Mission

This month's Pirate Surgeon article is on Christmas and New Year's at Sea. It features bits I've picked up on celebrating these holidays by sailors, privateers, buccaneers and pirates. Happy holidays everyone!

<Eddie Deezen> Brig, hey Brig! Is the song done yet? I'm still waiting, Brig. Two years and counting... Every morning I wake up, stretch, kick the cat off the bed so I can make it and then wonder to myself if this will be the day...? So let me know when it's done, n'kay Brig? 'Cuz I'm waiting. (No, I don't want to smoke any of Jack's nasty cigars. You keep all those rotting ropes to yerself.) Is it done yet? I'm still waiting. No pressure or anythin'. Just... waiting...patiently. Still. Brig. *sniff*</Eddie Deezen>

Wait...He has your mug? I...find this...unlikely, at best. I have a photograph that undeniably doesn't prove that Captain Jim is right. (And he was there, so he can verify it.)

Wasn't it Woodes Rogers captured the two Indians to get information about the port somewhere in South America? I believe they also captured one Spanish ship and learned about a second, larger one that was behind her. Of course, Rogers wasn't truly a pirate. There was also that group of pirates from one of Johnson's books that went into a port castle pretending to be French merchants or something like that so they could get inside and determine where the guns were before they attacked. I'd cite the references for you, but I don't keep notes on such things. I may not even have the details right. I'm surprised Little doesn't have this sort of stuff in his footnotes - he's usually pretty good about that sort of thing.

"I understand people like to tell outrageous stories about me. I've heard one only lately. Highly imaginative." -Irwin Maurice Fletcher, Fletch's Fortune (p. 169) Thank you all.

No, really, I am!

I'm moving this the the Weapons forum where it belongs.

My but he had a thing for men groping women's breasts, didn't he just? There are at least half a dozen similar images. Here seems to be the base page, but it is again some sort of application or interactive thing, so I can't repost the image here. (Curiously, at the very bottom of this page, it says this is a public domain image. Very interesting. I may spend some time looking around this museum myself...) https://www.rijksmus.../RP-P-OB-51.374

Ah, glad you dug this up. I found something while I was reading in Key West for you in The four years voyages of capt. George Roberts on page 376, but hadn't the time to put in here: "I began to think I was got on Board a Pirate, for there was such swearing, cursing, &c. that it would have made a sober Man's Hair stand on End; and I was too weak to be able then to do much, having daily a Fever and Ague, and the Captain, poor Gentleman! almost in as bad a Condition, having also an Ague, tho' not so frequently. The Mate hove the Lead to sound, but we were out of Soundings: The Folks then swore, They would not heave up the Anchor; or if they did, they would not lay a Hand on any thing to work in her; they did not know what the Design was; and a thousand other such Speeches, attended with thundering Oaths and Curses, such as Ignorance, joined with arrogant Sawciness, is wont to produce; tho', at the same Time, it was the Negroes that did in a Manner all the Labour."

I don't know about anyone else, but I can only see the pipe and the hand holding it. FYI, the board can only repost images that end in things like ".jpg" or ".png" When something ends in "=a bunch of random-looking characters" that is often an indication that you don't actually have the URL for the image or you have an interactive image or some such. (This occurs with zoomable images for example. The forum cannot reproduce these correctly, so you have to find the true image ending in a valid image type. Sometimes you have to fiddle around to get to it. Or you can do a screen capture and then upload it to your gallery here on the Pub if you really want to capture it.)

Wow, I just transferred this into word and it's 47 pages long. Last year is was in the mid 30 pages as I recall. Blah, blah, blah...

These are Captain Jim's photos from Sunday night. I love this album - it's almost like I was there! The Spirit of the Patrick Hand Original™ Planter's Hat haunts the fort gate. None shall pass except those who can toke upon the Cigar of Dr. Zeus! (With Caribbean Pearl.) Brig: "I think he might be dead." Mission: "Wah... Wahh... Wahhhhhhhhhhh..." Brig" "We should really prolly do something with the body." Mission: "Yeah. Prolly. I wonder if his socks would fit me? Do you think mustard is my color?" None shall pass! First Mate Matt passes the test. "Here, Frank, take a puff on this big ole' Bob Marley cigar." Frank: "Oh, I couldn't possibly, well maybe one." *cough* "It's a little harsh. Here, cannonball it!" "*sigh* This reminds me of that time in the northwestern corner of Guam where Stynky dressed up like a naked headhunter and was running around telling us the sky was falling and then *smack* in front of us a plane crashed and we thought he might be prescient. Fortunately Mission had something in his medicine chest for prescience and Stynky was cured. *sigh* Good old Guam... Bad old Stynky..." "Everyone's complaining about having to smoke cigars before they can leave! Did you let your gorram surgeon at the scotch again?! I swear, William, one of these days!"

Are you waiting to see if there will be goat or not before adding me? Ha ha ha ha! That's great! (As if I would miss this event. You can just put me on it every year without asking.)

"Hey, I have to wait for the guy (at Compass Realty) to find my condo keys. Do you guys mind waiting?" William, waiting in the car with Captain Jim and madPete: "No, I've got two hours invested in picking you up, I want to see how it all turns out."

"That's fate, bitch-slapping you."

I actually woke up one morning with the Yar yar yar Jeopardy! theme playing in my head.

Only if someone brings another goat.

