Day of Mourning

Well, there was some warning that this day would come. I've known for almost a week now that I'd be writing this post, feeling sombre and slightly empty, with a hollow feeling in my gut and some anxiety for the future and questions about what it will hold for me. I know that I face some inconvenient and expensive hurdles to get past now. Plans for buying a house when I get home will have to wait until I see what the changes will do to my income.

   At any rate, they'll be here tomorrow to pick up my truck and bring it to the scrapyard. It got flooded with seawater when my company's parking lot went underwater in Hurricane Sandy.


Wait, did you think I was talking about something else? No, I was talking about my truck.

 I bought my truck new, for the express purpose of being able to haul bait and tools and not looking like a wussy. At the time, I was lobstering with The Notorious B.O.B., and he had just made me relief captain on the RITA C, his boat. I was running to Boston twice a week to pick up 1,500lbs of salmon heads, flounder bodies and cod parts, (pronounced "Pahts," of course). Those 3,000lbs, along with a couple of barrels of pickled herring delivered by Dick The Bait Guy (Well, properly 'Dick, the bait guy', but we are juvenile, Bob and I, when we're together). At any rate, my truck was a point of pride for me. I traded in a Dodge Neon to buy it. The Neon was my commuter vehicle when I was in grad school and running from southern Rhode Island every Thursday afternoon to go fishing on Friday and Saturday, then spend Sunday with my parents before heading back to RI for more classes and work and other things associated with a life I wasn't interested in. My truck payments were part of the reason why I couldn't survive on a deckhand's salary anymore, and had to step up and get a captain's license too.

 The election? Yeah, I voted for the other guy. We elect a president, not a priest-king. If the Vox Populi wants to start a slow march to being another Greece, there are still people in position to slow the slide, so I will continue to do my best for me and mine and hope that others will do the same. Everyone else, though, can go fuck themselves now, until I again feel that there is someone who represents my interests in our government. My contributions to the Free Ice Cream Machine have just gotten a lot more begrudgingly given.