Philosophers are not made by education. They are born that way. I am a philosopher and a philologist. This is not my fault nor is it the fault of my mother. Before we go any further, I would like to define two terms as I use them here. A philosopher is a person in love with Sophia or wisdom, that is. A philologist is a lover of learning in and of itself.
My mother is of German, Welsh, Swedish and Cherokee heritage. My DNA has the addition of Irish strands and that is why you are reading these thoughts. Women, in general, cannot stand philosophers, regardless of what they might say to the contrary. Philosophers cannot possibly comprehend women, regardless of what they may say to the contrary.
The stage is now set. I was born and school was opened. I crawled, walked and ran. My elder half-sister and I fought like tigers, possibly due to our differing strains of Celtic blood via our fathers. I likely hadn't survived beyond six years old without the martial spirit of Cuchulain my sister possessed in abundance.
I remember staying at my grandfather's cabin on the Gulf of Mexico one hurricane season. It was just my sister, me and him. We were at the beach swimming while the old man fished. Being an old salt with decades at sea travel under his belt, he told us to keep “a weather eye” on some inky flat clouds that were forming up a few miles out over the gulf.
Following his directions, I was the first to spot an angry, ragged piece of black swirling vapour twisting itself into a tornado. I started to sound the alarm and suggested vociferously that we jump in his truck and burn rubber all the way to his house in Beaumont. I shouted at him in anger, fear and disbelief, all to no avail. My grandfather slowly took in his fishing line and stood still. He quietly told me not to worry.
Far beyond worry, I turned to my sister hoping to get a majority in favour of immediate departure. The inky funnel had now dropped from the horizontal to the vertical and had made contact with the sea. There was a silvery splash and an incredible churning. The sea is very shallow where we were which intensified the effect of the wind as mud, gravel, shells, seaweed and fish were vacuumed up into the negative circular maw.
My little blond, blue-eyed, Irish Viking sister was knee deep in the water and staring the ugly beast right in the eye. As I approached her, I could see not a trace of concern in her countenance. Rather, I saw awe and respect. The fact that she wore a grin unnerved me further. I stood beside her in the surf and denounced her and my grandfather as both being crazy until the roar drowned out my puny voice.
We all watched the waterspout together. Like a living being, it plowed an erratic course toward land with short, stabbing lightning bolts cracking stochastically on all sides. Landfall was made a hundred yards or so toward the East and this change from water to earth disrupted the cyclonic action enough that a few hundred feet farther inland it collapsed. There was an epic splat as tons of salt water, mud, sand, Sargasso seaweed and fish were deposited unceremoniously onto the Coastal Highway which stretched toward Louisiana.
My Swedish grandfather laughed, “See, I told you not to vorry. Chust a lilla vater spoot.”
My sister said, “Woww!” and continued playing.
I went to investigate the nautical leavings on the highway, with two new lines of investigation forming in my five year old philosopher's head. One was the wisdom of old men and the other was the bravery of little girls. Damn!
Another time at that same cabin, the same sister and I were with our grandmother. We managed to get caught in a flotilla of Portuguese man o’war jelly fishes. These are a type of jelly-fish that has a pink float on the surface and long stinging tentacles dangling underneath a clear blue sac, sometimes several feet long. Their sting is like boiling water spilled on the skin and has several long lasting side effects.
We were diving and body surfing and hadn't noticed the quivering armada blowing in with the wind. The creatures drift where ever the wind pushes their sails and the tide and currents take them. As soon as one of us had been stung and had begun hollering, we both saw that we were totally surrounded by a margin of thirty feet.
Our grandmother was on the beach nearby and heard our cries. She stood and soon saw the raft of pink floats. By that time, my sister and I were thrashing around in earnest and had become completely entangled in the blistering strands of a demon’s mop and were caterwauling like battlefield casualties. Our bodies were crimson and starting to swell.
Straight into that miasma of pain, strode my Texas Cherokee grandmother. I watched in horror as she reached the fiery skirt of the flotilla and her legs also became wrapped in the accursed, slimy strands of painful poison. I figured she would be overcome by the pain, turn back and be unable to reach us before we succumbed. Likely, my sister and I would sleep with the fish, I mused. Then it happened.
My grandmother started to laugh! She released a warm, burgeoning belly laugh that carried over the water and affected everything within earshot. The more she got stung, the more she laughed. She reached our position and scooped us, one in each arm and strode back to the safety of the hot sand. We were all soon laughing through our tears. We were all three of us blotchy and looking like acid had been poured on us.
