STEVE THE HERMIT! YEAH.....RIGHT

This is a two-year-old re-posting

--part of "my story"...

On the "Sugar Lump"

This scene is almost a replica of where I spent my 10 days.

Found out I am not cut out for "HERMIT" material!

(NOTE: I did NOT have a boat.)

STEVE THE "HERMIT"
STAR DATE 1966
PART ONE (of THREE)

The year 1966 is one which lives in my memory, mainly for the events here described. Since I had come to Florida to 'be a hermit', for my vacation during the summer of '66, I determined to get a taste of the hermitage. So, for my two weeks in the sun and fun, I chose to get myself planted on a small spit of an island south of Marco Island--the objective, to 'play hermit' for a week or so...I think it was ten days?

I rented a tent, and all the equipment which could fit on a small boat, and hired a fellow to float me down to this 'sugar loaf' spit of sand in the Gulf of Mexico. And of course, it goes without saying that I loaded onto that little runabout several cases of beer, one case (12 quart bottles) of my favorite (the cheapest) vodka of the day and six quarts of Early Times (to compensate for my bland vodka dietary choice). Ice, many cans of tuna, some boiled eggs, heck I don't know what else, it didn't matter. Ants got to the food before me, since I mostly drank the first couple days.

As soon as my guide dropped me, and helped to unload my gear (don't break the bottles!), he sped away, maybe glad to be rid of me--with the promise that in ten days he'd return. Well, I was ecstatic!

I was in HEAVEN! I ran around like a crazed child, alone on his private playground. Me, the hermit! My dream of thirty years had come true, at least in "trial" form. I cavorted (yes, cavorted) in the water, bare-footed, and bare-ass'd. I really thought maybe the water there was contaminated, because it had a certain foreboding red color, all around me was this red-tinted water. It was THEN, that reality set in. I had been cavorting on an old oyster bed, and the "red" was my own blood. Yep, my (by now!) VERY sore feet bottoms were shredded.

Now I became scared...no doctor, no medicine, no First Aid kit...so first I took a huge pull from a vodka bottle, and knew that I was going to soon be wasting some of the precious liquid on my FEET. If whoever reading this is an alcoholic, they will immediately KNOW what absolute TRAUMA it was for me to pour vodka , AND Early Times (forgot to mention the Whiskey!) onto my feet. I cried then. Not the burning, but OH! the wasted booze, Oh! Woe is me!

So, for the next days (daze!) I walked about wearing a tee shirt wrapped around each foot, using a makeshift cane for support. I did not acknowledge God at that time very well, I mean He and I were at odds, at least I was.

Now, back to my first night. On the radio, it was announced that a Tropical Depression had formed over Everglades City, about 10 miles from where I sat, painfully nursing myself with the only anesthesia I knew, in the darkness of a warm, June night. Well, that storm came thundering full blast at my island, the water kept rising, I'd check it every half hour, and moved my tent several times that night, walking on two bloody stubs. I stayed very drunk, but could not avoid the dangerous situation which was before me. There was nowhere to go, no hills, and the water kept rising. In a drunken stupor I fell fast asleep.

You'd think my 'First-Night' story might end here. Wrong! Since this blong has become waaay out of bounds for a simple daily log reading, the "rest of this story" will be on my next posting. It's much more interesting than today's, so don't miss it. I promise!

HERMIT STORY: THE BEGINNING

THE HERMIT

 

 

1956

 I watched with intensity a Television show (documentary) in which David Brinkley explored the life of a hermit. He chartered a boat to carry him out in the SW Florida waters, to visit Rob Roy Ozmer, the "Hermit of the Ten Thousand Islands". I watched intently as Brinkley disembarked, and the hermit Rob Roy walked to meet him.

That day I had made up my mind that in order to be free, one must be a hermit. I talked about it to everyone, constantly, year after year, and daily. And so the thought lingered, then became implanted in my brain, to stay there until.....

1964

The time was now for me to go to visit Rob Roy. It was a more-than-cold December. From my home in Cincinnati, I took a week vacation (holiday, for you European Peeps!)
and flew to Miami Florida. As the plane circled low over the city's fringes, I looked down and my heart REALLY sunk--there was snow everywhere...you must know how I felt, well, like excrement. I had written David Brinkley at NBC(?) and he responded, urging me to take Bacardi Dark out to the hermitage (near Coon Key Island). But he'd written nothing about snow in South Florida. The "snow" I saw was nothing more than all the rooftops painted white, the color which deflects the daily sun heat (Sigh!)

