note: This is an old post. I have decided to update it, add recent events in the lives of some, and to write about a couple more...
Morgan City, Louisiana was the first town in America to require all job applicants to be fingerprinted, and their prints run through the FBI's registry. This was back in the '70's, before I sought work in the oil patch. When I first heard this, I was convinced it was the work of fascist totalitarian control freaks. Maybe so, but the reason for such measures was the number of people on the run from the law who came to Louisiana to get jobs. For example, Jack Henry Abbott, the murderer who wrote "Belly of the Beast" about his life in state orphanages and then prison, famously championed by Norman Mailer, was caught in Morgan City after killing a restaurant manager in New York City shortly after gaining parole. "Belly" was a powerful book, but how anyone who read it could feel that Abbott was fit to walk the streets is beyond me. He was a victim of state neglect, and it is a shame. However, he was past rehabilitating. But I digress.
Yes, the marine industry has been a haven for brigands, cutthroats, and crazies, probably since the dawn of time. And guess what? It still is. One reason, I believe, is due in part to the nature of the job; weeks-long hitches in small cramped quarters are easily tolerated by ex-convicts, who are delighted to be paid, and get better food, and not be hassled by guards and clanging steel doors. Lots of deckhands have prison "tats"(tatoos, for you citizens), such as swastikas and assorted curse words, that are not viewed kindly by prospective employers at the Shoe Barn, or IHOP. The other pool we draw our deckands from is ex-soldiers. I prefer the cons; I have only had one ex-military man worth a tinker's dam. And he committed suicide! They are lazy, undisciplined, and argumentative, the exact opposite of what I would have expected before experiencing this phenomenon first-hand. One has to stand up to some frightening fellows every now and then, or you will not be respected, and respect is Everything to these guys. But I have never had any problem with stealing, or worried about getting a knife in the back. We never lock our bunkroom doors. A crew develops a tight bond, and anyone who violates that trust gets black-balled, or worse.
The other reason I like these guys is their stories. Some of what follows may be a bit dark, but boring it ain't. Allow me to introduce you to:
Tom. He was the only deckhand who was a friend before we worked together. He had just got out of Atlanta Federal, when I brought him to work with me on the first boat on which I was the captain, the m/v Elizabeth Bourg. He had served 4 years of a 12-year stretch for conspiracy to distribute cocaine, but he had wangled a job in the prison law library, and actually got his sentence reduced to time served, plus probation, on a technicality that his lawyer was ignorant of. Dumb, Tom wasn't. He was a character straight out of an Elmore Leonard novel. Strong as an ox, he picked me up from a loaded barge onto an empty with one hand one night. Tom once fought 5 cops at one time, and the judge laughed when he read the cost of the uniforms that were torn up in the fight, and the dental bills. Still got jail time, however. He could charm cops, anybody really, especially the ladies, when running or fighting wasn't an option. We had an engine room fire one day in the Houston Ship Channel, and Tom grabbed a fire extinguisher, climbed out on an exhaust pipe over the flames, and with one hand put the fire out. It was one of the bravest things I have ever seen, and it saved our bacon. However, he was still a con in his head, and intimidated the other deckhands. I interceded on a skinny guy's behalf finally, and we had a slap-fight that nearly came to blows. I admit, when I saw how close he was to exploding, my insides turned to jelly. Tom only stops hitting when he gets tired. I still fired him on the spot, and although we hugged and made up before the company driver came to take him to the bus station, he remained fired. And that rat bastard I defended turned on me years later, and got me fired off a boat. Of course, EJ wasn't a criminal, and had no code. We worked together in 1985, and Tom has served two prison sentences since then. We are still friends. Better than being his enemy, trust me.
Update: I haven't seen Tom in over eight years, except for a picture in the arrest record on the local paper's website, for a minor misdemeanor of some sort. He is 50 now, and off probation. I guess he has settled down some.
