Thunderbird

We drove up from Ventura County, and they drove down from the Bay Area.  My wife and I met my wife’s sister and her husband at a state beach campground on the Central California coast.  It was late October, and the weather was turning, so we had the park almost to ourselves.  The wind was up and cold off the water, so we had bluster as we put up our tents, built a bonfire, and settled in for a couple of days of camping and conversation.

On the first full day, our ladies decided to warm themselves with sisterhood and nearby shopping, while my brother-in-law and I lugged down to the seashore in our warm clothes, determined to catch some dinner right out of the surf.  We had fishing poles, bait, sand chairs, and sandwiches.  It got chilly out there, between the wind and the waves and our stumbling in the water.  By the time the sun was fading, we were soaked and shivering.  What made it tolerable was the gallon jug of Pedroncelli “red” with the screw-top cap, which some would consider fine wine in much the same way that some would consider Carl’s Jr. fine dining, and which we had used for our medicinal purposes throughout the day.   

Through it all we managed to hook five or six medium sea perch, a triumph for these intrepid hunter-gatherers, and which turned out to be good eating.  We were looking to clean up and made our way to the bathhouse, only to find that there was no hot water.  Even worse, the showers were outside.  What’s a guy to do?  Well, there weren’t more than two or three other campsites in use, so maybe no one was looking.

We stripped, streaked to the showers, hurriedly washed off in an icy torrent and streaked back.  As we were drying off, we were joined in the bathhouse by two high-school-age lads who came in passing back and forth a quart of Thunderbird, which some would consider fine wine in much the same way that some would consider Sonic fine dining.  When we told them about the shower situation, they decided to emulate us and streak on their own.  Only not as quickly as we did.  We were nearly dressed when two things happened at the exact same time. 

Number 1:  Two underage, noisy and very loopy kids came stumbling back from the showers, pushing and shoving, laughing and swearing, still tag-teaming on the Thunderbird, dripping and shuddering in their altogether nothings.

Number 2:  The park ranger walked through the door.  What a sight he was, right out of central casting for a hapless “smokie” in a cross-country car-chase film:  wide flat-brimmed hat, shiny badge, gun on hip, big ole “stache,” broad belly, and an end-of-the-shift attitude. 

It didn’t take him long to size up the scene.  To his left he saw two adult males fully dressed, with their tackle, string of fish, folding chairs, benign smiles, reasonably sober, nodding respectfully to the officer and ready to return to their campsite; and to whom he nodded respectfully in return.  To his right he saw two half-in-the-bag, belligerent, profane, uncooperative and bare-bottomed kids, too young to be legally sharing a bottle of rotgut, giving him lip, and on whom it was gradually dawning that they were in very, very deep — especially when the officer spoke for the first time with a question. 

To this day I believe that if that ranger had actually been in a movie, and had actually uttered the following question, it would have gone down as one of the most memorable lines in the history of filmdom, right up there with “What we have here is a failure to communicate,” and “He’s only mostly dead,” and “Leave the gun; bring the cannoli.”

He roared, “AWRIGHT, WHO’S BEEN TAKIN’ NUDE SHOWERS?”

When you think about it, it is a weird inquiry, right?  Who doesn’t take a nude shower?  On the other hand, in that setting the question had a certain logic to it.  Still, you had to be there.   

We slipped out, and the last thing we saw was two half-naked boys being stuffed in the back of a cop cruiser.  They might have gotten off with misdemeanor stupidity, but Oh, their felonious tongues really provoked the fish-and-game fuzz.      

As we dined that evening on our fresh catch, we regaled our wives with our beach adventure and pondered the bitter irony for those two teens, because it was probably the two of us who were originally seen in the buff by a camper, and not them; but they got busted.  However, we salved our guilty consciences with the knowledge that my brother-in-law had offered a piece of good advice to the boys as we were leaving which, to their grief, they ignored.  He whispered, “Hey guys! When you’ve had too much up your snoot, keep your big mouths shut.”