I am like the craziest man in the nursing home, rocking on the porch, telling the same stories each year as August arrives.
I was once, after all, Blackbeard the Pirate.
Were you?
As an occasionally intrepid reporter for the Bangor Daily News, I was forced to cover the Maine Lobster Festival (did it start as the Seafood Festival?) for 30 long years. The festival starts Wednesday at Rockland’s public landing.
It was cool to complain about the annual event and the hordes of tourists. Secretly, I loved the festival. You could walk down to the festival grounds on any day of the week and get a damned good feature story. The carnival owner would tell you how the tourism business was going around the state. Any “carny” on the spot was worth a story.
Every year you had to interview the guy running “The World’s Largest Lobster Cooker.” No one knew if that title was true, but no one ever contested it.
It was kind of tawdry years ago, as most of those events were. I remember when the traditional “moment of silence” for lost fishermen was drowned out by the carnival ride music. Hey, they could have shut down for a minute.
My very favorite festival moment was on the festival stage when Ted Cohen, an official Festival Sea Hag (and Press Herald reporter), asked if he should blow cigar smoke in the face of emcee Dason Decoursey, who thought he was Bert Parks. I, serving as Blackbeard, said it was not a bad idea and was crippled with laughter when he actually did it. Most people thought it was part of the festival shtick. Only Saul Zwecker, a sardine plant owner, appreciated the highly disrespectful act.
You hadda be there. Perhaps that was why my term as Blackbeard lasted exactly one year. And I had a black beard.
My least favorite moment was when I wrote the Sea Goddess story, then forgot to send it. When the Saturday morning paper came out without the traditional story, I was furious about those “idiots on the desk” that failed to print the story. I checked and found that I never sent it.
Paul Arvidson was a furniture store owner and a genuine wiseass from Dedham, Massachusetts. Naturally we got along famously. It was his daughter who won the crown that night, and I had to apologize profusely. He always thought I had done it on purpose. I certainly did not.
My second favorite festival story was about John Wallace of Alabama and Cathy Field of Martinsville. I bought a house in Martinsville where Field was raised. We became fast friends. Well, she was the prettiest girl in Martinsville (maybe in Maine) and was promptly elected Miss Port Clyde for the festival. I believe our friend Saul Zwecker was involved. Wallace was serving in the U.S. Navy at Brunswick. The Navy men were asked if they would like to serve as beauty queen escorts in faraway Rockland.
You can guess their answer.
Well, Wallace and Field met on that festival stage and history was written. They married, had daughter Marisa and had the best story ever on “how did you meet?” sessions.
One of the best national stories about the festival occurred when the PETA organization picketed against the wholesale slaughter of the crustaceans. If memory serves (it rarely does) the national publicity generated the best year the festival ever had.
I had to agree with PETA since I have never eaten a lobster in my life. It seems likely that I shall pass from the Earth without tasting one. It all goes back to 129 Perham St. in West Roxbury when my father started cooking lobsters — he loved them — in a pot filled with boiling water. I must have been about 8 years old. I could hear the lobsters clicking their hearts out, trying to get out of that pot.
“I’ll have a hot dog,” I said to Big Bob.
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the Bangor Daily News in Rockland for 30 years.