tai-chi-one.com

When I returned to Ocean City with a station wagon filled with cases of bottled spring waters from Europe and America and packets of literature and will, I connected with Glasseye, a friend and client of Fish’s, living in the same apartment building where I shared an apartment with Fish. The only thing missing was the water cooler and Fish and his girlfriend Stretch; they had gotten married and headed South after the 84 season. Stretch was a high velocity yoga instructor and didn’t find much of a market in Ocean City; Fish could cut hair anywhere. I was able to get a water cooler and five gallon glass bottles of Mountain Valley Natural Spring Water, bottled at the source in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas—Glasseye took me in as a roommate for the remainder of the summer. I was in business. I bought a brand new white Ford Econoline E350 box van—no air, no radio—with two gas tanks.
In Greek Mythology IRIS is the goddess of the RAINBOW which is the BRIDGE between this world and the nether world—at the time there was Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and everyone can interpret anything as they choose. I’ve heard stogies used for cigarettes and cigars, and language takes on its own life and meaning with its repeated use—an American Value.
I was looking to get my faith back. I had a purple iris painted on the side of the truck and called the business THE WATER WAY—just another way. I was lucky enough to get the phone number 28WATER. Each filled glass bottle of water weighed 62 pounds. I threw my back out before the summer was over and made deliveries carrying the bottles cradled like a baby. The summer ended—I had enough accounts to deliver through the winter and tended bar at Ocean City’s convention hall whenever a job became available. I became involved with the Ocean City library and helped form the Friends of the Ocean City Library preparing for the next season. Glasseye left after the summer and I rented an off season condo in North Ocean City for the winter.

The DELMARVA Peninsula wasn’t a total stranger to me having spent my youth in Baltimore and much time on a farm in Bridgeville, Delaware—the Smith Farm—where we picked asparagus and tomatoes and peaches. Ocean City, Maryland was also an acquaintance from my youth and more recently the previous summer, 1984, when I shared an apartment with Fish, a former Baltimore bar owner turned itinerant barber and true independent thinker. He was also a pretty good cook. Our paths had crossed many times in our adulthood enough to have one of those instant though sometimes reluctant connections no matter how much time had passed. Fish cut hair and I worked at the Brass Balls Saloon on Ocean City’s Boardwalk concocting rum runners and ice cream drinks and beer in frosted mugs for an ex-Carney whose motto was “fuck them before they fuck you.”— an American Value.
The center piece of Fish’s apartment was an Oasis water cooler topped with a five gallon plastic jug of Mr. Natural bottled water. Compared to what came from the tap in that West Ocean City pad, Mr. Natural was truly an oasis even though it was named after a brand of blotter acid from the 70s. Mr. Natural was from Ocean View, Delaware and bottled at the source on the DELMARVA Peninsula.
The VA of the Peninsula is part of Virginia, connected to Virginia by a 17 mile bridge tunnel and otherwise formed the corners of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay—the land of pleasant living. In the 80s Baltimore’s mayor referred to the Eastern Shore as Baltimore’s outhouse. The biggest hill, however, was the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Hauling water—it was doable.