July 29, 2002
DOWN HOME:
Green was color of Ol' Straw Hat
___Ol' Straw Hat is lucky the Destin Princess doesn't have a gangplank. My buddy Brent wanted to send him on a watery walk.
___Brent and Jackie and their girls, Alayna and Andrea, have been meeting Joanna and our girls, Lindsay and Molly, and me at the beach every-other year or so since our daughters were little girls.
___One year--I think it was 2000--we toyed with the idea of going someplace else. But since we all love to lallygagin the sun, sand and surf, we eventually settled back on the Florida Panhandle coast. This year, we didn't even debate the issue; it was the beach.
MARV KNOX
Editor
___But this year, Brent decided he and I should do something different. He had this brilliant idea that we should get up at 5:30 one morning--a thought that defies the very notion of "vacation"--to go deep-sea fishing.
___First, he wanted us to sign up for a charter with a small outfit so we'd only have about six people fishing together. I only had two problems with that plan: (1) I've seen every episode of "Gilligan's Island" and (2) I couldn't decide whether I'd rather sell Lindsay or Molly to afford the charter fee.
___So, we signed on with the Destin Princess., which carries a crew of five, plus 40 strangers, each equally inept at casting heavy-gauge fishing line from the side of a lurching ship.
___Before we embarked, our captain intoned the one and only rule of the voyage: "If you get sick, cast your breakfast over the side of the boat."
___About an hour into the trip, something happened that's never happened before. I regretted eating chocolate donuts. Fortunately, I kept my eyes on the speck of land, thought soothing thoughts, and the feeling passed.
___Somehow, Ol' Straw Hat (we didn't know his name, and his hat and reprehensible behavior were the only things that distinguished him from 37 of our other fellow-voyagers) wasn't so fortunate. And apparently he didn't listen to the captain, for he violated our one and only Code of the Sea.
___For a minute there, I felt sorry for Ol' Straw Hat. But Brent set my thinking straight. "How can you miss the ocean?" Brent asked. "How can you fail to hang your head over the railing and then miss the cotton-pickin' ocean? How hard can it be?"
___Well, I had to admit Brent had a point. And if they ever start a reality-TV show called "Gangplank," I imagine my pal will be an articulate spokesman for why Ol' Straw Hat should sleep with the fishes.
___Later, near the end of our trip back to port, I saw Ol' Straw Hat again. He was up near the bow, lounging in the sun, asleep and no longer green around the gills.
___The memory of the peaceful look on his face reminds me that God's grace covers a multitude of frailties, foibles and fishing incidents.
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