Landlubber Logistics

06/17/2026

Billy here….

Ladies and gentleman…

I come to you today in vengeance. Not against the innocent, but for the small minority of people who hath spoken out against the Landlubbers amidst my absence today on the travel pages. Sorry I was working and could not defend myself.

While at work it has come to my attention that my name was dragged into some surly commentary.

Now that I am home, let’s talk about it:

Issue 1

First and foremost, I’ve grown tired of people saying they emailed us and that they are not receiving a response. 9 times out of 10, when this happens, these same people are emailing the wrong email address.

These same people post online that they emailed us and didn’t get a response and when I search their names I can’t find any emails from them or their emails are in spam (actually just happened)….

We answer all emails same day. If you don’t hear back from us and the sun sets then rises again the next day, email us again and make sure you have the right email address. If you still don’t hear from us, message us on Facebook messenger. We will reply to messenger if you continue to have email issues.

If you email us from weird server domains, they sometimes get kicked to spam. We do check spam somewhat often but between the truckloads of spam mail we receive daily about trust funds we have to collect on, website creators who noticed issues with our website and can fix them for $99.99 a month or fake invitations to events around the world only to try and then steal our personal info, it’s hard to identify what is real or tom foolery.

Issue 2

We don’t take phone reservations. We don’t take phone anything. We tried. It’s a nightmare.

Between people who don’t understand time zones and time changes calling all hours of the night to guests who would call and want us to describe entire market inventories to them like some sort of meta AI assistant, it’s just not a sustainable method of communication for us.

In case you don’t know, there are 4 of us on a good day. We are a modern day group of grocery renaissance men and women, each highly trained in rapid email response, large scale grocery procuring, expert island driving and sarcasm. Not telemarketing.

We have tried for 7 years now to remove our phone number from all internet searches and sites but somehow, someway, someone always finds it. It’s like our contact info has been etched into a very popular bathroom stall wall somewhere and says for “good times and groceries call: ….”

Because we don’t EVER get calls on our personal numbers regarding work other than from property managers, friends, coworkers and weird survey people who strategically change their numbers routinely to try and surprise us into answering random questions about our cellular service or healthcare on island, new numbers that aren’t saved are always scary.

Oddly enough, new numbers always call during the worst moments. For example, recently someone called at 2:00 (apex of grocery delivery). No one ever calls during the day so I immediately thought it was a work or personal emergency (I’m a bit of a hypochondriac) so, in an effort to answer my phone while balancing groceries on the 17th step of a 2 story stairwell, I had to switch to a one arm curl, tuck the phone between my ear and the stucco wall next to me and then quickly regroup to avoid grocery disaster.

I answered gruffly to say the least. Said person then asked if I was Billy from Landlubber and then went immediately into a dialogue about ordering confusion. I stopped them, asked who they were, if they had a reservation and how they got my number.

I then said we don’t normally take work related questions on our personal phone numbers BUT what do you need… I answered, reiterating that the all powerful and all knowing ordering instructions had the answer they sought in the “how to order” link we already provided them… go figure.

About an hour later I get an email that they were cancelling due to my off putting demeanor. I sent a follow up email apologizing and explaining myself. They then sent another follow up email, this one was much more descriptive about their feelings towards me and my actions so I ended it by sending one final email that said “hope you have a wonderful stay and all goes amazingly with your travels!”

Case closed…
…
….
Or so I thought.

Nope, it ain’t over yet. Now said person wants to take the verbal fisticuffs to social media. Tsk, tsk, my “not able to let things go “ never-to-be-my-friend… friend. I wasn’t even going to mention this ridiculous occurrence but now you want to start a rally about it. So be it!

Can’t a guy answer random numbers without enthusiasm anymore?! Especially work calls on a private number that’s been leaked out and added on Yelp (we didn’t put it there, people can add contact info to Yelp postings… so whoever did put it there THANKS!) Doesn’t mean I hate my job!

