Our Day In The Sun (Chapter 68)

{Photo of Morning Glory Cottage used in a Calendar}

The next candidate for Toxic Avenger was Lola, the lady from across the street. The day after discovering the Giant Cacti had been doused with diesel I happened to glance across the road and saw Miss Lola pouring diesel fuel from a gallon milk jug in several spots around her yard. She saw me and cackled loudly, “Fire-ants, fire-ants, Ize killin’ da fire-ants, heh-heh, heh-heh-heh,” as she fairly leaped around with glee at her handiwork. “Yah Mon, Ize killin’ da fire ants, deys bod over ‘ere, very bod, da diesel fuel she kill ‘em good doh.” She just kept laughing insanely and dancing around manically as she continued pouring diesel fuel around the sandy yard.

This of course piqued my curiosity and put her high on the list of likely perps. The whole point of who had done the dirty-deed was really moot, but I was just intrigued being curious by nature and always ready to try and solve a mystery. While staying upwind of Lola and her toxic ministrations I casually asked her if she knew anything about the poisoning of the Cacti. This really seemed to wind her up and she started shrieking about how those cactuses were used during Slave Times to protect Whitey from attack by any rebellious Slaves. In fact, this was true, and had I heard the same story while on St. Johns, Virgin Islands.

White settlers would surround their houses with all manner of spiny cacti to ward off intruders. She was practically foaming at the mouth over the whole subject of Cactus and how they should all be destroyed wherever they grew. Very interesting: Of course the cactus is an equal opportunity offender and I had heard my apartment dwelling neighbor who basically ran a chop-shop complain numerous times about how dangerous those Giant Cacti were. So we had Mark the vandal who liked to torch things with diesel, the nut-job from across the road who hated Cactus and loved diesel fuel and the mechanic who despised the Cacti and kept no end of large quantities of toxic fluids in and around his apartment.

So, there were several potential candidates for the vandalism. In any event, my only recourse was to seek out the apartment manager from next door and convince her that the problem had to be fixed. Fortunately, some of the other apartment dwellers were beginning to complain about the psychoticly deadly smelly pollution situation: Fortunately after much whining and moaning by your’s truly, the manager finally and reluctantly agreed to tackle the problem.

By now it was Wednesday and as we were scheduled to have our guests sitting down to lunch at noon on Friday, I rolled up my sleeves, grabbed a shovel and went over to help out. It was a Herculean task. It really required a back-hoe to dig up the 6 400-500lb monsters, but there was no way the manager could pay for one, plus there was no way to get a back-hoe in the area where the digging needed doing. So she hired the 2 Jamaicans who did odd-jobs for the apartment complex.

In theory these guys were Maintenance Men, but that was really stretching the truth. Don’t get me wrong, some of the hardest working humans I’ve ever met were Jamaican. But these 2 clowns were ganja-smoking layabouts that could turn a 1 hour job into a week-long career. I had watched them numerous times while they were supposed to be painting the exterior of the 20 unit Apartment building. Out of an 8-hour day, they probably actually worked a total of 20 minutes. I didn’t want to rat them out, but on this job, I was determined that they actually do what they were supposed to. Again, it was a ginormous job, but I insisted that the manager ride herd on them while she could and I never left them alone for the next 3 days.

First, the Cactus had to be cut in sections using a chain-saw. Each section weighed around a hundred pounds and were covered in spikes. They had to be placed gingerly into a wheelbarrow and carted off. This scenario was repeated for all six plants. Then the root systems had to be dug out by hand, and extensive roots they had. The roots had absorbed the diesel and an area a couple of feet around the plants was soaked with fuel, so it had to be dug up and hauled away. I am still baffled by the enormity of the vandalous act as at least 20 gallons of diesel fuel had been poured over and around the Cacti.

I worked like a Trojan right along side the “Maintainence Men” and it was brutal. If not for the constant Trade Winds blowing to offer some relief from the heat, I would probably have died in the doing of it. But, finally, by 11:00 am Friday, the last wheelbarrow load of sand was hauled up to the street and disposed of.

I went home, had a quick shower and was dressed and ready for our guests who arrived moments later, escorted them out to the porch over-looking the sea and proceeded to have one of the nicest, most relaxing afternoons I’ve ever spent. The breeze was cool and sweet, the food was excellent, the guests imbibed their drinks and lingered over coffee and dessert, never knowing what a battle had taken place to make the scene safe for human habitation.

That afternoon as we bade our guests a fond farewell, I caught my breath as I smelled the unmistakable stench of burning rubber. I looked across the road and there was Lola, cooking over an outdoor fire which she often did, but this time with one noticeable difference. Instead of a steel grill, she had placed a section of plastic/rubber coated steel shelving over the bed of hot wood. You’ve probably seen the shelves, made for closets and storage, they are shaped much like a grill or oven rack but coated in rubber to protect the steel from rusting. So, as I watched the rubber melting and oozing into her food, I decided that this method of outdoor cooking should be avoided if at all possible. Bon Appetit!

Our Day In The Sun (Chapter 67)

As mentioned, there was a small apartment complex next door to our house. Visually, it was not a problem, well screened from view by hedges and trees. But olfactorily, it was at best a major annoyance and now had morphed into a collosal environmental nightmare. I knew that the breathtaking stench originated from the apartment building compound. But where, why and for what reasons occupied the rest of my week, for every hour of daylight was spent by me trying to deduce the answers and rectify the problem in time for our pending al fresco soiree. Not to mention, it was now impossible to sit outside period. I suspect if someone had lit a match, the whole street would have gone up in flames.

