The Echo of Boots

Just across from Ramp Road Park in Cocoa Beach lies one of the larger islands south out Minuteman Causeway. It is an innocent looking blend of Australian pines and Brazilian pepper trees, with a few palmetto palms and a handful of prickly pear cacti thrown in for good measure, but few recall it’s happier days. Few recall the echo of boots.


In the fall of ‘75, as a newly transplanted teenager, while following that age-old male navigation technique known as “let’s see where this goes”, I came upon the small canal that winds between this island and its two southern neighbors. I passed under a steel cable strung across the canal about 12 feet above the water, crossing that, and bolted to it at the intersection, was another cable that ran up to a 40 foot high tower built of wooden telephone poles with a wooden ladder and a platform at the top. Below the cables, a neatly trimmed landing beckoned on the island’s shore. Beaching my boat and following the trail, I was shocked to find a series of odd constructions of not only more poles, lumber, and cables, but also ropes and nylon cargo netting. I had seen this sort of thing before, in my older brother’s book from the U.S. Marines’ training facility at Parris Island, S.C.. This was an obstacle course! I had no idea what it was doing in Cocoa Beach, but I didn’t care. I’d found it. It was mine! Possession was nine tenths of the law, right?


I was on my sixth obstacle when that last tenth arrived. They weren’t much older than me, but they were dressed in fatigues and I was pretty sure that their tenth of the law was going to trump mine. The older one was named Hardcastle, and he seemed to like to yell a lot. He explained that I was trespassing on “Parris Island South”, a facility of the Cocoa Beach Police Cadets. I had never heard of such a thing, but it did sound quite official. Considering his volume, people in Tampa probably thought so too. Though when I mentioned my brother was a Marine, he calmed considerably, and I was allowed to leave with my life.


A month later the whole scene was replayed, this time I was on the top of the large cable tower “just chillin’ out”, and the two in fatigues were a pair of brothers named Petron. They liked to yell too. The THIRD TIME my friend Hardcastle was back, but he was no longer my friend. He explained that I could either be charged with trespassing, etc., etc., Florida statute etc., etc., TIME IN JAIL etc., etc., OR I could join the program! Now I may have been too stupid to stay away from their obstacle course, but I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t know that “jail or program” meant PROGRAM!


The next Saturday I was in boots and fatigues helping about a dozen and a half similarly clad teenagers haul canoes out of a classroom at Freedom 7 under the supervision of Cocoa Beach Policeman named Gordon. The short trip to the island was followed by callisthenics and then (Oh, joy!) marching. During this time I learned that “Sergeant Major” Hardcastle had apparently been using his “indoor voice” during our previous encounters. If Tampa had heard his trespassing speech, surely Dubuque heard him call cadence.


Then the fun began; we ran the course. I was thrilled to learn that the cable was for a “zip line”, a pulley that one would hang from and then slide down the cable some sixty feet or so to the point above the canal where it met the other. IF the abrupt stop didn’t throw you into the water, you then came ashore hand over hand. Few stayed dry. When the pulley was broken you lay face down on the cable with your right boot hooked behind you, your hands grasping it to the front, and your left leg hanging straight down as a sort of counter weight for balance. You then pulled yourself along to the juncture below. This was deemed “too easy” so you were also required, once over the water, to hang down by just your hands and then pull yourself back up and continue. Even fewer stayed dry through this. Over the next few month several other groups visited to run the course, most notably the Marines recruiters from Orlando, and the Ranger ROTC squad from F.I.T. in Melbourne. All of them joked and teased before. “Boy Scouts! Kiddy Ride! Playground!” We got to hear them all. NOT ONE of them EVER finished that course dry!


It wasn’t all fun and games either. Cadets also served as volunteers in the Emergency Room at Cape Canaveral Hospital, directed traffic on Sundays when services ended and during special events, one of them was even the part-time dispatcher for the Cocoa Beach Police Department. The end of the Cadet Program came when we were told we had to allow girls to join, and a female cousin of one of the guys volunteered to be the first. She’d visited three or four times before, and knew what she was getting into. On the second obstacle she flipped herself over a cargo net, despite having repeatedly heard the instructions NOT to do so. She lost her grip, snagged her foot, and fell to the ground, HARD. She broke several ribs and I believe punctured a lung and lacerated a kidney. After a month in the hospital, signed waiver notwithstanding, her family sued! End of story.


I never did learn to like marching, but that program, more specifically, Officer Gordon, the “soft spoken” Craig Hardcastle, and all the rest of those guys, did give me a place in a town where I’d yet to find one on my own. They gave me a little bit of extra structure at a time when I needed it. To this day every time I visit that island, I hear the echo of boots.


On a parting note, I believe three of the guys did go on to careers in law enforcement, and eight joined the military. The last I heard, Captain Hardcastle was flying jets for the U.S. Marine Corps, where I’m sure his voice is heard over the engines. Semper Fi, Craig.