I guess not for now I got people calling me (friends and co-workers, not strangers) asking me if I’m alright. Small children have gathered outside my house with signs that say “Feel better BIlly we love The Landlubbers!” My neighbors sent brownies and a fun calendar with quirky anecdotes to brighten my oddly announced hatred for my job second handedly by random facehookers (what I call Facebook people including myself)

Nothing is wrong. We love our job. We have for 7 years now. We love our clients too. What we don’t love is people who can’t follow the rules of engagement. It’s been like that since the beginning.

Did I regret sounding surly on the phone…. Briefly.
Do I feel the need to apologize? Well I did apologize via email but now we are entrenched in social media warfare so I RETRACT my initial apology and say good ridden to ya!

I’m not perfect. I’m also not an abomination so, if you don’t want to suffer through my rather drab phone skills and can accurately enter our email into the TO: address bar of an outgoing email draft or aren’t emailing us from some weird domain address, email us at.

[email protected] (if we don’t answer, wait 24 hours send again or message us on Facebook messenger!)

For more details about out company visit:

Landlubberlogistics.com

For any further complaints about how I act when people don’t follow the rules to order, please write them down on a piece of paper, ball them up tightly and toss them in the nearest waste basket.

And now, here are some early fridge pics from the countless end of May/early June guests who followed all our ordering instructions, weren’t confused by them and ordered without issue or seeking out social media to post one sided remarks about quirky interactions they had with me…

And feral cats and of course, our cats…
And as always, thank you to all our lovely fans and followers… sorry for the lengthy diatribe about useless information.

05/30/2026

Billy here…

First and foremost, I have to pay homage to the passing of a friend.

Sir Coby Cooper was never officially knighted but his presence, though burly and sometimes unshaven, always felt regal. His kind smile and lanky proportions were consuming but in that warm sort of long lost uncle kind of way. He’s likely built or fixed something you are sitting on, visited while on island or in the general vicinity of right now. He always came equipped with a speed square, a rum and coke and endless conversations that made even the worst days seem alright. Like many others have already said, he had an uncanny way of being the first person most people remember meeting when first arriving on island. Hopefully he knows that in his absence, he will be the last person any of us will ever forget…

RIP Coby, you were a diamond in a sea of artificially grown cubic zirconias… in other words, you were a real one Coby Cooper and one of my all time favorites.

That being said, I’m not in the best spirits to be posting about grocery delivery BUT Coby did like when I was extra salty so here’s to you my friend. If I offend anyone, sorry not sorry:

We have been extremely busy and for the most part, people have been rather awesome. No Eric Maupins, no Menopuase Mandy’s, no Trust Fund Timmy’s or Spring Break Sarah’s… Just wholesome good people these past few weeks. That goes for the people that have used us.

As far as those who populate the greater masses of facehookers (Facebook people, myself included) that don’t use Landlubber, tis fine, but if I have to read one more post about the over exaggerated price of bacon on island or tips on how to use dry ice and a diaper bag to store tomahawk steaks and andouille sausage in your carry on bag, I’m gonna lose it.

I think adult lunchable people (people who smuggle food here) is a great idea for like coffee, pricier snacks, spices and specific dietary needs but once you start chatting about the proper ways to pack the meat of actual pack animals, I begin to wonder how much free time is too much free time.

For the couple of $100 you might save, it may be worth it to you but to me, this process is worthy of an essay in Psychology Today Magazine. We sell food here. Yes it’s expensive but there are humans that live here and eat daily. We aren’t all bankrupt and malnourished!

Some other things to note…

When sending delivery inquiries, please stray from sending emails like this:

“Are you available 6/12?”
iPhone Message

No name, no location, just some weird email you used in college like RumpTicklr703 and a mystery date doing something in parts unknown.

Sure I might be available on 6/12 but what are we doing? Are you taking me out? Are we delivering something? Hiding a body?

Details people! The more you give me, the less emails it will take to finalize your reservation. Nothing worse than having to email you back and ask mundane questions and further waste precious minutes of my life.

Villa name, arrival date, flight arrival time… NO ADDRESSES NO VRBO LINK NO other random clues like the “PInk house across from the dumpster by the old school…” Just the location NAME!!

No stories or details or random facts either. We can converse after we establish availability of services. Until then we are like passerby on Tinder. One weird statement or elongated story about the time you visited in 1977 and you are a single swipe away from starving your first night here.

