| TRAVELS OF DURSMIRG VOLUME IV THE ROGUES OF ST. AUGUSTINE AND OTHER SOCIAL MISFITS Chapter 16 |
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REAL ROGUES
Dom and Cofi Trakor/ aka “Dom Trick-a-door”
Their boat was named the New Bedford, a vessel that Dom acquired by dubious means and $1,600 up in Cape May,
New Jersey.
My salty old boat delivery partner and side kick Dick Jansen had tipped Dom Trick-a-door off to this dubiously out of
proportion steal of a deal.
Old Dick was waterfront wise from days gone by and had worked the docks and fished the waters out of Cape May,
New Jersey for many a season and knew the ins and outs of every deal above and below board.
The imposing old New Bedford characteristically looked the part of a traditional old time New Jersey coastal fishing
vessel. Sporting a high sharp entry bow and a round stern especially designed for traversing the Jersey coastal
entries in all sorts of breaking seas its relatively small but tall wheelhouse was positioned well aft giving the operator
a commanding view of the forward work deck and a smoother drier ride aft.
Powered by a real work-horse of an engine, a 13,000 Caterpillar diesel that sounded confident even at idle and
resonated an unlabored ring of power at top RPM of around 1500. The New Bedford would unmercifully pull like a
huge work horse just leaning into the load. It was started by a hand cranked gasoline pony motor.
This very traditional fishing vessel was the St. Augustine home to Dom and Cofi living aboard and tying it at the City
Yacht Pier where it was a much photographed conversation piece.
Dom never missed an opportunity to turn a buck and rented bunk space in the forepeak to young street kids he took
in under his wing.
Enterprising Dom was also taking gambling parties off shore aboard the New Bedford where he sold his betting
clients the booze and also charged dearly for the trip.
This enterprise was short lived however because I have heard that Dom never bothered to acquire any licenses or
get any of his charter boat captain certifications…these small details never bothered or hindered Dom from
venturing into any endeavor he deemed to be innovatively cash positive.
Built like a gorilla, street wise Dom had a certain charm about himself that emphatically said; “trust me”.
Not the smartest dude on the block or the dock Dom was on the other hand naturally possessed with a gutsy
slickster character and was a Danny DiVito look-alike with similar attributes that included his glib tongue coupled with
natural acting abilities.
The list of businesses that Dom ventured into in the St. Augustine area is far too lengthy to list here, but I have
compiled the following sampling;
Dom did start a teenager dance hall and got shut down for numerous statutory infractions by the city.
Another of Dom’s slick-stir enterprises came when he opened a used car lot business stocked with questionable
inventory over on Anastasia Island and flip-flopped in and out of that odiferous enterprise rather quickly.
Each time Dom got one of his many different business enterprises going he always maintained that he had gotten
his financial backing from the estate of Cofi’s rich uncles up in New York State.
One of Dom’s many businesses turned out to be in construction repairing the tubular steel pilings at the City Yacht
Pier. (Dom contracted with the city to fill the 12 inch diameter tubular steel pilings around the City Yacht Pier with
cement…and that was all.
Clever Dom got foxy and merely stuffed the tops full of waded up newspaper and then proceeded to plaster a thin
layer of cement over the paper leaving the rest of the piling empty but appearing to be full. He put in about two
inches of cement and got paid for filling the 30-foot long pilings and again lived up to his well earned nick-name,
“Dom Trick-a-door”. Somehow that Dom just didn’t have it in him to do a straight business transaction especially if
there was a corrupted alternative.
Dom Trick-a-door the “Good Samaritan”; Dom and his wife Cofi had their commercial vessel New Bedford tied at the
City yacht Pier where Dom could use his “trust me charm” to gain the confidence of stranded yachters with
mechanical problems.
With a big smile and a helping hand good neighbor approach crafty Dom would offer to lend a helping hand to any
rich looking yacht owner that pulled into the Yacht Pier with mechanical problems.
Dom had a second sense that seemed to sniff out a rich troubled boater.
Dom would come to the rescue like a long lost friend, then he would first inform the novices that they had a really
big problem. Next he would go on to confidently tell them that they were so very fortunate that he happened to be
there with his extensive nautical experience and mechanical abilities to help and would resolve their problem…“trust
me”.
Always self assuring, confident and cordial Dom took the stranded out of town transient yachter under his protective
wing.
Then with some convoluted stories he so artfully acted out Dom would remove some crucial part of the transient
yacht making his potential victims into captives.
Dom was like a predatory spider weaving a web and then cornering his prey into the tangled mess to savor the
spoils.
In the end, when his victims were totally exasperated beyond their limits of patience Dom would finally relent enough
to make some trivial Rube Goldberg patched up repair job keeping the transient yacht waiting for a few more days.
Then Dom tested the limits to the extreme being suspiciously over friendly and would time the completion of the
make shift repair job to coincide with the very last of the transient’s exhausted tolerance.
Dom, the actor, always managed to extract the extra buck from his victims with a sympathy seeking nearly tearful
hard luck story.
He was extraordinarily good at his confidence building performances because he was born and bred with this
genetic predisposition to a natural acting expertise.
The parting shot from Dom would be to caution his duped victim that the repair job was only provisional but it would
be OK if the vessel proceeded slowly.
Dom just loved his con-man capers and his victims went away with a story to tell plus perhaps a special experience
that they might never have had if it weren’t for their Dom Trick-a-door encounter.
Dom got some kind of an ecstatic high whenever he told of his confidence scams and fleece jobs. This was some
kind of a self congratulatory ego builder that gave Dom his unquestioned rogue status.
Treasure map con story; Sweet, cordial and likeable Cofi was a natural talented artist with a homespun flair. Cofi’s
good looks matched with her northern Italian red hair and smiley freckles worked as a waitress at the Santa Maria
restaurant adjacent to their floating home the New Bedford docked at the City Yacht Pier.
The Santa Maria was a nautical looking eatery situated in downtown St. Augustine out over the water in Matanzas
Bay. Built on pilings and located at the bay front break wall on the south side of the City Yacht Pier, Bridge of Lions
and old Spanish Fort Castillo de San Marcos.
The place naturally attracted lots of tourists and Cofi would spot certain customers that she thought were well
endowed financially.
Crafty, conniving, cunning and devious Dom on the other hand would dupe naive and inexperienced Cofi into
drawing out bogus but authentic looking old treasure maps that were a bona fide work of art with their ersatz
authenticity.
This is how the scam progressed;
Next Cofi working at her waitress job with potential out of town map customers dining and enjoying the St. Augustine
waterfront ambiance would call over to her husband Dom; the stern of their docked New Bedford was only a few feet
away from the restaurant, very convenient indeed.
Dom would then appear in a couple of minutes to strike up a confiding conversation and tell of his hard luck story
and then almost secretively whisper implying confidentiality about this incredible map he had gotten by some
mysterious convoluted coincidences.
