Grandpa Waller
always said it was a good idea to know something about where
you're going before you get there, otherwise you might drive
right on by and miss it.
Grandpa's bilious bromides were the main
reason no one looked too hard when he rolled off into the
night in his wheelchair during a Fat Tuesday visit to New
Orleans in 1958. However, in his blessed wandering memory,
this is where you get on...
They would have felt right at home
in Poco Cabesa.
Trying to understand
this unusual speck of rock in a lonely sea is a bit like walking
in after the first fifteen minutes of a new "Star Wars"
film with a super jumbo bucket of popcorn in one hand and
half a quart of watery soda in the other -- figuring out what
you missed so far is no problem, but finding a seat is going
to be an adventure.
For all its glories and follies and flaws,
its flora, fauna and foolishness, Poco Cabesa is a magical
island where space and time have little meaning and receive
absolutely no respect. A place of contrasts, contradictions,
and general confusion, it is also a place of grace and honor...
you just have to look real hard.
So, your humble correspondent will keep
it simple for now.
(Above) Panoramic view of Klinkleburg,
circa 1891
Somewhere on the tropical
fringes of the great Caribbean Basin lies the island of Poco
Cabesa and the town of Joetown, home to a few hundred locals
and a President-for-Life named Comrade
Joe the Only.
On the northwest
portion of the island is the paradisaical kingdom of Medillo
Grande, where an air-sea charter service called "Following
the Equator Air & Sea" ekes out a bare existence.
Well, actually, it just ekes.
"It's
in the shop again??"
That's
because FTEA&S is little more than a dilapidated Catalina
PBY Flying Boat owned by a cantankerous
crustacean (if there ever was one) named Mad
Jack Waller. Its sole crew-member is a screwball
savant Bengali wrench-wrangler named Babala
Prince Albert Holmes.
In the
greater scheme of things, "hanging on by its fingernails"
describes its current socio-economic status.
And the latest President-for-Life?
He's just a younger, hungrier, more capitalistic sequel
to his President-for-Life uncle, who's
now the island's second-most celebrated recluse. And
the locals, well...
But, I am getting ahead of Hank
Campbell's story. Or maybe you have already been
there and I am behind. In any case, you have been forewarned...
We
despise all reverences and all objects of reverence
which are outside the pale of our list of sacred things.
And yet, with strange inconsistency, we are shocked
when other people despise and defile the things which
are holy to us.
-- Mr. Twain