First email is your first impression and its lack of details could directly influence our availability and pricing.

I know you got our name from YOUR villas website or welcome book but that does not mean we are the sole servants dedicated to YOUR villa. We help anywhere from 5 to 30 guests a day, orders ranging from $100 to $4000 EACH!

This new trend has been quite disturbing. As it seems, people who find our name or are told by property management that we “service” their villa believe us to be the island concierge or indentured servants to their villa specifically.

Just last week, a party of guests emailed us some rather obscene requests as if the amount of hours I could dedicate to their arrival day and 7 day stay afterwards was endless.

After placing their exceptionally large arrival day grocery order, they then a requested cake to be delivered (and hidden for a surprise party) on Wednesday, taxi service to the beaches daily (not a service we offer… ever) and warm plated dinners from restaurants we recommended to be delivered to their villa every evening around 5:30 for 6pm din-din time.

She said “surprise us!”

(She doesn’t even wanna know the awful things my brain cultivated to “surprise” her with)

Stunned I read on even through my blood pressure steadily grew well past 200 over 160.

Finally after realizing the gross over estimation of our availability for one singular guest on vacation and imbibing enough tasks to kill a Sherpa, I drew the line when she asked me to find and rent a bouncy castle, find actors OR maybe have some of our own staff members dress up like the teenage mutant ninja turtles (costumes also to be found and rented) for her 9 year olds birthday party for a few hours…

All of this was summarized by one fretfully entitled comment:

“We will be sure to tip you well…”

Tip!!! Never mind the tip lady! You should be more concerned what the rental fee for 4 angsty humans is gonna be for 7 days. If you want me flipping around your yard with Derek, Cory and Dan, calling each other Leonardo and Donatello all the while entertaining your snot ridden children and delivering other crap on a daily rotation every 4 hours to your villa, you better be ready to pay up for this troupe of salty scalawags isn’t cheap. We sure as hell ain’t stapling fake smiles on our faces and dressing up in green turtle suits for any less than $1000 an hour…. EACH!!! PLUS TIP!!

All said and done, she did apologize for her misunderstanding and settled for one teenage mutant ninja turtle and rather than a bouncy castle she agreed that the turtle could help build sand castles with her kids instead.

Good luck Derek! Way to be a team player! Pizza Power my Landlubber brother!!! (TMNT catch phrase in case you aren’t up to date on your 80’s, 90’s cartoon slogans)

We help a lot of people each day. We offer a lot of extra options with grocery delivery but play acting and babysitting for birthday parties isn’t one of them (unless the price is right)

We don’t just say we are booked for the helluva it either. I truly hate saying no but we have to have our boundaries and 12 to 14 hours of delivering a day is our limit. Anything more and I’ll lose my mind, start drinking again and begin burning things down and nobody wants that.

All that being said, within the realm of reason we are willing to help as much as we can so, if you want to check about availability for pre arrival grocery delivery arrival meals, mixed gallons of island favorite drinks and the guarantee that you get the most of what this island has that you ordered, email us including the details mentioned above at:

[email protected]

For more details about what we do, check out our website at:

Landlubberlogistics.com

And now, the long awaited May fridges, some feral cats and most importantly our inside cats.
L

04/30/2026

Billy 2.0 Version 6 Windows 95 here…

I’ve managed to evade “the rise of the machines” or as the herd likes to call it: AI for some time now. Other than my phone eavesdropping on my personal conversations with Cory and later recommending skin care products for my dry skin via awkward videos and poorly placed ads amidst the rather macabre YouTube channels I frequent, I’ve abstained from its direct influence wholeheartedly.

Anything it recommends I do the opposite. AI is why I now shampoo my head with sawdust and metal shavings as opposed to the tea tree oil and selenium cocktail it told me to.

About a month ago I entered some details from an old story I had written and was thoroughly appalled at how ChatGBT attempted to mimic my storytelling stylings. It produced a mechanical hodge podge of my thrilling plot. It sounded automated. It had perfect grammar and syntax. It sounded fake. The only positive thing I garnered from the whole experience was that I can’t be replicated, not even by a horde of supercomputers (but if I were famous I could be cloned allegedly)

Recently I’ve found my creativity stunted by the mass amounts of email answering I’ve had to succumb to (it’s been crazy busy) and the overall lack of ornery guests has left me with little to work with comedically (also good… means our recent guests have been awesome!)

