No Day at the Beach

The human brain is a fabulously complex and wondrously
strange thing. Mine certainly is, although people
tend to focus on its strangeness. Occasionally my
brain does things that even I consider very odd,
but so long as I am alone at the time it doesn't
really matter what I am tempted to do with kumquat.
At least that's what I tell myself.

But recently I was out in the world and I saw someone
approaching wearing a yellow fedora. I immediately
flopped over on my back and began doing what bystanders
thought resembled the backstroke. No, I didn't really,
but I wanted to, and I thought that was strange enough.
I had to probe my psyche deeply (back in the privacy
of my own home, of course; they won't let you do that
in most malls) to discover what had caused this
reaction. I didn't have to look too hard, which is
good because you know how painful those probes are.
I probably could use a sharper set.

Anyway, I flashed back on an ill-fated fishing trip
I took years ago. My father, brother, conveniently
pseudonymed "Bro," and I took the canoe to Webb Lake
over in Weld, Maine, one summer evening. It had been
a lovely, sunny day, and looked like it would be a
mild evening. Until we crossed the weather divide.

This is what we have named the Weld town line because
they do not subscribe to the same weather provider the
rest of the state uses. Weld has had a secret deal with
a Canadian province to buy weather for years, but now
that NAFTA is in place we can talk about it. The province
(which I believe is Saskatchewan, or maybe Saskatchetwon)
pipes its surplus weather to Weld in exchange for hard
apple cider. There aren't enough people in Saskatchewan
to use all of the weather, but they sure manage to
guzzle that hard cider. Thus, Weld weather is always
about ten degrees colder, and there tends to be a lot
of wind. I guess that's why the Saskatchewanese drink
so much hard cider. They need it to keep warm. Why the
folks in Weld prefer Saskatchewan weather is unclear.
They just do.

So as we crossed the town line, the car began to be
buffeted by heavy winds. My father claimed it was just
the canoe tied to the roof that made us un-aerodynamic,
and maintained that it was only a little "breezy."
The dark clouds rolling in overhead didn't seem to faze
him, or my brother, "Bro", either.

The lake was pretty choppy when we got there, but we
put the canoe in anyway, and paddled out. There were,
as any normal person would expect, no other boats out
there at all. Nevertheless, we paddled out toward a
large rock in the middle of the lake, commonly called
Bass Rock because once in 1857 a guy caught a bass near
it.

There we dropped anchor and threw in our lines amid
the growing whitecaps. The wind kept spinning the
anchored canoe around, so that you would begin a cast
in one direction and end up facing the opposite way.
This is how my brother came to cast straight toward
the rock. All you fishermen out there know what happened
next: His line got snarled in the sub-surface rocks.

At just that instant, the wind lifted my father's
bright yellow fishing hat from his head, and set it
down on the water twenty feet away. My father immediately
hauled up the anchor and bellowed against the wind,
"We're going after my hat!" My brother was apparently
unaware of this, as he kept trying to jerk his line free.
It's amazing how strong fishing line is, because "Bro"
had us anchored nicely, and my father's paddling only
drove us in circles. Finally the line snapped (after
numerous death threats shouted by my father to my
seemingly stone-deaf brother), and we rescued that
yellow hat just before it sank.

I, who was sitting on the floor in the middle of the
canoe, was so seasick by then that I asked to be let
off on shore while the others paddled back to the dock.
I guess this must qualify as a fairly traumatic memory.
If it doesn't, at least it does explain why yellow hats
affect me the way they do. Maybe.