Hearing with Your Eyes

By Jack Mazur

By now you may have discovered Jack Mazur’s blog, “Jack and his palm trees,” wry observations that emanate from his bunker in Key West. Jack likes to muse about life on this zany island. His stories often revolve around his beer-swizzling pal Joe Beans. We have collected here more of these tales into a companion volume to his Sad Demise of Henry. His ruminations range from observations made while walking around Key West ... dead bodies on St. Nicholas Cay ... daydreaming while driving ... waking up dead ... a favorite cow named Delilah ... hanging out at Schooner Wharf Bar ... a CA spook ... and visits to the bait shop. These low-key adventures often featuring Joe Beans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AbsolutelyAmazingEbooks.com
• Release date: Aug 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370436439

Book preview

The Atom Bomb We

Never Dropped

Across the highway at mile marker 17 there’s a place where you can pay several hundred bucks and jump out of a plane attached to a person who knows what he’s doing. For another hundred you can purchase a photograph of said event. Seems profitable. And, usually, the chute will open.

One sunny day down at the bait shop while I was making my daily beer run – B-double E double R – and so on and so forth I met up with a couple of chute jumpers chugging on a few cans just outside the establishment underneath a ten-foot shade tent. They were talking about different jumps and free-falls they had done. After I made my purchase I hung around for a while to listen to their stories. There were bunches of them. Some were funny and some were quite scary. Not one of them made me want to part with any amount of money to experience the event. But I listened.

One of the jumpers was a white South African guy named Lars. Suppose he had some relations way up north with that moniker. The other fella was a local Conch who had spent some time in the 101st Airborne. After several slightly humorous stories they got to one that held no equal.

Seems an adult black couple came in one day to the grass strip behind the Sugarloaf Tiki Bar. The couple had put their heads together and wondered what they could do to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary and get some really good pictures. They were well off. Money wasn’t going to interfere in their determination to do something spectacular. They kissed each other one day and said to each other, lets jump outta motherfuckin’ airplane. They pulled behind the Tiki and made inquiries. They were LaVon and Georgianna Cumquat. Yes they were a little sour, they said, but willing and able.

Lars met them outside the office and stood aghast. He hoped beyond hope that these black people weren’t looking to take the plunge. Nothing to do with color, it was just something he noticed. He also noticed that LaVon was pushing 300 pounds. When his eyes moved over to Georgianna he saw that she had all that and maybe a hundred and twenty more. The couple explained what they wanted to do. Lars did the quick math in his South African mindset and came up with a takeoff weight for the little Cessna of something akin to a lift off with a fleet of pachyderms! He checked with his white mental South African synapses and then he checked in with his Nelson Mandela mental synapses. It was unanimous. NO!

Well, this was going to be a pleasant discussion. How do you explain weight of plane, weight of fuel, weight of pilot and jumpers, and the weight of, er, ah, larger people? But that is what Lars proceeded to do. Surprisingly Georgianna understood but only if her husband, the lighter of the two, could make the jump. Lars headed off to talk to the pilot. There was a heated exchange.

In the end the pilot drained off thirty gallons of fuel and dumped everything of no use out of the plane. Out came the water bottles, the puke bags, the life vests, the life raft, all the change in his pockets and the bobble head doll of Jesus on the dash. Then he said if LaVon had seven hundred bucks it was a go. Then he went into the hangar bathroom and evacuated his bowels. Lars buckled LaVon up and they got inside the plane. The pilot revved up and they only took off one small limb from the pine tree from the end of the runway.

Still the plane made an agonizingly slow ascent. You could hear the engine droning way over on Big Pine Key. Lars later said that a couple of pelicans passed them in flight. The pilot saw that a ten thousand foot jump was out of the question. It was going to be eight thousand. LaVon with his tethered jumper (Lars) and chute weighed close to 600 pounds. Then they couldn’t fit out the door. Big bunch of testosterone couldn’t even move. The pilot dove right on purpose and out they fell all akimbo. The tourist and the tethered jumper fell like a huge Brahma bull through the sky.

Lars, with a big brute in front of him, had trouble just breathing. Then again they were tumbling over thermals and cold spots at almost 200 miles per hour. Oh God! He pulled the ripcord. It broke in his hand. Shit! The big beef coral on the ground was speeding towards them. He pulled the emergency ring. Heavenly choirs sang out, the pelicans flew back by. Lars felt that maybe LaVon had shit all over his crotch. Then, suddenly, they were going back upwards. That’s the way it feels when a chute opens. They had ten seconds under the parachute before they landed on a Spanish Bayonet, two hundred yards from the landing zone and in the garden of the Sugarloaf Lodge. Everyone needed alcoholic beverages.

A year and a half later in the Southernmost District Court of Florida a lawsuit was being decided. While Cumquat versus Sugarloaf Jumpers would never be a case written or studied in law journals the only black judge in that area was presiding over the case. The premise was that Georgianna was not allowed to jump from a plane on that eventful day. And it was a prejudicial action. Not only was she black but she was extremely obese. But that didn’t matter. Her Civil Rights had been severed. Nobody could tell Georgianna Cumquat she couldn’t jump out of a plane if she had the same kind of money as a white man.