I know, I know, this should be over now. Most of you who were here have gone back to your non-FTPI lives. But not me! It's raining like hell this morning, though, and I'll be glad to get home, deal with 300 pounds of laundry and an irate cat. But there are a few things to mention yet. Yesterday I spent most of the day with Lily Alexander. We took William Red Wake to the airport and then went off to breakfast at Blue Heaven. I wanted to get some photos of the place for one my verbose descriptive rants back there. (I was shocked to discover that the place where I have spent so many hours chatting with friends and wiling away the hours in the morning was almost nothing like I described it. Call it artistic license. While there, who should we run into but Gareth and his wife! They have been coming over to this event from England for as long as I can remember and probably longer. He is usually so busy running around the fort, organizing the British cannoneers and such that I have never had a proper chance to sit down and find out about him. And today, I still didn't. We didn't want to impose upon their last morning in paradise. He said they were flying out to London tonight. However... I had been talking with Scarlett Jai the night before and she had told me all sorts of thing so off we go. Gareth has been running the British cannon drills and firings on the battle field for the British for the Viceroy for the last few years. This is highly appropriate because he retired from the British Royal Navy after 20 years of service to Her Majesty. He told me in our short discussion that he had been in charge of cannons during his tenure which puzzled me until he explained hat "anything with a smooth bore is considered a cannon in the military." So we're talking about howitzers and that sort of thing. (I wonder how you prick the charge in those mothers?) I asked Scarlett if he had retired to become a spy and it turned out he had. (I would make a double-ought spy reference here, but Gareth and Jethro really don't belong on the same continent together, let alone in the same sentence.) In fact, Scarlett said she thought Gareth had started a private security firm or worked for one or something like that. Scarlett didn't seem to clear on this point. (That's the way it is with these double-ought spies. Oops! Sorry.) All she knew is that from his emails he traveled all over the world. "I'm in Lisbon now, but I'll let you know (whatever) when I get back." She rattled off a string of different place names in similar fashion that sounded a lot more appropriate to a security firm but I have completely forgotten them. I could doing what I usually do and randomly pull names out of the air ("I'm in Guam now..." "I'm in Upper Ubangi...") but then we would be back in Jethro territory. These were serious, no-nonsense sorts of places. One of the things Gareth seems to do for fun is raise sheep. He has a sheep that has won all sorts of awards in the UK..He made a comment to Scarlett that really resonated with her experiences living in Key West. It was that in the place he lived, the seasons were not measured by the weather, they were measured by what was going on with the sheep. Things like breeding season, lambing season, shearing season, annoy the sheep by making 'bahhhh-ing' sounds season and so forth. (Does this sound like Ireland to you? Or perhaps northern England? Being a security firm sort of guy, I'm sure he'd have to kill me if I put it in print, so we'll not guess, eh?) In Key West, Scarlett noted that the seasons are measured by which festival or party was going on - Fantasy Fest Season, Christmas Season, Make Fun of the Snowbirds Season, Sweat Till There's No Liquid Left in You Season... Scarlett also told me Gareth's house was built in the 1700s. No doubt many of you are 'oooh-ing' and 'aaah-ing' over this, but that was my experience while in England. What we think of as being historically significant, the British think of as being new construction. ("1812? Give it a few years so the foundation can settle fully.") They have bars over there that have been running since the time of the Picts. I wanted to go and visit the Key West Key Lime Pie Factory store, which Lily was game to do, so off we went. She did her Christmas shopping and a I bought some oddly flavored coffees. (Your ship's surgeon loves oddly-flavored coffees. Although I'm talking about things like coconut and key lime, not things like bacon and raw sewage. Please don't buy me any coffees like that based on that comment. Thank you.) Then we toddled up to Faustos so she could get some groceries and it was just a Brad and Janet sort of day. We talked philosophy, which has been a recurring theme for me this trip and how we Introverts are so much better off than those Extraverts. Fast forward to dinner. We had dinner with Scarlett Jai at a locals place you will never be able to find - even with your fancy smart phone mapping program - on Stock Island called Hogfish Bar & Grill. We even had to successfully answer three questions to cross one of the bridges on the way there. ("Red. No, blue! Aieeeee.") We dined with Scarlett's mother Lorry and aunt (her aunt was down from somewhere north. Possibly Canada.) Her mother and I clicked immediately, allowing me to learn a lot more about Scarlett. (Scarlett kept trying to separate us, but her mom is one of those fun-loving folks who not only understands the interest of an alleged humor writer in talking to someone's mom, but embraces the opportunity to regale him with the juiciest stories.) So let me give you the skinny on Scarlett. She has a twin sister who is named Lee-Lee. Yes, Scarlett Jai is a twin, just like me! (As far as I know, she doesn't have a third twin like me, which is her loss.) Actually, Scarlett's sister is not named Lee-Lee, she is named Leanne or something like that, but I liked Lee-Lee better and her real name was never brought up again after that so I assume it only appears on legal documents. Lorry showed me photos of Lee-Lee dressed as a vampire, which I hope I can get her to let me use in the Journal. I asked what Lee-Lee was like and Lorry told me that she had a pirate and a princess. Lee Lee is a Reiki Master which has something to do with Universal Spiritual Energy Healing, but I hit a wrong button and I can't figure out how to get out of full screen mode to look it up in another tab. Lorry told me that Scarlett was born a smart-ass and that Lee-Lee had once noted that although she was born 8 minutes after Scarlett, she was trying to catch up with her in that department. At this point Scarlett's aunt jumped in with stories about the twins going into rooms while she was sitting for them and changing their clothes so they could fool her into the thinking one was one and one was the other. (This is an old, tried-and-true twin trick. Mae, Brig and I do it all the time as you will see when the photos get posted. They can never tell us apart.) After dinner, Scarlett took us over to see her boyfriend Pistol Pete's live-aboard boat which he is restoring so that they can go on an around-the-world sailing jaunt. (Scarlett told me that was her dream right now.) The boat is in drydock amongst a village of similar boats on Stock Island, many of which have active tenants. I don't remember much about her other than she was about 45 feet long, gaff-rigged had a boom that stuck out well beyond the back of the boat, had an 8 foot draft and a 50 or 60 foot tall mast. The inside was very cozy and yet had a lot of standing room because of the design of the boat and her deep draft. Pistol Pete was sitting back relaxing when we climbed down into her, listening to really good new age music. The place was festooned with pirate images, many of them from past FTPI events. The seats were covered with skull-and-bones blankets and such. A nice space. I didn't take any photos of this because it somehow seemed a bit irreverent of me to even suggest it. Pistol Pete is a quiet, intense sort of guy - like someone who is externally very calm but has all sorts of business going on in his mind. He sort of, kind of, reminded me of Patrick Hand. He is a professional sailor and was sometimes gone off on sailing trips all over the world. He had seen the boat they are restoring when it was owned by an man who was too old to climb and work on her, but too proud of her to sell her. He died, and Pete bought the boat from the family. They asked him to look around the boat to see if they could find "his treasure." Apparently they figured the old man had squirreled away precious items on the boat, but I guess they didn't want to be bothered with pulling her apart to find it. (Very piratey.) While working on the boat, Pete and Scarlett had been keeping an eye out for stuff, but they hadn't found any in the boat proper. Scarlett told me when the first got her, she contained "four of everything" which they set aside to look at later. Scarlett happened to need a backpack for her motorcycle and she grabbed one of the several she found an proceeded to empty it. Inside one of the many zippered pockets she found a small diamond ring. She also found the gold-plated coin that had been placed under the mast when the removed that during the refurbishing process after Pete had searched in vain to retrieve it. This causing her to ask us, "Now who's the better pirate?" As if you have to ask. Well, that should be it for the Journal unless something interesting happens on the plane. (Which it sometimes does on this trip.) Hope you guys enjoyed it!

