POLSON - When 11-year-old Logan Stephens goes to work, he slides a knife between his teeth, which can make it difficult to perform some of the other duties of his job, which include shaking his fist at people and saying “arrgh” a lot.
While other kids his age may be mowing lawns or babysitting to pick up extra cash this summer, Stephens has a rather unusual job.
The advent of the Happy Hippo on Flathead Lake this summer has given a handful of Polson kids like Stephens a unique way to earn a little money.
They attack unsuspecting tourists who think they're going for a ride on the Hippo, a 35-foot-long Vietnam-era amphibious military vehicle that bounds across the Armed Forces Memorial Bridge in Polson, ducks into Riverside Park and plows into the Flathead River.
Folks are no sooner floating in the water than a pirate ship appears.
OK, so this pirate ship is not exactly the Black Pearl.
It's a jet boat capable of running circles around the Happy Hippo, which it does with gleeful abandon.
Stephens and the other pirates on board on this day - David Cleveland, brothers Rob and Ian Ricketts and captain Bob Ricketts - grimace, shake their fists and shout all sorts of threats. Knives clenched in their teeth and dreadlocks tumbling out from under their pirate hats and bandannas, they spray the tourists with their wake, and eventually unlock their cannons, which in this case happen to be giant squirt guns.
The tourists aren't defenseless.
First mate Kyle Patterson and second mate Danielle Tidwell arm the Hippo's passengers with their own water cannons, scoop up buckets of ammo from the river, and the battle is on.
No one dies, but rest assured, no one stays dry, either.
And for the rest of their lives, the kids will have an eye-catching job to list on their resumes: They've been pirates.
They aren't getting rich, but name a job where they'd have this much fun.
The plastic-knife-wielding pirates - there are about eight youngsters who rotate in and out of the attacks - get five bucks a run (there are usually anywhere from two to four Hippo tours a day) and all the pizza they can eat.
Bob Ricketts, the only pirate who isn't a kid and who owns the Happy Hippo and the Three Dog Down store in Polson where the tours originate, says the chief requirements for working for him as a pirate aren't what you might expect.
“You don't want rowdies,” explains Ricketts, who lives on a ranch near Big Arm. “You want well-mannered, well-behaved kids who will stay in character and follow instructions while they're on the boat.”
The Happy Hippo is one of the latest ventures for Ricketts, who also pilots tourists around town in one of his trolleys, serves them chuckwagon dinners at his ranch, sells down comforters and other items out of his store, and manufactures items used to rescue people and transport patients.
The Hippo is a 1967 LARC (Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo) that once transported troops and supplies in Vietnam. It most recently hauled materials to construct a large home on Cromwell Island. When the house was finished its owner, Robert Lee, donated the LARC to the Dayton Volunteer Fire Department, which then sold it to Ricketts.
Its attraction isn't just that the 10-ton rig can go directly from land to water, but that it can do so at speeds of up to 30 mph.
If you want to make a splash, the Hippo can oblige.
Which it does three times a tour, climbing in and out of the Flathead River at the Polson Fairgrounds. Captain Dennis Talbott picks up speed with each run down the hill until the wall of water that's kicked up on the third entry is so high it won't come down until passengers at the rear of the Hippo are under it.
And there's no time to dry off. The pirate boat is always lurking nearby, ready to spring another attack on the Hippo every time it leaves land.
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The young Jack Sparrow impersonators say they often pick out a passenger or two to endure the bulk of their watery fury.
“Stud-muffins,” says Cleveland, who's 13. “Guys who pump their muscles at us.“
The crew on the Hippo also isn't immune, but it hardly matters who they aim at. With the pirate boat speeding past as they fire their giant squirt guns, everyone's going to get wet.
How wet is mostly up to Ricketts. On the 99-degree days of July, he'd make several passes close to the Hippo and cut away sharply, sending a wall of water crashing down on the passengers. On cooler days he'll do less of that, but between the splash landings in the river and the squirt guns, it's still a wet ride.
After the third trip into the water at the fairgrounds, the Hippo chugs upriver, the passengers still under attack by the constantly circling pirates. At the bridge, the pirate ship breaks away and disappears, and things quiet down.
But only for a few minutes.
There'll be one last attack, one final, drenching battle, before a surrender is negotiated.
The pirate attacks haven't all gone off without a hitch. One day when the jet boat had mechanical problems, Ricketts hastily arranged to borrow a ski boat from Profection Powerboat in Polson.“We grabbed a couple extra life jackets and raced out to get the boat,” Ricketts says.
The Lake County Sheriff's deputy who pulled them over on the lake was (a) surprised to find a boatload of knife-wielding pirates, and (b) not sure what to make of things when the pirate behind the wheel told him he didn't know for sure who owned the boat or where any of the paperwork was located.
“I think at first he thought he had a stolen boat on his hands,” Ricketts says. “And we'd been in such a rush, I hadn't thought to count how many life preservers were in the boat, and it turned out even with the ones we'd grabbed, we were one life jacket short.“
So the pirates got a $45 ticket.
“Which I totally agree with,” Ricketts says. “You've got to have a life jacket for everybody. And he was also very nice and loaned us a life jacket so we could continue on and carry out our attack.”
The oldest pirate has as much fun as the kids. “We are pirates of the Caribbean on vacation in Montana,” he shouts at the Hippo passengers while waving a sword in the air, but whatever else Ricketts plans on saying never gets out. A passenger takes aim and squirts Ricketts directly in the face.
Most of the young pirates are friends of his 12-year-old son Ian. Cleveland “is one of my favorite kids in town,” says Ricketts. “He's the first to get in when there are chores to be done at the ranch.”
Ricketts, a former professional opera singer who sometimes hauls out his accordion and entertains customers in Three Dog Down, met Stephens because of the instrument.
“Someone in town told me I had to hear this kid play the accordion, and he's amazing,” Ricketts says. “A wunderkind.”
The 11-year-old not only got his part-time summer job as a pirate through the meeting. Ricketts also signed him on to play at the Friday and Saturday night chuckwagon dinners, which have drawn as many as 220 people, at the ranch.
The pirate attacks will dwindle as the pirates return to school and cooler weather sets in, but the Happy Hippo will keep going, Ricketts says. He hopes to still be giving tours - minus the splash landings and squirt guns, of course - this winter in the LARC.
It may not be very good at outrunning pirate ships, but the Happy Hippo can break through ice.
How to join the fun
The Happy Hippo currently hits the water twice a day, Monday through Friday, at 1 and 3 p.m., and is available at other times for larger groups. Tickets are $15. Starting point is at Three Dog Down on the west side of the Armed Forces Memorial Bridge in Polson. For more information, call 883-3696 or 1-800-364-3696.
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