The Suit Funeral
He always hated wearing a suit and tie, let alone hard shoes, Florsheim wingtips with those tiny holes atop that made them a sure giveaway as the shoes an FBI agent would wear which is why he always referred to them as FBI shoes. Makes sense, eh? The suit itself was a charcoal black double breasted affair with matching vest and the pants held a crease as sharp as the finest piece of Toledo steel. The shirt, of course one of light robin egg blue Battistoni’s that hung in the closet as comfortable as works of art that adorn NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art . The cufflinks themselves were an art deco treasure from the 1920’s he picked up in an antique shop in Vermont next to the Appalachian Quilt Gallery. But it’s always the tie that sets the pace, the mood, the beat, the cadence, the style. The Satya Paul Design Studio tie cost more than the whole suit, but when you wanted to go A list, Go Paul! All this for a dead person’s funeral. He walked into the Mortuary, from the Spanish “mort”, and there stood the casket on a pedestal center stage festooned with enough flowers to create a rainforest. He walked down the aisle and joined the party on the left where he sat next to his grandmother and grandfather on one side and his mom and step dad on the other. “What took you so long,” his Mother chided him. “”Not like he’s going anywhere Mom so wasn’t in a rush”. After a brief visitation he ended up on conversation with assorted aunts and uncles he hadn’t seen in years. Good to see the old gang one more time, but a shame it had to be under these circumstances, at least that is what someone always says at these things. The usual conversation floated around the room in bits and pieces. “He looks just like himself!” What the hell kind of crack is that anyway? He always looked pale and pasty with too much rouge applied to the cheekbones, eyes closed, hands clasped in repose? Soon others began to arrive. Many he recognized, vaguely, and others he felt at home with. One who arrived as an ex fiance and lover, a German Girl named Sibyll Kalff. He immediately ran to up to her and they hugged as only old lovers can and will and should. “God, it’s good to see you, Sib! Missed you so much!!!” She began to cry while holding him an an inescapable embrace. “Missed you too!” she cried. “Been so long!” At that moment the they came to remove the casket, place it in the hearse and heads to the Veterans Cemetery. Cars were lined up outside in formation. He noticed so many others he knew and decided he’d meet with them at the dinner after the burial. All current friends and associates, but right now...it was Sibyll and his time. He waved his grandparents and parents and aunts and uncles on ahead, “We’ll meet you there..” he yelled. As he turned back to Sibyll she was in tears, ut tears of happiness it seemed. “I’ll explain later,” she cried. At the cemetery there was the typical military send off. 21 gun salute, folded flag, taps… As the casket was lowered into the ground he suddenly was confused. He turned to Sibyll…”Wait a minute. Sib, you’ve been dead for two years. And my parents and grandparents longer than that. What the hell is going on?” She smile at thim sweetly, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Welcome Home! You died three days ago, and now the past is alive again! You belong here with all of us.” At last he was home….the pain of cancer, the smell of impending death, the trauma to others….all was at peace now. Sibyll took his hand and led him over to his parents and grandparents. Loved ones….Peace…..The dark was now light…. Thomas Wolfe said “You can’t go home again” … Wrong Mr. Wolfe. Home awaits us all…...
He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Father
The son sat with an anxious eye on the tarmac and a watchful one on his two kids as he waited for his dad’s plane to land at Reagan International in D.C. Alongside of him, fussing with playful abandon, as a six and four year old brother and sister will do, were his two children engrossed and amusing themselves in a game of tug of war over a bag full of colorful gumdrops. These were also, proudly, the old man’s grandchildren. He was thinking of them as well, as the 747 neared Washington and the airport to eventually land as the voice on the speakers reminded all passengers to fasten their seatbelts and to please return the trays to their upright position before it touched ground and taxied to the terminal to discharge its cargo of passengers, carry on luggage, and suitcases. The grandkids were eagerly awaiting grandpas arrival. That usually meant pizza, tale tales and stories he would make up about magic lands of dragons, wizards, wonder and imagination. It also meant they would all go fishing for the big ones where grandpa once showed them how to use Gummi Worms for bait and how to add pinecones to a BBQ to enhance the flavor of a fresh grilled rock bass. To go with the BBQ’s corn in the husk. Grandpas was an outdoorsman, or at least used to be until cancer decided to permeate his body organ by organ replacing the robust rowdiness he used to be filled with for life with a calm sobering resignation that his roadtrip of a life was soon coming to an end, The son was preoccupied and lost in almost the same thoughts. A mental trunk full of nostalgia and memories times past where his dad, the old man would backpack in the Rockies, the Sierra’s in California, parts of the Appalachian Trail as well the mountains of Hawaii as well as Japan when he lived in both places, always dear to his heart and soul. The son smiled as he could picture the old man riding horses, as he did every chance he got. Trail riding in mountains alone at times, a real John Muir alone kind of ride immersing himself in nature’s beauty as often as he could and never taking it nor life for granted. He laughed to himself when the old man taught him to ride a horse the first time when he was 10. Fear at first soon turned into a passion for mounting and riding free in the sun, fresh air, then the smell of the barn that to a horse lover is intoxicating. There is something special about horses. If you haven’t been around horses and you enter a barn you know what the aroma of horses, horse sweat, manure and hay is and how that smell wakes up your memory. To the old man the odor of a horse is like a perfume. Today the old man was dying of cancer and those days of backpacking and horseback riding were well behind him in the rearview mirror of life. His days in radio and TV, life of rock and roll, protest marches against war, and his time in the military during Vietnam. A young man’s game to be sure. Today he has trouble walking without a cane, he is slow now and any attempt to scale Mt. Everest as a sure footed Sherpa was about as possible as Helen Keller walking a tightrope. As the plane made its final approach the old man remember three years earlier before the cancer was discovered hiking with his son along a rocky path along Potomac River on a visit. All of a sudden he hit a particular rocky area and his legs gave out on him. Later the cause was discovered to be a tumor growing on his left hip. His son ran to him and picked him up and carried him across the rocks. The old man was angry with himself for not being able to handle a minor obstruction but his son calmed him down by reminding him, “When I was little and would fall off my bike you’d run to pick me up...now it’s my turn to carry you. It’s life come full circle.” The old man never finished high school, whereas his son completed college, got his teaching certificate and was now going for his Masters Degree while teaching Special Ed students in D.C. The visit this time was permanent. The son and his wife had both agreed they wanted the old man to live with them. When it was brought up the old man said, “Have you even spoken to your wife about this?” To which the answer was “It was partly her idea, you don’t realize how much she loves you and she always says you are her best friend!” So, the die was cast. “We want to be with you while you’re alive to care for you and for your grandkids to get to know the man who made me who I am today, so hopefully you’ll rub off on them too. I may be a solid citizen with suit and tie, but I think a little Haight Ashbury Sixties can do a lot for them too.” The plane came to a stop. The old man grabbed his carry-on and entered to terminal where he immediately saw his son and grandkids. His heart swelled with pride, his face beaming in a broad smile as the two little ones grabbed a leg each and wouldn’t let go….. The son looked at him with a grin…”Welcome home Pop, and remember, it’s our turn to carry you! Your daughter in law can’t wait to see you!” “As long as she doesn’t ask me to dance to five ABBA songs in a row as she did at your wedding!” What the hell..he’d dance to ten of them….he was with family now until the end….
The Looking Glass, Two Headed Cows and Water Running Uphill
I got the travel bug early on in my life. Blame it on my parents, my mom and my stepdad. They took me to see anomalies such as concrete Dinosaur Gardens in Ossineke, Michigan to Michigan’s Mystery Spot where water defied gravity and runs uphill to giant Paul Bunyan statues with fire towers the public could climb off off US 23 the Sunrise Side Highway overlooking Lake Huron. I remember one trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee at lets see, must have been 10 years old at the time and was amazed at the gift shops where i got to load upon an Indian headdress, a rubber tomahawk and cheap rubber tom tom drum after visiting an Indian village by the river. I also remember buying a Union and Confederate army hat. Depending on which side I was on that day in my imaginary play. Another stand out trip was to St. Louis and the old Gaslight Square District, and although the ragtime honky tonks were above my head at the time, I do remember enjoying the party like atmosphere my parents and their friends who lived in the area were having. My parents traveled a lot.When they got married they went on a Honeymoon to New York at the Waldorf Astoria, then to Florida for a week. I did get a fold out book of postcards, I still have and a stuffed politically incorrect small alligator and a rubber shrunken head...had to be moms idea that one! Later trips they made and I’d stay with grandparents were to London, Rome, Venezuela and Acapulco to visit and stay with friends and in Italy with family. They were always on the move, seeing, exploring, experiencing. We weren’t rich but weren’t hurting either. I left home at 15 to see, explore and experience as well but without the cash flow they had. I was traveling sub tourist class…. Later my kids from two marriages were taken on trips as well by me to California, the East Coast, Missouri, the Rockies, etc. Today on the phone my son is at a cottage on the beach in Delaware with my grandkids, (his kids) and the cycle continues…. They are enjoying the beach as my son and daughter used to with me when they were young...my son tells them stories of when he was young and things he and I would do. When we’d drive to Northern Michigan near Saginaw the interstate, I-75 rises high and I told my kids I built that all by myself. They of course believed me. One time driving up north with my parents and the two kids we hit the Saginaw Bridge and my daughter said to her grandma…”Daddy built this!” Ha to which my mom, being who she is said, “Honey, your dad is full of shit!” Somehow that didn’t deter their belief in my engineering skills..some day when my son tells his kids a tall tale….I’ll just sit back and smile and say nothing…..but mom will always be lurking in the background of my mind…”Your dad and your grandpa are full of shit!”
Fishing! The Knights Templar of Rod and Reel and Beer!
If you want to be a member of the ranks of the secret cult of fishing you need to be aware of a few requirements before you even attempt to bait a hook, untangle a massive mess of tangled fishing line, remove the hook you carefully cast that landed not in the lily pads where the big ones lurk, but in your drinking buddies right ear. It’s his fault anyway...he was too drunk and standing too close to avoid getting snagged. First rule of fishing. You’ll need a tackle box the size of Texas overflowing with sinkers of varying size from split shot for bluegills to a 57 Buick for the really big Moby Dicks you envision on the dinner table that night that you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of catching. Don’t forget bobbers - the early warning system of fishermen.. lures - think of the fish as a hooker on the avenue and the lure or bait is a $50 bill. One gets you a decent blowjob, the other a platter of prostitute fish who sold themselves for a lousy night crawler. Load up with extra hooks and line, fish scaler, jack knife, needle nose pliers, plastic worms - I’ve used Gummi worms and caught bass in Michigan with them...but then again, Michigan fish have a sweet tooth! (A can of corn tossed on the waters of a river bring the carp to your fishing poles front door! Next you’ll need a beer can opener, and a first aid kit in case you have to render CPR to an over stimulated salmon. (Salmon Rushdie? Isn’t he a writer with a bounty on his head?) It’s also important to be a math genius. Trigonometry or geometry and a dash physics are important especially when adding 6 to 12 inches to the length of the really big one that got away. You’ve heard of penis envy? This in Templar terms is called Fin Envy. To bait or not to bait that is the question! Spinner baits have metal parts that spin, dance and move like a deranged disco ball dazzling and delighting the Saturday Night Fishing Fever of any fish within proximity. For them when caught, “Stayin’ Alive’ ain’t an option. Live bait is another story...worms or minnows? Worms gives you the ability to cast in tight cover. If you are in a boat fishing for panfish such as my favorite, perch, your best fishing bait will be a small minnow. Minnows or worms can be bought at any bait and tackle shop that also sells beer, cigarettes and ammo by an old guy named Gus who just needs someone to talk too about the good old days of World War Two and the time he was shot down in B-29 bomber over Berlin Or….you can dig for nightcrawlers at night in your backyard garden or find minnows in small dam areas by using a net and a bucket. Don’t let your cat if you have one have any access to the minnows, especially if it is a catnip or heroin addict that failed rehab twice already. Many fishing folks use a Lowrance fish finder which I find is a waste of time, unless you can successfully program a TV remote and put full trust in that faulty GPS system in your SUV that mistakenly sent you careening over a cliff into the Pacific Ocen. Lowrance utilizes sonar (Think “Run Silent, Run Deep”) and unless you are considering using depth charges or dynamite to bring fish to the surface I’d pass on it. I call it Zen Fishing...be the fish...know the fish….get drunk with the fish and you’ll know where the best bassholes are, not to be confused with those suburban assholes who ski boat close to you just as you get a strike! Which brings us to Inboard or Outboard, the yin and yang of power. Inboard is a must if your working for Miami Vice and chasing down cocaine smugglers with Sonny Crockett. Outboard Mercs and Johnsons are perfect for getting you to where the fish dwell. Trolling motors are best for that Foghat slow ride dangle your bait fishing pole dance that drives fish crazy. Follow these simple rules and you too will soon be a Templar Knight...let the Fishing Crusades Begin!!!!
