Manpot's Tales of the Tropics (4 page)

The boys, of course, are never invited.

There is no doubt our neighbour fancies himself as a
man of influence...a man to be listened to. We think of him as a
rather "colourful" annoyance.

“You have to move the fire”, he wheezed,” last year
we had to call the fire department when the sparks blew up the
hill.”

None of the boys ever heard of the fire department
from nearby Capoons Bay even being called….they certainly didn’t
show up...but the “boys”, one with more than eight decades under
his belt, faithfully moved the wood further down the beach...

God forbid an errant spark should disturb "Mr.
Colourful's" happy hour...

Then the fire department (one volunteer) showed
up...

“A concerned citizen has complained...We can't let
you light the fire,” he explained...though his broad smile showed
what he was really thinking...

There was nothing for it…the annual gourmet bar b q
would go on as planned…without the fire...

The sun sank into the Atlantic giving the “boys” a
spectacular lightshow….the bright stars started piercing the inky
sky when suddenly an orange glow filled the beach...The flames from
the fire shot to the sky...the embers swirled...the boys cheered
and the ladies who’d stood by their sides clapped...

Everyone formed a giant circle and sang "We shall
overcome".

Suddenly those turbulent sixties in the South didn’t
seem so very far away...They were still rebels.

It was a wonderful night to celebrate freedom...a
freedom these “boys” had fought so hard for...

Next morning the “concerned citizen” called..."You
defied me,” he steamed.…

And just minutes later two members of the local
constabulary showed up...

The case of the errant bonfire was growing
serious.

There was only one thing for the boys to do...send
out the secret weapon...Miss Elizabeth. Now Miss Elizabeth is a
proper white-haired Bostonian lady married to the ringleader of
this aging crew of "troublemakers". She'd stood by her husband as
they'd been burned out their home by the Klan. She'd endured the
death threats. She'd stood by him when McCarthy fingered him as a
Commie ...She'd followed him faithfully to Tortola to live on the
north shore when there was no electricity and just donkey
trails.

She was as a demure as a Sunday school teacher...but
could have the mouth of a trucker.

But, on this day, the constables got Miss
Elizabeth….Sunday school teacher.

"Why hallo officers," she smiled, offering ice cold
lemonade, "how may I help you two handsome young men?"

Trying to keep a straight face they explained the
complaint and asked just who had been at this beach party.

"Well", said Miss Elizabeth, keeping a spectacularly
straight face," there were many people"...

Promptly she started rattling off name after
name...and then said " Would you like to interview…all of
them?"

The young policemen sipped their lemonade and quickly
made the smart decision." No, Miss Elizabeth...that will be fine",
said the senior of the two, "I can't believe any of your guests
would have done such a thing."

"Well there were some kids playing on the beach,"
said Miss Elizabeth innocently.

Miss Elizabeth reported back to the boys who were
enjoying their afternoon swim.

The boys just laughed...they’d defied many things in
their long lives…would they have the audacity to defy the “...man
on the hill…" disturb his happy hour with an occasional whiff of
smoke or a drifting spark?

Not these heroic boys of summer.

You could tell the guy was a pirate...He was sitting
in a beachfront bar in the Caribbean…drinking rum…oh, and yeah, he
had a jaunty eye-patch.

With a parrot on it...

Every happy hour I saw this man in one of my favorite
watering holes on Tortola…It's a bar and restaurant called
"Myett's" where the trade winds blow...and seem to blow in a good
mix of locals, tourists and just plain wacky characters. Every time
I saw the "pirate" he smiled and said "Hi"...

Finally we started to talk...

"Tell me the tale of the eye-patch", said I after
buying him another Mount Gay...And the tale he told was an
inspiration…

A genetic disease had attacked his left eye leaving
him almost totally blind in that eye...and then had started to
attack his other eye. The only hope, his doctor told him, was a
radical operation...followed by an even more radical recovery
period.

For six weeks after that operation he would have to
keep his head forward…perfectly still...twenty four hours a
day...seven days a week.

In pitch darkness.

Our "pirate" had the operation and then told me how
he learned to sleep leaning forward…in fact live his whole life for
those six weeks hunched forward... He could not move and he could
not see.

Finally, he told me, came time for him to return to
his doctor's office to have the bandages removed. The doctor warned
him not to hope for too much...Even if he had vision in that one
eye it might be very fuzzy, said the doctor, "maybe just shadows
and shapes."

Slowly, he said, the bandages were unwrapped...but he
was terrified to open that eye. He might be blind...He might never
see again...He might be confined to a life of "shadows and
shapes."

As a tear welled in the unpatched eye our "pirate"
said he opened his good eye...and in the words of Johnny Nash
yelled " I can see clearly now..."

"I kissed the doctor...I kissed his assistant...and I
bawled like a baby", he told me," then I decided to enjoy every
single moment of the rest of my life."

At 75 years of age our "pirate" bought his ticket to
the BVI's swearing to take in every spellbinding site in that
spectacular technicolour you only seem to find in the tropics.

At that moment the sun started to set over Jost Van
Dyke.

