By the most undeniably and deliciously serendipitous encounter late this afternoon while wheeling my tricycle to the upper end of Buttonwood Bay I met Dan the Man and his wife Vicki Porter.  Dan told me he formerly performed with Tommy Hunter OC, a Canadian country singer legend popularly known as “Canada’s Country Gentleman”. Not long after our confab when back home I was scanning the internet, then listening to “Pt 109” by Dan Furmanik from the compilation “Titanic: Epic Songs of the Sea”, an interruption from my scheduled interlude of Bailèro by Victoria de los Ángeles, Orchestre des concerts Lamoureus & Jean-Pierre Jacquillat.

Dan Furmanik
Television: Produces and co-hosts a weekly 30 minute outdoor/fishing show featuring the many “Adventures of the Day in God’s Great Outdoors” as enjoyed by the “Big Dawg” Rusty Rust, Dan “The Man” and his wife, Vicki Porter who also cooks…”In The Skillet”…on the show!

No doubt it was Dan’s Tennessee drawl which had instantly quelled any reserve I might otherwise have had when he gingerly approached and asked whether he might take my photograph. Admittedly this was not what I had expected. When he apologized for the seeming effrontery, I jokingly answered his gall by saying it was punishment enough to have my photograph. I have never been known for timidity. In his defence he convincingly asserted that I reminded him of some family friend from long ago.  Apparently his friend and I have, in addition to the physical similarity, the additional coincidence to both be Canadian.

For his part, Dan instantly reminded me of Colonel John Eldon Dean, a chap with whom I had been at boarding school at St. Andrew’s College a lifetime ago.  John Eldon Dean was, so we were led to believe, a real Kentucky colonel. The suavity of John Eldon Dean’s voice was in harmony with the mellifluous tones of Dan the Man who I understand now hails from Tennessee (though he was raised in Hawaii). The Hawaiin connection may explain my subsequent discovery of the Coconut Cowboy on the internet. As well I believe Dan entertains the local Key Largo population from time to time.