The Birds Lost Their Voices
He had been through the war (Vietnam) and weathered the turmoil, chants and storms of the age of raging protest on the tear gassed streets when he returned home, no longer a boy with dreams, but as a man with too much innocent and not so innocent blood on his hands, to a country that had turned on him. Decades later he would visit his old comrades in arms whose names were now merely names carved on a memorial wall in Washington, D.C. Now he was facing his toughest battle. The battle of health, the Viet Cong of health...cancer. It had spread with a vengeance, nothing could stop it’s advance. No magic bullet to kill the beast. As he sat alone on his porch facing the large lake that had provided years of meals of bass, perch and bluegill accompanied by the sounds of his children’s laughter as they caught their first “trophy”. Trips with his own parents who now repose six feet under a gravestone and plastic flowers faded by the elements. The birth of his children and the glorious moment of that first look at them as they entered life scared yet defiant. The days of his children learning to ride a bike with with wheels after freeing themselves to soar and fly on their own. Now they have their own children and careers and have soared on their own jetstream. The old man kept his photo album handy so open the pages and enjoy once again the family picnics, swimming in the lake, Halloween where the little superhero and pink princess walk hand in hand with mom and dad close by, never out of reach, always protecting, always loving. The silence replacing a child’s laughter. Storybooks no longer to be read to anyone at bedtime. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn disappeared down the Mississippi River never to be seen again. Now, the children were all grown, families of their own making their way through life in far off places… The wife who died years ago whose photos remain as reminders around the cabin of the love, laughs, and life once shared together. The bed they shared now slept in alone. The dinner table now set for one. As he sat in his chair watching the lake he noticed that the sky was no longer as blue as it He thought now of the loves who had passed through his life to be loved by him and those who loved him back. The friends who shared a joke or two along with a beer and a campfire with flames dancing in the dark to while the crackle of the sparking wood filled in the gaps of those silent moments when friends don’t have to speak a word to each other.used to be. That rich polarized blue that held the secret of flight. Now it was as faded as an old prom dress. The grass was no longer as green as it once seemed. The kind of green that invites you and a friend to lie down on and in it staring at the cloud formations talking about your childhood dreams and what you want to be when you grow up. The stars and the night time sky don’t sparkle with diamonds made up of a billion stars millions of miles away anymore. Even the old songs, rock and roll, have lost their edge having given energy and emotion once, now merely oldies on some radio station coming from an old AM radio that sits alone on a shelf collecting dust and memories. As the cancer advanced over the year he noticed too, something else was missing. The song birds don’t sing anymore. The howl of the distant coyote fades in the dark. Noise becomes grey...the body begins to fade as his dad’s old rusted Desoto that sat for years in a field in back of the barn on the Michigan farm grew up on. Now he had the sound of the lake and sometimes early in the morning he could hear Mr. Hendersons Johnson motor start up at 5 AM ready to start his journey to that secret place known only to him where the bass are as large as a fisherman’s tall tale. The sounds of the past grew dimmer each day….the memories fade fast now…. Only once would he love to hear his children’s voices laughing as they caught fire flies at night...and only once more he longed to hear the sweet voices of the song birds...but...the children are now grown….and the birds have all lost their voices.
Fathers Day Amplified
Photos: Gramps with my mom - middle, my aunt godmother and my grandma on left on end Photos of my step dad are all gifs and wouldn't post! That pisses me off!) By amplified I’m not talking about a Jimmy Page guitar plugged into a stairway to heaven sound system at the Joe Louis Arena. By “amplified” I mean I was fortunate to have two father figures due to the fact that my birth dad was a complete schmuck so mom had to move back in with her parents when I was a month old. He decided to leave us the month I was born. Maybe he was psychic and knew I would be a pain in the Dago Wop ass. My grandfather turned out to be the best “dad” figure a kid could have. He’d get me out of bed on Friday Nights at ten PM to sit on his lap and watch Gillette Boxing on the old black and white TV in the living room...much to the consternation of my mom and my grandma. That’s what grandpas are for you know. I would imitate him as he drank his beer, Strohs or Altes usually and do the boxing jabs to imitate Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Graziano, Jersey Joe Walcott, JOe Louis and Archie Moore. Biff, bam, jab, duck punch...10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5-etc etc Down for the count. Hence my lifelong love of pro boxing….mainly because it involved my grandpa…. He’d also take me Tiger Baseball games downtown at the old Briggs stadium in Detroit to see Al Kaline (yep sounds like a battery!) Billy Martin, and Red Wilson. I was 10 years old or so and enjoyed those ballpark days. Gramps in the 40’s was a teller at a bank on Detroit’s Eastside and when thc place was held up by an armed gunman, he ran after the guy when he left and tackled the son of a bitch outside, disarmed him and held him until the cops arrived. He taught me to ride a two wheeled bike and let me help burn the leaves at the curb. Going up north to the cottage my fondest memories are of hanging out with him in the fish smelling boathouse getting ready to load the rowboat at 5 AM to hit the bass spots. Later when I was an adult he was suffering from Alzheimers. I had been gone a long time and on my travels and when back went to visit him with my mom and aunt, his daughters. His wife had died years before. When we went in he didn’t recognize anyone then looked at me, eyes wide and said….”I know you! I used to pick you up from the bus!” He was correct when my mom remarried and we moved to the Westside of Detroit I would even though still a youngster take the crosstown bus for the one hour journey through the inner city and to the Eastside end of the line where’d he’d be waiting for me….I remember all those memories hitting me that moment and tears begin to form but held them back….after all I had withstood watching Joe Louis beat the crap out of opponents! In that and many other respects, I’m glad my blood dad was an asshole….I got to raised by a real man who loved his boxing, his baseball, his family, his grandson and while Dirty harry used to waste the bad guys with his Magnum….gramps took one down with his bare hands!! Now that’s a man…..that’s a grandpa...that’s a father figure! My second dad was my stepdad who married my mom when I was 12 and man did I give him a load of crap! Stole his car for joy rides, argued all the time and in effect I was most unappreciative son of a bitch on the planet. He gave us a great home, we travelled a lot and saw the country and he was a god, no a great man as I later learned after I got over myself. He was an intellectual that had me reading Chaucer at an early age, the New Yorker Magazine theater reviews and interviews by Bennett Cerf. He also had a collection of records by Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Redd Foxx and Dusty Warren. We watched Jack Paar and Steve Allen. He was a diehard Kennedy Liberal, Civil Rights Advocate and introduced me to the Detroit Institute of Arts and the local theater crowd who were friends of his. He was college grad and was editor of the Wayne State University arts publication. He was an early advocate of Women’s rights and rights of the LGBT movement and was opposed to the Vietnam War. Now you know where that part of me comes from….. As a result of these two men I was according to my ex wives a damned good father...a lousy husband but great dad! I think it dribbled down as my son today is super dad….and super husband….now if I can pull off the grand dad thing properly I have my grandpa and my step dad to thank. If they are looking down at me from time to time …. Thanks from my heart….you two were the best!
Paradise Lost and Found
He was now at the point of his life where his youth was just a faint image in life’s rearview mirror, and no those objects are not larger than they appear. Gone forever, except carved in the granite of memory were the days of first love...trips with parents who now repose and decompose I suppose six feet under a gravestone and plastic flowers faded by the elements. The days of his children learning to ride a bike with with wheels after freeing themselves to soar and fly on their own. Now they have their own children and careers and have soared on their own jetstream. The old man kept his photo album handy so open the pages and enjoy once again the family picnics, swimming in the lake, Halloween where the little superhero and pink princess walk hand in hand with mom and dad close by, never out of reach, always protecting, always loving. The friendships forged in his army days were being dissolved through the death of those who bonded until only one was left. No man left behind they used to say...and this was no different. Cancer would be the enemy this time around that would explode in the foxhole. Thomas Wolfe said sadly, you can’t go home again. He was right to a degree. When the old man returned after years to the house he was raised in, at one time to his 5 year old eyes a castle so large it was overwhelming...today it seemed small and empty. No one in the family had lived there for years..now just strangers who have erased the family footsteps. But still shouldn’t the fog of the past, the mist of memory linger with faint images? Where were the childhood pirates, joys, fears, wonder, awe, fright, werewolves, indians, cowboys, dead and dying soldiers hit with full force during flashlight tag, ("You're dead, I just shot you," "Did not," "Did too," "I did, so fall down, already," "Did not," and so on and so forth until the battery in your "gun" went dead, and it was time to go home in the dark and hang up your soldier gear until you got drafted years later and Uncle Sam gave you a real gun and real people to shoot and real people to shoot back at you. Were they all no more, and only just figurative fragments of figments of the past? He missed them all. In an attempt to rediscover lost innocence that he had lost quickly, more rapidly then he realized until it was gone he rented a small cabin back up in the woods that he loved so much as a child. He rented a Norse red, you've seen the red and read about the red, cabin with fireplace of fine fieldstones from the surrounding farms picked up in 1938 when she was built, and it had a Civil War musket and bayonet displayed over it, hand hewn ceiling and a deep well pump on a cobblestone patio, and all these things were located on Grand Lake nary a compass point off due north of Alpena in Presque Isle with it's two lighthouses, one haunted built in 1849, and the "new" unhaunted where they still hold summer corn roasts and tours of the tower. He remembered his grandparents cottage and it’s small boathouse that smelled of old fishing forays in the Forties and Fifties, the wooden wall having jars meticulously aligned and lining the shelves with an assortment of fish egg bait long since dried up, old rusty smallish hooks for sunfish or bluegills, and a rickety old dock with a rickety old grey rowboat and the boathouse was home to racoons and their family who would come out at night along with the bats,yes, those damn bats. He remembered a young him at age 12 when he would row out on the calm lake in early evening and before sunrise to watch the bugs dance a striptease on the water. The waters were placid and calm and he liked to listen, and to feel the waves rock against the boat, chanting a mellow mantra. One morning the old man remembered he got up earlier than usual and pushed the boat into the water to enjoy the silence of the early morning. He rowed out to the middle of the lake and put the oars in their locks and lay down in the boat to enjoy it's gentle rocking motion. He could smell the grey wood start to come to life with the increasing gentle heat of the morning sunrise, the scent of cedar and pine, the up north smell as it was called, wafted and drifted out across the water joining the cacophonous chorus of the squealing of seagulls arguing over small fish as they dove pelican down, crazed kamikaze's attacking an aircraft carrier. He closed my eyes, watching the drama play out on his aging eyelids, fueled by my imagination that began to take on a childlike quality. "Whatever happened to childhood?" Where are they...all the cowboys and indians, the kites that became giant birds in the sky, the dead trees on that became pirate ships and flying saucers? They had all become trapped and locked away, as all childhood fantasy does as one grows older and experiences life. The past recedes, buried in sediment, while the imagination gets dulled, an old blade on a Buck knife used too often as a hammer in a farm barn on an old tractor to tighten things that had come loose in the field, and childhood, childhood is obscured. People die, people disappear, the sun sets at the end of the day, but the day is revived and reborn as night as the moon ascends and takes its rightful place in the heavens. The fire dies to embers at night, yet burst back to life in the morning with a gentle breath as bellows to warm the coffee pot to take off the crisp chill of the morning air and a night in a dew covered sleeping bag that has traces of odors of sweat and mosquito repellent from trips past in the fantastic light of the forest. The old man smiled now as he thought about freeing the invisible pirates from their captivity to bring them all back to life, to bring childhood back to life, but it seemed an impossible task. How to make the imagination of childhood take flight once again, aboard a spacecraft loaded with pirates, cowboys, indians and the ghost of a young boy who at one time gave them all life. He thought to himself..."It's easy, just close your eyes and picture them and smile," and childhood came to life. They haven't gone anywhere, he told myself, they were there, hidden all the time. He just forgot where he put them, like an old baseball glove or bag of marbles you had as a child, but they aren't lost really, nor did they disappear, and you find them, like playing ready or not here I come hide and seek. As he sat alone on the dock taking in the early morning sun...he heard the voices of his grandchildren as they ran up to him on the the dock. He had brought along the grandkids and his son, daughter in law and his other daughter. He may die of cancer but...childhood? Wonder and imagination and innocence are always within...all you have to do is close your eyes, open your heart and know where to look and find the child that still dwells within. Now he found joy in the imagination of the grand kids...and smiled….Childhood...Is forever!
Betty Peak the Greaser Queen
The only thing I remember in the first semester of 8th grade before I dropped out of High School was running into Betty Peak. the Greaser Queen. Even though we shared home room and Civics class together we didn’t really connect until one fateful night at the Big Boy drive in on Telegraph Avenue when cruising with my friends in Jerry Kozlow’s big ass Polish Pontiac. He had the license and the wheels so he had lots of friends. We’d cruise the burger joints and Telegraph Ave. racing frats and filing the back seat with empty beer cans, one fallen soldier after another. I was dating Debbie L. at the time but still found time for those one night pick up stands that led to a fondle foray in the back seat of the Pontiac down in the woods by the Rouge River at Hine Park. I met Betty who was parked in Big Boys parking lot with her girlfriends in her dad’s car. She was at the wheel and dressed in a leather jacket, Xena in black leather with a bouffant hairdo, tight jeans that later would reveal a cameltoe that could absorb the Detroit River and every Great Lakes freighter that plied the riverfront. He had WKNR on the radio blasting away the top 40 as she waved at me riding shotgun in Jerry’s chariot as he revved the engine loud and proud...yep..that was the heavy metal mating call. Engines hot and hormones on a rampage...all my pistons were pumping now and was ready to readline revving my engine deep in her garage! Her girlfriends hopped out of her car and into Jerry’s, he was the football star so every girl in school wanted to at least get felt up by him. Betty motioned for me to get in her car and take up the royal seat next to her highness. I swear her musk down below was filling the night air and me. That combined with ten tons of hair spray to hold her air aloft and the smell of worn leather with a hint of sexy sweat was making me dizzy. After I watched her eat her burger and licking the hamburger sauce from her fingers I was a captured prisoner...she was a pro, no doubt about it. After she ate she reached down to my pants and began her ceremonial rubbing as she was a pro at this. From there we headed out but not for Hines Park and the forest dark. Instead we headed for her parents house where she lived not far from my parents house. Hers were out for the evening so we pulled into the driveway and went inside where she led me to her bedroom and began taking her clothes off and began removing mine. The Greaser Queen herself...she was Apocalypse Now before Apocalypse Now. She was napalm itself and I was ready to carpet bomb her in her bed...she pulled me on top of her. This was it..I was about to scale the Mt. Everest of High School sex! We were all over each other with lips tasting here and there and then the moment came when I was allowed entry into the treasure room….slowly I approached as a jet approaches the runway and began my trek into the rainforest..when all of a sudden the front door was unlocked...we froze in fear...her parents were home early and daddy was a cop! I hurriedly grabbed my pants racing to get my legs into them which I did except the damn pants were backwards...grabbed my shoe at the footsteps got closer to the bedroom, Betty tossed my shirt to me and jacket and I grabbed them up in my arms and made for the bedroom window, pushing the screen out and jumping out of the window into the backyard into the bushes then making a mad half naked dash to the street….anywhere out of range of an angry cop dad with a pistol! It was Marx Brothers on speed! The next day in school Betty sat next to me and asked me what I was doing Friday night. I said probably go to Big Boys if you want to go. She agreed and said we could go down to Hines Park but that she was having her period. I said it was no problem if it doesn’t bother her….it beats an angry cop dad worried about his greaser daughter!! Betty and I stayed together as did Debbie and I, (she was in the Jr. High School so never would cross my wires) until I left home that summer. Never did see Betty again but Debbie? We did write awhile before I got absorbed in Haight Ashbury. Betty and I also kept in touch until then. Years passed and she saw me on the streets back home when I was married to my third wife. She kept a scrapbook of the newspaper articles on me for my theater group and radio and free concerts and such. She called me...but it was not for a romp in a back seat. Her da had been dead for years by now and her mom had just passed away. She tracked me down from the radio station and called me. Her parents were gone...her past was gone...no more leather...and bad marriage. Now all she wanted to do was talk and cry to me. We met for dinner, with my wife’s permission as she took her call first and told me about it. We had a few drinks, dinner, talked about her mom and that infamous evening in her bedroom which her mom was told about and laughed in later years. We were both older now but I swear there was a ghost of a scent of her leather jacket that haunted me that night. A night I never forgot. Gawd I love the smell of nostalgia in the morning!
