Lessons in Humility on the Waterfront

Tasty little crustaceans. They drive Maine's waterfront economy every summer. From the herring and poggie fishermen to the bait shop and the tank room to the truckers driving up and down the coast delivering barrels of fish and picking up crates of lobsters, everyone is in high gear making money while to fishing is good.

Custom House Wharf is a throwback to earlier times, an eclectic mix of fish shops, waterfront restaurants, canvas sail and tote shops and the lobster business. My family has worked this wharf for generations. Great, great grandfather sailed from here. Great Grampa Clarence based his hard hat diving business here. Gramps Davis sold Clams to Boones Restaurant at the head of the wharf. My father ran the oil terminal across the harbor. And now my cousin runs his bait and lobster business on Custom House Wharf. Cousins, nephews, children, spouses, son-in-laws, they all show up to fulfill some function from shoveling fish, to working in the office, to unloading boats and trucks.




My designated role this summer is to drive the big trucks and fill in where needed, but in order to do the job I had to get a commercial drivers license (CDL). I thought "no big deal". Lesson in humility number 1. The process is onerous, a thick manual to digest followed by a written test and a permit. Next driving for weeks with a licensed driver and learning to operate a 52,000 pound GVW, a 10 gear, high/low range non-synchronous transmission, air brakesand suspension, dual axle, 30 foot box, BEAST of a truck. Then three more tests; an off road maneuverability test (back-up, offset drive through, parallel park and truck dock), a pre-trip inspection test and a road test. I visited the DOT testing site and watched 4 people flunk the test. Real confidence builder... I was hesitant to send in my request for the exams until my cousin pushed me to it.

All the trucks on the wharf were working, so I had to rent a rig for a couple days... and practice. I set up the cones and paniced as I repeatedly failed to perform the maneuvers. 12 hours later I was hitting 1 out of 3 times. I was almost out of daylight when I tried a final docking and backed right into the garage door of the business where I had been allowed to practice. Crunched it hard. Lesson in humility number 2.

Somehow I passed the tests. It was just luck or maybe the helpful woman test instructor or maybe divine intervention. Whateva'. To quote Blanche Dubois from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," I rely on the kindness of strangers". So I'm feeling pretty cocky now. What a hot shot. Passed the first time. Bragging to people that I had to update my resume; Glen D. Foss; BS, MBA, CDL. Pride goeth before the fall...

My first solo trip was the next day to the Georgetown Fishermens Co-op, a route I had driven several times. Up the wharf and through busy Commercial Street dodging traffic and pedestrians with scarce inches of clearance, north on busy I-295 through miles and miles of road and bridge construction, through Brunswick and Bath with snarls of traffic dripping fish juice from the 40 barrels of bait on pallets in the cargo bay, and down the peninsula over a narrow, winding, hilly road.

I was white knuckled and tense, but doing ok, not grinding too many gears, only stalled out once in the middle of a busy intersection and coming down a hill, fully loaded toward the narrow bridge in the fishing village of Georgetown when an elderly woman pulled out of a driveway in front of me and stopped broadside in my lane. My heart almost exploded in my chest as I locked up the brakes knowing full well I could never stop in time. At the last minute, she pulled out of my path. I laid on the air horn, across the bridges, a 90 degree turn followed by a steep hill. I was in the wrong gear and blew the downshift, had to stop on the hill, set my breaks and start up again in low gear, creeping my way up the hill, fish juice pouring out the back of the truck onto the waiting line of traffic stacked up behind me. Utter humiliation. Things couldn't be worse... except perhaps that I might have killed an old lady on my first trip out. Yeah, what's a little humiliation compared to that.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I backed the truck up to the wharf and shut down the engine. And then I opened the cargo door. Lesson in humility number 4. 40 barrels had slid off the pallets, fish and juice everywhere. An hour later sweating, stinking and sore, I finished unloading. Lesson in humility complete... for that day.

Every day I have new lessons presented to me. Criticisms from the crew for wearing my boots wrong ("you tuck your pant legs in... not out"), from my cousin for speaking out of school ("Don't talk about the business. You can't trust anyone"), and yesterday from the tank room crew when I dropped four crates of lobsters off a dolly ("The fishermen are all talking about your yard sale... good one.").

So why am I having such a good time? Don't know. But it feels right. Who ever said that by age 60 we should know it all. Remember the lessons from your younger years? "Failure is sometimes the result of trying to learn new things." "Even the best baseball players only hit the ball 30% of the time" .

Ultimately we are all just "Bozo's on the bus". When ego and status rear their ugly heads, life gets less fun. A healthy dose of humility, though mighty uncomfortable sometimes, isn't a bad thing. Nobody enjoys failure. But, as Helen Keller wrote, "Life is an adventure... or nothing". Adventures in humility...

The sunrises and the scenery are spectacular.



Who has more fun than people...