The Day The Son Of Man, Jesus, Saved A Wretch Like Me-I Once Was Lost But Now Am Found, Once Was Blind But Now I See- The Strange Saga Of One “Fallen” Allan Jackson     

By Bart Webber

This is a story that Allan Jackson, the benighted young subject of this short piece, would not tell anyone in a million years especially to those old tars who lived and died by the barnacled seas. (It was not by accident that among his first homeland the sea thoughts landed him smack dab in the middle of an old sailors’ home long out of use since the kind of tars that wound up there were from the “men of iron and ships of wood” age and his first death memories were formed via the old sailors’ graveyard located several hundred yards down the sea road from the Snug Harbor Elementary School where he nestled first with such thoughts.) The only reason I know about it, about th story not the other stuf which every guy knew from six years on is that I was actually there on the beach at Nollie’s Point when all the action occurred and although I was sworn to secrecy some sixty years later I am taking the statute of limitation claim to hell, taking the veil off.   

First you have to know, and regular readers presumably do know, that Allan Jackson former editor here for many years and now a senior contributing editor (which means he can write whatever he pleases whenever it pleases him from fifty words to five thousand and nobody, maybe not even God would cut one precious word without his okay) has gone on and on mercilessly about his love of the sea, the ocean, what he calls our homeland, the mother of us all. What any discerning reader would note though is that while he has had some ravishing descriptions of the furies of the seas when unleashed by whatever demon gods’ angers stir them, and fury abated when tepidly coming to shore as well that he has to my knowledge never actually described being on say a boat, at least not some small sailing craft and I don’t know about steamships, or having dunked himself in the surf on a hotter than hell day. And there is a reason for that going back those sixty years just mentioned.    

See all kidding aside, all fears aside as well Allan is deathly afraid of the seas, afraid for a very good reason although not a totally sane one. He almost drown at Nollie’s Point one fine day when he was eight (as I was). I can’t vouch for whether before this incident Allan was much of a swimmer, I would think not given the bone-headed way he dealt with the seas that day. But that hotter than hell sunny day was not a day for kings, or Allan. Somehow he got in his eight- year old mind that he would “ride the waves” on an old washed-up log as the tide was coming in to see how fast he could come ashore. I had seen the log and frankly to this day thought nothing of it, although I should have.  Should have realized that I would not have attempted such a feat and I was a pretty fair swimmer.

To the plot though. Allan rolled the log into the wash and hung on for a while until the log was heading across the point to a place where he would be over his head. That decision is the key because somehow during that period when he was over his head he decided that he would let go of the log, would try to swim to shore. Fatal, or almost fatal. Somehow the surf started coming up, the water got green and edgy meaning that it would be serious work to get to shore. Allan (as he told me later) went down once, then he yelled out to me, told me to get somebody because he was drowning, couldn’t make it to shore. Fortunately in the height of summer there was a lifeguard there. Not some muscle-bound college guy or slinky college girl with connections to get some summer dough but a young mother who had her daughter in tow. In any case after I screamed bloody murder she swam out to Allan (who said he went down twice and did not think he was coming up the third time. He did since she saved him.  

The minute he got to shore (I am not sure he needed to be pumped out I think not) he swore me to secrecy which I have kept until now. Here is a bit of irony, a bit of why I am spilling the beans, snitching as old as I am and as dedicated to the code of silence as anybody.  A few weeks ago I was at a class reunion and started talking to one of the fellow classmates whom I had not known in high school except she was a Squaw Rock girl and hence out of reach for Acre boys. I mentioned Allan Jackson’s name whom she remembered not for whatever publishing skills he possessed but because she had been on the beach that day when Allan almost drowned. Apparently Allan had given his name to the worthy young mother lifeguard in her hearing. She confessed to me that she had known all about Allan’s situation for as long as I had. See she was the little girl in tow while her mother did lifeguard duty on Nollie’s Point that day.