Homeward Bound
Sometimes in life, the only way back home when you’ve lost your compass is to leave home. I’ve been asked time and again why I left home at age 15 in the first place and never really addressed that and was recently asked again so….time to unload and get this off my chest and see if there are any skeletons in the closet that may be rattling around. First off, I was not abused as a child, although even at a young age I developed a crush on one of my babysitter’s. In retrospect I think I wanted her to abuse me. I started early with my adoration of the female of the species. I had completely forgotten about that until this moment of writing. OK, I was not sexually abused. Then what? Was I forced to live in a box and eat dog food? No, not that. Ah, my old man was a drunk and regularly beat my mother and me! No, not that either. In fact it was nothing that would land me on the Oprah program or Jerry Springer. Between both shows I would need to be a sexually abused, drug addicted transgender Nazi in need of a makeover. Oh , makeover...ah huh...that must be it….I wanted to be a female so I was bullied in school, right and need a puppy and diapers to calm me down? No not that. Maybe I was the lone survivor of a mass shooting at a White Castle hamburger joint? No..mass shooters prefer schools...more targets and more fun to shoot up a classroom and a room full of jocks...to me most school mass shooters would be bandies that got bullied for playing a trombone. A school shooter feels if you eat at a White Castle your life expectancy is short enough anyway so why waste a bullet. One other theory put forth by my good friend and fellow writer (more successful than I) and TV (History Channel) regular as well as being a childhood friend, Greg Michno, who came to visit me last summer for a few weeks said when I dropped out of school in 8th grade and disappeared from Detroit...everyone thought I went to California to join the Hells Angels! Yep, the Angels recruited me as my 5’ 6 “ frame. 125 pounds and naive look on my face would intimidate the most hardened of rival biker gang members. So...no...that’s not it. I had a good life. Except that my real dad was going to divorce my mom, or at least let her know he was leaving was when I was born, about a week old. He had a girlfriend and all so the prick walked out on us. No Loss believe me. Mom now went to work (at a place where she met my stepfather who entered my life as stepdad at age 12.) Up until then I was raised in Detroit by my grandma and grandpa at their house along with my mom, aunt and two young uncles who were like brothers to me...had lots of friends, hung out with Soupy Sales, a neighbor and life was good. Then, mom had the audacity to remarry when I was 12...on the cup of my rebel without a cause years. In my eyes, this was the crime of the century. Loeb and Leopold were good samaritans by comparison. The marriage meant moving my life from the industrial riverfront Motown eastside comfort of the Italian garlic and pasta plenty of Three Mile Drive of old world Catholicism to the insidious, unknown and uncharted sea monster infested edge of the world lands west of Woodward Avenue.! The fucking suburbs!! The burbs were bullshit filled little croissants of leviathan Levittown communities of conformity all served up by a topless waitress who in turn was remote controlled by anal probing Ed Wood aliens from B-movie planets who dared to go where no man had gone before! This was exactly what Kevin McCarthy warned us about. An invasion of procto-pods from Outer Space, intent on filling empty human cavities with cotton balls and rubber gloves. My teenage angst years were about to become more pubic in nature as well. Testosterone testy, I got into fights constantly, mostly over girls, or sometimes for no reason at all. Arguments at home flared up too for no reason at all. Fights. It didn't matter what day or night it was. Horrible hormonal Vikings were setting sail in my imagination on my envisioned North Sea to conquer and assimilate whole cultures and assault sealskin clad virgins, whose virtues were suspect, in faraway Greenland. Defeating first one army, then another, composed of one breasted fighting Amazons, then impregnating them as great and grand pyre fires stoked by the wood of their defeated bows and arrows shot flame and smoke high into the jungle skies. Westside suburban kids played tennis. Fucking tennis! Eastsiders played stickball in alleys. They wore penny loafers. We word boots with Cuban heels and cleats. Too many tennis courts, and not enough alleys for play. Eastside blue collars faded to a starchy white as GM and Ford executives along with Dodge and AMC hurried about in a Fritz Lang blitz of anticipation of a Christmas bonus once a year. What's good for GM is good for the country. I began getting into fights in my new school with the penny loafer crowd, but found other kindred Greaseball spirits who introduced me to drinking until the needle hits vomit, and borrowing cars on the weekend that didn't belong to us. Hotwiring is an art form and we were goddamned Michaelangelo’s hotwiring our Sistine Chapel and revving up the statue of the Virgin Mary and watching her redline and head for the finish line where the big Buicks and your grandfather’ Oldsmobile turned into teen tanks . .We'd start the cars up and take them to an old dirt track near Rouge Park..run them around until out of gas..fishtailing, radio's cranked up and then let the car sit idle after scraping a few trees and ripping the paint job and leaving a few dings and dents. We also did that with our parents cars. Roll them down the driveway...extra set of keys we stole and then fire it up down the street at midnight when they were asleep...drinking, fighting and fucking was a way of life. I started early in the arena of sex at 14. The only time you can fuck an underage girl and get away with it is when you too are underage, or living in the Haight in '66. Sweet Jesus, I can still feel that softness below and that firmness above in my hand... One night I had an argument with my dad as I got kicked out of school for the third time that year for smoking on school property again and nailed by the shop teacher. I made the mistake of grabbing the teacher by his tie and pulled him hard, so hard he fell forward and hit the ground...my adrenaline rushing...I was then rushed to the principal’s office..a familiar path led the way as I had been there before. I was kicked out for week...I said, "Make it Two" so he did..duh. I didn't tell my parents thinking my life in school was invisible. I would use my sabbatical from school to hang out at the pool hall on Ford Road near Telegraph where I always fled. Bought my Chesterfields from a machine and used my allowance to shoot pool until I won enough money or lost it all to that "faster gun" My dad and mom had enough and packed me off to Culver Military Academy in Indiana. Would give me an education, make a man of me, and in time I would make something of myself. It was a costly affair and they had to really scrape to get the funds to get me in..but in they did and there I went. The kids were from all over..France, England, Germany, Canada and of course the United States. Rich kids mainly whom I had nothing in common with. Rich kids piss me off to this day. The snob and clique factor was in high gear and fortunately I got to share a wooden tent with two others of my "status" and reputation. It is bland, boring, regimented, a conformists Garden of Eden and a non-conformists Garden of Pure Evil. It's great for those who wish to be policemen, or firemen, or service station attendants who require uniforms to wear to feel whole....to make them feel a part of something. Hells Angels, punk street gangs, and sororities..all the same...identity crisis that requires a sameness..a brotherhood..a sisterhood...a hoodlum hood...General Hood...Robin Hood....So when I was thrust headlong into this nightmarish lava pit of conformity...I felt the priests were right all along..I had been cast into fire and brimstone as punishment for whatever Catholic laws of propriety I had dared to defile and defy. Which deity had I pissed off? Jesus himself might come down off that cross and sucker punch me then crawl back up to take his place in history or mythology, whichever you believe. I had come to crashing stop at a brick wall and to break through it, I came to a decision. Life sucked. So I left one night and hitched home to Michigan. Now I was 14 and getting rides through cornfields until Michigan loomed ahead. …. My parents lost the 10,000 to send me there as had left AWOL ...no refunds folks, sorry. Back to normal school at Fordson HS….eighth grade now….more fights, more home battles….so it happened half way through eighth grade,.. The time had arrived to toss it all in a trash can and leave and go away from all that had been taken away anyway. I had some savings stashed away, money saved from the past four years mowing meandering lawns in summer, shoveling shitloads of snow in the dead of winter. Raking leaves in the spring and other odd car wash jobs had filled in the money mandala. Now, it was time to jump the chasm and escape...and in '63 I did just that. No 2 minute warning. Nothing. I just packed a small gym bag, minus the jockstraps, went down to the Ben Franklin where they had a pay phone, called a cab to take me to Detroit Metro Airport. Demons of determination were driving him to go as far west, young man, as a young man, boy really, could go. Going. Going. Gone! It's easy to blame the circumstances that landed me on the road on my parents, my environment, the company I kept. Anyone,but myself. Ok so that is bullshit and glad you agree. You do agree don't you? If not, then you are not very bright are you? You make your own bed, and hopefully someone will sleep in it with you, or so my philosophy says. I had a stepfather enter my world at the age of 12, and unlike some kids, couldn't handle the intrusion. It upset the apple cart of my existence. We moved from the eastside of Detroit, my home since birth. Dago denim was out. The wet head was dead and the beach boy look was coming into vogue and the suburban landscape replaced my beloved city alleys and avenues. Dagos and Poles and Blacks and Irish mixed it up on the Eastside..on the west it was very white...almost a Canadian white...diversity only went so far and I was a fish out of water....I left home for one reason only…I wanted to see what was on the other side of the mountain and the dark side of the moon...I was curious...as simple as that. Later my stepdad and I and mom had one hell of a great relationship...but I had to leave home to find home ...on the road to California’s Sunset Strip and Haight Ashbury as well as the life of a beach bum at 15 on the beaches of Honolulu and three years in the army, two of them overseas enjoying Asia...I began my journey...back home..once again I was homeward bound
The Vortex of Planet Henry Ford
I was sucked into the Henry Ford vortex since birth. The week my mom gave birth to me my blood dad...prick that he was decided to tell her he wanted a divorce and had a girlfriend. He was employed at Ford Motor Company. That was my first clue as to what lie ahead, but being mere one week old, my reasoning power hadn’t fully formed. I was still trying to master drooling at that stage of my life. My mom remarried to my step dad who in my mind was my real dad (didn’t see my real dad until I was 18 and had come for a visit to Michigan from San Francisco hitchhiking all the way) and we moved from Detroit’s Eastside to (insert gasp here) The westside and worse yet...the suburbs of Dearborn...the same town Henry Ford was born in (called Greenfield Twp at the time of 1863. Although he would make his automotive footprint at first from the city of Detroit...Dearborn became one and the same with the Ford name. Example...I went to Clara B. Ford Elementary School (Henry’s wife’s name), then to Fairlane Jr. H.S. (Fairlane is the name he gave to his mansion) and spent one half of a semester in High School at Fordson (yes the name of the favorite tractor of Joe Stalin!) My parents bought a house in a subdivision just off of Ford Road and the land the development was on was Ford Property sold to the developer. In fact the subdivision community house was the old Ford Horse Barn and the tract of land my parents home was built on was smack dab on the horse race track Ford had..clearing the land we could see traces of it disappear where the vegetable garden would go.. No secret Henry Ford had an affair with his head stenographer Evangeline Cote (he had her marry one of his employees, Ray Dahlinger, to throw off suspicion) Part of the deal was that he also gave them a mansion on the same property as the subdivision but that was in Dahlingers name so not part of the deal. We kids got to know Mrs. D as she was old now and according to her husband Ray who took me aside once, “She’s crazy. Be Careful!!!” The same advice I got from her one evening about him while I was helping her clear some brush from the property!! We’d (kids)all pile in the bed of her beat up white pick up truck...yes, a Ford and she’d race us around the grounds over grass, bumps, logs and we’d laugh as we went flying out on the dirt. At night the Mr. Hyde aspect would emerge from her. We’d sneak onto the property by way of the forest path along the Rouge River and use the old vegetable storage shed for out clubhouse...she’d watch for us and when she saw us she’d blast away with a shotgun full of rocksalt chasing us in the dark! Next day...the usual truck ride as if nothing happened the night before. Henry’s mansion Fairlane was our fave spot to go and explore, The woods around it, the mansion itself, waterfall etc. He also had a boat house and an electric boat back in the day. He’d motor down the Rouge River to the Dahlingers and he and Evangeline would do their thing while Ray looked the other way or went out. She and Henry had a child, kept secret. He, John, eventually grew up and ran a strip club in Dearborn that when I worked in Detroit radio would frequent and got to know him pretty well. In downtown Detroit my favorite watering hole on Congress St. was owned by the wife (Kathleen) and step daughter (Debbie) of Henry Ford II or “The Deuce” as he was known. Kathleen was there sometimes, but dail duty went to Debbie whom I got to know very well...hell sometimes free drinks by the French Maid Clad waitresses. I have a photo somewhere in this house of me standing with two of the French Maids kissing me on each cheek while Debbie held a feather duster in place in my equatorial region. Also nearby my Dearborn Home was the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, not to mention Ford’s world headquarters called the “Glass House” three miles away and the Ford Motor Company test track where we would climb a nearby tree to sit on the brick wall and watch the new cars go through their paces. We used to sneak into Greenfield Village under a fence near the railroad tracks on Michigan Avenue and into Henry Ford Museum by pooling our money, buying one ticket and that person would open the back door of the museum movie theater to let us in when empty… So when I say I was lost in space in the Ford Galaxy (no, not the car) It was not far far away...in fact...I was surrounded!!!!