Then he would go on to build their confidence and tell his hard luck story of just how unfortunate he had been that
here he was almost stranded and didn’t even have enough money to go after the treasure himself…what was he to
do?
Dom would fumble and act like the simple village idiot and pretend to be just a little bit on the dull side. Then he
would fake getting slightly inebriated and next let the now eager tourist exercise their instinctive greed to take
advantage of this poor dumb down and out fool Dom Trick-a-door.
Dom sold lots and lots of treasure maps around town and positively gloried in pulling this scam.
This was his calling in life.
Dom’s mind was just naturally programmed into being a scamster and he would work harder at some con-job than
he ever would have had to work getting the money honestly. He just absolutely could not help himself…this is who
he was, this was his natural behavior, he had a genetic predisposition to scamming and this inevitably would be his
lot in life.
Yet another of Dom’s fumbled and flopped string of slippery scams;
Made to order for Dom was this hard working trusting and financially secure newcomer to St. Augustine, George
Ford.
George was so straight that he nearly didn’t qualify for the title of social misfit but in time he converted.
Dom set up the deal which was to buy a boatyard located at the site of Phil Melansin’s defunct Ferro-cement
boatbuilding yard over on the west bank of the San Sebastian River.
Dom would be the master-mind and manager and George the relentless hands on worker that dug deep into his
pockets to fork up his savings financing the acquisition of high ticket equipment; a crane, huge winches, dredging
equipment, pile driving gear and of course the energy to operate it all.
Dom was spending George’s money like a drunken sailor.
(The drunken sailor syndrome; it doesn’t matter how much money the drunken sailor has, $10 or $100 the next
morning it will all be gone.)
Well, it took nearly a year and a half but George Ford’s financial well was finally drained dry.
Now poor Dom would have to go in search of yet another financial chump to exploit. George on the other hand
needed money now that his was all blown away and squandered on Dom’s go nowhere spending spree.
The last we heard of George he was clerking at a 7-11 convenience store nights and living in a house trailer.
Dom never ceased to amaze when it came to sniffing out cash. So, here are one more of his incredible capers;
We didn’t know where and how Dom made the connections but somehow slick talking Dom gained the confidence of
a young man with big bucks and a 300 foot bulk ocean going freighter named OLIVE OIL.
As a confidence builder Dom got a truck load full of boaters from the St. Augustine Yacht Pier and also the
anchorage to make a trip to Jacksonville where Dom’s newly acquired friend docked his 300 foot freighter on the St.
John’s River.
Jane and I made that Sunday afternoon sojourn…we were impressed!
The amount of money and coordination it took to get this vessel underway was staggering. Not just the food to fill
the freezers to feed the crew but big ticket items like fuel, maintenance, paint by the drum full and the list of
expenses goes on and on, before the dock lines could even be cast off.
What happened next definitely got the attention of little old St. Augustine.
The unthinkable…
A few days later in the St. Augustine inlet came the 300 foot ocean going freighter OLIVE OIL then it proceeded
through the Bridge of Lions.
Oh my god! This 300 foot OLIVE OIL had but a couple of inches to spare in order to slip through the creaky old
Bridge of Lions fenders.
The ship’s wheelhouse towered high above the bridge tenders control station absolutely dwarfing it…a spectacle
that left the Old City’s spectators open mouthed and slack jawed.
Next yet another unexpected occurrence came when the OLIVE OIL maneuvered around and dropped its anchor
making the Matanzas Bay anchorage appear startlingly insignificant in size and making a spectacle that got the total
attention of the whole town.
The newspaper and radio coverage was a buzz with the event.
This was the biggest ship I am sure to ever enter the Ancient City’s little harbor and was now anchored there.
Dom Trakor had his day of glory as the town’s number one celebrity and spokesman for the unexpected and
unprecedented arrival of the sea going freighter OLIVE OIL.
Dom was the instigator and the self appointed official spokesman.
This is when Dom Trakor officially became known as Dom Trick-a-door.
The enthusiastically eager radio announcer covering the story incessantly referred to Dom Trakor as “Trick-a-door”.
Excitedly in this live interview the passionate announcer seemed almost hypnotically transfixed on Dom’s name
which he continued to mispronounce over and over again… it was Trick-a-door...
Dom became a legend in his own time around St. Augustine with stories like this next one;
The sea going freighter OLIVE OIL on its way to some overseas port came into St. Augustine today to pick up their
new engineer and 1st mate; “Dom Trick-a-door.
Fast talking slick-stir Dom just couldn’t produce his seaman credentials because he was in the end just talk.
Hang your head down Dom, you missed the boat. The OLIVE OIL left town without their self-appointed official
spokesman.
Dom in Fernandina;
Our second time to pull our boat Dursmirg was again at Rawl’s Boat Yard in the northern east coast industrial town
of Fernandina Beach, Florida.
While Jane and I were awaiting our turn to go on the marine railway at Rawl’s we anchored across from the city’s
downtown…a lovely spot and nearly a mile off shore on the Georgia side of the St. Mary’s River that marks the state
boundary line.
We had our super go-fast “Bingy Dinghy” to traverse the open river and could be across in almost all weather
conditions in just a few minutes.
The City marina was more than accommodating with free dockage for our dinghy. They even found a safe place a
block away at the fire department to store our bicycles.
The City Marina was also the official State Hospitality Center for transiting yachts even provided showers and
complimentary Florida orange juice. Yes, we felt welcome in Florida.
Jane and I were no strangers to this strange place called Fernandina that didn’t quit fit with the rest of Florida and
was jokingly known locally as Fernandina, Georgia.
We knew many of the shrimp boat owners on a first name basis plus a number of local merchants that included the
staff at Standard Marine and Hardware Company, perhaps the largest marine supplier south of New England.
Surprise! There at the dock was another vessel well known to us the 65 foot trawler New Bedford owned by Dom
and Cofi Trakor.
It was like old home week and we got another surprise, Dom was headed to Rawl’s Boat Yard to pull, clean and
bottom paint his New Bedford.
This was the first time that the New Bedford had been away from the dock in several years and we were surprised
that it would ever move because of the profuse amount of marine growth clinging to its bottom.
This underwater ecological jungle was made up of a thick layer profusely encrusted on the vessels bottom including
the propeller.
Besides barnacles as big as a walnut there was a colony of oysters that had flourished and proliferated. These were
harvestable size creatures, many more than four inches long. Cleaning a bottom this encrusted was a momentous
job because both the barnacles and oysters were razor sharp and could cut flesh to the bone effortlessly.
The turn of events took on another strange twist when we both went upon the rail on the same high tide, side by
side.
Ironically our friends Gary and Penny Kubchek were still at Rawls Boatyard.
