Dashy Dern

Clarence and Maude sat on their respective rocking chairs on the porch of their Pearl Street house. An observer could not tell if the creaking came from the rocking chairs, the old porch, or maybe even old bones. But it didn't matter. The brother and sister had been creaking for so long that no one in Marbleville really cared.

During their lives each had married, raised their separate families, and lost their spouses to old age. Clarence was two years older and never let his sister forget it. "I'll be a hundred when you're still in your ninety's -- ha! So don't talk like you know more than me. Oh, isn't that just like the younger generation, now?"

But at eighty-eight, young Maude knew a thing or two of her own. Like how to raise two strapping boys who grew up stars at Marbleville High then turned NFL pro. Also Chelsea, who went to a music conservatory and toured with one of the respected symphony orchestras. Yes, Maude knew a thing or to.

Now, Clarence was no piker himself. He'd engineered the Rock Island Freight and Rail Company for a week over fifty years. Got a watch to prove it, and don't think he didn't dangle it in front of Maude to emphasize the point. Clarence also liked to tell stories. There was one he repeated so often the listener began to think he'd experienced it.

"I no more than retire than the doctor talks about an incurable disease. Terminal. Dashy dern, only six months to live!

"Six months? After all those years? And I swear the doctor said, "I'm not giving you the day, my friend, that's God's job. I can only talk in months. I didn't make the rules."

"Now, I'd spent half a century following the same tracks to Adell and the same ones in the opposite direction back to Marbleville, so don't think now and again my mind hadn't wandered off those parallel tracks a time or two. But as I approached retirement, I just didn't seem to have the old get up and go, so even before I hard the news about terminal, mentally I'd already packed it in.

"Now, you know as well as I do that some folks'll hear the same thing

others will but react just the opposite. Take war. Mothers'll get all gray-haired worrying about their boys going overseas and getting killed, but young fellers just can't wait to get in the thick of things. So when it came to cancer or whatever the doctor said, unlike others, I wasn't all crest fallen and say dashy dern forgood. So instead of sitting on my porch waiting to die, this Marbleville resident did himself proud.

"That's right, I said, since I'm going anyway I might as well gomyway. So I took every last thing I owned except my railroad watch and hocked it for cash. Then I signed the deed to my house to sister Maude, here, and headed for New Orleans.

"Well, don't ask me how, but a fellow who spends half a century doing the same thing every day has a good long time to think things out. And a lot of those thoughts start the same way: "If I win a lottery," or, "Once I retire," and oft-times, "If I just weren't working for the RIFIC, good an outfit as it is, why, I'd..." And though the scenarios started different, most ended pretty much the same if I let my mind wander far enough. So I said, dashy dern, enough of ideas and dreams, I'm going intoaction.

"Now, once in New Orleans I dug up some fellows who weren't too persnickety about which side of the law they worked and had them make up enough fake credentials you'd think they were supplying everyone in the FBI and CIA together. And each ID came complete with pictures and fingerprints and voice identification and blood type and bar-coded resumes fit to get me hired as President. I'm telling you, I'm classified every which way fit to travel the world under the glorious auspices of the United States Government, though they weren't aware of a thing.

"Now, that first step took half my life's earnings, but it was worth it. The second part of my bank roll went into a complicated system that said I had credit in so many banks and enough financial endorsements and letters of reference you'd swear I could buy the Taj Mahal on pocket change. All set, though totally broke as far as real money was concerned, off I went to spend the last six months of my life in style.

"Now, if you've done even elementary arithmetic, you'll know the figures I've used don't quite jive. I started the story saying I was nigh onto ninety, yet I headed out at sixty-five. Something's amiss, right? Either the good doctor miscalculated or something came up once I hit the road.

"Well, sir, I'm not fibbing, so I'll tell you exactly what happened. With all my fancy credit and credentials, I buy a PT boat. Rig her good and hire a healthy crew, too. She took pretty good seas and was fast enough to zip

here and there under radar and over the speed limit. I figure if I'm going to go, let it be full throttle and dashy dern about the brake linings.

"Now, my crew is of the same mind since they're half-pirate and not thinking beyond today. I picked them up when I pocketed my credentials as both were furnished by the same outfit in New Orleans, don't you see.

"Well, I'm telling you, the scrapes, mishaps, and near-disasters I had would make James Bond look like a Boy Scout. But whenever things got a bit close, I'd whip out a Government document signed by the President himself and get off Scott-free and a "My mistake, Sir." Of course, since my retirement I'd grown an Errol Flynn mustache and wore a jaunty admiral's outfit, plus the fact that I had this PT-boat painted official with a realistic FBI or CIA or somesuch seal, so I pulled the wool over many a near-arresting officer's eyes.

