Mike Walling

Before I was 30, I’d been in everything from an Arctic hurricane to a rum factory in Haiti.

I’d gone to sea for a living — truly the second biggest crap game in the world. It was a place where the only chip in the game was your life and it was on the table every time you got underway.

My job history reads like a Doctor Strange comic book from the 1960s. I’ve sold insurance, encyclopedias, computers and commodity options. Jobs have included scuba diving, retail sales, computerized embroidery, marketing marine navigation software to mega-yachts in Florida, telemarketing and building models of everything from sailing ships to weapons systems.

On the docks of Boston, my tires were flattened by an ice-pick-wielding competitor when I got an order for ship supplies before he did.

Helping to bring a sailboat back from the Bahamas, I experienced the copper taste of fear for the first time and there was gray in my hair when I reached shore.

I’ve been blessed by the Northern Lights, sailed through Prince Christian Sound at the tip of Greenland, a land so old that you expect to see Leif Ericson pull out from the next fjord, seen the Green Flash as the sun set behind the Leeward Islands and watched dolphins play in a tug’s bow wave in the Gulf of Mexico.

The words “Boarding Party” and “Prize Crew” evoke images of pirates and bloody cutlasses. Reality for me was a .45 pistol backed up by M16s and .50-caliber machine guns.

One time on ship, if I had zigged instead of zagged, they would have buried me in two pieces.

I’ve known the love of a great woman and how heart-wrenching it can be to raise children.

All this and a buck gets me a cup of coffee.

— Mike Walling