Gravlax and the revenge of the bugs, chowda...

That's me slicing gravlax at a party. This will get me to almost drowning in the North Atlantic in a circuitous way. The Nordic delicacy is one of my favorites, and there were too many vegetarians hanging around so I jumped in and did the deed. Funny, I saw some of the aforementioned vegetarians glomming the salmon as the liquor flowed and the phrase, "I sometimes eat fish", came into play. Those are what I call "beady eyed vegetarians"...they eat fish and chicken. Then, of course there are the "no-eyed" vegetarians that eat stuff like conch and eggs (especially if the eggs are in a particularly good dessert). But hey, I'm an omnivore with a heavy lean toward the vegetable side. I get into some terrific discussions with vegetarians about wearing leather and cow flatulence blowing holes in the ozone layer. I fully believe that last statement, but what would we do with cows? I haven't been to India, but I saw the movie. There are some major problems with cow shit there. Problems like these are more complex than the economy.

So, the place where I trucked lobster in the seventies (remember me passing the kidney stone in a cramped bathroom in an earlier post? 9/28), had us filleting salmon when the bug (Maine for lobster) business was slow. Hence, the gravlax connection. It was a really early start down there at the bottom of Main Street in Belfast, Maine. We left early, before dawn, touring the coast of Maine picking up crates of bugs. It was an amazing thing to be cruising down east (check the map of Maine for an explanation of that term) before dawn, sometimes I thought I was the first guy in the continental USA to see the sun rise...even if I was somewhat bleary-eyed most of the time. I had some hard nights in those days, actually some hard days too.

One December morning, before the sun rose they were playing way too many Beatles's songs on the radio. Before they said it I figured one of them had died. As the sun came up on the way to Prospect Harbor I learned that John Lennon had been shot. I wasn't a fan, but the tears ran anyway. I'll never forget, I got out of the truck near Bucksport to take a leak and could feel the frozen tears on my face. It was a shitty morning.

But not as shitty as the time I fell in the water, off the pier in Prospect Harbor, in January! They say you have a few minutes in those kinds of waters, but I was having none of that. My knee high, steel tipped rubber boots were filling up, but I was swimming like Mark Spitz. Donnie, the guy who ran the lobster pound just happened to be in his house (right where the pier started) when I lost my balance hoisting a one hundred pound crate (that's net, the crate itself probably weighed another thirty pounds) and went ass-over-tea kettle into the drink. I had on long johns, jeans, a long underwear shirt, a flannel shirt, rubber gloves and a down vest that was duct taped together like a patchwork quilt. All of it made it out of the water with me as I somehow scrambled up the ladder to the pier.

By then I was screaming for Donnie and running to his house. He took one look at me, dragged me into his living room and told me to strip everything off. I was quickly naked and he was stuffing my stuff into a dryer in the mud room. He had given me a wool blanket to wrap myself in, nonetheless I felt like a human popsicle. It was then that I noticed his three daughters were sitting around the kitchen table at the opposite end of the room. They were pretty big, they introduced themselves and one went and got me one of their gigantic, terry cloth robes. Still shaking they poured me a hot coffee while we gathered around the kitchen table. Donnie went out and finished loading my truck while I made small talk with the daughters.

Now this was way down east Maine in the seventies. These girls hadn't seen a long-haired, hippie freak (let alone nude!) too often, maybe once or twice up in the big city, Bangor. They just looked at me and asked every once in a while if I was okay. They heated up some fish chowder, that's "chowdah", as we listened to all my shit tumble in the dryer. I think Donnie was thinking I might take a fancy to one of them, but it wasn't happening.

I finally got dressed, thanked them all profusely, got the receipt for the lobsters from Donnie and headed out to my truck. Donnie had it all warmed up, with the heat blasting...I had to drive with just my socks on because my boots weren't going to be dry for a while. I fished an emergency doobie out of the glove compartment and started the two plus hour drive back to Belfast, still freezing my ass off. It took days and a lot of liquor to warm me up.

When I got back to the shop I had to call a guy back into work (no cell phones in those days) to help me unload. I had him bring me his extra boots. He also brought a pint of Jim Beam for me to start the defrosting process in earnest. The boss came by, he wasn't much for heavy labor and asked us, "Hey there's some salmon in the cooler, you two want to fillet some tonight?" In perfect synchronization were both spat out "f... you."

So, I love gravalax, but whenever I see it that trip often comes to mind. That lobster pound has a million stories, like the time my buddy Leo flipped the truck in Rumsford, and there were bugs all over Route 2...but that's for another time.

Later, biff