Still July 16th, 1947


  We are about to leave port.

   Had a good time, running around, downtown LaMirada, with Commanch, and the guys.

   Heck we even got Tully to hang out with us for awhile.

  Y'know he doesn't seem as mean as he used to be. Maybe that's why Durant is giving him the cold shoulder.

  He's still not much for conversation though.

  Oh yeah, funny thing about Tully, while we were heading towards a little pub, that Commanch, suggested, we passed by a an interesting little joint, called MacDougals House of Horrors. I thought maybe we could go in, for a laugh.
 

 My oldest boy loves monster movies, his room is full of pictures of Loren Belasco all decked out in his vampire get up. I was thinking I could pick something up for him, if they had a gift shop or something. Unfortunately, they were closed.

  I argued with the owner, who was sweeping up the front, if he could open it up, just for us. No dice.

  As we started to walk away I noticed Tully just standing and staring at the marquee. The Marquee, was all done up in a mural, real colorful, with vampires, bogeymen, werewolves and what not.

  Tully seemed upset by it, like it reminded him of something that he really didn't want to think about. He was just staring and staring, even though we kept saying, "Hey Tully, let's go".

  Finally, he seemed to come out of his trance, and we were on our way, but Tully seemed even sadder, the rest of the after noon.

   We made it to the pub, a nice little, snazzy joint, called the Purple Anaconda, and we picked out a big table. Champ bought the first round and Commanch put some Ledbelly on the juke.

  We started gabbing about our wives, kids, funniest felonies, what have you. After a couple more rounds we started talking about this gig.

  Bay City Bottems, told us about how he and his crew, had to drive their truck to some place in New Mexico called Roosewall, or something, and load up a large crate left for them, cached in cave. They were told before hand where to find it, and never made contact with any one the whole time they were there.

  They did run into a little trouble, when they decided to make a quick run across the border into old Mexico, to visit some bordello famous in the underworld for being a good hideout, and employing really exotic broads.

  It seems before they could make it to the Casa de la ill repute, the border patrol got suspicious about the contents of the truck, and Bottems decided to high tail it.

  They were almost caught by two Mexican masked avenger types, El Medico Asesino and El Santo. They were lucky to get away!

  We tried to get Tully into the conversation, but he wasn't really in the mood to talk. Tully excused himself, and said he was going back to the ship, and he left.

  Fresno Dan had to fill us in on the trip from California. Fresno, rode shot gun, with Tully, and told us how they drove the truck to Burbank, to pick up a bunch of lab equipment that Dr. Prometheus had purchased from a Mrs. MacVicker.

  The equipment once belonged to the girls uncle, Dr. Sigmund Walters, who was a mad scientist type.

  Tully and Fresno didn't have the convenience of having it already packed up in a nice, tidy, crate, they had to carefully box up all the weird gadgets and gizmo's themselves. Fresno said it took all of twelve hours to do the whole job.

  I didn't have so interesting of a story to tell. Gooter and Muggy had already picked up our big package, before I even knew about this job. I think they said they got the crate from some company in New Jersey, called Yoyodyne, but that sounds like something those guy's made up, to pull my leg.

   Our conversation was interrupted by these two goon's who had, had maybe a little to much, drinkee, drinkee.

  They were two working stiffs from a local shipping company. One of them, a little pudgy guy, started giving us guff, because they had seen us loading the crates onto the ship, and said they should have gotten the job, seeing how they were union. I thought he was going to try to get tough with us, but we all, kind of casually, showed our pieces, and he and his pal backed off.

  They went back to the bar, and got into some silly discussion about baseball.

  It started to get dark, so we decided to head back to the ship, as it would be leaving soon.

   We all had a good time, laughing and carrying on, during the walk back to the ship.

  Once back on deck, I saw Tully, leaning on the rail, staring up at the moon, looking like his dog died or something. Jeez, what gives with him?

  That's all for now. This ocean voyage is underway, and I'm going to get some sleep.