Ronald Eugene Traylor had always dreamed of a quiet retirement. Not of grandeur, mind you—he wasn’t that kind of man. A recliner, a flat-top grill, and maybe some quality time teaching his youngest how to skip stones with military precision.
Instead, the very morning of his retirement ceremony—before the sheet cake had even been cut—his wife of nineteen years and 364 days told him, quite plainly, that she had never loved him, hated the sound of his breathing, and was leaving him for her Zumba instructor named Kyle, taking their four kids and both Labradors.
“The kids too?” Ronald asked.
“And the dogs,” she said. “But you can keep your Air Force retirement and your dumb little coin collection.”
She left him with a pension, a sad jar of cocktail peanuts, and the lingering scent of betrayal mixed with Bath & Body Works. Ronald signed the divorce papers with the same stoicism he’d once reserved for nuclear protocols, then drove straight to the VFW where he drank enough to put down a Clydesdale.
He stood on the bar at one point and gave a speech no one asked for, about patriotism and how “you don’t really know a woman until she says she’s leaving you for a guy with clear skin.”
The next morning, wearing aviators, tube socks, and a Hawaiian shirt that smelled like regret, Ronald wandered toward Green Hill, TN—drawn by nothing more than a whisper of lake wind and a promise from a former colleague that said “Old Hickory Lake : Life Slower than You Deserve.”
There, he found a man wearing a wife beater named Dewey selling a 1988 houseboat with a sagging roof, one good engine, and a toilet that only flushed when you whistled Dixie.
Ronald didn’t blink. He pulled out a checkbook, wrote a check on his USAA account he knew would bounce, handed it to Dewey, and claimed his new life.
He named her the USS Whiskey Tango.
It wasn’t just a name. It was a mission statement.
He moved aboard with two duffle bags, three cartons of Lucky Strikes, and a plastic bin labeled CLASSIFIED.
The lake became his kingdom. He fished. He sunburned. He read Danielle Steel novels with the intensity of a man trying to understand his ex-wife’s depraved soul.
Local boaters quickly became aware of “that retired Air Force fella who lives full-time on a part-time sinking houseboat.
Children whispered legends. Adults shook their heads, mostly mocking him.
“Ronald of Old Hickory,” they called him. “The Divorce Admiral.”
He began hosting sunset storytelling nights on the deck of the Whiskey Tango. Admission was free if you brought beer. The best seats went to those who brought bourbon.
People came in droves. They laughed at his tales of Cold War misfires, botched stealth operations, and the time he saluted a mannequin in a JC Penney. They cried when he recited poems he wrote to his kids but never mailed.
One night, a Baptist youth pastor from Laguardo tried to convert him. Ronald let the man speak for 30 minutes, nodded thoughtfully, and then handed him a margarita. “Son,” he said, “I’ve already seen the gates of hell. They looked like a four-bedroom ranch in Lebanon with beige carpet and emotional neglect.”
Enter Dwayne.
If Ronald was the weathered, whiskey-simmered soul of Old Hickory Lake, Dwayne was the barefoot philosopher and certified lunatic. They’d served together once, long ago, in a forgotten corner of the Pacific where nothing happened except heatstroke, paperwork, and feral goats. IYKYK.
Ronald liked Dwayne because he was loyal, hilarious, and absolutely insane in a deeply practical way. Dwayne could fix anything—engines, radios, busted trolling motors, old microwaves—and he did it while explaining, in excruciating detail, how 9/11 was orchestrated by a cabal of Icelandic yogurt moguls.
But Dwayne refused to meet Ronald at the Gallatin marina. Too many “cameras in the weather vanes,” he said.
Instead, he arranged a rendezvous at a rundown boat ramp near Cairo Bend—where the weeds were tall, the pavement cracked, and the only witness was a feral cat with one eye and PTSD.
Ronald rolled up with a six-pack of cheap beer and a cigarette dangling from his lip.
Dwayne emerged from the woods shirtless, wearing camo pants, flip-flops, and a tactical vest with no plates.
“You alone?” he asked.
Ronald squinted. “You think I brought the NSA?”