In a bar (naturally!) in Everglades City I found an out-of-work crabber who would, for $15, run me out to the island and back for a visit. Well, it is easy to get lost in the Ten Thousand Islands (actually well over 12,000), and I felt "God" was with me, as, laden with no more than the rum, we arrived at Rob's island, waving the bottles in the air. And obviously, that was our 'ticket' for an audience with the hermit.

More and more, I could see myself living in this fashion, free as the birds..even free as the mosquitoes which were bird food!  Rob Roy Ozmer was as congenial a host as a genteel plantation manager in Georgia, FAR exceeding my expectations. Several memories:

1.  He told about a man he'd seen the summer before, attacked by hordes of mosquitoes entering into every
(that's EVERY!) orifice in his body. The man jumped into the Gulf of Mexico, and died of suffocation. (My "deadly mosquito" story.)

2.  I could hear bubbling from my seat on the dirt floor, which provoked the question to  Rob Roy. He was making carrot liquor in five-gallon vats placed strategically around his houseboat home, the old boat no longer fit to float.

3.  Rob Roy's younger wife lived in Everglades City--population about 247 at the time--he was age 65--and once a month he putt-putted (a small boat) into town, collected his Social Security check, bought supplies, said hello to "her", and back again home, before the mosquito population took over the Everglades.

4.  We spent the whole day drinking, eating bird of some genre (I did not ask!), and discussing the outside world as if it were a billion space-miles distant...as it was!

5.  I left  drunk, full stomach, and happy for a "day-in-life-of-Steve". Days of heavy drinking--for me--did not ALWAYS end in catastrophe...just almost always! We got out just before the invading insects came out from their hiding places of flora and fauna. Somehow, I still have the feeling that maybe WE were the invaders...

2010....TODAY!

Peeps, I DID shorten this story as much as possible, keeping some of the salient points. There follows ONE punch-line-story, which I simply MUST tell you--don't go away NOW.....

This post was mainly about an obsession culminating with a day in the year 1964. 

NOW is the year 2010. About 4 days ago, I was sitting outside our Alcoholics Anonymous meeting place, the 24-Hour Club in Naples, FL. Next to me was a girl, and we began to chat. I told her of my planned blog post (THIS one!), since she had mentioned that some 50-odd years ago she was BORN in Everglades City (the smallest of villages I have EVER encountered to this day.) When I mentioned Rob Roy Ozmer, she hit me on the arm, saying "You will not believe this but his WIFE was my grade-school TEACHER!"

Melly and I (not real name), both staying sober after hellish lives, by chance are sitting side-by-side, in the cold, drinking coffee FORTY-SIX YEARS after my encounter with the husband of her teacher. You tell ME what are the chances of this--almost spiritual--happening.  

Sorry about the length of this post, but I felt some might find it interesting, the beginning of an obsession which lasted for years after. Once or twice a year still, I get a strong urge to hunker down alone somewhere even if only on the open road, on my motor scooter. But to actually live the life of a hermit...never, NEVER again! I love Peeps TOO much! We all know many who live like hermits, though surrounded by hundreds of Peeps. I can be that kind of hermit any time I drift from my program, my way of life, Alcoholics Anonymous. Isolation is for me an attribute long ago removed.

I truly LOVE you, my Peeps
I really NEED all of you, my Peeps
I stay SOBER with you, my Peeps
I want to be HAPPY with you, Peeps
I want to live without ANXIETY--like you, Peeps
At least for TODAY--and maybe tomorrow?

HERMIT--PART III

LOOKS LIKE MY ISLAND BUT IT IS NOT

This story I posted on my other blog 

in June 2008
Here is Part III of III  

(Posted this for the Peeps who
are new here during the past year).

STEVE THE "HERMIT"
STAR DATE 1966
PART THREE, FINAL EPISODE

In order to keep away the mosquitos during my stay on 'my island', I had arranged to have the Marco Island spray plane fly the eight or so miles south, to spray me every day. It only cost two quarts of Bacardi Rum, for Martin, the pilot, to agree to this--(see, I even do my bartering with booze!).

