Monday, August 25, 2014

Blaine.


Blaine was a pillar of practical wisdom. As a young man he started a small business to help out after his father died.
Blaine once said that if you gave a man a $50 bill for three days in a row if you didn't give him one on the fourth he would hate you. He was right.
Once I made a comment to him about what a nice outfit a nearby woman had on. Blaine replied that you never think of what the woman was wearing after you get her clothes off.
I couldn't argue with that.
Blaine was the most practical, unflappable logical person I have ever met. He could see through any smoke screen or mirror display and would go straight to the bottom line in his dealings with others.
The one thing Blaine taught me that sticks out the most is that he taught me that to get to the bottom of something all you generally have to do is follow the money, sex or power trail.
He was without a doubt either the most unlucky or the luckiest person I have ever met. He was briefly a room mate of mine when he got caught between places to live. During a three week period he survived a crab boat sinking, a fire at sea, and a three day period of being adrift at sea in an open skiff with no food or water.
After every one of these fearful events he would return to my place late at night griping about the event like it was routine and tell the story in such a way that the pair of us would laugh ourselves to tears. The following morning without a thought Blaine would return to the harbor and look for a fishing job.
After the adrift incident he got on a salmon boat worked all summer without incident and decided his luck was running thin. He returned to New Jersey and sold cars for a while.
He had given me a Zippo lighter he had engraved with an Ernie Gann quote. "Run as fast as you can and escape if you will, for you are the quarry and fate is the hunter."
I kept it for years.
In 1995 I heard that five years earlier he was killed off the Jersey shore in a pleasure boat wreck. It is believed he went down with the boat.
The following year I was running up the coast with a load of #6 oil and when we crossed the area he was killed I returned the lighter to him by casting it into the deep.

No comments:

Post a Comment