The ruckus had attracted attention and a small crowd had formed. A wise man in the crowd gave the formula for our relief. He was an old salt like her husband and my grandmother knew to listen to him. Evidently, there was only one thing for it. We had to pee on our legs immediately. I contributed as much as I could and probably the lion's share, as I recall. It actually worked. Something about the ammonia in the urine changes the toxin’s chemistry.
A year or so after that event at the beach, my sister and I were back there and swimming as usual. We had invented a game in which the object was to face seawards, wait for an incoming wave and at the last second, jump straight up and over it into the temporarily deeper water behind the crest. If done correctly, one had a satisfying dive and if wrongly timed, it was a hard handstand on oyster shells.
I mistimed one of my jumps and did a handstand onto the back of a Channel Catfish. This fish has pectoral and dorsal fins that are especially adapted for a life in Texas. They are rigid hypodermic bones and filled with venom and disguised with soft tissue. My aim was true, my weight was perfect and the fin pierced the third segment of the middle finger of my right hand, scraped the bone and came out the top-side of that unfortunate digit.
The spine’s shaft is slightly barbed and the fish was stuck good. The venom started to swell the flesh immediately and I ran to shore with the evil, bewhiskered turd-wrassler dangling from my hand like a voodoo ornament. This time there was no grandmother nor grandfather. We had come alone.
So, I laughed! I remembered my grandmother while I yanked the writhing dagger out of my hand. I remembered the old man and I peed all over the wound. I was already a coffee and a root-beer drinker, so it healed in a short time with no infection. I was beginning to accumulate wisdom by learning from all those around me.
My mother taught me three things that stand clear now from my vantage of sixty-five years. She taught me to not judge people by race or creed. She taught me not to mistreat women. Finally, she taught me to cut and to thread gas-pipe. She began her role as a mother at a very young age after a very difficult, short childhood. She always did her best.
We were never very close emotionally and one main obstruction was my father. I do not blame her and I no longer blame myself for this. What is, simply is. We have always had each others backs on some level, however. These difficult bonds become clearly visible when life blows all the other rubbish away and they are exposed
My younger sister was supposed to be a boy, according to my wishes as a six year old. I prayed continually through my mother's pregnancy and had my first religious crisis when my mother brought home a wee little girl. After one look at my precious new sibling, I learned that Great Spirit gives us what we need free of charge. A different Principal gives us what we want and sticks us with an interest-bearing bill later on.
That new sister taught me responsibility and gentleness. When somebody looks up to you, it calls forth the best in you and my little sister looked up to me. I have had her in mind always throughout my life. So, these four women added much to my pool of knowledge, but as I got older I wanted more.
I sought wisdom everywhere and realized early on that the best substitute for it is the ability to discern it in others. When detected, it must be heeded. I already knew not to judge books by their covers and my information sources ranged from the unlettered denizens of the streets and from randomly encountered PhD holders, alike.
In my study of families, I realized that my own was a very limited model to base my future life upon, thus I spent many hours in the company of other families. One of those was an Ecuadorean family I met.
The family I speak of spoke rudimentary English and I spoke present tense High School Spanish, so we communicated in Spanglish. I was a beer drinker in those days and the father of that family loved to drink beer with me. When his three sons had grown old enough, they joined us. I spent the better part of a couple of years in their company.
I lived in my own place but I took supper at their table several times a week. Every weekend found me at their house from Friday night until the wee hours of a Monday morning. I was working as a gas-fitter at that time, a trade that my mother and step-father had guided me into. I treated the South American family as my own and I was treated in a like manner by them.
The mother of my adopted family taught me many things. She tried to teach me to dance but it didn't take. She and her husband taught me that any number of guests can and should be accommodated at one's table. This is accomplished by simply adding more water to the soup and taking turns with the bowls. A lesson that I have never abandoned since. I learned through observation that her sons had bonded strongly with their mother because there was no interference from the Papa.
Due to the fact that, including me, there were four males in the casa and only one woman, there was an over abundance of testosterone. Usually, we took it down to the basement and soothed it with beer and cumbia music. Once in a while, Mama and some female cousins would come down to sip Cokes and patiently try to show me how to dance.
In time, Mama chose a good young woman for her eldest son to marry. They are still happily married today and have children of their own. The young lady was Chilena from a farm background. One night, as we sat talking at the kitchen table, Mama was the last to arrive home. She had a bag in her hand and something live was struggling inside it.
