Family Bonds Inspire

My great uncle Rawlan ‘Tank’ Nelson, was a six foot four, 240 pound longshoreman. No surprise they called him Tank. What would you expect a giant dockworker who’d worked in the port since 1951 to do in his ‘spare’ time? Brawl in bars? Play football with his buddies or break people’s legs who didn’t pay their loansharks back? Our family might’ve expected shenanigans like that from his father, my great great grandpa Ludwig, but not Tank.

When Tank wasn’t longshoring, he was reviewing films. It started out as a fun thing. He’d watch movies and chat with the locals about what he liked and why. More and more people would ask him what to watch, so he hung a chalkboard out of his apartment window for passersby to get a quick glance of his top picks. This guy went from joining the Navy to dockworker—then his chalkboard movie reviews turned him into a local sensation—bringing about his own regular guest column called Think Tank that he wrote for local newspapers. He was featured in The Los Angeles Times, and appeared on a couple television shows. Exciting stuff because it was so different from the port-and-sea world that I knew.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t much care for politics, but I truly relished listening to my grandpa Harry, a conservative Republican, arguing with my very liberal great uncle Tank. These brothers were so opposing in their personalities and viewpoints, it was fascinating to watch them yell and scream at each other—and it wasn’t because they were a couple of loud longshoreman—my grandpa was almost deaf. If I were visiting my grandparents after school and Tank was around, I turned off the television because the ensuing arguments in the other room would be way more interesting. My favorite exchange between these two was when my grandpa yelled that “Democrats give us crumbs” and Tank hollered back “I’d rather have crumbs than nothing!” All of a sudden they segued into a conversation about oxtail soup and how good it was. My teenage brain imagined them eating a dirty, smelly cow tail and the two became brothers again as they tried to convince me to try the soup one day.

Although I have yet to try the soup, Tank was one of my heroes. As a fourth generation longshoreman, it would be so easy for me to count my blessings, keep the great job I have, and look no further. But like my great uncle Tank, I love to write. I also love life, the joy of laughing, and the bonds that turn strangers into newfound family.

Families fight, families disagree, yet at the end of the day there’s a bond there that’s unbreakable. People say blood’s thicker than water, but there’s a lot to be said about the powerful bonds created by the salty sea in the veins of sailors and longshoreman. And these are the very bonds that I’ve forged between Laura and her crew in the fictional world of The Pirate Queens’ series.