This is a story about a fish man and a grocery store. The first part of the story is true. The second part of the story is a fable.

True Story:
I live in the little town of Blue Hill, along the coast. In the middle of town there is a small, old-fashioned grocery store, with wooden floors and things tied to the ceiling, and just about anything you would ever want or need. The store has the best meat department in the area, but the same cannot be said for its fish department. Sometimes the fish is good, but sometimes ... well, let's get on with the rest of the story.

A few years ago, a fish man came to town and started to park his truck almost every day on the little bridge which crosses the mill creek on Main Street. He would open the back door of his van, display the prices, and wait for the people to come. And they were not long in coming. The fish man sold very good fish. He sold a lot of fish.

Well, the owner of the grocery store became very upset, because his customers were going to the fish man to buy their fish. So the grocery store owner proposed an item in the town meeting warrant – a one-hour parking limit on Main Street.

But the people in this town were not to be fooled.

''We don't have a parking problem on Main Street,'' they said. ''Why is this in the warrant?''

The grocery store owner spoke up. He said the fish man was being unfair to the business owners in town, since he paid no property taxes, was only on the bridge when he felt like it, and didn't carry all the burdens that the regular business owners did. A one-hour parking limit would level the playing field for all the cars and trucks along Main Street, and prevent the possibility of future congestion.

Someone in the meeting muttered to someone else in the meeting, ''If he doesn't want the fish man to steal his customers, he should sell better fish.''

The people in Blue Hill did not approve the one-hour parking limit on Main Street.

But the grocery store owner persisted. The next year, he proposed an ordinance, to require a street vendor's permit, costing $100 annually. That way, the grocery store owner said, the town could get some benefit from the fish truck for the space it took up on the street, and for all the bother it caused the citizens of Blue Hill.

The people asked the fish man if that was OK. The fish man said it was OK with him. So the people approved the ordinance.

The fish man is still parked most days in the summer on the bridge in Blue Hill, and the grocery store still has the best meat department around. And that is where the true part of this story ends.

Fable:
Now let's say that after all this had happened, someone wanted to learn how to sell fish, and signed on one summer to work with the fish man. That worker learned all there was to know about selling fish – where to buy it, how to tell what was good and fresh, how to fillet it, how to display it, how to price it, how to sell it. Let's say that worker took to selling fish like a fish takes to water.

When the summer ended, the worker decided to sign on to a fishing boat, to learn the other end of the fish business – how the fish are caught. And the worker knew that this was it – he was hooked on the fish business.

Then let's say the very next summer, the fish man announced that he was not going to park in Blue Hill anymore, that he would be taking his fish truck to Bar Harbor. What was his worker to do?
Well, the worker looked at several options:

He could sign on to another fish truck – but there wasn't one.

He could buy a fish truck and set up shop, er, truck. But one of the things the worker had learned working for the fish man was the many disadvantages of working out of the back of a truck.

So he went to talk to the grocery store owner.

''I know your store has an excellent reputation overall, but I also know what kind of reputation your fish department has,'' he said. ''I can fix that for you. I learned a lot from the fish man, and I can turn your fish department into the pride of the area. I will sell a lot of fish, you will get a cut, your customers will be happy, everyone wins. What do you say?''

If you were the grocery store owner, what would you say?

Well, in this fable, this is what the grocery store owner said:

''Before we can even talk business, you have to do two things.

''First of all, you have to publicly apologize for working for the fish man last summer, and stealing all my fish customers.

''And second, if something comes up and you are not working here after a few months or a year, you have to promise up front, right now, that you will buy all your fish from me, and you will tell everyone else to buy all their fish from me.

''If you can't do those two things, don't come talk to me.''

This is what the worker told the grocery store owner:

''First of all, it makes no sense to apologize for working for the fish man, because if I hadn't worked for the fish man, I wouldn't have gone on to work on the fishing boat, I wouldn't know what I know today, and I wouldn't be able to be as good as I am at selling fish.

''Secondly, I can guarantee you the best fish department in the area, but I refuse to take responsibility for your fish department if I'm not running it. I know good fish, and if you have good fish, I will buy it, and I will tell other people to buy it. But if you don't have good fish, I won't buy it or tell other people to buy it. It's as simple as that.''

* * *

I don't know if you have figured it out by now, but in this fable part of the story, Jonathan Carter is the fish man, I am the worker, Tom Andrews is the captain of the fishing boat, and the Democratic Party owns the store.

And, at this point in time, that is the end of the fable.

– The Aroostook Democrat

(Note: Jonathan Carter ran for Congress in 1992 in Maine's 2nd District as the Green Party candidate, Tom Andrews was a Congressman in Maine's 1st District where I worked for a few months in 1993.)