Gary and Penny were still working on and pouring money into their elegant Danish built steel hulled sailboat since
our previous trip to Rawl’s the year before.
Gary obviously had mega-bucks or a wealthy benefactor because besides his Corvette he had been at Rawl’s
Boatyard over one year pouring a fortune into his boat project. He was installing the very best and latest state of the
art equipment with total disregard to the cost.
(Dear reader; you may remember the people from Volume 1 of The Travels of Dursmirg, they were the people with
the pet raccoon.)
Coincidences just inevitably seem to follow Dom around wherever he goes. While he had his New Bedford tied
downtown at the municipal docks there was an alarming number of marine related thefts from the commercial fishing
vessels.
At Rawl’s Boatyard one evening we all were aboard Dom’s New Bedford while it was still pulled up on the rail
alongside our Dursmirg.
Gary and Penny Kubchek, Dom and Cofi Trick-a-door and Jane and I were all gathered together for a friendly
congenial get-together and of course talkative Dom was leading the conversation.
Then the bomb shell exploded when Penny got an alarmed almost terrified expression on her face as she turned to
her husband Gary and excitedly said to him; “Oh my God Gary, look at that watch that Dom is wearing it is exactly
like the one you had stolen two days ago.”
The watch was definitely a custom built one-of-a –kind made of heavy solid gold and dripping with precious inlaid
stones.
Just another remarkable coincidence in the travels of Dom Trick-a-door that slick talking Dom would verbally sweep
this one under the carpet as he side-stepped yet another deadly encounter.
Dom definitely lived by his roguish wits.
Not to be foiled by this slight encounter with a potentially life threatening situation Don did it again and came right
back to snooker Gary into pouring money and labor into Dom’s old vessel.
It was utterly amazing to watch slick and suave Dom sashay around gullible Gary, and then set the hook and reel in
yet another one.
A graphically descriptive story of Dom’s tooth extraction; an abscessed tooth drove Dom to total distraction and
drastic action.
Being a natural story teller and a slicker than slick confidence man Dom loved to make an impact on any audience
he felt he needed to astonish.
First he would go into his wretchedly poor circumstances of his youth to gain the sympathy of his audience and then
next he would tell of how this tooth abscess was killing him with inhuman torturesume intolerable pain that would
ultimately drive him to an unthinkable act.
Driven to the definitive breaking point, Dom, the actor, would carry on his animated account of his tooth extraction.
Armed with a pliers Dom demonstrated his resolve to rid his body of this killer pain. With tears in his eyes he would
open his mouth, place the pliers on the tooth and begin to grimace falling to one knee and shaking his head with a
hopeless sigh of failure. Staggering to his feet again he would grasp his shaking throbbing head and try to muster
the courage for yet another attempt. Again the torturesume pain overwhelmed his determined effort and he
collapsed.
It had to be done.
A drink of booze and back he went.
Powerfully built like a gorilla with husky arms and meaty hands Dom had more than the average mans appendage
strength and next he would tearfully tell just how much force he exerted on that unbearably painful tooth that would
not budge.
Determination and focused resolve were depicted on Dom’s grimaced face as he next demonstrated how he again
took up the pliers and this time with tears in his eyes and a deep moan he acted out this tale of man overpowering
the insurmountable.
With a brief description of the amount of force he had applied to that unmovable tooth he then showed that this time
he would have to twist and break loose this pain inducing nemesis.
Staggering with pain and fighting this battle of determination Dom would drop to one knee, nearly faint away, regain
his resolve and again go back to this exhaustingly protracted mentally draining impossible task.
Alas sprawled out on his back and fainted dead away Dom’s Shakespearian production would leave his audience
weak, gasping and exhausted.
Among his long list of glib tongued and animated dynamic recitals Dom was at his best with Omar Khayyam and after
listening to his renditions we always wondered why Dom hadn’t pursued a different life to take advantage of his
incredible talents.
Hurricane Hole October 1974;
Jane and I had our boat Dursmirg at the St. Augustine City Yacht Pier following my appendectomy operation. It was
a good place for easy on and off of the vessel plus it was secure so Jane wouldn’t have to wrestle with anchors and
anchor lines.
We enjoyed a splendid week at the City Yacht Pier with many drop in visitors, something we had been isolated from
while swinging out at anchor.
I kept our smoke oven stoked continuously smoking fresh fish supplied by friends and our stay at the City Yacht Pier
turned into a gourmet eating extravaganza.
Several evenings the group aboard Dursmirg would swell to overflowing capacity when Dom Trakor would enthrall
the gathered guests by beating on his bongos and bellowing out Belafonte old time calypso 50s favorites.
Dom had a real talent to entertain and his calypso routine was a crowd pleaser with a standing ovation and lots of
loud applause.
As always, there is a fly in the ointment even here in this laid back utopia.
Sure enough a hurricane was headed our way and had St. Augustine in its cross hairs.
Hurricanes are big, strong and devastating but travel slowly giving the prudent person ample time to make
preparations for escape.
There is no time for last minute heroics or unplanned arrangements however once the storm is upon you.
Its lethal powers will crush and stomp out any unprotected human life or vulnerable manmade structures. Many times
even the best laid preparations are to no avail when a category five storm indiscriminatingly focuses Mother Nature’s
ponderous powers to overwhelm in seconds all that is beneath its oncoming irreversible deadly swath.
Well, having just been released from the hospital and my appendectomy surgery I was in no position to stand up to
the oncoming hurricane.
These are the storms that tip the playing field in favor of Mother Nature over little and nearly insignificant man.
Where to go?
What to do?
With out 20 ton floating home Dursmirg that had more than its share of vulnerable freeboard, we desperately
needed a very secure spot away from other vessels with no destructive tidal current flows.
To the rescue came our old friend Dom Trick-a-door.
Dom had just the spot for us and it was only ten miles away.
Dom was capable of doing good things for a friend and there he was at his very best!
In these circumstances time is of the utmost essence and so we immediately cast off our dock lines and headed
Dursmirg south to a waterfront land development named Treasure Beach that was partially developed.
I took the helm and Dom was the bar pilot.
By the time we finally pulled in off the Intracoastal Waterway and headed up the maze of freshly dredged canals the
winds had already piped up to a very brisk storm.
We arrived none too soon.
Dom directed us to the extreme furthest canal at the very end of the development amongst towering ancient live oak
trees that had obviously withstood many a hurricane’s devastating blast over their lifetimes. We were out in the
woods in a brand new dredged canal and had it all by ourselves.
Dom and his cronies did all of the heavy dock line pulling as I directed from the deck of Dursmirg.
In a half hour we had twelve stout lines tied off to the oak trees and anchors buried in the bushes. Three tie lines
led off from each side with three off our bow and another three of our stoutest anchors buried deeply off our stern.