My "pirate" buddy and I toasted that spectacular
scene and he grinned like a five year old.

To me the sunset was beautiful…to him it was a
miracle...

The “pirate's" name is Dick Swain...we dubbed him
“Insane” Dick Swain. Since that incident he has endured a bout with
stomach cancer but now he vows to return to Tortola for more and
more months every winter.

Last winter he had the remains of his hair braided
with beads. People would laugh and have their pictures taken with
him with his pet, wooden, parrot Marty, perched on his
shoulder.

We hope to watch many...many ...more sunsets with a
true...brave...pirate...

The year was 1993 and my favorite ice hockey team,
the Los Angeles Kings had had a great season. Wayne Gretzky had
joined the team and the old LA Forum was rocking every time the
Kings hit the ice.

Hockey had gone from a sport with a small group of
die hard fans to the hottest sport in the Big Orange.

Every game, at rinkside, you'd see Stallone...Goldie
Hawn and Michael J .Fox. Best of all we had a pair of season
tickets for all the action.

Now my LA Kings had never made it to the Stanley Cup
Finals but, ever the optimist, I would look at the schedule and
figure the possible very last championship game if they were to go
all the way…and then book our trip down to the Caribbean

And that's what I'd done in 1993.Except there was a
short labour dispute delaying the whole season a couple of weeks.
No big deal…right??

Months later the Kings were barreling their way to
the Stanley Cup Finals. Game seven of the semi finals against the
Toronto Maple Leafs was an amazing nail-biter. The Kings won...I
threw my beer all over the folks in front...everybody hugged and
high fived...my voice was gone...the Kings were going to the
Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in their history.

And, because of that two week labour dispute, we
would be in the Caribbean.

After years of suffering...we would miss the big
show.

Now being in the islands is not exactly suffering
but…

So I gave my hockey tickets to my very best friend
(although they were worth a fortune by that time) and we jetted
down to Tortola.

But, on the night of that first of the finals I was a
man on a mission. I had to find a bar to watch the game.

"No problem, Mon," said my buddy Sandman at Myett's
on beautiful Cane Garden Bay, "I find it for you."

And find it he did. My wife Candace and I sat there,
drinking cold beers and cocktails and yelling at the screen. Slowly
our local friends came over.

"What's that??" said Shadow, an elegant local
rastaman.

"Ice hockey," I said and started to explain to my
very confused pal just what was going on.

A couple more friends joined us...and Shadow started
explaining to them what was happening on the ice.

Til then the only ice these guys had seen had been
going into blenders for Pina Coladas and Painkillers. These guys
know their basketball and they love cricket but a bunch of crazies
flying up and down a sheet of ice with a stick and a piece of
rubber was totally alien to them...or so I thought.

The game ended and the Kings had won...and suddenly
we had quite a little group around us talking about the marvel they
had seen by satellite beamed in from frigid Montreal

"Manpot...when's the next game?" asked Shadow. I told
him it was in a couple of days.

"Okay", said Shadow...and everyone in the group
nodded.

Two days later we were back at the bar watching the
pre-game show. Then Shadow arrived, then Boots and Daddy Magic. I
looked around and suddenly there were about twenty of our local
friends all staring at the screen.

Now back in '93 Myett's had rows of bleachers at the
edge of the deck...so everyone grabbed their drinks and took a seat
with a perfect view of the screen.

Suddenly Shadow shouted: "Mon...dat be icin'!!"

And he was right...a Montreal player had fired the
puck down the ice to delay the game. Next thing I knew Shadow was
describing the icing rule to the assembled locals.

As the game went on the crowd got more and more
animated.

"He hook he"..."Mon that be roughin'"...the comments
came thick and fast and were usually right on the money and, if
they weren't, who cared.

These guys hated anyone in a Montreal uniform.
Overnight there was a whole new Kings booster club down in the
Caribbean.

My crazy island buddies had fallen in love with ice
hockey, and "their" Los Angeles Kings.

Every time Gretzky jumped onto the ice with his
trademark "99" jersey they cheered. Every time anyone wearing the
red, white and blue of Montreal touched him...they booed

At the end of the game Kings player Marty McSorley
was called for playing with an illegal stick and, if those
Tortolians had been in Quebec, they would have stormed the ice!!
The Kings lost...but there would be another game.

By game three the bar was packed with local hockey
fans. They yelled, they screamed...and they almost cried when the
Kings lost.

The Kings went on to lose the series...but they won
the hearts of a really great band of sports fans down in Cane
Garden Bay, Tortola.

I started putting together a treatment for a movie
about my new rabid hockey fan buddies…

"The series is over but they are such fans they
decide to form a team...and build an ice rink.

"They clear an area of sugar cane and bamboo...flood
the land and using an old diesel generator manage to make an ice
surface...With dreadlocks jammed up under their hockey helmets the
'Tortola Tropics', or maybe the 'Cane Garden Bay Crushers' take the
ice. No organ for these warriors…Pan Vibes plays the 'charge" chant
on steel drums.

"Suddenly there's a breakaway and Shadow dressed in
the team's Rasta colours of red, green and gold, flies down the
ice..."