News & Views for Southern Sailors - Southwinds Magazine

By Morgan Stinemetz
here from time to time, but they are mostly powerboat
people.”
“How do you know that”
Bubba spat into his Mountain Dew bottle,
took a slug from his coffee cup and said, “I
was just guessing. Do you know any sailors
who are shoplifters”
“Not a one,” I replied.
“See,” Bubba said. “I don’t know
any shoplifting sailors either, so it must
be the turn-the-key-and-go guys.”
“Is there any empirical data on it”
“What the hell does that mean” snapped Bubba. I realized
I was on a dead-end street and changed the subject.
“Anything else about packaging bugging you”
Yeah,” he said, “it bugs me that when I need to look at an
item I am thinking about buying, I can’t. It’s sealed in plastic.
It drives the clerks nuts when I cut open the package with my
Leatherman just to look at the product. If I don’t buy it, they
can’t put it back on the shelf. I think it gets sent back to the
manufacturer. That has to generate a ton of paperwork.”
“That does seem rather cumbersome,” I commented.
“Look, sport,” Bubba emphasized, “the concept of making
products hard to get open permeates our entire country.
Who can even open one of those puny packages of mustard
or relish or catsup by tearing where indicated It’s impossible.
After those seven Tylenol murders in Chicago—potassium
cyanide was put into Tylenol capsules by some crank
and then the adulterated product was put on supermarket
and drugstore shelves back in the early
1980s—anything you bought that you consumed
was sealed so you couldn’t open it. It’s as if
the packaging industry and manufacturers
teamed up on a credo that went: We
Don’t Care How Complicated Things Get
After We’ve Gotten Your Money. When
you think about it, one crazy fruitcake—
whom they never caught—changed our
entire culture forever. The case is still open.”
“What has that got to do with West
Marine, directly,” I asked.
“Nothing at all,” Bubba countered. “West Marine doesn’t
sell things that we can put in our mouths. But, come to
think of it, maybe some day someone will start putting links
that dissolve in water into those ungodly vinyl-covered
anchor chains West Marine sells. If there ever was a dead
give-away that a powerboater didn’t know squat about his
responsibilities as a boater, that anchor chain stands out as a
tangible example of a product made for idiots. You see them
all the time at boat ramps, the places where normally rational
people do stupendously irrational deeds.”
“Like what”
“Like falling overboard, for one.”
“And you have never fallen overboard,” I inserted.
“Yeah, I have a couple of times, but someone had overserved
me,” complained Bubba.
“Are you saying in so many words that you were drunk”
“Something like that,” Bubba admitted.
“Was your boat moving”
“Yes. What about it”
“Then you were operating a vessel while impaired by
too much alcohol. And you have a Coast Guard six-pack
license, too.” I summarized.
Bubba was miffed. “What do you think a six-pack
license is for, you nitwit” he groused. “Look, let’s have
some more coffee.”
It sounded like a good idea, so I fixed another cup and
added some powdered cream and a half pack of Sweet &
Low. When I looked up to continue the conversation, Capt.
Whartz had totally disappeared. Gone like flatulence in a
fresh breeze.
News & Views for Southern Sailors SOUTHWINDS July 2011 15