It
is barely eight-thirty a.m. and Barrett Pier resembles New York’s famed
Fulton Fish Market. Three boats are offloading and several others are snaking
single-file down the channel toward the dock. Three trucks are on the pier,
one has backed down the concrete ramp below the pier, and people are moving
every which way in every imaginable vehicle, tossing lines, carrying bushel
boxes, hitching trailers, backing up trucks, docking boats, rowing dinghies.
I half expect an ultralight aircraft to fly over, or some daredevil to parachute
in. No one stays more than a minute or two; it is a breach of etiquette to linger
at the dock.
Photos
and text copyright Jim Patrick and Rob Benchley, 2002