Willie LaPointe was another character. He had done time in Angola for raping his ex-Mother-in law, of all things. He said she set him up, but who in their right mind would get into such a situation? When Kermen, our personnel guy, interviewed Willie, he asked him if he could cook. "Yeah", Willie said, "But only in real big pots". Willie was a beast; he had no moral compass whatsoever, and was even stronger than Tom. One poor deckhand, a real nice young fellow named Terrell, was a victim of Willie's warped sense of humor. Willie would pinch his rear every time he passed, and tell Terrell how he was going to make him his "maytag fag"(isn't prison jargon colorful?). He told Terrell how he would be Willie's wife on the boat, and do his laundry and assorted other wifely things, or get the hell beat out of him. I would not have put it past Willie, but one night while we were pushed into the bank, waiting on the Industrial Locks, the captain heard a splash. It was Terrell, throwing overboard a plastic bag loaded with his gear, slipping into the water after it, and swimming to shore.
One night, on a different boat, a propeller shaft broke, and fell off into the water, leaving a 10-inch hole shooting water into the engine room. Everyone was scrambling to get into the flatboat, as the pumps could in no way keep up with the inflow of water. Willie grabbed a coffee can and a bunch of rags, forced the coffee can into the hole, held it there against the force of the water, which had the pressure a firehose might have, and jammed rags around the can, slowing the flow to a trickle that the pumps could keep up with until a blocking flange could be screwed in place. No sane man would have tried that, but there you are. He saved the boat, and became a legend on the waterway.
But Willie was another one who could not adjust to life on the outside, where violence was not the answer to everything. He beat up a captain one night, and when Kirk offered no resistance, it was open season on the poor bastard. Weeks later, Willie chased a bleeding and bruised Kirk onto our boat, which was pushing a tow with theirs at the time. Crying that Willie wanted to kill him, my crew said they would protect him. But when Willie followed Kirk over and started thrashing him, no one lifted a finger. Thankfully, I was at home that week. Finally, my deckhands jumped Willie and kept him at bay until the boat reached port, and our driver picked up a now calm and mildly repentant Willie. Peanut, the driver then and my captain now, kept his .38 in his lap for the entire drive back to New Orleans. Willie, I hear, is back in Angola, this time for life. I hope he and his wife are happy together.
Dane was my deckhand when Katrina hit New Orleans. He is a good hand, but at the time he had a bad substance-abuse problem. One time he was so messed up that he took 30 minutes, strike me dead if I'm lying, to tie his handkerchief on his head, pirate-style. He was drooling all the while. It was crew-change day, and Peanut and I had to hustle him out of the galley before the driver saw the condition he was in. Why didn't we just fire him? Because the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don't. Anyway, the boat was in Baton Rouge after the storm, and Dane had to work over, as our other deckhands had evacuated to Texas with their families when Katrina came through. When he did get off, he had two big paychecks to blow. Jeff, the driver, asked him where he wanted to be let off, thinking he would say somewhere in New Orleans. "Where's the bad side of Baton Rouge?", Dane asked. "Take me there". Jeff did, and Dane was MIA for a year and a half. He's back now, but with warrants and attachments just waiting to be served on his buccaneer butt.
Update: Dane came back after a stay in Florida, something about a car full of stolen pharmaceuticals. he had not changed, however, and was living with a woman who did as many pills as he. Dane knew that there were warrants out for him, as he had walked away from a work camp a few years back. It was just a matter of time before he was stopped by the police after being spotted in a drug-soaked section of Kenner, Louisiana, on foot, the only white boy for blocks. I talked to him a few months ago, and he was on work-release again, but he sounded a bit smarter. I sure hope so.
Then there was Sonny, who is a hard worker, but he likes to work alone, as he gets time-and-a-half when he does. So he runs off everybody he can, in order to make the big money. I was fine with him working the deck solo,as he is very conscientious and attentive to his duties. Sonny was the last deckhand I remember seeing wash the boat in the rain, common in my day, today not so much. He was gone for a couple of years, serving time for stealing dirt-bikes, or some off-road vehicle. He claims that he was passed out in the truck when his buddies did it, and only woke up when the cops chased them down. A good story, but it didn't sway the judge. One guy refused to be intimidated by Sonny, and Sonny invited him out onto the barge to have it out. Nevins, I forget his first name, obliged and punched Sonny's ticket in short order. No overtime that week.
