Names and places changed because some of the guys are still in the business.
For the life of me, I had never heard of a particular crewman being named by name as a person called out to discharge a barge but it actually happened to me once. Talk about being fireballed somewhere!
Anyway, I has headed home after crew change and my cell phone went off asking me to turn around. There was an emergency of some sort and my special services were required.
Yeah, OK. I whipped a 180 and returned to base at warp speed. I told them that if I wasn't going to get home that night to call my house and explain it to my wife. They did that and a few minutes from the office my phone rang. It was my wife asking me what was going on.
I said I didn't have a clue and I'd call her later.
Seems one of our units pulled into a dock and the dock wanted the guys to adhere to their safety/dress/whatever code. One of our guys stupidly got snotty about it waving his credentials around and got the surprise of his life. They were ordered to leave the dock. Seems the guy seemed to forget where his paycheck came from. They were ordered to leave the dock.
I knew the facility well, having both loaded and discharged cargo there several times beforehand.
The port captain that called me explained that the contract was in danger and they had been booted off the dock. In the process of trying to save the contract the company had offered to pull the crew off and replace them. The customer had mentioned my name as a possibile replacement and the office went into a panic to locate me.
When I walked in people were looking at me both confused and like I was a lesser god or something. I was confused but said nothing.
A minute later my then captain came in and we were briefed. We were to board the barge that was currently in an anchorage near the facility and discharge it. The port captain pointedly told my then captain that I was to do all the talking.
We were taken to the airport, handed tickets and told that if we needed anything to just buy it and they would reimburse us for all expenses. We flew on out of there, landed, grabbed a cab and went to the launch service and climbed on board. They took us to the tug and barge. It was a ghost ship as the other crew had already been pulled off. We promptly fired up the generator, took a walk-around, chatted briefly with the tug skipper and racked out.
Just before dawn we were awakened and made breakfast, ate and then weighed anchor, tied up to the dock, hooked up the hose and discharged. It was completely uneventful other than a dockman I knew telling me that it was good seeing me. He was surprised somewhat to see me and said that when he was talking to the office he asked how I was doing. I guess in the panic of possibly losing a contract they told them they'd try and send me. Whatever.
So here I was, a major celebrity. Shortly afterwards they reassigned our vessel to their facility and we were in and out of there frequently for the next couple of years.
Now for the rest of the story as to why I had been singled out.
One time when I had pulled into the dock the plant manager was talking to the dockman. I walked in and sensed an accent and asked where the manager was from. I found out that both of them were from the next town over. Of course we started playing 'Who do you know?'
Seems I knew the plant manager's brother from many years ago.
One Sunday I had driven up to New Hampshire to buy beer on Sunday because of the (then) Massachusetts Blue Laws.
Near a New Hampshire beer store of some sort I ran into him and he was involved in shenanigans of some sort. I already knew the brother by name and face and he seemed OK. If I'm not mistaken there was some kind of fake ID business, somehow the cops were called his accomplice ran off and he had vanished into the woods. From his hide he recognized me and my Dodge and came out asking for a ride back into Massachusetts.
I quickly stuffed him in the trunk alongside the beer I had just purchased (most likely with a fake ID) and after we got back well into Massachusetts I let him out of the trunk and he rode along with me. Seeing how he lived along the way I dropped him on in Scituate Harbor.
The plant manager and I shared a laugh over it.
I never realized it could come back a couple of years later to my advantage.
This time after we had tied up I went ashore to do the paperwork and it was the same dockman. While I was filling out the prerequisite paperwork I casually said to him, "Do me a favor. See if you can have the manager get us assigned to this run."
"I'll do that," he replied.
After the discharge we returned to Philly and I checked in with the office before I went home. My port captain called me over went on and on about what a good job I had done. Then he told me he had gotten a call from the customer They wanted my captain and I assigned to their run. Requesting a certain crew was unheard of in the business.
The customer treated us like princes. If we needed grub they'd loan us the company truck and almost always had a box of Dunkin's finest for us on arrival. The run lasted for over two years.
All this because thirty years earlier I had done someone's brother a favor and had given him a ride.
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