Rock Sound 2, March 21

Once Again, we can't post photos. Here's a couple blogs...




ROCK SOUND PART 2: Friday, March 21, 2008 Mr. Lucky writing to ya.
Well, wowee. Did I just write all that yesterday? I told you I would have forgotten it when I woke up. It’s weird, anything that happens before 10 a.m. is a mystery to me, even if I was there. In the meantime, so much has happened. We have no internet here, so it’s unfortunate that now, perhaps even more than usual, we can’t reach out and send this till who-knows-when. There’s one place that does sell internet access- at $5 for 15 minutes, which is just absurd, so I hope you’ll forgive the long silence, but that’s that.
Ruth and I have been dingying into the beach, and then walking or hitching about. Found a hardware, ATM, and the like, which is cool, and replaced some of our fishing stuff. The ATM was out of money as usual, we were told when we got there, but it turned out to just be temporarily broked. We met some Canadians who told us that sometimes the bank only had ones and fives, and sometimes neither but only big bills. Ah, the Bahamas. It’s so awesome that people just don’t care about these details. Like a bank keeping money on hand. That’s SO last year.
Anyway, next door to the Canadians was a lady named Lita. She is fricking COOL, man. WOW. She might be 70, or 60, or whatever age, but acts like a kid. Reminds me of someone named Phyllis. Awesome person. Anyway, we were checking out the ocean hole, which is a 300 foot across hole that goes down hundreds of feet, and leads to the ocean that happens to be about 20 feet from her house. We said hellos, and the next thing she tells us there’s a guy selling land that she knows of for a good price. In addition to that, we talk of fishing, and we talk of our exploits, and lack thereof, she offers to help us catch a shark, and tells us to be at the dock at 8 o’clock, and she’ll teach us how to catch a shark. We show up with our gear, and some fishheads cut from the fish the kids sold us. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with this stuff, so she just grabs it, and the next thing she’s demonstrating the techniques, and swinging the fish head around and around on about 3 feet of line, before sailing that sucker way out in the bay. Sure enough, we had two bites from sharks, one within about three minutes. We had another head taken while at the boat. We didn’t catch anything, probably because there was little activity because the water wasn’t clear enough. We’re going back tonight.
The other amazing thing is this guy she said was selling land, she went and told him about us before we met him. It seems we were recommended or something, because I think it’s really important to these people who they pick for neighbors. Anyway, we met the guy, who is Daniel Evans, and his son Gary, who are selling a lot that’s 50x150, and maybe a nice piece of backland that extends the whole thing back another 100 feet, for incredibly cheap. All while all this development is booming here. I think we lucked out, and are in an amazingly protected harbor, with a nice deep lot on a small slope, overlooking the ocean, right next to a small town that has everything you could need, but is still tiny and full of cool people. I mentioned it before, that we were thinking of this. Anyway, the idea is this: we would build something cool, small, and very humble, most likely. When it’s done, or even before that, we would give friends and family carte blanche to use it and a set of keys to prove it. That’s the idea. It’ll be cement, so we don’t even have to worry about you burning it down. And if you make a mess, we’ll just hose it down inside. Who knows, maybe we won’t be down here for long stretches of time, and maybe will just visit now and again and sell it someday, or retire here, or something. The one thing that is sure is this: you won’t have to worry. We’re not going to move away from home. We need you all too much, and miss you all too much, and our time with you is just too valuable. But after August sometime, we’ll be selling the place in New Orleans, and we’ll have to do something with the proceeds, so that’s where some of it would go.
Maybe we’ll hang here for some winter, or winters, or just come and go now and again, or whatever. When we would start it is undecided, but once we did, we would stay on the boat while we built it. In any event, consider it good news. You now have friends in the Bahamas, and eventually, will have a place to go to anytime you want. You would just have to get here.
We hope it makes you happy to hear this. We’re very excited about it, and just as excited to share it with all of you. So, we’ll see. I can’t wait to POST THIS BLOG!!!
This is really cool. I have something else to mention: again, about how typically nice people are here, unexpectedly. Yesterday morning, when the local vendors were setting up their stands for the local festival that’s going on now, we passed one that sold drinks and whatnot. We stopped and ordered two virgin strawberry daquiris, and as she made ‘em, she noticed the bag of DVDs I was holding. We talked for a minute and she asked about the boat and whatnot and then she mentioned that she had some DVDs she would give us. I said that maybe we could trade a couple or something, and didn’t know what to say to such a generous offer. So we moved on. Fast forward to today, she said she missed us last night because she had gone home and gotten the DVDs for us, and then didn’t see us. Is that nice or what? Her name’s Marlene. But wow. Can you imagine this stuff? It’s like there’s something in the water.
Anyway, then we met Donovan last night, super cool guy. He insisted that today he would drive us all over and show us the island. Today we called him, but missed him, and bumped into him later. It turns out he had come to the boat and was calling to us to take us out. Amazing. It just never ends here. I can’t imagine someone here ever going hungry, as long as someone on this island had something to eat, because it’s like one family. So now, we’re going in to meet Lita to shark fish off the pier again, and go to the festival again, but we’re taking Marlene some DVDS we’ve seen enough of, and taking my circular saw to Gary, who is a builder (Daniel’s son), because they look like they could really use it. There’s literally holes in their floor, which is in a house that I believe is made out of old pallets, but all painted up nice as could be, in stripes following the pallet boards. And you can’t imagine a more postive attitude coming out of that house. Daniel is older, and has a bad cough, and is living in what looks like really extreme poverty, and tells us to have a blessed day, and when we tell him to do the same he tells us that he’s blessed every day with a big smile. If nothing else, I just think I want to keep coming here to take lessons from the Bahamians.
It’s like our family and friends are all living in these people’s bodies, and everywhere we go, we keep bumping into you guys as you look out for us, offer us anything we could wish for, give us rides, and then send us on our way with care packages. We got a pizza from Sammy’s yesterday, ordered two days ago for yesterday, and when the owner found we had walked there, she insisted that we didn’t pick it up, but that she would drive it to us. Again, wow.
On the way back from Sammy’s, we went in an abandoned house, which turned out to be a church of sorts. The roof was gone, the floor was rotted through, and the podium still had the cloth over it, a bible on it, and an attendance book that hadn’t been touched. It was from January 1909. No spray paint, no vandalism, no arson. Untouched, since 1909, it looked like. Figure that out.
Okay, time to go shark fishing.
Jack out.