Dock Dave / I'm Not Done Yet

By Dave Draper

Male dancer, carpenter, dude ranch cowboy, mariner, drug dealer, commercial fisherman, movie actor, concert promoter, wakeboarder, artist, divemaster, master dock builder... Any two would be highlights of the average person's resume. But "Dock Dave" Draper's done all those things...and more. You'll find some famous names here, along with an array of lesser-known but no less fascinating characters. Back and forth in the USA, across the Asian continent, to Australia, New Zealand, and Europe - get on board with Dave, and be sure to buckle up. You're in for quite a ride!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dave Draper
• Release date: Aug 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310100260

Book preview

Dock Dave / I'm Not Done Yet

Dave Draper

Copyright 2014 by Dave Draper

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

I was born in San Rafael, California.  The year was 1953.

 That same year, the world lost Hank Williams, Josef Stalin, boxer James Jeffries, Queen Mary, Jim Thorpe, Django Reinhardt, Man Mountain Dean, Edward Hubble, Dylan Thomas, tennis champ Bill Tilden, Charles Gordon Curtis of steam engine fame and of course the Rosenbergs (Julius and Ethel), put to death at Sing Sing.  They all dropped, and out I popped.

This is where I'd love to regale you with tales of my ancestors and impress you with my pedigree.  Sorry.  The family tree is festooned with common folk – farmers, laborers and the like.  We do go back to the Pilgrims, but that's pretty much it for any bragging rights.

I've never found anyone who even worked for a famous person.  Even in the military, they were just low-ranking enlisted men.  Everyone was born, raised and buried in the same part of Massachusetts.

So why did I have such a wanderlust?  These people seemed content to accept whatever life dealt them.  I've always tried to keep improving my situation.

What bedtime stories did great-great-great-great-granddad tell his kids?  Today I watched the cabbage grow?  Oh, and there was a ladybug!  At least that would put them to sleep quickly.

Even in more recent times, few in my family seemed motivated to succeed.  We've been the cleaners and drivers and housekeepers who keep things going but don't leave much of a footprint on life.  We got the C's and the D's in school, graduating just barely and apparently not able to make much of whatever we learned pay off for us.

I wonder whether, in spite of my struggles to make something of myself, I was doomed by genetics to stay with the drones and the worker bees and never fly high enough to escape my fate.

There were five of us in the Draper brood.  First there was my older brother Gordon, then me, and then Nanci, Suzi and Jeff, who arrived at one year intervals thereafter.  My early childhood comes back to me in snapshots:  the typical boy adventures and misadventures, the risky behavior, the odd flashes of memory that connect to nothing special.

An old Mike Myers sketch from Saturday Night Live took me back to being harnessed to a car’s front bumper – a human bolo paddle ball, fueled by boundless energy, bouncing in all directions but really going nowhere.  Perhaps that was a metaphor for what was to come.

Nanci had Shirley Temple curls.  They were quite lovely.  But I fancied myself a barber – even drawing a fake mustache on my five-year-old face.  And so I applied my dubious tonsorial talents to removing all of her crowning glory.  Needless to say, my mother was less than pleased.

What else? you may ask.  Well, I remember sitting on a railroad flat car with Gordon, eating a ham.  That unadorned factoid raises several questions I simply cannot answer.  Suffice it to say that the train started moving, we got scared and jumped off and ran to the nearby highway, someone picked us up and somehow we got home.

And then there was the forest fire I started.  Ah, youth.

Also at age five, I felt the first stirrings of lust.

We were creating mud pies, she and I.  Her name is lost in the mists of time, but that girl holds a very special place in my memory.  One of the pies found its way down into my shorts, and she reached in to retrieve it.  Oh, the ecstasy.  I didn’t know what the feeling was, exactly, but I liked it.  Instinct took over, and I kissed her.  Then, I dry-humped her.  Yes, those frenzied moments of exuberance were just as romantic as they sound.

It was my first sexual experience – one that would have to suffice for the entire eleven-year dry spell before I had the next one.

About that same time, I remember, there was an event that – although of no great consequence in the overall scheme of things – illustrates something very fundamental about my character.