Update: This is good. and the story includes another character on the deck.
Our boat and Sonny's were tied up in the trees north of Mobile, waiting out a hurricane. I was off that week, thank the stars.
In anticipation of a two-day hiatus, both captains had stocked up on beer and Crown, my captain's favorite whiskey. That is how many boat stories start, by the way. So the drinking starts, and my deckhand, Earl, got stupid almost immediately. He had recently learned that the deckhands were not getting raises, and he had been stewing on that news for a few days. The two captains were drinking and talking on our boat, when Earl burst in, demanding that Picou, my captain, talk to the office and get him a raise. Picou said that he had, but Karl was unmollified. Tired of his loud mouth and demands, the captains picked up their glasses and the bottle, and went to Robbie's boat to get their drink on. Though told not to, Earl followed a few minutes later. They moved back onto our boat. When Earl followed, Picou told him to go. Earl refused, made a stupid statement, and Picou leapt over the table and hit Earl hard enough to knock him out.
When Earl got up, he changed the focus of his venting from wheelhouse personnel to the deck crew, bitching about the lack of a raise. Sonny took it to heart, and raised the ante.
About a half hour later, Hicks, the wheel man on Robbie's boat, heard some banging in the engine room. He got up(Hicks was not much of a drinker, and had avoided the revelery). He caught Sonny in the engine room, drunker than Cooter Brown, sabotaging the generator. Hicks wrestled the maul from Sonny, who then tried to pull the electrical wires off the generator. After a tussle, Sonny went upstairs and told Robbie, his brother-in-law, incidentally, that he quit, and demanded to be taken to Mobile right then. If not, he was gonna tell the office about the drinking. So Robbie had the other deckhand fire up the engines, and they headed down to Mobile, planning to drop him off at the fuel dock. From there, he could call his family, and get a ride home to Louisiana.
Well, Sonny got a little impatient, and an hour before arriving at the fuel dock, the idiot jumped over the side with his luggage, and waded to shore. Robbie was plenty mad, but maybe he should have tried a little harder to convince Sonny that he had just dragged his sorry soaked butt onto 12-Mile Island. Robbie turned around and headed back upriver, and calls Sonny's Mother, telling her what her son had done. Remember that here is a hurricane in the Gulf. Sonny passes out shortly thereafter, as he does not call home for 10 hours.
When he tells his Mom to come pick him up, she tells him she ain't got a boat, nor a plane. He asks what she means.
"I mean you are on an island, you dumb drunked fool!" she informs him.
Sonny has to swallow some pride, and call Robbie. Robbie agress to pick him up finish the delivery job. About then it started rining really hard, and it was one water-logged, bedraggled, hung-over Sonny that was unceremoniously dumped at the fuel dock. He was fired, natch. Forever. I heard he did another stretch in the joint. I know, I am as shocked as you are.
Bundy was my favorite deckhand of all time. He weighed 350 lbs, most of it muscle, and due to an unspecified blood disorder, was completely hairless. All over. He was called Bundy because he resembled King Kong Bundee, a famous wrestler of the time. Again, this was the 80's. He was a sleepwalker, and would show up in the galley in the middle of the night in his white underwear, looking for all the world like a giant New Year's baby. he would make two sandwiches, stuff one in his mouth, and take the other one back to his bunk. The next day, he would remember none of it. Bundy was a white supremacist, but he liked black women, and he absolutely loved Jimi Hendrix. We agreed after a sit-down to disagree on the race issue. I became his friend for life when I recorded Hendrix' "A Band of Gypsies" onto a cassette for him. He was not a rabid racist, just thought blacks were inferior, and in fact had a lot of black friends. Black people love outrageous white people and Bundy was outrageous indeed. Always smiling, always ready to josh and joke. And no one could tighten a ratchet like Bundy. When he was done building tow, even a thousand foot of loaded barges did not bend no matter how hard we steered on them. Other deckhands hated to break the barges apart that he put together. Usually, they needed a sledge hammer to knock the ratchets loose. He was finally let go for health reasons, and the last anyone saw of him, he was a barker on Bourbon Street, urging passersby into the strip joints in the French Quarter.
