I lived with Dewey for nearly a year. He and I shared the first year of our working at Aquarius as roommates - living at the facility as the caretakers.
Throughout the early days of our time together, Dewey's outlook and natural joy made it easy for us to share a small room tucked in the back of a busy research facilility.
Our room was right by the employee restroom. In the morning staff would arrive and hit the restroom as part of thier morning routine. Dewey and I would jokingly try and guess who was "in there" by the pattern of noises heard.. One crew member always washed his hands (our guess was Roger), and another (James) would seemingly assault the toilet paper roller bolted to the wall.)
Kindly forgive me for diving into bathroom trivia.. but it was one of the ways Dew and I turned what we had into a game.
Throughout the earlier days of our time together, we were able to chum around as fellow Rookies. I still very vividly remember our first time in the habitat. Buckley was instructed to take us down with him and show us the startup procedure for the habitat, to bring the thing to life.
Dewey and I followed behind Jim outside the habitat as he swam from one valve array to the next, lining up the air supply for this feat of engineering. Jim did this with an air of confidence, as simply as one would tie a necktie, or going shopping for grocieries. Smart guy, that Jim.
After a lap around Aquarius, Jim called us into the wet porch. As dewey and I entered the air space of the habitat and took off our masks, and I can so clearly see this in my memory, we looked at each other with the biggest, dumbest, goofy-est grins on our faces. I was about to say, and could tell Dewey was also, something along the lines of "This is the most incredible thing.. and it's going to be our job!" But Buckley had other plans.. "Get your stuff off and get up here! We're not done!"
After the daily shift was over and the rest of the crew went to thier homes, Dewey and I would often reflect on how blessed/humbled we felt to be part of this agency.
Sometimes we'd walk over to the nearby watering hole and "reflect" rather aggressively, and stumble home in a Rolling Rock induced haze. Other times, we'd go downstairs and sit on the steps facing the canal, and talk some matter of work over: "why are the moorings laid out like this?" or "how would you lay out the shop differently?" or we'd talk about our family, plans, fears.. the usual stuff close friends end up chatting about.
We also made an admittedly corny and probably terrible Beastie Boys styled rap about the work. I'll spare the readers the full, um, masterpiece.. an excerpt included something along the lines of "we've had to kill more coral than global warm-ing, Heading out to the site even when it's storm-ing." (eco-dork note: the killing coral reference is related to the fact that we must keep reef growth off of our critical components.. NOT that we go around stomping on staghorns!). We kept the pulitzer-prize-grade lryics written down on a shared notepad, and we'd sit down over a beer and always try and incorporate new things we had learned into it. I wonder where that notepad is.. should've copywrited it.
Other things we did:
Cut the tops off of coconuts and make dangerous rum-drinks out of them! Once the facility's supply of coconut had been depleted by too many social events, we'd catch ourselves scoping out the neighborhood for nighttime coconut-procurement missions. Later we found out noone cared if we took them or not. Good thing, since the MGB was /not/ a sneaky vehicle, and the limited trunk space make for short hauls of coconuts.
We'd do mechanic stuff at Larry's. Dewey bought a mid-70's porshe 914. He had this zany idea that a newer Saab twin turbo motor would fit in it. I had to leave the area before he finished, but I would wager that the Paarshe, Sorb or whatever he would've dubbed it, would've been a sight. The day the motor arrived at Larry's on a wood pallet, he had this gleam in his eye..
Dewey made the feeling-comfortable-at-a-new-place part of my life easy, and I deeply hope I did the same for him.
Eventually, our roles at the facility began to differentiate substantially. I left the agency after a year's stay there. At the end of my stay, I had a difficult time - but Dewey was invariably the one person who would be rock-solid uplifting. Nate said it well at his services recently, "He could make you laugh, even if you didnt /want/ to."
Even though he's left me, he's still helping me. He was so good at being uplifting that his persona persists well after he's left us. Even know, I'm smiling as I finish this.