We slept well and stayed a week in this very tranquil little serene sanctuary before taking departure for our annual
south Florida winter season get-a-way junket.
So, thank you so very much, dear old friend Dom!
Over the years we have had numerous get-togethers and very interesting encounters with Dom and Cofi.
Dom loved Jane’s homemade wines and pleaded with her to show him how to make his own.
Jane is always eager to help any interested person with any of the things that she has gained expertise in over the
years.
So, helping Dom make his own home made wine was a friendly gesture and Jane definitely had enough experience
at this point in time to make all of the necessary precautions necessary in order to assure a fine finished product.
First and foremost Jane stressed the impeccable cleanliness in every detail necessary with special instructions in
how to sterilize all the equipment and the bottles that the wine would ultimately be bottled in.
Recently Jane had been featured in the weekend edition of the St. Augustine Record newspaper. The subject of
that feature article was wine making from free Florida fruits that included; orange, prickly pear and coconut.
Jane had also experimented with just about every type of fruit to be found along the coast from the Georgia Sea
Islands to the southern Florida Keys.
Jane knew her stuff and everybody that ever had the opportunity to sample her product when visiting our Dursmirg
raved about her wine making abilities among other things like her superb culinary skills.
Eager Dom enthusiastically dove into this project and soon had a large caldron of wine brewing away in the cabin of
his New Bedford emitting a pleasantly odiferous aroma of fresh yeast commingled with pungent fruit.
It was lovely and Dom was very happy.
In less that a weeks time Dom was sported a long face and told Jane that her recipe wasn’t any good.
We went to investigate and sure enough the caldron of wine had now become a huge vat of vinegar.
Jane was no fool and instantly knew the exact reason for the vinegar outcome.
Upon questioning it immediately became apparent that inquisitive Dom was going to cheat just a little on the
production and sampled the brewing wine. He was the culprit contaminated it with bacteria from his own mouth when
he snuck in and spooned out samples.
It was in Dom’s nature to cheat and no matter how much Jane explained that there could be absolutely no
exceptions to the sanitary production of wine it was beyond Dom to comply and make the connection with
cleanliness, impeccable sanitation and his own personal honesty…he just couldn’t honestly help himself.
Anything that was not nailed down or locked up was fair game for Dom’s callous compassionless kleptomaniac
tendencies.
If he was hungry he had absolutely no compunction about raiding a crab trap no matter who it belonged to…even
ours.
Jane and I did have financial dealings with Dom and even bought a couple of surplus diesel engines together with
him.
We let him handle our money and he came through with our engine and even delivered it all the way up to
Daufuskie Island, South Carolina to our anchored out boat.
We were impressed with his persistence and so was the magistrate of the island who Dom traded his engine to for a
building lot on the island.
Ironically that deal may have been the very best investment that Dom had ever made.
If he still holds that lot it is now worth at least a thousand times the value of that engine.
I don’t think that Dom ever cheated us, not openly anyway.
Kippy Kimski: The third of the three Kimski brothers was stereotypically the proverbial social misfit carried to bazaar
extremes.
Oh, my god! “Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy” as he was notoriously known around St. Augustine may not take
the first prize for social misfit but he must at least be tied for that dubious outrageous distinction.
Described by our friend John Ryder, Kippy was his most brilliant student that John ever had in his high school social
studies classes.
Kippy Dippy was totally out of control from his earliest childhood.
Hyperactive Kippy Dippy early on demonstrated his complete disregard for all things of the establishment when he
had an affair with his eighth grade teacher while he was in eighth grade…of course it takes two to tango!
With apathetic adults…his parents shrugging off his scandalous vandals behavior somehow Kippy Dippy glided
through life with an absolutely remorseless disconnect to the consequences of his spur of the moment whimsical
whims that kept the whole town on guard.
Kippy Dippy got his jollies when it proved great fun to wreck his father’s business equipment. Racing the engine of
the fuel oil delivery truck until it was screaming and ready to fly apart then popping the clutch to do tire smoking
wheelies gave Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy a high that made him fly.
This brought his cannabis blitzed eyes into a star glazed exotic mental orgasm.
Somehow Kippy Dippy managed to rally his rag-tag tag-along co-conspirators no matter how flea brained some of
Kippy Dippy’s antiestablishment deviancy took him.
Well, well here it was as brazen as brass in full day light Kippy Dippy took yet another step into his world of pushing
the proverbial limits beyond all rhyme and reason.
At gun point along with some of his lackeys Kippy Dippy held up the St. Augustine sight seeing train…great fun just
like in the wild-west b-movies!
Witnesses? I guess so!
Not only a hundred or so passengers but also the tour train operator who knew Kippy Dippy on a first name basis.
Daddy tried to bail him out, but this time the shit that hit the fan stuck to the wall and shocked stoned out of control
Kippy Dippy did some hard time.
His first night out of the penitentiary Kippy Dippy got into a bar-room brawl with tire iron…break parole?
Yes, Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy knew how to do that too.
Kippy Dippy’s disconnected mental process led him into some pranks that were almost too bizarre to imagine.
What drug induced delirium could have taken his twisted and perverted remorseless mind to the level of this next
caper is unfathomable to me.
To imagine any kind of self-gratification to be derived from what prompted Kippy Dippy to catch a large rattle snake
and then remove its rattle and next place it under the seat of a friend’s car is taking social misfit to another plain of
consciousness.
This wasn’t enough of a caper to satisfy Kippy Dippy.
Next he pulled the same caper in a public bathroom of a local restaurant.
Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy signed the guest book aboard our boat Dursmirg, 24 September, 1977 and here
is the note that accompanied his signature; “The craziest bastard in town”.
(There could be absolutely no dispute to his claim to fame!)
The father, Mr. Kimski, bought his kids, Brad and Kippy a 73 foot wooden shrimp trawler that was all ready to go out
and make some money with.
This represented a several hundred thousand dollar outlay of hard earned cash by a father that loved his kids no
matter what.
It wasn’t long and the lovely wooden vessel suffered from apathetic neglect and was rarely ever worked.
Kippy used to take the trawler off shore at night and change the engine oil, pumping it directly overboard because
like he jokingly used to say; “you never pollute after dark”. This is the only maintenance I ever heard them give to
that very expensive trawler.
Brad, Jerry and Kippy’s father was a prosperous businessman who gave the kids just about everything they ever
wanted and all that he had.
This likeable tend-to-business old father with the biggest heart in town was a chain smoking fanatic who finally did
himself in and he sadly died at a prematurely young age of throat cancer.
So, young demented Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippie became a legend in his own time.
This is one of St. Augustine’s sightseeing trains leaving the, “fabled” Fountain of Youth and headed out onto
Magnolia Street which happens to be lined with oak trees.