Hail to the Chief
I’ve had uppers and downers, figuratively, when it comes to Beltway experiences in and out of Washington D.C. Many times I could have used uppers and downers (literally) but the one thing that stands out more than oral herpes herpes are the close POTUS calls I’ve had. I’ve never seen a UFO, except the one I came to your planet on at Roswell from a Ford Galaxy far far away. My first POTUS sighting was around 1952 or so when he was campaigning in Detroit. He was giving a speech and the crowds were tremendous, so I was 4 years old at the time and my Grandfather took me downtown to see the Hero of Normandy even though I was just as happy to stay at home and watch cartoons. Ike spoke outdoors then came over to work the crowd on Woodward Ave. When he reached my Grandfather he shook his hand then looked up...Grandpa had me sitting on his shoulders. Ike seeing a future presidential contender shook my hand and said with a smile, “Don’t forget to vote.” Being young and not to cognizant of events this was related to me by my gramps..I do remember sitting on his shoulders, tons of people and a kindly gent who shook my hand and the pride he told the story to my grandma and mom. Next on the POTUS hit parade as Pres. Jimmy Carter, who you may remember had a brother who sat all day at a filling station drinking beer. I met him well after his presidential days when I was doing my home improvement show in Detroit. I had Jimmy on as a guest to discuss Habitat for Humanity. Wonderful warm human being and a great smile and sense of humor, adn best of all...he wasn’t married to one of his cousins as they tend to do down there in certain circles. Thankfully Jerry Lee Lewis never ran for the job, or I may have voted for him just to spice up the Beltway. Now we come to a guy who as Brando said in ‘On the Waterfront’...”I coulda been a contenda!!” Michael “The Tank Driver” Dukakis around 1988, again I was doing my radio show and had him on as a guest. My interviews were not serious, but primarily to get my guests to have fun and show the “human” side which plays well me thinks. Yes, I asked him to teach me to drive a tank and kn exchange I’d give him directions to Greektown for dinner! Dan Quayle was another guest. He had misspelled “Potatoes” and I talked about that and we had a spelling contest in jest. I also invited him to the Posen, Michigan Potato Festival and he could ride in the convertible with the Potato Queen. Unfortunately he had to go to the Great State of Chicago for a rally…. Now we come to Bill Clinton….two run ins. The first one was when on my radio show there was a huge concert at the Dallas Speedway of rock and roll and it was coming to Detroit as well. I contacted the promoter for tickets to give away for the Detroit show...he sent the wrong ones and I had 12 tix to giveaway to the Dallas Show a bazillion miles away! I asked the audience if they wanted them and would actually go (which they did and brought me souvenirs back!) Now once a month on rotation to make it fair a Michigan Senator, Republican or Democrat depending on whose turn it was would call my show to talk Michigan politics. Contest day twas the scheduled day for the Dem to call. As my phones were going full tilt boogie for the Tix give away our secretary ran into the studio and screamed..”It’s Air Force One for you!!!” Clinton was coming to Michigan and had some state senators with him including my scheduled Dem. I said to our Secretary, “Put them on hold.I’m running a contest.” She about died on the spot. She talked on the phone for about 3 minutes then I buzzed he desk to put that call through as it wasn’t on my studio line. I did my greeting and heard Bill in the background and asked if he’d come on the air to play trivia, not thinking he would..silence and the next voice...yep..Mr. C. He was amiable as hell and certainly never missed a media op even a goofy one unplanned...I told him we had a people who won tickets to a concert in Dallas and if you missed the trivia question would he be willing to fly them all down there on Air Force One…. The game began...limited time..one question and yep….How do YOU spell Potatoes as Dan Quayle has his one way” No matter what you think of him his laughter and sense of humor in this minor episode was magnanimous. One final note during his second run for a second term he was coming to Detroit. Me and my girl went downtown as we usually did along the Riverfront and Ren Cen etc. Not even wanting to do any politics that day except…..I couldn’t resist..the Secret Service as all over the lobby of the Ren Cen you know talking into their hand so being in a playful mood I went up the most serious looking one and said, “Oh good, you work here. Can you get our bags please and take them to our room?” I thought he was gonna shoot me right there! All I got out of him was him tense and yelling at me “Go away, I’m busy, get out of here.” No sense of humor those guys. Gotta have fun...as for First Ladies, never met one but Jackie O, Michelle and Melania have my vote!
The Single Father
As a newly single father I learned fast that the rules of the game had changed. One thing major is that as a single father with two kids at the park playing on swings is a mating call to any single moms in the area who can sniff out a single dad faster than a K-9 cop track down a deadly explosive at a subway terminal. I met a Native American girl, said she had Blackfeet heritage and she was a beauty. We met at the park on the lake in Monroe, Michigan. We spent the day together, our kids all playing together while we made plans to have a BBQ on the spot. Later we were inseparable enjoying Downtown Detroit using 4 photos for a quarter photo machines, enjoying the festivals etc, She eventually had to move back to Montana to take care of her ailing mother, her father already deceased. (I did visit once and enjoyed the stay, the culture and Linda.) But...it was not to be. Another aspect of being single father is to without knowing it...embarrass one of your kids accidentally. This happened one day at the Motown Exhibit at the Henry Ford Museum where you could step on the small stage and learn the dance steps while watching the Four Tops on video and singing along with them. They would walk and talk you through it. I started dancing as did my daughter who was 10, my son age 12 an too cool was not having anything to do with this nightmare as people gathered around and my daughter and I gave one hell of a performance. Berry Gordy would have hired us on the spot!!!! Then there are those get even ha moments. I was gonna take the kids and my girlfriend Denise to Belle Isle for the day, picnic, rent a horse and carriage, fly kites and visit the zoo on the island. There mother almost blew a gasket at the “DANGERS” of Belle Isle. “You be dama\ned careful,’ she admonished, “I don’t feel good about this!” I’m more urban than she was so that was understandable. When we got to the Island it was packed, kids and families everywhere. Why? It was the Detroit Police and Marine Corps Kids Day Festival! There had to be one cop and one Marine for every 10 kids...helicopters to explore, fire trucks, balloons, cotton candy, music...can’t get much safer than that. We had an awesome day and got some PAL Police Athletic League t-shirts for the kids….victory was mine at last!!! The really cool thing though is that I bought my kids a Lionel train set with track, building tunnels, people...everything you need. They’d play with it when they came over and we kept the set at my apartment….then when all alone after a few beers ….I’d fire it up and became Casey Jones! I guess I never grew up….never will. The kids are all grown now and I miss those days...but….there are now grandkids to spoil..but will never forget those days of my own kids when they were young...best days of my life….
Race Relations
Detroit is more than a melting pot of race and cultures, we have the largest population of those from the Middle East right here in the center of racial gravity known as Detroit or as any true blue Detroiter calls it...Deeeetroit or simply The D. When living in a condo with my third wife and two youngest kids we had a family move in that whose household was headed by a Sikh gentlemen by the name of Bushlinda, as close as I can spell it...anyway...that is it phonetically. He had a wife and three kids, two of which a little boy and girl my son and daughters age who became friends joined at the hip thanks to the bonding power of big wheel bikes and a condo swimming pool. Bush was an engineer back home and was in Iran during the turbulent years of upheaval of the 70’s...ya’ll remember that, yes. They made their way as a family to America the hard way and found their way to the apartment next to mine. Thankfully. Bush wanted to learn all there was to being an American. Red, White and Blue! Go Team USA, Go! We’d have family dinners together, go to movies,and take the kids to the pool. One day when got home from work...Bush came to the door and said, “Mike come over for dinner tonite, after we eat we get some beer and watch Rodney Dangerfield movie on cable….I looked at him…”Bush, beer and Dangerfield? Damn...You I now pronunce you and American!” Going into the city everyday for concerts or dinner or just goofing off I used to park at a parking lot across from the Ponchartrain Hotel a block away from Hart Plaza, Cobo Hall, and ground zero for the Motor City Festivals. I got to know the owner, Jabbar from Pakistan and he missed his family and was trying to get them over here. We’d talk in his key shed and I’d bring him coffee from the MacDonalds a block away and kill time with him. My friend Emmett wanted to go to dinner one night with our wives to the ritzy suit and tie Ponch where he bragged he knew the sommelier or “the wine guy” He was bragging about how he always got the best wine when ordered,, etc etc. You know how snobby wine types can get...ha….I said as I was driving in my car and pulled into Jabbar’s lot where he came out to get the keys and said, “For you my friend, you park free.? I looked at Emmett..OK , I expect your wine guy to give us a free bottle of Napoleon Brandy!” Turns out my parking lot Pakistani friend was more powerful than the Ponch’s wine steward! Black and white racial division? Maybe in the past by one day I took my daughter and daughter in law to be swimming at the Belle Isle beach….we also packed a cooler with hot dogs and burgers for the grill later. It was summer, Belle Isle was packed to overflowing….after swimming we drove around and not a grill to be found or table….blacks and whites and Arabic families already having family picnics. We drove a little bit more and found what I thought was an open grill. We parked began unloading and walked to the grill..badda bang...it was just taken by a Black family having a family reunion> I mean had to be 50 some folks getting together to enjoy the day….we decided well, no grills or tables let’s pack up and keep looking when one the Black gents came up and said to us, “We’re done with the grill and we have some seats and lawn chairs. So we joined the family, gilling and talking, drinking beer and laughing for about three hours….If I could have chosen a family to be adopted by..it would have been them, I kepot joking withntehm that I was the White sheep of their family...what a great day. Another time I brought my fourth wife from California to Detroit and of course, Belle Isle. She never saw black squirrels before as in Cali they are more grey. It was early morning Saturday as we walked around and she saw a black squirrel but failed to notice the rather large 200 pound Black man jogging nearb when she blurted out loudly, “It’s black! It’s black!” The gent looked over puzzled or pissed not sure which. I said “She meant the squirrels she’s from California and never say one.” At that point he waved and smiled broadly shaking his head laughing and jogged on… Race is what you make of it…I’ve always viewed the different races as the color on God’s canvas of humanity. Each one adding to its beauty...we may not hang in the Louvre, but I’d rather party on Belle Isle with that Black family or sharing a cup of coffee with Jabbar hearing stories of his home in Pakistan and most of all….I’d love to share one more beer with Bushlinda watching Rodney Dangerfield as our children played together...colorblind, culture blind and innocent…..
We Are The World?
Yeah, I hate that pansy song too, but gotta admit growing up in a large city such as Detroit with its ethnic diversity from pasta to fried chicken to Polish sausage had its perks. A a kid my neighborhood on Detroit’s Eastside was primarily one of Italian greaseballs with a few Irish drunks tossed in the mix. We were a group of Russo’s, Scalisi’s, Marino’s, Cusamanos and Bommaritos. Across Mack Ave was Grosse Pointe home of the mafioso big wigs, Licavoli, Tocco and Tony “Jack” Giacalone (The guy who was to meet with Jimmy Hoffa when he disappeared) On the corner of our block Mack and Three Mile Rd was a auto bump shop that seemed to be more of a chop shop. It was owned by a 300 pound dago named Jimmy Cusamano. My grandpa always warned be about Jimmy and the guys who hung out there and on the second floor of the florist shop across the street from Jimmy’s. (Much gambling above the bouquets and roses…) It was mainly cards and dice. I used to earn a few bucks when I was young running and getting cigarettes for the gamblers and bags of oranges and fruit for Jimmy. Put a little cash in my young pockets. I had a lemonade stand set up on the corner one hot Detroit afternoon and was selling lemonade a nickel a glass. Then here comes Jimmy with a few of his, uh, mechanics? Hands me a five, a lot of money in those days especially at 10 or whatever I was. Then he’d pick up the pitcher of lemonade and down the damn thing then go back to chomping on an onion he ate like an apple. “Thanks kid,” then walk off...I was rich!!!! I’d go home and have grandma whip up another batch, never mentioning Jimmy and the fiver. That would have ended my enterprise that day! One day a Nordic family of some sort moved in. They must have been Nordic as they had a blonde daughter named Lindy who was 11, an older woman! I had my first crush and was down there everyday. One day I was drinking Kool Aid or some drink he mommade forus and I dropped and broke the glass on the front porch...I ran home frightened that I had broken the Holy Grail itself. Embarrassed to the max! Within minutes her mom was down at my grandma’s letting her know what happened and me that it was just an accident. I came back with her and played all afternoon with Lindy...I’ve loved Nordic people ever since...so forgiving. Now if Lindy was a WOP I’d probably get an old fashioned dago riot act read to me! Ray Kopek was our lone Polish kid and one of my best friends even when we were playing with his dads golf clubs in his backyard...he swung, I was too close and got knocked out briefly. To this day I hate golf! Another neighbor that was not Eye-Talian was Dave DeBusschere who was an American professional National Basketball Association player and coach and Major League baseball player. In 1996, DeBusschere was named as one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history. He played for the University of Detroit after he was champ at Austin High. Then….the Detroit Pistons and the Knicks. I was pals with his younger brother and one day we tied Dave’s shoelaces together in knot that even the best most patient fisherman couldn’t untangle, or so we thought..the afternoon before a game and hid in the basement. He came after us after he found out what we had done but at least he was laughing. God knows he could do a hoop shot at 50 yards with either of us. Detroit has always been diverse with a few speed bumps along the way..race riots in the late 40’s and of course in ‘67, but for the most part...I wouldn’t trade that upbringing for the world. A few years back my son and his fiance, now his wife were downtown at the Eastern Market when two Black guys with a TV camera came up from the local cable TV station to interview us on of all things race relations and are they getting better in the city. My son’s fiance was a film student in Ann Arbor and wanted to look at the camera after the interview. When she was done she handed it back, as she did two (one white, one black) renta cops hired by the market came running over….”Is there a problem here? The one yelled..we all looked at each other then at the pseudo cops….I said, “Not until you two came along!” Then the larger of the Black guys said, “Whites and Blacks can’t talk now?” You see the problem was perception. As she was handing the camera back they at a distance thought they were TAKING it from her. The five us weren’t the problem..,..those two were! Diversity in California sums it up best. My girlfriend and I, my radio partner and his girl were going to Yosemite for the day from San Fran ….we stopped at a gas station to gas up then Kevn and I went inside to get cigarettes and pay for the gas…. Long line...behind was was a Japanese American kid, in front of me was a Latino guy, mean while the Arab clerk was arguing in Arabic with a Chinese guy who was yelling Chinese! We all couldn’t believe two guys arguing in two different languages getting nowhere. The Latino guy turned to me and said, “Goddamn, welcome to California!” Later I had jobs in some all white small towns and missed the diversity, but was saved again when in New Mexico...Anglo, Hispanic, Native American….I felt more at ease there...so we are the world? Maybe not a perfect one, but diversity is a richness to be savored, treasured and cherished. Without it….we’d have no pizza or burritos or egg rolls or make friends we’ll never forget…..
