There is a tale my father tells, of when, new to this continent, on a sweltering spring day, during an excursion in the North Ontario bush, he sought to relieve the onerous heat by stripping down and leaping into a pond of stagnant water.  A damn fool notion, but then, what should a callow Maltese youth, fresh to the country in 1964, know of the perils of leaping into ponds of stagnant water in Northern Ontario.  When he emerged it was as though his entire body had suddenly sprouted a coat of coarse  black hair, covered as he was by a pelt of mosquitoes.  His body went into shock as a thousand proboscises began syphoning his blood.  His blood pressure plummeted and he lost consciousness and was rushed to hospital.

Sometime in June and July, every year on Lake Erie, may flies will descend in vast green swarms.  On the ships they cover every available surface. At night they’ll proliferate, particularly in front of spotlights on deck where they quiver like dumb supplicants in thrall to the beam such powerful wattage casts. The deck becomes treacherous as it thickens with their bodies.  Each footfall squelches and murders dozens and the way becomes slick with their viscera.  A fellow crew mate, who hails from Port Dover on the North shore of Lake Erie, tells me that some years their numbers are so pervasive that cars can’t drive up even the shallowest of inclines in town.  Their tires are unable to gain purchase on the thick blanket of insects that coats the roads.

I recently read the description of a Liberian hotel room’s walls by the Polish writer Ryzard Kapucinski who wrote that they were not white as they had been painted, but black and seething with the polished backs of enormous mustached cockroaches.

As human beings, we are in the business of telling stories. It is a currency in which we trade.  Whole cultures are indebted to them. And we in turn carry and accumulate our own.  If Jesus was a fisher of men, then most of us are, at the very least, fishers of ears that will listen to us.

Sailors in particular like to tell a tale or two and are known to exaggerate their experiences lavishly. Wind speed and wave height will often be puffed up by a good 15 to 25% as will our proximity to danger, destruction and death.  The Portuguese call these ‘contos de pescadores’ or fishermen’s tales.  

I sailed with a captain, himself a talented writer, who has stories enough to fill many books and such is his passion for travel, adventure and adrenaline, that I worry for his safety because I fear his stories may not be exaggerated at all.  One tale I recall him telling me occurred when he was the carpenter aboard the Barque Picton Castle on its circumnavigation of the globe.  They were anchored in the Galapagos islands and he chose to row ashore in a 15-foot swell at the oars of a small dory he had spent most of the previous voyage constructing. Apparently, he stood up, an ore in each hand and surfed an enormous wave shoreward, only to have the boat and himself crash and somersault onto the rocky beach.  The boat was reduced to splinters instantly but he, as is his manner, walked away unscathed and continued on into town.  For the rest of their stay on the islands he was referred to by the locals, many of whom had witnessed this spectacular stunt, as ‘El carpentero loco.’

It should come as no surprise that I like a good yarn.  Both the spinning and the receiving.  

The multi-million-dollar company I work for, fastidious penny-pinchers, decreed a few days ago, that rather than let the crew of my vessel finish their holidays it would bring us back four days early in Windsor, Ontario and thus save themselves the cost of flights to Sault Sainte-Marie or Thunder Bay.  Such blatant parsimony is particularly galling as, after a few long months spent mired in a funk both physical and existential, in my final week ashore everything seemed to be coming up Tabone.  An auspicious encounter, a lively dinner outside with three old, dear friends, a planned skate date with a fellow aging skateboarder and, to cap it all off, a gift arrived for me on my final day home that had been ordered by my roommate (also a sailor and a friend of longstanding) who, worried at the turbidity of mind he had witnessed in me a few weeks prior, surprised me with a vinyl record of the Bee Gees’ album ‘Sprits Have Flown’, autographed by all three of the brothers Gibb, two of whom are now dead.  When I opened the package and discovered this I shrieked like a giddy schoolgirl, for despite my punk rock pedigree and my downtown skateboarderly pretensions, I can unashamedly admit I fucking love the Bee Gees.

T.L and I drove through the night, as did four other rental cars from all over the province and we parked by the Detroit River to wait for the ship.  It was a humid night and we tried to sleep in the hot vehicles as the sun rose.  My crew mate snored quietly in the back seat and I could hear the wind and the hum of distant generators as I fidgeted and tossed around and tried my best to get comfortable.  A mosquito troubled my ear and suddenly I recalled my father’s story, which has become a story friends of my fathers have told over the years and is now also my story.  Its veracity is unimportant.  Over time the facts have become elastic, bending one way or another according to whomever is telling it.  Most have him emerging unrecognizable and howling like a sasquatch from that stagnant pond.

The story does not end there either.  My dad, after such a cruel anointment, claims not to have been bothered by a mosquito since.  Never bitten in 57 years.  Not once.