Lily had invited me out to dinner to Duffy's (Either that or I invited myself. I do that.) Monday evening I made my way over to Chez Alexander where I found three people sitting in the living room. I asked them if they were the Brigands because I knew the Brigands had been staying in Lily's condo. They laughed and said I knew all of them. Now while the cotton ball in soup had sort of dissipated, I was still operating on three hours of sleep, some cobwebs and breakfast with Stynky, so I think I should be given a pass on this one. It turned out these were the Pirates of the Dark Rose - Crudbeard's Crew. I was actually Facebook friends with two of them - one of whom instantly confessed to being Fenris Chase and the other of whom made me guess who she was. I couldn't place her. I had run into her on Thursday evening and gone through this once until I finally gave up and said I knew her when I really wasn't at all sure I did. She had short dark hair. "I'm the girl sitting on the cannon!" she announced. I was thinking about Sandi Bilbo, but she had long, curly red hair. I mentioned this and she said, "That's me!" Then it slowly, ever so slowly, dawned on me. They make these mystical things called 'wigs.' Little sleep...cobwebs...Stynky at breakfast. (Even so, I am sitting in Lily's condo right now typing and I had to verify that this was the case because Sandi never confessed.) The other person was a photographer I had met earlier who had been taking a ton of photos that I am sure will be populating the web page version of this Journal. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said "piratographer" which his crew had had made for him. Don is one of the organizers of the Eastport Pirate Festival which takes place the weekend after Labor Day in Maine. Don is a pretty soft-spoken, yet intense kind of guy. His voice intensity rose notably while explaining this event to me telling me that had a bed race, fireworks, dinners, a ball and Pirate Pet Show. Yep. A Pirate Pet Show. Color me intrigued. Don noted that it included dogs, cats, rabbits and several other animals. If it has goats, I am so there. Actually, it sounds like something I'd really like to see. I've always wanted to visit Maine and this is a wonderful reason to do so. For a quiet guy, Don really sells this well. (I should talk. I yammered on about the Put-in-Bay Pirate Fest in Ohio that takes place the weekend before the 4th of July to anyone who would listen.) Everyone finally arrived and we all drove over to Duffy's. We were eight - the three Pirates of the Dark Rose, William and I, Lily Alexander and Scarlett and Pistol Pete. Everyone was in normal togs... well... almost everyone. (You'll have to wait for the photos.) This apparently allowed Scarlett Jai to switch out of character and I was finally, after six years of doing this, able to find out something about her. She was born in Montreal, but her family moved down to Hollywood, Florida when she was five or six. She went to college in Tampa for 8 years, earning a variety of degrees in Woman Studies and then told me "I couldn't get down here [Key West] fast enough." She's lived in Key West for 11 years. She is committed to helping out the fort. On Saturday, Frank had told me that she works for the Florida Key's Children's Shelter although he called it 'Project Lighthouse.' He said she is quite passionate about helping children through this organization although I've never heard her mention it before. An amazing woman, really. Now in the 16 or 18 trips I've made to Key West, I've never gone to Duffy's before, even though Lily has raved about it in previous years. This is mostly because they have their menu posted out front like a lot of the good Key West restaurants and it never had anything on it that interested me. It looked like a nice, upscale surf-and-turf place. So I scoured the menu looking for something that was 'Key West interesting' since I only eat fish and not meat A lot of it was Lobster, which has never been a favorite food of mine. (They're just... great... big... cockroaches.) So I settled on the Yellowtail Snapper "Maison".which featured capers and mushrooms in a white wine sauce. It came with soup or salad, so I ordered the New England clam chowder, which just seemed wrong somehow. William talked about getting the Alligator Tail to split between us, but I finally decided alligator was more meat than fish. So he ordered that old tourist standby, conch fritters. (He had never had them before, so this was a good thing.) Friends, I have been giving Duffy's a short shrift. I knew this the minute I took the first sip of the chowed. It was outstanding. I offered it to Sandi Bilbo, sans wig, who told me that she didn't like fish. "You live near the ocean in Maine and you don't like fish?!" She replied, "I live four blocks from the ocean and, no, I don't like fish. I never have." I mean to say... What?! You know? The entree was fine and we all sat around and chattered for quite awhile after the meal was over. It was a really nice evening out. I was stuffed to the gills with fish, which only seemed appropriate. However I thought I would like to walk back rather than ride to try and walk off some of the heavy feeling. Don said he wanted to go wandering around, so he would go with me. We left the group in the parking lot, still talking and wandered down Duvall. Don has an interesting photography style that I mightily admire. He glances around, looking for interesting things and pauses and snaps a quick shot. After the first one we had to stop to adjust his camera shutter speed so that the photos would come out, which is something I am willfully ignorant about. (This is why some of my night photos are so bad, no doubt.) Then we proceeded along with Don taking quick shots of things I didn't see until he paused. He never took more than one shot of any given thing which I really admired. I tried to give him running commentary about the various buildings and places along the way that I had picked up on my many trips, but he was mostly focused on looking for 'the shot.' I'm not sure he even heard half of what I said. We got to Sloppy Joe's bar near the end of Duvall. I explained what it was, but the loud dark cavern of the bar didn't interest him. Then he spied the Hog's Breath Saloon across the street at the back of the parking lot it sits in. So I told him about that and we wandered over. He shot two or three images in different place of the Hog's Breath. He said he liked the music. We went along a little further, running out of exciting town scape for him to photograph. "I think I want to get a drink." I was pretty sure he was still thinking of Hog's Breath. While I have never actually been in there for more than five minutes, the lack of sleep/cobwebs/breakfast with Stynky was wearing on me and I bid him good night. He went his way and I went back to the condo, stopping to try my hand at some Christmas light photos. I doubt they'll be half as interesting as Don's.

Keith generously offered to take my surgeon's chest to the UPS store some time after that. OK, that's not really what happened. I went over to Lily Alexander and asked her what we were going to do with my medicine chest and she said we were not dealing with that right now. So I asked what I could do with it in the meantime and she started doing the Austin Power's Zip it! Routine. In the middle of all that, I thought I had heard her say Keith could help me take it there when he got back from dropping people off at the airport. So when Keith appeared, I toddled back over to their tent and Lily started doing Zip it! again and getting all exasperated with me. She later told me she really wasn't all that exasperated, she was just messing with me. She's so serious when she does that that I can't tell when she's kidding and when she's not. I figure it's better to err on the safe side. However, it was finally decided that Keith could take me to the UPS store, with a stop off at the condo to pick up the shipping labels so, for some reason I'm still not entirely clear on, all the remaining members of the Mercury crew decided to pile into the car with their gear. (That would be William Red Wake and madPete.) On the way over to the condos, madPete and I were inducted into the secret Fellowship of the Flounder club which Keith and William had established earlier. The purpose of the club was to immediately slap anyone who complained about niggling little things in the face with a flounder. It had a secret handshake that, if I explained it to you, I'd have to kill you. Arriving at the condos, I went and grabbed this shipping documents and then settled in with the rest of my inexplicably present crew at Keith and Lily's place. Keith trotted out some hors d'œuvres and we all sat around and munched and discussed the weekend. Keith had some fresh coffee made so I had some of that too. (Keith always has fresh coffee. This is not because he dumps out the old stuff when it's been sitting, but because a pot of coffee has a very short life around Keith. He told me that Crazy Lady's Catering had stopped giving him paper cups and taped his name to a ceramic mug and told Keith to get his own coffee whenever he wanted it. He paid in $10 increments and told the owner, "Let me know when it's time to put down another deposit. Keith and I went off to deliver the box to the UPS store, which went without incident and then I returned to my condo to update the Journal.

