What a week, hell, what a past 12 days.
Visits from a powerful Saudi Corporation that is interested in our system.
More visits from some very special and prominent Japanese delegates, all eager to start the GBT system in Japan.
Stephen and Lee Barnes booking their flights to Japan for early March.
After weeks of Eduardo telling me not to talk about the very advanced hatchery we have built here in Texas (largely because without it, as a shrimp production company we are vulnerable to the diseases and vicissitudes of third party hatcheries and their inferior genetic lines, which is unacceptable and irresponsible), Eduardo stands up at a Texas shrimp meeting and tells everyone our hatchery is operational.
Our shrimp are growing beautifully. We are slowly overcoming many of the poor design and inferior construction work that has plagued the project.
In short, professionally, things are finally coming together.
I am going to the Turks and Caicos Islands next week where I hope in between business and government discussions to get in at least one full day of fly fishing for bone fish.
(Which always puts me in a better mood).
I guess it was the bone fishing decision that reminded me of one of my favorite books, "Fly Fishing through the Midlife Crisis " by Howell Raines.
So given how warped my mind works at times this lead me to read the dreaded Chapter 9 (entitled "The Black Dog".)
This of course lead me to obsess on the last two paragraphs of that chapter and which I now quote:
"For some men - men who adore their jobs and are content in their love lives, do not fear death-there may be an easier and much briefer adjustment. If you are such a man, count yourself blessed beyond measure to miss this extremely interesting experience. But it is not for you I write.
I address the battalions of lost Rebel boys and lost Yankee boys, too, thrashing in the Wilderness. Hear me now, my brothers. You know who you are. Neither the old fathers nor the sons you love can carry you now. The letters of wives and sweethearts cannot reach you. Your generals have fled the field. There lies before you a severe journey----a soul-rendering passage that will either heal you or wreck you. I leave a note pinned to a tree in the heart of the forest. It contains all the advice any man can offer. The black dog is on your trail. Get ready to meet him."
This in some inexplicable machination of the mind ( no, I am not drunk nor on drugs) made me think of Robert Chester Ruark who wrote " Uhuru", "Lost Classics", Something of Value", Horn of the Hunter" and much , much more, including my personal and all time favorite "The Honey Badger."
In describing the Honey Badger on Amazon one description of this work by Ruark goes as follows:
"Robert Chester Ruark was one of the mid-20th centuries "larger-than-life" characters: journalist, author, world traveller and big game hunter and in this, his last work, it is impossible to fathom where Ruark finishes and Alex Barr, the principal character starts. In "The Honey Badger", first published(posthumously) in 1965, Ruark - thru his hero -searches for a purpose to his existence in a tapestry encompassing the restaurants of New York, thru wartime London to the plains of Africa. And just what is a honey badger? A mean little animal which, when cornered, attacks straight for the balls!! Immensely readable. Robert Ruark tells a story like no other. His dialogue and interface between characters is beyond belief. Too bad he died at an early age before he was able to create more books."
Of course what I remember and Amazon is too politically correct to reprint is that in the description of the Honey Badger, Ruark wrote, " There is in Africa a mean little animal which, when cornered, attacks straight for the balls!! Not unlike the American female."
Ruark was often called the "poor man's Hemingway" but that is a disservice to both great authors.
In any case this is my "Ode to Robert Ruark", let him never be forgotten and let his works be re-read by millions. There is great value in them even if by today's standards he may be called misogynist, politically incorrect and even "heaven forbid" a tad racist. I suspect he was none of those things. I suspect he was just a "man", which is in my view, probably not a popular genre these days.
By the way, least you think this blog is written from a maudlin perspective tonight, you would be wrong. Today, as on many days as I drive home to my house in Texas I passed Pelican Pier.
Perhaps the most appropriately named location in the world.
Enjoy !!!!!! I do.
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