She pulled out a large chicken that she had just purchased in Chinatown. We all sat in amazement. She grabbed it by the feet, approached her husband and asked him to kill it for supper. He declined with a beautiful speech worthy of Cicero. She clucked her lips and went by turns to each of her three sons in declining order of age.
The eldest son gave a philosophical and spiritual rendering of his inability to do the deed that would have made you cry tears of agreement if you understood Spanish. The middle son only gestured with a negative nod of his head and lowered eyes. Her youngest son protested vehemently at the barbarity of the entire exercise. Then it was my turn.
I wanted to say yes out of respect for that woman who had been so very kind to me. I couldn't bring myself to action, however and the eldest son's new bride took the bird outside and returned four minutes later with the meat. Part of that lesson was about the practical skills of farmers but another component was the dual unmasking of the underlying temerity of women and the underlying timorousness of men. But, as with everything, there are exceptions.
There eventually came another visitor to the casa on weekends for soul food and beer drinking. He was a huge Ecuadorian man that could have served as a model for the character Caliban in Shakespeare's, The Tempest. He was well over six-feet tall. Most Ecuadorians I had ever met were barely five-feet tall. They also had delicate hands and small feet.
This particular fellow was ham-handed, barrel-chested, hairy as an ape, loud as an auctioneer and as crude in his English speech as he was in Spanish. He had been befriended in the travels of the youngest son, who took much delight in being in his company. I would say that the man was near his mid-thirties at the time I am speaking of. I was then in my early twenties.
His name was Avila. Just, Avila. He wore thick eye-glasses pulled tight to his head by rubber straps. In Winter he wore a massive, shaggy black beard. His feet were huge, his nails were bitten to the quick and he had an unsettling way of poking his tongue out the left side of his mouth, curling it skywards, closing his eyes and raising his chin when making a point in conversation.
He snorted when he laughed and one wondered, seriously, Dude, is he a human or a demon spawn? He was, however, a guy and so he loved to talk philosophy, as long as it got vulgar enough quickly enough. His appetite was so prodigious as to beggar description. Mama had to kill a lot of chickens and add a lot of water to the pot when Avila was at table. He sprayed when he talked and he stabbed the air with his finger, like a gun-barrel for emphasis. He was as polite as a young choir-boy in the presence of Mama and an altogether uncouth sasquatch in her absence.
I began inviting the boys and their father over to my place for dinner as a way to relieve to my friends' larder. I would make a five to seven pound garlic clove stuffed, black pepper and bacon covered, slow-cooked pot-roast. Mashed potatoes, rice and green beans would round out the meal along with Calabrian bread loaves sliced, buttered and oven warmed.
Avila would accompany those guys every time. He sat in the captain's chair, stabbed the roast with his fork, cut off half and then began to shovel on the garnishes. An entire loaf of bread would go to him alone and he drank every beverage dry including (but not limited to) alcoholic beverages, milk, juice and coffee. He was a bull. He grew to like me, in time and with much feeding. He hated gringos with an uncontrollable rage, but tolerated me solely on account of the Cherokee in my blood and meat on my table. He called me Cheroki Sueco.
After my gas-fitting work petered out, I found myself employment at a local Vancouver shipyard. My interview had been short. I told the English Engineer that I only knew domestic piping and he asked me if I could read blueprints and follow orders. I replied that I had taken drafting in high school and that my father had taught me the latter.
I began the next day and was shown to a tin shack inside of a huge compound. It was the pipe-fitters' shack. The workers were predominantly from the river Clyde in Scotland with a few Germans and a sprinkling of men from the Caribbean. All of the bosses were English.
There were bicycles everywhere and they were intended to be ridden to the various tool shacks where you would exchange tool tags for larger-sized tools than the personal tools each man had in his own red box. Next, you would ride to your assigned hull and commence the days chores as outlined by your Foreman.
I was given the task of connecting the freshwater systems and the air-conditioning on a Venezuelan Oil-Rig Supply Vessel that was overdue for delivery and still in dry-dock. I rode to the hull with my collection of giant Stillson wrenches and a blueprint.
I mounted the ladder and strode onto the steel deck through a shower of welding sparks and a greasy miasma of acetylene smoke. While looking for the hatchway that I needed to access the lower decks, I pulled out a smoke and started to light it with my Bic lighter.
