Quote Originally Posted by Stan View Post
In the end it would have little to do with how many pirates were killed, rather, how swift and brutal a blow was dealt. Whatever was left behind would be scarfed up by the locals. Sounds terrible, I know, but that's how things are typically done and for some strange reason with no immediate remorse or threats of payback.
I've been thinking about your last sentence above and I wonder if it has to do with kicking the fruit tree. A cop or official would push for a shakedown as hard as he could but if he didn't get anything he mostly wouldn't hold it against you and would probably wave at you the next time he saw you. That always puzzled me until they told me the story of the fruit tree. When you go by a fruit tree, you kick it just to see if some fruit would fall. If it didn't you went on your way. You didn't hold it against the tree. Us mundeles were the tree.

Maybe a part of the story they didn't tell was if your buddy kicks the tree and a coconut falls on his head and kills him, you don't hold it against the tree, you just take his stuff and go your way.

Stan I know you know the story but maybe some others don't and I like to tell it because it is a great story.