The Galleon Hunter
This next story is about Arthur McKee, a Bridgeton Legend unlike any other. McKee was a real life treasure hunter who was born and raised in Bridgeton. In fact, the author of the piece which appears below calls McKee the "Grandfather of Treasure Salvage." This story is actually part of a larger work---Robert "Frogfoot" Weller's fascinating book about McKee called Galleon Hunt. Frogfoot has been gracious enough to allow me to reprint portions of his book here on Bridgeton Legends. We're going to start with Chapter II of Galleon Hunt (entitled "McKee's Early Years"). In the weeks to come, I plan on including other portions of Weller's book on McKee (notably, a piece written by Capt. McKee himself entitled "Survival on Las Tortugas").
About McKee, Frogfoot writes: "He gave America its first look at treasure being recovered from an old Spanish galleon and was able to show young people, and old alike, that sunken treasure was not only a serious business, but one filled with fun and excitement. He created an American dream, a dream that anyone could strike it rich on the trail of gold doubloons and pieces of eight. Like an Irish leprechaun, he chased every treasure rainbow that somehow found its way into his life. And he led the life he always wanted, one filled with the excitement of the hunt, one with a golden condor waiting for him...just over the next reef."
I want to thank Robert "Frogfoot" Weller for his gracious permission to publish portions of Galleon Hunt here on Bridgeton Legends. Anyone interested in purchasing Galleon Hunt or learning more about Frogfoot can do so by visiting http://www.1715fleet.com/1715fleetbooksbyrobertweller.htm
So, without further adieu, I present Chapter II of Robert "Frogfoot" Weller's Galleon Hunt...
McKee's Early Years
Arthur McKee was born November 2, 1910, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, a small, not so sleepy community in the southwestern corner of the state. The nearness of the Delaware Bay---and the Cohansee River flowing along the city limits---provided a made to order setting for youthful hihjinks, if a young man were so inclined. Young McKee was so inclined. He had energy that seemed to mount up and ride off in all directions. The boy groups in town always gathered around young McKee for ideas on how to get into trouble, or out of it.
Art played high school football until he tore the cartilage in his left knee, an injury that would plague him throughout his life. It would almost cost him his life on an obscure island in the Caribbean.
A local doctor operated on the knee, but it was in the days before much was known about athletic knees and the arthroscopic surgery that now mends them. In his case the operation made the situation worse, and his knee and leg began to atrophy. He visited a local osteopath, who treated his injury and did his best to strengthen he limb with exercise. His advice to Art: “Swimming is the best therapy you can possibly give that knee.”
Young McKee needed no further encouragement. He applied for the lifeguard job at Sunset Beach, a local summer center of activity for the younger crowd, and was able to swim to his heart’s content. He kept the job after graduating from Bridgeton High and, along with other odd jobs, he remained a local spark plug.
In 1933 a Florida hurricane swept up the coast, aiming its fury at the New England coastline. South Jersey was inundated by the torrential downpour that followed, and the Cohansee River overflowed her banks. Two oyster schooners broke their moorings, and the rush of water carried them downstream, where they took out the bridge at the end of town.
It was about the same time that young McKee and a buddy decided to take a canoe down the rapids as well. The current was like an express train, and it was great fun until their canvas-covered birch canoe hit the broken pilings in the middle of the river. It broke in two, sending the two young men into the swirling, muddy Cohansee. Even as they swam ashore they were laughing at what a great ride it had been.
The hurricane had a side effect; it dried up he lake at Sunset Beach as the waters receded. Art’s job was now a “mud guard”---as the local papers put it---because the lake had become nothing more than a large, oozy flat.
The city had hired a diver and a barge to repair the bridge, so Art soon made friends with this man who obviously enjoyed the water as much as he did. As a means of introduction, he mentioned that he was the local lifeguard. The diver replied that, being a good swimmer, he should try this deep sea diving outfit. “It’s a different world down there.” But even as Art was agreeing, the diver went on to say that having insurance and his parent’s permission was first priority before even trying on the hard hat. Both seemed pretty impossible at the time, so Art applied for and got the job as line tender.
Each day he would dress the diver, start the compressor and make sure it ran smoothly all day long, then watch for line signals to lower various tools down where the work was being done. At the end of the day it was his job to wash the heavy canvas suit down with fresh water and hang it up to dry.