A short, stocky man about twenty years my senior, flung out his arm and caught me across the chest. I went down on the slippery deck and sprawled on some grating. I stood and retrieved my lighter and asked him why he had done that. He told me that a spark from the welding could settle into my pocket, ignite my plastic lighter and subsequently blow my chest in two. He added that he spoke as a prior witness to that very event
He was a father and he knew that young men of my age didn't listen well to words but really did paid attention to actions. He was right on both counts. I went down into the dank, acrid hole and set about teaching myself how to be a Marine Pipe-fitter. It was slow going but I was happily working solo.
After a few hours, the task started to become easier and to make more sense to me. If I needed a flange welded onto the hull to mount a valve or a threaded pipe, I simply went topside and tapped any welder available for the small job. I had no welding glasses and got welder’s flash within an hour and suffered ocular agonies later that night.
The shipyard was a union workplace and I had been inducted into said union with no prior experience of what that even meant. To me, it meant more dollars per hour than I had ever dreamed of. It was roughly six times more per hour than I had ever earned up to that date.
There was a steam whistle that signalled two fifteen minute breaks and a half hour lunch. Those breaks were taken in the pipe shack. I made friends with some Caribbeans by lending them my Tabasco sauce to liven up their baloney sandwiches. We all worked exactly eight hours per day, minus breaks, I was told. No one explained that an allotted wash-up period began ten minutes prior to knocking off work.
I simply fitted pipe until quitting time when I heard the whistle blow. I gathered my tools and had a smoke while admiring my tiny but promising beginnings. I mounted the ladder and came up top. The compound was deserted in every direction. Descending the hull down to the bike, I rode over to the tool shed. It was already locked, so I took my large tools to the pipe-fitters shed, left them on the bench and grabbed my jacket.
There was a double security fence to be passed through when coming and going. It was manned by an armed guard who admitted the hundreds of men passage, one at a time. After showing a special ID, each individual in turn entered a chain-link chute that connected the two barriers. It was all topped with razor-wire and looked very much like a prison fence.
I saw a throng at the gate and hurried up to join them. I could hear malignant sounding grumbles circulating among those men before I reached them. These audibles came to my ears in a variety of accents but with similar threatening sentiments. Evidently, the new guy had broken a cardinal rule by working past the wash-up time.
The work in a shipyard is over when a ship is launched except for the small contingent who accompany the vessel on its sea trials. If it gets finished a day early, there is a day’s less wages for hundreds of men. I was in trouble and I quickly knew it. There were many unkind men between me and the fence and the view to the outside was blocked.
I saw a few faces in the crowd that were familiar from our pipe-fitters' shed, but the mentality of a mob is equal to that of the lowest IQ present. I had read books about this phenomenon and now I was looking at it. Slowly, I made way, trying to get to the gate.
Guys bumped and elbowed me as they worked up to the trigger point of an ancient dance. I was showered with maledictions and curses never encountered before. Anything could have pulled the crazy-switch, so silence was my only armour.
Thinking of my grandmother, my sisters, tornadoes, lightening and schools of jelly-fish; I was getting ready to laugh and to pee. I would try to make at least one bastard look worse than I was going to look.
These individual men weren’t evil nor was their violence personal. It was a chance to vent all the frustration, anger and shortcomings of their own lives in a safe environment with the power of numbers and the anonymity of a crowd. It was simple to understand. It was male cowardice at its timeless finest. They saw me as the likeliest drum on which to beat this ancient song.
Inching along, buffeted by the gauntlet, I was guided by the sound of jangling keys and the clack of a latch being thrown. Once in a position where I could, for the first time, see through a tiny gap in the crowd to the other side of the big fence, I laughed out loud! A warm, burgeoning belly laugh that carried over the gravel and affected everything within earshot. My unexpected outburst startled the men immediately in front of me and they parted slightly. I had a better view now.
“Oye, Avila! Que paso? Tu hijo magnifico de la gran puta del mundo,” I shouted.
Avila was in a black Security Guard’s uniform that must have been specially tailored for his inhuman bulk. His pistol hung like a child's water gun on his shiny black belt. Had a man taken it and shot him twice, they would have merely annoyed him. Avila searched the crowd for my face, found it and laughed like a cross-cut saw as he slid back the gate.
"Cheroki, no sabía que trabajabas aquí. Tu pendejito filosófico."
“Lo mismo para ti, glotón.”
Avila continued letting men out and bellowed, “Hey you fucking gringos! This guy, he's my friend.”
fin
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