Numbers 199,888 and 202,499
Before, during and after I had dropped out of school after 7th grade I had various odd jobs to fill the Mikey treasury. I was a paid part time under the table employee at a pancake house, worked at a carwash manning the steam hose and in summer mowed lawns and shoveled snow for neighbors, addition to my chores at home...yep...moving the lawn a large corner lot tract...shoveled snow on said same large tract and of course washed the cars, took out garbage on Wednesdays.
One of houses I shoveled and mowed when I first began when I was 12 or 13 belonged to an older couple by the name of Lahksur. Not sure of the spelling now as I wasn’t then either. Pronounced Luck-Sir. They were the nicest couple you could ever hope to meet. Mrs. L would always have fresh baked cookies or pies she would feed me when done with the job, along with hot cocoa in winter and cold lemonade in the heat of summer.
Mr. L was alway smiling and his love of life was infectious….Mrs. L was a bit on the serious side. I noticed they had what then to me as a kid was a “funny accent”, maybe German or Polish. Something European I was sure.
One day while weeding their garden Mr. L came out to help me and with him that long tall glass of lemonade. As he was digging weeds out I noticed something strange about him. He had numbers tatoo’d on his inner forearm. Being naive and curious I asked about it.
He got very quiet and somber and said something to the effect, “you will know someday,” He got very quiet. That night my parents received a call from Mr. L and went down to see him and Mrs. L a few houses away. Only one other house stood between the two.
Mr. L told them I was curious about the tattoo and didn’t want to tell me about it unless my parents said it was OK. My parents heard the whole story and before that knew both had been in a concentration camp during the war, but never pried.
I found out when sitting in their backyard a few days later when Mr. L laid out the story for me. Both he and Mrs. L were married to different people at the time both were picked up by the Nazi’s in 1942 and both spouses were killed in the gas chambers along with Mr. L’s youngest daughter and son, and Mrs. L’s daughter all of 12 years old.
I knew about the war, but not the camps, my curiosity hadn’t taken me that far yet at my age. I was in near tears after hearing about life in the camps which now I am sure Mr. L tempered for my young ears and mind. Mrs. L had to leave the backyard and go inside as tears were flowing from her...silent tears...painful tears.
I was near speechless and from then on read everything I could about the war and the atrocitie. Playing flashlight tag with my friends was different now. No more did I want to be a German soldier, (we’d switch off, German, GI, etc.)
It also began a lifetime hatred for Nazs, skinheads and those who want to kiss or destroy others over religion or race. How one monster of a man could conduct a symphony of unimaginable horror engulfing the world was beyond comprehension.
Both Mr. and Mrs. L met in the camps and after liberation began to reconstruct their lives and yep...got married and eventually had children together and they all resettled in the United States where Mr. L who was an engineer in Poland as the war began furthered his studies and went to work at Ford Motor Company as an electrical engineer for auto systems.
Now that I knew the story, I’d still have my baked goods and lemonade with them but I was quieter now. Noticeably. They treated me like a son and spoiled me at Christmas (I also that year found out what Hannukah was!)
Soon I left home for years of travel and journeys. When I finally did return the Lahksurs had moved They left behind a lasting impression on me. I felt I was wearing an invisible tattoo in honor of them. I was also confused….
Did my presence around them bring them joy or sadness? Did I remind them of the children who died in the camps? A rebirth so to speak, a feeling of hope and joy they must have clung to everyday in that hell on Earth...or was I reminder of their children who died at the hands of butchers and monsters and pure evil that walked the Earth until it was destroyed.
I like to think it was hope and joy and not a daily reminder of great sadness. Both are long gone by now, passed away and if there is a heaven...I know they are there...and when I die I know Mrs. L will have a large plate of fresh baked cookies waiting for me and I’ll hear Mr. L’s booming laughter as he plays with the children he and Mrs. lost so long ago….
Grandparenting
The only role that comes close in feeling to where you have the wings to fly as a parent is the role of grandparent. You spend years raising your kids teaching them valuable lessons from respect for diversity, to fanning the flames for absorbing knowledge, respect for others to rolling the perfect joint. You watch them grow in life from their first steps and first words to the day they put the key in the ignition of their first car and take off from the driveway to pick up their first girl or boy friend. Soon, they don’t have to rely on you anymore...they have their own wings and moral compass to follow….you’ve given them love, guidance and patience then the inevitable happens...they stab you in the back by (Gasp!) growing up and begin their own family. So as a parent you have become as useful now as an 8 track tape...or worse..a mood ring or a pet rock! You settle back...back off the role as all knowing all wise wizard and become a spectator, but cheer up….you’re now a grandparent. You have now attained the rank of a four star general and you are now able to spoil and gently guide your grandchildren! This all done covertly of course as any secret mission should be. You can regale them with tales of their own mom and dad when they were young. You are the gatekeeper of the family secrets and are ready to willingly give them away to the grandkids. “Your dad broke a window at the school once. Caught him drunk coming in late sneaking into his bedroom a couple of nights and spent a night in jail for driving dads car without a licence after sneaking it out of the driveway and stealing moms keys! (by the way my son never did those things..however I did and yep, my mom squealed on me to my kids!) As a grandfather you have become the Buddha of the family. The kindly curmudgeon that keeps your own kid on pins and needles as he never knows what will come out of your mouth and into the ears of the grandkids. Will grandpa start singing “Casey Jones” Driving my train….or will he start telling the kids about all the drugs and sex he had in the Sixties while the grandchild is still figuring out finger painting in kindergarten and thinks grandpa is the wisest man on the planet? In grandpa’s mind and that of the grand child..of course he is! The bond is solid….it’s part of the process really. The grandchild now reminds you of the lost days of your own child’s first steps and words. You take the grandchild fishing, hiking and read him or her or both a bedtime story. Sneak snacks to them before dinner...buy them toys and eat pizza and junk food while you and they listen and sing along to the Sgt. Pepper album until your own grown up kid walks in the room and says in a surprised voice “DAAAD!” While their mom dresses them in fresh clean clothes it is your duty as grandfather to make sure they get the new jeans dirty playing outside in the dirt and grass barefoot flying kites so they can see the wonders of the non electronic world they live in….OK, lava lamps don’t count…. They are magical to a young mind...and givs grandpa a chance to have a harmless flashback or two. The best part though...is when you as grandparent and your own grown up kid and the grandkids are all together sharing life as it is and watching the process of life envelope all of you...you are the past, your own kid now parent is the present and the grandchildren are the future…all three feed each other and make a solid circle of life, love and laughter to be cherished...but don’t get me wrong….you don’t have to grow up….you can stay young through your grandchildren...the future is for them, but they are your present so enjoy every moment...and don’t forget the lava lamp….
The only role that comes close in feeling to where you have the wings to fly as a parent is the role of grandparent. You spend years raising your kids teaching them valuable lessons from respect for diversity, to fanning the flames for absorbing knowledge, respect for others to rolling the perfect joint. You watch them grow in life from their first steps and first words to the day they put the key in the ignition of their first car and take off from the driveway to pick up their first girl or boy friend. Soon, they don’t have to rely on you anymore...they have their own wings and moral compass to follow….you’ve given them love, guidance and patience then the inevitable happens...they stab you in the back by (Gasp!) growing up and begin their own family. So as a parent you have become as useful now as an 8 track tape...or worse..a mood ring or a pet rock! You settle back...back off the role as all knowing all wise wizard and become a spectator, but cheer up….you’re now a grandparent. You have now attained the rank of a four star general and you are now able to spoil and gently guide your grandchildren! This all done covertly of course as any secret mission should be. You can regale them with tales of their own mom and dad when they were young. You are the gatekeeper of the family secrets and are ready to willingly give them away to the grandkids. “Your dad broke a window at the school once. Caught him drunk coming in late sneaking into his bedroom a couple of nights and spent a night in jail for driving dads car without a licence after sneaking it out of the driveway and stealing moms keys! (by the way my son never did those things..however I did and yep, my mom squealed on me to my kids!) As a grandfather you have become the Buddha of the family. The kindly curmudgeon that keeps your own kid on pins and needles as he never knows what will come out of your mouth and into the ears of the grandkids. Will grandpa start singing “Casey Jones” Driving my train….or will he start telling the kids about all the drugs and sex he had in the Sixties while the grandchild is still figuring out finger painting in kindergarten and thinks grandpa is the wisest man on the planet? In grandpa’s mind and that of the grand child..of course he is! The bond is solid….it’s part of the process really. The grandchild now reminds you of the lost days of your own child’s first steps and words. You take the grandchild fishing, hiking and read him or her or both a bedtime story. Sneak snacks to them before dinner...buy them toys and eat pizza and junk food while you and they listen and sing along to the Sgt. Pepper album until your own grown up kid walks in the room and says in a surprised voice “DAAAD!” While their mom dresses them in fresh clean clothes it is your duty as grandfather to make sure they get the new jeans dirty playing outside in the dirt and grass barefoot flying kites so they can see the wonders of the non electronic world they live in….OK, lava lamps don’t count…. They are magical to a young mind...and givs grandpa a chance to have a harmless flashback or two. The best part though...is when you as grandparent and your own grown up kid and the grandkids are all together sharing life as it is and watching the process of life envelope all of you...you are the past, your own kid now parent is the present and the grandchildren are the future…all three feed each other and make a solid circle of life, love and laughter to be cherished...but don’t get me wrong….you don’t have to grow up….you can stay young through your grandchildren...the future is for them, but they are your present so enjoy every moment...and don’t forget the lava lamp….
How Marilyn Monroe and Soupy Sales Saved My Ass
You wouldn't know it today, as do some of those who do know me over the years, that as a child I stuttered and stammered like an out of control jackhammer. At times the words would get stuck and jammed in neutral and the Billy Bibbit would emerge and fire off stammers thicker than a hail of bullets from a Gatling gun...pow, pow, pow, pow..and still hadn't made it to the end of the first whole syllable. Not very promising marksmanship on the firing range of verbosity for someone who was destined, whether he wanted to or not, to a 30 year career in rock and roll radio from Detroit to San Francisco and every am and fm frequency in between.
Growing up in Detroit on it's ethnically thick Eastside top heavy with greaseball Italians and swarthy Poles and hard drinking Irish, I stuttered as a pre-schooler so spent a lot of time reading. I'd get lost in tales of Sea Wolf's and Huckleberry Finn's, not to mention young Jim of Treasure Island. In my mind I didn't stutter...I could play out the literary drama's in my own mind...without stammering. Even me mates in play didn't seem to notice too much..ok, there were jokes and imitations of my stammering ways, but being an only child I had all my literary friends like Huck in my head backing me up..making it tolerable.
My Grandparents who raised me had me enrolled in 1st grade in a therapy class. Therapy? My gawd, you'd think I was a crippled war vet or damned junkie coming down cold turkey and was setting the pace for Betty Ford patients in the future. It was a goddamned speech impediment..period...I learned however by attending “therapy” that it was all emotional triggers..and once stuttering...the fear of stuttering itself and the subsequent mockery that came with it were triggers...book reports...fear....conversation...fear...answering questions in class...fear...you have to climb the mountain of fear and not fear falling off.
Old Buddihst saying...climb the mountain, when you reach the top, keep climbing, you won't fall off. I had no idea at the time of Buddhist sayings or had known any Buddhists so it was all moot. In essence though, that is what I did...kept climbing to loose the fear. Family support was crucial but so were Soup y Sales and Marilyn Monroe!
Soupy was my neighbor and I would go to his house almost everyday after school..he was local and not national yet. He'd do his practice schtick and routines for is kids and I would memorize them and mimic them and redo them the next day in the parking lot at lunch at St. Clare de Montefalco school...flawlessly...not stammers...no stutters..they were carved in memory that required no thought..it was a spigot turned on and the routines poured out..without fear and with control..pacing...inflection...breath control not to not stammer, but to give a good performance.
