Cousin Fred, Diamond Hunter

Happy Monday everybody!  It’s gonna turn out a lot better than you think!  You’ll see (yeah, right…at least until someone screws it up). 

Cousin Fred from Western Arkansas arrived mid-day on Saturday as I was putting the finishing touches on the BBQ sauce for the pork butt barbeque on Sunday. The wife was out of town this past weekend attending a fermented bean curd pot-luck in Southwest Colorado so I was happy to have some company.  Cousin Fred told me that he and Friend Lamont (who also lives in Western Arkansas) are working on a new project that he claims will be big…big…big.  I asked if he was already past the micro solar array phase of his entrepreneurial life.  He informed that was “old hat” (nyuk, nyuk).  My skull was happy to hear that.

By late afternoon on Saturday we had been sitting on the porch here at the compound for a few hours counting some clouds, drinking some wine, eating some cheese, and watching the Bermuda grass grow.  Suddenly Cousin Fred leaped to his feet and looked off to the north in the direction of the still growing Lake Mountebank.  He commented that the RV camping sites from the Memorable Memorial Day Weekend were now underwater.  He was right.  I told him I was beginning to worry about containing the water up on this ridge.  I think I even said how much I missed days of no rain.

At that point, Cousin Fred suggested we “have some fun.”  Now, with Cousin Fred that can mean anything.  I sucked in some air, gritted my teeth and asked, “Like what?”  He responded, “Like me demonstrating what Friend Lamont and I have been working on.”

I knew this wouldn’t end well.  But, it was Saturday afternoon and the weather was decent.  What could possibly go wrong? 

Cousin Fred took off at a trot toward his vehicle, calling over his shoulder for me to call the brother-in-law and ask him to bring his new bass boat to the compound.  Well, it’s a new bass boat in the sense that he just bought it, but it’s not the high dollar bass boat that sank in the lake a month or so ago.  That boat is still in the murky depths of Lake Mountebank waiting for August when we return to a normal weather pattern and the lake dries up.  His latest fishing boat is a 12-foot riveted steel flat-bottomed jon boat with a battery powered motor clamped onto the transom. 

The brother-in-law seemed a bit reticent over the phone when he found out Cousin Fred was on-site.  He’s still getting an earful from my sister for his last involvement with Cousin Fred.  In the end, he said he didn’t have anything going on at his place and would be here as soon as he could. 

As I hung up with the brother-in-law, I saw Cousin Fred pulling a large apparatus from the back of his SUV.  I know, I know…at that point, I should have run back inside the house and locked all the doors.  But, nooooooo…it is after all a Cousin Fred conceived contraption and thus begs me to know what it’s all about.  Whatever it was that he lifted out of the back and onto the ground was heavy and landed on the driveway with a loud clunk.  There was a largish metal frame with a small monitor on top and two white dish-looking things attached to spools of cord.  Cousin Fred informed me that the dish-looking things were special sensors that he and Friend Lamont had developed for finding gems underwater.  Gems…underwater?  Really?  I inquired as to the technology this thing was based in since gems aren’t metallic and I had never heard of a gem finding sensor. Cousin Fred assured me that the technology was highly proprietary and he wasn’t yet ready to share with anyone…the patents haven’t been filed.  It was plain from talking to him that he figures to make his life’s fortune searching for those elusive Arkansas diamonds underwater around his home state. 

He tossed me a mesh bag with a zipper top and suggested that I fill it with some of the wife’s jewelry.  That should probably have been my first clue that the day would end in disaster.  Secondly, I should have asked if he had at least tested this thing. 

Note to self:  Start locking up the wine whenever Cousin Fred visits.

I went inside and did as Cousin Fred asked.  When I returned, the brother-in-law had arrived and was backing his boat into the lake.  Cousin Fred took the bag from me and examined the contents.  He liked that I had filled the bag with a mix of diamonds and other precious and semi-precious jewelry.

“This will do,” he said with a smile.

He walked off toward the lake’s edge with the bag in hand.  I was just thinking that I should have attached a line of some sort to the bag to ensure it wouldn’t get lost, but I didn’t really know Cousin Fred’s intentions.  All I knew is that if I lost the wife’s jewelry, I was doomed.  I saw him talking to the brother-in-law before handing off the bag of jewelry.  The brother-in-law then began backing the boat away from the shore.  We watched as the boat skimmed across the water toward the center of the lake and began a slow circular pattern.  Cousin Fred told me to turn away from the lake so we couldn’t see where the brother-in-law “dispersed” the wife’s precious jewels.  It would make the test more “scientific” that way he assured me.  At that point, the definition of the word dispersed took hold in my brain and I should have stopped the entire operation and taken the wife’s jewelry back inside.  Did I?  Of course not.  Would I be writing about this if I had?  Nope. I would instead be writing about the return of mocking birds to the compound, singing their oddly melodic songs that I enjoy so much. 

