The Harbor. You can almost feel it. The warm distressed wood floor, the smell of stale beer, fried seafood, and cigarette smoke. The walls, just as distressed as the floors but riddled with the by-product used by the old salts, the sea dogs. Old ropes, mooring lines, and buoys all the like. Pictures of the old sea dogs standing proudly next to their catch brandishing their weapons of choice, usually SSG, Z Models, Spin Fishers, Senators, and Internationals. Penns. This is when Penn used real metal to make their reels and didn't offload the American dream to some foreign nation to make a quick buck. No Sir, these were the reels that would still work after they got dunked in the ocean, ran over by a semi and shat out of a wood chipper. And then there were the sea dogs themselves, just as tough as the old Penn's. Weathered faces with crevices, not wrinkles, mapping their sun scorched faces. These crevices were deep and true, full of the hardships offered by a combination of salt, sun, and working for a living. Beside these old dogs were the denizens of the deep themselves. Grouper, Tarpon, AJ's, snook, redfish, sharks, and I'm pretty sure they would have been glad to put free willy's fat ass up there if they could have got a barb through em.
But, the Harbor looked nothing like this. It wasn't a harbor or bar at all. It was an island. Just south of Osprey, FL near Nokomis and it was only accessible by boat, so deep in the womb of the mangroves, even a seasoned local could end up spending the night on the water if he judged the tide wrong or got lost in the mangrove maze that rivaled Jack Torrance's tomb in the shining. But there it was as Jason Stark navigated in the last breath of daylight. The sun had already gone down and he was forced to navigate by the purplish/orange, bad LSD trip, lighting that showed the way. The Harbor jutted out of the brackish water like a wart on an otherwise flawless face. It's mangrove moat kept its existence somewhat hidden. A mystery to those unknowing. Jason knew, however, that on the north side of the island (if one dared call it that), there was a nifty little walk way created by innumerable drunken footsteps and tipsy tumbles. There was no need for reservations at the harbor, you'd be seated immediately. There were no tabs. Beer, wine, liquour, fish, clams, oysters, stone crabs, blue crabs, and just about everything that needed to be on ice, were kept in the fiberglass hull of an old shrimp boat, "Mary Lee", it used to say. How it got there is unknown. But it had been there since the first time Jason had visited the harbor as a boy. Weathered and abused, it simply says "Ma L" now, giving it a homey feeling. "I need another beer from Ma L." Or "get me a bushel from Ma L." There were no formalities here. Just surf whatever shit bucket you were in and beach your ass on the sand like a dead whale.
Jason did just that. The grinding sand, scraping his hull always bothered him. He spent a lot of money keeping his "shit bucket" just a little less shitty. Nonetheless, the old skiff finally skidded to a halt. Securing his less shitty bucket on a thick mangrove root, Jason ascended up the shoreline to greet people he had almost assumed lived on that island. The locals.
"There be the ol puss boy true and true." Rusty Blackwell bellowed in his normal drunken, sloberly slur. "Thought you got lost up the groves like a goddam Yankee." Jason had come to expect this greeting from Rusty. It was almost scripted. Never missing a beat, Jason replied "Nah Rusty I just got lost in your momma a bit, but I lit a torch and climbed on out of her. Scary as hell I tell ya, deepest, widest hole I ever been in." Everyone got their usual pleasure as Jason and Rusty volleyed insults for a few minutes. Jason then noticed the smell he loved more than the sea, more than his place of freedom, it was the smell of burning wood, fish, oysters, and cheap beer. He went around back where Mike Smelter sat happily looking at his creation. Mike had taken it upon himself a few years back to create a leviathan of a grill and haul it, all 300lbs of it, up the banks of the harbor and make her proper. Jason could see what looked like redfish fillets cooking up nicely, sending a wonderful aroma of Cajun spice, old bay, and lemon violently through his nostrils. This mixed with the salty, organic, aroma of fresh oysters, and the hint of the tabasco concoction that made sweet love to the slimy booger that lay inside its shell. This was Mike's specialty and he'd never gotten a complaint. Mike typically used what looked like a heroin addicts dream machine. A 9 inch syringe, no needle but filled with this red concoction. Mike got drunk one night and shared his recipe for "big red" as he called it to everyone who would listen. "You gotta start like this: (he sounded like Gordon Ramsey explaining culinary arts to toddlers) you gotta mix up tabasco, lemon juice, and beer. Then you gotta mix up some old bay, cayenne pepper, and celery salt. Then you squirt that shit in when that shell starts to open under heat." It may have sounded off to a cultured seafood eater but, as simple as it was, it created a wonderful molestation of the taste buds.