Then Marilyn entered my life through the pages of Life Magazine. She was a hot commodity and hot pure and simple. I read a full spread on her and how her name was Norma Jean Baker and mainly how she was a stutterer! I couldn't believe it...Norma Jean and Me...hot damn...it turns out her stuttering was caused by childhood trauma and she could control it when delivering her scripted lines..they were memorized like Soupy's skits to me..soon she was, well, Marilyn afterall and her confidence though not rock solid allowed her to avoid stuttering. Listen to her talks..speeches in interviews...talks very slowly...controlled..I've read where some have said she sounded as though she were trying to foster an image of intellect...uh uh..wrong...it was controlling her affliction as best she could..just as I did the best I could...I started praticing more routines...reading out loud..and writing...the first piece I ever wrote was a tribute to Norma Jean Baker at the age of 11...the weird part is I used the encyclopedia and used the ancient Phoenician symbols of birds and animals to write it...or to my best idea of translation...talk about an early form of texting!!! One bird equaled 10 words and I'm sure I got it all wrong..but it didn't matter..it was Norma Jean afterall...and I felt I owed her.
Later the stammering receded, not completely but was in control..It still pops out today at times..not as a stammer but as a blank space..where I have to stop for a brief moment to think the word out and vocalize it..when doing radio..it flowed...I was at home with a mic and an audience...it was my comfort zone and at times actually felt lost unless I was in a studio with a hot mic and phone lines blasting away....my radio days had me mc'ing concerts and going to parties...no stammering...it allowed me experienes that built my confidence..stunt flying with the Red Baron Stunt Flyers, blasting with the Blue Angels, a live remote at the circus in a cage with a full grown Bengal tiger..riding the lead elephant in a barnum and baily circus parade and en tering the arena with top hat in Concord, California as the guest ringmaster, did the color at demolition derby's, rodeos' and hosting Jerry Lewis telethons in San Francisco...not bad for a stutterer..Billy Bibbit finally disappeared..all thanks to a pie in the face slapstick comedian...and a young girl named Norma Jean Baker!
“Tha...that...tha...that's all folks!”
Michigan Yoopers, Cabins &Yellow Snow
Michiganders are proud as hell of their heritage, whether it's warranted or not. It's a most uncivil war too when it comes to name of the states residents. Ganians or Ganders? Gettysburg had nothing on the battle would erupt over this query. The one thing Michigan has that no other state can claim is it's shape. It's hand shaped so can be used by the attached body part of the person trying to point out where they are from, from the Thumb to the Middle Finger of Michigan! Then there is the shape of Florida....Michigan is the perfect compliment to give the gulf gratification.
Michiganders are divided too on which part of the state they are from. The southern portion, the one shaped like a hand are called Trolls by the Yoopers, (those who live "above the bridge" in the Upper Peninsula!) and as we all know, trolls live "under the bridge" from Mackinaw on south.
The southern part of the state is the industrial hub, and the population center where the hustle and bustle of the office machines whirl and twirl, the pace is frenetic, and kinetic, the heart attack and ulcer rates skyrocket higher than the Michigan Consolidated Gas Building, and the infrastructure is crumbling, an urban rockslide leaving gaps and holes in the ghetto fabric exposing all the cities dirty little secrets. The whores, the pimps, the junkies thrive in this compost of crime. Gunfire is as prominent as crabs are in a whorehouse, and cops and corruption are engaged in a copulation of convienience. Dee-troit..where I was born and raised. I got used to it. Then..something happened. I moved away from the pollution, the factory noise, the horns, the urban congestion, as well as the culture and the excitement that exudes from a city. I did the unthinkable...I moved...UP NORTH!
The Up North of the state has always fancied itself an independent state, and could survive without the tourism provided by the Trolls of Michigan and the boaters from Illinois, Ohio and Indiana. Thats fine in summer, but in winter..it's food stamps as the official coin of the realm, and trying to earn just enough money to repair the chain saw and buy a new auger for ice fishing. It's the time of "rockin' chair money" or unemployment as any plaid and proud Yooper will proclaim..yep..and damn proud of it! So I moved there not knowing fully what to expect and fell immediately through the looking glass into a world that was completely upside down, topsy turvy and a place that defied me to define the difference between a pasty and a pastie, both edible as far as I was concerned. I've had both.
No, I did not just move up north, say to the Sunrise side of the state near Alpena, nor the Sunset side of the state near Traverse City. Like a virgin on prom night..I went all the way! All the way to the UP..the Upper Peninsula..where dwell the "yoopers" which at first sound conjur up visions of hobbits. No not the hobbits of film fame, but the hobbits you pictured when you first read one of Tolkeins books, remember those? Books? The film forced the imagery on you, the book leaves the doors of perception wide open and allows you the freedom to visualize. Yoopers, hearty souls of legend who are plaid and definitely proud and say things like "eh" to give a hard core Canadian reason to pause. It's Fargo, before there was a Fargo.
Yoopers are an original, in a class by themselves. I was ultimately absorbed into this wonderland underground counter culture without even knowing it. Like getting laid in your sleep. You don't remember what happened but you awaken with a smile, and look of contentment.
It's venison, shotguns, hunting tags, blaze orange, Pabst Blue Ribbon Bear, knotty pine and ladies pool leagues all tight jeaned hunching over a pool table, stretching the fabric even tighter than the male imagination, leaving nothing to the imagination, and Lawdy, how she could handle a pool cue!!
I took a job at a small radio station in St. Ignace, one end of the Macinac Bridge, the north end rolling gently to the Troll toll booths at the gateway to the land of Paul Bunyan, lumberjacks and jills, souvenirs and indian tribes with unpronounceable names, like some of the French names of cities and towns in Michigan that look like they were composed from an arbitray pile of Scrabble tiles that had fallen to the floor in no particular fashion.
I needed a place to live, and getting used to the smell of pines, instead of exhaust, it was inevitable that the lure of the forest would draw me out of town about 20 miles west of St. Ignace in search of that Jeremiah Johnson cabin in paradise, and damned if I'd find it..I did!
I found my private Walden, not in Idaho, but in a town near a small forest lake tucked away in the trees and full of blue gill and small bass, and on the shores of Lake Michigan which can bring down ships in a storm with the best of them and toss up a warehouse full of driftwood, logs, stumps, rocks, Petoskey Stones, and fishing line tangled, old bobbers, life jackets faded from the sun and elements, pieces of wood boats, rowing types and on ocassion, and old weathered oar that was salvaged and turned into shelving mounted on my limited wall space. The town was Brevoort..it consisted of my cabin, a house a quarter of a mile away, housing the landlord and lady, a small store with fishing supplies, bait and beer, a half mile down the highway, walkable, and traffic heading west to Wisconsin and Minnesota and east to St. Ignace and the island of Macinac. The yin and yang of US 2.
One time not far from the cabin there was a police chase. Seems one of the locals, will not mention his name as he may still be alive but was frequently seen drinking and shooting pool with me and also playing pinball at a place called Doc's Bar. One day he was so hungover, he forgot he was in a stolen car from the night before, and no, I was not with him that night! The cops knew it and saw it and chased it...he gunned it down US 2, cops in hot pursuit when he suddenly stopped the car, jumped out and ran to hide in the woods.
Soon he was heading at top speed back out of the woods and jumped into the backseat of the open rear door of the cop car afer it seems he ran headlong into the woods at top speed and in the process of intrusion, happened to disturb a mother black bear and her cubs. He wasn't that drunk that he couldn't figure out he had a better chance with the cops than a protective mama bear.
I heard this story as told by my news director at the time at the radio station who had by now secured a cabin next to mine, well, next is a relative term, as it was fully a quarter mile east of mine but walkable as we both would meet at the store, load up on beer for the evening to compliment the bags of weed we would open and smoke from a source in Saginaw and then spend the evening outside enjoying the stars and forest noises, a little music on the radio, me playing harmonica and he a small marimba he had purchased years ago in Grand Rapids from a street vendor.
There is a book called, "Don't eat the yellow snow" which didn't make a lot of sense to me at first until I did move up north, way up north, up up and away up north. Bears and forest critters, and some drunken or inhebriated humans have a habit of pissing in the snow when outdoors. The fluffy white gown becomes stained and yellowed resembling those stains you can find on the unclean sheets of any dive motel or flophouse in the country. Never mind trying to figure out it's genetic code..try to avoid it at all cost is all.
Not all creatures great and small live in the open. My cabin became host to a curious visitor who in time moved in and made himself, or herself, at the very least, itself (I wasn't going to pry or physically check for one gender or the other as that would be rude under any circumstance whether human or critter) It was a field mouse. The cabin was one room of knotty pine, with room for a bean bag chair, my sleeping bag which was my bed and a small kitchen adjoining with a tiny camping fridge and stove, compact as all hell and would fit in a Volkswagen me thinks. I don't remember if the mouse, was in fact a doormouse but if it was I can't remember what the doormouse said.
I didn't name the little fellow, as I figured he probably was known to his kind by his own name that the mouse world had given him so I wasn't about to interfere and play god with the forces of rodentia. He didn't call me by name either so we were on equal footing. I discovered him or her, or rather it discovered me when I woke up and rolled over in by sleeping bag one morning. Bang! Along with a spectacular sunrise there was a mouse staring at me from mere inches away. Quizzical, and as if to say...when is breakfast Amigo? I'm hungry...he wasn't afraid of me, nor I of him. I did talk to him a bit, as you'll rant and ramble in the early morn, rolled a joint, lit up and began to smoke and then spoke more at length with my little grey visitor, soon to be tenant and compadre. I got up and got a small bowl I had fashioned from tinfoil and put some milk in it, found some Oreo cookies on the counter and crushed one up on a small paper plate and set both down for the little guy. Chow Time!
From that day on..he would come and visit, sometimes for hours, especially at night. I became especially fond of his company and vice versa I think although he never said one way or the other. This went on for about two months. He'd scurry out the door after eating and visiting, and go back to the woods, no doubt to his family that had to be worried sick about him venturing in the the land of the crazed human race where cheese and traps are the norm as is disposal of the dead varmint.
Then one day he didn't return. Now I was worried sick. Was he in trouble, did the cheese trap vortex consume him? Did he venture into a tourist cabin where he was misunderstood and anihilated by unappreciative city folk. I didn't know, but dutifully left out a bowl of milk and Oreo's every morning just in case, hoping anyway the little guy would come by and brighten my day once again..but he never did.
I never enjoyed his company again. I went a few years ago on the trek down US 2 from St. Ignace to see what might remain of that cabin, and in the hopes that the little field mouse was waiting for his Oreo's. The day was clear, the sun bright, the lake blue and calm, with freighters heading up and heading down, private fishing boats filling the lake, the bridge not far in the distance, barely visible, but the cabin..I know it was here. Right There! Damn..it's gone, but that sand dune wasn't here before or was it? Parked the car, got out and went to the dune where the cabin should be and saw protruding from the top of the dune a green faded roofline. Yep..that was it..the cabin had been swallowed up alive over the years by the elements. It was as though the days I had spent there were preserved now, a mummy, no a memory preserved as the sands of the desert protect the pyramids and burial places of the ancients.
I headed out, feeling somewhat accomplished, though not fully. I wanted to go inside and relive those days, but Thomas Wolfe said it best..You Can't Go Home Again. So instead I started up the car and headed back to the bridge, back to the land under the bridge where the trolls live, but on the way stopped into the little party store where I used to get beer, bait, Oreo's and milk. The owners were different now, but they had Oreo's! I bought a package of them and the look of delight that came over my face must have puzzled them. It was almost gleeful and orgasmic. "Son, you alright?" he said. "Yep, I am, youbetcha I am!" I exclaimed. As I paid and pulled out an Oreo to eat. At that moment, that first bite, the memories raced back of that little mouse, my companion, and I started laughing outloud. The shop owner looked puzzled. "Are you sure you're ok?" I just smiled and took another bite and the memories poured forth.."I held the Oreo in the air and said happily..Damn, you CAN go back home again, at least for a little while a little moment in time!"
The Invasion of Childhood and Imaginary Pirates
1959,,,, when I would spend the entire 76 trombones led the big parade star spangled corn roasting month of July, and part of the hot, humid, Street Car Named Desire steam of the fish fryin' month of August at my grandparents cottage.
Grand Lake in Michigans North Country. Fishing and hiking, riding his bicycle, watching freighters go up Lake Huron, and down again...Buffalo maybe, maybe Cleveland. Maybe..maybe through the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the sea to Manila to the dark streets and alleyways of tranny bars and Mama Do-right hiding in a shack. Passing through the Soo Locks like an ore loaded suppository.
Closing my eyes to daydream, and enjoy the intoxicant of pine, sand and juniper. Sensual smells that permeated the wet, swampy mosquito woods that surrounded the red pine cottage. The red was no ordinary American red either. Nor a communist red that appealed only to Slavs. Naw, it was that deep, rich, dark, pumping blood red you see in photographs of log lodges buried ass deep in the blowing white snows of blonde Scandinavia with whole villages of Norweigians, also buried ass deep in the same snows, yelling with accents for more snowshoes. That kind of red.
The navy of early morning fishermen rose bleary eyed early. Ready as hell to launch the fleet of Johnson and Mercury motors to depth charge full speed ahead and damn the friggin' torpedoes urgency in their quest for the nazi fish just below the surface. Bass battling battleships chasing a silent service U-boat wolfpack of smallmouth looking to evade capture and sink the Lusitania first. Grand Admiral Grand Pa at the sunrise helm. Water lapping gently, a finger popping liquid Bobby Darin Vegas beat against the splintered sides of that old grey wooden, weathered boat. Grandfather and grandson. The Old Papa Hemmingway Man and the Sea flashing back, like old yellowed pages in a forgotten book. At times silent, enjoying each other, the stillness and quietude of nature, and the abject lack of words. Words not spoken that allow communication between friends who fish and hunt, that only comes with the dawn.