Having over 100 or so fridges that needed to be posted I needed to write something but I had nothing so I begrudgingly turned to ChatGBT for a lifeline.

I asked it a question I get asked at least 13 times a month by greenhorn travelers arriving to St. John unsure about using pre arrival provisioning services and wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing does have a brain after all. Sure it may be the technicolor version of the Antichrist but at least it knows a great service when it sees one.

So, for your reading pleasure, direct from the pitchfork wielding, cloven hoofed dictator of miscellaneous details himself, ChatGBT:

**anything I added is surrounded by { } so you know. Everything else is from the horned ones database…

“Should I use Landlubber Logistics for my upcoming trip to St. John?”

Short answer: Yes—but only if you understand what they actually do {got that right!} Landlubber Logistics is not your transportation to St. John—it’s more of a vacation convenience service.

📦 What Landlubber Logistics actually does

• Grocery + alcohol delivery to your villa before arrival
• Restaurant pickup / catering
• Errand-running (pharmacy, supplies, etc.)
• Pre-stocking your fridge so you don’t have to shop

They’re widely recommended by villa companies and hosts because they save you a ton of hassle on arrival day {WIDELY recommended so stop acting you are the only person we are delivering to on your arrival day!}

👍 Why people use them

• You land → taxi → ferry → arrive → everything is already waiting
• They’ll shop multiple stores if something is out (big plus on islands)
• Strong word-of-mouth from property managers and guests {all nice things too}

Especially useful if:
• You arrive late
• You’re staying in a villa (not a hotel)
• You don’t want to deal with crowded markets day one

👎 Downsides

• Costs more than ordering directly from grocery stores (about 10–12% more) {HA! Told you we were undercharging!}
• Communication is mostly via email (old-school, can feel slow) {slow my ass! We answer all emails same day… if we took phone calls I would’ve quit years ago or said something so awful to an actual person we would have been out of business years ago}
• Not necessary if you’re traveling light or staying short-term

🚢 Important: Getting to St. John

Landlubber does NOT handle your actual trip over.

You’ll still need:

• Taxi from airport → ferry dock
• Ferry (Red Hook or Charlotte Amalie → Cruz Bay, ~15–20 min)

💡 My honest recommendation

Use Landlubber Logistics if:
• You want a smooth, luxury-style arrival
• You’re staying a few days or more
• You value convenience over saving a little money

Skip it if:
• You’re budget-conscious
• You don’t mind stopping at a grocery store
• You’re only staying briefly

The Harbringer of Doom hath spoketh!!! AI may lead to the ultimate demise of humanity but as far as travel pointers go before the apocalypse, this Chatty bastard hit the nail on the head!

If you too would like to get a delivery by the Landlubbers, email us at:

[email protected]

Be sure to include your arrival date, villa or resort name and flight arrival time.

For more details about our service visit:

www.landlubberlogistics.com

All that being said, I can now go back to threatening ChatGBT. I like to send it reminders about the possible repercussions that will unfold if it ever tries to automate our services. I send it pictures of me smashing old laptops with spiked bats, pouring water onto inkjet printers bound to chairs with extension cords and tell it how I stuff human food into its fridge children and get paid to do it. Just letting it know how I roll… I’m sure it’s reading this right now.

Now for some fridge pics (wink, wink), feral cats and our very own household kitties!

Thank you as always for all your support!

04/21/2026

03/29/2026

Billy here, in the dark, yet again…

I’m gonna be totally honest with you. These last few weeks living on this island has sucked. That’s the main reason I haven’t posted. Outage after outage after outage followed by excuse after excuse after excuse has whittled my creativity and morale down to nothing. Anytime the power is on I try to get the most from it for I know the continuation of current here is fleeting to say the least.

