Barnacles and Brubeck

At the carwash I made a discovery and it was not one to be welcomed. As it turns out the immutable laws of boats dictate that even a short trip at highway speeds converts the recently wet and slimy stuff on the boat’s bottom into something dry, hard, and vile.

Getting right to it, I blasted the stuff with high pressure water, soap, and the long handled brush which hangs from the overhead in the stall. Some of the growth came off easily, landing on my arms or face, where I liked it even less than when it was on the boat. The slime did not give up easily, but water and elbow grease prevailed, and I was emboldened. The gifts that the birds had left took a little work, too.

My next discovery was that the hoses, coming from above, can snag on every imaginable part of the boat, trailer, and person. They will trip, strangle, and smite you all while providing an excellent opportunity to exercise the dark side of your vocabulary. They are perversely proficient in many ways, including fogging one’s spectacles, making it still easier to trip or run into things.

Baked on slime is bad enough, but barnacles, as it turns out, may be the most tenacious creatures on our planet, worse even than telephone solicitors. A friend with an unusual past disputes this, insisting that the stickiest substance in the known universe is found on the bottom of rat cages, rather than on boats. She claims that it is there that the secret ingredients for various adhesives are obtained, including some used by NASA. I am in no position to argue the point, and hope to keep it that way. Barnacles are plenty tough enough for me.

Boats and the car wash, like fuel and spark, can work together well, but require a certain amount of caution. The very pressure which blasts away the nasty stuff can also remove varnish, paint, skin, as well as your sense of humor and other things you may want to keep. Between hoses which wrap like tentacles, Force-10+ water that really hurts, and crustaceans which may as well be carving knives, cleaning the boat can be risky business.

When I quit, I wasn’t so much finished as defeated. Most of the barnacles were gone, but some were unmoved, and would stay there for now. The slime was vanquished, with some paint, varnish, and hide as casualties. The hide will grow back, I hope, but I’ll have to tend to the boat. I was beat up, tired and dirty, and ready to go home, where I would regroup after consulting with a beverage. This experience is another reminder that a trailerable boat has its advantages, and I cringe at the thought of how foul Elsie might have been had she been left in the water even longer.

I tidied up the area and stowed the hoses, confident that I’d have an edge on them in our next encounter. Ol’ Blue was ready, so I climbed in the old truck and headed out, listening to the radio. The day was pleasant, and got better as the carwash grew more distant. It was a time to savor.

The music was followed by commercials, which I can tune out, unless they involve shouting or screeching, or the news, which is often more difficult to ignore than the offending commercials, but I usually manage. It was the end of the broadcast, though, the almost casual addendum to the big stories, that stopped my mind in its wandering tracks.

I thought about all the talented people out there, and those who somehow become giants, leaving tracks like no other. Dave Brubeck, with musical footprints as deep and wide as they come, was gone.

Rooting around on the seat, I found my copy of Time Out and popped the tape in. As the music started, I chuckled at the thought that, but for a candid professor, Dave might have become a veterinarian. I’m sure that he would have been a good one.

Dave’s interests and talents took progressive jazz from the fringes of popularity to the center, at least for a time. The others in the quartet—Paul, Joe, Eugene—and the others who played with Dave over the years—were masters in their own right, too. Dave, though, was a master of time and precision, and his improvisation was in a class by itself.

I have often sailed to Dave’s music, and when I listen to it ashore, recall a rare and perfect tack, or perfect sky and water. In Take Five, the brushes on the snare are spray, the drum solo thunder, all to the rhythm of the piano and bass, which press on. The gusty sax is powerful, and goes through the tumult to a smoother place. In the long version, the drum-storm returns, keeping you on watch a bit longer and sax returns, this time an easing wind.

Dave’s Chopin tribute, thank you, summons visions of the sea’s vast beauty and strength. There is some mystery, too, in the complexity of the composition.

I am no musician, and certainly no critic, but I am a listener of varied tastes, and, like you, I know what touches me, what resonates in some special way. Dave’s music did that.

Readers of this column know that I am a proud follower of Ned Ludd, suspicious of most things requiring batteries except, perhaps, flashlights. On rare occasions, though, a tape player is aboard, as music is fine company and an accent to nature’s gifts. Maybe it’s time to rethink that, and maybe even get one of those i-things, or whatever you call them.

In any case, the Dave Brubeck Quartet has become part of that important collection of memories that I carry. We all have those associations, so strong and vivid that they can take us from a mountaintop or the desert to the water, from a ho-hum now to a sweet then.

Curiosity demands these questions: What is it that takes you to those times and places? Is it some special music, or perhaps some food or drink, or the sight of a friend? Could it be that cap or those well worn shoes, or an old shirt from a now distant harbor?

All those things work for me, but the music of Dave Brubeck and his quartet will always, always take me to the water.

Thanks, Dave, and fair winds. •SCA•

First appeared in issue #80