COUNTY POCKET — The American flag at 12 Surf Road in the county pocket flew at half-staff last month, to mark the passing of a pirate.
Here in the pocket, this cozy warren of beachside bohemia, pirates are granted the same respect as presidents, and 12 Surf Road was not the only yard with a flag in mourning that week.
“We always joked that in a past life he was a pirate,” says Brad Gallagher, a friend and neighbor since 1984. “He really thought of himself as a pirate.”
Pause in front of the house he lived in for nearly 40 years, and you can’t help feeling you’ve met the man.
Beneath the flagpole, a driftwood sculpture stands by the road where those of less imagination are satisfied with a picket fence. Pirates Only, the sign says, draped in green fishing nets and lobster floats.
J.G.’s Fish Camp. Conch Sound Point, No Name Shoals, Elbow Cay. All over the yard, on trees and fence posts, rustic signs evoke a man who loved the sea, the boats that sail it and the fish beneath it.
On the front door, Welcome, Sail On In.
Around back, beside the sailboat masts on the patio, is the ancient pingpong table.
“I used to play pingpong with him all the time,” remembers Jody Carr, a friend of 15 years. “He was definitely eccentric, and that’s why I got along with him. He was an old salt who loved the ocean, loved the pocket, fished off the beach and liked his beer. He was an odd duck.”
Donna Slebodnik met him in the early ’70s, when he worked as a lifeguard.
“He was a crusty old fisherman,” she said. “He could be cranky at times, and he could be a sweetheart. But if he considered you a friend, he had your back.”
And like all crusty old fishermen, he could be sentimental. Inside the house, on the fireplace mantel, the ashes of his beloved dog, Wesser, have rested for more than 20 years.
Some called him Jim, some Jimmy. To most he was simply, “J.G.,” “Buck Dorsal” or “the commodore.”
On his birth certificate, he was James Woodrow Guckert Jr., born Nov. 19, 1941, in Pittsburgh, Pa., raised in Delray Beach.
He ran his family mattress company on Federal Highway, worked as an electrician, married twice, had no children.
He sailed, he fished, he played pingpong, and when the cancer had progressed, he checked himself out of Bethesda Memorial Hospital and came home.
For five weeks, Hospice of Palm Beach County came, and so did friends.
Mike Cannon put an air mattress on the living room floor and moved in to make sure J.G. got his morphine. Mike’s wife, Natasha, came by. Brad and Sandy Gallagher from Bel Air Drive checked on him, and Brett Wise from across the road. Ron Heavyside from the Nomad Surf Shop came by, as did Vinnie and Gemma Dinanath from the Texaco station on A1A.
“During the last couple of weeks, he said to me, ‘I had no idea I had so many friends,’ ” Mike Cannon remembered.
And now you’ve reached that part of an obituary where newspapers list “survivors.”
Jim Guckert didn’t have any. He left no parents, no spouse, no children. No brothers or sisters, uncles or aunts.
But he left a pocketful of friends.
On Aug. 6, a small group of them will board his 24-foot fishing boat, the Salty Intrusion, sail east to a depth of 600 feet and scatter his ashes on the ocean he loved, along with those of his dog, Wesser.
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