SAMUEL G. TOOMA, AUTHOR
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CHAPTER 6. VIGNETTES (Cont'd)3/15/2021 I am posting 2 stories today. The first is titled "New York Customs Incident (1963)." This story shows how naive I was at 22 years of age. The second story is titled "My Buick Skylark Drenched With Bird Doo (1966)". This story is one that I would like to forget but my kids refuse to let me. NEW YORK CUSTOMS INCIDENT (1963). In September 1963, I had just completed my first oceanographic cruise with NAVOCEANO. This had been my first trip out of the country, and I was very naïve about the process of custom’s inspection of luggage when returning to the U.S. During the cruise in the Norwegian Sea, I was asked to return quickly to Washington for another cruise in the Caribbean Sea. I was asked to bring as many oceanographic “messengers” with me for use during the upcoming cruise. Figure 21 below shows a messenger hanging below a Nansen bottle. The purpose of a messenger is to “trip” the next Nansen bottle on the oceanographic wire. The messenger slides down the wire and strikes a trigger at the top of the Nansen bottle. The bottle then flips over and captures a water sample. At the same time, the thermometers attached to the bottle reverse (or flip upside down), thereby capturing the temperature of the water at that depth. The messenger then hits a lever at the bottom of the bottle holding the bottom attached messenger (shown in the figure) which is released and continues down the wire to the next Nansen bottle. The purpose of including this involved description is to show that these stainless-steel messengers were necessary to conduct an oceanographic station. We had a shortage of them; hence, I was asked to bring about 12 back with me. In New York, when I reached my customs agent, I was asked to open my suitcase for inspection. When I did, the messengers were on the top of my clothing and in plain sight. Although it is difficult to see in Figure 21 below, the messenger is attached to the Nansen bottle by a 3-inch-long wire with a loop in it. The customs agent gingerly picked up one of the messengers and began to touch this wire. I said loudly “Don’t touch that”! The customs agent, in a panic, flipped the messenger into the air, and it fell back into my suitcase. He looked at me with panic in his eyes. Well, I thought that all this was quite funny, and I had a big grin on my face. The agent did not share my humor. He asked me what the messenger was, and I explained it to him. He then proceeded to empty the entire contents of my suitcase, pushed it all aside, even onto the floor and then said “Next”. I had to repack my suitcase with all my dirty underwear in front of all the other people waiting patiently in line. I had the first laugh, but he certainly had the last. Needless to say, I didn’t pull any more dumb stunts like that with customs again. MY BUICK SKYLARK DRENCHED WITH BIRD DOO (1966). I finally replaced my beloved 1958 Austin Healy Sprite in late 1965. I got a 1966 Buick Skylark Gran Sport. It was the Buick version of the mid-1960’s so-called “Muscle Cars”. Pontiac had its famed GTO, Chevy had its SS, and Oldsmobile had its 442. My friends nicknamed my car the “Batmobile”. It was all black, inside and out. Figure 22 below is a photo of my Buick Skylark Gran Sport. Not too long after getting this car, I took Sylvia to a movie in Washington, D.C. Well, unlike the “date from hell” described earlier, I found a parking spot on the street not far from the theater. After the movie let out, we walked to the car only to see that I had parked the car under a near-dead tree. Hundreds of large birds were roosting in the tree, and they had recently fed on some kind of purple berries. They were doing what birds do. They were all pooping onto my nice, new, shiny black car. The car was almost totally covered with purple bird doo. In those days, I had to unlock the car with a key. And when Sylvia tried to get in, she was hit by several sharpshooting birds. When I got into the car, I realized that I could not see out of the windshield because it was covered by the purple mess. I tried to clean off the windshield with the washers, but this only smeared the doo and made it worse. I’m not sure how I made it back to our apartment, because I had to lower my side window and drive back with my head out the window so I could see. When we arrived back home, Sylvia found about 5 purple bird bombs in her hair. She was not happy. The next day, I cleaned off the windshield as best I could and went to work. On the way home, I stopped at a car wash place. I remember that the automated car wash did not get the car clean, and it had to be scrubbed by hand. The workers complained loudly as they cleaned the car. I was very embarrassed when I got into the car and relieved when I drove away. Figure 21. A Nansen Bottle. Notice the "Messenger" Hanging Below the Bottle. Figure 22. My Buick Skylark Gran Sport.
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