Guest Essay on “No place like home.” Denton Record Chronicle – 8-1-18

No place like home.

A year ago, a friend called inviting me to go fishing. We’d be going to a small Central American country in the Caribbean and staying on an island. “I’m in,” I said, and was fortunate enough to live to regret those words. Two days later we met in Houston and took off.

We landed on a runway that looked normal enough except for the surface to air missiles tracking our plane. “Don’t worry,” I was told. “Those are remnants from when this was a British colony.” Twenty minutes later we boarded a single engine Cessna: we were going to our island.

During takeoff I mentioned the missing gages in front of me, on the copilot’s side of the plane. “No need for those,” said Jimmy our pilot, a former air force lieutenant who had flown A-1 Skyraider’s over Vietnam, then flew for Southwest until he retired and was now an old hippie. “They’re redundant. And buckle up,” he added as an afterthought, “that door tends to open when you least expected.” I buckled.

So far so good, I told myself, and calmed down until ten minutes later during a downpour when we started circling a small island. “Got to keep my eye on the ground” explained Jimmy. “With no visibility, it’s hard to tell where we’re headed.” He then calmly tapped the oil gage to see if the pressure would come up. The thought crossed my mind that Southwest paid him to be here, not there—safer that way.

Our island proved to be truly small, with no runway except for the beach and no ac or windows or doors in any of the dozen or so cabins, including ours. “No need for them,” declared our host, “it’s an island.” I thought of calling Australia to confirm, but no signal prevented me.

The island might have been small, but the mosquitoes weren’t. “On the bright side,” asserted one of my friends, “we came here to fish, not sleep.” Thirty minutes later we met our boat captain: another American turned beach bum and fishing guide.

On leaving the bay, the first thing we caught was a seabird. “Better cut the line,” coached our captain. “Look at the beak. They go for the eyes.”

We did spend three wonderful days fishing, catching everything and most of it edible. The lobsters we speared ourselves and had plenty of Grey Poupon to go with them. Even snorkeling inside the reef turned out to be fun, until our captain suggested we steer clear of the sharks. “The big ones are hammerheads,” he grumbled, “that and the barracudas, best leave them alone.”

Our pilot picked us up on schedule, only now the fuel gage was on empty. “It doesn’t work” shouted Jimmy over the engine noise. What a relief, I thought.

In the end, it was good to be back in Denton. Even stuck on I-35 with 110° was a relief. After all, I had a working gage showing a full tank, ac and windows.

Link to the pages of the Denton Record Chronicle:

https://www.dentonrc.com/opinion/columnists/manuel-taboada-no-place-like-home/article_ff8f403e-11f3-5cb2-9a25-1699e4944d88.html