Yesterday I got to see the Legendary Mackerel Man of Southwest Harbor. Well at least he is legendary among the lobster men at the town/Beals docks. He is someone you wouldn't hear about on a tour of the island or even notice as you scarf down a lobster on Beal's lobster shack -- even if you did gaze over at the comings and goings at the town dock. No this is only a character you meet if you work down on the dock for a living because only then do you notice someone like the Mackerel Man.
No one knows his real name only that he shows up each summer in a van and sets up camp down by the town dock. By day he fishes for mackerel which he sells to the local lobster men for bait, if they take pity on him they might hire him on for the day to take the place of a stern man who has gone missing after a Sunday bender.
If not he spends his day between scowling at the lobster men trying to maneuver their boats to the dock among his fishing lines and scanning the trash for returnable bottles and cans.
They say he comes from way up north in the county and his visit to the island is not all that long. Its a mystery what spurns his migration back north, is because the mackerel have left the harbor, the cans have filled the van or is it simply that the Mackerel Man has had his fill of people?
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