by “Tackle Box” Billy Kelley

Enchanted Day

Hey folks. I hope you are doing as good as I. And just why am I so jolly this summer morn? A simple change of location. I got off the Custom House Wharf.

You see the homeless all over nowadays. Christ, the Oaks looks like Sebago Lake Campground. Every corner big enough to hold a human is now a spot to hold a piece of cardboard. I’m surprised they aren’t signing fishing boats! But they have found my pier, sure enough — specifically, some loud and vulgar drunks. Fucks it up for us meaningful fishermen, to be sure. Of course, I warned the little troublemakers how they are gonna fuck things up for everyone, but no one seems to listen.

So out to the trestle I go. You know, even the trip to get there is pretty nice. You go by way of the new Eastern Prom Trail. Since they paved it, it’s a real nice journey. Course, not as many short skirts as down the Old Port, but the scenery kind of makes up for it, ’specially for an old-timer like me. And they keep it quite clean, ’cept the part where they let folks do graffiti. Unfortunately, they fuck that up by leaving empty paint cans strewn all over creation. But go a little ways farther and you can see the old trestle.

I ventured down the other day, and a honey of a day it was. It is beautiful out there. Can be a mite dangerous, though. It’s actually put me in the hospital three times. I thought it’d be torn down by now, honestly.

You can visualize me at this wondrous spot, beautiful weather, the tide perfect, and I’m all ready for a record-setting day. However, my second cast — I use a jigger, by the way — and bam, my line snags on me. This is actually quite common when jigger-fishing. The wind catches your jig sometimes and it snags on your line. So I haul it in and go to fix it.

Plop. That is the sound of a fishing pole hitting the water. Yeah, mine. Two casts and it’s game over.

Now, I could end this column right here, but I won’t let my faithful readers down. Because when I left the house to go fishing, there was a real good pirate show on TV.

Do you know the secret pirate hiding place? It’s not in the Caribbean Sea, although they did have some peachy little places there — I assume ’cause that’s where most treasure came from. But numero uno of the spots to hide was not even in this hemisphere. They used to like hanging out in a spot by Madagascar, which is next to Africa. I know — quite a trip to get there, but it was great for a hideout. It was an inlet which you couldn’t enter lest you knew the way in. Booby traps and what-not, you see. In fact, you needed a sailor called a navigator to find the way.

The navigator was a real important guy on the boat. Rated third place behind the captain and the pilot. This guy could do lots of stuff: read the compass, read stars, read charts; could comprehend many languages, as most of their navigational stuff was stolen from other ships.

Yes, it’s very important to have a good navigator. Still is, if you think about it. The number one action during a battle was not protect the captain. Protect the navigator. Next: protect them charts. That’s the only way they’d find their way home. To figure longitude was not invented until long after the pirate days were over.

And you know, should someone get injured in battle, the cure was worse than the cause — unless you like stitches sewn up with needles half-a-foot long. And they had a strange idea that forcing someone to bleed would somehow cure disease. Oh, and amputation was quite common also. I do wish I could show you one of them saws. Scary. Christ, nowadays they use better saws for limbing trees. Sometimes they’d cut 25 to 50 arms and legs per battle. Very common to see wooden legs in those days. And they had yet to invent anesthesia. They’d use whatever alcohol they had on board — and it wasn’t a nice rum mixed drink.

As far as “grog” goes, they’d put fresh water into a keg. Tended to get real slimy in a real hurry. Plus, it had little creepies doing what they do — creep around the water barrel. Which sailors didn’t mind — a source of protein, don’t you know?

These are the thoughts that run through your head when you’ve dropped your pole. I’ve seen so many people do this. I’ve often thought about going down and looking for some of these treasures, and I don’t know why I haven’t.

I do hope they don’t ever tear the trestle down, or fence it off, or other little tricks they can pull. It’s one of the most beautiful places in Portland, and historical also. As one looks down the shoreline toward Tukey’s Bridge, in days of yore they built boats on that shore. I would have really loved to be in them good old days, watching the guys pounding away, rigging the sails. What a really great time we’d have.