As often as possible, my wife and I try to spend Memorial Day weekend at our camp in Washington County. If we’re lucky the sun will be out. But, whether it is or not, the black flies certainly will be!

Although I’ve noticed recently that the mosquitoes seem to be waging a major counter-offensive in their endless turf war with the black flies. Just think of it as a backwoods version of the Crips and the Bloods, where you supply the blood.

What is it about Mainers and black flies anyway? We certainly don’t love them. Maybe we just love to complain about them? Then again, it’s not exactly that either. It’s more that other thing, that quirky Maine thing which is so much a part of the fabric of our Maine life.

I think of it as “celebrating adversity.” Not diversity, mind you, although we’ve been known to do a fair amount of that as well.

Nope, I’m talking about adversity. It seems that reveling in life’s trials and tribulations is as quintessentially “Maine” as red hotdogs and whoopie pies with a Moxie chaser.

For Mainers, black flies share a category with ice storms, potholes, frost heaves, recessions (great or otherwise), mud season and similar indignities that, to hear us tell it, would have crushed a lesser state years ago.

We don’t consider ourselves victims though, not by a long shot. We’re survivors!

Clearly, a well-developed sense of humor is the one absolutely indispensable tool in a Mainer’s emergency survival kit.

How else to explain The Maine Black Fly Breeders Association in Machias? I interviewed these folks once for CBS News Sunday Morning and found it darned near impossible to keep a straight face as various members, tongues firmly planted in cheeks, waxed eloquent about such creations as the Black Fly Swarm Dome.  

In case you missed it, that’s a Maine version of the glass globe “snowstorm” you got for Christmas when you were a kid. Only when you shake this globe, instead of white flakes swirling around a church steeple, a swarm of black flies erupts in a dark menacing cloud and proceeds to swarm around a tiny Maine farmhouse. “Look kids. It’s just like real life!”

Following the broadcast, we got literally hundreds of responses, comments and inquiries from folks across the country wanting to know where they could buy one. Now, don’t you wish you’d thought of it?

In the summer of 1981, Marshall Dodge and I performed comedy shows in dozens of Maine towns including one at Cumston Hall in Monmouth where we invented something called “The Black Fly Festival.”

The theater was packed and the audience was having such a good time that they called us back for an encore. As we headed out onto the stage we had absolutely no idea what we’d do next.

Fortunately, the energy of the crowd supplemented by adrenaline rush, which always accompanies improvisational comedy “without a net” spurred us on and before long we had the crowd roaring as we listed the highlights of a festival which, according to us, was held annually in the IGA parking lot in Rangeley.

Since the whole thing was an ad-lib, we were just making it up as we went along when we described the Miss Black Fly Competition as  “… not just a beauty contest. Matter of fact, beauty don’t hardly enter into it.”

With a bit of polishing, that improvised routine soon became a staple of our act, eventually taking on a life of its own. There’s a version of it on one of my early albums as well as my book “Saturday Night at Moody’s Diner.” It’s even been published in a couple of anthologies.

Given the fact that Marshall and I fabricated the entire outlandish tale on the spur of the moment one long ago summer night, you can imagine my surprise when I stopped by a store in Presque Isle a few years back and spotted a poster, advertising a “Black Fly Festival,” which was being held somewhere in the area.

A bit of investigation revealed that this was by no means an isolated incident. Apparently life was indeed imitating “art” in a number of locations around the state.

I discovered, much to my chagrin, that several “Black Fly Festivals” have cropped up in Maine towns over the years. Although I’ve never actually attended one, you never know, one of these days I just might.

If you go, keep your eyes peeled. I won’t be all that hard to spot. Just, look for the tall guy with an extra large bottle of old time woodsman’s fly dope in his back pocket wearing a “Celebrate Adversity!” T-shirt.