After a late lunch at The Crab House in Jupiter, my mother and I walked to the end of the pier to watch the Manatee Queen dock and unload her passengers. She had just returned from a two-hour cruise viewing the homes of the rich and famous on Jupiter Island.

Mom and I had thought about going on that cruise, but she had listened the previous night to a garbled recorded message that seemed to suggest that the price was $24, which she found a bit unbelievable. I called the next morning to check the price. “It’s $24 for adults,” the man at the other end of the phone told me, “and $15 for children.” “What about seniors?” I queried. He replied, “They can come too.”

Hmmm. A comedian we have here. “And at what price can they come?” I persisted. “Darling,” he told me, “it’s the same price as anyone else. Almost all my passengers are seniors.”

Mom quickly and decisively dropped any plans for the boat ride. However, I was curious how many passengers they had for the price. The answer was: The small and rather uncomfortable-looking pontoon boat was crowded to the gills. Forty-eight people disembarked, none of them children. So the two-hour trip grossed a bit over $1,150. Subtract a couple of hours worth of gas at, say, ten knots maximum, and you get, oh, call it a thousand dollars? Times two trips per day. Much of it in cash from people arriving at the last minute just before departure. No expenses on food or even pillows for the benches. It seemed to me that this was a very lucrative business.

“Excuse me!” shouted my mother over the boat owner’s loud music. When he noticed someone seemed to be trying to talk with him, he turned the music off. “Do you also own the restaurant?” “No,” he said, “I just rent the dock from them.” “Why is the tour so expensive?” my mother asked. “This isn’t much of a boat you have here. The benches don’t even have backs.” He didn’t deign to reply. “Didn’t there used to be a bigger, better boat that did the same tour?” “Yes,” he said, “but they couldn’t make a go of it. They kept running aground.” “How about if you gave a one-hour tour for half the price” persisted my mother. (“I don’t know this woman,” I muttered to no one in particular. “Just met her on the dock two minutes ago.”) “Lady,” said the boat owner, “you don’t like anything do you? First you criticize me [this was not fair], then my boat, and now my prices. I don’t have to talk to you.” He turned the music back up, loud.

At this point a good-sized yacht approached the dock. A well-tanned fortyish man was at the helm, and his barefoot, blonde wife (probably) prepared to fasten lines upon arrival. Two young girls and an older couple were also aboard. Unfortunately, the man came in at too head-first an angle and too fast. He couldn’t slow down enough, nor make his turn completely. The boat hit the dock hard bow-first and then drifted back away. On the second approach, the woman was able to leap off the boat and pull it to a stop, cleating it to the dock fore and aft.

Catching the man’s eye, my mother said, “You didn’t do a very good job of that, did you?”

No kidding, Mom.

And just in case anyone is wondering, I was the invisible one melted under the floorboards.