IB Hooked - March 30
Hey guys, any of y’all beach freaks wanna take a gander at some serious beach reclamation, mosey on down to Dolphin Cove Oyster Bar and take a gander of what Oscar and his boyz from the county parks done. It be magnifico, secret ingredient is sargassum which bodes well for the migratory pelagics if the rafts stick around.
On a suck tail note, the Turk has passed on. No longer can we slide up to his bar at the Saida and have him point out a comely young lass that he’s known since she was in diapers and point to a new tattoo on her tail and remark that in fifteen years that butterfly is gonna look like a buzzard.
The Albanian devil was named at birth Murat Regep and probably got the nickname the first time he showered with the baseball team cuz they say the Ottoman Empire lorded over ya’ll know where cuz them males were, well maley’er than the rest of them European pencil dicks.
The first time I met the gravelly voiced ol’ fart was sometime in the eighties, the decades right but the year escapes me. I thought me and the ol’ lady were gonna do Corpus for a long weekend, boy was I wrong. We end up on the Sandspit and wonder of all wonders an ex-pat from Big D by the name of Walter MacDonald is doin’ a sandcastle to do down at the Holiday Inn. We crash the party and after burnin’ some real good herb I decide to haul my carcass to the surf and see if my cellulite could still body surf. Sure as caca I get caught in a rip and about a half hour later I get spit out by the Rad. I’d been there and done that so didn’t wanna shag a cab there so I mosey’d over to Saida lookin’ like a half drowned rat. Turkey greeted me like he greeted everybody but with a few more well chosen expletives, a few more hell, it was a torrent that’d make a baseball manager or a U Conn English proff proud. The gentleman refused to call me a cab, said he’d be closin’ shortly and he’d give me a ride cuz he wanted to see what the Amazin’ One had done with the dinero the town had put up for the sandcastle thing which is now dubbed Sandcastle Dayz. I told him that all of my ID and dinero was with the ol’ lady, and the boy snickered somethin’ like good luck gettin’ it back.
Soooo, for the next couple of hours I bummed Camels and swilled beer with him as he regaled me with stories from his bartendin’ career that spanned from New England to the Fontanblue Hotel in Miami when the right mob ran South Florida. Some wonder how in the hell they wound up livin’ here, it’s an easy answer, we get suckered by wonderful dirty ol’ guyz like the Turk whom I first heard describe this joint as an aspiring insane asylum. When I asked him why he just grinned like the proverbial Cheshire Cat, then with a few ripe expletives he told me this community can’t decide whether it wants to be a serious resort or a geritol bone yard or a family type community then he said can you spell skitzo. Yep, that was the Turk, you could sidle up to his bar with a semi-terminal case of optic rectitis and the gent would cure ya with wit, wisdom and a torrent of four letter jewels that would enthrall the most jaded English proff. I spect the boy is savin’ us a place at that rather large table in the next life, I also bet that he’s finally drivin’ a golf ball 250 and it’s landin’ where they mow. RIP ol’ buddy, see ya but hopefully not too soon.
Final note. Irby Basco is fishin’ down in Chile so the scuttlin’ of the Aggie Clipper has been postponed till 4/22/07.
