Episode Two

The return from the ’95 Iron Bowl went down in my family’s history as the first ever “Keep Hope Alive”. There have since been multiple episodes by the same name, but few are as epic as the first two. What follows is the second in the series.

Keep Hope Alive: Episode Two

Setting: several years after Episode One, on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, Mobile Bay.

Reid and I decided we wanted to take his little john boat across the bay to the other side. This was a small, two person boat with a dinky little outboard motor. Leaving right after lunch, we didn’t take much with us. We figured we’d only be gone a couple of hours and definitely be back for dinner. The boat and its crew of two putted across the bay, bearing straight for the land ahead. The ride was ten to fifteen minutes in length and as we neared the other side, we started looking for the best place to pull the boat up. Naturally, the closer we got to land, the shallower the water got. The tiny motor bogged down in the shallow mud and cut off. Reid went to the back of the boat in an attempt to restart the motor. He pulled the start cord and the propeller dug into the dirt, breaking the “sheer pin”. It’s a defense mechanism built into the engine. It disengages the motor from the propeller so that if the propeller gets stuck, the engine won’t grind itself until it burns up. On the downside, the propeller no longer turns. We were stranded.

We abandoned ship in the foot or two of muddy water and tied off to a nearby tree. We had no shoes on, no cell phone, no food, no sunscreen. We were two idiots stranded on the other side of Mobile Bay. Reid, a native of the land, decided we should try to walk down to Sailboat Bay, a neighborhood of condominiums that could barely be seen from our current location. And so, we walked.

Not fifteen minutes into our journey, we were confronted with our first of many adversaries: a water moccasin. To those who don’t watch Jeff Corwin on Animal Planet, a water moccasin is a poisonous snake. Our water moccasin was coiled up directly in our path like a large, poisonous pancake. Putting our heads together, we decided on the best way to slay this beast. We walked around it. This foreign and inhospitable land, however, was only getting started throwing obstacles at my cousin and I.

As the sun beat down on our unprotected skin, we continued to walk shoeless toward our destination. We came upon a span of muddy water that was probably only five feet from bank to bank, but we needed to cross it to continue; to survive. We stepped in and sank to our hips. Quick sand. Seriously. Ok, maybe its not the kind that slowly continues to pull at you until your grasping hand is the last thing swallowed, but it was close! We moved very slowly, dislodging one leg and stepping, then repeating the process. We clawed up onto the bank and caught our breath. “The Island” hadn’t claimed us yet.

Next, we entered a field of what we came to call “Bohemian knife grass”. Imagine very small bamboo, the size of pencils, cut off three inches from the ground. No shoes. No fun. We gingerly crossed the Bohemian knife grass and were amazed to see a small pink house standing alone! We rushed up to the house and knocked on the doors, the windows, the floor, the walls. Nothing. This house hasn’t been inhabited in years. Another of the Island’s cruel jokes. By now, somewhere between six and seven hours have passed. We continued to walk with cut up feet, sunburned bodies, and weary souls until we reached the end. The land stopped. What? This was supposed to connect to Sailboat Bay. Where did this International Waterway come from? We sat on the bank and weighed our options. This was a barge channel, what if the current was so strong that it swept us out to sea? What if we get tired and can’t make it all the way across? Just then, a speed boat with two occupants approached. We screamed, waived our arms, jumped up and down. The boat roared past us, our hopes died. We must swim. We walked as far as we could into the channel. Eventually, it got too deep and we started full out swimming. I’m no swimmer, I mean I CAN swim, I’m just not efficient. This was tough. Our final challenge, and we succeeded. Reid and I stumbled onto the bank near a house under construction. We zombied over to the man working on the house and asked if we could use his telephone.

“You boys just swim that channel?” he asked.

“yeah… (breathing heavily)… may we use your phone?” we said.

“There’s GATORS in that channel! You’re lucky you didn’t get eaten!” the good news fairy informed us.

We called Reid’s house and were picked up within thirty minutes. Of course, everyone was worried to death when we didn’t return for EIGHT HOURS. My parents took us to Burger King where we ate our weight in whopper. We were sunburned, our feet were cut up, our bodies exhausted, our minds completely devoid of all rational thought but one:

Keep Hope Alive.