The music in my head.

All I can hear on the bottom of Ky. Lake is the noise my regulator makes, the bubbles, and motor boats within 1/3 a mile or so.

You are alone. No TV, no people, no distractions but for the boat tugging on you whichever way the wind is blowing.

The job, harvesting freshwater mussels, I’ve done so long it’s damn near auto pilot. Don’t have to think about it much. So, you are very much alone with yourself. Having troubles? You have plenty of time to think. There’s a lot of thinking going on. But usually I’ll settle in, and sooner than later, a song pops into my head.

Which is fine. Except once one does, it sticks with you a while. It’s hard to change the channel. You will think of another song, and get it going, but the other song inevitably jumps back.

My song yesterday was “I Need You” by one of my old time faves Lynyrd Skynyrd. I warn you, it’s an ear worm, but a great song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD1ruD7-2-I

Side note, I came up from my first dive yesterday, had lost one of my shell sacks, and it had my 4″ Washboard and Heel Splitter ring on it! Shit! Damn! Hell! Then it gets even better, I hadn’t been in the boat 10 seconds, and I see a boat near me with a man and a woman in it. The guy was waving, his boat motor was up, and he was moving under trolling motor power. “Well shit!” I knew what this was the second I saw it.

He needed a tow. His outboard failed.

I’ve been out here on this lake/river a long time. 40 years in fact. So, these things happen, and the river code is simple. You help people when they need it. I didn’t want to, I had a shell sack to hunt for. I was on a decent spot too. So my income for the day is going to take a drastic hit. All I could do though, was ask, “where do you need to get to?”

I’ll spare you the details, but I used Google Earth this morning, it was a 7.5 mile tow! Thank Njord, one of the Nordic gods, there was a marina close by, so I could get enough $5.25 a gallon gas to get me back to my spot to hunt for my sack. It took 2.5 hours to get back where I was diving. The trip back might have taken 20 minutes. Lots of boat traffic on a Saturday, heavy wakes and a N wind slowed me a bit.

Thing is, it was that guy yesterday, it could be me tomorrow. These are the kind of things you pay forward, whether you have something you’d rather do, or not.

Oh yeah, I found the sack 😉