Ed Zero

 Jim Cuming & Ken Hildenbrand 'Lost at Sea'

 One summer morning, in 1966, we headed north across a wide part of Long Island Sound, and toward the south shore of Connecticut, in a 15 foot open fiberglass boat, not knowing that we would become dangerously "lost at sea" by nightfall. It was a sunny day, with a strong breeze from south to north, warm, clear, light and free, and a great day to go exploring. My best friend Ken and I were both in junior high on summer vacation, suntanned very dark brown; sun bleached blondes, lithe and trim. After checking to see if there were any girls on West Meadow Beach, whose mothers would allow them to go with us, and there were none, we headed off, bouncing over the waves as fast as we could go, speedily full throttle, as usual. It almost two hours to cross the 20 miles of the Sound. We saw the Bridgeport - Port Jefferson ferry; Middle Ground lighthouse; fishing boats; seagulls; and finally arrived at the mouth of the Housatonic River. After exploring a few miles upriver, and playing Tarzan off a river tree swing, we began to hit submerged objects and warily decided to turn back, stopping at a marina for gasoline.

 The sun crept lower in the afternoon as we headed home, hitting unexpected headwinds. We hadn't noticed the high winds on the way over because we had been travelling with them. Now heading back south the wind and spray was hard in our faces, slowing down the boat's progress. When we were almost home, about 1700-2000 yards from shore, the engine sputtered and stopped. We looked at each other in shock. This was not good. We had run out of gas. And we were drifting eastward quickly toward the North Atlantic with the outgoing tide. Ooops. Oh-oh. Running out of gas before, often, was an inconvenience - yes, but never a really big deal as we were usually within 50 yards of any shore and we could walk to get some.

 Ken said he was going to swim to shore, and get gas or tell folks what happened, and send help. I contemplated swimming with him, and was not sure I could make it. I then tried to talk him out of it, after considering what could happen. I would have been responsible for anything happening to him and wonder about that for the rest of my life. And if something happened to me he would be blamed. He was about to dive over. He knew he could make it. I knew he could make it. It was getting darker. We were quickly floating out to sea. Lights on the high cliffs twinkled.

 Ken laughed and said, "I can make it!"

 "I know you can make it, but what about me?" I asked apprehensively. "What if I drift out to sea in the dark with all those big ships not paying attention to who they are running over?"

 Ken would have been responsible for my demise, possibly, or I could have been responsible for his demise if I let him go, or even if he forced the issue and did it on his own.

 "What if you don't make it?" I asked, thinking something unexpected might happen. "I will be blamed for letting you go." Anything could happen. He reluctantly and finally got it. "Okay, but we really need to stop floating out to sea." I think we were both deeply relieved that he did not attempt the swim. Plan B was to catch a lobster pot buoy floating quickly by, and use its anchor line to the trap below to stop our boat quick drifting. Ken jumped in with 30 feet of our boat's rope and tried unsuccessfully for 20 minutes to catch some of these buoys floating by. They were white empty upside down plastic bleach bottles, tied to 300 feet of line below to a heavy rectangular wood and wire 4x2x2 foot box trap for lobsters. We drifted fast. It got darker.

 My turn to catch one was scary. Swimming away in very deep dark water was spooky. But after a few attempts I luckily caught one. The bad thing was that, as I held onto both the buoy and the rope back to our boat, with two different hands, I immediately sank down about 10 yards under the water, as the boat was much heavier than an empty bleach bottle and changed the angle of the line to the bottom. There I was, under the surface, holding my breath and waiting, and waiting, and waiting to be pulled in by Ken 30 feet way, except it wasn't happening fast enough. The current and wind were pushing hard against Ken's efforts. As I held my breath longer I noticed that it was so quiet and still down there, 10 yards down, somehow surreal. Also it was somehow very nice, like home, somehow. Peaceful even. Not windy. Very quiet. Wait a minute! I could die like this. I desperately kicked toward the surface with great difficulty because my arms were immobilized holding both ropes, and barely broke the surface, and screamed at smiling Ken,

 "Pull Faster!" and took a huge breath, disappearing quickly beneath the surface, dragged down, down deeper, once again, into the strange beautiful quiet of our emergency. "Hold on." I told myself. But it was very hard to hold on, taking all my strength. The boat was heavy. The lobster pot was not moving. I was stuck down there. I had to hold on and save us. If I let go we could disappear forever. Who knows what might happen in the dark on the open ocean in busy sea lanes. And there is that strange beautiful quality down here, again, slightly hypnotic. When my lungs gave out I kicked mightily without arm strokes, and struggled up to the surface, but only to look desperately at the still pulling Ken, saying nothing and gurgle and gasp for air before being quickly sucked under again, under the loud wind, under the rising waves, into loud silence, peace.

 "I am going to die like this," I thought naturally without worry. I must hold on. Eons later, just before I was about to let go, Ken pulled me in, hugely gasping for air. "We'll be safe now," I thought. Well, sort of, "safer" at least. Our seaward drift was stopped. By morning a lobsterman would hustle over to see who's stealing his lobsters. All we had to do was wait until dawn, which was to become a mini torture as we would become incredibly thirsty. We did not have any water. We also had eaten potato chips. As darkness descended the breeze over the cool water was like air-conditioning. With only shorts and Tees we were slightly freezing by 9 pm. The sea was calmer, and a huge wild lightning rainstorm was happening back north in Connecticut 10 miles away. What if it came toward us? Little did we know that Ken's father, who was a commodore in the Stony Brook Yacht Club, would shortly be calling about 10 friends who would be heading north in their 10 large yachts, across L.I. Sound as fast as they could go, into a huge lightning storm, looking for two young lost souls all night into the early morning. What if they had lost a yacht because of us, or worse? They sailed right into that lightning storm for hours. OMG. Ooops.