Each day, about 8 AM, the old Air Force C-47 made several passes so low, as to raise beach sand everywhere. Martin--a pilot here from Cuba-- sprayed that wonderful stuff onto everything. I'd open my mouth to maybe catch some of it. A few months after, that Martin died in a fiery crash, driving that same aircraft. The Mackle Brothers, developers of Marco Island, paid lots of bucks for my comfort.

The above paragraph sets up this next bit, the SADDEST DAY OF MY WHOLE LIFE. I can cry even now, remembering the horror of it all. Any true, 'real' alcoholic might identify with me, and KNOW me, know my ache, my hurt, my anguish, by reading this short story:

Two of my friends, both pilots, flew their two small Cessna 270 planes down to entertain me with their aerobatics about three days before I was to vacate the island. I had run out of ALL alcohol (and cigarettes!), was still walking in pain, and figured they would magically, automatically 'know' my sorry predicament.

The two planes flew SO low, that I could see my wife and daughter in one of them--so then I was CERTAIN that my lack of supplies would be alleviated, since we always had a 'working telepathy'. I stood in one spot, waiting for the drop of my C.A.R.E. package...My wife was close to the window, I figured that within minutes I'd be OK again, with a liter of vodka in my hand--my world would then be O-KAY!



Fifteen long minutes later, when I finally thought maybe they were playing that 'waiting' game, they flew away--out of my life--forever? Who would know? I knew true HATRED that day! POOR ME--and I MEAN THAT, even now. (Ha! I just now peeled off a long-buried, long-hidden, powerful resentment. And I'll take care of it right away!)...........

My utterly total self-centeredness assumed that everyone was thinking always about me, ME. And that somehow they would 'deliver' me from my predicament. 

I did not even then realize how close to death I WAS, being such a daily heavy drinker suddenly cut off completely from my supply. This was NOT mental now, but physical. My craving knew no end, only progressed by the hour. I was consumed with desire, would have easily killed for a few tastes of liquor, some alcohol in my body.

SO began the Unhappiest day of my whole life--no booze, no smokes, and that equaled NO NOTHING. I did not pray, for fear that I would curse God Himself for this calamity. (They could have at LEAST dropped some Bandages -grin-) Now...think about this--HOW would these planes flying overhead--5 feet off the beach, drop bottles of booze? Doesn't glass break at 115 miles per hour? (Sigh!)

On one slow, painful 2-hour limp around the island I found a sand-buried Jack Daniels (Black Label!) bottle, and it was about half (empty, or full?). Immediately, I pulled off the cap and proceeded to guzzle--UGHHHHHHH! THHHHHPT! OMG, oh shit...someone had used it for their specimen, it was all piss. I washed my mouth out with salty sea water, and even drank a little of the brine. I can tell you that God was not taking care of ME that day. (Or maybe He WAS?)

I cried often during the remaining really cool sea-breeze nights, and sun-blistering days. The world as I knew it had ended. Friends and family had forsaken me, I blamed EVERYONE ELSE for my predicament. My mantra: WOE IS ME! REALLY! 

I was ready to DO it, but was chicken-shit to end my life, because I could then never drink again--dead! Also because --get this--my FEET hurt too much! I'm living today, because God allowed me to 'cavort' barefoot back-and-forth--unknowingly--through an under-water oyster bar, and spend the next eight days with bloody, infected feet!.

And yet, I spent the next EIGHT YEARS perfecting my drinking habit. I became a 'functioning' drunk. For that, I needed a daily, hefty amount of maintenance alcohol. God, since then, has allowed me to learn and use the Twelve Steps He gave us, and to stay sober since March 18, 1974. I never looked back as far as drinking again--for me. It just has not happened. Expressing my gratitude to God, and you AA people, and now you blog peeps, is what I live for today.

Oh yes, the fishing guide DID arrive as scheduled to pick me up. We enjoyed an EXTREMELY quiet ride back to civilization.

Steve E. (A Hermit--NOT!)

Oh, Peeps, TODAY
Let's Be THANKFUL
Let's be SOBER
Let's be HAPPY
Let's be at PEACE
Let's FORGIVE
Let's LOVE

Tomorrow, the story of how my obsession
to be a HERMIT began, in 1962...That
WILL be the final in this See-rees of posts.
Please join me, Friday night or Saturday.