The forty-pound lead shoes were always covered with mud and had to be scrubbed thoroughly. During the rest breaks, the diver would sit on the edge of the barge and spin stories to Art about the various jobs he had been on and about the accidents that always stimulated an audience. He was told that once the air compressor wasn’t turned on, and the diver was lowered to over 150 feet. When he was finally brought to the surface, the diver had been squeezed like jelly into the cavity of his helmet.
Another time, the chin dump-valve, the valve that a diver regulated with his chin to dump the excel air from his suit, was stuck in the closed position. The tender on the surface kept pumping air to the diver, and soon he shot toward the surface like a hot-air balloon. The closer to the surface he got, the more the air expanded and the larger the suit inflated. By the time he came out of the water like a bloated whale, his arms and legs were sticking straight out from his body. The sudden rush to the surface caused the diver to have the bends…and other complications.
The there were the stories of large, toothy fish that the diver liked to tell all his young audiences, always including an octopus or two. No doubt the stories had a lasting impression on McKee, but not once did it ever dampen his desire to try the diving suit.
His opportunity came one Saturday morning. As a ritual each Friday night, the diver would take his weekly paycheck and drink dinner with it. His hangover always lasted well into Sunday, so the barge was always empty every weekend. Art got one of his buddies to dress him in the 191-1/2 pounds of lead shoes, weight belt, and brass helmet. He explained about keeping the compressor running at all costs, and to watch that his life line and air line didn’t get fouled in the bridge abutment or under the barge.
The friend then helped Art to the diving ladder, a sort of shuffling process because Art could barely lift each foot to take a step. The suit was extremely heavy on his young shoulders, but the challenge was there, and he was determined to see it through.
There were moments of misgivings as he climbed down the ladder, but the suit seemed lighter as soon as he entered the water. As he slipped beneath the surface, someone turned out the lights on him. It was inky black in the Cohansee River. He couldn’t see in any direction, and there was sudden panic as his buddy continued to lower him, deeper and deeper. There was no way but down because he had forgotten to tell his partner on the surface about “hand signals.”
With pressure building on his eardrums, his feet finally struck bottom some thirty feet below. It wasn’t exactly solid bottom because the Cohansee mud had collected there over many years, so Art sort of oozed into the bottom. Before he could take a step, he was up to his knees in mud. More panic as he pulled one foot out and tried to take a step, then pulled the other one out behind him. It was pitch black and he had satisfied that curiosity. Now he had had enough and wanted to come back up.
He knew that the diver worked the valves on the side of the helmet to put air into the suit and start the rise to the surface, but which valve…and how much air? He now began to remember all the stories that the diver had related to him about diving accidents, and he suddenly realized the predicament he was in. He didn’t want to take the chance of cutting all the air off, nor of pumping too much air in and end up floating over the city of Bridgeton on the end of an air hose for all his friends to see.
Finally, he made the decision to walk his way to the side of the river, if he could figure out which direction that was. Slowly leaning into the current, he knew that the river bank was somewhere to his right. So, carefully picking up one foot and then the other, he made some progress. Soon the oozy mud in the center of the channel gave way to a little firmer footing, and he knew that he was going in the right direction. But it as slow going.
It seemed as though he had been underwater for hours. Gradually, he was able to reach the edge of the channel, but now he faced a new problem. The bank was steep and slick, and he couldn’t get a footing to climb up! Art was getting tired now, and it was difficult for him to think his way through this new crisis.
Suddenly he felt himself being pulled, bodily, up the steep bank. Soon the black midnight of the muddy bottom turned to a hazy brown. The next thing he knew he was being dragged through the weeds that bordered the river’s edge by a group of men that his buddy had solicited to help him get Art back to the surface. His buddy had seen that Art was trying to reach the side of the river, and he knew he couldn’t pull him up by himself.
A group of spectators had gathered that Saturday morning to watch this young diver on the bottom, and they wound up dragging him to safety. The two young men spent the rest of the day cleaning the mud off the suit and getting their story straight in case the diver should ask questions about why the suit was still wet. It was a lesson that McKee would not soon forget.
It was also a summer that McKee would not forget for another reason. He met, and fell in love with, an eighteen year old local beauty. It was the love of his life, and before the summer was over, they were married. When his wife first let him know that a child was on the way, McKee was ecstatic. His head was in the clouds, and everything seemed so much brighter and simpler then…a world full of sunshine.
