I sent this blog addy to a friend, or I think he's a friend, he used to be, by replying to an email that he had forwarded me. I might have hit the reply all button or the email program may have just decided to reply to all on his mail list; I don't know and I really don't care much either. I did get a shitty reply from someone that got copied and it really surprised me enough that I thought I would share it with everyone: "Dude; how did you get my email addresses (panzyfrost@wannabe.com) and (hardfat69@yoohoo.com)? I think it was from J. T.. He's not too happy that you took it for granted to do so. And neither am I. Please remove me from your emailing lists pronto! PS-Jeff said you didn't even go to commercial diving school like we did and yet you call yourself a "Salvage Master"?!" Well, consider it done, Asshole! Turns out this guy is some wanna-be nazi-souvenir collector that has everybody in Ft. Lauderdale convinced he is a working diver. He buys all these antique diving hats and nazi flags and crap at gunbroker. He advertises buying the stuff on a Jewish war vet site and google earth shows a clear picture of his house right down to the pool in the backyard. I have never met the man, so I really don't know why he got so crappy. Mr. Cohen, I am so sorry that I accidentally emailed you, asshole. I do not in-fact, call myself a Salvage Master. The company that I work for which happens to be one of the foremost Salvage Companies in the world, calls me Salvage Master. In fact, they call me a Senior Salvage Master and no, I did not go to diving school. I don't believe they even had commercial diving schools when I began my career thirty-something years ago. I do have have several ADC Certification cards and other credentials that I have picked up over the years. Maybe the requirements for getting them were lessened for me alone and they let me slide on the tests? I don't really know how I could have gotten them all, since my momma and daddy didn't pay tens of thousands of dollars for me to go to a school to learn how to be a deep sea diver? I have qualified to run diving operations and dive for the TVA, the BATF, the FBI, NASA, USACOE, USCG, and the frickin US Navy, but maybe I fooled them too. I have ran commercial diving projects full-time for thirty-something years and have never had one man taken from my job on a stretcher, but hell maybe some of us are just damned lucky. I have had some close calls; hell, I almost killed a diver several years ago when the crane I was operating failed due to a repair that I knew needed to be addressed but had allowed the company I was working for to bully me into continueing to use it. The diver was rightly pissed, given the narrow escape and demanded to know what happened: I told him and the whole team that I simply fucked up. I did not blame the crane. I called my boss and told him the job was shut down until that crane was repaired. I fixed the crane before we returned to work; I should have insisted that we repair it before it failed. The divers said that they wouldn't have told on me; that I didn't have to call my boss about it. They were wrong. I chose to ignore what could have been a nasty accident that I would have carried the burden for the rest of my life and would not do that again; ever. I came to this job after a financial wipe-out on a joint venture between my own diving company and an outfit from Finland. I had no intentions of staying with this outfit; it was just a fill-in-the-blanks job while I decided what to do next. We had some good divers on the job but the project manager decided to leave the job in my charge. I was recuperating from a spinal injury that I was trying desperately to deny. We all seemed to work well together. I bought a guitar and we would spend the evenings drinking a little beer and smoking a little pot once in a while; that's just what divers did back then and probably still do now. I don't smoke pot any more; don't even drink beyond a glass of win with dinner or a cocktail once in a while but that isn't because I have any moral objection to it, I just don't like it. I completed this project and the next several that they called me to do. Most of these projects were really big stuff and pretty damned challenging even for someone that was bullshitting their way into a job. Eventually they appointed me fleet captain and years later, salvage master. The crux of this diatribe is coming: Recently, one of the divers that was on that first job with this company, in fact, the diver that I nearly crushed with the crane, has joined this project. He is still a diver and I don't think he has ever been asked to stay on any job other than as a diver since I worked with him years ago. I always thought he was a good diver and was glad to see him. It surprised the hell out of me when he wouldn't shake my hand and he commented that he didn't want to get shit on his hands. I don't waste much time with what a person says but do wonder why they would say it. I lay awake most of the night wondering why someone that I haven't seen in years or even thought of would say something like that. I can't even think of anyone over the years that I have pissed off to warrant such a response. When I finally found out what it was about, I laughed, it was so stupid. He thinks I told the office that he is a pot-head...LOL . It just amuses the hell out of me that I manage to piss off two near strangers in one week and didn't even have a clue. I get paid a lot of money and I get eighteen paid weeks off a year doing it. I get a company provided vehicle, big bonuses, travel all over the world and best of all, Everybody in the company calls me the "Salvage Master" and I didn't ask them to; I earned it.