The sightseeing trains are a great value for tourists because you can get on and off as many tines as you like and
they pass all of the interesting attractions plus the riders get a running narrative filled with humorous historical facts.
next chapter
Dom and Cofi Trakor/ aka “Dom Trick-a-door”
Their boat was named the New Bedford, a vessel that Dom acquired by dubious means and $1,600 up in Cape May,
New Jersey.
My salty old boat delivery partner and side kick Dick Jansen had tipped Dom Trick-a-door off to this dubiously out of
proportion steal of a deal.
Old Dick was waterfront wise from days gone by and had worked the docks and fished the waters out of Cape May,
New Jersey for many a season and knew the ins and outs of every deal above and below board.
The imposing old New Bedford characteristically looked the part of a traditional old time New Jersey coastal fishing
vessel. Sporting a high sharp entry bow and a round stern especially designed for traversing the Jersey coastal
entries in all sorts of breaking seas its relatively small but tall wheelhouse was positioned well aft giving the operator
a commanding view of the forward work deck and a smoother drier ride aft.
Powered by a real work-horse of an engine, a 13,000 Caterpillar diesel that sounded confident even at idle and
resonated an unlabored ring of power at top RPM of around 1500. The New Bedford would unmercifully pull like a
huge work horse just leaning into the load. It was started by a hand cranked gasoline pony motor.
This very traditional fishing vessel was the St. Augustine home to Dom and Cofi living aboard and tying it at the City
Yacht Pier where it was a much photographed conversation piece.
Dom never missed an opportunity to turn a buck and rented bunk space in the forepeak to young street kids he took
in under his wing.
Enterprising Dom was also taking gambling parties off shore aboard the New Bedford where he sold his betting
clients the booze and also charged dearly for the trip.
This enterprise was short lived however because I have heard that Dom never bothered to acquire any licenses or
get any of his charter boat captain certifications…these small details never bothered or hindered Dom from
venturing into any endeavor he deemed to be innovatively cash positive.
Built like a gorilla, street wise Dom had a certain charm about himself that emphatically said; “trust me”.
Not the smartest dude on the block or the dock Dom was on the other hand naturally possessed with a gutsy
slickster character and was a Danny DiVito look-alike with similar attributes that included his glib tongue coupled with
natural acting abilities.
The list of businesses that Dom ventured into in the St. Augustine area is far too lengthy to list here, but I have
compiled the following sampling;
Dom did start a teenager dance hall and got shut down for numerous statutory infractions by the city.
Another of Dom’s slick-stir enterprises came when he opened a used car lot business stocked with questionable
inventory over on Anastasia Island and flip-flopped in and out of that odiferous enterprise rather quickly.
Each time Dom got one of his many different business enterprises going he always maintained that he had gotten
his financial backing from the estate of Cofi’s rich uncles up in New York State.
One of Dom’s many businesses turned out to be in construction repairing the tubular steel pilings at the City Yacht
Pier. (Dom contracted with the city to fill the 12 inch diameter tubular steel pilings around the City Yacht Pier with
cement…and that was all.
Clever Dom got foxy and merely stuffed the tops full of waded up newspaper and then proceeded to plaster a thin
layer of cement over the paper leaving the rest of the piling empty but appearing to be full. He put in about two
inches of cement and got paid for filling the 30-foot long pilings and again lived up to his well earned nick-name,
“Dom Trick-a-door”. Somehow that Dom just didn’t have it in him to do a straight business transaction especially if
there was a corrupted alternative.
Dom Trick-a-door the “Good Samaritan”; Dom and his wife Cofi had their commercial vessel New Bedford tied at the
City yacht Pier where Dom could use his “trust me charm” to gain the confidence of stranded yachters with
mechanical problems.
With a big smile and a helping hand good neighbor approach crafty Dom would offer to lend a helping hand to any
rich looking yacht owner that pulled into the Yacht Pier with mechanical problems.
Dom had a second sense that seemed to sniff out a rich troubled boater.
Dom would come to the rescue like a long lost friend, then he would first inform the novices that they had a really
big problem. Next he would go on to confidently tell them that they were so very fortunate that he happened to be
there with his extensive nautical experience and mechanical abilities to help and would resolve their problem…“trust
me”.
Always self assuring, confident and cordial Dom took the stranded out of town transient yachter under his protective
wing.
Then with some convoluted stories he so artfully acted out Dom would remove some crucial part of the transient
yacht making his potential victims into captives.
Dom was like a predatory spider weaving a web and then cornering his prey into the tangled mess to savor the
spoils.
In the end, when his victims were totally exasperated beyond their limits of patience Dom would finally relent enough
to make some trivial Rube Goldberg patched up repair job keeping the transient yacht waiting for a few more days.
Then Dom tested the limits to the extreme being suspiciously over friendly and would time the completion of the
make shift repair job to coincide with the very last of the transient’s exhausted tolerance.
Dom, the actor, always managed to extract the extra buck from his victims with a sympathy seeking nearly tearful
hard luck story.
He was extraordinarily good at his confidence building performances because he was born and bred with this
genetic predisposition to a natural acting expertise.
The parting shot from Dom would be to caution his duped victim that the repair job was only provisional but it would
be OK if the vessel proceeded slowly.
Dom just loved his con-man capers and his victims went away with a story to tell plus perhaps a special experience
that they might never have had if it weren’t for their Dom Trick-a-door encounter.
Dom got some kind of an ecstatic high whenever he told of his confidence scams and fleece jobs. This was some
kind of a self congratulatory ego builder that gave Dom his unquestioned rogue status.
Treasure map con story; Sweet, cordial and likeable Cofi was a natural talented artist with a homespun flair. Cofi’s
good looks matched with her northern Italian red hair and smiley freckles worked as a waitress at the Santa Maria
restaurant adjacent to their floating home the New Bedford docked at the City Yacht Pier.
The Santa Maria was a nautical looking eatery situated in downtown St. Augustine out over the water in Matanzas
Bay. Built on pilings and located at the bay front break wall on the south side of the City Yacht Pier, Bridge of Lions
and old Spanish Fort Castillo de San Marcos.
The place naturally attracted lots of tourists and Cofi would spot certain customers that she thought were well
endowed financially.
Crafty, conniving, cunning and devious Dom on the other hand would dupe naive and inexperienced Cofi into
drawing out bogus but authentic looking old treasure maps that were a bona fide work of art with their ersatz
authenticity.
This is how the scam progressed;
Next Cofi working at her waitress job with potential out of town map customers dining and enjoying the St. Augustine
waterfront ambiance would call over to her husband Dom; the stern of their docked New Bedford was only a few feet
away from the restaurant, very convenient indeed.
Dom would then appear in a couple of minutes to strike up a confiding conversation and tell of his hard luck story
and then almost secretively whisper implying confidentiality about this incredible map he had gotten by some
mysterious convoluted coincidences.