“Never hurts to check,” Dwayne said, tapping the cat twice on the head and whispering, “We’re clear.”
He tossed two duffel bags into the dinghy, climbed in, and immediately began explaining how the CIA had infiltrated NASCAR in the ’90s to suppress hydrogen fuel technology. Ronald nodded the whole way back, mostly because he knew better than to interrupt a Dwayne download once it got rolling.
And from that moment on, the USS Whiskey Tango had her full crew:
One brokenhearted captain…
One conspiracy mechanic with night terrors…
And a mission to avoid reality at all costs.
Everything seemed perfect—until 3:07 a.m. that first night.
Dwayne had night terrors.
Not the whimper-and-sweat kind. These were full-volume, combat-grade, gut-churning reenactments of either classified operations or deeply confusing fever dreams.
Every night, without fail:
“THE GOATS HAVE TAKEN THE TOWER!”
“STOP GIVING THE GENERAL THE PINEAPPLE!”
“I’M NOT A SPY, I’M JUST A SENSITIVE LOVER!”
He once woke up saluting the microwave and wearing Ronald’s bathrobe like a cape.
Neighbors on both sides of the river started calling the sheriff so often that eventually local LEO stopped responding unless there were visible flames or female nudity.
One night, Ronald snapped. At 3:05 a.m., he waited in the galley wearing a raccoon costume he’d found in a lost-and-found bin behind the Bull Creek gas pump.
At 3:07, Dwayne sat bolt upright and screamed, “THE BIRDS HAVE LEARNED TO TYPE!”
Ronald leapt from the shadows, hissing.
Dwayne screamed a high-pitched note only dogs could hear and dove face-first into the pantry, knocking over two jars of pickles and defrosting a pork chop with his elbow. They both collapsed, laughing so hard Ronald blacked out.
After that, things got better. Or maybe they just drank more. Either way, peace returned—relatively.
They started “Terror Tuesdays.” Every Tuesday night, Dwayne would tell his weirdest dreams while Ronald grilled catfish and offered commentary.
New transplants from California in kayaks would paddle up just to listen, and they would usually stay until the jokes about homosexuals started.
One night it was “the time he got court-martialed in a Chuck E. Cheese,” another it was “the flying armadillo battalion of Guam.” They considered filming it for YouTube, but got distracted when Dwayne tried to build a Tesla coil from a Shop-Vac and accidentally zapped a duck. Dwayne and that duck screamed a lot longer than anyone expected.
Ronald aged like a well-worn saddle: leathery, reliable, and a little cracked in the head. On his 67th birthday, he threw a party with live music, three disabled dwarves, a pig roast, and fireworks so illegal the ATF sent a chopper to investigate.
The next morning, he was found in his captain’s chair, peacefully expired, a photo of his kids in one hand and a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey.
The booze and the girls were all gone. The toilet was overflowing. The bilge pump alarm wouldn’t shut up. Every now and then the vessel shifted in an uncomfortable way.
Dwayne handled the funeral himself. He didn’t concern himself with local laws. As far as he was concerned, Wilson County was Hazard, KY.
He buckled Ronald in to the seat, lit a cheap cigar, and pushed the USS Whiskey Tango out into the lake for a proper Viking sendoff.
Unfortunately, no one had ever checked the depth at the sketchy ramp near the Steam Plant.
The boat drifted twelve feet, then sank—in three feet of water.
The vultures feasted for a week. The stench shut down a bait shop and caused one Gallatin church group to flee a baptism. One heavily tattooed local scavenger managed to strip some parts before the vultures ran him off.
But those who knew Ronald agreed: he would’ve laughed his ass off.
To this day, folks on the eastern side of Old Hickory say that if you’re out late on the water, and the fog’s just right, you might hear the strains of Alan Jackson and the low chuckle of a man who lost everything—then found freedom on a houseboat with no rules and no regrets.
Ronald of Old Hickory: Patron Saint of the Brokenhearted and Barely Afloat.
And his First Mate, Dwayne of the Night Terrors—who made madness holy and Tuesdays unforgettable.
May we all go out as gloriously confused and magnificently unhinged as they did.