2000-06-02 - 22:40 MDT

June 2, 2000

The Gulf

I was thirty years old before I got my first look at salt water, a bit older when I saw the Gulf and later the Atlantic at Daytona. We moved to the the north end of Old Tampa Bay in the town of Oldsmar.

My friend who had moved there several years before said, "Come on and we will go check he mooring of my boat. I saw grass and a strip of sand, a pier and great blooming gobs of water, sloshing up and down. As we neared the bit of sand I saw that it was covered with moving things, closer yet and I said, "Gee, John the sand is covered by spiders," as I shuddered with distaste. My nemesis back home had been spiders. I had an unholy terror of spiders, deep down in my inner self there was something psychological about it.

John said, "Yeah, they ain't spiders but crabs and before too long you will be handling them." I walked out on the pier as he waded in and checked the rope. When he came back my remark was, "Why on earth should I ever handle those disgusting things ?" John looked at me a bit and then said, "You told me one time that you liked to fish, didn't you ? "Yeah, I do, why ?" was my puzzled reply. He said, "They make awfully good bait."

In this as with other things he had been my mentor for a long time. He was right, before very long I was sitting in a gently rocking boat out on the Bay and was baiting hooks with the Fiddler Crabs. I had carefully watched them when I was near the pier, they were curious to me, one claw was much bigger on all of them and more strange to me they always seemed to be facing the same direction. That is, I assumed that the part of their body just behind their claws was their "face," or maybe they had their backs turned on something.

On their battalion like formations I heard many different reasons for that peculiar behavior and gradually came to the conclusion that this Dry Land Westerner was being given the equivalent of the Cowboys treatment of the tenderfoot, fresh from the east.

Oldsmar was a tiny town and surrounded by palmettos and various other things and amongst the livestock in the park around the pier were rattlesnakes. While I lived there the learning went on, how to avoid putting myself in situations where I would get the "creeping crud" and "Redbugs" (chiggers). The crud was pretty easy to take care of, a trip to the drugstore and the purchase of a bottle of fluid under pressure (damfino what it was) and spraying the affected area long enough to freeze it and the crud was gone. Never did find out how to get rid of chiggers though, but did hear many formulas and procedures, none of which worked for me. Carefulness about sanitary procedures helped avoid worms, pink eye and other ailments.

I learned to tell the difference between the Coral snake and the False one, along with that I learned to never put my hand somewhere I couldn't see it. For rattlers how to avoid goinng into places where one could be startled. Out west we had rattlers and were reasonably cautious, but out here there is a heck of a lot more bare ground than in Florida. Needless to say, more rattlers in Florida too.

We had a wonderful life down there and were accepted by the inhabitants soon. My youngest son was born there and I remarked to someone that our baby was a Cracker amongst Yankees. Then came some tactful teaching, We were not "Damn Yankees - - - - we were "Damn Westerners" and that a person couldn't be a Cracker unless his grandad and dad had been born there.

I learned he difference between, "press, mash and push" and "tote, take and carry," and the difference between roasted peanuts and boiled ones.

Oh, good grief, I could go for hours about life and philosophy among the people of that area. But strongest are the memories of the people (not Snowbirds) who had been born to Floridians who were in their own baliwick. Their curiosity was great and very little was a deep secret. That rankled a bit but also taught me to better my behavior too. The one thing that overshadowed all other things about them was their kindness, sympathy, good will and the effort all made when someone was burned out or had some other disater occur.

So, my education advanced in coping with the creeping critters, the wriggling ones and other live specimens of pests. Also, deep in my heart and being I learned more on the order of how to live with people and care for them. I returned to Denver a wiser and more thankful man.

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