After a few hours of nosing around literally, I discovered that the source of the Diesel fumes was definitely coming from the apartment complex. Someone had poured gallons of Diesel fuel over, on and around six collosal cactuses. These cactuses were part of the complex’s landscaping. They stood 6-feet high, were at least 5-feet in diameter and weighed in the neighborhood of 400 pounds each. Now they were the world’s largest Toxic Air-Wicks. You could actually see the fumes coming off them as the sun hit the giant tree-like plants. It was virtually impossible to stand or be downwind of them for even a few moments without experiencing dizziness and nausea. Since the biggest specimen was only about 20 feet from our ocean side porch, it completely put the kaibosh on sitting there or anywhere in the vicinity. I was livid. Now the questions were, what lunatic did it and how in the Wide World of Sports to remedy the problem.

In fact, my first thought was that Mark, the local juvenile delinquent must have been the perp, as he had recently been spotted trying to torch one of the neighbors’ cars and was guilty of no end of vandalous acts. My favorite escapade of his was the time he painted vulgar graffiti on our cistern wall. The graffiti read. “Fuck you Mr. Peek,” and the bozo was so stupid he even signed it, “Mark”. Mark was a 12 year old candidate for Grand Cayman’s Most Wanted. He was always up to no good.

Mark had painted the obscenity on the wall while we were away, and in an apparent moment of remorse or paranoia, attempted to obfuscate the message. The original words had been sloppily painted over and now said, “Fark You, Mr. Park” signed “Bark”. I couldn’t help but laugh at the kid’s antics, but everyone knew he was destined for infamy, so he was first on my list of possible perpetrators of the Diesel attack.

Then there was a guy who owned the ground floor apartment just 20 feet from our back door. He was a guy who loved to spray paint his car, strip down engines and degrease them with huge cans of WD-40, left large aluminum baking pans filled with diesel fuel laying around with engine parts in them and generally was a toxic nightmare.

This neighbor who basically ran a chop-shop and auto-painting service from his apartment also complained bitterly to me several times about the Giant Cactus. He said he was forever getting stuck by them and tearing clothes on them and considered them a giant pain in the butt. I grilled him as to his possible involvement in the escapade but he flat out denied any knowledge. In fact he swore he hadn’t even been there the whole weekend before the Monday Morning when the stinkathon became apparent. I was skeptical because I had seen his clone rooting around over there during the weekend, but he said it was his friend who had stayed there for the weekend, a friend who just happened to be tearing down a car engine and rebuilding it.  Birds of a feather I suppose.  At this point I needed CSI to step in but that wasn’t going to happen.

And, I had one more serious contender for the role of offender.

Our Day In The Sun (Chapter 66)

Though I have never been accused of being a sensitive person (in fact I’ve sometimes been called an insensitive jerk or worse) I have been blessed with amazingly keen auditory, visual and olfactory senses. My vision when I was younger was 20/13, my hearing is like that of a bat with a hearing aid and if one’s sense of smell could be quantified on a scale of 1-10 mine would be a 20.

True story; once while Turkey hunting, I had been sitting in the woods for hours and suddenly smelled something funky. About ten minutes later I could hear leaves rustling and after another ten minutes I saw a herd of Turkeys, about 20 of the birds walking abreast, scratching the leaves looking for food. I realized then that what I had smelled was the Turkeys.

Now that was in a cold climate. In the tropics, smells are amplified exponentially. Of all the little annoyances on the Island that seemed to grow on my nerves, I think smells would have to “Rank” at the top of the list. I’ve already mentioned the constant bombardment of pesticides, both on the ground and from the air by the Mosquito Control Board, but added to that was the constant spraying of pesticides and herbicides by all and sundry. In fact we lived downwind of a small apartment building on Manse Road, and though by no means was it on the level of the spraying and application of noxious chemicals at Lancaster House, the fact that the wind blew steadily in our direction meant that every time one of the apartment dwellers sprayed their homes or painted, deodorized, perfumed or otherwise stinkified their air space, it ended up blowing right in our faces. Add to that, the constant painting of the building, the illegal burning of their trash and lawn refuse and it was sometimes like Gehenna.

There was a gas station about an eighth of a mile up the main road from us and another about a quarter mile away. At least twice a week, one or the other stations had their main storage tanks filled. It is hard to imagine the intensity of the fumes generated by several thousand gallons of unleaded, regular and diesel fuels being discharged haphazardly into those tanks, but again, due to the steady breeze blowing from them to us, it was overwhelming. I finally learned to go inside and just wait it out for the hour or so it took to fill their tanks.

Then, although illegal, most of the locals burned their trash at night. Being downwind of the village of Bodden Town, the stench was horrendous. Once upon a time when the waste stream consisted of cardboard and brown paper bags, this probably wasn’t too bad. But in the 20th and 21st Century, the average family’s garbage contains enough plastic to build a couple of Lego Land Cities. There’s nothing like the sweet scent of burning milk jugs, styrofoam egg boxes and broken plastic toys to bring a tear of joy to my eyes and perhaps yours. Burn Barrels were de riguer, even though trash pickup was essentially free for Caymanians. I guess it was just too darn much trouble to haul the trash to the curb, just easier to dump it in the burn barrel outside the kitchen door and let ‘er rip.

Diesel fuel is like Mother’s Milk in the Islands. It is like Duct Tape to a Canadian; used for everything. People used Diesel to start their trash fires, to kill fire-ants, as a herbicide, a cleaning product and occasionally even as a fuel for their vehicles.

Catherine and I had invited some friends for lunch on a Friday. The Monday morning before that Friday, I woke up, threw open the sliding glass door to the ocean side of the house and nearly passed out. The smell of Diesel fuel was like a punch in the face by Mike Tyson. Thus began the mysterious saga of the poisoning of the Giant Cactus.