Eye Sees Banter: It’s a Elluva Remark

Jean Erck, my friend from Houston, is a smart lady. When we were neighbors and our boys were growing up, she was the one who could figure how many hot dogs and rolls and quarts of potato salad and baked beans it would take to feed the Pony League baseball finals. The rest of us just put stuff in until our biggest pot was filled and hoped for the best. Not Jean. She could do it. She had a computer before anyone I know. I wouldn’t be surprised if she can flop her own discs.

It’s just that when we took our recent cruise to Mexico on the Island Princess, she said a couple of things that made people wonder. Maybe it was the salt air after having lived in Houston for so long.

A fellow traveler was Jack Tenner, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge and his tall, elegant, blond wife, Georgeann, who was an actress. When we set anchor in the bay of Cabo San Lucas, the launches came alongside to take us ashore to buy all those things that look so wonderful in the shops and look like something you won knocking down wooden milk bottles when you get them home.

Jack Tenner is a large man, with a manner of command that could easily cause mountains to tremble. He has a magnificent head like a library lion. If he has ever made a mistake, you will never know it. What’s more, neither will he.

Jean and Judge Tenner dropped into the launch from the ship’s gangway and sat side by side. It will give you a small glimpse of the man’s dignity to tell you that he settled himself in the launch as if he were seating himself on his own bench, judicial robes falling in proper toga folds around him. Most people get into a launch looking as if they had just descended a laundry chute.

The harbor at Cabo was filled with large expensive boats--fishing boats, motor sailers, cruisers--all looking as if they had slid down the ways from the cover of a yachting magazine. Millions of dollars were bobbing at anchor in that lime-ice sea.

Said the judge, “I had no idea there would be so many large boats way down here.”

“Yes,” Jean said, “and a lot of them belong to Houstonians.”

She has lived in Texas so long she has slipped into their speech patterns and she elided the H in Houston. Judge Tenner nodded wisely but his eyes were those of a man who has received a skewed signal.

“Estonians,” he said. “I had no idea. I thought Estonia went after the World War with Latvia and Lithuania. Actually, I don’t think I can name an Estonian port.”

Jean began to laugh and try to explain at the same time, causing her to sound like an old 78 played at a 45 speed. She finally managed to say, “I meant Houstonians. People from Houston.”

Judge Tenner roared like the great green dragon with the 13 tails, making the boat rock with his laughter. By the time the joke was explained to everyone in the launch, it became the byword of the ship. Jean was pointed out as the lady who knew all there was to know about the Estonian Navy. She thought it was funny for quite a while and I still do.

Her second little aberration of speech took place aboard the Island Princess. We were having a drink with Art and Patty Seidenbaum in front of those immense slanted windows that show you the Pacific clear to China. We were talking about dolphins. Jean and I had seen several just before we met the Seidenbaums and they hadn’t seen any. Jean said, as if she were reading from the National Geographic, “Watch for pelicans. They fly above the dolphins.”

All four of us gazed in silence out the great windows. The boys on the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria never looked any more intently. Finally Jean broke the silence.

“There. Look there. See that pelican? Now watch him as he flies down to the surface of the ocean.”

The silence grew until finally Art said, “Jean, that pelican is an airplane.”

And so it was, inasmuch as we all agreed there were few twin-engine pelicans around.

Well, it could have happened to anyone whose glasses were in the stateroom. But coupled with the Estonian Navy, it did make people look askance at Jean. For heaven’s sake. Two tiny mistakes. The Seidenbaums were gracious about it, though. They even pretended they saw a dolphin.