I very seldom if ever say anything about another race, creed or color but I think there is always time for a nice exception.

A while ago I lightered a ship and the deck crew was Filipino. The instant I saw that I relaxed because I knew that everything was going to be all right. The instant I heard the sing-song chatter of Tagalog I knew everything would be all right.

There is something special about these people and I suppose that the guy who called them the Irish of the Pacific really wasn't all that too far off. Most of them are Catholic. (Which means nothing to me.) They enjoy beer and a good time and for the most part seem to have very good dispositions. They are kind and generous and from the way they work so well together, they are just about the best seamen out here.

A shipmate once said that if you have only one Filipino on a ship you have a sad soul, but add another for him to bounce off of and you have a wonderful asset aboard any ship. I guess they are just like the Irish in that they are social beings.

When I lived in Kodiak there was a pretty good sized Filipino community there and I generally got along very well with a number of members of the community there. I was invited into a number of their immaculate homes and enjoyed their hospitality.

A number of them also joined in on a so-called St. Patrick's day parade one year in Kodiak. It was pretty funny seeing them wearing the green, but you have to realize that there was a shortage of Irishmen there so we did what we had to do and filled in the ranks with a few Norwegians, Swedes, Aleuts, Filipinos and whatever else we could scrape up.

(Parade, my ass! It was nothing but a damned Pub crawl!)

While I do not doubt that there is a dark side, it is just nice to be around what I see as basically happy people. I hope that in the future the rest of the deck crews I have to work with are like these guys. It is fun to work with them.

The reason this came up is because a few minutes ago a shipmate and I were yakking about the lightering job. These can get wierd in a heartbeat, but we both agreed that as soon as we saw the deck crew was Filipino we both relaxed.




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