I kept telling myself that surely the brother-in-law was going to simply drop the entire zipped bag over the side.  I figured in a worst-case scenario wherein Cousin Fred’s harebrained scheme didn’t work, I would simply don diving gear and retrieve the bag from the bottom.  As I was thinking that, I heard a sound like so many pebbles hitting the water and turned to see the brother-in-law spreading the wife’s jewelry across the water as though he were feeding dog food to catfish.  I thought about the catfish I had stocked in the lake eating each and every piece of jewelry as it sank to the bottom.  I felt faint.  I was doomed…doomed I’m tellin’ you!      

I glared at Cousin Fred, who assured me that we would have all of the wife’s jewelry back in the bag in no time at all.  As the brother-in-law pulled back into shore, Cousin Fred told me to grab one side of the contraption and help him carry it down to the boat.  What else was I going to do?  It was now my only shot at salvation! 

We placed the frame of Cousin Fred’s invention across the bow of the boat.  The length of the frame exceeded the beam of the boat by nearly two feet on either side.  Cousin Fred indicated that was perfect and that we would be able to trawl the sensors as we moved around the lake.  With the contraption mounted on the front of the boat and the brother-in-law at the back there wasn’t much room for anyone else. Cousin Fred read my mind I think and said we would share the middle seat.  I looked at the brother-in-law who nodded his assent. 

While Cousin Fred was working to secure the contraption to the bow, I settled myself onto the middle seat.  To my right was a small metal tag riveted to the side of the boat.  It indicated that the maximum safe payload for the boat was 600 pounds.  By my figuring, the three of us already exceeded that limit.  With the weight of the contraption on the front, we were way over.  I was about to say something when I felt Cousin Fred pushing the boat back into the water and then jumped in from the port side (Navy talk).  As he settled onto the middle seat I noticed that the waterline was nearly to the top of the gunwale (more Navy talk).  The brother-in-law seemingly nonplussed by our impending disaster reversed the motor to back us away from shore and then turned the boat toward the center of the lake. 

Cousin Fred instructed him to begin a slow circular pattern as he leaned forward to release the two sensors which disappeared beneath the surface.  He then flipped a switch which caused a loud hum to emanate from beneath the surface of the water.  I began wondering what manner of radiation, RF energy, EMF, or who-knows-what-sterilizing-beams-of-energy I was being exposed to when I noticed that as Cousin Fred’s weight shifted forward, there was a slight spillage of water over the bow and into the boat.  I leaned back hoping to counter the weight shift. 

At that moment one or both of the trawling sensors hooked on something beneath the surface.  I took a quick look around and knew it was that pile of dead trees that I had placed out here to burn if it ever rained.  The bow began to dip into the water and the brother-in-law revved the motor even higher, apparently hoping to break us free.  At the same time, Cousin Fred began trying to reel his sensors back into the boat.  The inside of the boat began filling with water before the entire thing raised vertically into the air.  The brother-in-law yelled, “We’re swamped boys, swim for it! Every man for himself!”

In the water, we all watched as the jon boat descended into the water like the Titanic.  The brother-in-law groaned and then started swimming toward shore.  He was followed by Cousin Fred.  I remained…treading water and thinking it might be better if I just slipped beneath the surface and drowned.  The wife would be so distracted by my untimely death that she wouldn’t notice her jewelry was missing…well, at least not until the funeral when she would go for a piece of jewelry that would look great on a black dress.  At that point, she would flip out and I would be doomed for certain…dead, but doomed.

So it was that I finally decided to swim in to shore and face the music.  When I came out of the water, the brother-in-law was sitting there holding his head.  He was trying to figure out how he was going to explain to my sister that he had lost a second boat in less than two months. 

Lake Mountebank is quickly becoming the Bermuda Triangle of NW Oklahoma.

I tried to comfort the brother-in-law by reminding him that once the lake dries up in August, we’ll be able to retrieve his boats from the mud.  It occurred to me then that I’ll be able to do the same with the wife’s jewelry.  Now I just needed to figure out a way to keep the wife from wanting to wear her jewelry.

Cousin Fred then mentioned that he had a great idea for making that happen…