 We had a small transistor radio and the then popular song that came on, over and over, all night long was the Beatles "Yellow Submarine." We finally turned it off and crept under the gently bouncing bow, wrapping ourselves up in the heavy canvas boat cover to keep warm.

 All of a sudden an hour later a small tanker ship rumbled up 30 yards away, chewing up other nearby lobster pot's lines with a huge 15 foot propeller half out of the water. What?!? THAT SHIP IT COULD HAVE HIT US, and should have seen our small light, and DIDN'T! Our situation was now more dangerous. As the tanker moved off toward NYC, I imagined us crashed and chewed up after it hit us. It was a while before I went sleep, wondering about the next close call. Early next morning here comes the lobsterman racing to stop us stealing his lobsters. Slowing down and circling around us he yells, "Oh, you two must be the ones on the radio all night!" The local Radio station had been giving us our first 15 minutes of fame. We asked him for water because we had been desperately parched for 14 hours. No, he wouldn't do that for us, wryly smiling. He called the coast guard and left us sitting there. What? Thanks. We are dying!

 The 30 ft. coast guard cutter showed up a couple hours later, and we were even thirstier. "Please give us some water, we are dying!!!" Nope! They were wryly smiling also. What's up with that? Were we being punished? We both suffered more directly, getting ill and dizzy breathing their diesel exhaust as they towed us back to PJ harbor. They didn't even let us on board! We had drifted, surprisingly, quite far away from home, and it took two hours to get back. Meeting us at the dock, Ken's mom looked like she had been in a war zone all night, and she was NOT happy, and we didn't get any water right then from her either. But we were happy to be back. We thought she should be smiling and happy to see us alive. Somehow she was NOT happy. She dropped me at home after a very silent ride, and my grandmother looked worse than Ken's mom. Gram said "I almost died of a heart attack." She went right to sleep at noonish and woke up at 8pm, and was out of kilter for days. She told me not to go out, but I went to a kids dance and was very popular. Kenny was grounded. I was some sort of star for being on radio. One well-proportioned gal took "celebrity me" out back for kissing. That was interesting.

 Going to Connecticut again, years later, was a slower and safer ride, after we had purchased 50-50 for $100 and refurbished a 26 foot "unsinkable" 1944 WWII Navy "Lugger." We named her "Scavenger" and she was slow and strong. We had grown out of a love for speed. In 1968 when I went off to Texas A&M I signed over my half-ownership to Ken and he kept "Scavenger" for years, even living on her to save rent money in his 30s. When I came back for our 10 year High School reunion, I slept on it with him and he softly shared that he had conceived a child, a girl, with a black gal that he didn't see anymore. I was surprised, amazed and somehow happy for him having a daughter. I had no children myself by then, but had been married and divorced twice by 28. I sank the boat accidentally the next morning, and Ken's belongings floated around Setauket harbor. What are best friends for? But the boat itself didn't sink, just floated on the surface, unsinkable. The next day, after I said I was sorry, and deposited his ex-girlfriend with him, I left the country and did not come back for 3 years, studying Sufism in many French Alpine summers and living the rest of the years near Stonehenge in an intentional community of from 5 to 25 persons seasonally, while restoring an ancient building, a former Abbey, that also was a healing and crafts center. Ken and I wrote from time to time. He easily got over the sinking of Scavenger.

 Shortly before our 20th HS reunion, Ken died mysteriously, perhaps an accidental drug overdose, or whatever, no one would say. His mom didn't wish to talk much about it when I went to visit her during the 1988 reunion. Toward the middle of our conversation I unknowingly dropped a bomb by innocently asking, "How is Kenny's daughter?" being curious to meet her.

 His mom's mouth dropped open, "What?" she yelled, in that hoarse high pitch of hers. She had never heard that before. First time. OMG. Ken had apparently told no one else. His mom couldn't, wouldn't and didn't believe it, then, or even ten years later in 1998 when I brought the issue up again, indelicately but dutifully, as Ken's best friend. In the interim she had called Ken's sister, who also didn't believe it. Ken's two sisters did not have kids and one sister and Ken's mom have now passed, as did his banker father much earlier, so Ken's only child has only an aunt left on her father's side. It makes me sad that there is a tall, big boned, good looking black woman, born probably around 1974-77ish, who might, and perhaps should, inherit the estate. I tried to get New York State to let me check birth records, but no, I am not family. Perhaps the birth mom never wrote down Ken's name as the father, nor wrote Hildenbrand. Ken's daughter has an Aunt, and her Aunt might have nieces or nephews never met, and vice versa. I would recognize Ken's daughter's face and tall body structure. What is her name and where is she? I could tell her stories about her father. He had no reason to lie to me about having a child. We were best friends catching up, talking softly before sleep on our boat one night in July 1978.

 When last visiting Scavenger, she was stored next to Ken's barn, later to be donated as a school's recess plaything, destroyed by the kids in a few years. I took a memento from her, a large brass cleat used for tying up to docks and buoys, now a treasured possession. Today I remember Ken and our outrageous, sometimes dangerous, and usually wonderfully exciting times of moving from teenage boyhood into early manhood. The sea, the sand, the beaches, the sun, racing the wind, becoming lifeguards, track and field, risking our lives, growing up. I will always remember Kenny smiling, young and tall and fit, standing, driving our boat. And, once, we were lost at sea.