“I’ll Break Your Teeth!”

Crazy Tim was just a good ol’ boy from south Florida, about six-foot-one and 220 pounds, whose dad had sent him to Costa Rica to manage the family’s orange groves and hopefully to force him to grow up. Tim had counted the bars between San Jose and his house (32) and his greatest goal in life was to drink at least one beer in each bar during one drive (not multiple) from San Jose to his house. The last time I checked up on him, he had made it to 27, but was still committed to the quest. He could have accomplished his dream– I mean, he certainly had the capacity– but he’d usually get to buying drinks (especially for the cops who would drop in) and over consume in one or two watering holes and then forget about his mission and just try to avoid the ditches on either side of the road for the rest of the drive home.

But he was handy when sober. He built a Jacuzzi behind his house. This was not a store-bought deal, and it didn’t look like anything you’ve ever seen. It was built above ground out of rocks cemented together and was pretty leaky, but his garden hose kept the water level in near equilibrium. The Jacuzzi effect was created by the most bizarre contraption engineered by Tim himself and powered by propane gas. I always felt like we were going to die in that thing from a fire or explosion, but between the rum and bikinis,  who cared?

In case you haven’t figure it out yet, Tim liked to party. (He eventually opened his own bar so he could recycle his money there, but that was long after the time that this story took place.) One night he drove his tractor to the local watering hole because his Jeep wouldn’t start. Yep, I was just chillaxing in a bar under the tropical sky enjoying the Latin rhythms when I heard a tractor approaching. I was thinking to myself, hmmm…that’s unusual—even out here, when the tractor pulled up to the bar, stopped and Tim hopped down. Imagine my surprise! By the way, he never went anywhere, not even kayaking, without his 9mm.

One day he showed up at my house on his tractor, the purpose of that visit lost to history due to the effects of rum on my memory. I asked him why he wasn’t driving his Jeep and he said that it was in the river. “Which river?” I queried. “The one between my house and the cathouse—La Selva Negra [the Black Forest],” was his reply.

It seemed that Tim had been getting hammered with another expat when the other guy decided that it would be a good time to contribute to the “college fund” of one of the girls down at Selva Negra, but Tim didn’t want to go. The guy took Tim’s Jeep, but flew off the bank of the river into the riverbed when he rounded a corner too fast to observe that the bridge had been washed out by recent floods. Luckily (miraculously?) the guy wasn’t seriously injured, but not so the Jeep. No, that poor Jeep would never be the same.

The Jeep was so jacked-up after flying into the river that it would never pass inspection again. Consequently, it was never licensed or insured, and its maintenance was ignored at best. For example, it might have one headlight and no taillights or it might have no lights at all. Now we lived in the middle of the jungle, so these things did not really matter and the local police did not hassle us. We always contributed to the local Police Benevolent Association, but probably key to our copacetic relationship was the fact that we bought the local cops (who we generically dubbed Barney Fife) lots and lots of adult beverages.

One day Tim was crabbing in his Jeep to a nearby village and a transit cop not from our area pulled him over. The long (endless) story was that Tim finally offered the guy a bribe (maybe $20 ) but the cop wanted more. Tim danced round and round with the cop, finally lost his patience, and screamed, “Take the effing money or I’ll break your effing teeth!” According to Tim, and I have no reason to doubt his word on this, at that point the cop (all 90 pounds of him) did an abrupt about-face, sprinted to his car, dove in, and sped away, never to be seen in those parts again. In his haste to get away from el gringo loco, the cop forgot to grab the proffered money out of Tim’s hand.

Oh yeah, and Tim was the guy that taught me to keep a crisp $50 bill in my passport. It worked wonders when dealing with local authorities. No bribe, no discussion, no conversation, just 50 bucks sitting there for the taking to smooth over any ruffled feathers.

Next: Ticos Come Looking for Work, hmm?