Then he would go on to build their confidence and tell his hard luck story of just how unfortunate he had been that
here he was almost stranded and didn’t even have enough money to go after the treasure himself…what was he to
do?
Dom would fumble and act like the simple village idiot and pretend to be just a little bit on the dull side. Then he
would fake getting slightly inebriated and next let the now eager tourist exercise their instinctive greed to take
advantage of this poor dumb down and out fool Dom Trick-a-door.
Dom sold lots and lots of treasure maps around town and positively gloried in pulling this scam.
This was his calling in life.
Dom’s mind was just naturally programmed into being a scamster and he would work harder at some con-job than
he ever would have had to work getting the money honestly. He just absolutely could not help himself…this is who
he was, this was his natural behavior, he had a genetic predisposition to scamming and this inevitably would be his
lot in life.
Yet another of Dom’s fumbled and flopped string of slippery scams;
Made to order for Dom was this hard working trusting and financially secure newcomer to St. Augustine, George
Ford.
George was so straight that he nearly didn’t qualify for the title of social misfit but in time he converted.
Dom set up the deal which was to buy a boatyard located at the site of Phil Melansin’s defunct Ferro-cement
boatbuilding yard over on the west bank of the San Sebastian River.
Dom would be the master-mind and manager and George the relentless hands on worker that dug deep into his
pockets to fork up his savings financing the acquisition of high ticket equipment; a crane, huge winches, dredging
equipment, pile driving gear and of course the energy to operate it all.
Dom was spending George’s money like a drunken sailor.
(The drunken sailor syndrome; it doesn’t matter how much money the drunken sailor has, $10 or $100 the next
morning it will all be gone.)
Well, it took nearly a year and a half but George Ford’s financial well was finally drained dry.
Now poor Dom would have to go in search of yet another financial chump to exploit. George on the other hand
needed money now that his was all blown away and squandered on Dom’s go nowhere spending spree.
The last we heard of George he was clerking at a 7-11 convenience store nights and living in a house trailer.
Dom never ceased to amaze when it came to sniffing out cash. So, here are one more of his incredible capers;
We didn’t know where and how Dom made the connections but somehow slick talking Dom gained the confidence of
a young man with big bucks and a 300 foot bulk ocean going freighter named OLIVE OIL.
As a confidence builder Dom got a truck load full of boaters from the St. Augustine Yacht Pier and also the
anchorage to make a trip to Jacksonville where Dom’s newly acquired friend docked his 300 foot freighter on the St.
John’s River.
Jane and I made that Sunday afternoon sojourn…we were impressed!
The amount of money and coordination it took to get this vessel underway was staggering. Not just the food to fill
the freezers to feed the crew but big ticket items like fuel, maintenance, paint by the drum full and the list of
expenses goes on and on, before the dock lines could even be cast off.
What happened next definitely got the attention of little old St. Augustine.
The unthinkable…
A few days later in the St. Augustine inlet came the 300 foot ocean going freighter OLIVE OIL then it proceeded
through the Bridge of Lions.
Oh my god! This 300 foot OLIVE OIL had but a couple of inches to spare in order to slip through the creaky old
Bridge of Lions fenders.
The ship’s wheelhouse towered high above the bridge tenders control station absolutely dwarfing it…a spectacle
that left the Old City’s spectators open mouthed and slack jawed.
Next yet another unexpected occurrence came when the OLIVE OIL maneuvered around and dropped its anchor
making the Matanzas Bay anchorage appear startlingly insignificant in size and making a spectacle that got the total
attention of the whole town.
The newspaper and radio coverage was a buzz with the event.
This was the biggest ship I am sure to ever enter the Ancient City’s little harbor and was now anchored there.
Dom Trakor had his day of glory as the town’s number one celebrity and spokesman for the unexpected and
unprecedented arrival of the sea going freighter OLIVE OIL.
Dom was the instigator and the self appointed official spokesman.
This is when Dom Trakor officially became known as Dom Trick-a-door.
The enthusiastically eager radio announcer covering the story incessantly referred to Dom Trakor as “Trick-a-door”.
Excitedly in this live interview the passionate announcer seemed almost hypnotically transfixed on Dom’s name
which he continued to mispronounce over and over again… it was Trick-a-door...
Dom became a legend in his own time around St. Augustine with stories like this next one;
The sea going freighter OLIVE OIL on its way to some overseas port came into St. Augustine today to pick up their
new engineer and 1st mate; “Dom Trick-a-door.
Fast talking slick-stir Dom just couldn’t produce his seaman credentials because he was in the end just talk.
Hang your head down Dom, you missed the boat. The OLIVE OIL left town without their self-appointed official
spokesman.
Dom in Fernandina;
Our second time to pull our boat Dursmirg was again at Rawl’s Boat Yard in the northern east coast industrial town
of Fernandina Beach, Florida.
While Jane and I were awaiting our turn to go on the marine railway at Rawl’s we anchored across from the city’s
downtown…a lovely spot and nearly a mile off shore on the Georgia side of the St. Mary’s River that marks the state
boundary line.
We had our super go-fast “Bingy Dinghy” to traverse the open river and could be across in almost all weather
conditions in just a few minutes.
The City marina was more than accommodating with free dockage for our dinghy. They even found a safe place a
block away at the fire department to store our bicycles.
The City Marina was also the official State Hospitality Center for transiting yachts even provided showers and
complimentary Florida orange juice. Yes, we felt welcome in Florida.
Jane and I were no strangers to this strange place called Fernandina that didn’t quit fit with the rest of Florida and
was jokingly known locally as Fernandina, Georgia.
We knew many of the shrimp boat owners on a first name basis plus a number of local merchants that included the
staff at Standard Marine and Hardware Company, perhaps the largest marine supplier south of New England.
Surprise! There at the dock was another vessel well known to us the 65 foot trawler New Bedford owned by Dom
and Cofi Trakor.
It was like old home week and we got another surprise, Dom was headed to Rawl’s Boat Yard to pull, clean and
bottom paint his New Bedford.
This was the first time that the New Bedford had been away from the dock in several years and we were surprised
that it would ever move because of the profuse amount of marine growth clinging to its bottom.
This underwater ecological jungle was made up of a thick layer profusely encrusted on the vessels bottom including
the propeller.
Besides barnacles as big as a walnut there was a colony of oysters that had flourished and proliferated. These were
harvestable size creatures, many more than four inches long. Cleaning a bottom this encrusted was a momentous
job because both the barnacles and oysters were razor sharp and could cut flesh to the bone effortlessly.
The turn of events took on another strange twist when we both went upon the rail on the same high tide, side by
side.
Ironically our friends Gary and Penny Kubchek were still at Rawls Boatyard.
Gary and Penny were still working on and pouring money into their elegant Danish built steel hulled sailboat since
our previous trip to Rawl’s the year before.
