Boats

Living on an island accessible only by boat makes you think of the boats you rode like you would family members or best friends.  You depended on them to get you to the other side and back.  And in the twelve years we lived on the island, none of them ever let us down - getting across Doboy Sound that is.  But they each had a personality of their own.  Some were a bit uppity, some were stylishly dependable, some were dowdy and plain and some were like spirited teenagers and wild horses. My favorite boat was the Pegasus.  I really did think of her as a sleek white horse, running across the water, taking us to school and back.  The Striker was the teenager.  Young, speedy and fun.  The Janet was the queen boat, the main one in the fleet whose sole purpose was to transport islanders, visitors and very important guests.  She was the most respected and loved all of the boats.  The Kit Jones was special too. Painted gray and white, always in meticulous condition, the Kit Jones was a nice looking boat.  Although occasionally we would ride the Kit Jones to the mainland, she was the primary research vessel and kids weren't welcome on-board too often, and you certainly couldn't run around and mess with things.  Captain Rouse was a stern captain and kept his boats squared away -- and he didn't  take to warmly to fidgety kids.  If you ride a boat as often as we did, sometimes it was so hard to sit still and just look out of the window at the endless choppy waves hitting the side of the boat.  Porpoises were a fun diversion though and we loved to watch them swim along side us for fun.  The sea gulls were always hanging around the stern seeing what got stirred up by the propeller that they could swoop down upon.

One boat I had a love-hate relationship with was the Tarpon.  She was an old shrimp boat converted to a transportation and research vessel.  We had to take the Tarpon to the mainland when the Janet wasn't in service.  From a child's view she was the country-cousin of the Janet.  The Tarpon was noisy, lumbering, vibrating and smelly with diesel fumes.  The Tarpon was painted gray inside and out, a boat metal gray, maybe with a hint of blue.  When you had to take the Tarpon, instead of the Janet, and you were dressed up to 'go to town', you suddenly didn't feel special anymore, and you hoped that no one off the island would see you get on and off that old boat. But I felt sorry for the Tarpon, I don't know why, maybe because she knew she didn't have as much class as the others, being that she was made to be a work boat for catching shrimp.  She was always docked on the left side at Marsh Landing dock when you approached from the water, certainly not as prominently docked like the Janet, who was always front and center, or the Kit Jones, were.  Almost as if we were embarrassed to have this old, dull looking boat in our fleet.

Although you really wanted to like the Tarpon, to find something likable, a comfortable place to sit wasn't it. She made for a long, boring ride across Doboy Sound.  Everyone had to keep their thoughts to themselves for the duration of the 35 minute ride because the seating area was so near the engine room.  No one could hear you and you couldn't hear them without having to shout.  And your body vibrated the entire time, especially when you tried to talk.  I remember my mom would hold me in her lap and I would put my head to her chest so I could hear the vibrations of her voice as she tried to talk to the other women and mothers on board.

Riding the Janet is a story in itself.  She was our ferry for so many years.  She was the one you strained to get a glimpse of her pink and white colors as you came down the mainland dock road.  If you were returning from a long car trip across several states or just coming back from town and had gotten delayed, everyone in the car would be worried she wasn't going to be there waiting if you got there a minute too late. Seeing the boat captain, Fred Johnson or his brother Cracker, wearing a captain's hat and smoking a cigar at the helm always made your day and you knew everything was going to be okay when you safely made it in time to place your belongings on the back of the boat and to take your seat inside.  Then you would watch Dan pass around the log book and sit back and role himself a cigarette. The Janet is another story indeed.

The Women of Sapelo

Kind, round faces, soft, lyrical voices, outstretched loving arms with nimble, capable hands are some of the images I remember the women of Sapelo by.  I would gaze upon their beautiful, smooth skin of varying shades of brown and black, watch their animated faces with stories to tell  and wise sayings to impart while switching a fan back in forth to dispel the constantly buzzing bugs, heat or both. I never tired of hearing the sweet voices, intently listening to understand their language, their island way of speaking, and wondering why I could always catch more of what the women were saying  than the men of the island. Perhaps it was their softer and slower way of speaking.  The men spoke faster and sometimes their sentences came out like bullets of foreign sounds.

I have never yet again been surrounded by so many mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers and aunts.  Their ways of interacting, of being, and of living were a constant source of fascination and wonder to me.  They did not have a lot of money but what they did have was confidence in their living, and how to live right.  They were strong in every since of the word.  And capable of cooking the best food you have ever wanted to eat. Fried chicken, pork chops with rice and gravy, lima beans, string beans and black eyed peas and making lemonade so perfectly tart and sweet that on a hot summer day it made lunch at the dorm's dining hall the best meal you had ever tasted.  I remember the times the kids were allowed to join the students for a special lunch at the dorm, sitting in the cool air conditioned lunch room watching the students finish off their fried chicken lunch and desert, and wishing I could be an ecology or geology student just to be able to eat dinner at the dorm everyday .  I loved just hanging out in the dorm kitchen where Miss Rosa and Miss Viola worked.  Two more wonderful human beings there never were.  At age 9 I was chest height to them and my memories of hugging them are delightful, feeling nestled in the security of a mother's bosom. And how they liked to laugh and hear our stories and love us.