I had climbed up to the high diving board, intent upon performing a complex and impressive jackknife on the way to the water below.  Perhaps less confident of my athletic ability than I was, someone reached out and held me back.  I was both angry and embarrassed.

Being told I can’t do something I want to try never has sat well with me.

Suddenly, we were trekking across the country to Cape Cod.  The company my dad worked had been founded by his aunt in 1903, and it was the largest candle factory in the world.  He was a low-level manager, and this was a transfer from one of their plants to the other.  He wasn't particularly ambitious, having come from that hardy Draper don't rock the cradle stock.  And so he worked there all his life, never making waves or seeking more responsibility.  He took what was offered – nothing more.

There was great fun to be had in Cape Cod, and the five of us kids made a lot of friends.  We were the only ones who hadn't been born there.  Those were good times – 1959 to 1968.  But they were destined not to last.

Chapter 2

Even as a child, I felt kinship with the non-conformists, the outsiders and the malcontents. I turned my back on all that defined my boring home life, becoming withdrawn and aloof. My heart and mind were with the artists, writers, actors and musicians who defined the counterculture. I listened to Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and all the R&B and Blues I could find.

But on Saturdays, there was baseball over by McGiver's pond. I got pretty good at slamming home runs, and that meant I was usually the one who had to go find the ball in the bushes. After a few hours of that, we would play war with our plastic machine guns loaded with caps. When those ran out, we'd make the noises ourselves.

Cape Cod was a great place to be a kid. We had the beach, the woods and more. Of course, the beach was where the women were. At that tender age, it was the closest thing to porn we had. Bikinis were everywhere, and that's when we first learned and practiced the invaluable male skill of rating females by the size of their boobs and the shape of their asses.

I once got close to a blonde lifeguard. She must have been in high school or maybe even college. I guess she thought I was cute – or saw my tongue hanging out – and playfully hoisted me onto her lap, where we played tic-tac-toe on her flawlessly tanned legs with a clam shell. My pals were in awe, and I was in heaven.

I was just about to propose marriage when the moment was ruined by some dumb kid who stepped on a horseshoe crab and let out an ear-piercing screech.

I would see her every day, but she never reached out to me again. I was crushed. She'd had her way, and now I was tossed aside like a hot egg salad sandwich. Women!

I didn't know it at the time, but I had just been granted a small peek at my own future.

Of course, girls our own age were there only to be tormented.

Pouring water on them, putting crabs in their towels...those were nothing compared to the sugar donut. We'd get wet first and then roll around in sand. A dive into mud was next, and then we'd put seaweed on our heads. The object was to lie on the girls and gross them out. Oh, how they hated us.

How many women recounted that traumatizing childhood experience to their high-priced therapists? And how many of those doctors, while betraying no emotion, secretly admired our creativity?

Anyone who grew up on the Cape during that time knew about Gozelka's. It was a themed-restaurant designed to replicate the look of the Gay 90s. Around it, Mr. Gozelka had constructed a small 19th century town, with a cool playground, a pond where we played hockey in the winter and a vintage train on a track surrounding it all.

In the middle were a grist mill, fire station, barber shop, cobbler and other businesses typical of the period. There was an impressive display of old cars dating back to the days of the first horseless carriage. I remember an organ grinder playing while his monkey doffed his cap and hustled for tips.

We guys built our own private hideaway in the woods. It was a vast, dark forest, and seven of us dug out a long, deep underground fort that we covered with plywood. Illuminated by candles set into the walls, we would meet to discuss our plans for world domination. Playboy was the preferred reading material, and those who smoked brought cigarettes.

It would have been a perfect place to take girls for sex, but none of us really had a handle on how to accomplish that. So there was a lot of talk but no action at all. Instead, we focused upon a far more easily attainable objective: challenging our rivals the Mill Hill gang to a game of baseball.

I knew the Mill Hill boys, and my friends weren't very social. So I volunteered to be the leader in establishing contact and laying down the gauntlet.

The plan was for five of us to pedal there and make it a full day. We'd stop at Fruitland, the half-way point, and get supplies (candy).

Mill Hill was an entertainment mecca for