Gary obviously had mega-bucks or a wealthy benefactor because besides his Corvette he had been at Rawl’s
Boatyard over one year pouring a fortune into his boat project. He was installing the very best and latest state of the
art equipment with total disregard to the cost.
(Dear reader; you may remember the people from Volume 1 of The Travels of Dursmirg, they were the people with
the pet raccoon.)
Coincidences just inevitably seem to follow Dom around wherever he goes. While he had his New Bedford tied
downtown at the municipal docks there was an alarming number of marine related thefts from the commercial fishing
vessels.
At Rawl’s Boatyard one evening we all were aboard Dom’s New Bedford while it was still pulled up on the rail
alongside our Dursmirg.
Gary and Penny Kubchek, Dom and Cofi Trick-a-door and Jane and I were all gathered together for a friendly
congenial get-together and of course talkative Dom was leading the conversation.
Then the bomb shell exploded when Penny got an alarmed almost terrified expression on her face as she turned to
her husband Gary and excitedly said to him; “Oh my God Gary, look at that watch that Dom is wearing it is exactly
like the one you had stolen two days ago.”
The watch was definitely a custom built one-of-a –kind made of heavy solid gold and dripping with precious inlaid
stones.
Just another remarkable coincidence in the travels of Dom Trick-a-door that slick talking Dom would verbally sweep
this one under the carpet as he side-stepped yet another deadly encounter.
Dom definitely lived by his roguish wits.
Not to be foiled by this slight encounter with a potentially life threatening situation Don did it again and came right
back to snooker Gary into pouring money and labor into Dom’s old vessel.
It was utterly amazing to watch slick and suave Dom sashay around gullible Gary, and then set the hook and reel in
yet another one.
A graphically descriptive story of Dom’s tooth extraction; an abscessed tooth drove Dom to total distraction and
drastic action.
Being a natural story teller and a slicker than slick confidence man Dom loved to make an impact on any audience
he felt he needed to astonish.
First he would go into his wretchedly poor circumstances of his youth to gain the sympathy of his audience and then
next he would tell of how this tooth abscess was killing him with inhuman torturesume intolerable pain that would
ultimately drive him to an unthinkable act.
Driven to the definitive breaking point, Dom, the actor, would carry on his animated account of his tooth extraction.
Armed with a pliers Dom demonstrated his resolve to rid his body of this killer pain. With tears in his eyes he would
open his mouth, place the pliers on the tooth and begin to grimace falling to one knee and shaking his head with a
hopeless sigh of failure. Staggering to his feet again he would grasp his shaking throbbing head and try to muster
the courage for yet another attempt. Again the torturesume pain overwhelmed his determined effort and he
collapsed.
It had to be done.
A drink of booze and back he went.
Powerfully built like a gorilla with husky arms and meaty hands Dom had more than the average mans appendage
strength and next he would tearfully tell just how much force he exerted on that unbearably painful tooth that would
not budge.
Determination and focused resolve were depicted on Dom’s grimaced face as he next demonstrated how he again
took up the pliers and this time with tears in his eyes and a deep moan he acted out this tale of man overpowering
the insurmountable.
With a brief description of the amount of force he had applied to that unmovable tooth he then showed that this time
he would have to twist and break loose this pain inducing nemesis.
Staggering with pain and fighting this battle of determination Dom would drop to one knee, nearly faint away, regain
his resolve and again go back to this exhaustingly protracted mentally draining impossible task.
Alas sprawled out on his back and fainted dead away Dom’s Shakespearian production would leave his audience
weak, gasping and exhausted.
Among his long list of glib tongued and animated dynamic recitals Dom was at his best with Omar Khayyam and after
listening to his renditions we always wondered why Dom hadn’t pursued a different life to take advantage of his
incredible talents.
Hurricane Hole October 1974;
Jane and I had our boat Dursmirg at the St. Augustine City Yacht Pier following my appendectomy operation. It was
a good place for easy on and off of the vessel plus it was secure so Jane wouldn’t have to wrestle with anchors and
anchor lines.
We enjoyed a splendid week at the City Yacht Pier with many drop in visitors, something we had been isolated from
while swinging out at anchor.
I kept our smoke oven stoked continuously smoking fresh fish supplied by friends and our stay at the City Yacht Pier
turned into a gourmet eating extravaganza.
Several evenings the group aboard Dursmirg would swell to overflowing capacity when Dom Trakor would enthrall
the gathered guests by beating on his bongos and bellowing out Belafonte old time calypso 50s favorites.
Dom had a real talent to entertain and his calypso routine was a crowd pleaser with a standing ovation and lots of
loud applause.
As always, there is a fly in the ointment even here in this laid back utopia.
Sure enough a hurricane was headed our way and had St. Augustine in its cross hairs.
Hurricanes are big, strong and devastating but travel slowly giving the prudent person ample time to make
preparations for escape.
There is no time for last minute heroics or unplanned arrangements however once the storm is upon you.
Its lethal powers will crush and stomp out any unprotected human life or vulnerable manmade structures. Many times
even the best laid preparations are to no avail when a category five storm indiscriminatingly focuses Mother Nature’s
ponderous powers to overwhelm in seconds all that is beneath its oncoming irreversible deadly swath.
Well, having just been released from the hospital and my appendectomy surgery I was in no position to stand up to
the oncoming hurricane.
These are the storms that tip the playing field in favor of Mother Nature over little and nearly insignificant man.
Where to go?
What to do?
With out 20 ton floating home Dursmirg that had more than its share of vulnerable freeboard, we desperately
needed a very secure spot away from other vessels with no destructive tidal current flows.
To the rescue came our old friend Dom Trick-a-door.
Dom had just the spot for us and it was only ten miles away.
Dom was capable of doing good things for a friend and there he was at his very best!
In these circumstances time is of the utmost essence and so we immediately cast off our dock lines and headed
Dursmirg south to a waterfront land development named Treasure Beach that was partially developed.
I took the helm and Dom was the bar pilot.
By the time we finally pulled in off the Intracoastal Waterway and headed up the maze of freshly dredged canals the
winds had already piped up to a very brisk storm.
We arrived none too soon.
Dom directed us to the extreme furthest canal at the very end of the development amongst towering ancient live oak
trees that had obviously withstood many a hurricane’s devastating blast over their lifetimes. We were out in the
woods in a brand new dredged canal and had it all by ourselves.
Dom and his cronies did all of the heavy dock line pulling as I directed from the deck of Dursmirg.
In a half hour we had twelve stout lines tied off to the oak trees and anchors buried in the bushes. Three tie lines
led off from each side with three off our bow and another three of our stoutest anchors buried deeply off our stern.
We slept well and stayed a week in this very tranquil little serene sanctuary before taking departure for our annual
south Florida winter season get-a-way junket.
