While Mr. Samuel Bingo Burdett drank, I sat outside and smoked cigarettes.   When I walked back inside, the gruff individual was making origami flowers for the woman behind the bar.  How he can fold with his tree branch fingers, I’ll never know.  Scrimshaw Kid I.

He’s making me wait.

Everybody seems to love Burdett except me.  The bartender was going guano crazy over those damn origami flowers, which I do admit were rather fetching.

He pretty much ignored me.  I guess I didn’t make a very good first impression.  I had to get something, though.  I HAD to.  This was my first solo Monkeywhale News assignment.  I took pictures of the origami with a bar napkin as a back drop.  I tried to take his picture, but he wouldn’t let me.

So I just sat there drinking coffee and taking a note here, recording a tidbit there.  I’m glad I stuck around, because it was while I listened to Mr. Burdett regale the bartender and two other patrons with sea stories, I realized it was exactly what I was looking for.  I found out what a story Burdett has, and that he may be completely insane.

Samuel Bingo Burdett was born, has lived, will continue to live, and will die on a boat in the ocean.

His first name was a family name.  His mother named him after her father, Alfred Samuel Burdett, who everyone knew as Sammy the Rooster Crow.  (I know that sounds funny.  I’m pretty sure that’s what he said.)  Sammy was a whaler.  He raised his daughter, our Burdett’s mother, on his whaleboat until she could take over the whaleboat for his whaleship.  A whaleship usually has two whaleboats to catch the whales and bring them to the whaleship to be cut up or whatever.  Sammy the Rooster Crow had four.  One for each of his children to captain.

When Mr. Burdett (our Mr. Burdett) was born, he was in the hull of his mother’s whaleboat.  He stepped on land for the first time when he was seven.  He said he just never wanted to get off the boat.

His middle name, Bingo, was his rumored first word.  Being the only person younger than twenty on the boat, he got a lot of attention.  Despite his mother’s complaints, everyone called him Bingo from the very moment he first spoke, and it was that name he used to introduce himself.

As for his last name, Burdett claims to be of a long line of whalers and scrimshanders dating back to the 1850′s.  He says he is a direct decendent of Edward Burdett, one of the first scrimshanders to sign their work, 94% of all scrimshaw coming from anonymous artists.

And just like that, right in the middle of the scrimshaw story, without missing a beat, Burdett has paid his tab and is waving goodbye right out the door while I scramble to get my stuff back in my bag and follow him out.  It’s dark outside.  My mouth is full of coffee and I am putting on my coat when Mr. Burdett sticks his head back in the door and yells, “It’s late. We’re done, Sheets.”

I froze for a moment, swallowed my coffee, then ran after him.

to be continued…

right here.  Scrimshaw Kid III.