“That’s for being too fast, Jimmy Pip-Squeak,” came his chuckled retort.
With that we flipped over my freshly painted, small, white, six-foot dinghy with its oars strategically hidden underneath, and carried it the thirty feet (high tide) or so to the shoreline, then unceremoniously dropped it with a sudden splash of warm, salty water.
“You row.”
“Sure thing, Tommy.”
When we water skied, which we did practically every day, and sometimes all day every day, we each brought our ski of choice, in addition to whatever crap ski’s might happen to already be on the boat.
For me, Tommy, Patrick, and Ken, that meant one ski each, since we were all accomplished slalom skiers, preferring to be dragged up on one ski rather than risk losing one by dropping it.
Stevie Bird, being The Bird, insisted on dropping a ski after he was hoisted up, but due to his general lack of coordination and overall klutziness, inevitably his extra ski would wind up mangled, lost, or far too many times to count, directly in his path, causing evasive maneuvers, or to our combined delight, spectacular wipeouts.
My ski was a beautiful mahogany O’Brien Competition with its ultra-concave body. Tommy had a bright orange fiberglass Sea Glider Retro complete with an enormous fin that looked better suited for a guillotine, and Patrick’s, since he was so big, was a much longer Connelly Sport Team One. The Bird had whatever the heck his parents bought him, something presumably ready to fall apart.
Tommy’s floating missile of a boat started on about the 12th try, punctuated with a black cloud of oil.
“Don’t worry. She’ll be fine once we get going.”
“Me? Worry? No way. It’s cool.” (I mean, it takes every outboard engine at least a dozen attempts to start, right?)
We picked up the rest of our crew at the dock then spent all morning cutting the flat-as-glass ocean to shreds. Well at least our little slice of the ocean, from Phinney’s Harbor to the “Second Rock Pile.” Any farther out than that was always rough and choppy, so we stuck to doing endless zig-zags, loop-de-loops, and figure-eights on Mashnee’s bay side, where it was the calmest.
But with Ken Flaherty skiing, and doing a mighty fine job of cutting across and jumping the foamy wake at a considerable rate of speed, punctuated by plenty of hoots and hollers as we cheered him on, he hit the wake awkwardly, which jettisoned him, and his ski, dangerously high into the air. The day’s calmness slammed to a sudden and unexpected hiatus, when his ski, led by its sharp, near-four-inch metal ski fin came smacking down directly onto Ken’s forehead. It was a one-in-a-million shot. He was the one.
In the boat our reaction went from hysterically laughing, to near hysteria, once we saw the large circle of scarlet-colored water precede his re-emergence to the surface, as he came up holding his bloodied head with one hand and waving frantically for help with the other.
Then suddenly, “Motherflipper!”
SPLASH
Tommy was in the water streaking like a freakin’ submarine toward Ken, who was now bobbing like a barreled-apple and visibly gasping for breath.
Tommy grabbed him by his life vest with an iron-clad grip, then swam him back to the boat, where his brother Patrick, now sporting a beet-red face which matched the color coming from his brother’s head. He hauled him up into the boat with his powerful arms—all the while Tommy was yelling, “Keep his freakin’ blood off the freakin’ seats or my freakin’ father will freaking kill you…and me… Ahhh shit!”
He shouted to no avail.
As soon as Ken was aboard the boat we applied a large beach towel to the open wound, which it quickly bled through and seeped onto the boat deck, and yes, all over the seats too. It was obviously a very deep cut, and he was probably concussed, but we didn’t know about concussions back then, so we just called it “having your bell rung.”
Tommy then zipped the boat around and hauled-ass back to the Mashnee dock, where I was charged with running ahead to The Club to get help. The help I enlisted was Betty O’Connor’s daughter Marylou Riley, who, despite her substantial girth, had literally barreled down to the dock at a truly astonishing rate of speed, a stack of clean towels and a first-aid kit in hand.
Displaying admirable dexterity in the art of first aid, she had immediately taken charge of Ken, then rapidly drove him to the Bourne Hospital, where he would receive some sixteen stitches, and one bad-ass scar.
Patrick figured his brother Ken was in good hands, and it wasn’t a life-threatening injury anyway, so he might as well just enjoy the rest of the day.
We spent the next hour attempting to clean the blood from Tommy’s boat, in reality only making matters worse (“Yup, I’m screwed”).
Then, with big plans still in the works and nothing more for us to do at the dock, and with the portable AM-radio blasting out The Rolling Stones singing, “I Can’t Get No, SAT-is-FAC-tion, But I Try, and I Try, and I Try, and I Tryyyy…” Tommy, Patrick, The Bird, and I headed over to Memorial Beach to salvage the day by picking up Christine and Sally. They both looked lucious in cute, matching bikinis. Sally, a sexy, tall, blue-eyed blonde, not only wore the skimpiest suits imaginable, but back on land, she apparently didn’t own a bra as well, fine with us!
They hopped onto the boat… (“Ick guys, what’s that gooey red stuff all over the seat…?!) Then, with cans of lukewarm ‘Gansett beer in our hands (courtesy of Tommy’s unwitting father), and the girls holding onto the side rails and dancing with each other (I was mesmerized), we threw caution to the wind and headed toward The Cape Cod Canal; the day was definitely looking up, but problematically, the weather wasn’t.
Chapter 34
Rope
Despite the fact that we had tons of freedom, we also had curfews. Even Tommy.
Of course, back then they weren’t called curfews. No sir, curfew sounded much too lenient. Back then it was simpy: “Get your ass home on time or you’re grounded for the rest of your life.” Hard and fast check-ins were the law of the land and sea.
With as much lenience as we were afforded, there were two key check-in points during the day, neither to be missed: dinner-time and late-night. No excuses. No stories. No plea bargains. Just be there. On time every time! No exceptions!
Except, this time we weren’t.
Tommy’s boat was flying, zipping all around the two large rock piles defining Phinney’s Harbor, cutting figure eighths in the now slightly choppy waters and generally showing off, to the girls’ delight. They, like the rest of us, were loving every minute of the thrill ride, as they jumped in time with the larger waves while giving equal attention to holding their bathing suit tops up, and, much to our dismay, at least until that point in time, succeeding.
“Slow the hell down a second,” shouted the broad-shouldered Patrick, “I wanna grab a beeeeeeeeer.” Upon hearing such, Tommy immediately goosed it for a second, just to tease our oft short-tempered friend, much to the delight of the rest of our crew.
Tommy was showing off and the girls were lovin’ it. On this day we had chicks aboard, and we were busy showing off. We zipped around the outer reaches of Mashnee’s Captains Row, then charged through the area where the waters dangerously intersected, out along the edge of Hog Island. We flew beyond the State Pier on Taylors Point, Buzzards Bay, at the southern end of the canal, where Onset Harbor frames the infamous Massachusetts Maritime Academy Training Vessel, all decked out with sharp-looking cadets.
Back then it was known as the BAY STATE II. (Tommy gave his air horn three generous toots in honor of the occasion.)
Then we headed into the government-owned Cape Cod Canal, which was actually dangerous as hell for small boats. Which, of course, was why every one of us had been explicitly forbidden to enter it without express written parental permission. Oops!
Hey, sometimes we didn’t listen...
The canal hosted a spaced, but steady stream of oil tankers, tug-boats, barges, canal cruises and various mighty bulk carriers transporting unpackaged bulk cargo —such as grain, coal, ore, steel coils, and cement—in their cargo holds. All were heading through Cape Cod Bay then out to the Atlantic Ocean proper.
Also in the mix of this heavy traffic were unpredictable currents and ominous-looking whirlpool rip tides.
