Remembering an Odd Encounter Part 1

(I may have written some version of this on the old journal--harpO--but it wasn't as vivid in my mind and I felt like I needed to write it again)

Today was another teak day. I finished a piece over at project O, as intended. I was going to scan the scene with my Flip, due to Bobby's request, but I discovered the batteries were dead as doornails. I must have left that sucker on, or something.

Anyway, the lounge chair is now a work of art. I have done five of those now. Just one more to go, but that will be later. I'm heading south to do who knows what near the thriving zany city where I was supposed to grow up but never quite did.

Tracing the thought pattern which brought up the memory of Mike Kevorkian, a pioneer in the South FL diving world would take more space than this lengthy story. My acquaintance with Mike was brief, yet memorable. I did not know him as the shaker and mover I later discovered he was.

Growing up in Miami included working in and later doing all the work in a side business my father started. Not sure how it came about, the business, not the work. It was a little operation that originally made spearguns, then the replacement bands for the top brand and spears for Hawaiian slings. Those are like an underwater slingshot that shoots spears. I've never been spearfishing. Maybe my father did, I don't know. Our lives were not exactly intertwined in a transparent fashion. Since he didn't live there from the time I was 9 or 10, the work load fell on my brother and I. In high school, I was the whole ball of wax.

The speargun factory was in the garage in the back yard. Few jobs I've had since involved work that was that hard, hot or unsafe. UPS truck loading in Greensboro matched or exceeded the degree of risk to life and limb. Safety is for sissies. That was our motto. In addition to producing a higher quality product, I managed to shed less blood than those who went before me. Am I tooting my own horn a bit much here? Sorry. I'm practicing for some pitches I have planned for projects that require schemes so crazy that unmitigated gall and confidence are the only way to go.

My experience in the fish gun labor camp is probably the source of my secret satisfaction in doing higher quality work than is required, or even obvious, and my disconnect between work and reward. Work should equal reward and satisfaction. I have yet to tie it together as I should. For some reason I do like seeing a good result that I can't fault when I'm done, but considering best return for effort put in eludes me.

Back to Kevorkian. He was always asking me about things I couldn't answer when I'd make deliveries to his shop. He especially wanted to make the replacement bands and was always prying about our method of doing this. That was not information I could divulge. It bothered me that he asked, and I was just a kid, stuck in a morass of other confusion.

A few years out of high school, with some college behind me, now a part time Air Guard crew chief, and still confused, I'd returned to Miami thinking, since the business was shot and stagnant that I'd revive it, then branch out into making other cool things not related to spears or fish. I figured if I offered my dad 50% provided he just take the money and didn't interfere it was win-win.

I immediately drummed up new orders and sold out the stock on hand with new orders coming in. Absent as he always was, I'll be damned if dear old dad didn't find time to start questioning my pricing and every other move I was making. Instead of months going by with no contact, he was critically crossing my path way too often.

I shut it down. Hell with that. I took a job as a draftsman/designer at a place that made water cooled exhaust systems for yachts. That was not a bad gig. Soon I was the go to guy for the custom work because I could look at blue prints and design the system to fit. Had to say that. I often forget that stuff. Anyway, I had a little apartment and a hellacious rush hour commute to Hialeah every day. Soon I decided to go back to school in the middle of nowhere--little town in NC--small college, and I was going to straighten out; no drinking or drugs, just become academic. Fat chance on that. D and D all the way.

Kevorkian called me and since he'd heard I shut down, wanted to buy the machines and such for making those bands. He named a figure and I assured him it had to be higher for me to even approach my father. I was good at that game. He complied, and my father agreed. After all kinds of hassle, I got a meeting arranged between the two at my mother's house, home of the speargun factory.

End part 1.

I'll write part 2 in a minute. I'll mess around with it so that part 1 is above part 2 on the page. Right now I have a cafe con leche break. Bustelo cooked on the stove. I'm saving my remaining parrot coffee, but Bustelo is a reliable Cuban coffee por la gente.