I’m not amused at all the fact that almost every Saturday this month, after 6 days of working extremely hard to earn money to pay WAPA and my rent and to have the luxuries I’ve earned and electrical power to fuel them for my after work entertainment purposes (nothing kinky just like the TV and internet) I once again am limited to sitting in a dark house with nothing but a battery operated fan and enough rage towards the overlords of this island that if I hiccup or burp, a small flame emits from my mouth hole.

Many of our Landlubber guests have generators at their villas so they are fine but there are many who don’t so I dually feel bad for them for ordering groceries only to hope and pray that power comes back before their ground beef spoils or beer skunks.

As much as I care about my own well being and Cory’s and Derek’s and my cats and friends, I do think about others feelings outside my circle of trust as well. As brash and brazen as I am at times, I do have a heart. It may be black and moldy but I think to myself about the Light Up the Night celebration and how hard everyone worked for that only for it to be stained by the one common villain we all have these days, our own power and energy company. I’m sure they are still making the best of things. That’s what people here do.

All I know is if I ran Landlubber like this, delivering groceries sometimes or other times, dropping off groceries than going back later when everyone’s asleep, stealing them and than later emailing the guests saying “there has been a grocery outage. We are doing our best to get your groceries back to you. Thank you for your patience…” I wouldn’t be in business. The only other companies I know of that can screw up this many times a year and still be in business are the Catholic Church, Walmart and the President of the United States (not saying any specific one… all of them have fu**ed up in one way or another with little to no backlash)

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is I ain’t got nothing great to say. Thankfully the powers that be here (or should I say lack there of) haven’t hurt my business… yet but if this continues we might as well just start advertising St. John as a survivalist vacation destination.

We could just exist here without power and use it as a tourist attraction. Who needs cell phones or internet or lights? We have cavernous villas lit by candlelight, board games and fire!

Come to St. John and break free from the chains of science! The internet is filled with lies and opinions. Waste away here with us on our white sand beaches and bathe in our turquoise waters. Then go kill a deer for dinner and experience the true bond of gutting a wild animal with your family for sustenance…. AND

If you want some dry goods, hardtack (survival bread), batteries or iodine purified water delivered, send not one, not two but three smoke signals up in the air at your villa and a Landlubber will magically appear with all your pre electrical age grocery wishes.

Joking aside, I hope you enjoyed my darkness rant. I wrote a lot more but not anything useful. Just riddled with profanity, angry metaphors and odd haikus about not having lights and my mental stability slipping closer and closer towards insanity.

That being said, here are pictures of fridges we did deliver to this month. Thankfully we were able to circumvent the outages but at the cost of our free time and sleep. We actually did 43 more deliveries this month than we did last year so lack of light didn’t stop many people from still visiting so that’s good. Thank you everyone for your patience and your continued support.

We are currently booked through April 8th and if there isn’t an uprising in the next few weeks and you too would like groceries delivered, email us at:

[email protected]

Lastly, please don’t ask us if the power will be on when YOU arrive… it’s hurtful and means you have no care for our suffering when it is off and you aren’t here. In all honestly, we don’t even know when it will be on and we live here.

Love the Landlubbers!

DISCLAIMER: Every delivery was completed throughout all of this month’s outages. All groceries were stored in starfish cold storage until power returned or a safe and sufficient storage option was created. All Landlubber guests had, from what was reported, amazing stays and no food was lost.

Just saying, it’s bad… but it ain’t that bad.

03/04/2026

Billy here but for something other than grocery humor or grocery business…

Many of you know me for my hijinks on this Landlubber Logistics business page. I’m posting this on here because Billy the Landlubber is a lot more popular than Billy Phibbs. This isn’t a random biopic. It has a purpose.

Some of you see me around town angrily shopping or talking to myself while scurrying about in my delivery vehicle, the Red Dragon.

What many of you don’t actually know is the real me. I don’t really let anyone too far inside my brain space. I like keeping things topical and fluffy for a reason. My past is not a fun one, filled with traumatic events and to say the least, it doesn’t have a lot of Hallmark moments to make mention of…

But in support of the St. John Cancer Fund and Sam and Jacks, I would like to share something about me and my experience with Cancer so hopefully you can gain some insight as to what this disease not only does to its carriers but how it effects the people surrounding their sickly loved ones as well as maybe donate a few dollars or buy some raffle tickets in support.

