Joe Burke’’s Last Stand

I was born in Greenwich Village, New York City, but raised, mostly, by my grandparents in Woodstock, a small town in the Catskill mountains. Midway through sophomore year at Hamilton College, an inner voice said, ＂Get out!＂ It seemed crazy, but I knew it was the right thing to do. A fraternity brother told me I’d have no trouble finding work on the shrimp boats in Key West. I hitchhiked south. In Key West, I walked to the harbor and asked for a job on the first boat I found that had anyone on board. The captain said, ＂Shrimp season’s over, kid.＂ I think he felt sorry for me. He pointed to a rusty shrimper across the water. ＂He might take you.＂ I picked up my bag and ran around to the other jetty, arriving just as the boat began to pull away. A man on deck was doing something with a cable. He wore a sweatshirt and had a two-day growth. ＂I’m looking for work,＂ I shouted over the engine. ＂You a winch man?＂ The winch occupied a large part of the deck, a complicated assembly of giant gears and levers. The strip of water below my feet widened. It was jump or forget it. I had a vision of winching the boat upside down in the Gulf. I shook my head and walked to the Southern Cross Hotel, a wooden building with white peeling paint and a sign declaring, The Southernmost Hotel in the United States. I wrote it down in a notebook and have been writing ever since. Along the way I served in the Air Force, earned a degree in computer science from the University of Hawaii, married twice, and raised children. The adventures, the loves and betrayals, the teachers, the lessons---they are in my stories and poems, where, like all writers, I have tried to make of my deeper bio something worthwhile.