The official footware of America's sailing capital is docksiders. Whether Sperry or Sebago, the slip on moccasins with the non slip sole is de rigeur on deck. It's one of the few things sailors and boaters agree on.
Another is that after March 21, only wimps and tourists wear socks with deck shoes.
A few years ago, one of the boatyard laborers tore off his socks at the end of winter, tossed them in an empty varnish can, and torched it. Legend has it that they were the only socks he'd worn all winter, so the olfactory experience was as memorable as the gesture. It became the stuff of legends.
It does not take a great deal to concoct celebratory occasions in Eastport, so this quaint practice became an annual rite of spring, complete with bands, speeches and ceremonial toasts on the beach as participants toss their socks in a bonfire.
For one such celebration, Jefferson Holland, Poet Laureate of Eastport, composed a verse which has become a part of the ritual every year since.
Them Eastport boys got an odd tradition
When the sun swings to its Equinoxical position,
They build a little fire down along the docks,
They doff their shoes and they burn their winter socks.
Yes, they burn their socks at the Equinox;
You might think that's peculiar, but I think it's not,
See, they're the same socks they put on last fall,
And they never took 'em off to wash 'em, not at all .
So they burn their socks at the Equinox
In a little ol' fire burning nice and hot.
Some think incineration is the only solution,
'Cause washin' 'em contributes to the Chesapeake 's pollution.
Through the spring and the summer and into the fall,
They go around not wearin' any socks at all,
Just stinky bare feet stuck in old deck shoes,
Whether out on the water or sippin' on a brew.
So if you sail into the Harbor on the 21 st of March,
And you smell a smell like Limburger sautéed with laundry starch,
You'll know you're downwind of the Eastport docks
Where they're burning their socks for the Equinox.
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