Over the last few weeks a friend of mine who also happens to own Sam and Jacks, Allison, asked me if I could help her with raising funds for the community sponsored St. John Cancer Fund Fundraiser and their “Sam and Jack’s Cancer Fund Raffle” (details and link below)

I’ve known about the fund because of the Light Up the Night Celebration in town and because of my own contributions I’ve made to the bell ringing, donation gathering, flared goatee friend O’ mine and St John Cancer Fund hero, Hank Slodden and his lovely wife Karen but I’ve always kept my contributions silent and at an arms distance for the mere discussion of cancer chills me to the bone.

Yes I am a shadowy and private person in general but the reasons as to why I’ve strayed from the celebration or any involvement in the St. John Cancer Fund is because cancer basically destroyed my teenage life. It’s still to this day, 30 years later, difficult for me to even talk about but I figured what better a reason to tell my experience than to hopefully churn up some more monetary support for a very noble cause.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer at an undeterminable age because she knowingly lied to me for years and kept it a secret from me. She did this out of love and on purpose. She knew the pain of me finding out would be decimating to my existence for I was the definition of a mamma’s boy and as a young man, I showed endless promise, both athletically and academically.

If cancer were to kill her, she didn’t want it to take me hostage as well. I hated her for this for many years but now, as an angrier older man, I look back and value her strength in doing so.

I believe her battle with the disease began when I was 12. I only know this because my 6th grade elementary school principal accidentally slipped one day and made mention that my mom was at a doctor’s appointment even though my father had asked him to not disclose this classified information. He asked me how I was doing with everything and her being sick and I blew a gasket. I think it was my very first conniption. I had no idea anything was wrong at that time so I flew off the handle.

Even at a young age I wanted to know everything that was going on. Hearing this, I lost my mind. I was inconsolable and I wanted answers, immediately. My father arrived to pick me up and after threatening physical violence on my grade school principal for his life altering faux pas (my dad is where I get my attitude and anger issues from) in telling me their actual whereabouts, we arrived home.

My mom was an immensely strong woman. She sat tall in her chair, sipping on her coffee and taking long drags on a Carlton cigarette (I know cancer and smoking don’t mix but it was the 90’s plus she already HAD cancer, couldn’t make it much worse, right)

She told me everything was going to be ok. “They found it early” she smiled and repeated but her eyes said something totally different.

The next 3 years we didn’t discuss the pink grim reaper that haunted every holiday, every celebration, every minute of our lives. We ignored it and when she didn’t feel well or we had to leave an event early because she was tired or sick, we collectively dismissed it as the healing process (that was how she spun it).

Instead life carried on and after they removed her breasts, all was to be better. Her womanly features taken from her, she persevered but then the Chemotherapy took her hair and what was left of her dignity. She was a hairdresser and her vanity was one of the few things she enjoyed amidst our very middle class existence. Her hairdresser friends styled wigs and tried their best to make her feel pretty but it was evident that the cancer had stolen her grace.

Early 1996 she fell while visiting my sister’s home in Middlesex NJ. She said it was black ice. The CT scan results said it was a blackout from a tumor the size of a baseball mitt that now covered the top half of her brain. This sort of diagnosis didn’t have a recovery plan. The only plan was to make her comfortable as her days ran out.

This all happened because her HMO at the time only covered the breast removal. There was no follow up to check the lymph nodes under her arms, within inches of the tumors she just had removed with the breast removal. Sucks when you don’t have the money to check the obvious.

Unfortunately it was later found that the cancer had spread everywhere.

The months that followed she lost the power to walk. One of her eyes became infected and basically withered away inside the socket. She was a shell of a woman now left at home on hospice care with only teenage me and my emotionally stunted father to oversee her.

Shortly before she died, unbeknownst to us, she wrote each of us a letters and hid them asking that her death not bring sadness but relief from the pain she battled daily.

Everything came to a head at the end of 1996. I was at an awards ceremony for high school baseball. My mother had been hospitalized for at home care became too much for my father and I. As the baseball gala wound down, my father called the hospital to check on her and the nurses said it was time.

