Bubba Gets the Right Half To tell the truth, I had other things on my mind when I stopped by Leonard’s Do It Your Self boatyard not far from The Kitty Litter Lounge in a part of Sarasota I do not usually frequent. I have had a gallon of Micron 44 in my possession for a long time. It is the bottom paint that the EPA declared to be the marine equivalent of the Love Canal, when they banned its use. Micron 44 has tributyltin (tributyl-tin) in it and is devastatingly effective. To marine critters and marine growth that adhere to sailboat bottoms, Micron 44 is the gas chamber, a lethal injection and the electric chair all rolled up into one deadly package. Unfortunately for the company that made Micron 44, the ablative paint sloughed off as it was supposed to and killed nearly everything on the sea bottom within a 100foot radius of the boat whose bottom it was applied to. What it didn’t kill, it mutated into look-alikes for The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Normal fish started growing teeth that looked like Wink Martindale’s when he was in his prime and hosting memorable TV game shows like Bumper Stumpers. Martindale, incidentally, is still alive and was the first inductee to the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had selling my gallon of Micron 44 to Leonard of Leonard’s Do It Your Self boatyard on my mind when I stopped in to see him. Leonard weighs about 300 pounds, rarely gets up out of the chair behind his desk and smokes cigars. He also has a junkyard dog that guards his office and growls incessantly. The dog’s name is not printable in a family magazine. His name does, however, start with one of the first three letters of the alphabet. I was about to tell Leonard about what a value I had in a gallon of Micron 44 when a pneumatic jackhammer started up in the boatyard, making any conversation useless.
From the noise it made, it sounded like one of those jackhammers road construction crews use to cut through concrete. “What is that awful noise, Leonard,” I shouted. “That be Bubba Whartz tryin’ to take about 15 years of marine growth off his boat,” Leonard replied, also shouting. His dog barked. “I know Bubba Whartz,” I exclaimed. “Most people in boating ’round here do,” Leonard affirmed. “He’s out there with a jackhammer getting them oysters off his boat. There are going be enuff of ’em to put a shell driveway from the road all the way to my house, which is pretty much hidden by banyan trees and ficus trees, on Longboat Key.” I set down the gallon of Micron 44 in Leonard’s office and went outside to see what Bubba was up to. It was a hot day and the sun beat down like a sledgehammer. Bubba was on his back on a creeper, in the shade of his boat’s hull, with a jackhammer much smaller than the ones used for highway repairs, but it seemed just as loud. Bubba was wearing a white protective suit, a respirator, a hard hat and held the jackhammer horizontally as he pushed the creeper along with his feet. As he moved forward, keeping the jackhammer’s chisel point in contact with his boat’s hull, oysters and barnacles showered down on him in a limestone blizzard. Occasionally, when he got the chisel angle wrong, parts of Right Guard’s ferro-cement hull showered down on him as well. Cement is a different color from oyster shells, a bit darker, you could say. And it comes off the jackhammer in dust as opposed to oyster and barnacle chips. After a while, Bubba noticed me and stopped work, took his respirator off and said hello. His horizontal body was covered in mounds of debris that he had sheared off his boat. If he didn’t stand up occasionally, I am sure Bubba
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