_Live From Cape Canaveral_ - Jay Barbree [17]
If the astronauts or anyone gave Henri or his staff trouble, he would throw them out. With his melodious Flemish accent, he reminded them, “Customers I can always get! Where am I going to find good help?”
Henri tried to hide his love for the astronauts, but his hospitality and food and his efforts to get them anything they needed gave him away. He was their protector. He offered them privacy and a place to relax. Gordo Cooper returned his love by having the motel pool filled with fish. With pole and fishhooks in hand, Gordo loudly announced, “I have never caught a fish in Florida, and this time it’s going to be different.” The rest of the guests weren’t too pleased about swimming with saltwater trout and dodging Gordo’s hooks. Happily for them, the chlorine soon killed the fish.
The fish-in-the-pool prank held the record until one night the Mercury launch team and the astronauts decided to move their party to Henri’s. The only problem was their party was on a boat. The chop on the river grew too rough so they picked up the vessel, carried it by hand across busy A1A, and dropped it in Henri’s swimming pool.
The astronauts and engineers clung to the boat, shouting, “More rum, wenches, more rum,” until Henri and crew jumped in the pool and heaved them overboard. It took two cranes and a house-mover to get the boat out of the pool the next day, but that wasn’t the end of it.
Wally Schirra was a masterful practical joker by himself, and one afternoon Henri and Wally walked out of Wally’s room, the innkeeper supporting a wounded astronaut with a bloody towel wrapped around his arm. The pool was crowded with reporters and tourists, and we rushed to Schirra’s aid.
Concerned, I asked, “What happened, Wally?”
Wally turned, nodding toward a large field of palmetto and shaggy oaks. “In there, Jay. It was in there. I don’t know what,” he groaned with pain, “but we got it—we got the damn thing…. It tore my arm up good.”
“Did you call a doctor?”
“There’s one on his way,” Henri nodded.
“Good,” I answered, staring at the thick, bloodied towel.
“We need to wait for the doctor in the room,” Henri said, and some of us followed a moaning Wally Schirra inside.
The bloodied astronaut pointed to a large box on his bed, covered with a blanket, and turned to me. “Be careful, Jay. That thing’s dangerous. I think it’s a mongoose.”
“Big mongoose,” Henri agreed.
I shook my head. “There are no mongooses in Florida.”
“Maybe it got loose or something. Who the hell cares?” Wally argued, growing more agitated. “Damnit, look for yourself.”
Being from a farm, I have never been too afraid of animals. I moved toward the box on the bed.
“Careful!” Wally insisted.
I was wondering why there was no movement in the box when—
WHAM!
A huge, spring-loaded hairy thing with long teeth and claws burst through the blanket into my face, knocking me backward onto the floor. Those who had followed me into the room shot outside, stopping a safe distance away. Wally was on the floor beside me, his arms around the “jack-in-the-box wild thing,” doubled over with laughter.
In the coming months, the “mongoose” sent some of the country’s most daring astronauts and fighter pilots hurtling through doors and windows to safety.
As of this writing, Wally tells me he still has his treasured mongoose in his garage.
Project Mercury was running out of days in February 1961, and a serious tone settled over the upcoming launch teams. But the decision to mislead the public as to who was going to be first held. The media’s general consensus was that John Glenn would be chosen. I didn’t agree. Shepard and I had swallowed a little too much of Jack Daniel’s sour mash one evening and, off the record, he told me.
I wished he hadn’t. Had I learned of his selection to be first another way, I could