We're Back!! (page 5)

SanFranciscoJim

I would have to say they had the best prices on watches I have ever seen

The reason I lived on St. Thomas for 13 years is because I was a jeweler. I managed a jewelers on the island (retail, repair, design, and manufacturing). With 280 duty-free jewelry stores in a 6 block area, the jobs came looking for me -- I was never unemployed there!

One of these days, I'm going to write a book about some of the "tourons" (cross between a tourist and a moron) that I encountered while living there. I was actually asked such questions as:

"Do you live here?"

"How do you get up and down the steep hills in the winter when it snows?"

"Oh, you're from Pennsylvania....do you know so-and-so?"

A friend of mine who worked as cruise director aboard one of the smaller ships was actually asked the following questions:

"Do these stairs go up?"

"What time is the midnight buffet?"

...and my all time favorite story about an elderly woman who called the cruise director in a panic, telling him she was trapped in her cabin. He asked if she tried the door and she replied, "yes, but there's a toilet in there." He asked her to try the other door, but she said "I can't get out of that one either -- it's full of coat hangers." He explained to her that she was looking inside her closet and asked her to try the third and final door. She replied "But that's the one I can't open." He asked why. She said......

"Because there's a 'Do Not Disturb' sign hanging on the doorknob."

cruzanheart

TRUE St. Croix stories:

We had a couple of friends, Ted and Victor Calfas, who were in construction. At one point, Victor went to Florida to pick up a very expensive length of pipe (I think it was called a Monell pipe, but I'm not sure). He hand-carried this pipe back to St. Croix and gave it to one of his foremen and told him to cut it in half. Ted told us that he could see Victor from a distance. Victor looked at what his foreman had done and went to the nearest wall and banged his head on it several times, then went back and looked at the pipe and did the same thing. Evidently the foreman had indeed cut the pipe in half -- straight down the middle of the pipe, so instead of making two small pieces of pipe there were two long pieces of half a pipe.

Before the first circuit assembly, which we had on Tortola (one of the British Virgin Islands), my dad, who was in charge of food service, went to a local butcher and told him he needed a certain amount of chickens, quartered. Now, how do you quarter a chicken? The proper way is to have the breast split in half (that's two pieces, with wings attached), and two pieces containing a leg and a thigh. The butcher listened to what Dad wanted, went back and took an electric knife and the chickens and just went up and across, cutting each chicken into four pieces. It was a most interesting meal. Some people got nothing but bones and skin and a tiny bit of breast meat, and others got white and dark meat.

Sometimes it was like living in Alice's Wonderland!

Nina

Joyzabel

AwwwwGawd!!

To hand carry a precious pipe and turn it over for someone else to cut, I hope he learned his lesson!

But that does sound like "island mentality" hehe. Keep the stories coming!

SanFranciscoJim

But that does sound like "island mentality" hehe. Keep the stories coming!

One of the most tedious chores to do in the Virgin Islands is going to "Inspection Lane" (their version of the Department of Motor Vehicles). The lines are incredibly long and pathetically slow, even by island standards.

One day, a man went to Inspection Lane to renew his driver's license. After filling out the necessary paperwork, he was told to sit in a small room and await his name to be called so a driver's license photo could be taken. Apparently, this man was in a bit of a rush and getting very impatient. The last thing you do in a Virgin Islands government agency is ask the employees to hurry up! The West Indian woman manning the camera called the man, told him to sit down, and then proceeded to get into a long conversation with one of her neighbors who also happened to be sitting in the same room. The man got up, annoyed at her belligerance, and left. A couple of days later, he received a driver's license in the mail with a picture of an empty chair on it!

Frannie Banannie

Welcome Back! What a beeee-yooootiful paradise!! How could yall stand to leave there?!?!?!?!?!

Frannie B

SanFranciscoJim

Soooo.....did anyone who has ever visited or lived in the Virgin Islands ever see the Green Flash?

jst2laws

Damn Jim,

My wife has missed countless fabulous sunsets watching for the green flash. I saw one night what I think people are toting as the "green flash". That's why I am a little angry about it. Just set back and enjoy the whole thing, all the colors in their intense hues. What an opportunity to connect with all that is beautiful about our otherwise short and miserable existence. I hope you agree.

Steve

cruzanheart

Great story, SFJ!!! My dad had his own business for a year or two, servicing the water treatment plant, rum factory, etc. with their flow meters and other electronic devices, and once the water department was late paying his invoice. He asked about it, and the person in charge of invoices went to the file, pulled out his invoice and said, "oh, that's the problem -- you gave us the pink copy. We only pay from the yellow copy." Well, we'd lived there for four years, so Dad knew better than to argue. He went home, typed up a new invoice, took it apart, took them the YELLOW copy, and got paid in a week.

And then there were the guys who were hired to paint white stripes down the middle of Centerline Road. (A) They went REAL slow; (B) the lines weren't the least bit straight, especially if one of their friends was riding alongside them and talking; and (C) you could tell where they either ran out of paint or decided to stop because the line ended in a sad little squiggle in the middle of the road.

Nina

mouthy

The pictures were just so wonderful.....Thanks Joy for sharing such beauty.

SanFranciscoJim

OK, does anyone else know the real reason they drive on the left in the Virgin Islands, even though they're a U.S. territory? I do! I'll tell you if no one else answers.....

BTW, I saw the green flash only once in the 13 years I lived there, but I agree with Steve -- the sunsets are too beautiful to miss.....

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