TALES FORM THE CARIBBEAN

After eating a big farm breakfast the captain and Dave headed west for Sanibel Island. Dave was driving and the captain started reviewing his call list—Big Jesse was at the top of the list—he appeared more than 20 times on the missed calls window. Jesse answered on the first ring and before they could exchange insults Jesse said, “Listen up son it’s hotter than a ten dollar pistol here! The Park Police got a search warrant and searched the boat shack and they’re looking for you and Dave. Delilah tipped them off about the treasure and they’re hot after it.”

“What treasure?” asked the captain. “We don’t know anything about any treasure. I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

“Pull into that McDonalds son.”

“But Pop we just ate.”

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“I know,” said the captain. “Give me your cell phone,” and as Dave pulled into the McDonalds the captain bagged up both phones and put them in the trash.
“But, Pop,” protested Dave. “I haven’t called Aura yet. She’ll be worried.”

“No more calls until we get the treasure taken care of and we get back on this side of the state,” insisted the captain. “It’s better for her to be worried than for us to be detained for questioning and those boxes confiscated. Furthermore, drive the speed limit because the cops are out fleecing the great white haired herd that’s migrating north around this time of year.”

“Golly Pop, I was going to invite Aura to sail with me in this year’s “Sweet Hearts of the Caribbean Race,” Dave said dejectedly.

“I know son, but everything has changed. We won’t have to remain blacked out much longer, we can off load the treasure at your Aunt’s place on Sanibel Island and get two more pre-paid cell phones. But if the law is looking for us they’ll be monitoring Aura’s phone calls. Time is on our side and I want to keep it that way. The more time that passes before they find us the better—we’re not running, of course, we’re just on vacation—no law against that.”

When we stop for lunch, I can use a pay phone to call a friend in NY who works for Sotheby’s Gallery and I’ll ask her to fly down and evaluate the gems, jewelry and everything else that’s not coin. What’s odd about this treasure is there are more gold escudos than silver pieces of eight—that’s very odd. This treasure makes no sense and I suspect that we’ve connected the wrong legend to it. This was not a fast heist by a pirate crew. What we have here is several different treasures that were stashed over some period of time. The pirate captain who stashed it was either killed or captured and it remained there until you found it. Almost all of the treasure found around here has been under the salt water for hundreds of years and is covered with concretion, but this treasure is as clean as the day it was stashed.”

“Pop, I gave Aura a gold chain with an emerald cross on it that came from this treasure and when she had it appraised before putting it in a safety deposit box, they said it was priceless and they could not figure out how it could’ve found its way to the Caribbean—It had the Spanish Royal family’s insignia stamped on it. They questioned her at length and she told them it came from her deceased mother’s things and that her late father had given it to her and that she had no idea where it came from. They started to get pushy until she told them who her dad was and that he had worked for the C.I.A,” explained Dave.

“Yeah,” said the captain. “The authorities make a big deal when little people don’t tell them the truth, but they’re the biggest liars on the planet—they’re politicians going for a better batting average—they don ‘t care squat who’s guilty or innocent. It’s like one butt sniffer looking down their nose at another butt sniffer and calling them a butt sniffer.”

Mel Fisher in Key West tried telling those revenue-collecting skunks the truth and they confiscated his museum, treasure, boats, house and everything else they could get their hands on. People who talk to the police have nothing to gain and everything to lose—Presidents, congressmen and corporate executives remain silent so why shouldn’t the people do the same? If you would’ve jumped through the hoops and filed for salvage rights, the authorities, would’ve confiscated this treasure, but this way, it’s finders keepers losers weepers—you won and the tax collectors lost.

“Pop, a friend working on a research vessel told me that plankton off the Nordic Coast are dying because of all the fossil fuels we’re burning in coal fired generating stations, cars, trucks, buses and so forth, and if the bottom of the food chain dies, well we know the rest of that tune,” said Dave.

“Son, I know very little about the subject, but some Waynedale friends once shared something with me that had the ring of truth to it. They said that ever since man discovered fire our civilization has been living in an era of “high-fuel-low-energy.” All that we need to understand about “low-fuel-high-energy” is that the bombs we dropped on Japan that ended WWII only converted .6 of one gram of uranium fuel to energy—that’s “low-fuel-high-energy.”

Coal, oil and natural gas, are solar energy that was collected in vegetation 2-300,000 thousand years ago but they are not very “energy dense.” It takes a lot of fuel to produce a little energy and the 70 percent of the fossil fuels that are wasted are what’s polluting the air and most of it is eventually absorbed into the oceans and it’s causing less plankton.

Our earth’s crust has another more abundant supply of rocks such as uranium and thorium that are millions of times more “energy dense” than fossil fuels. They are the result of a Super Nova that exploded 2-3 billion years ago. The problem with conventional nuclear power plants is that they are all old technology, like the 1970s reactor that melted down at Fukushima Daiichi. Most were built in an era when our nuclear weapons programs were in full swing and they needed the plutonium by-products from those reactors to make nuclear weapons.

to be continued…