I finally made it into the fort where I wandered around, chatting, wishing people farewell, getting hugged entirely too much and occasionally helping folks to load up. I didn't have anywhere to be, so I didn't mind helping people to load up a little, but not too much because, you know, these hands are delicate, precision instruments. Surgeon. While I was preserving my delicate, precision instruments from the rigors of moving heavy things into vehicles, Zach and his mom Jen appeared. Zach wandered off and Jen sat nearby while I taped up my surgeon's chest to prepare it for shipment. I had seen comments from Zach on Facebook about swimming with the manatees, so I asked her about it. She told me it was amazing. "The swim beneath you and you feel them lifting you up." I asked her what she was working on these days because she is a splendidly intelligent and creative woman and she said she was putting together a web page that she called 'Healthy Moms, Healthy Bodies that was about eating and being healthy when you were pregnant. She told me she was going to be interviewing Dr. Christiane Northrup about midwifery and nutrition soon. We finally had gone as far as we could with that topic. (Your ship's surgeon actually skips anything the talks about delivering or caring for children in the period surgical manuals. I'm afraid it might be contagious and I don't want to run any risk in that area.) She told me she also had a financial information web page that she had put together that talked about how to save money and invest it wisely rather than relying on bank account savings and the soundness of dollars. Now we were talking! With my MBA and interest in business, I could get into that topic without fear of catching anything. I told her about the wonderful parable-style book The Richest Man in Babylon which seemed to interest her greatly. (I know, I know, we're supposed to be talking about pirates stealing money, not investing it. I'll stop now. Although that is a really good book.) Jen also told me she, Zach and Bill (her husband) had gone out on the Owl on Friday, the smallest ship out on the water. Friday was an overcast and windy day, so they kept getting pulled out to sea It was a problem because they weren't close enough to the battle a lot of the time and the Captain - John Lewis - kept having to bring her back in, but it was also really cool because they saw a flying manta ray leap out of the water. Zach wanted to sail on that ship because it was much closer in size to the kind of ships most of the pirates would have sailed in during the golden age or piracy as I learned last month in the first of a two-part article on the surgeon's quarters shipboard. She then went off to find Zach and I found myself back with the Mercury Crew. William told a couple of stories this weekend that I wanted to remember to share in this Journal and here seems like as good a place as any. The first was about the founding of the event. William was the instigator who got us inside the fort back in 2005. He kept suggesting to people at the Pyracy Pub who were involved in the event that we should move it inside the fort. Before it was in the fort, everyone stayed in hotels and events were held all over town in various bars and other places willing to put up with a bunch of raucous people dressed in pirate garb. The other people told him the fort would never let us go in the fort and do this. He kept thinking about and and William finally decided to call the fort and see what they would say. He reached Harry Smid who immediately said, "I've been wanting to do that for years! How many people have you got? How much space do you need? We'll supply you with wood and water and free camping. It'll be great!" Three and half hours later, William finally got Harry off the phone and we had an event spot. So William was really laid the groundwork for what would eventually become FTPI. The second story was about me. My first Fort Taylor pirate experience was in 2007 as those of you who read all the journals will recall. (It was also the first Pirate Surgeon's Journal which was started because William's Wife Tracy, who couldn't come (and whom I've never met) posted something on the Pyracy Pub asking us to tell her what was going on at the event. But I digress yet again again.) So William so me sitting on a picnic table, staring thoughtfully into the distance while everyone else was putting up tents and organizing their campsites. (He thinks I was being thoughtful. I was probably actually thinking about where I might go to dinner that night. The way to the surgeon's heart is through his stomach.)(Fortunately I have an instrument for that.) (Getting through the stomach, that is.)(OK, I'll stop doing this now.) Anyhow, knowing this was my first time and sensing something was going in in the fuzzy lint I call a brain he asked me, "So? What do you think of all this?" He reports that I looked at him, paused for a beat and responded, "Ask me again when the weekend is over." Fast forward to the Monday after the 2007 event. He claims he saw me sitting on the same table, or one near it, looking off in the distance in about the same way and he asked me, "So... what did you think?" He says I replied that I would probably doing this for many years to come. And... I have. The last thing is something from Sunday night's romp which also involves me. We were talking about the goat being at dinner and I was explaining how I had been talking about bringing a live goat to FTPI on the Facebook page to see if I could rile Lily and now... we had had a goat at the festival, in part, as I understood it, because of me. (It was also there because it was kid's day and someone thought it would be funny to have a kid cooking at kid's day. This is much more clever than the reason I brought it up, which is because it's my go-to goofy animal.) But I was wondering drunkenly at the goat being there and, according to William I said, "You know, it's strange. It (pointing at my skull) comes up with all this weird sh!t and I put it out there and it becomes legend... and lore." Yeah, it's a bit arrogant, but I can allow it because I was pretty happy sitting there leaning on my twin smoking a ceeegar. "Wah... wahh... wahhhhhhhhhhhh."

