It's a good bet that there's been more sitting on the dock of the bay done at the end of the zones main street than there have been visitors to the Capitol Rotunda in San Juan. Very few folks who have lived on this island have not parked their butts on this old dock. And every visitor to the B*zone climbs up and walks its length if even for a minute.
For sailors who find their way here it's where the dinghy gets tied and from where it's a dozen sea-legged baby steps to a table under the almond trees and a first look around. For those seafarers who fall from grace with the sea or whose anchors become permanently stuck to the bottom, it's the best lookout point for that legendary sloop- full of Brazilian girls all sailors know is out there somewhere and must make a landfall someplace, sometime, - and maybe that's her rounding the point out there right now.
Every day around sunset when it's not pouring down rain a congregation scorch their corneas watching a sky show that can be spectacular in the true sense of the word. When it's raining, often people will gather at the dock and sit under umbrella tables or under the awning at the beach bar and watch anyway. Often stormy days bring crowds just to celebrate their luck at finding themselves surrounded by such a vista.
It is a favorite of photographers and sketch, scam and con artists and a spot where countless lovers embrace and make countless promises. Fisherman clean their catch early mornings and perfect fish stories on it. Crazies howl at the moon from it. Kids practice weekend skiff theivery skills beside it- Conga drum circles and saxophone players have been known to visit in pre- dawn hours to bounce music across the bay off it. A few times I've seen wedding parties sluffing through the sand wearing good shoes and hiking up yards of silk and lace to jump up and pose for pictures crowded onto it. When we waded out to rake its' basement, two dumptrucks were needed to haul off the souvenirs people had tossed off it - like so many pennies into a wishing well.
The dock is a special place for anyone who has ever spent much time around it because they know that in a place where anything can happen- the old dock will likely be witness to it. Belonging at once to land and sea, the dock is a portal and passageway- and the obvious spot where all those Brazilian girls will disembark when that sloop finally shows up.
After Hurricane George ravaged the island a few years ago and finding I had survived intact and the roof was still mostly fastened to what was left of the house, I needed to bike down to the corner to check that the dock was OK. When I got there I saw fifty people had arrived before me for the same reason.
It's not the dock That Otis Redding sings about sitting on in that soulful tune.
If he'd been sitting on this one it would have turned out to certainly be something else. |
