Mayday

Roll out the barrel. Have yourself some fun. We set sail on Gitchy Gummee at the crack of dawn on an old makeshift raft made of driftwood and old rootbeer barrels. Our vessel featured one rinky-dink mast made from an old rusty flagpole and a sheet of glued together fish scales. You cranked the sail up or down depending on the wind, or maybe just for show since it didn’t seem to help with the direction of the ship at all. Luckily we had a couple of poles and oars to help out with the navigation just in case. There were about six of us on board I think. Tommy Pizza was the one who had mostly built the boat or maybe he just bought it from some guy in Herbster.

We called him Tommy Pizza because his favorite thing to say was, “You want a slice?” Also on board as part of the crew, the first mate as a matter of fact, was a fellow named haha. We called him that because he liked to play golf and every time he hit a good shot, he would say, “haha!”. So Haha was on board as well along with the rest of the fellas.

We called our little rig The Barrel of Fun. Some guys wanted it to be the Barrel of Laughs. While others preferred, just The Barrel, something more succinct and stately. This gave us some things to talk about, was one of our discussion topics as we rolled out on Gitchee Gumee on a beautiful clear Saturday morning. About six o clock as the sun was coming up. A few planes were flying overhead, but othr than that, there was not a sound other than the rolling drone of the water and the cackling from the gulls up above. But all that was about to change when a big ore barge appeared on the horizon moving right in our direction. One of those hundred footers.

Tommy Pizza was busy hacking away at a pile of shellfish with a sharp looking dagger. He had brought many sharp pointy things on board with him as a matter of fact. From little paring knives to a big saber. We were all hoping that they were being brought along for us to defend the ship against pirates and not for him to hack us all death, but we knew Tommy Pizza would never do anything like that. He just felt better with his swords by his side. As it was, the lake was calm and the sun was not too hot. We each picked our little spot on the Barrel of Fun and relaxed in the morning breeze.