So, thank you so very much, dear old friend Dom!
Over the years we have had numerous get-togethers and very interesting encounters with Dom and Cofi.
Dom loved Jane’s homemade wines and pleaded with her to show him how to make his own.
Jane is always eager to help any interested person with any of the things that she has gained expertise in over the
years.
So, helping Dom make his own home made wine was a friendly gesture and Jane definitely had enough experience
at this point in time to make all of the necessary precautions necessary in order to assure a fine finished product.
First and foremost Jane stressed the impeccable cleanliness in every detail necessary with special instructions in
how to sterilize all the equipment and the bottles that the wine would ultimately be bottled in.
Recently Jane had been featured in the weekend edition of the St. Augustine Record newspaper. The subject of
that feature article was wine making from free Florida fruits that included; orange, prickly pear and coconut.
Jane had also experimented with just about every type of fruit to be found along the coast from the Georgia Sea
Islands to the southern Florida Keys.
Jane knew her stuff and everybody that ever had the opportunity to sample her product when visiting our Dursmirg
raved about her wine making abilities among other things like her superb culinary skills.
Eager Dom enthusiastically dove into this project and soon had a large caldron of wine brewing away in the cabin of
his New Bedford emitting a pleasantly odiferous aroma of fresh yeast commingled with pungent fruit.
It was lovely and Dom was very happy.
In less that a weeks time Dom was sported a long face and told Jane that her recipe wasn’t any good.
We went to investigate and sure enough the caldron of wine had now become a huge vat of vinegar.
Jane was no fool and instantly knew the exact reason for the vinegar outcome.
Upon questioning it immediately became apparent that inquisitive Dom was going to cheat just a little on the
production and sampled the brewing wine. He was the culprit contaminated it with bacteria from his own mouth when
he snuck in and spooned out samples.
It was in Dom’s nature to cheat and no matter how much Jane explained that there could be absolutely no
exceptions to the sanitary production of wine it was beyond Dom to comply and make the connection with
cleanliness, impeccable sanitation and his own personal honesty…he just couldn’t honestly help himself.
Anything that was not nailed down or locked up was fair game for Dom’s callous compassionless kleptomaniac
tendencies.
If he was hungry he had absolutely no compunction about raiding a crab trap no matter who it belonged to…even
ours.
Jane and I did have financial dealings with Dom and even bought a couple of surplus diesel engines together with
him.
We let him handle our money and he came through with our engine and even delivered it all the way up to
Daufuskie Island, South Carolina to our anchored out boat.
We were impressed with his persistence and so was the magistrate of the island who Dom traded his engine to for a
building lot on the island.
Ironically that deal may have been the very best investment that Dom had ever made.
If he still holds that lot it is now worth at least a thousand times the value of that engine.
I don’t think that Dom ever cheated us, not openly anyway.
Kippy Kimski: The third of the three Kimski brothers was stereotypically the proverbial social misfit carried to bazaar
extremes.
Oh, my god! “Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy” as he was notoriously known around St. Augustine may not take
the first prize for social misfit but he must at least be tied for that dubious outrageous distinction.
Described by our friend John Ryder, Kippy was his most brilliant student that John ever had in his high school social
studies classes.
Kippy Dippy was totally out of control from his earliest childhood.
Hyperactive Kippy Dippy early on demonstrated his complete disregard for all things of the establishment when he
had an affair with his eighth grade teacher while he was in eighth grade…of course it takes two to tango!
With apathetic adults…his parents shrugging off his scandalous vandals behavior somehow Kippy Dippy glided
through life with an absolutely remorseless disconnect to the consequences of his spur of the moment whimsical
whims that kept the whole town on guard.
Kippy Dippy got his jollies when it proved great fun to wreck his father’s business equipment. Racing the engine of
the fuel oil delivery truck until it was screaming and ready to fly apart then popping the clutch to do tire smoking
wheelies gave Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy a high that made him fly.
This brought his cannabis blitzed eyes into a star glazed exotic mental orgasm.
Somehow Kippy Dippy managed to rally his rag-tag tag-along co-conspirators no matter how flea brained some of
Kippy Dippy’s antiestablishment deviancy took him.
Well, well here it was as brazen as brass in full day light Kippy Dippy took yet another step into his world of pushing
the proverbial limits beyond all rhyme and reason.
At gun point along with some of his lackeys Kippy Dippy held up the St. Augustine sight seeing train…great fun just
like in the wild-west b-movies!
Witnesses? I guess so!
Not only a hundred or so passengers but also the tour train operator who knew Kippy Dippy on a first name basis.
Daddy tried to bail him out, but this time the shit that hit the fan stuck to the wall and shocked stoned out of control
Kippy Dippy did some hard time.
His first night out of the penitentiary Kippy Dippy got into a bar-room brawl with tire iron…break parole?
Yes, Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy knew how to do that too.
Kippy Dippy’s disconnected mental process led him into some pranks that were almost too bizarre to imagine.
What drug induced delirium could have taken his twisted and perverted remorseless mind to the level of this next
caper is unfathomable to me.
To imagine any kind of self-gratification to be derived from what prompted Kippy Dippy to catch a large rattle snake
and then remove its rattle and next place it under the seat of a friend’s car is taking social misfit to another plain of
consciousness.
This wasn’t enough of a caper to satisfy Kippy Dippy.
Next he pulled the same caper in a public bathroom of a local restaurant.
Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippy signed the guest book aboard our boat Dursmirg, 24 September, 1977 and here
is the note that accompanied his signature; “The craziest bastard in town”.
(There could be absolutely no dispute to his claim to fame!)
The father, Mr. Kimski, bought his kids, Brad and Kippy a 73 foot wooden shrimp trawler that was all ready to go out
and make some money with.
This represented a several hundred thousand dollar outlay of hard earned cash by a father that loved his kids no
matter what.
It wasn’t long and the lovely wooden vessel suffered from apathetic neglect and was rarely ever worked.
Kippy used to take the trawler off shore at night and change the engine oil, pumping it directly overboard because
like he jokingly used to say; “you never pollute after dark”. This is the only maintenance I ever heard them give to
that very expensive trawler.
Brad, Jerry and Kippy’s father was a prosperous businessman who gave the kids just about everything they ever
wanted and all that he had.
This likeable tend-to-business old father with the biggest heart in town was a chain smoking fanatic who finally did
himself in and he sadly died at a prematurely young age of throat cancer.
So, young demented Kippy Dippy the pot smoking hippie became a legend in his own time.
This is one of St. Augustine’s sightseeing trains leaving the, “fabled” Fountain of Youth and headed out onto
Magnolia Street which happens to be lined with oak trees.
The sightseeing trains are a great value for tourists because you can get on and off as many tines as you like and
they pass all of the interesting attractions plus the riders get a running narrative filled with humorous historical facts.
next chapter
