2011 Label: The Captains Daughter
Sunday April 1st 2012
We’d sailed into Port Townsend two days earlier on the S.V. Wandering Star, most the trip had been helmed by me whilst the skipper pointed out personal and totally dubious points of historical import along the way. Things like where he ran aground that one trip in ’76 trying to pick up some girls on a beach, or there’s the spot I lost an anchor one day trying to get to shore for more Gin. It was a damn good sail and our guest along for the ride was a major MLB celebrity so there were enough stories floating around the boat to last a year, between pro-baseball and piracy. I was right at home, getting my Jimmy Buffet indoctrination along the way, among other things. I had just talked the old man into putting honeybees in his feral backyard not two months before and while we sailed my mind kept wandering back to them and their welfare. I was new to the honeybee gig and in a constant state of curiosity about what I had flying around Alki Point. I remember vividly the surrealism of the moments on that trip discussing my bees with him, grumbling about his ideas being unrealistic, not what they had said in the book….etc. We used to really get into it over my bees, we had both read the same books but neither one of us knew a damn thing except I had millions of honeybees in his backyard and at the end of the day; they would do whatever they wanted. I had a big job in front of me and we both knew it. Over the span of that first Summer the old man warmed up to the bees until finally he just threw in all his chips and admitted how much he loved 'em back there. He studied them all day long in between chapters of whatever book he was reading, or sips of whatever gin he was drinking. He would give me real-time updates at the absolute worst times possible, calling or texting me in the middle of a boardroom meeting downtown to tell me something about something he noticed. Like the one time he wanted me to know that he figured out Jimmy Buffet motivated them more than anything overall, and if it wasn’t sunny out, a little Buffet would get em out. These words are making me laugh, the old man very obviously was in direct competition for my bees affection. His favorite thing to do was bust chops about how he never had been stung despite his totally inappropriate frolics around my Hives while I was at work. Of course I had been stung millions of times by this point and it chapped me to hear his wild boasting of this very fact. It all went away though the first time he got nailed, not because he got nailed, but how: He was at the bar regaling all his sailing buddies how good he was with bees, he told them how he can run a mower right up against the Hives and not get stung, or how he reads right next to the Hives all day and lets them “crawl amongst his hair” (his chest hair is obnoxious) and so forth, you get the idea. Well it turns out one of my girls from his yard had hitched a ride that day on his shirt and somehow gone un-noticed. As is so often his wont, his arms gestured pragmatically during his tale of wild success: how can the bees not sting his very person he queried, when the beekeeper himself is attacked every time he opens a Hive? As he drew the end of his tale down with a flourish of the arm, the hitchhiker honeybee became pinched amongst a befouled and hairy pirates pit so she did what honeybees do and unleashed her fury on his arm. The ensuing scene contains enough hell and howls of pain from the skipper and raucous delight from the cronies to last a lifetime. You never hear those stories from skip anymore, oddly enough.
The old man has come to love those bees back there as much, maybe more than I. His appreciation and level of emotional investment for them is astounding, he is in no way involved in the actual work of the Apiary, he just observes and reports what he sees, we exchange notes and ideas…he lights up when he talks about the girls and that in turn lights me up. In that spirit I decided to name the 2011 Harvest after him and his affection for the little honeybee he so gruffly agreed to letting pillage his yard. The Captains Daughter pays homage to both the skipper and his unexpected muse, the honeybee. We hope you enjoy it. Here's a little Buffet, for you Skip.
Comments
Micheal - Sunday, January 1, 2012 @ 9:42 PM
This makes everything so comlpetely painless.
Channery - Saturday, December 31, 2011 @ 6:50 AM
Action reiqures knowledge, and now I can act!
Matei - Friday, December 30, 2011 @ 10:02 PM
Big help, big help. And supertailve news of course.
Rocky - Wednesday, December 21, 2011 @ 7:40 PM
When you think about it, that's got to be the right ansewr.
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How could any of this be better sttead? It couldn't.
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