~3:30 am - Crawl into bed and go visit the subconscious. I sleep remarkably well until... 7:00 am - My cell phone rings. @#$%$#! Who is calling me at 7am after leaving the fort around 2:30am? If you guessed Stynky, you win a virtual Kewpie doll. (I've been trying to get rid of that damned virtual Kewpie doll for months anyhow.) I didn't actually answer it because the morning after a good long session with alcohol, I am usually really logy. Do I really want to deal with Stynky in this state...? What passes for a hangover for your ship's surgeon is existing in a dull and featureless world where I look at the day and think that it ain't for me and I may as well give the whole thing a miss. Fortunately, I don't usually get headaches or feel sick at the stomach or worship the porcelain god, but I feel slow and dull-witted. I am just... logy. Do I really want to deal with Stynky in this state...? I pad around the cool tile floor of my condo in my bare feet. The doors are open with the pull screens across them (BTW, I love those pull screens. They sing to the engineer in me.) There is a nice pleasant breeze wafting through the place, but I am mostly oblivious to it. I wonder about the cotten roll in my mouth... oh, wait that's my tongue. Those stupid cigars... (I later learned that Brig spent quite a while this morning trying to get the taste of them out of her mouth. Her husband Jack buys good cigars and I do recall them tasting pretty good while smoking them, but... pthah.) Do I really want to call Stynky in this state...? It occurs to me that there is no going back to sleep after this mental debate, so I call Stynky back. I can hear the croaking voice that sounds as if it is coming from inside a mummy's sarcophagus. Stynky picks up. I say... "Whaaaat?" He asks me if I want to go to breakfast. "It's 7am - there's nothing open. You're in Key West. Normal tourists are dead to the world at this point. Why the &^%$ are you calling me at 7am? I went to bed at 3:30." I'd add exclamation points to that last sentence because it would this all sound so much more dramatic, but you couldn't get emphasis out of me to save your life at this point. There's a big fuzzy cotton ball sitting there in a bowl of soup between my ears and I'm having enough trouble keeping my thoughts lucid enough to continue this conversation. Finally I decide it will be something to write about in the Journal, so I consent to try and find a place for breakfast. I know Croissants de France opens at 7:30, so I suggest that (This is the place madPete and I went Saturday... was it Saturday? It seems like a week ago.) So off I go, feeling a little like I'm made of settling concrete and meet Stynky on the road. He tells me he fell asleep on the beach earlier this morning and had awoken feeling... well I don't know. I am too busy feeling logy to listen to him that closely. He decided to get up with sun - as if he had a choice - which turned out to be a fortunate decision because one of the park people appeared not long after he departed the sand. (My one hope at this point is that he had sand in his shorts. Waking me up at 7am after last night. Pah.) Arriving at Croissants de France I can tell he is not impressed. It is now 7:38 according to the big cheerful guy behind the counter, but they don't serve food until 8am. I shoot Stynky a look. "I told you that we wouldn't be able to find breakfast this early." Key West is not really a morning town. Not even remotely. It wakes up sluggishly, just like I did this morning, feeling a bit arthritic and having a slight headache. Back on the street he explains that that wasn't the breakfast he was looking for. He wanted a Key West breakfast. I know what he means, but I know we're not going to find it right now. Finally I admit that Blue Heaven opens at 8am. I am pretty sure that this is where he really wanted to go all the time and he knew I knew where it was. I love Blue Heaven, I honestly do. The open air, the bright white cross-hatched lattice fence, the packed mulch and patio block floors, the little Tiki bar at the opposite end, the roosters scrambling around amidst the cats, the wrought iron tables and the efficient waitstaff that you can just tell have interesting stories if you can only prise them out when they're stopping to refill your coffee. Yep, love it. But I was not hungry. Hungry and I didn't belong in the same sentence. (Ignore that last sentence. Thank you.) So I said, "I'm not hungry." "Neither am I, but let's go over to Blue Heaven - they'll be open by the time we get there. They are not, but the gate is open. Now I had been there on Friday morning and had been chatting with the guy who was folding napkins near the hostess station. He had been quite interested in my garb and had asked me several questions and told me several things he knew about pirates. (Many of which were wrong, but you know how it is.) So I had given him my card and suggested he check out my website. He was there again this morning and he greeted us cheerfully with "It's the pirate doctors!" Stynky asked "Can we sit down and wait?" The guy glanced furtively behind him and said, "No. I could get fired for seating you right now." Stynky said, "Yeah, but can we sit down and wait?" He talked with us for several minutes after that, asking more questions about pirates, which helped stretch out the time. It still wasn't opening time. (What a couple of Blue Heaven groupies we were.) He indicated we couldn't stay there or he might get in trouble, so we ambled off to the open gate that serves as the entrance and chatted. The fog was lifting. I didn't feel human yet, but I the soup/cotton ball thing was gone. Finally it was opening time and we had a nice, Stynky-approved Key West style breakfast. We both had eggs benedict. After that and several cups of coffee, the loginess was completely gone and I was feeling zippy. Stynky called Braze (his ride) and suggested he meet him over by the entrance to the Truman Annex. (This is where my condo is - in the Truman Annex.) We stood around there for about ten minutes, talking about the Pyracy Pub and what we could do to improve it and how Google ads had told him they weren't going to pay for the web space because he had malware on the site. He asked them where the malware was so he could remove it, but they told him that they couldn't tell him because that was proprietary information. All that coffee went straight through me so I told him "I have to go back to my condo and use the restroom or I'm going to explode." He replied, "OK. Give me your camera." "Why?" "So I can get a picture of you exploding. I'll make sure it gets in your Journal." Komedy! Wow, that took a whole lot longer to explain than I thought it would. I have NO photos of this because my mind was so fuzzy that I didn't grab my camera when I left the room, so when I do the web page I'm gong to be hosed here. Still, another Stynky story. I love this event. There is so much more to tell...