Soon the silence is broken. Sonars ping and bobbers bob, signalling the attack as the line tugs from the depths below...a kamikaze fish on the line, dinner on the table. It was always the time he looked forward to the most. His special time, but first, to get to it...you had to endure the gauntlet of gore and the obligatory Attack of the 50 Foot Bats! That first Friday, after school let out for the lazy, hazy daze of summer, the air in an academic balloon emancipated, I would head "up north".
Up North. More than a state of mind, it was the promised land of knotty pine, white birch and yellow perch. Deer heads in the buckshot headlights, mounted on the unemployed pine walls of the local foodstamp bars and bowling alley dives. They kept gaze from above, glass eyed gods of the art of taxidermy over the pool tables with the incessant cracking collision noise given off by the cue ball as it successfully sought out it's next ball/victim and sent it bleeding and slashed into corner pocket hell. A Jack the Ripper eight ball serial killer, if ever there was one.
One of the Ten Commandments of this promised land was simplicity itself. "You catch 'em, you clean 'em". You got to unstring them, knock in their little bulging heads with a stick, and clean and scale the helpless critter. The catch of the day. Once filet'd and finned, you'd toss their little left over heads into a little left over pie tin to feed the masked racoon raiders some left overs when they waddled out at night from under the boathouse.
It was a land of plaid shirts, tackle boxes, shotguns, beer and ammo, along with smoked meats and smoked cheese. Wicker swings on the porch and fireball sunsets. Black bears feeding at the dump, seagulls swooping overhead, all played out on a stage of trash, with an appreciative automotive audience in attendance at a command performance at the Carnegie Hall of Carnivores. Now, dammit, that's mammalian entertainment!
All true blue, red plaid and proud Michiganders referred to "the north" as that magnetic compass point anywhere away from the grime and crime, and the rust and concrete of industrial Detroit. The highways of summer, a California gold rush of vacationers from the blue collar and white collar jails that imprisoned them on a daily 9-5 regimen. An asphaltian armada of Motor City steel and chrome setting sail. Wooden sided station wagons, space age cars, rusticity seeking campers and awesome, sleek phallic Airstreams, heading away from the strewn wounded of the urban timeclock battlefields, for some much needed seasonal rest and recuperation and time to reload.
The new Gold Rush. California may have had it's share of '49s, but in Michigan, it was the invasion of the Knotty Piners! Secret convoys of modern day prarie schooner pioneers, composed of modern day internal combustion Conestoga's, would toss their white collar ties and blue collar coveralls on a funeral pyre. The sirens wailed as they began the escape from the confines of the city after the work week ended, and would begin the four hour northward trek along the two laned sunrise coast.
As enveloping dark descended, and miles of even darker roads were devoured whole, they would eventually arrive "Up North" around midnight. Eight dirt miles to go and the Packard would slowly berth itself in the small parking spot across from the cottage, a freighter from Dahomey making port in old ganja Jamaica. Just the week before, as in rehearsed history, the cabin was unshuttered by Mr. Carlson, local plumber and volunteer fireman, and his sons who helped out during the summer. They put the dock in the water. The boat hoist put in place. Lastly, they removed the coverings on the two boats that had been as silent as unearthed mummies from underground Cairo in a plastic holy sarcophagus, covered and sheltered at the side of the old boathouse to weather the northern winter storms season after howling season.
On weekends, family would come up to visit. Cousins, aunts and uncles, and when my mom would come up with her fiance they would sometimes bring up one of my commando comrades to spend a week, and return home the following weekend. Alone, most of the time, I had a hearty crew of imaginary and invisible pirates to keep me company. Wind at our backs, and in our mainsail, we would sail the bounding main, and ply the green waters of Grand Lake searching for strange languaged Spaniards of a swarthy nature, and rob their rich ships laden and tilting to one side with too much Filipino gold. Madrid wouldn't be seeing these riches anytime soon, Matey.
The imagined crew would disappear into the hold of the ship when my friends would arrive for a visit. They, Italian adventurers from the Olde Neighborhood, and not the Olde World, would replace the phantom crew of pillaging pirates, and become their flesh and blood plundering, blundering counterparts, Shanghai'd drunks pressed into His Majesty's Service.
Wooden swords held high, bad sea dog accents and enough vanity to think we'd actually find it, we searched for treasure on the beaches, buried deep. We'd explore the grounds of the haunted lighthouse looking for the fabled remnants of the great ghosts of the Great Lakes. Spook each other like Tom and Huck emerged from a time machine, telling tall tales and ghost stories in the graveyard, and spend sunny afternoons building rafts that wouldn't float.
I smiled as he soared on my magic carpet of memories, adrift in a subliminal sea, and caressed by the drone and hum of the engine, a V-8 mantra, horsepower replacing haiku, and rpm displacing Om. Finally, the Packard pulled into it's parking spot near the abundant poison ivy. Me and my grandparents, careful not to brush against the obnoxious weeds, would get out of the car, grab the bags and flashlight, and make their way to the doors of what passed for Shangri-la.
As we neared the doorway in the black-blue of midnight, my eyes got wild, large and as big as flying saucers in the New Age skies over New Mexico. I would look up in horror, noticing that the night sky was not only filled with thousands of planets, solar systems, super nova and stars, but also alive with the nightmare of hundreds of flying blood sucking dread. Bats!
Certain their only purpose in life was to torment me, swoop down and bite my neck, and thus turn me into a mindless zombizied Lugosi "yes Master" creature of the night. Doomed forever to seek helpless victims as I plunged into the B-movie abyss of bad dialogue and eternity. My heart raced and the blood pumped. "Oh God, no, not the blood". Soon I'd be served up on a platter, an all you can eat buffet for every bloodsucker in Transylvania. A feast for the beast to devour.
I would hear the latch of the door unlock and soon we would seek shelter inside. Safe for the moment. Safe from the bats. Safe from a life as a campy, vampy vampire. I loved the great outdoors. He loved nature..but bats?
The sun would explode above the horizon the next morning, and the bats would be sleeping, thankfully, resting up for another night of child fear, and the seagulls would take over dominion of the skies. No wonder I dreamt of pirates and high sea Jack London adventures. The lake would be bathed in the early dawn golden hues of the solar gift, and the small waves would sparkle with the dancing refelctions of many tiny shards of sunlight. Diamonds and jewells, floating in concert with driftwood above, and minnows below.
Some mornings I'd put on my pirate garb and grab the rowboat and row out to one of the many islands in the lake. One large one, I called Treasure Island, would draw me into it's own peculiar Robert Louis Stevenson fantasy where I would land with my crew and search high and low for the treasure I was sure lie buried in the past and the dirt of history. Men o' war with one legged, eye patched, foul, rum soaked Captains with real swords, and not wooden ones, plyed these waters he kept telling himself. Marooning men and burying treasure and selling white, big soft breasted maidens into Arabic slavery.
On occassion I would come across one of these fair maids, hear her cries, pleas, and dash, a handsome Hollywood swashbuckler, to her rescue, ala Errol Flynn. Rescued, we would sail to her castle, evil in pursuit, and once safe would be feted by the King, her father. After a night of feast and festivity I would once again board my vessle and sail away, into the bosom of adventure and the arms of more maidens and lands of strange Argonaut monsters.
My spirit and bicylce always took me to the narrow spit of beach penninsula up the road where I had made friends with the elderly couple who lived at the Old Lighthouse. Decommisioned for years, and now a museum, it was a nautical beacon of solace for me. The old couple, he a former Great Lakes sailor, and she a teacher, treated him like their own flesh and blood and let me have the run of the place.
I'd ring the giant bell that reverberated across the bay, unleash the cry of the banshee playing with the antiquated foghorn and most of all, got to run up to the beacon tower where I could survey the present, and peer into the past, but he never felt quite alone up there. Along with the past, comes it's ghosts, and rumour had it, the Old Light was haunted and alive with spectral death!
Pirates, treasure and ghosts. Corn on the cob and fresh frying fish. Days of innocence that were getting short, shorter. Soon, the summer would end and in the years to come, so would the innocence and gone too were the invisible pirates.
Growing up Against My Will
After years living on the road, on the beach and in the Haight and an Army stint...it wa time to return home. Not in possession of anything close to resembling a semblance of an education, (I completed 8th grade and then dropped out and hit the road) and, with no desire to obtain any discernable skills, I, naturally, ended up working at radio stations across the country, mainly doing morning radio shows for the next 30 years bumming am and fm rides on the analogue highway from Michigan to Colorado to California to New Mexico and a few places in between. I spent a lot of time listening to radio's during my earlier travels, as TV was a luxury, not to be afforded. Thumbed rides in cars with AM preachers in Texas talking in Mennonite German and Louisiana crayfish pastors blasted from giant Mex-X stations from south of the border, as voices demonic, as voices from hell itself, as parishioners would mysteriously disappear and be buried in the sand, three feet down in the desert while the pastors were really bastards and not bastions of propriety.
I would dust off my old journals to keep that part of my past alive, and I kept writing, non-fiction fiction, fictianally reality he called it, in between the rocks and the rolls, and eventually wrote several books about my journeys and truthful sojourns. But still.....where were the childhood pirates, joys, fears, wonder, awe, fright, werewolves, indians, cowboys, dead and dying soldiers hit with full force during flashlight tag, ("You're dead, I just shot you," "Did not," "Did too," "I did, so fall down, already," "Did not," and so on and so forth until the battery in your "gun" went dead, and it was time to go home in the dark and hang up your soldier gear until you got drafted years later and Uncle Sam gave you a real gun and real people to shoot and real people to shoot back at you.
Were they all no more, and only just figurative fragments of figments of the past? I missed them all. In an attempt to rediscover lost innocence that I had lost quickly, more rapidly then I realized until it was gone, leaving me fileted and stripped, I rented a small cabin back up in the woods that I loved so much as a child. Up North they call it in Michigan, anything north of Eight Mile Road in Detroit was up north, compass heading, true magnetic north too by the way on the great Mississippi Flyway and Great Lakes Beltway.
I rented a Norse red, you've seen the red and read about the red, cabin with fireplace of fine fieldstones from the surrounding farms picked up in 1938 when she was built, and it had a Civil War musket and bayonet displayed over it, hand hewn ceiling and a deepwell pump on a cobblestone patio, and all these things were located on Grand Lake nary a compass point off due north of Alpena in Presque Isle with it's two lighthouses, one haunted built in 1849, and the "new" unhuanted one built on the point of the peninsula in 1871 where they still hold summer corn roasts and tours of the tower.
I rented the "writing womb" rooms in the cabin for the season, all summer long and into the fall with the leaves changing, and the summer people going back home to Detroit, Chicago and wherever they hail from in Ohio. There was a small boathouse that smelled of old fishing forays in the Forties and Fifties, the wooden wall having jars meticulously aligned and lining the shelves with an assortment of fish egg bait long since dried up, old rusty smallish hooks for sunfish or bluegills, the same thing really, just called different names by different people, like caucasian and negro, people really, the same but called different names by different people, and a rickety old dock with a rickety'r old grey rowboat and the boathouse was home to racoons and family who would come out at night along with the bats,yes, those damn bats.
I would row out on the calm lake in early evening and before sunrise to watch the bugs dance a striptease on the water, regular Carol Doda's with large Carol Dodas, transforming the fish below into real sex crazed insect killers. The waters were placid and calm and I liked to listen, and to feel the waves rock erotically against the boat, and slap lap like a hungry whores tongue against the woody, a mellow mantra. One morning I got up earlier than usual and pushed the boat into the water to enjoy the silencio of the early morning. I rowed out to the middle of the lake and put the oars in their locks and lay down in the boat to enjoy it's gentle rocking motion.
I could smell the grey wood start to come to life with the increasing gentle heat of the morning sunrise, the scent of cedar and pine, the up north smell as it was called, wafted and drifted out across the water accompaning the squealing of sea gulls arguing over small fish as they dove pelican down, crazed kamikaze's attacking an aircraft carrier. I closed my eyes, watching the drama play out on my eyelids, fueled by my imagination that began to take on a childlike quality. "Whatever happened to childhood?" Where are they...aAll the cowboys and indians, the kites that became giant birds in the sky, the dead trees on Three Mile Drive in Detroit that became pirate ships and flying saucers?
They had all become trapped and locked away, as all childhood fantasy does as one grows older and experiences life. The past recedes, buried in sediment, while the imagination gets dulled, an old blade on a Buck knife used too often as a hammer in a farm barn on an old tractor to tighten things that had come loose in the field, and childhood, childhood is obscured. People die, people disappear, the sun sets at the end of the day, but the day is revived and reborn as night as the moon ascends and takes it's rightful place in the heavens.
The fire dies to embers at night, yet burst back to life in the morning with a gentle breath as bellows to warm the coffee pot to take off the crisp chill of the morning air and a night in a dew covered sleeping bag that has traces of odors of sweat and mosquito repellent from trips past in the fantastic light of the forest.
I smiled as I thought about freeing the invisible pirates from their captivity to bring them all back to life, to bring childhood back to life, but it seemed an impossible task. How to make the imagination of childhood take flight once again, aboard a space craft loaded with pirates, cowboys, indians and the ghost of a young boy who at one time gave them all life.
