This is an interesting short story that has nothing at all to do with fishing, but I considerate worth telling before I forget about it...

Many years ago I was a Cape Coral police officer and assigned as the crime prevention officer in liason with the neighborhood watch program (a fine job by the way: five days a week and weekends off). Some member asked if we could establish a marine crime watch program and place a sign on our boats and travel around patrolling our 400 miles of canals, thereby frightening off any would be miscreants. The idea was passed up the ranks to the police chief and came back approved. All the interested crime prevention sailors received a "crime watch sign to be mounted on their boats.

As the head of this program I was given a sign to mount on my boat, the "Hammerhead," which was built like a mini tug boat and was well known in Cape Coral because of it's unusual configuration. One of my many perks of being a Cape Coral police officer was permission to take your radio home with you. One saturday afternoon Tucker and I were down at my dock in the back yard working on the Hammerhead and listening to police calls coming in when an emergency message came over the air: "an automobile has run off the retaining wall at the gas pumps behind the yacht club and passengers are trapped inside!" Both Tucker and I jumped into the boat and raced off toward the yacht club, which was just minutes away from my house. Just a few minutes after the first call came through, the radio blasted that the people were out of the car and were being pulled out of the water. The blood was rushing in both Tucker and I, and we were going to continue to see what happened.

As we rushed into the canal we were motioned to slow down and I made a sweeping left turn and wound up banging against the sea wall crime patrol sign in full view of the now many onlookers. A short distance away from the half submerged auto, Tucker and I remained in the boat and watched as a tow truck pulled the car out of the water. Happily there were no injuries. As the crowd began dispersing I tried to start the engine -- err,err,err,err -- the engine just would not start. As the leaving pedestrians were passing by our boat I could just figure what they were thinking in their minds, "crime patrol boat needs help, ha-ha!"

Not overly concerned, I simply asked Tucker to walk home to our house and pick up another battery I had as a reserve and ask mama to drive back here with some tools. It was at this time that my quiet grandson asked me a question -- "papa, do you have a paper bag?" I replied, "yes, but why would you want one now?" My eloquent grandson replied, "to hide my face in so nobody recognizes me!"