So...gate duty. Right. Gate duty was a bit fuzzy. In fact, it was a lot fuzzy. I recall sitting cross-legged on the ground with Brig and William and having Captain Jim running around taking all sorts of photos which I will probably regret. Brig and I kept trading off the cigar. Eventually the cigar started reminding me of a scene in the movie The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. (Now stay with me here, because it will take some explaining.) Tuco is tracking Blondie (Clint Eastwood for those who don't instantly recognize this reference). Tuco keep finding old campfires as he goes along and he figures out that they were Blondie's campfires by the stubs of old cigarillos in the fires. Finally Tuco finds a campfire that's still smouldering. He stirs up the ashes and finds the butt of a cigarillo in there that is still smoking, so he takes it out and drags on it three times. The important thing (for me) is the music in this scene. It is sort of riff on the GBU main theme that goes, and I quote. Wah... (Tuco tries to puff the cigarillo.) Wahh... (Tuco drags on it and there is a spark at the end of the cigarillo. Wahhhhhhhhhhhh. (Tuco takes a deep puff and lets the smoke slowly dribble out of his mouth.) So I did the musical notes, trying to imitate Tucos puffs and everyone looked at me and said things like (and I quote here): "WTF?" So I had to do it again, explaining each puff followed by the musical note. I found this incredibly amusing and I did it at least 10 times more. By then the cigar had been smoked down to the nub. Brig said she was going back to camp to get something, but she promised to come back, so I asked her to get us another cigar. It's a twin thing. She eventually returned, cigar in hand. Something else I thought was amusing for some reason was offering a puff on the cigar to everyone in the cars leaving the park. (William said I tried to force them to puff on it, but I don't remember it that way. William was sober, so we can't rely on him to understand all this.) I believe Captain Jim got a shot of each car with me offering the cigar, so you can all look forward to seeing that in the web page version of this Journal. Brig returned and somehow a comment was made about the two of us being awfully close together, sitting there on the ground, or something like that and Brig said we couldn't do anything together anyhow because that would be twin-cest. Seriously I wrote that in my notebook! I think we were sitting closely together because we were holding each other up. If you would have removed one or the other of us, there would have been a pause, like right before Wile E. realizes that he has run off the edge of the inexplicably tall cliff in the Southwestern desert and the twin not removed would have suddenly fell over. Brig had my notebook for a while and there are more notes that she wrote in it, many of which I may be able to guess the meaning. The first one says, "You 3rd twin!" which I believe is pretty self-explanatory. (I am the third twin. Or did I mention that already?) Next it says "Bastard from MI". which I am not sure I understand. I do believe either Jim or William asked how we had not known each other before the Fort Taylor pirate event in 2007 and Brig said something about we had known each other and whomever posed the question said something about the bastard from MI. (I take no offense, I accept it in the manner it was offered.) Then it says (and I'm trying to figure out all the words, so sue me if I go astray) "Stack Line - warmer in bikinis - Frank." Well, the Frank part is pretty obvious - Frank must have been leaving the park and I must have been talking with him and asking if he wanted to smoke the cigar. You may recall that Frank had left the Rum Barrel the day before to go meet some girls at the Fort rather than stay for corn and crab chowder, which is a sin against god and man, but we'll forgive him because (as I believe I stated it to him at some point), it's better to go after the fish on the line than sit and eat corn and crab chowder. (Wise advice to anyone, to be sure.) He did tell me that it had been totally worth it and I'm guessing the girls were in bikinis when he met them or something. I don't know; it's all so cryptic. Then it says, "Best gate crew ever!" although I don't know if this was a quote or a comment on how much fun Brig was having. Then it says, "Think I saw a ghost on gate duty" which I really don't understand at all. Or maybe I do... let me think... maybe it was that there was something in the bushes? Or a light? Or Brig was practicing her drunken penmanship. Nah, I got nothing again. William also reported something else we two twins said. Brig: "I just drink to preserve myself." Mission (nodding thoughtfully): Like a mummy." William said the best part about this exchange was the even tone we both said that in and the immediacy of my follow up to her comment. You had to be there and you probably weren't, which is your own damn fault. (Start planning for next year. See the drunk surgeon forcing cigars on passing motorists! Fun for the whole family!) William also added that "It was almost like you guys were finishing each others' sentences." Which makes perfect sense to me. Twins... Brig started to get tired and said she was going back to camp. Captain Jim, ever the gentleman told me that I should accompany her. So I did. As we were walking into camp, I spotted Scarlett Jai's scarlet motorcycle sitting there by the entrance where it had been parked all weekend. "Get a picture of me on the bike!" I demanded and got on it. So she did. Then I told her to get on it, but she wouldn't. I begged her to do it for reasons I don't begin to understand now, but she wouldn't. She told me it wasn't hers and she didn't have permission. I rebutted, "I didn't have permission and I did it!" as if that made any sense at all. No amount of beseeching could get her to do that. I think I may have even offered to give her money to sit on the bike so I could take a picture. (Thinking on it now, I haven't the faintest flipping clue why I thought this was important.) I whined about this all the way back to the campsite and she crawled into bed and shut me down. I asked Jack to get her to do it and he said, "No way. I've got to live with her." So I went over to Lily and asked her if she would sit on Scarlett's bike, which she agreed to do and I took the photo. "Is that it?" she asked. I said it was. I then went back to the gate and finished my time out with Jim and William. Eventually our relief showed up in the form of Keith/Edward and Lily and we went back to camp. We all repaired to the Mercury fly and sat around talking. I started drinking lots of water, knowing this would be a key aspect of how miserable I was going to be the next morning. Then I started wandering though the park, stopping at Commodore Cutter's site as I reported several posts ago. (Cut that out and insert it in here to preserve continuity.) Finally I was feeling relatively human, so I got my bike and headed to the gate. There I found Edward, Lily and Stynky. Stynky was as drunk, if not more drunk, than I had been a few paragraphs ago. Edward asked if he could ride my bike, so I let him. When he returned, Stynky wanted to do it too and he disappeared for quite a while. I stuck his mug under Lily's hat to see if he would notice. (He didn't. He reported this morning that I had never done that and he had always had it.) Then he told Lily he wanted to give her a piggy-back ride and stooped over and ordered her to get on. She refused. He kept asking her to do it and she kept saying no. It was me asking Brig to pose on Scarlett's motorcycle all over again. With that, I left for the night, peddling all the way home without hitting anything along the way. This time. And that was Sunday night - they're always the best nights of the weekend. Seriously.