How quickly that evaporated when, in childbirth, his young wife died. Art named his new daughter Phyllis and tried to pick up the threads of his life. Her grandparents had other ideas. After a short court battle, they were awarded custody of the daughter. Art was allowed meager visitation rights, and Phyllis grew up hardly knowing her father at all. He would watch from a distance as she was walked by her grandmother near he playground. He was heartbroken.
In a life that had been so carefree, there was this sudden realization of how tragic life can sometimes be. He decided to leave Bridgeton, and the words of his osteopath now came through loud and clear. His knee still hurt, and he now walked with a noticeable limp. The only place that he could swim throughout the whole year was sunny Florida and, before long, he was headed south.
Arthur McKee never looked back until he reached Homestead, Florida, at the head of the Florida Keys. Here the palm trees lined the center of Main Street, the air seemed a little cleaner, and the rain, when it fell, gave everything a fresher smell. The people seemed as friendly as they were back in Bridgeton---possibly a little more laid-back---and Art was immediately accepted.
He had gotten his easy smile back. As an ex-lifeguard, he first searched out the city pool, only to find it in a sad state of disrepair. The bottom had been leaking, so the city had drained it some time before. There had been no one to take an interest until Art McKee came to town. He played the banjo and soon was able to organize a small group of musicians that began to play at weddings and benefits for donations to the “pool fund.”
Before long they had enough money to repair the pool, fill it, and open for business. The locals found in McKee someone they thought could bet their city recreational program together, so they gave him the job as city recreational manager. This meant chief lifeguard as well, and he was back to his swimming routine.
He saved his money and was soon able to buy a used hard hat diving rig in Miami. Everyone who spent time at the pool was quick to describe the crystal-clear waters of the Keys and the great myriad of fish that lived in the reefs there. He had to see for himself. It wasn’t long before his weekends were spent in slow motion, walking the bottom in twenty to thirty feet of water. It was, indeed, a whole new world for him, certainly a far cry from the muddy Cohansee.
Here the bottom around the reefs was white sand and the water was crystal clear. Some days he could see well over 200 feet in all directions, and with the helmet and bubbles, this new apparition was a natural attraction for fish. Whenever he was on the bottom he would be surrounded by a circus of sea life. Fish of all sorts would nuzzle his faceplate, peering in at this new stranger, or playing fish fantasy among the bubbles that expanded as they neared the surface. And these creatures were everything that everyone said they were. But soon there was something more exciting to Art.
He found himself exploring some of the old shipwrecks that line the reefs facing the Gulf Stream. Many were plotted on charts and were easy to find. Others he would stumble onto as he walked the bottom. No one had ever spent this much time on the bottom along the reefs because it was before the advent of the “aqua-lung.” The great explosive invasion of skin divers to the Keys was still many years away.
As he slowly walked his way around the debris of these once-proud ships, he would spot large sections of copper pipe, now turned a bright green color by long immersion in salt water. Brass fittings sometimes shone brightly, but often they too wore a green patina. Before long he began tying a line around his valuable metal and hauling it aboard his small boat. It surprised him how much money the scrap brought in at the reclamation yards along the Miami River. Soon he was able to purchase a larger boat and bring in scrap iron as well…not as valuable perhaps, but there certainly was a lot more of that littering the bottom than the copper and brass he searched for. Art was enjoying life again.
His love life took a turn for the better as he met, and soon married, a local Homestead beauty. For the next two-and-a-half years he walked a tightrope, doing the best to keep the home fires burning and still spend his spare time out on the reefs. He had this insatiable curiosity about shipwrecks along the edge of the Gulf Stream.
Soon, his son Wayne was born, and Art became a model father. But, as he worked to provide for the family, it meant more time out on the reefs, searching out the scrap that provided a decent income. The city job jever was enough to pay all the bills. It was this constant separation that proved the breaking point, and his marriage dissolved.
Although he had been married only two-and a half years, he was able to keep a close relationship with Wayne in the years to come. Wayne would accompany Art on many dives, and the underwater bug would bite him as well. It brought Art a great deal of shock and sorrow when Wayne, an electrician with the Homestead Light Company, was electrocuted on a light pole at the age of thirty.