As I kept his eyes closed, I began to smile as I could picture the space craft ascend with all aboard, and I began smiling ever broader when I noticed that in the pilots seat was none other than the origianl space cowboy himself...Doc Yucatan...."Good mornin' boy, great day to be alive....so, you want those invisible pirates back do you? Tell you what," he said with a mainical laugh..."It's easy, just close your eyes, real tight (I did) and picture them (I did) and smile," (I did) and childhood came to life and I once again was flying in a space ship made from a dead elm lying on it's side on the street. They haven't gone anywhere, I told myself, they were there, hidden all the time. I just forgot where I put them, like an old baseball glove or bag of marbles you had as a child, but they aren't lost really, nor did they disappear, and you find them, like playing ready or not here I come hide and seek."
Wonder and imagination and innocence are always within...all you have to do is close your eyes, open your heart and know where to look and find the child that still dwells within.
Great Ghosts of the Great Lakes
The storm tossed perils of the Great Lakes are well documented and have a watery wealth of paranormal history. Talltales of tallships, fathoms and phantoms, nautical ghosts and ghastly gales. combine to create a hidden treasure of haunted folklore, lying in the spectral depths of Davy Jones' locker!
Sightings of ghostships plying the lakes crewed by the spirits of Har Matey Mariners have been more plentiful than sightings of Elvis or the Loch Ness Monster combined!
The tales began to rise to the surface as early as 1679, when Robert La Salle's wooden ship, the Griffin, pullled a Jimmy Hoffa and vanished without a trace on the stormy waters of Lake Michigan. Today, many shipwrecks later, visitors to the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point on the shores of Michigans Lake Superior, say they can feel the 29 spiritis of the deckhands that went down to the bottom of that lake, along with the twisted wreckage of the giant ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald during an unforgiving November storm in 1975.
Lighthouses, beautiful beckoning beacons, grace the many miles of Michigan's shoreline as though a delicate string of pearls on a nautical necklace. Lights of life, that guide and illuminate the way to harbors of safety to sailors and all the ships at sea. Along with the ships and the sailors, the lights and their keepers have also become lore and legend shrouded in a fogmist cloak of maritime myth and mystery. Amazing apparitions do appear, and there are those that claim that some of those old lights are haunted by the restless spirits of their former caretakers and custodians.
The Great Lakes are a paradox. One moment, they can be calm, tranquil and placid, and within minutes can turn themselves into a terrifying tempest with horrific gale force winds and skyscraper waves, tall, and fierce, a rabid pitbull looking for a helpless vessel and crew to attack and devour. When the lakes are calm, and the waves lap gently on the shores, the water washes over the sand and stones, reaching out gently. The ghost fingers of so many mariners lost. Are they reaching out to shore merely to clamour to dry land from the imprisonment of their watery graves? Perhaps they are trying to warn others of the unpredictable nature and power of the lakes? Or, are they searching for other victims to join them?
You be the judge, as we hoist the mainsail and set off on a haunted voyage of Michigans Great Lakes. We'll drop anchor at the Whitefish Point Shipwreck Museum where it's been said the salty dog spirits of the Edmund Fitzgerald live inside the ships bell. Then we'll set a ghost buster course southward, for the phantasm friendly harbor of Presque Isle and her high spirited, and highly haunted lighthouse just north of Alpena, where many say the beacon is not just haunted, but the spirit is a paranormal prankster just having a little paranautical earthbound fun!
The adventurous French were the first Europeans to navigate the waters, explore the lands and exploit the rich harvest and bounty of the beaver pelt in the Great Lakes region. They ventured deep into unchartered wilderness in a quest to assure the affluent heads of European society that they would be well supplied in the fur fashion style of the day. In addition to conquest of the dam building rodent, the also kept copious notes of their travels and travails and became expert maritime mapmakers in the process. The hidden harbors and protruding peninsula's they found along their birchbark bateau journeys were given jaunty placenames that remain on maps today.
North of Alpena, on Michigans sunrise side is the vacation community of Presque Isle. Named by the French, it means, "almost an island". Today it's much more than a mere island. It's a highly developed, some say overly developed summer community with cottages and summer homes that fan out in all directions like exploding shrapnel. It's a paradise for fishing on Grand Lake and Lake Esau, and hiking along what remains of a dwindling system of hidden trails and paths. Outdoor opportunities abound, but it's main distinction is that it is in geographic possession of one the most magnificent harbors on all five of the Great Lakes.
It's also where I spent my childhood summers fishing, daydreaming, walking through the woods, and sneaking into the graveyard at night, armed only with my imagination and a flashlight to see all the invisible pirates that we were certain were guarding hidden treasure in that field of tombstones and terror! It was a simple time of plaid shirts and knotty pine rusticity. One of the places where I was fortunate to spend a lot of my time was the Old Presque Isle Lighthouse. Little did I realize then that those days of wonder, wander and water, would give way in the future to the appearance of a para-nautical ghost with a whimsical sense of humor!
Construction of the 30 foot tall Old Presque Isle Light, began in 1838 by workcrews from Detroit, in response to an increasing number of steam powered boats and ships that were stopping in the area for wood to refuel their hungry boilers. When completed, she was the Royal Lady of the Lakes and wore her bejewelled beacon proud and high as her royal crown . The whitewashed rubble structure lit up like Broadway and officially began her light powered custodial coast guardian service in 1840.
Commerical shipping times, they were a changin' as Bob Dylan would say, and the old harbor light began to loose it's illuminating luster and soon fell into a state of weathered disrepair. She was soon replaced with the completion of the New Presque Isle Light just a mile down the road at the tip of the peninsula. Taller, more modern and elegant in a Katherine Hepburnesque sort of way, the new beacon was activated in 1871. At the same time the Old Presque Isle Light took it's final bow from the nautical stage, was solemly extinguished and then simply went silent and dark into the night.
The Old Light stood vacant, boarded up. A forlorn mariners memory, caressed only by the winds and waters of Lake Huron, until 1897 when it was sold at auction to a local resident from Alpena. Even then it remained a rotting reminder of days gone by until purchased by Francis Stebbins in 1930, who wanted to rebuild it as a summer home for his family. Francis bought it from his brother Bliss, who ended up with it early in the century to use as a picnic area by guests at his thriving Grand Lake Hotel just down the road.
In the post war years, tourism began to grow like a field of wild morel mushrooms in Northern Michigan, and they were flocking to the area like Canada geese on steroids. The astute Francis Stebbins decided to meet the increased auto tourist demand headon, and so began an extensive retro project on the old light. He eventually opened a museum on the grounds replete with an arsenal of maritime artifacts, including a huge ships bell and old hand cranked foghorn. In 1965 permission was given to install a light that would be regulated by the Coast Guard so it wouldn't confuse existing maritime traffic.
Then in 1969, Francis Stebbins died and his son Jim took over stewardship of the grand old dame of the great old lakes. It was also during this period that the future ghost of Presque Isle Harbor would make his first appearance...as a very much alive, flesh and blood, living and breathing caretaker and tourguide before taking a bow and departing to the other side! George and Lorraine Parris were hired in 1977 by Jim Stebbins to live onsite and to also operate the lighthouse as a museum and center of learning for young and old alike. George, by all accounts had a playful nature and enjoyed blasting the foghorn when you weren't looking just to see you jump out of your skin! He delighted in the telling of grisly ghost stories to the delight of everyone. All these wink of the eye attributes and his pleasing demeanor had them coming back for more every tourist season.
The final curtain came down for George when he dropped dead of a heart attack in 1992. His death, combined with the Darth Vader realities of the hungry needs of the Department of Revenue confirmed that only two things in life are certain...death and taxes. By 1995, due to those insatiable government costs and taxes, Jim Stebbins sold the property to the State of Michigan, and donated the buildings to Presque Isle Township. The light was disconnected, the gears that turned the light were removed by the Coast Guard and normally that would be the end of the story. Except for one thing, George Parris decided to make a return appearance, this time as an affable apparition from the other side!
A young girl visiting the lighthouse walked up into the lantern room, and when she came back down she described seeing a smiling old gentleman up there with Santa Claus white hair and beard and wearing glasses. The caretakers at the time were puzzled as no one else was on the grounds except the little girl and her parents. They decided to show the girl some old photographs in the lighthouse album, and to everyones amazement she pointed out an old photo of George as the man she had met in the lantern room! Other sightings of the protoplasmic prankster were reported but the strangest occurances began in mid-1990's when visitors, this writer included, reported seeing the Presque Isle light activated and moving at night. It had a yellowish cast that moved about and the local media arrived and reported seeing the same thing. The Coast Guard investigated the lighthouse. Their was no power supply to the tower, the gears disconnected and nothing to indicate a logical reason to cause it's relighting, let alone a yellowish cast. Since those original sightings more have been reported, even by the Coast Guard during flyovers of the light in an attempt to solve this maritime mystery. To this day, the Coast Guard simply and classifies it as "an unidentified light". In effect, a beacon equivalent of a UFO!
Is it just as the Coast Guard says, an unitdentified light, or is it really George the Ghost just having a little fun as the Presque Isle Prankster Poltergeist? Only George knows for sure, by George!
The Legend Lives On!
So goes the song "The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot as it hauntingly describes the tempestuous nature of "the big lake they call Gitchigumee". Gitchigumee, aka Lake Superior, was made famous in the story, The Song of Hiawatha. Today, it's nautical notoriety lies in the story of the sinking of the Great Lakes ore carrier, Edmund Fitzgerald. Built in River Rouge, Miichigan, just downriver from the port of Detroit, she was hailed as the largest lake freighter of her time when launched in 1958. Proud and strong, iron and steel, she was the pride of the fleet.
Great Lakes sailors are a hearty breed who take their work seriously, and accept the dangers inherent in sailing on any of the five Great Lakes, especially, Superior, the largest and most dangerous of them all. Gale force hurricane conditions can occur at anytime, making them as frightening as any storm that hits the Atlantic Ocean. The crew of the Fitzgerald took pride in their massive ship, but all the time aware of the perils of the "witch" as storms are called. November of 1975. The Fitzgerald cleared the port of Superior, Wisconsin on this, her last scheduled voyage of the shortening shipping season, before the wicked weather, snow, gales and ice of winter took possesion of the lake. She was loaded with taconite pellets heading across Superior, her final destination was to be in Detroit, just south of Lake Huron. Detroit, the city that thrives on the fuel of industry, and the Edmund Fitzgerald was sailing there to provide her with her industrial strength needs. That night as Mother Nature began to whip up her wicked brew...the legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald began.
The winds began a fierce howl that ripped a pathway to the soul, and the sea's began to rise like a beast from the very gates of Hell. The captain and crew had weathered many storms before, and had been triumphant in battle, but this time the tide had turned, and the odds were not in their favor. The captain ordered all to remain below deck, and frantically made radio Mayday contact.
Communications were kept open and everyone who could hear the back and forth, over and out, was feeling a growning, ominous force of doom penetrate deep into the flesh of their spirits. The static interference grew, just as the gales were screaming their rage. The waves smashed headlong into the hull of the ship. The groans of straining metal soon joined the cacophony of fear. Contact was getting sparse, then impossible as they made a dash for safe harbor at Whitefish Point on the extended tip of Michigans Upper Peninsula. The lake waves rose higher in mounting anger, but the radio waves were now silent and contact with the Fitz was lost...forever. The mightiest vessel of the Great Lakes had vanished, eaten alive by an insatiable Lake Superior. One by one, lifeboats were spotted like drifting pieces of deadwood, floating, some to shore, with no survivors. Silent empty testimony to the fierce savagery of the storm and to the bravery of the crews last moments of life at sea.
Searches refused to shed any light on her plight early on, but soon the story began to unravel. The power of the waves and weather had snapped her completely in half before she sank hard and fast, with all hands on board. She lies today, as a maritime memorial 530 feet deep on the bottom of Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, along with others, mounted three underwater expeditions, in 1985, 1994 and again in 1995. It was during the 1995 exploration that the 200 pound bronze bell was retreived, and today, along with other interpretive displays stands as mute testimony to the lives lost that in that fateful November storm. The 29 lost at sea, also remain at the bottom of the lake, in a watery graveyard in the environment they had embraced with so much love and so much spirit.
The Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point is the only shipwreck museum on the Great Lakes, and inside are scale models of the Edmund Fitzgerald as well as other models of other ships that have given up their lives and the lives of their crews. As you enter the eerie quiet, and soft lights of the display room, your greeted by the bronze bell of the Fitz. Many who stand silently in front of it, ponder the power of the lakes, and say they can feel the spirits, and hear the cries and the voices of the captain and the crew. So chilling of an experience, you can almost feel the turmoil and the fear that they felt during the storm.
To truly feel the passion of spirit of all Great Lakers you should also visit the Mariners Church on Jefferson Avenue in downtown Detroit. The pulpit is in the shape of ships bow and when ever sailors are lost, the church bell rings. In the case of the men of the Edmund Fitzgerald...the church bell rang, it rang 29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Great Lakes are bountiful in beauty, and at times, that beauty can instantly turn into a beast of tragedy. The Griffin was the first vessel reported to vanish, and the Edmund Fitzgerald was the most famous. Men and ships ripped from life and consigned to graves in the deep depths of the lakes they loved so well, but always aware of the dangers that could one day sink their ships, and exact it's toll by taking their lives. The lightkeepers, too, who kept the beacons burning to offer safety and security, sometimes died tragically and sadly. The legendary lights themselves reaching out to sea like the loving arms of a mother to cradle her children have fallen into disrepair, some to be reborn with the help of historical societies to live again, not as lifesavers, but as museums of a nautical past that is fading into memory, sailing away, like driftwood floating away from shore.
The Great Lakes are afloat with ghost ships and ghost stories. Haunted lights, haunted graveyards and haunted sightings of ships long since gone. Some ghosts, like the 29 hands on the Edmund Fitzgerald, will live in tragic legend until the end of time. Others, like George the Presque Isle Ghost, will appear on occasion to have a little fun, and to remind us how precious life can be.