There were a lot of people out for the event this weekend. I mean a lot. You'll find out when the group image is posted. Speaking of that, before dinner, we were all corralled over to the Pyracy Pub flag to take the group shot. Unlike previous years, it was organized quite quickly and only took about five or ten minutes to shoot. For some reason we were supposed to line up in groups, so we Mercury crew members all got in the right back row and tried to look handsome and debonaire instead of sweaty and tired. I was most pleased to find that Beowulf had changed into Commodore Poppycock again this year. (Ya gotta' love those white shoes.) Back at our encampment, we thought about the fact that it wasn't proper to have Commodore Poppycock dine with the regular unwashed, so we decided to use Iron Jon's tent fly to arrange the tables so he could eat with his own group of unwashed. (It was a beautiful sunny day on Sunday and we were really pushing the limits of decency with our unwashedness.) So we started arranging the surgeon's tables and Iron Jon's fascinating-looking slat table into a reasonable proximity of a long dinner table. I haven't mentioned this before, but our camp was directly across from the meeting tent where dinner was going to be served. This made it super-convenient to attend meetings and, we hoped, get dinner. . It also meant we would be treated to Jon's fine victuals. He produced cheese, meat and other assorted snack food while we waited for the pre-dinner festivities to start. Something else Jon produced was a bottle of 12 year old Glen Fiddich. Now, I have been talking throughout the entire last year about how I wasn't drinking for a year, something I decided to do on December 16, 2011. It was December 1st. Iron Jon called out to our group, "Anyone want this?" I liked my lips. I had almost made it a whole year. But it was 12 y.o. Glen Fiddich. It was only two weeks early. So I decided to forge ahead and poured myself a cup of Scot's nectar. Stynky, Braze and Cascabel joined us at our table and we all feasted on Iron Jon's cuisine and I feasted on scotch. Braze and Stynky asked for some of the golden liquor, so I poured some. Braze took a sip and then roared and asked someone to put some water or something in it. "If you're not going to drink it straight, pour it into my cup!" And he did. Stynky asked for ice, but I talked him down from that ledge too. 12 year old single malt scotch and ice. I mean to say! Getting a bit happy, I grabbed madPete and asked him if he would take some photos for me. I posed with Caribbean Pearl and Pete shot the image. "Who else?" he asked. That was really all I wanted. I learned from Pearl that she was going overseas to the orient somewhere and would not be back to the FTPI event until at least 2014. I believe her husband got a job over there doing whatever it is he does. (Yeah, I know, but I didn't take any notes.) I decided to wander around and find people to pose with, which we did. I eventually came across Wendy Wellman who started babbling about Pete insulting her calves. (My comment? "I didn't even know you kept cattle." madPete laughed.) She walked back to the table with us and Youngblood. They sat at our table along with the rest of the gang. Not long after that they started bringing out the food which was right in front of our makeshift dinner table. Talk about hitting the jackpot. Not long after that, chaos began over in the unwashed tent. Several curious ceremonial things occurred like inducting people into the Order of the Leviathan, inducting other people into the Order of the Stinky Sponge... er, the Order of St. Barbara, and inducting the Viceroy into Order of the Pie in the Face Club. (I was told that a great deal of time was spent trying to figure out how to convince Lawrence, who plays the Viceroy, not to wear his wig to dinner because they didn't want to ruin it with pie filling. I don't know how they did it, but I just thought it was an interesting logistical problem that I wanted to share with you all.) There was apparently also a mini-pie fight between the Viceroy and Spike (not the bunny), which I am damned sorry to have missed. I have written so much that I can't rightfully keep track of it all, but I don't think I mentioned that I talked with the Key Lime Pie Company about staging a Key Lime Pie fight, an idea William Red Wake sort of accidentally started on the FTPI Facebook page and which I carried on and on and on about trying to make it happen. Sandi Bilbo was going to be a part of this as I recall. The Key Lime Pie Company LOVED this idea and said if I could make it happen, they would make special pies that wouldn't be as heavy and hard to deal with as real pies. So that is Mission's mission for next year: get the Key Lime Pie fight on the schedule. I am going to talk to Harry and see if I can get around Lily and Scarlett who seem somewhat opposed to this wonderful idea. After all that silliness, DB Couper and his recent bride Anne Marie renewed their vows (of a month or two ago). I didn't actually see most of this, but I've no doubt it was touching and wonderful. DB told me he had proposed to Anne Marie while they were flying to Hawaii earlier this year by announcing it over the plane's PA. He had chocolates and flowers ready at the military hotel where they stayed on the island (DB is former Navy, which I didn't realize.) He got champagne and the people running the military base sent up champagne and the hotel sent up a bottle of champagne and I'm guessing they floated out of that room. They spent three weeks in Hawaii, honeymooning. Scarlett Jai then made a nice speech thanking everyone who had helped, particularly Mama Ratsey and Lily Alexander. She thanked everyone she could think of, including me for working on the website and not starting a pie fight. We all cheered. Lily and Mama Ratsey got up and said some nice things about the event and the people who show up to reenact and make it happen and it was warm fuzzies all around. Then dinner was served. Being strategically placed, most of our crew was near the front of the line. William has already asked that we get the same position in the camp next year. Dinner was delicious and hot and included at least four different kinds of meat, including the goat. I wish I could have tried the goat. Although I didn't mind breaking the alcohol free promise a little early, I knew that if I started eating meat, I'd only regret that the next day. Alas. Speaking of breaking my alcohol promise, DB Couper and Anne Marie had a bet, which she won, that I would break my alcohol freeness. (How I rate a DB/AM bet is something I can't quite fathom.) We all sat around chatting after dinner and I finished off the Glen Fiddich. I spent a lot of this slightly fuzzy period talking with madPete, Wendy and Youngblood. We were talking about Youngblood not having to be in school and so forth when, according to my notebook, on which I must rely because... fuzzy... Wendy said to Youngblood, "We don't bring up your parole officer in public!" Somehow that doesn't seem as funny now as it did at the time, but we were roaring about it. Wendy got hold of my little notebook and promised to write some good things in it, most of which I couldn't make head nor hair of when I first looked at them. So let's look at them them here and try to guess the meaning and context. "'Kid table'" OK, that one I get - it's a reference to the fact that we were sitting off to the side, away from the main group, which I have already explained with a much dumber joke. "Ant made food." Hmm. Oh! Ant was the guy who made the food for the feast. Ant also happens to have been the guy who borrowed my bone saw to cut the pig. I ran into him this (Monday) morning and he was still boasting about cutting through that knuckle in 23 seconds. (I had heard 24, but he said it was actually 23.) When he cut the first one, it took him longer and he decided to see how fast he could do it on the second. "Glenfidick." I believe this is a comment on the fact that I kept correcting people who were pronouncing it Glen Fid-ditch. I am pretty sure the pronunciation is the way I stated. (Otherwise I wouldn't have stated it that way. See how that works?) "I;; cutcha..." Hmm. Nope. I got nothing here. If that bit was fuzzy, the next bit is probably going to be hopeless. I had actually stopped drinking for the most part by that time because when I'm drinking scotch - which I love - one liquor to rule them all - I know when and where to stop drinking scotch. I made my way over to Brig and Jack's tent where Stynky was sitting. We had gate duty tonight and I had promised to be there, so I was going around asking everyone what time it was. It apparently wasn't time, because I parked myself under their fly and joined in the conversation, which was being conducted in low tones because of Angry Bird. I guess I better explain that. Stynky had asked Kiera, Brig's 4 year old daughter, what games she liked as a sort of ice-breaker. (Little kids are often shy when they aren't used to you. Even if they aren't they should be around Stynky because as past readers know, he has a tendency to recruit them into his criminal plans, like having Josh Sterling sell counterfeit Mission's Mugs to the unwary because such a cute child couldn't possibly be pulling a fast one!) Anyhow, Kiera said something about Angry Birds, so Stynky started calling her that, which made her laugh every time. (I was witness to that.) The point of all this is that Kiera/Angry Bird was asleep and we had to conduct our conversation in low tones, which is tough for your old surgeon when he's crocked. But I pulled it off. As far as you know. Jack was smoking a cigar and drinking his patented liquor which I believe I skipped because I didn't want to start mixing. (I may have had some, but I didn't have very much.) madPete was supposedly going to go into town and get me another bottle of single malt, but I'm glad he didn't because I was cruising pretty well without it. Brig and Jack were in street clothes and he was in one of the chairs while she was sitting on the ground, so I sat next to her. She suddenly decided she wanted a cigar, so Jack lit her one. Feeling pretty randy (when I fall of the wagon, I go all the way) I started smoking the cigar. Scotch and cigars, you know? So we ended up sharing it, because I am the third twin. (Note that the Surgeon General has determined that smoking cigars and drinking single malt scotch is a damned fine way to spend an evening while sitting on the ground in Key West.) Someone told me it was time for gate duty, so I got up to amble off in that direction. Brig announced she would go with me. So off we went. What happened next will have to wait. I'm going off to dinner.

