THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, January 6, 1997 TAG: 9701040088
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: 88 lines
THE PRESIDENT has his faults, but he knows where to go on vacation.
The U.S. Virgin Islands, where the Clintons took a brief break last week, may not be the most beautiful place on Earth, but don't try to tell that to the natives.
St. John, where we spent our Christmas vacation, is the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the most picturesque. Before 1917, St. John was a Danish colony, and almost everyone on the island was Danish.
Today, only four Danes survive. One is Arne Jacobsen, a writer who drives his four-wheel-drive vehicle over the island with a Danish flag sticker proudly displayed. The other three are his dogs, all great Danes, who bark at the cows and goats that roam the paved roads and sometimes stop traffic by sitting or reclining.
St. Thomas, where the Clintons stayed, is far too commercial and bustling for the St. Johnians, whose island is a 30-minute ferry ride from St. Thomas.
Best that the prez not bring the helicopters, Secret Service and rowdy press corps to St. John. A presidential visit might upset the cows sitting on the roads or the schedule of the roosters, which announce dawn each morning instead of digital alarm clocks.
Very little news is made on St. John. One of the biggest stories of recent years on the tiny island involved the ferry. It shows the desperate measures a St. Johnian will resort to in order to avoid spending a night on St. Thomas:
St. Thomas, USVI - On Tuesday night, September 24th, as the 9 p.m. St. John ferry was pulling away from the Red Hook dock, a St. Johnian woman arrived slightly ``behind'' schedule. She rushed down the dock and began yelling for the ferry to stop.
Already in motion, the ferry captain kept going. The woman - who was both slightly drunk and totally exasperated - immediately dropped her pants, faced away from the ferry passengers and bent over.
The ferry's passengers - amused by the show - stomped their feet and whistled. The ferry skipper - fearing a riot - returned to pick up the tipsy tizzy.
A tourist couple - new to the islands - watched the whole scene with a smile.
``This is our first `moon' light cruise,'' they giggled.
During our holiday stay on St. John, we occupied a house tucked into the side of a hill at Hurricane Hole (the refuge for boats during a storm). The house was perched about 800 feet above the water. The porch also provided a stunning view of Coral Bay - a gorgeous, sparkling body of water floating dozens of sailboats, which looked like bathtub toys in the distance.
Princess Liberal Right-Thinker dubbed the house where we stayed ``Mount Rutmore.'' The drive to it was so steep and the road so bumpy that it would make a great endurance challenge for an Army Special Forces team or Israeli commandos.
But the view was worth the drive. The hills surrounding the bay were lush with green trees and bushes, their tops gently rounded, giving them the appearance of friendly, sleeping animals.
Tourist activities on the island include snorkling - there are more than 300 species of tropical fish in St. John's numerous bays fretted with coral reefs - cloud watching and hiking in Virgin Islands National Park.
At about sunset, our party of five would gather on the deck outside the house to enjoy the view of the bay and ponder deep philosophical questions such as:
Do fish sleep?
What the tiny lizards which appeared on the kitchen walls each morning were doing there.
And . . . is it better to close the doors and windows or leave them open and risk having a goat join you for dinner?
It was my first Caribbean Christmas, hopefully not the last. We spent Christmas Day on a 40-foot ketch circling the island, drinking rum punch and snorkling in water bristling with fish so colorful that they appeared to have been painted by Picasso.
Captain Bob, the skipper of our rented ketch, the Spree, had an astonishing first mate - a dog named ``Shanty'' that lives aboard the sailboat. Whenever Cap'n Bob began to bring the Spree about - change direction - the dog prevented any of us from getting bopped by the mainsail boom raking across the deck. Shanty would rise from his mat in the cockpit the moment the boat began to turn and scamper to the bow, where he would spread his legs for balance and warn us by barking continuously until the turn was completed.
Amazing. Tanned and sleepy, we flopped on the boat's deck on the return trip to the dock at Cruz Bay, listening to Christmas music, which Cap'n Bob piped through stereo speakers as the Spree knifed through the sunlit afternoon and the cobalt-blue water.
Shanty sang along on ``Jingle Bells.'' He wasn't very good at it. But nobody complained. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
MARY REID BARROW
Our vacation home on St. John offered a stunning view of Coral Bay.