It’s time for another fuzzy memory. I told this story many years ago in another report, but it bears repeating. A few reports ago, I posted a photograph of a group of my friends, riding in my old Chris Craft Sea Skiff, and one was wearing an orange pig mask. At one point, I and some of my friends each had our own latex pig mask. They were our official party masks. Because they only covered the top half of the face, they did not interfere with one’s ability to drink beer. That was of the utmost importance in those days. Those masks unleashed our partying superpowers, and perhaps they even transformed our personalities. Anyone who has ever worn a Halloween costume knows the power of a mask.
For sheer debauchery and untoward
behavior, one vacation stands out. Back in the 1980s a group of us rented a
large rooftop condominium on Grand Bahama Island for a week’s vacation of
nonstop partying. The eight or nine of us in this group frequently celebrated
together in Buffalo, so moving the party to the Bahamas was a slam dunk. On our
first day, we rented a dilapidated, 1970s mint green Cadillac the size of
Nebraska, with bad suspension, balding tires, and a badly peeling dark green vinyl
top. We drove that beast all over the island, stirring up mayhem and chaos. There
was gambling, drinking, and of course, there was an abundance pig mask-wearing
behavior. That Caddy was on its last legs when we rented it, and we were the
nail in the coffin. After the first night on the town we somehow lost what was
left of its decaying exhaust system. There is nothing like to sound of an
unmuffled, big block V8 engine to wake the dead. Everybody knew when the pig
people from Buffalo were coming, that’s for sure.
One day, we took our loud, smoking,
lime green chariot on a road trip to the other side of the island. We’d heard
about the fancy Jack Tarr Village resort, far removed from the froth and fray
of the other side of the island, and from scofflaws like us. We wanted to see
for ourselves how the other half lived, and we had every intention to behave
ourselves. We planned to have one over-priced drink, maybe hang out on the
beach for an hour or so, and then head home. The day did not turn out as
planned.
We got off to a bad start, because
our Caddy had a pre-ignition problem. When we arrived at this fancy resort,
parked and shut off the car, it shuddered for a good 5 seconds, after which it
let out an ear-splitting bang and emitted a huge cloud of blue smoke. That was
a sign of things to come. Unfamiliar with the all-inclusive resort experience, we
discovered that Jack Tarr Villagers prided themselves on their privacy. If you
were not an official Jack-Tarr-Village-card-carrying guest, you were persona non
grata. I can’t imagine why a quiet, exclusive, family-friendly resort, would
not welcome a group of loud, young adults, four who were wearing pig masks, but
regardless, we were summarily rejected. Some of us, not the designated driver,
were a little intoxicated, so that rejection, by those pseudo-exclusive resort imposters,
just fanned the flames. Indignant, we “pigged” the pool area, then moved on to the
bar and lobby. With each rejection we became more obnoxious, until we spent the
remainder of our ill-fated stay eluding security guards and photo bombing
befuddled residents while they stood for carefully posed family photos. Somewhere
I have a photograph of my friend Michael popping out of the bushes wearing his
pig mask just as a carefully posed family portrait was being snapped. What did
Groucho Marx said about country clubs? I felt like he must have been talking about
us. Anyhow, we now had not only had security guards chasing us, but also angry hotel
guests as well. We all scrambled back to our rusty land yacht as the gathering
crowd of disgruntled people chased us. After what seemed to be an eternity, our
designated driver managed to get the engine to turn over, and we beat a hasty
retreat with tires squealing. In our wake, shrouded in a thick cloud of blue smoke,
were the angry residents and security guards waving their arms and shaking
their fists. They reminded me of the angry villagers gathering to lynch
Frankenstein’s monster. I do believe that was my last visit to a Jack Tarr
Village resort.
As I said, those masks were to
blame, I would never have behaved that way if I wasn’t wearing a pig mask. As a final note, when our vacation was over, as instructed, we left the very tired
Caddy in the airport parking lot. That very well might have been it’s last
rental. By now, on top of the myriad of other mechanical failures, its rear
differential was bone dry. It was smoking from the friction of an unlubricated
rear axle. As we took off in our puddle jumper to Florida, we could see our
legendary beast, our weary dragon in combat, possible about to catch fire in
the airport parking lot, shrouded in a gathering plume of smoke. Those Caddys
take a lickin’ and keep on tickin’.
- Written by Jamie
Oppenheimer ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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