The Native Iowan

Who says I suck at math? They are wrong. I know that today, and today only…

21=68.

Wouldn’t have it any other way.

Yesterday I posted an obit for Uncle Teddy Selman. I noted in that post that I have not heard from Teddy for decades. And thats OK. Sometimes people get lost in the currents of life. And as a life-long adventurer, I have been “leaving”, moving on, sailing away often. Any loss of communication between friends in my life remains largely due to me, myself and my eclectic and eccentric life.

After posting Teddy’s obit yesterday I started thinking of classic Teddy tales…

Teddy was an interesting man. An accomplished guitarist. A mechanical genius. A master machinist. An amazing story teller. Teddy’s father was from West Texas, his mother, Miss Molly, was a Cajun Princess. I was lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time visiting Teddy in his Orange, TX home. For a few years Uncle Teddy’s place was on our list of things-to-do whenever we visited the USA.

I got to know his Mother, Miss Molly.

Everyone called her “Miss Molly”. She had a “negress” caregiver looking after her daily. She was an artefact of a time past. She was old school Gentile Cajun. She was born in a time of a different form of political correctness. Miss Molly was prim and proper and correct in all she did. I always felt honoured to be in her presence. Uncle Teddy’s good manners and charm came from his Mother.

One of my favourite uncle Teddy tales…

It’s late in the 1980s. We’re on Guadalcanal. One of the big past-times in those days was scuba diving. Pretty much everyone that was posted to GCanal did a dive course, got certified, bought gear and started diving. The Solomons offers some of the worlds best underwater adventuring… The water is warm so no need for wet suits and loads of weight. The coastline of GCanal offers numerous, easy to access beach dive sites. So all we needed to do was grab our gear, hop in a car and drive the short distance to Bonegi.

It’s a Saturday morning. I recall Willis and a couple other folks all gathered on the beach, preparing to enjoy an easy 40minutes underwater. Uncle Teddy was there, going for his first ever scuba dive. It was customary for the gang I ran with to take folks on an introductory dive, to get them interested, started on their way to being a certified diver.

That day Willis is Teddy’s instructor…. gives him the prep intro, shows him his gear, gets him suited-up and in the water.

Bonegi is an easy dive, start shallow, work down to around 100feet, slowly ascend up the coral wall. 40minutes is the average time a tank of air lasts at such depths. And 40minutes was about as long as a recreational dive needs to be.

We surface, waddle ashore, drop our gear.

Someone asked Uncle Teddy, “how was it”… we’re all expecting the usual 1st-dive enthusiasm. A torrent of words proclaiming the amazing-ness of being under water, enjoying the gravity absent feeling of flying, the colours the activity the spectacle of it all…

So, “Teddy, how was it?”… To which Teddy replied:

“Damn long time to go without a cigarette.”

To my knowledge Uncle Teddy never went scuba diving again.

And the beat goes on.

More later