“Hang on, Lee. Big wave coming.”

Sailing for the Caribbean island of St. Martin from Bermuda to look for a new shipmate, we had about five hundred aqua blue salt sea miles to go.

The wave broke across the bow, windblown wet mess missing Lee and me entirely.

Lee found a spot on the aft cabin where he could look aft, keeping an eye on his trailing fishing line. He could hear my sea story above the splash of chop against the hull and occasional shaking of sails. I was just warming up a tale from an earlier voyage, recalling an odd occurrence years ago sailing up the Red Sea in my leaky old wooden ketch.

A seagull apparently blown offshore was riding the crest of a swell. Rocketing straight at the dinghy atop the aft cabin, at the last instant she pulled up slightly, slanting a few feet overhead.

“In Seychelle Islands it was, 1,700 miles southwest of India, where I picked up a couple hundred feet of two hundred pound test monofilament. We had destroyed all our tackle on tuna coming across the Indian Ocean from Singapore. Believe me. It only took one look at my shipmates and me to know we didn’t have a penny to waste on fishing gear.”

“Sounds familiar.”

Lee studied a rain squall on the horizon above his lure.

“Now we sailed up the Red Sea for Israel, the Suez Canal being closed by recent war. Yes, off the coast of Ethiopia we were, in excellent following winds and seas, having a grand time. Even fishing was good. I pulled in a barracuda three mornings in a row, at first dawn’s light, when you could just begin to see well, but a while before the sun actually came up. Each one perfect eating size, maybe twenty inches or just a little more.”

The gull circled back. I could see her little head swiveling.

“On the fourth morning I stepped to the stern rather expecting the usual barracuda. I pulled the line in hand over hand, coiling as I went. The line felt dead and empty.”

The breeze freshened and shifted aft a little. I leaned over the genoa sheet winch, eased a little line out and wrapped it again around its cleat. The big jib sail in front took the wind a little better. Sweet Mary, it’s hard to beat sailing in the Caribbean trades.

“I take it your point is going to be that there actually was something on that line?”

Wait. Had I told him this story before?

“Yes, shockingly so. I could see it as the hook was only a few feet behind the boat. I carefully pulled the hook up out of the water and lowered it to the deck. Hanging only by its own weight was the lower jaw of a fish, probably a barracuda, about two inches across. The jaw was bare, with just tiny shreds of flesh hanging from it. I stood there staring at that thing, imagining some shark, perhaps, ripping it from the hook all in one gulp, leaving the lower jaw bone hanging.”

Goose bumps on my arms as I delivered Lee the punchline ending.

The gull hovered over Lee’s lure then soared away, hungry and tired, a long, long way from home.

For thirty-seven years now that darned fish jaw hanging from the hook keeps popping back in my memory, and from here the story goes from happy to sad.

These days, among my personal friends and in stories of life abroad in our nation, across the proverbial fruited plain and from coast to coast, people feel like they are being eaten alive, like that barracuda.

First the stock market crash in the early 2000’s and then the credit bubble sucking ordinary hard working folks into excessive debt.

Next came the housing bubble and the government spending bubble, and the final blow for many, job loss with dim employment prospects in the now tight credit market. People just feel like they’re being eaten alive.

Now, everyone has his pet theory on where we went wrong. For my part, if I weren’t trying to concentrate on my sea stories, I’d be happy to go into it. In a nutshell, things have fallen apart due to occasional personal human failings such as irresponsibility, thoughtlessness, and irrational optimism, combined with higher-ups elected and private grabbing a portion of the pot which doesn’t really belong to them.

Mainly, however, this societal meltdown has resulted from poor government.

What’s your guess?

Ross Pobanz can be contacted by e-mailing him at: ross.pobanz73@gmail.com.