Update: Bundy was visiting a friend, another bouncer, in the club where he was on duty. When a patron got a little rowdy, Bundy's friend went overboard, and they thought that the guy was dying. Bundy helped dump the body in a dumpster. Fortunately, the guy survived, but he was seriously brain-damaged. Bundy and two others were charged with an assortment of crimes; it looked pretty bad for my big bald friend, not that he didn't deserve punishment. However, the fellow who did the beating was looking at life anyway, as this was his third strike, and he 'confessed' that he had dumped the man in dumpster all by himself, and all charges were dropped against Bundy. He faces a huge civil suit, however. As my friend Ron says, you aren't going to get any blood out of a turnip.
Earl
I had just fallen asleep when Dudley burst into my cabin.
"Earl fell in the bathroom, he's bleeding from his head, and I can't get him to respond!"
I jumped out of bed as went on. I was dressed and headed downstairs as Dudley admitted that Earl was drunk off of a bottle that Dudley had snuck on board for him. I filed that away for later.
Earl was blue, laying on his left side, a trickle of blood ran from a gash in his forehead. I opened one eyelid, at my command Dudley took a flashlight and shone it in his unresponsive eye.
"You know CPR?", I asked Dudley.
"Sort of." he replied.
Earl had drunk a whole fifth in about 20 minutes. His breath stank accordingly. "You get to do mouth-to-mouth," I told his supplier, and we went to work.
For two minutes we worked on him; I would stop every few pushes and listen for a heartbeat, and could not detect one. Dudley, bless his heart, never stopped breathing air into Earl's inert, ever more bluing body. I stopped listening, and just pushed on Earl's chest harder and harder, yelling at his sorry ass to freaking LIVE!. Then he coughed, luckily Dudley was taking a breath, or the sputum that followed would have gone...fuhgeddabouttit.
We shouted at Earl, slapped his face a couple of times. Finally he opened his unfocused eyes. I just knew he was brain-damaged, but then he looked up at me.
"Hey, Greg...", he said weakly. Then "Ow!" as Dudley dabbed a rag soaked in hydrogen peroxide on his head injury, which was actually minor; all the drama was alcohol-induced. We got him on his unsteady feet and walked him to the galley table, where he promptly laid his head down on the table.. Dudley poured some more peroxide on the cut. Earl's head shot up.
"You aren't going to sleep", I said as we gave him some coffee. I was mad, but he was still too drunk to take in what had almost happened. Besides, I was pretty damn exhausted from the effort expended and the adrenaline rush, now fading. "You might have a concussion." Dudley took over the patient's care, doing a very good bandage job. He must have been assigned to the prison infirmary.
The captain had snuck home for the night. If I called the office, that might come out. When not binge-drinking, Earl was like a part of my own mind out there on the tow; always having just done what I was about to tell him needed doing. So I prepared to threaten him with firing, then giving the 'one more chance, don't even watch a beer commercial, or I will fire you' spiel.
When he came down stairs the next morning, he looked rough, but alive.
"How are you, Earl?" I asked in a voice edged with sarcasm.
"My chest hurts." I knew that I had done the CPR right when he said that. You have to break the cartilage in the ribcage, or you aren't pumping blood through the heart. And he god-damned deserved to hurt.
The Captain fired Earl a few months later, for an incident that rates its own post.
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There were others, like the fellow with the knife scar across his face who got in my face one day because I made him build a coupling that he thought was unnecessary. That was fun. And the Charlie Manson look-alike who would stare at the back of my head until I could feel it, and turn around to see him leering at me in the darkness. We called the office and got him replaced before he evinced any other Manson proclivities. We did not let him know that he was fired until his relief pulled up in the company truck. Whew! I may have to do another post on this subject, as I am recalling more and more crazies as I write this. Most of the rest were run-of-the mill drunks, burglars, and crack-heads. But good workers, and most, to a point, became my friends. Kermen and I used to laugh and say "You don't need a criminal record to work for Gulf Towing, but it helps".
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