Another foot in a shoe has washed up on the Canadian coast. This is all you need to know about today. Instead, let me tell you about what I did on my summer vacation.

Last week about this time, I set out in a rented car packed full of strangers in search of a seafood shack that someone had heard about. “It’s where the locals eat,” was the whispered rumor. Ooh. If there’s anything I like better than wearing a bib and cracking open an exoskeleton, it’s doing it local style. This particular locality was Essex, Massachusetts. My car was full of conference-dazed painters looking for booze and a good time after the close of their shindig.

The weather on the eastern seaboard last week could best be described as torpid. Elastic. Slimy. We set off down some state highway in search of the mythical exit 14, gateway to tail and claw-meat nirvana. A peppering hail of bug bodies crackled against the windshield as we bored into a fading rural evening. My back seat was full of women. The up-front passenger was a bloke name of Ted, one of maybe seven or eight of his gender at this gathering of 225 wax-loving painters. Why so few men at such a well-attended gathering? My theory is that men don’t join. The social gene has gone missing in most of ‘em. Not Ted, though. Ted’s the kind of guy you just like straight away. He’s a large fella, with a personality that could fill the Astrodome. He smokes a pipe. He’s like Santa Claus, if Santa Claus was bald and told dirty jokes.

There it was, perched on the bank of a broad, flat salt marsh. Farnham’s is a dive in the best sense of the word. We stood in line to place our orders and bugged the counter help with inane trivia questions. Us: do lobsters have a season? Them: hah? Us: Y’know, like shellfish. A time of year when they’re off limits. Them: Dunno. Maybe wintah. We’re not here in the wintah. Leathery, weathered New Englanders, my ass. Turns out they spend January lazing by the pool in Santa Fe.

“I’ll have the boiled lobster dinner,” said I, when it was my turn to order.

“Anadda Lobstah Dinnah,” she shouted into the steaming kitchen. “Sides?”

I shook my head, “What are my–”

“French Fries, Onion Rings, Slaw. Pick two.”

French fries AND onion rings? Kill me now. We crowded in around a too-small table and yakked about painting, life, and seafood until platters of the reddened dead arrived, with copious tubs of drawn butter. Each lobster was wearing a yellow sombrero of lemon slice, perched at a jaunty angle. “Hola, señor, yo soy boiled!” Ted said, as he puppeted his dinner around the table. If flesh-eating bacteria devour humanity some day, nobody can say we didn’t have it coming.

One by one, we filtered out onto the gravel parking lot after dinner. I found Ted smoking a bowl and facing the water. He didn’t speak when I approached. The last of the day was dying in the west, leaving a faint smear of pink in the sky and on the lagoon. On a spit of land among the reeds and glassy water stood an ancient house, weathered and gray. I let my eyes wander its rooms and watched as seasons changed, the summer folk came and went. In the time it took Ted to take a couple of good draws on his pipe, I lived a lifetime in this spot. This is what writers do. It’s why I travel; not to see the sights and collect photos for some dusty album, but to inhabit, for a fleeting moment, another life.

Everyone gathered with full bellies to watch the night take the lagoon. Cameras were produced, and miniature lightning flashed across the water. An exclamation came from behind me, “Wow, stars!” Then another voice, “Those are bugs.” In the inky evening they were invisible, but the flash revealed the swarm buzzing around us. One by one, we discovered another inconvenient truth. “They’re biting me!”

Ack. We high-tailed it into the cars and peeled out in a spray of gravel. Goodnight, señor lobster.