THE STORY OF A CABIN BOY

A 74-Year-Old Recruit from the Port of Brooklyn

A story of potatoes, nails, and ships

Photo by Leroy Skalstad on Unsplash

The cold wind from the East River smelled of salt, diesel, and stale whiskey. For three days I had been wandering around the bars near the port in Manhattan.

At seventy-four years old, most people are looking for a comfortable rocking chair and joint pills. I was looking for a ship.

In a smoky bar, I finally found a Captain. I sat on the adjacent stool, looked him in the eye, and blurted out:

“Some people walk forty years in the desert to receive enlightenment. I am seventy-four. If I head into the desert, I will end up very smart, but I will miss the steamship. Please, enlist me as a cabin boy!”

Any other captain along this coast would have kicked me out. They would have told me to drink my tea at home and learn the maritime regulations before speaking to a vessel of such rank. This one, however, was different. He listened to me, saw potential in me, and took me into the crew.

“Welcome aboard, recruit,” he smiled professionally. “Your first duty begins immediately. Go down to the galley.”

A mountain of potatoes for dinner was waiting for me there. The problem was that I took the order too literally. No one gave me any tools, and I was too embarrassed to ask for a knife so as not to look like a complete amateur.

I sat on a wooden stool, rolled up my sleeves, closed my eyes, and began peeling the potatoes with my fingernails. In my head, the words about harsh naval discipline echoed, and the tough skins of the “Kennebec” sacks turned into my scraping desert.

After two hours of struggling, my fingernails were broken and bleeding, and the bucket was full. Instead of peeling the potatoes cleanly, I had scraped their skin into perfect, alternating black and white stripes.

They looked like the striped shirts I had seen on TV, and the whole room smelled of damp earth and stubbornness.

The heavy door of the ship’s galley burst open, and the Captain walked in for an inspection. He looked at the pile in the bucket, then at my wounded fingers, raised his eyebrows, and said with a sneer:

“Young man, did you by any chance play for that college team, the “Zebras” of Texas, when you were a student? I ordered you to prepare dinner for the crew, and you have filled my bucket with a football refereeing panel! This is a high-ranking ship, not a school stadium!”

I wiped my sweaty forehead with my rolled-up sleeve, looked at the striped potatoes, and replied seriously:

“Captain, I accepted your order and gave it my all. They might not look like potatoes for soup, but I guarantee you that every single one of them complies with maritime standards and has passed strict inspection!”

The Captain was scanning the bucket, but his gaze locked onto the top of the pile. He took the small potato that was showing off right at the top and held it up before my eyes.

This one was different from the striped “zebras” — on it, I had managed to leave a vertical scratch that ended in a small dot at the bottom.

“And what is this, young man?” he asked sternly, spinning the potato under the lamp. “What does this nonsense on top look like to you?”

I looked at the potato, sighed with exhaustion, and said:

“That, Captain, is an exclamation mark. I put it right on top to show how emotional and exciting everything began for me on this shore.”

The Captain frowned as if I had committed the greatest maritime crime, and his face grew darker than a storm cloud over the Atlantic.

“Listen to me carefully, cabin boy!” he shouted, his voice echoing in the narrow galley. “On my ship, exclamation marks are forbidden! Is this some tabloid press or cheap sensation to you, that you would scream at me from the top of the bucket? On an American ship, headlines and potatoes must end cleanly. This mark ruins the professional look of the dinner and will give the sailors heartburn!”

He glared at me bloodthirstily and continued:

“Listen, boy, service on this ship is harsh. On the last voyage, the cook overdid it — he decided to play the genius and threw the potatoes into the cauldron unpeeled. He fried them and garnished them with vinegar, which he had accidentally poured from a jerrycan of industrial acid.

By the third bite, the ship resounded with such a collective growl that the sailors’ bellies started vibrating to the rhythm of the ship’s propeller! The baking soda evaporated from their mouths in seconds.

Then the boatswain dragged out a sack of quicklime, grabbed a shovel, and started pouring it straight down their throats. Smoke was billowing from them as if they were steam locomotives!

After a moment, their faces softened and they started shouting: “Ah, what a relief! Well done, cook, next time boil some of the same potatoes again!”.”

The Captain turned sharply toward me, and I had become whiter than the lime in the hold.

“There is no room for weaklings on this ship, cabin boy. My sailors have stomachs of cast iron. Now, march to scrub the deck! And if you feel heartburn… you know where the sack of lime is. Tomorrow, let there not be a single exclamation mark on board!”

With these words, he tossed the potato back into the bucket and left.

I remained on the stool amid the smell of starch, looked at my broken fingernails, and thought that forty years in the desert would have been much easier than the standards of this Captain. On the other hand — I was on board, and the voyage was yet to come.

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