Art was to marry again. In fact, it seemed that he married everyone he ever fell in love with. He was a happy-go-lucky guy who felt that he could make everyone as happy as he was. But personalities change, and each time, unfortunately, divorce was the ultimate outcome. He was married to Sarah, and in that marriage his son Mick was born. Then it was Madge, and two red-haired, freckled kids---his son Rick and daughter Pat---were born. When Madge asked for, and received, a divorce, it ended Art’s amorous lifestyle. But his love for exploring the ocean bottom never diminished.
E-mail stories to getaholdofkyle@yahoo.com
About McKee, Frogfoot writes: "He gave America its first look at treasure being recovered from an old Spanish galleon and was able to show young people, and old alike, that sunken treasure was not only a serious business, but one filled with fun and excitement. He created an American dream, a dream that anyone could strike it rich on the trail of gold doubloons and pieces of eight. Like an Irish leprechaun, he chased every treasure rainbow that somehow found its way into his life. And he led the life he always wanted, one filled with the excitement of the hunt, one with a golden condor waiting for him...just over the next reef."
I want to thank Robert "Frogfoot" Weller for his gracious permission to publish portions of Galleon Hunt here on Bridgeton Legends. Anyone interested in purchasing Galleon Hunt or learning more about Frogfoot can do so by visiting http://www.1715fleet.com/1715fleetbooksbyrobertweller.htm
So, without further adieu, I present Chapter II of Robert "Frogfoot" Weller's Galleon Hunt...
McKee's Early Years
Arthur McKee was born November 2, 1910, in Bridgeton, New Jersey, a small, not so sleepy community in the southwestern corner of the state. The nearness of the Delaware Bay---and the Cohansee River flowing along the city limits---provided a made to order setting for youthful hihjinks, if a young man were so inclined. Young McKee was so inclined. He had energy that seemed to mount up and ride off in all directions. The boy groups in town always gathered around young McKee for ideas on how to get into trouble, or out of it.
Art played high school football until he tore the cartilage in his left knee, an injury that would plague him throughout his life. It would almost cost him his life on an obscure island in the Caribbean.
A local doctor operated on the knee, but it was in the days before much was known about athletic knees and the arthroscopic surgery that now mends them. In his case the operation made the situation worse, and his knee and leg began to atrophy. He visited a local osteopath, who treated his injury and did his best to strengthen he limb with exercise. His advice to Art: “Swimming is the best therapy you can possibly give that knee.”
Young McKee needed no further encouragement. He applied for the lifeguard job at Sunset Beach, a local summer center of activity for the younger crowd, and was able to swim to his heart’s content. He kept the job after graduating from Bridgeton High and, along with other odd jobs, he remained a local spark plug.
In 1933 a Florida hurricane swept up the coast, aiming its fury at the New England coastline. South Jersey was inundated by the torrential downpour that followed, and the Cohansee River overflowed her banks. Two oyster schooners broke their moorings, and the rush of water carried them downstream, where they took out the bridge at the end of town.
It was about the same time that young McKee and a buddy decided to take a canoe down the rapids as well. The current was like an express train, and it was great fun until their canvas-covered birch canoe hit the broken pilings in the middle of the river. It broke in two, sending the two young men into the swirling, muddy Cohansee. Even as they swam ashore they were laughing at what a great ride it had been.
The hurricane had a side effect; it dried up he lake at Sunset Beach as the waters receded. Art’s job was now a “mud guard”---as the local papers put it---because the lake had become nothing more than a large, oozy flat.
The city had hired a diver and a barge to repair the bridge, so Art soon made friends with this man who obviously enjoyed the water as much as he did. As a means of introduction, he mentioned that he was the local lifeguard. The diver replied that, being a good swimmer, he should try this deep sea diving outfit. “It’s a different world down there.” But even as Art was agreeing, the diver went on to say that having insurance and his parent’s permission was first priority before even trying on the hard hat. Both seemed pretty impossible at the time, so Art applied for and got the job as line tender.
Each day he would dress the diver, start the compressor and make sure it ran smoothly all day long, then watch for line signals to lower various tools down where the work was being done. At the end of the day it was his job to wash the heavy canvas suit down with fresh water and hang it up to dry.
The forty-pound lead shoes were always covered with mud and had to be scrubbed thoroughly. During the rest breaks, the diver would sit on the edge of the barge and spin stories to Art about the various jobs he had been on and about the accidents that always stimulated an audience. He was told that once the air compressor wasn’t turned on, and the diver was lowered to over 150 feet. When he was finally brought to the surface, the diver had been squeezed like jelly into the cavity of his helmet.