"But folks don't usually take much to stories that are full of generalities like I've given you so far. So I'll give you a few predicaments when I was in the Gulf of Mexico and maybe that'll satisfy you.

"I called myself Skipper Sam. Thought that'd be a nice touch since I looked Government. And my Missions, oh, weren't they beauties.

MISSION ONE:

Code Name: Mary Jane.

Type of Mission: Search and Seizure.

Objective: Intercept and destroy all drug deliveries from Mexico, Cuba, Columbia, and all points South.

1. Use extreme caution. The enemy means business. They're fully armed and ready to fight.

2. Before dispatching the enemy and their vessels, burn all contraband before their very eyes and watch them moan and groan.

MISSION TWO:

Code Name: Wet Back.

Type of Mission: Intercept and Return

Objective: Intercept all vessels containing illegal aliens and return them to their homelands.

1. Use caution: some émigrés will do most anything to get to the land paved with gold and not have to return to their holes of iniquity.

2. Supply each returnee with U.S. Government funds so they can start anew in their homelands.

3. Tattoo each recipient so they won't return just to get on the (my) U.S. payroll. Inform them this is a one-shot hand-out.

MISSION THREE:

Code Name: Gattling

Type of Mission: Search and Seizure

Objective: To confiscate all American weapons being smuggled to countries outside Continental U.S. via the Caribbean.

1. Use extreme caution and be prepared to exchange volley for volley. Gun runners want to shoot. They will use arresting officials as free targets in order to become accustomed to the weapons they're smuggling.

2. Confiscate all moneys and use them to buy ice-cream for the New Orleans kids during scoring hot July days.

3. Recycle gun powder from illegal ammo into fire crackers for July 4th.

"Not all generalities, now, eh? Anyway, so went the missions, all created and executed by the notorious yours truly, Skipper Sam.

"Well sir, in time, the Government got wind of my daring escapades and investigated. They found Skipper Sam's real name, who'd forged all those ID's and documents, even the names and backgrounds of my crew. But here's the best part: they looked the other way!

"Why? Because my Missions were getting good results. And they were cheap compared to Government missions. Of course the U.S. disavowed responsibility: to them I was a hair-brained renegade off my marbles, but as long as I didn't cause them any embarrassment, they let me continue. I even heard IamusedWashington. So I carried on as if I were Invincible Sinbad of the High Seas. That is, until we collided with a ship carrying South American diplomats to Washington, D.C.

"Now, I need to straighten something out in case you've read about the incident. Truth is, we didn't collide, we rammed. Hey, I trained Fernando Alverez myself and he followed orders to the T."

"The official communiqué the South American liner sent to D.C. said they were being harassed by a U.S. Government vessel demanding immediate surrender of all drugs, debarkation of all illegal aliens, and to relinquish all firearms and ammunition.

"The communications between Washington and the ship,Santa Teresa, were embarrassing. But when I fired a cannon across the bow of the liner, war almost broke out. And before jet helicopters carryingrealGovernment officials arrived, me and my lusty crew took matters into our own hands by ramming the diplomat-carrying vessel a hearty broadside.

"That ended my adventures on the high seas. Dashy dern, Uncle Sam grounded me forever!"

Well, Clarence has lived twenty years now since his shenanigans ended. And ever after he's lived with sister Maude rocking back and forth on the Pearl Street house.

Now, if I heard this for the first time, I'd wonder what's up with the doctor's six-month prognosis. Clarence was supposed to check out because of terminal cancer, so why didn't he? It turns out that while Clarence was doing all his high seas' mischief, the good doctor passed away:Hedied of terminal cancer. It turns out that when our retiree was in the office, Clarence thought the doctor was talking abouthim, when the truth was the sawbones was carrying on about his own predicament.

But the mistake never bothered Clarence. Truth is he had the time of his life because of it. I mean, what retiree can cruise the Gulf of Mexico cart blanche thanks to Uncle Sam and get away with most of it to boot?

So there sat ninety year-old Clarence and his younger sister, eight-eight year-old Maude, just rocking away.

"Lookie here, now, you know your boy's a football coach. But for what team? You have to givedetails, Maude. Generalities just won't do."

"Beats me. But I do remember that once Chelsea did Marbleville proud by giving a concert in that Carnegie Hall, there."

"Well that's more like it, kid sister." And on they rocked.

If you ask old Clarence for his favorite story, be prepared for him to put his railroad watch aside, then wind up and tell you the time he was a Government Agent. But you have to listen closely at the beginning and be good at math or, dashy dern, you'll miss just who had that disease."