With the pig sawing complete, Devlin and I trudged up the circular stairs to the fort wall to watch the battle. I got up on the fort wall for a bit to hang out with Michelle Murillo and Wendy Wellman who were encouraging the crowd to yell enlightened things like "Hit... a... Brit!" Scarlett Jai appeared on the wall shortly after that and I realized that I was way out of my league when it came to inciting the public and sheepishly got back off the wall. There was quite a large crowd for the battle today so I stood back with William Red Wake and Chad Azevedo and watched the tourists watch the battle. We were also guiding people to stay away from the side of the fort wall we were on because there were a small group of pirates hanging out about 20 or 30 feet away up there with their guns ready for take the final shot. As a result I didn't really see much of it, but what I did see was that they had decided to arrange the British along the water facing the fort and the pirates along the fort wall facing the water to exchange cannon fire. I thought this was a much better arrangement than normal (when the Brits were on the left and the pirates on the right) because the sound reverberated like crazy every time they fired a shot. I was later talking with Edward/Keith and he said it was awesome for the pirates too, because the Brigands were playing in the sally port and the sound was bouncing off the wall there and adding music to the battle. The battle appeared to go back and forth with cannon fire. Running out of powder, the British advanced step by step on the pirates, firing small arms and people started dropping on both sides. (It's kind of funny how they fire all those cannons and no one ever gets wounded until they switch to the notoriously fiddly and inaccurate small arms.) The pirates were getting the worst of it, mostly because they didn't actually have any small arms today. Someone - it may have been Crudbeard - noted that they figured they shouldn't drop because the pirates had no weapons and it wouldn't make sense. (Meanwhile, up on the fort wall, everyone was looking at Scarlett, Michelle and Wendy and yelling that inane phrase and not really noticing whether the pirates had guns or not. They were three rows deep at least and probably could only see the ships trawling around firing cannons and small arms.) Crudbeard (if it was him) added that it suddenly occurred to him that there were pirates firing from the ships behind them and they could logically die. (Meanwhile, up on the fort wall, Michelle and Wendy were leading the crowd in doing the wave along the wall.) The moment finally arrived for the three people in the corner of the fort wall that we were guarding from the public to fire their pieces. Among them was Cannibal Chrispy with his swivel gun con stock (which someone in the Mercury crew had nicknamed Cannibuss - Canni-bal -bal + Blunderbuss - Blunder.) I wish I had been paying more attention to this so I could have snapped a picture, but I had joined the crowd who were being led by Michelle and Wendy in doing the hokey-pokey. All the Brits went down in a heap and the crowd started cheering in between putting their whole selves in and then putting their whole selves out. The pirates won! Huzzah! I went back and retrieved my bone saw, which was now covered in pink goo and Italian dressing. I wiped it off and returned to my station. As mentioned previously, I had really wanted to sit down and interview Tury which she remembered and returned to sit and chat. I was on her list of things to do because she was leaving soon, which kind of bummed me out. (I was already feeling a bit down because fellow twin Mae had decided to leave earlier in the day. Who was I going to be stupid with? You girls really need to just take Monday off and stay for Sunday night. It's always the best evening in the fort. But I digress yet again.) Tury is a friend of Maria's as I explained yesterday. Maria was planning to introduce her to the wonder that was FTPI, but Maria got sick and decided it was best not to come down. Tury told me Maria had been going on and on about it and she was really interested in seeing it because she loved the ocean and had "always wanted to play a pirate." When Maria couldn't come, although she knew NOBODY here, she got in her car and came down with the idea that "I was not going to miss this opportunity. I love finding that sort of pluckiness in people, particularly women. For some reason new-to-pirate reenactors seem to have it in spades. Tury turned out to be from Cuba - she came here when she was 17. I asked her about Cuba, because it seemed fascinating to me, but she just sort of shrugged at the question and said it was a beautiful place but it could be a hard life. I also learned that, like me, she had an undergrad degree in computer programming with an MBA added for good measure. Although she had been tired last night and left the auction in the middle, she loved the interplay between the two auctioneers and the crowd and had had a great time. From talking with other folks at the event she had learned that there had been active pirates in Cuba (mostly in the 1800s as I recall) and decide she was going to do some research and find out more. She told me she was already looking forward to coming back next year. It was getting near closing time for the fort (sunset), so I started packing things away in the Surgeon's Chest (which is really just a big box right now, not a proper surgeon's chest from period.). While I was doing that, I noticed a funny-looking knit purse with a drawstring on top and three little decorative tassels on on the bottom on the table. "What is that?" I asked someone. "It's a Gunnister purse." I learned that it was used to keep money in. It was a replica of one found on a preserved man who had been found perfectly preserved in a peat bog near Gunnister Scotland. He was dated to about the golden age of the pirates (early 18th century) and they used his clothes and belongs to assemble and image of what men wore during that time period - at least men in Gunnister, Scotland. Speaking of projects, the boys started making fire-starters while I was packing up my kit. Iron Jon pulled out a little box of blue and white striped cloth cut about 2" wide and a bag of flax. Captain Jim explained how to make the fire-starter and Jon and William began assembling them. The way this was done that you took the pieces of cloth, stacked a couple of them together and lit them on fire, only letting them smoulder. If I remember it rightly, Jim said when you saw smoke, it was time to stop. This created a ashy-looking piece of cloth which was then buried in the highly flammable flax and stored in a little metal box. Being so flammable, it worked well with flint and iron. (And, as anyone who has ever tried to start a fire with flint and iron will attest, anything you can do to help get it to work is to be highly prized. I have worked for 10 minutes on a flint and iron trying to get it lit to no avail.) Captain Jim is a font of interesting knowledge. He is also one fine wood-worker based on the pipe box he had donated to the auction last night. He has offered to make my plaster box for me (which is an open box with compartments in it for storing plasters, bandages and gallipots of ointments and medicines) which I plan to take him up on. This brings up a point that I find interesting about reenacting. The best kind of reenactment pieces you can have in your kit are those that 1) have a story that goes with them - like my newly pig-breast bone christened Chad Azevedo bonesaw and 2) were made by a friend - also like my Chad bonesaw. So I knew that getting a Captain Jim original wood product would be a prized worth having. As soon as I can get the info from William Red Wake on the lady who makes period gallipots that I (hope I) mentioned, I am going to get some so that I can design the plaster box around them. Cascabel happened to be sitting at our table while we were talking about this and he gave me some excellent suggestions for making realistic-looking plasters. He said to use Vasoline on the the fabric of the plaster and add cinnamon to some of them to give them a ruddy brown color. The plaster box has officially become a group project. It was getting near time for the pig roast. One thing I haven't mentioned yet is that the food at the fort was awesome this year. There were two food vendors in fort - one was called Crazy Lady's Catering and the other was a meat cooking operation of which I don't know the name. (I will find it out, though. Keith told me they came all the way from Pennsylvania with this huge cooker to be at the event!) Usually I try to escape the fort for the Sunday dinner because the food is not really Mission/vegetarian friendly and it's often cold by the time you get up to it. This year looked to be quite different and I was actually looking forward to the Sunday Pig Roast. Before we get to dinner proper, however, I want to mention William and Iron Jon's pre-dinner snack. It seems someone had cooked the goat's balls, slicing them quite thin and frying them or something. (Maybe they were breaded, but I never saw them, I am only reporting this second-hand.) Both William and Iron Jon tried them and noted, almost simultaneously, that they tasted like, you guessed it, goat balls. No! They tasted like chicken! This brings us to dinner preparations and dinner, but I really must take a shower because I haven't had one since yesterday morning because of Stynky. (I will explain why later on.) Plus my laptop battery is running out and I have to get it plugged in.