Ramblings With Ron: Origin Of The Bowie Knife Salute

Drywall Holes, Bush Pilot Knife Selfies, and Banana Blasphemy

There's enough banana-ammo here for a fit of epic proportions!

For those of you that haven't read a Ron Rambling before, let me begin with a little backstory. My father is a bullbuck in a freshly constructed logging camp on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. A bullbuck is the manager of all the timber fallers in a logging camp. Basically Dad is in charge of a bunch of people not known for their consistent natures. Tonight's conversation with my Pa really illustrated the type of behavioral scenario that was not that uncommon in the places that I grew up in.

Mom recently mailed Dad a cell phone that would work in camp, for it has been radio silence around here in the conversation department as my Dad's Verizon phone wouldn't work on the wilderness side of the island. His new AT&T phone works well, this I can report, for we are back to our almost daily chats. Dad started off our Mother's Day visit with:

"I just wanted to call my mom and wish her a Happy Mother's Day," Dad sighed into the phone and quickly added, "There was a Bowie knife pulled on me today."

"That's nice, Dad," I replied with polite and thinly veiled curiosity, "Do continue."

"Well," he started his tale, "It all began with F threatening D's girlfriend in the cookhouse."

Apparently D hadn't taken kindly to his lady friend being verbally assaulted and had provoked an altercation in front of the cookhouse in her honor. The end result of that interaction was D ending up with a tooth missing from his dentures and an almost broken jaw. My interest was piqued, yet I wasn't overly shocked, as this kind of scene is unfortunately common in logging camps.

Dad continued, "Then we found out that F was out driving the brand new log shovel until ten o'clock last night and damaged it."

Well, at this point I figured ol' F was definitely fired, and that fact was indeed relayed as the next item in our conversation. What I didn't expect is what F did after his firing commenced.

Dad began laughing and said, "He went into the Roaming Gnome's room and wiped it clean (swiped everything off of every shelf), and get this, Sis! He had a banana and threw it on the floor and stomped it into the carpet!"

At this point in the story, that bit of banana buffoonery was so unexpected that I burst into a series of guffaws that had the contagious laughter effect on my family. I was laughing so hard at the visual image of a grown man squishing a banana into the carpet of a man that he didn't even bunk with, that I might have cried a bit.

Source
This was the first thing that popped into my mind as I pondered the banana-smashing scene.

"Dad! What does that even mean?" I gasped when I could somewhat breathe again, "How is squished tropical fruit an insult, or is it some sort of code?"

Dad was really cracking up now, and choked out, "It gets better."

How could it get better than banana squishing was beyond me, but then dad spit out,

"Next was the Bowie knife."

"What?" I choked in reply.

"I was walking with him to the office to get his check when the guy pulls out a fourteen inch knife and told me, 'I ain't postal, Ron.'" Dad replied.

"Um...What?" I queried in return.

"I don't know, but I calmly told him that was good and took the bar wrench out of my pocket." Dad delivered this unsettling bit of the tale with a bit more seriousness.

"As I stood on the office porch waiting for him to get his check I heard this bit of noise coming from the office and didn't think anything of it, but then I checked and that guy had punched a hole in the brand new drywall just above the office lady's head." Dad spoke this line with a bit of disbelief.

At this point of the tale, aside from randomly chuckling about the banana thing, I was starting to get more and more horrified at the absurdity of it all. The whole thing sounded like a complete psychotic break. Dad went on:

"Well, we got a plane for him, fast, so we could get him out of camp, and a short while later the office lady got a text from the pilot. It was a selfie."

"What? While he was flying with the messed up guy?" I pleaded for data.

"Yep," Dad responded, "The pilot sent a picture of himself holding the Bowie knife, F had pulled it on the pilot and the air flight artist took it from him and sent us an in flight selfie with the knife in his hand."

Okay, this is not a Bowie knife, it is the bayonet off of our M1 Garand, but it was the biggest knife I could find!

The absurdity of the entire situation really struck me, and both Dad and I started laughing so hard that we couldn't talk for a bit. In reality, the whole scenario was quite sad and somewhat dangerous for the camp's inhabitants. When I think about Dad having a knife pulled on him by someone who clearly needed help, the whole idea is a bit disconcerting, but then again we have lived out our lives frequently experiencing situations like the above described one.

"You know what the worst part is now though, Sis?" Dad stated as we were getting ready to hang up for the night.

"What's that, Dad?" I replied.

"Every time I walk by any guy in camp, they pull out their pocket knives and raise them in salute." he chuckled in mock offense.

I guess I should be happy that they weren't smashing bananas into the ground as he walked by.

It is important to note that I am not mocking the severity of the poor F's behavior. The whole situation was disturbing and uncomfortable for everyone involved. In my family we use humor to help us process and come down from intense situations. Laughing at the absurd bits helps us to decompress a bit after going through trauma. In the end I am glad that no one was too seriously injured, and I hope that F finds some peace, or at least switches his fit throwing arsenal solely to bananas instead of a Bowie knife.

And as always, unless otherwise cited, all of the images in this post were taken by the author on her not on the ground iPhone.