We all need an Eskimo sometimes

Original: (Friday, June 03, 2005)

Back in '96 (that's 1996, not 18.. or 17.. or..) I was having a tough time. I was working as a fisherman that year, not exactly getting rich. I'd headed offshore to go for Albacore, on my nice new (1960 vintage) boat, Seabreeze

Somewhere (well, I can look up the exact co-ordinates; I wasn't 'lost at sea', really) about 800 miles west of Eureka I caught an old floating hawser in my prop, blew out my engine. Not much I could do out there, except spend a lot of time checking my bilge pumps, putting out distress calls, the usual thing for anyone floating around the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
After what seemed forever, but was actually just four days, I caught a lucky bounce off the ionosphere, and got hold of US Coast Guard Station Brookings. It took a few more days, but a Coast Guard ship finally got to me, about the time the weather was getting really iffy. They took me in tow, and in a few more days I wound up tied to an abandoned fishbuyers dock in Eureka California. Having had little-to-no sleep for weeks, I pretty much collapsed. Spent about 15 hours dead out.
But time has a way of moving along no matter my state of consciousness, so next morning I had no choice but to wake up and try to get things set to rights.
I was standing in the wheelhouse, surveying the chaos, when a cheerful little woman with sensible walking shoes and a slouch hat, looking perhaps a little like Miss Marple, came striding by along the beatup old dock. She waved and gave me a cheerful "Good Morning!". I growled at her. She said "What a beautiful boat you have!" (she had a remarked tendency to speak in exclamation points). I said it was a piece of junk (well, something a bit stronger than 'junk') with a blown engine, unusable, a disaster, etc. She persisted in engaging me in cheerful chatter until, finally, in exasperation at her impenetrable cheeriness, I said: Look, I wouldn't even have a way to get around, except a friend is letting me use his truck.
She said, without even a pause "Oh, you have a friend!"
I must have blinked, or blacked out, or something, because when I looked next, she had disappeared. I wanted to say thank you, or something, but, having delivered her message, she could then depart. That was my eskimo, back in July of 1996.