction I nearly bit my tongue in half trying to keep a straight face. Melvin handed me a respirator and something papery and white in a bag. He pointed to another new guy he also knew by name and gave him the same equipment. Then we started walking.

When we got to where we needed to be I was looking up at a not very big hole on the bottom of a very big barge. I put my white suit over my jeans and tee quietly, and tested the fit of my respirator. With little fanfare Melvin handed me a single 40 watt bulb attached to single incandescent work light, a flathead shovel and pointed me towards the ladder that half filled the hole. As I walked towards the ladder I heard him say to my co-worker, "Make sure this is done by four." With that, I started climbing  the ladder, and recognized I was climbing into a black hole. 

Once inside, I managed to find the lone electrical outlet by following the cord from the entry hole. I plugged in the work light. It was the visual antithesis of dropping a black coffee from a ski lift in a blizzard. You can see there is something, something different there, but it just doesn't matter, because it is so inconsequential. Even the entry hole in the hull provided more light, and it was on the bottom of the hull, forty feet away. My co-worker entered the hole quietly in his whitesuit and we began to dig 15 tons of black sand through a hole smaller than the opening of a Coleman cooler. 

After 3 hours we took a break. It was 10:30, and we climbed out into the bright, bright world. It had gotten a bit hotter since 7AM and we could both tell there was a possibility of some serious heat inside the hull of  black giant as the afternoon progressed. We had about 4 tons of black sand spilled through the hole on the ground, so I said I thought things looked pretty good. I got a grunt from my fellow digger, and as I finished my water and turned to re-enter the dark zone,  I heard my co-horts white suit swooshing. I turned and watched in mild amusement as he bolted for the parking lot. "Fudge" said I, and I climbed back up into the darkness. 

I kept digging the grit throughout the morning, and finally broke for lunch late. I ate under the massive hull to keep from the sun, which to my mind had gone from hot to scorching. The stagnant air in the enclosed hull section didn't move at all, it just got hotter and more dense with dust. And the white suit I wore was a deep grey, with obvious wet spots where my sweat was amking its way through the fabric. I must have eventually gotten some sort of rhythm going, because by four I was brooming the last pile of grit out the hole. Sopping wet, grit colored grey and exhausted, when I finished I threw my shovel, the light and the cord through the aperture to the lit world. I followed the tools onto the enormous pile of sand that almost reached the bottom of the hull, and was blinded by the brilliance of the light reflecting off the white coral. As my eyes tried to adapt I could tell somebody was approaching me, some one large.

"Where's the other guy?" asked Melvin, sounding a little peeved, and looking kinda puffed up.

I confessed, "Uh, he left at 10:30, or something like that." 

As my eyes were still adjusting, I saw this huge guy looking at me, he was considering what to do. 

"Are you finished?" he asked. 

"Yeah, it's all clear in there. You can check if you like; I'm heading home." I replied, feigning to exit, but knowing Melvin was going to check. I waited for him to climb the mound of sand to look through the hull portal. 

He turned to me and it surprised me enormously when he smiled. For a huge and scary guy, he had the happiest, most easy going smile. He looked at me in a completely changed face and said "Listen, just walk into the ocean, you look beat. Just walk into the ocean and drive home in a towel or something. Nice work. See you tomorrow."  Flabbergasted, that just what I did, and the water was as nice as anything I've ever been in.

I saw the kid that I'd started that dig out with weeks later, but I saw him from the cab of a 40 ton forklift that Melvin taught me to operate. That guy should have learned his tools with MANVIL cards and stuck with it. C'mon in, the water's great.

Lucky you live Hawaii...

When I was a kid I used to go to my calabash aunt and uncle's house and borrow their sunfish sailboat. This assumed family of mine were relatively old-time Hawaiian residents, (for Navy haoles) having arrived in the late 50's. In the mid-60's they purchased a beach house on an 'out of the way' beach, and if you've been to Hawaii in the last 30 years, you know, there is no longer any 'out of the way' Hawaii... unless it's on another island. 

My calabash family's beach house had a single walled construction the likes of which might have sheltered plantation workers if it had been more inland and surrounded by the red dirt of the pineapple fields, yet their house was right on the beach, and you know what they say in realty... location, location, location. It had a small driveway, a small sailboat that could be dragged into the ocean by the string bean of a kid that I was, and a view that allowed you to see the curvature of the earth. That's about it for their house, excepting the fact that it had wonderful inhabitants and a talking mynah bird that said, "Alooohaaaaaaa!"

When I would visit with a friend to go sailing, my calabash uncle, would sit and paint like an impressionist at their outdoor bar and barbecue shed all weekend long after working his can off for the state transportation department. His wife was dutifully active in many social pursuits on the island, and had a fondness for hula that, for the life of me, I couldn't understand. She loved to dance hula, and as their Hi-Fi belted out the treble-heavy wailing of old school, notably high-pitched Hawaiian music, she would gracefully sway and bob to the music while practicing. When we arrived to go sailing, she'd simply waive at us, blow a kiss and point us towards the boat. To this very kind couple, my buddy and I were the crew of their battered plexiglas navy. 

Kendall and I would awkwardly drag the forlorn sunfish to the beach with him trying to lift the front with the built in handle and me straining to hold up the aft end. Once the ordeal of getting the boat to water was accomplished, we'd set to work getting the sail rigged while wading chest deep in the warm Pacific. In our pre-take off check list to ensure a safe sail, one of us would always set the cotter pin in the dagger board to make sure it never got away from us.

