Off the Coast of Florida

Off the coast of Florida there’s a little boat sitting near an island’s edge. I guess you call it a skiff. It looks like a rowboat was stretched and two masts were placed inside: one almost in the bow, the other slightly behind the midpoint. The sails are wrapped around the masts, only a small slender triangle of the sail is visible and it’s edge is a dark gray with a congruent maroon inner piece. Because the sails are backlit by a bright sun they appear to be darker than they are. The outsides of the boat are a light green, but you could hardly tell that due to the dark shadow cast from the sun. The only hint of it’s true shade is from an outrigger, or is it a dingy strapped to the side? The side of that semi cylindrical shape escapes the sun’s dark cast shadow of the rest of the boat’s side. This is more the type of boat one would expect to see around the Horn of Africa or in the Red Sea.

The inside of the boat glistens white. There’s a tiller, tied off by a white rope and a red bundle near the front. Who’s ship is this?

It is none other than that of Pedro don Pete. His friends call him The Don; his enemies, Little Pepe. It is reputed that a woman, not impressed with his masculine accouterments  so named him and if you call him this name within earshot it is reputed he will challenge you to a duel on the spot. Nobody calls him that to his face. Not that anyone is afraid of him, his days of “womanizing and whoring” - as he calls it - are well behind him; he’s 75 or 80 years old and can barely get around. You don’t call him Little Pepe because you don’t want to have to make an excuse not to fight him.

This island is Pedro don Pete’s Paradise, as he calls it, complete with villa and cantina. The villa is a small stone and cinderblock shack that can be seen on the island’s one hill. The cantina is where we are. A few palm trees, a hammock for don Pete, stumps sitting vertical in the ground for us to sit on, and a few wooden boxes strapped together with a slight roof to make a bar. He calls it his tiki bar, but the only hint of such a thing are a few palm founds sadly stapled to the sides of the boxes.

If you get there late in the afternoon or early evening don Pete will be behind the bar, after awhile he will retire to the hammock and he encourages you to “mix your own.”

One always tries to get there early because once don Pete gets to his hammock he picks up “old Sadie” as he calls the tiny guitar (or oversized ukulele) that is leaning against a box that serves as his “day table” as he calls it. Don Pete will then begin to strum old Sadie and sing. A more god awful sound would be hard to imagine, that’s why you want to get there early so that by the time he starts up with the entertainment you are well into your cups and don’t really care that an old man is caterwauling in a hammock a few feet away from you. 

Fortunately, he can’t sing very loud and the guitar is never in tune but he can’t strum it with much power. Some people make requests and he never turns down a request. Stairway to Heaven, Shake Rattle and Roll, Hey Joe, Electric Slide, Get Down Tonight doesn’t matter don Pete says sure and then he strums the guitar and mumbles some incomprehensible words. By the second or third line of whatever he’s playing he’s probably forgotten what you requested. He certainly has no idea how to play it. Whenever a newbie is along it’s fun to try and get them to make a request and watch them listen, then look around to see if anyone else realizes that don Pete is not playing Rock of Ages or Kumbaya or whatever they requested. Of course, the rest of us are trying to keep a straight face and nod along to the music as if don Pete is hitting all the notes and singing all the right words. Sometimes you can catch a muffled phrase or word at the end of a line and repeat it as if you were just a second off from his singing. This is especially fun if you’ve drunk so much rum that your tongue already feels thick and fat in your mouth. By the way you can order any drink you want at don Pete’s Tiki Bar and you’ll get either light or dark rum. Can you have it with ice? or coke? or pineapple juice? Sure. Did you bring any?

So you learn to bring everything you want to drink but the rum. You leave whatever you bring for don Pete’s next “customers.”

And when it gets dark and you’ve had enough and don Pete is asleep in his hammock you slip out to your dingy and return to your boat.