Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 01, 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vST6hVRj2A

I happen to like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

Great… now that’s stuck in my head.

Love that song

Gordon Lightfoot…what’s not to like?

Well played

Great interview with Gordon on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast last week. Lightfoot’s been in the business as long as Dylan.

They won’t play Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald until November 10

Lightfoot outdid himself with that song…It’s a song for the ages…It’s timeless….It sounds like a classic 100 year old sea chantey already. It’s a true story told exceptionally well….It pleases both history and English teachers, to no end….It’s got a rolling and appropriately dire musical score, that actually makes you feel like you are on a ship in storm…….It was a grand and beautiful, sturdy ship…Perhaps the finest on the Lakes…It was swallowed whole by a Lake that can turn into a monster….It’s almost like Lightfoot took a photo of it going down……

The Wreck of the Gordon Lightfoot

Now I’m going to be singing that song in my head all day….

Don’t go near the lake, you’ll be okay.

And it goes on and on and on and on and on…

I love that sad ballad, one of the other comics here on gocomics, has had it’s story taking place on what is most likely the Edmund Fiztgerald.it looks like it, except for being nose down in a barren wasteland. such a haunting song, the bodies were never found, except for one and that wouldn’t fit the story of the song. I just listened to it again on You Tube.

I admit that I was wrong about yesterday strip but I still miss the build-up to the book costume reveal

bigpuma, seen any gales lately? That is what is so dangerous about the Lakes…..Totally unpredictable, change in a second. They don’t let ocean captains sail on the Lakes…They are much more dangerous than the oceans….Even though they are basically huge, they do slip and slop back and forth, and bounce off the shore and come back and they cause rogue waves that can be huge…..and very dangerous…We lose over 20 people a year on bright summer days. Rip currents. Any one of these Lakes can eat you with a smile on her face, right in front of your family…On the most beautiful of summer days

Ah, there’s nothing like a little Gordon Lightfoot on November 1 to get the day going :)

“…The Legend lives on from the Chippewa on downOf the big lake they call Gitche-GumeeThe lake it is said never gives up her deadWhen the Skies of November turn gloomy…”

I have a different perspective of that song. There were 2 iron boats went out that time, one made it, one did not. My best friend’s dad was on one of them and for a very anxious time, they did not know which ship went down. Thankfully, her dad’s ship stayed close to shore and survived, but that has always made this song more meaningful to me.

Comicsssfan and whisplicka you are both right. Piers can cause them, they can sometimes sweep along the shore depending on the wind direction and how long it’s been blowing. The bigger danger are the ones caused by sand bars…With strong on shore waves, water builds up behind a sand bar, more and more, until……. a part of the sand bar damn breaks and the water behind behind it flows out at a high rate of speed……Much faster than you can swim against, if you try to get back to shore….Fortunately. Great Lakes riptides are very narrow compared to the oceans, maybe 50 feet wide, tops. They only carry you off shore about a hundred yards or so….So, either swim one way or the other, parallel to the shore and and get out of it easily or just let it carry you out and swim to another part of the beach when it’s done…...Easy Peasy…….

Is Gordon Lightfoot still alive?

Then there are a few of us left who remember when the ship was lost and following the event.

When I was in college a friend of mine had a summer job where he could walk to work along the lake Michigan shore and he walked to work as often as he could. One day he was walking along the shore and saw a large ore freighter out on the water along with a smaller ship that was sailing along just ahead of it. He stopped to focus on the name of the freighter and stopped dead in his tracks when he saw that it said “Edmund Fitzgerald.” Turns out they were doing a documentory on the Edmund’s sinking and the documentry crew had gotten permission to use the Edmund’s sister ship and change her name for the filming.

I just wish people would stop thinking the wreck happened in ‘76. That’s when the song came out… the wreck was on November 10, 1975. Love the song, especially since it helped me remember the names of all of the great lakes. Came in handy a time or two. Although, I must admit, the song scared me when I first heard it… I was six… because it’s so haunting, but considering the topic, what else could it be?