Once the safety list was was finished, we were off to the races with Kendall minding the sheet and me manning the tiller. If the winds were favorable the boat would pick up speed and plane out as Kendall and I leaned far backwards to counterbalance the effects of the wind in the sail. If we played our cards well, and balanced our weight enough, we would simply skim above the water screaming along as fast as the wind would take us. We'd spend hours battering that boat in the wind and the surf, and being that we were on the windward side of the island, that little craft would pick up pace and roar off wherever we pointed it. Skimming the top of the water at a break-neck pace with our backs inches off the clear, light blue sea allowed us to imagine that that tiny, worn sunfish was a real race boat. Such was the life, and we knew it was good.

After sailing for hours in surf, calm, flat or storm, we'd return to shore, dash the sails, pluck the dagger board, wash the boat, and join my calabash aunt and uncle for a coke and some sandwiches. We'd 'talk story' about what was going on at our individual high-schools, and how my aunt and uncle were doing, occasionally striking on political matters. My 'uncle' was very involved in the politics and policy of the 50th State, which is why my leaving Hawaii to go to college on the mainland would be bittersweet for me. 

Many years later, when I returned from college, I continued to visit my uncles' house in order to enjoy that aged, yet still fun to sail, sunfish. I received the same warm greeting from my aunt and uncle, but now I no longer needed help getting the boat to the water, and could actually lug it down to the beach over the plants by myself. It seemed that little had changed, and sailing the old craft was delightful. I eventually called Kendall to see if he wanted to get back into sailing, and he figured he'd give it a whirl again, for old times sake. When we both loaded onto the craft and got underway, we found it decidedly slower than we both remembered it.

As we moped along we tried to go over the reasons for the slowness of the boat. We'd rigged the boat the same way. The sail looked to be in good shape. The dagger board looked to be in good shape, if in need of a new coat of lacquer. Only the daggerboard locking cotter pin, which was kind of corroded, needed a bit of coercion to seat in position, but that was taken care of by a pair of needle nosed pliers that we chose to leave on the deck of the house.

Kendall and I kept wondering about the problem. Why were we going so slowly? As we pondered the issue a really great gust of wind picked up, and we began to pick up speed going down the beach. The only tell-tale sign that this was truly an awesome burst of wind was that out of the corner of my eye I could see that almost every chair, towel, blanket and purse on the beach was beginning to fly directly into the brush further inland. As the gust blew down the beach people began to cover their eyes, grab their sand blasted shins and watch in vain as sundry items blew by them. I'd have chuckled at the time, but I soon had bigger fish to fry.

As the breeze picked up to a harried pace Kendall and I stopped trying to figure out what was slowing us and began to fight for control of the boat as the bow began plowing whitewash over the tiny deck. The mast began to distort a bit as the sail strained taught from corner to corner and the tiller began to lose it's desired effect as we began to nose forward, churning water over the deck and splashing wildly against incoming swells. We tore off leaving a wake of roughly churned water behind us and I began to lean far back off the aft end of the little boat to try to bring the nose up. We powered on, laughing about the great gust that we'd come onto, and the rather voluminous amount of water we were constantly taking on, wiping off, spitting out and having to bail. 

At that sudden breakneck pace, in a howling wind and with water splashing over the deck we instinctively followed courses that we had always taken as kids. Our mentally charted route coincided with dark coral heads that appeared somehow more ominous in the azure, now white capped water. Through the salt spray we yelled at each other that the coral heads looked dark enough to seem nearer to the surface than they had been years before. Surely, they couldn't be that much nearer the surface.

In fact, they were. The coral was bigger, because coral grows. Duh! And our dagger board was lower, because, apparently, we too had grown. In a split second reaction to this desperate realization of nature's growth and our girth, Kendall quickly reached for the corroded cotter pin with his free hand and attempted, in vain, to pull it out in order to raise the dangerously low center board. Without any purchase on the corroded and jammed pin, his water soaked fingers slipped off. In the midst of another large spray he grabbed at the pin again, and as he did, the boat shuddered severely. Then all went remarkably calm.

We began to blow sideways to shore, quietly. No more violent splashing over the bow. No more heaving at the lines. Not even much compression from the tiller. Now we were just blowing straight to shore in abject silence. In the smoothing foam of our once proud and frothy wake I could see parts of the dagger board and a large portion of the tiller. With what rudder there was, I aimed us for the beach, and the wind was much more helpful getting us there. 

We sat and regrouped for a moment, a little crestfallen, watching the chaos of the people on the shore trying to pull their beach wares from the fauna and rubbing sand from their eyes. That's when we started laughing, and we didn't stop until we got to shore.

Eventually, we got the boat back to my calabash family's home by walking it through the waist deep water near the shore. With the breeze down, and the beach suddenly devoid of other visitors, it was quick business. On our way we were even able to find some of the larger pieces of the shattered centerboard, which was slightly more disappointing due to the fact that these shards of wood had found a way to beat us to shore. 

Back at the house, we washed and packed up the boat, checking for any serious damage along the way. When the boat checked out, we got set to have a drink with my aunt and uncle. My calabash aunt, dressed in a full length muu-muu with puffy shoulders and a laced collar, met us on the back porch with two Primos and some snacks. Eventually, my uncle joined us as well and we sat a laughed at the loss of the dagger board and the tiller. He and his wife sat and listened to our pretty innocuous story with rapt attention and enjoyed a their own drinks, a mint julep for him and a white wine for her. As the afternoon waned we made a deal to replace the boat parts and waved goodbye for the week. My calabash aunt and uncle both yelled "Aloohaaaa!" from the yard as we waived our thanks. As we loaded up for our ride back into town with the broken remains of the daggerboard we could still hear their bird from its cage, "Alooohaaaaa!"

Lucky you live Hawaii, to know Aloha.