“Call the upholsterer, on the double.”
It took only a few minutes before the upholsterer arrived. He looked a little frightened at the assembled officers. None of them thought about leaving as soon as possible anymore. This party turned out to be very interesting. The little Filipino, not understanding the emotional damage he was inflicting, after he was explained what to do, stuffed the severed paw in his tote bag and carried Buster away, holding him by his leg. Ma gave a piercing scream when she saw how her little darling was being handled, but the upholsterer was gone.
It took us a while to calm her down, and shakily she had two more Bloody Marys while we, in turn, assured her that Buster would be fine. Not before long, Buster reappeared, with his front paw where it belonged. Ma Winkler pressed the upholsterer to her heaving chest and showered him with sloppy kisses.
The party lasted another ten minutes before the captain expressed his thanks to Ma and told her he was leaving, having to attend other duties. As we had come earlier that evening, we left, the captain in front, followed by his officers.
“You know what?” I heard him saying to the chief engineer. “The only normal one in that cabin this evening, was that teddy bear.”
Ma Winkler died many years ago, but every now and then, hers and Buster’s name still come up in our conversations. She was one of those passengers one does not easily forget, sometimes a pain, often a joy, and always unforgettable.
Gone Fishing
Millions of people get their life’s enjoyment out of fishing. Not me, however. It has never been a favorite hobby of mine. I have tried it often enough, and I failed to get the right taste for it. Maybe it is because I’m not a very patient man and expect to see things happening at once, and at my time. I simply don’t like sitting in a boat all day, waiting till some little fish gets it into his mind to bite. I often wonder what exactly it is that I don’t “get,” when I sometimes see hundreds of people sitting at the side of a canal, just staring at the water. All these people must love to fish and so did our captain ….
Alaska is probably one of the greatest fishing locations in the world, and fishing is one of the things everybody seems to do there. That and hunting, hiking, and just about every thing else associated with outdoor life.
We had left Ketchikan a few hours before and were on our way to Juneau. It was a beautiful late afternoon, and we sailed at full speed in an unforgettable landscape. Snow Passage, a very narrow stretch of water, requiring very careful navigation, was just an hour ahead of us. I had my binoculars ready, as this was a prime location to see some whales.
The captain was standing to my left, in deep conversation with the pilot. Of course, as always, when these two sailed together, it was all about fishing. How big a fish he had caught last week, what bait he used, and how many hooks. All of which did not appeal to me. It was probably also the reason he never really talked with me that much, as our fields of interest were worlds apart.
“It’s marvelous; I’ll show it to you, just a minute.” I heard the captain saying, while he turned around and left the bridge.
We still had half an hour to go till Snow Passage. I had called the engine room to warn the engineers that I was going to slow down a bit to a speed that would allow the ship to be easier to maneuver, necessary when navigating in confined waters. After pouring himself a cup of coffee, the pilot checked our position and course and concentrated on the coming narrow passage.
“Here it is. Look, isn’t it a beauty? Just the feel of it in your hand. Bought it two days ago in Vancouver—a special order.”
Both the pilot and I looked behind us, as the captain had come back on the bridge with a brand new fishing rod in his hands. Unlike me however, the pilot showed more than only a fleeting interest. He turned around and gaped at the rod, the brand of which apparently was rare and top of the line. The captain grinned, like a child in possession of a new toy.
“I’ll show you. Look, you swing it and with a snap of your finger it releases. Never owned a fishing rod this accurate. You can get your bait exactly where you want it to go. Watch!”
While talking, the captain swung the rod through the air, carefully avoiding the low ceiling. The accuracy indeed was impressive. Three hooks and a piece of lead hit a chair fifty feet away at the exact spot the captain had predicted they would strike.
“Let me try it.” The pilot almost grabbed the rod out of the captain’s hands. He reeled the line in, savoring the moment of holding such a fine piece equipment in his hand.
“Man, it balances like a precision tool. Alright, now I’ll try to hit that chair too. Watch out!”
Balancing it, and ready to release, he swung the rod in wide arches. At the end of his last and widest swing he released the line so the lead could hit the same chair.
Anyone who has ever been on ships knows that the ceilings are not the highest, a fact that also applies to most navigation bridges. The captain, having played with his toys on board often enough, was painfully aware of this restriction. He once had hit a sprinkler head, and now allowed for this when he practiced. The pilot, used to the vast expanses of Alaska had never been in a fishing position where he had to take ceiling heights into account.
Exactly at the moment he released the line, the top of the fishing rod hit a smoke detector on the ceiling. This in itself was not the problem. The effect, however, diverted the lead and the three hooks with it in a totally different direction than was intended. The lead hit our captain square on the head, which, it being only light, did no harm to him.
The real problem was that our good pilot, the moment he saw what was happening, jerked the rod back. An experienced fisherman later told me that this is the movement often used to hook a fish when one feels it nibbling at the bait. The same theory applied here. One of the hooks firmly embedded itself in the back of the collar of the captain’s shirt, the second one fell on the floor, while the third one got solidly stuck in the seat of our Pilot’s pants.
“We are getting very close to the passage now, maybe you should come over and check,” I informed them, not yet aware of what had happened and what the complication was. Not getting any reply, I turned around to see what was going on, and it was a scene I will never forget. The captain was on his hands and knees trying to get the hook unstuck from the pilot’s pants. While at the same time, the pilot was bent over, plucking at the at hook sitting in the captain’s collar. The other hook, the one sitting in the carpet, in the mean time, had significantly reduced their area of mobility to just a few feet.
“Sit still, or I’ll never get it out.”
“Me sit still, if you didn’t keep moving I could get to your pants a lot easier.”
“Ouch!”
The captain started sucking his finger, where the hook had cut into his skin.
“Sir, we are entering snow passage now, you better get over here.”
Desperate to get loose, the pilot yanked at the line, trying to pull it up from the carpet. The situation, however, was not that clear with at least 50 feet of line lying around. In his haste, he had not really checked which end was attached to what, and his violent pull was applied to the wrong line. Our poor captain almost toppled over backward by all that “yanking power” applied to his shirt collar.
“Can you stop that, you fool! It’s a three hundred pound line. Better get me some scissors from the chart room. You there, hurry.”
The lookout, who, silently and with growing amazement had observed the whole scene from a corner of the bridge suddenly became the one to solve the situation. Startled into action, I heard him rumbling through some drawers
“Where did you say they are? I don’t see any.”
That was