This post is part of a series. You can go back to the first one at Cruzin’ then Cruzin’: Day 2. There’s our sojourn in Mexico and this is part four.
As I write there are four liners in port and we are getting ready to leave. It’s just passed five in the afternoon and the captains are playing silly-buggers with the ships’ horns. We toot twice. The other ship toots back three times. We toot back five. Eventually it gets to Shave-and-a-Haircut.
Continue reading “Cruzin’ Day IV: Poison & Magic”This post is part of a series. You can read Cruzin’ and Cruzin’: Day Two that occur before this one
What’s surprising about this trip is that, even though it’s open-bar, I’m not hungover and am waking for the sunrise each day. I never do this at home.
That over there, that’s the mainland, Met-hi-co. But we’re not going there, we are heading for a little place called Cozmel, an island apparently constructed and operated by cruise-lines.
Continue reading “Cruzin’ III: Mexico Adventures”This post is part of a series. To catch up, go read Cruzin’.
Day two and we are at sea, off the cost of Mexico. Sachie and I wake before dawn, watch a Caribbean sunrise before the worst of the heat and humidity sets in.
I’m still foggy, vulnerable, when there’s a knock on the door. Could it be? Was this it? We lock eyes and I see my own hopes and fears written on Sachie’s face. Even far from sight of land, they know we are here, they know our cabin. They have come.
Continue reading “Cruzin’: Day Two”Dan and Sachie have been Cruising. No, it’s not like in the Al Pacino film from 1980, quite the opposite. While Al descended into a sleazy world of leather and gay sex, Sachie and I ascended to the heights of luxury and first-class travel. That is, Sachie scored a fam trip on a boat.
Not just any boat, it’s classy Celebrity Cruises Celebrity Beyond and apparently it’s quite a score. Not your usual family-friendly booze-and-buffet cruise that has you packed into tiny airless staterooms but something closer to the golden age of sea travel, 1977’s The Love Boat.
But first! A long and arduous flight across the Pacific.
Quit that racket kids. No, turn it off and come over here. We’re supposed to be remembering old Stan today, it’s his big day and tomorrow there’ll be plenty of time for Tick-Tockin’, Row-box or whatever foolishness. Come over here and I’ll tell you a story. No, over here. In a circle.
You see that box over there, no the big one. There. Quit it Sally, I don’t have time for shenanigans. Stanley’s in there, his is body anyway. Yes, really. I thought that’d make you clam-up.
Now I seem pretty old to you and I am. I’ve seen 52 summers and am proper old. But when I was your age, anybody over 16 was a grown-up and that’s how I knew Stan. Stanley was my oldest brother and on the day I was bawlin’ while mother dropped me off for my first day of school he was already put out out to work.
What? I guess he was (one, two three four…ten, twelve) about 14. Yes Sally, that’s too young to work in a factory these days but that’s how it was back then. Pappy ran off and left our mother with five boys to feed and Stanley quit school to keep the rent paid and his brothers fed. Fed most of the time.
Continue reading “More Champagne Comedy”
