Produced (some might say perpetrated) at the Port Royal in Oxnard, California's Channel Islands Harbor, the matter at hand the night of July 16, 1999, enticed a festively garbed audience to enter an island time-zone fueled by splendid libations, beach music, and a laugh or two on a fine summer evening.

No doubt most of them were thinking "What the hell was that all about?" by the time they pulled into the driveway at home, sobered up in the restaurant downstairs over an ahi steak, or woke up the next morning in their car in the parking lot with their underwear down around their ankles and their money gone. But seriously...

A while back, Naval Aviator Lt. Cmdr. Hank Campbell decided it was time to quit flying “Prowlers” off the U.S.S. Nimitz.

He’d been all he could be or wanted to be in the Navy and it was time to get out and get on with his life. (And, word was, there were second-seats on commercial jets just begging to be filled.)

So Hank got out. And it wasn’t long before he had himself a nice Atlanta condo by the river, a perky little flight attendant fiancée named DeeDee, a good hunting dog, and a co-pilot seat at a fast growing regional airline with national pretensions.

The future did indeed look bright.

But, a hurricane pushed Hank's condo up-river (he had the pleasure of seeing it float back down, too), a flatbed full of sandbags flattened his pedigreed hound, his perky fiancée up and perked off to Utah with a website guru, and that up-and-coming little airline up-and-collapsed because its venture capitalists lost all their capital in the Japanese economic melt-down of the 1990's.

Now, another man might have choked on a pretzel, turned to Jim Beam, Halcion, St. John’s wort, or started selling real estate in north Georgia. But not Hank. There were insurance claims to file. FEMA applications to complete.

Funny how paperwork can take your mind off the subject of reality.

It was a glossy four-color piece for an apparently thriving charter enterprise called “Following the Equator Air & Sea,” based on a lush Caribbean island called Poco Cabesa. There were pictures of houseboats and an immaculate Catalina PBY Flying Boat. It looked fairly impressive.

A note written in Crew Chief Waller’s Richter-scale scribble was attached with a toothpick: “Skippy! Give me a call when you want to do some real flying, love and kisses, Mad Jack.”

Hank scowled at the mention of his first Navy nickname -- something to do with a carrier landing on a rainy night in the China Sea whose pucker-factor was something he would rather just forget.

At the time the brochure arrived (postage-due, naturally), Hank assumed that this was just another of Jack Waller's maniac, mai-tai fueled dreams. But, now, slogging through his soggy piece of the American dream, it was the nearest straw that might put him back in a pilot's seat, and Hank grasped with all his might.

He cashed his IRA-Keogh, collected his insurance money, packed his damp clothes in a Navy sea-bag, and cast his fate to the wind. Unfortunately, as you shall see, dear reader, it blew back in his face.

When Hank actually arrived on Poco Cabesa (via ferryboat, by the way), he stepped into the steamy afternoon heat, looked around, and wished with all his heart that he'd never heard of Jack Waller.

A tin-roofed garage served as a dock terminal. The only vehicles in sight were rusting Yugos. And every available scrap of shade was in use by snoozing humans and animals.

Hank cautiously approached the table of a Customs Agent who was cheating at solitaire. A snoring guard wearing a patched uniform was asleep at the agent's feet.

This did not look promising. So Hank went looking for "Mad Jack," starting in the cantinas...

A rattling mini-cab hauled him through the island's capital, Joetown, which consisted of six cockeyed cement structures on either bank of a fetid green stream languorously emptying into a fetid green harbor known as Guano Bay. Wooden huts thatched with threadbare palm fronds were haphazardly clustered around the more permanent buildings.

The first episode featured, perhaps we should say manhandled the talents of Gary Best, Dwier Brown, Kim Maxwell-Brown, Zachary Pugh, Erin Whitehead, and A.J. Morgan as the Narrator.

The evening was produced by Craig Kelley, Dwier Brown and Kim Maxwell-Brown. All three are currently reported as being in improved but guarded condition at the state asylum for the terminally nervous.

The author is J W Nelson (the tar and feathers are coming off quite nicely, thank you). All legal matters should be referred to the firm of Dewey, Cheatum & Howe, Lompoc, California, cells #301 through 303.

Somehow persuaded to appear before and after the radio-play was the extremely talented Southern California band:

Check back here for new features on life on the island referred to on navigation maps as "Uninhabitable." Everyone will be there -- Hank, Mad Jack, Emma, Her Majesty Gert, both Comrade Joes, Cap'n Roy, Baby Willie, Henry the Pirate, Comrade Joe the First's Wife, Carl the kakapo, and the irrepressible Babala.

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