Another time, the chin dump-valve, the valve that a diver regulated with his chin to dump the excel air from his suit, was stuck in the closed position. The tender on the surface kept pumping air to the diver, and soon he shot toward the surface like a hot-air balloon. The closer to the surface he got, the more the air expanded and the larger the suit inflated. By the time he came out of the water like a bloated whale, his arms and legs were sticking straight out from his body. The sudden rush to the surface caused the diver to have the bends…and other complications.
The there were the stories of large, toothy fish that the diver liked to tell all his young audiences, always including an octopus or two. No doubt the stories had a lasting impression on McKee, but not once did it ever dampen his desire to try the diving suit.
His opportunity came one Saturday morning. As a ritual each Friday night, the diver would take his weekly paycheck and drink dinner with it. His hangover always lasted well into Sunday, so the barge was always empty every weekend. Art got one of his buddies to dress him in the 191-1/2 pounds of lead shoes, weight belt, and brass helmet. He explained about keeping the compressor running at all costs, and to watch that his life line and air line didn’t get fouled in the bridge abutment or under the barge.
The friend then helped Art to the diving ladder, a sort of shuffling process because Art could barely lift each foot to take a step. The suit was extremely heavy on his young shoulders, but the challenge was there, and he was determined to see it through.
There were moments of misgivings as he climbed down the ladder, but the suit seemed lighter as soon as he entered the water. As he slipped beneath the surface, someone turned out the lights on him. It was inky black in the Cohansee River. He couldn’t see in any direction, and there was sudden panic as his buddy continued to lower him, deeper and deeper. There was no way but down because he had forgotten to tell his partner on the surface about “hand signals.”
With pressure building on his eardrums, his feet finally struck bottom some thirty feet below. It wasn’t exactly solid bottom because the Cohansee mud had collected there over many years, so Art sort of oozed into the bottom. Before he could take a step, he was up to his knees in mud. More panic as he pulled one foot out and tried to take a step, then pulled the other one out behind him. It was pitch black and he had satisfied that curiosity. Now he had had enough and wanted to come back up.
He knew that the diver worked the valves on the side of the helmet to put air into the suit and start the rise to the surface, but which valve…and how much air? He now began to remember all the stories that the diver had related to him about diving accidents, and he suddenly realized the predicament he was in. He didn’t want to take the chance of cutting all the air off, nor of pumping too much air in and end up floating over the city of Bridgeton on the end of an air hose for all his friends to see.
Finally, he made the decision to walk his way to the side of the river, if he could figure out which direction that was. Slowly leaning into the current, he knew that the river bank was somewhere to his right. So, carefully picking up one foot and then the other, he made some progress. Soon the oozy mud in the center of the channel gave way to a little firmer footing, and he knew that he was going in the right direction. But it as slow going.
It seemed as though he had been underwater for hours. Gradually, he was able to reach the edge of the channel, but now he faced a new problem. The bank was steep and slick, and he couldn’t get a footing to climb up! Art was getting tired now, and it was difficult for him to think his way through this new crisis.
Suddenly he felt himself being pulled, bodily, up the steep bank. Soon the black midnight of the muddy bottom turned to a hazy brown. The next thing he knew he was being dragged through the weeds that bordered the river’s edge by a group of men that his buddy had solicited to help him get Art back to the surface. His buddy had seen that Art was trying to reach the side of the river, and he knew he couldn’t pull him up by himself.
A group of spectators had gathered that Saturday morning to watch this young diver on the bottom, and they wound up dragging him to safety. The two young men spent the rest of the day cleaning the mud off the suit and getting their story straight in case the diver should ask questions about why the suit was still wet. It was a lesson that McKee would not soon forget.
It was also a summer that McKee would not forget for another reason. He met, and fell in love with, an eighteen year old local beauty. It was the love of his life, and before the summer was over, they were married. When his wife first let him know that a child was on the way, McKee was ecstatic. His head was in the clouds, and everything seemed so much brighter and simpler then…a world full of sunshine.
How quickly that evaporated when, in childbirth, his young wife died. Art named his new daughter Phyllis and tried to pick up the threads of his life. Her grandparents had other ideas. After a short court battle, they were awarded custody of the daughter. Art was allowed meager visitation rights, and Phyllis grew up hardly knowing her father at all. He would watch from a distance as she was walked by her grandmother near he playground. He was heartbroken.
