The War on Christianity

Taking the Fight to the Christian Right

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The Hunt for Red Balone

I was sitting on a sandy beach trying to pull the pants of my wet suit up over my legs. I was in a hurry to get into the water. But the darn thing wouldn't go on. And now my feet were stuck halfway down each leg of the foam-rubber pants.

I waddled up the beach to where my mother sat. "Mommy, Mommy, can you help me?" I asked, as I stumbled to my knees in front of her.  

She laughed. "Sure, I'll be happy to help." She took them off, poured some corn starch down the legs, and they slipped back on easily. She then helped me with the blouse, I pulled up the beaver tail up under my crotch and snapped it to the front of the blouse, zipping it up part way. Then boots, hood and weight belt followed.  

"Don't you look cute and adorable?" Mother said, smiling at me.

"I do not!" I replied, as I stomped away in a huff. I was a big boy, almost a man and I was not cute and adorable. I was six years old.

We were at the breakwater in Monterey, the Coast Guard pier was off to our right. The pier extended out maybe two hundred yards, followed by another hundred yards of just plain rocks. A colony of perhaps three to five hundred sea lions made their home on those rocks.

I picked up my tanks and sauntered over to my father where he was getting dressed. Come on Daddy. Hurry up, Let's go. I want some baloney.

Father laughed. "That's abalone, son." He said.

"That's what I said, I want some balone. Can we go yet?"

"Well, hold your horses," he said, smiling. "I'll be ready in a minute."

My own tanks, wow, I thought. I had only had them a week or so, and I wanted to use them. Father had made them for me out of a couple of CO2 bottles, and given them to me as a birthday present. They were twin 15's, which simply meant that each bottle held 15 cubic feet of air compressed. They were aqua blue, maybe eighteen inches long and they came to just below my rump. It was 1960 and there was no such thing as Diver Certification.

The regulator was almost bigger than the tanks. It looked a bit out of place with an inch-thick hose coming around each side to meet at the mouthpiece in the front of my face.

Father helped me to slip into the tanks, and I snapped the quick release buckles at my waist and then at my chest. Then he hoisted up his own tanks and buckled them on. His were twin 60's.

"Come on over here, son," he said, as he proceeded to check everything out, making sure that everything was secure, the harness, the weight belt, the regulator and such. Then he turned on the air and had me breath through the mouthpiece. A rush of adrenalin poured into my body, as I realized that we were ready to go.

"Come on, let's go," he said, and we carried our fins down into the water. At about waist deep we put on our fins. Then we washed out our masks in the ocean and spit into the inside of the glass, smearing it around so it wouldn't fog up. I put the mask on, the mouthpiece into my mouth and began to breath.

Then father signaled me to follow and we were off. We swam side by side through the shallows, following the base of the rocks where the sandy bottom met the pier. About fifty yards out the kelp forest began off to our left, where fish abounded. I had a yearning for my spear gun. But I hadn't taken it along, we were after abalone.

Then we began to see them, clutching against the rocks, or lodged back into the crevices of the huge boulders that formed the base of the pier. The first ones we saw were blacks, a smaller variety, and we were after the big reds.

I followed my father on out into places I had never seen before, and at about a hundred seventy yards out from shore we saw our first big red abalone. Father pulled it off with hi spry, measured it against the notches on the side, showing me that it was too small. They had to be eight inches long to be legal, so he put it back.

A couple of sea lions were playing in the water above us. We were in their territory now, about seventy feet down. We watched them play for a bit, before continuing on.

Father found another and gestured me to pry it off. When I had it in my hands I measured it, and sure enough it was legal, so I stuffed it into the bag that was tied to my waist for that purpose. There were many little caves in that underwater realm that I could get into because of my size. I turned out to be really good at getting back in there at the abalone and bringing them out. Hey, I was smaller and could get deeper into the crevices where they liked to make their homes.

I had gathered several of these shellfish, when father suddenly pushed me further back into the little cave I was exploring. I tried to look out to see what was wrong, adrenalin pumping into my body. There was a huge dark shape moving by us maybe three feet above us and six feet out from the rocks.

Father pushed me back into the cave. He seemed to be trying to get in there with me. I sat there boxed I, becoming a little more agitated with each passing moment. Then he grabbed me by the tanks on my back, pulled me from the cave, and set off for the surface. He kept as close to the rocks as he could, holding me in front of him all the way up.

What's wrong, I thought. I still had air, and I wanted more abalone. And I began to feel depressed that my adventure had been cut short.

When we reached the surface father lifted me up, completely out of the water, and sat me on a relatively flat rock above the waterline. Then he hurriedly climbed out himself and sat there beside me breathing heavily. I pulled off my mask and looked at my father who was doing the same.

"What was that, Daddy?" I asked, unconcerned, and a little sad.

"That son," he said, with both fear and relief present in his voice, "was a killer whale." He pointed, "Looking for something to eat."

I looked out to sea. A seven-foot dorsal fin cut the water where the killer whale was looking to lunch among the sea lions. They were going berserk, all trying to clamber up onto the rocks all at once.

"A killer whale, huh?" I said, still a bit annoyed. "Well, he can't have my balone." 

 

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