Coach Lewis

I woke up at 2:30 a.m. today from a dream. My youngest son wanted to take the canoe back from somewhere in what seemed to be the Florida Keys backcountry... from an island resort or outpost of sorts, across the bay to the mainland. It didn't seem like a long trip for him to manage on his own.

He'd have to go on his own because there was only room for one person and the rest of my gear. I don't know how old he was at that time. He's now 21. I didn't want him going on his own, but if he did, I wanted to make sure he at least had a life vest.

Now, I'm up because I couldn't get back to sleep, thinking about things that upon awakening were all melded together in the present in my dream-state. Celebration of Seagrove Potters, divorce with my wife, divorce of my parents, a trip to Canada to do some wilderness canoing and backpacking, a trip I took by myself in a boat across a reef and into a chanell that led to the mainland of the Keys....

My mind slowly separated all these memories and impressions and recatagorized them according to my present day reality, sort of like I do on my computer desktop with a click and a drag from the mouse.

File them away.

Coach Lewis came to mind. Bob Lewis, I think was his name, and I have two images of Coach Lewis, who helped run Fish Camp. One image is of him snapping a football forward with a powerful underhand pass during a football game at camp out in a field behind the rooms where campers slept. Coach Lewis was a strong man who helped teach football at Palmetto High School in South Miami.

He could do a push up with his arms outstretched. When he passed the football, it was like a bullet.

The other image is of him coming back into a 20-foot boat, over the bow railing after seeing his first baracuda while diving on a reef in the Keys. I was told about this, I think, so it's one of those images that the mind creates from a story. At the time of the incident, he was an excellent diver, but had never seen a large baracuda. They are quite harmless as long as you don't look like a small shiny fish, but they're quite ferocious-looking with the razor sharp teeth showing as they open and close their mouth.

Coach Lewis would lead sing-alongs at camp when the weather was too rough to go fishing or diving. He had a great way with kids. Some of the songs I remember him singing:

Music Concert (This is the music concert, from the fatherland....)
Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree (Therrrrre I held her on my knee...)

He did this bear hunt, where you mimicked the actions that he did as we all went on a bear hunt, slinging our rifles over our shoulders, stepping into our canoes, getting out and walking (pat your knees), up the hill (slower clapping of the knees), through the grass (sliding the hands together: "swish don't clap"), climbing a tree, searching the horizon, climbing down the tree, stomping over a bridge (beat your chests) and when we finally found the bear, it was in a cave and roared at us. We screamed and ran as fast as we could back to the canoe, permorming all the actions at such a rapid pace that we couldn't keep up with Coack Lewis. But he did it perfectly, and we all were in stitches by the end, as the rain came down in torrents outside the mess hall of Fish Camp.