In a life that had been so carefree, there was this sudden realization of how tragic life can sometimes be. He decided to leave Bridgeton, and the words of his osteopath now came through loud and clear. His knee still hurt, and he now walked with a noticeable limp. The only place that he could swim throughout the whole year was sunny Florida and, before long, he was headed south.
Arthur McKee never looked back until he reached Homestead, Florida, at the head of the Florida Keys. Here the palm trees lined the center of Main Street, the air seemed a little cleaner, and the rain, when it fell, gave everything a fresher smell. The people seemed as friendly as they were back in Bridgeton---possibly a little more laid-back---and Art was immediately accepted.
He had gotten his easy smile back. As an ex-lifeguard, he first searched out the city pool, only to find it in a sad state of disrepair. The bottom had been leaking, so the city had drained it some time before. There had been no one to take an interest until Art McKee came to town. He played the banjo and soon was able to organize a small group of musicians that began to play at weddings and benefits for donations to the “pool fund.”
Before long they had enough money to repair the pool, fill it, and open for business. The locals found in McKee someone they thought could bet their city recreational program together, so they gave him the job as city recreational manager. This meant chief lifeguard as well, and he was back to his swimming routine.
He saved his money and was soon able to buy a used hard hat diving rig in Miami. Everyone who spent time at the pool was quick to describe the crystal-clear waters of the Keys and the great myriad of fish that lived in the reefs there. He had to see for himself. It wasn’t long before his weekends were spent in slow motion, walking the bottom in twenty to thirty feet of water. It was, indeed, a whole new world for him, certainly a far cry from the muddy Cohansee.
Here the bottom around the reefs was white sand and the water was crystal clear. Some days he could see well over 200 feet in all directions, and with the helmet and bubbles, this new apparition was a natural attraction for fish. Whenever he was on the bottom he would be surrounded by a circus of sea life. Fish of all sorts would nuzzle his faceplate, peering in at this new stranger, or playing fish fantasy among the bubbles that expanded as they neared the surface. And these creatures were everything that everyone said they were. But soon there was something more exciting to Art.
He found himself exploring some of the old shipwrecks that line the reefs facing the Gulf Stream. Many were plotted on charts and were easy to find. Others he would stumble onto as he walked the bottom. No one had ever spent this much time on the bottom along the reefs because it was before the advent of the “aqua-lung.” The great explosive invasion of skin divers to the Keys was still many years away.
As he slowly walked his way around the debris of these once-proud ships, he would spot large sections of copper pipe, now turned a bright green color by long immersion in salt water. Brass fittings sometimes shone brightly, but often they too wore a green patina. Before long he began tying a line around his valuable metal and hauling it aboard his small boat. It surprised him how much money the scrap brought in at the reclamation yards along the Miami River. Soon he was able to purchase a larger boat and bring in scrap iron as well…not as valuable perhaps, but there certainly was a lot more of that littering the bottom than the copper and brass he searched for. Art was enjoying life again.
His love life took a turn for the better as he met, and soon married, a local Homestead beauty. For the next two-and-a-half years he walked a tightrope, doing the best to keep the home fires burning and still spend his spare time out on the reefs. He had this insatiable curiosity about shipwrecks along the edge of the Gulf Stream.
Soon, his son Wayne was born, and Art became a model father. But, as he worked to provide for the family, it meant more time out on the reefs, searching out the scrap that provided a decent income. The city job jever was enough to pay all the bills. It was this constant separation that proved the breaking point, and his marriage dissolved.
Although he had been married only two-and a half years, he was able to keep a close relationship with Wayne in the years to come. Wayne would accompany Art on many dives, and the underwater bug would bite him as well. It brought Art a great deal of shock and sorrow when Wayne, an electrician with the Homestead Light Company, was electrocuted on a light pole at the age of thirty.
Art was to marry again. In fact, it seemed that he married everyone he ever fell in love with. He was a happy-go-lucky guy who felt that he could make everyone as happy as he was. But personalities change, and each time, unfortunately, divorce was the ultimate outcome. He was married to Sarah, and in that marriage his son Mick was born. Then it was Madge, and two red-haired, freckled kids---his son Rick and daughter Pat---were born. When Madge asked for, and received, a divorce, it ended Art’s amorous lifestyle. But his love for exploring the ocean bottom never diminished.
E-mail stories to getaholdofkyle@yahoo.com
posted by Kyle at 7:58 PM
