A friend of mine who owns his own marine construction company recently showed up at my front door in the early morning and said, “I hear you’ve got the day off, Daryl. Would you be interested in giving me a hand out on the river for a few hours?”
“Sure,” I said, although I wasn’t exactly overflowing with confidence in my ability to assist someone in the construction business, especially the marine construction business. “What kind of job are you working on?”
John explained that he needed to take some heavy equipment he had been renting off one of his barges, and to do that, he had to float the barge a few miles down the Sacramento River to a boat landing where he could then use a huge crane which was also on the barge to off-load the equipment.
“But what do you want me to do?” I asked, sure that I would be of absolutely no earthly help to anyone involved in such a project.
“I just need someone to operate the tugboat,” said John matter-of-factly.
“Tugboat?” I asked him with a smile. “You’ve got to be kidding. You want to turn me loose with a tugboat?”
“I can do the rest of it,” explained John, “but it would really be helpful to have someone operate the tug.”
Knowing John as I do, I was pretty sure he could actually handle the whole thing all by himself and that he was just trying to include me in a little river outing on a beautiful fall morning, but what he didn’t know was that ever since I can remember, I’ve always wanted to get behind the wheel of a tugboat.
First, a little history. When I was young, there used to be this popular weekly television show, the title of which I have long forgotten, but it starred a guy who I think was named Preston Foster and he played the role of a really cool tugboat captain. Plus, his tugboat was named the Cheryl Ann, which also happened to be the first and middle names of my twin sister.
Every week, this Preston Foster guy would have all these wild and woolly, spine-tingling adventures involving his tugboat. He was always ramming the bad guys with the Cheryl Ann and beating the heck out of big, burly sailors who said or did the wrong thing. And even though he didn’t have a big “S” on his chest, he was obviously the Superman of the waterways, and I was absolutely determined to grow up to someday be a brave, virile tugboat captain just like him.
Anyway, by the time John and I reached his tugboat and the barge it was supposed to push down the river, the sun was already warm on our backs, and I was having a great time. He took me up to the bridge, showed me how to work the controls and gave me a crash course on the hand signals he would be giving me from the deck of the barge. “It’ll be a piece of cake,” he assured me as he hurried off to do all the hard work necessary to get us underway.
Suddenly, there I was, Tugboat Captain Daryl Fisher, smack dab in the middle of the mighty Sacramento River, pushing a giant barge which was easily capable of destroying any dock or pleasure boat in its path. And even though I had already forgotten the meaning of half the hand signals John kept flashing me, I somehow managed to keep the barge moving in the general direction of the boat landing, and my belief that I could have indeed been one of the all-time great tugboat captains continued to grow by leaps and bounds with every minute that passed.
Just before we reached our destination, I noticed a couple of old men on a fishing boat looking over at me with awe, obviously convinced that I knew exactly what I was doing. Not wanting to disappoint them, I nodded confidently in their direction and only wished John’s tugboat had one of those really loud, deep-voiced foghorns that Preston Foster always used to toot a half-dozen or so times when people came too close to his beloved Cheryl Ann.
Much to my surprise, I somehow managed to push the barge right up to the foot of the boat landing and after John had secured everything, he jumped into the cab of the crane and began unloading the heavy equipment.
“You did it,” I said to myself as I leaped to land from the side of the barge to get a better look at what John was doing. “And best of all,” I added with genuine pride, “you didn’t make a fool of yourself even once!”
“Okay, Daryl,” said John about 15 minutes later, “you better get back on board now. We’re about ready to go.”
Then it suddenly dawned on me that although jumping down off the barge had been relatively easy, getting back on the darn thing was going to be quite a bit more difficult.
“John,” I said, “could you bend down here and give me a hand? I’ll put my foot on the side of the barge and you can pull me up.”
“I don’t know,” said John with concern. “That’s quite a distance. You sure you can make it?”
“Are you kidding?” I said, positive that Preston Foster would have never even given the matter a second thought.
So, I began to jump, and John began to pull, and my foot began to slide, and John’s hand began to slip, and before I knew it, I was up to my chest in the dirty, ice-cold water of the Sacramento River, and John, who had absolutely refused to let go of my hand until the very last second, ended up somersaulting over my head and crashing down on the rock-hard pier with a loud thud.
After we had assured each other that we were both okay, and as I stood there in the chilly river, shivering, and suffering from, among many other things, acute embarrassment, and a very severe case of George Castanza shrinkage, I happened to spot the two old fishermen who had been watching my every move. Not only were they slowly shaking their heads and grinning from ear to ear, but I’m pretty sure I heard one of them say to the other, “Preston Foster he definitely ain’t!”