Velociworld

When the Flame Begins to Flicker

When the Senator first started manifesting the early stages of Alzheimer's it was unclear precisely what was ocurring, as the symptoms correlated rather closely to his traditional iconoclasm and general bullheadedness. The malady was also not well-known at the time, and generally misunderstood, the more vernacular pickling being in vogue among the physicians in the region. The only early manifestations in the Senator I recall were fire. And, of course, sailboats.

The Senator at one point curiously abandoned the traditional male's swagger in his firecraft. Few men I've known take their firebuilding skills lightly. I have in fact seen young men, flush with red liquor, beat each other senseless on Daufuskie Island over campfire disputations. One never offers unsolicited advice to another man over the manner, size, or flammability of his blaze. You are never taught this as a child; it naturally evidences itself. In fact, I believe the word flamboyant is derived from primitive souls strutting around a well-built inferno.

And yet the Senator, for reasons unfathomable, determined at one point that the essence of a fire was the fire itself. Heretical, yes, but there it was. Instead of employing all of his skills in creating a bier in the fireplace that would leap spontaneously into glorious oxidation, he began using gasoline as an accelerant, like a rank crude arsonist.

He was not completely bereft of mythos, of course. Not yet. There was still rite and ritual involved. He had, if fact, developed a particular and inappropriate fondness for a small juice glass. It was embellished with decals of orange slices, and was reminescent of something you would see in an old Howard Johnson restaurant, while awaiting your flapjacks and johnnycakes. This glass, source of affection unknown to the writer, was the only vessel he ever used to bastardize his fireplace with gasoline.

Gasoline certainly causes an immediate immolation of the fuel itself, if not the tinder underneath, and so when the Senator had placed a small bit of burning paper under his carefully constructed logs, he would toss the juice glass of petrol into the waiting maw, and grin malevolently as the impact-burst leapt a foot outside the fireplace. "Burn, baby, burn!" he would chortle as the flames reflected satanically in his oversized eyeglasses. The cry was ritual, too. Always Burn, baby, burn. The Senator was certainly no aficionado of the Black Panthers, and yet in his dotage I think he found a perverse, childlike pleasure in their nihilistic philosophy. Who among us, after all, hasn't wanted to shout that at some point in their life, as the Molotov cocktail arced gracefully toward its target?

Did I say sailboats? Yes. The other discordant note was the love-hate, push-pull, gee-haw with the sailboats. The Senator went through a phase where he loved to halloo the sailboats. He lived on the mighty Wilmington River at this point, half a mile wide as it flowed into Wassaw Sound and, thence, the Atlantic Ocean. Every weekend there was a bootleg, unsanctioned, dogcatchers regatta of some sort on the river, starting at the Savannah Inn and Country Club (where the Senator had honeymooned when it was the old Oglethorpe Hotel), heading out into the sound, and returning.

The boats were running downwind on the return, and often had an incoming tide with them, yet many of the skippers liked to shave close to the docks. It was impertinent and dangerous, but part of the allure of a gimcrack regatta. The Senator would espy the brightly-colored spinnakers from his Florida room and holler "Woo-hoo! Look at the sailboats!" He would then stride down to the dock magisterially, as the boats closed and the skippers inched closer to the row of docks that dotted the western shore.

The Senator would point gaily at the sails, laughing in full measure, then, as the skippers passed the dock and gave him a smug "Ain't I grand?" grin he was shake his fist and scream "Get away from my God damn dock!"

It's hard to lose your wind when you're on a broad reach, but shitting one's foul weather gear, or falling off enough to hit another boat is quite doable. The sailors eventually learned to stay away from the Senator's dock, and I am proud to say I never once saw him wave his .357 at them. That particular flourish was usually reserved for close acquaintances, and family.

My personal belief is the Senator had never mastered the righteous joys of sailing, and he was both envious and bemused. Being a pragmatist, he could never understand why one would labor so intensively in millennia-old technology when a big-assed engine could get one there in style. He probably also thought sailors were showboats and dilettantes, and very queer with their colorful sails and fancyboy outfits. The only chrome he prized on a boat was a gimble that held his lethal cocktail. I'm glad he never synergized the gasoline and sailboats, however. A properly heaved juice glass of low-octane followed by an en fuego Zippo could have had deleterious effects on all involved.

Next: I, Barfly. My ill-advised attempt to become a 23-year-old rummy at the Crowbar Lounge.