Sunday, May 25, 2008

More fun with the stories...

Water Taxi Bootlegger and the Rogue



On a sunny day with a breeze blowing you can almost hear the laughing and bickering of the high school kids as they rode the water taxi to the mainland. Mind you, some of the kids were familiar with the after hours chores of this steel-hulled launch. By day, the owner of this craft was a mild mannered taxi-operator. By night he was a bootlegger. Some of the students were his customers, so it was a poorly concealed criminal enterprise, all things considered. Coastal villages and camps had thirsts that legal vendors couldn't quench. So you'd think that this boat was chased up the rocks on a stormy night by a patrol boat or dashed on the logs by a sou'easter during a gale that blew the arbutus trees flat against the ground. No, the captain and his accomplice were on a routine delivery, clipping along at an honest thirty knots on a moonlit night when outa nowhere they were lifted by a rogue wave and deposited on the beach, ten feet free of the hightide mark. Since they were relaxed due to being half cut dipping into their cargo and relatively unharmed, they climbed down from their lofty perch, surveyed the situation and the hole in the hull, and waited for daybreak and rescue. The cargo was unloaded and the boat was never retrieved.
__________________
Ron Morrison

10 comments:

BoneDaddy said...

Wow, how the mighty have fallen...or climbed down from their broken boat, whatever.

Jeffrey J. Boron said...

A couple of rouges outdone by a rouge of nature...hmmm...poetic justice...?

Love the sky in this one Ron and the treatment of the weather rusted hull.

Jeffrey

Clive said...

At least the rouge boat didn't succumb to a gentlemanly wave. Nice loose watercolour, Ron. This looks like it might be a smaller sketch. You don't post image sizes; might be interesting to add; I know some of your images are very very large, done from rolls of watercolour paper.

~Babs said...

Some things are just better,,,,left alone. Sounds like he knew when to quit.

Indeed,the rust is fabulous!

Ron Morrison said...

nks Grimm, yes to that.

Ron Morrison said...

Thanks Jeffrey, rogues, yes, very good, I like your interpretation, irony and all..

Ron Morrison said...

Thanks Clive, its a quarter sheet, quite small...

Ron Morrison said...

Thanks Babs, yes they did.

Madison Moore said...

ooohhhhhh...I love this one! Rusty, rusty!

Ron Morrison said...

Thanks M., I'm an oxidizer...