Tag: dailyprompt-1910

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Choose, But Choose Wisely

Security guard chasing a man on a wooden dock near fishing boats
Daily writing prompt
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
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There is a bar in Lower Manhattan that I have vowed never to set foot in again. Besides being that I have “been banned forever,” it might be healthier to stay clear. Yes, the events that led up to that banning are epochs in the past. But the proprietors of said establishment may have used software to age-advance the photo of the young Wes Carson (my performing alias) to an advanced age and set the bouncers on me if I crossed the threshold. No safer to stay clear and go over to 11th and Hudson to the White Horse Tavern.

I was not the lone individual banned that night in the 1970’s. There was my dad, Nick Carreras, my father-in-law, the Cap’n, and a former shipmate of mine, John O’Toole (formerly Petty Officer, first class). We were all seamen of some stripe. My father was in the engine room. The Cap’n in command on the bridge. And O’Toole formerly operated the largest illegal liquor operation on a naval carrier. Me? I was just small change along for the ride with my seniors.

It started innocently enough. We were doing a friendly round robin of sea stories. There was a lot of laughter and good feelings; service rivalry and departmental grudges were put aside. I was the junior man in the group; I had served the least time and had the fewest tales to tell. So I maintain that my being banned forever was disproportionate.

The fight started over terminology. something simple, right? Someone has a word for something that’s not yours, you just smile and get on with it, right? Not that night and not that crew. My dad was telling a story about a repair that they made to the steering gear of his ship in an Asian port. The correct part was not available, so they took what was and jerry-rigged it. The Cap’n chimed in with a rough “Ahem! You mean you Jimmy-rigged it!” There then followed a discussion that was more about the perennial arguments between Bridge and Engine Room than the actual term.

O’Toole listened for a while patiently, then proposed that the actual term Navy style is Jury-rigged. After all, I piped up, ” There is the right way, the wrong way, and the Navy Way!” That was the match that lit the fuse. Now, this was a bar near the docks. Every other person of either sex was Merchant Marine, Navy, Bridge, Engine Room, off a fishing vessel, or other type of sailor. People of this tribe can be touchy about terms – sailor English is not your land-loving, dirt-hugging variety. The damned bar was up in arms in seconds with secondary arguments pouting all over the place.

With the Cap’n, my dad, O’Toole, and I following, we made for the door just before a big bouncer with a sap in hand reached us.

I’ve never been back. But word got to me that after the damages were totaled, all four of us were banned forever, not just for life.

So, no, I never want to go back there again. And in case you are interested! It’s Jury-rigged!

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Top Places I Never Want to Visit Again

Chill out! Damn! What a question. Where would I not want to go? Well, let’s start at the top. Gitmo – that’s Guantanamo to the uninitiated. Yeah, it was in the 1960’s but from what I’ve heard, it’s still on the list of the Pits. Maybe even worse.

Beyond Gitmo, there are any number of disepitiomable, despicable, and low-down small towns and cities that, if I never again pass through them, will make me ebullient with glee. Have I been clear enough? Places that you might have nightmares about.

You would like me to enumerate? Well, at a glance, I do not have the appendages needed to enumerate them accurately. Trust me, I’m afraid to. In some may still reside people who’d love to know my current whereabouts. Why? Just the sort of exaggerated idiocies of a mispent youth. I didn’t burn anything down. But why take a chance, eh? It was all innocent fun… and lynch mobs are so déclassé.

No, I’ll stick to bland, neutral places. They see my grey hair and see a lovely older gentleman. No reason to dissuade them from that little fiction. Is there?

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Change, Changing, Changed

There is an entire genre of Science Fiction dedicated to time travel. It often features the consequences of inadvertently or deliberately altering the past. I’ve always considered this “What if?” approach fun but overly contrived. It exposes a persnickety desire to play with the past. Of course, we all do it. “If I had only done this, not that” is a favorite game. But those who mine the past for our scribblings have little regard for what happened. We are too busy exploring an alternative take on something.

In our retelling, we have the opportunity to be the GOAT ( greatest of all time) in some particular area we love rather than just another mediocre scribbler. Of course, we have great insight into motivations, history, and reactions. After all, we are writing the stuff, aren’t we?

But of course, after you put the pen down, stop typing on the keyboard, or imagine a world of “If,” you are left with the fact that you aren’t allowed any redos or takeovers. You are stuck with your actions and the consequences of your actions. Now, some of us are pros when it comes to avoiding consequences. But sooner or later, something tends to catch up with us. I hear a quiet chorus of karma out there. So, we should be encouraged to recall our errors in detail when cornered. If smart, we spend less time cogitating on changing our past and seek to change our future instead.

Not all of us are smart, but most of us can learn from experience. And then there are the incorrigible. Learn from the incorrigible. They may bristle at you, but those bristles are theirs to bear encounter after lousy encounter. We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it and change the present and future.

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Layover

In my time, I have visited places that I’d love to return to. When I was younger and sometimes desperate, there were places that I wished I could have laid over in longer. But I was prone to rash decisions and often bemoaned the deficiencies of the places I wound up roosting. I never stayed long.

A few years ago, I ended up in one of those places. The architecture was the same, and the traffic pattern around the town’s central monument was just as insane. One of the restaurants I ate in was still there. But overall, the experience was creepy. First, gentrification had taken the town from the working class to the leisure class, and the types of businesses lining the streets were very different. Secondly, I am over fifty years older; no one I remember would be there, and I certainly would not recognize them if they were. Nor would they recognize me without my pack, guitar, and greasy-calf-skin engineer boots.

I stopped for coffee and remembered that in David Wallace’s book Big Fish, the protagonist visited the town of Spectre twice – the first time too early and the second too late. My intention had always been to “swing back,” but here I was, like the character in the book, returning too late.

I have no immunity to the feelings of the absurd in my life. I laughed out loud at myself and attracted a few odd looks in the coffee shop. I’ve thought about this more than a bit since then. except by accident I have no desire to ever return to those places I laid over. What’s done there is done.

Daily writing prompt
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
View all responses