The Tale of Cahoon’s Hollow and the Unhappy Campers

At my blog, he goes by the name Pooftha, sometimes it’s Poofy but I call him Laho. (Now, don’t go and hit me the racial slur bit, ok?)

Actually, my long time friend Billy (Zipperhead, Zip for short)
coined the name ‘Laho’ and for me it just stuck.
We’ve celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and we get together on a fairly regular basis for a nice dinner out or the occasional BBQ at his house or my house.
(But Laho has a bitchin’ pool, no lie, so we usually go there)

Laho & Liho (his wife, who looks like she could be my wife’s twin sister) are very close to us.
We’ve gone through much together as far as our lives go.

But I’ve yet to tell you Laho’s favorite story about me.
It’s one he likes to pull out and tell (in great detail) every time we’re together.
However, he seems to derive an inordinate amount of pleasure telling it when there are lots of people around to actually listen to the man.
I take it more in stride these days but boy, oh boy, you’d think I really scarred the poor bastard for life the way he tells it. And maybe I did.

 

The story begins with a beautiful day on Cape Cod; the sun is 100% Orange Crush and the skies are a deep shade of eternal indigo with a few scant puffs of white for contrast.
Yeah, it’s perfect, ok?
L&L love the beach visible by their cocoa brown-colored skin during the summer months. I couldn’t take them to just any beach; Uh, uh.
This had to be a very special place.

It didn’t help my cause at all that I chose to praise the living crap out of this
hellhole. . . uhh, I mean really nice beach, I decided to take them to.
We agreed to meet the next day at our hotel and drive to the elbow of the Cape, Wellfleet to be exact.

“You guys are going to love this place,” I said, “It’s called Cahoon’s Hollow and it’s wonderful. We’ll have a blast,” I said confidently.

I should make a point of telling you that each of us had an infant in tow
(translation: we were carrying mucho baby apparatus; diapers, bottles, gallons of SPF 50+ sunscreen, bottled water, chairs, playpens, toys, strollers and incredibly the list goes on…you get the picture. And if you’re thinking this can’t and won’t end well, you’re right)

I should also mention that the path leading down to the beach was a steep incline easy to go down but virtually impossible to get up even when you’re not carrying a six pack of Magic Hat never mind 2 ½ tons of baby shit.

We all made it safely down the blistering hot hill of sand and found a nice spot to set up the girls and the babies.
It wasn’t until we were done that I turned to look at the ocean, the raison d’être for our visit.

Oh. My. God.

I didn’t think the ocean had that much seaweed.
For as far as the eye could see the first 25 to 30 ft of ocean was slimy, brown and extremely icky seaweed.
It even grossed me out, which is really hard to do. (Just ask Laho)

 

Laho said, “Nice . . . you guys come here a lot, huh?”

Even my wife gave me the ‘I don’t even know you’ stare.

By now, we’re all red hot, sweaty and irritable and the babies are getting whiney and crying; they’re hungry.
My recollection of the day pretty much stops right there.
The old grey matter had soaked in enough.

That’s where my good buddy Laho comes in.

He’s good at explaining the perilous and almost life-threatening situation we encountered exiting this shithole of a beach.

He uses words and phrases like “ frickin’ Murphy’” or “we almost died getting out of there” or “Goddamned Murphy and his bright ideas” or “You’re not going to believe this shit!” or my favorite, “beautiful, just frickin’ beautiful” to describe the utter mayhem we experienced that day.

I’m here to tell you Laho and Liho (and family) still frequent the beach but our oldest daughters may be repressing some deep seated fears over brown, slimy and copious amounts of seaweed. I’m not sure.

I love Laho like a brother but if I have to hear that damn Cahoon’s Hollow story one more time… I’m still going to be laughing like I always do.
Maybe that’s what good friends do.

And in my heart, we’re more than just good.

And the Hollow will never let us forget that.

 

~m

ps. Liho, you’re Mom and Dad are in my prayers