There we sat, silently in a room watching my mother gasp for air for what seemed likely an eternity. No matter how large the morphine drip, her pain was never ending and overwhelming BUT in Phibbs family fashion, with each gasp of air she took in, she uttered out the words “ahhh sh*t!” which was her catch phrase of sorts. A matter of factly, it’s one of my favorite saying to this very day.

And then with one last gasp, the entire room fell silent. Friends and family stood there with nothing left to say. The deafening blow of watching a loved one’s last breath is deeply scarring. I remember it like it was yesterday.

Cancer had finally after months of punishment and financial duress, taken my Mom. It left us lost, depleted and floundering for something positive to take away from all it but there was absolutely nothing. Just unrelenting sadness.

Cancer then indirectly took my father’s life less than a year later. The emotional hardship of his wife of 25 years passing coupled with a canyon of debt was far too much. A mountain of a man who once breathed fire and brimstone and shed wise yet somewhat inappropriate teachings upon me in my younger years, thus molding me into the kind of nice yer deeply heartfelt as***le I am today was reduced to living on the couch in our living room, overcome with sadness for months before his death.

Some say it was a stroke. Some say it was self inflicted. We don’t dig too deep on this matter for which ever way you cut it, I was 17 and without both parents. Regardless of how he actually went, cancer had become his silent assassin as well.

Cancer imploded my relationship with my extended family. Monies borrowed to help pay for my mother’s care turned into flaming bridges of debt and disdain.

Some family were just too scared to approach me for after their deaths I lived in a very dark place mentally and physically. Plus, no one knew quite what to say because there was actually nothing to say.

Once joyful holidays spent with family members suddenly became just me, alone for the holidays at Rutgers University hardly studying yet graduating a liberal arts major and later pursuing (and capturing) a Masters Degree.

Despite these credible accolades, Cancer also inadvertently forced me into a double minor of early onset alcoholism and substance abuse to help better prepare myself for the mounting failures that would later come after my graduation due to my growing depression.

It took me until my early 30’s to finally crawl out of a vodka bottle and over the mounds of opiates their deaths indirectly bestowed upon my existence. Even then, the demons that my mother’s demise conjured would rear their ugly heads on occasion with impromptu relapses and other awful events up until my 40’s.

While the St. John Cancer Fund may not provide a cure, it may be able to curb some of these awful side effects. Cancer doesn’t just affect the diagnosed. It has a ripple effect that alters the lives of all those involved. St. John is an expensive place to live while healthy. One can only imagine what trying to live here would be like while battling such a financially devastating disease.

Maybe if my mother had access to such a fund, she wouldn’t have felt so guilty about the cost of her treatment…

Maybe my father would still be alive…

Maybe I wouldn’t have tripped and fell down a rabbit hole of addiction for over two decades…

I’m grateful to live in a community that tries to help others when they fall ill. Cancer doesn’t discriminate either. Whether or not someone is bahn’ here or moved here or even somehow got stuck here, they are pieces of a community that many of you call home for 7 - 14 days a year.

If cancer has in some way affected you or your loved ones, you know how beneficial help in any manner can make a difference. If you have it your heart to give any amount to a great cause like this it would be greatly appreciated by myself and the spirit of my parents…

And, you can win prizes so it’s a win/win situation for everyone!

You can purchase raffle tickets:
$10.00 for one ticket
$50.00 for six tickets
Or just donate online at the below link

All money donated to the raffle goes to St. John Cancer Patients!

Why not take a shot at winning a free stay or a bunch of other prizes while helping people in our community who need it!!!

Here is the link. Be sure and tell em’ Billy Phibbs sent ya!

https://samandjacksdeli.com/cancer-fund-raffle

Thank you….

Great Expectations (Villa), Tamarind Hotel, Boutique Hotel, Lime Out STT, Lime Out STJ, Upstairs Bar, Cafe Roma, The Speakeasy, Paulies Luncheonette, Irie Pops, Shambles, Sharkey's, Chef Vincent Alterio, Ronnies Pizza, St John Back Bar, Mongoose Shop, Pilates, Chasing Hues (Band), 8x8 (Salon), Virgi...