The judge, James Heritage Smith, after listening to arguments, called the attorneys for both sides over to the bench. He said to Georgianna’s attorney, You’re kidding, right? Then he displayed to both attorneys representing the case the plaintiff’s exhibit three. Five severed shrouds from a parachute that had been attached to Georgianna’s husband’s parachute. They had broken upon opening of the chute during LaVon’s jump. There was no evidence that the shrouds had been damaged previously. It was a matter of too much weight. As Georgianna was suing because she wasn’t allowed to jump and not because the shrouds broke because of LaVon’s jump no matter how ill advised the case was dismissed.

Skinny people are still jumping from airplanes behind the Sugarloaf Lodge to this day.

Where the Pelicans All Turn Blue

Debauchery, mayhem and madness greeted the pedestrian at every corner. There were painted people and naked people. There were painted naked people! There were grotesquely large people showing their breasts and buttocks. Many of the men, believing they had large endowments, had worked long hours to cover same with the smallest piece of cloth or covering imaginable so that they fell within the limits of the law. Some had differing sexual orientations. No matter. Advertising the appendage ruled supreme.

Younger women feeling they had something to advertise stretched the limits of water-based pigment. It was okay to stare at these masterpieces as that was their pre-thought purpose. The older women were, well, just trying to release themselves from a lifetime of self- or religious-imposed Puritanism. And the Catholics? They could go to confession on Friday. But it was easy to see how the older ones just added to the absurdity and insanity. Everybody was roaring drunk! The pedestrian walked on over to the beach on Simonton Street. There was supposed to be some group involved in a silly enterprise of some sort. He passed Sloppy Joe’s where a mounted police officer let his horse stick his neck into one of the bar’s windows. It seemed an entirely acceptable circumstance. Odd but acceptable.

At the beachfront a group of Parrotheads, followers of the brother James Buffett, with two Ts, were up to some shenanigans that they had sought and been given permission to perform. The pedestrian popped the first cold beer of the day and leaned against a parked car to watch. The operation was to put a floatation device in the water in the shape of a large painted parrot. A photographer was stationed on a balcony at the hotel next door to snap pictures. In order to make the yellow, red, and green colors of the parrot’s feathers stand out, they had poured several gallons of harmless brilliant blue dye in the water. Things were going according to plan. At the moment the dye went into the water a school of mullet were just then passing through in the channel. In another moment three Key West pelicans in perfect military formation discovered that lunch was just then swimming through.

The pedestrian watched as the three perfectly outfitted sea birds took their dives and splashed into the water. All three retrieved their lunches. All three and the fish in their pouches were all a metallic blue. They flew in unison to some pilings on the other side of the channel to enjoy the feast and dry their feathers. They would all remain blue until the next feeding. They were not in danger of any health issues. They’d just look odd for a while. Very odd.

The pedestrian meandered back to Duval Street. The Fantasy Fest on Saturday was a world of weird. Weird could be fun sometimes. He saw the 70-year-old lady who had her boobs painted to look like two beagles. The nipples were like two wet fun noses. Fun. Then the pedestrian saw the homeless bum across the street. He was sitting in a dilapidated lawn chair with his crutches nearby. He had made a cardboard sign announcing he was doing alcohol research and that anyone could contribute. He had a small cardboard box for the donations. That there was still lettuce residue inside from a delivery to a restaurant up the street was not a deterrent. He’d had a tourist dressed only in a scrotum sack retrieve it from a dumpster for him. He addressed him as, Mr. Naked Nuts. Mr. Naked Nuts got pissed and called him a few selective expletives. The bum took no notice and went and set up his handout stand. He was a sight on crutches with a box and a lawn chair but he got it done.

The pedestrian, in a low-key costume with a lone ranger mask, was tapped on the shoulder by a guy dressed in a Superman outfit. He wasn’t a very large man but the costume did not reveal any fat.

What’s up there, Joe? A very familiar voice.

Max, you old coon hound, whatcha doin’ here?

I’m on a job so don’t ask. But I thought I’d take the opportunity to check up on you. And I see who you’re staring at across the street. He nodded in the direction of the lawn chair drunk.

Man, you put a hurt on him?!

I found it necessary. He’s still breathing. How about a beer or two at the Parrot?

Excellent. Let me meet you there in ten minutes. I’ve got an errand.

Roger that.

As Max, aka Superman, walked away, Joe, the pedestrian worked out his plan. With his hat firmly pulled down over his brow and his mask in place he crossed the street. The drunk bum was talking to a middle-aged short guy in a Viking outfit. It was a bad disguise. Who ever heard of a short Viking? Joe took the five previously folded one hundred dollar bills and dropped them into the box. The bills were partially covered by lettuce. This was good because any number of other bums passing by would see the denominations and run off with the box. As Joe walked away other tourists and revelers dropped small change on top of the paper money. Ah! Beers