Michigan 1988

In the summer of 88 I was working concrete construction in Champaign, Illinois. I worked with a number of good guys, but my best friend from that job was Kurt Strube.

At some point in the summer, I mentioned that I'd like to go to Michigan because I'd never been to Michigan. So, Kurt and I decided to go.

We only had the weekend, so there wasn't much time to get very far into the state. I'd wanted to go to Traverse City, to Mackinac Island, to the U.P. and places of the far north. But, looking at a map, I settled for a state park north of Muskegon.

Yes, we planned to camp.

But first off, Strube wanted to go to Holland, MI because he had an old friend--who used to work concrete construction in Champaign--who had moved there. So, we went to Holland.

No cell phones in those days, but Kurt had his number and he used a pay phone at some strip mall to call this guy and this guy said he'd come meet us at said strip mall. We waited and the guy walked right past us until Kurt made a quacking sound which was some kind of inside joke between them. Anyway, the guy was okay, kind of wacky like Kurt himself. I'm not sure what we did: drove around to see the town, known for its tulips (I think), drank a few brews at a bar and played pool.

Evening came and we told him we wanted to camp. The guy said he knew a place. we followed him there.

The place was some bottomland beneath a bridge along a river. It had weeds and trees and lost of junk.

Now, I don't mind camping, don't even mind sleeping in a car or truck, but I don't usually sleep beneath bridges in strange towns or even in familiar towns. But, this place was just fine with Kurt.

Okay.

It was summer. It was hot. There were tons of mosquitos. Who knew what kind of people came to a place like that beneath the bridge--evidence said people who drank beer and whiskey and dumped bulk trash and had furtive sex. But, again, this was fine with Kurt.

I elected to sleep in the vehicle--I think we took his truck, but maybe it was my ugly Ford maverick. Strube wandered around the detritus and picked out an old soggy stained mattress that someone had dumped in the weeds.

Okay.

So, he slept out there with the mosquitos and who knows what. I slept in the car with the mosquitos and, at least to some degree, I knew what.

Nothing happened beyond that, so the next day we drove up to Muskegon and past and to the campground of Silver Lake State Park, which was more to my liking and which was fine with Kurt.

We camped. Went swimming in the lake. Climbed dunes to see the bigger lake--lake Michigan. Later that evening we drove out to some bar.

The bar was next to a concert venue. The band Aerosmith was playing at that concert venue. There were crowds. In the bar some motorcycle guys wanted to play pool. We played pool. The biggest of them said to me: If I was going to fight you, I'd have to knock you out really quick because I'm in too bad shape to fight for very long.

I didn't feel too threatened by that statement, but it did give me pause to think . . . Anyway, they were okay and we went out with them to stand along the fence as the Aerosmith concert wound down.

There were security people around this chain link fence. The motorcycle guy--who mentioned his need to knock me out quickly--asked the security guy how he could stop him if we rushed the fence to get in to the concert. I personally had no plans to rush the fence, but it was nice of the motorcycle guy to include me.

Well, we didn't rush the fence.
I didn't get knocked out.
I didn't sleep on an abandoned mattress under a bridge.
I did finally go to Michigan.

Dear Non-Readers: Repetition

The problem--or, a problem--with an inconsistent blog such as this, one that has gone on for years now at its own erratic pace, is that I can't always recall what I have written about previously. Oh, I could search through the titles, the archives, of my own stuff, but I'm too lazy to even do that. Also take into account that this blog sat idle for over a year (2012) and that I've been very busy with other, more serious writing projects, and the fact that--though I still (by my own estimation) have at least a decade in me before I assume the title of an Old Man--my mind is not quite as sharp as it used to be, then the repeating of some stories is bound to happen.

Tow of the last three posts, I felt in my gut, are such repetitions. I have not bothered myself to check for sure, nor will I. This blog is still, basically, an off-the-cuff kind of thing. And, with the Missouri Rules I imposed (or, de-imposed) upon the resurrection of this project, well, I'll just run with it however it turns out. (This also explains why I've let many miscues and typos and grammatical errors slide.) (It's always handy to have an excuse.)

So, Dear Non-Readers, bear with me.

And yes, I still have no readers.

And yes, it still suits me just fine.

The Biggest Fish: Fort Lauderdale 2009

I am not a fisherman. Yes, I've fished--as a kid on the lakes of South Dakota and Minnesota, in the streams and creeks of Iowa; a little bit in the rivers of Montana, more on the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico and on the bayside of the Keys in Florida. But, I'll say again, I am not a fisherman.

I was back down in Fort Lauderdale just over a week ago. Stayed with Billy. Francis came down from Montreal and stayed at Billy's as well . . . Billy is a fisherman. Francis also, though not a saltwater one like Billy. But it was the three of us, maybe five years ago (the actual year is fuzzy, so I'm only making a guess on 2009), who went out on Billy's small Boston Whaler one gray morning to catch fish and hooked The Biggest Fish, one that Billy still talks about to this day.

As mentioned, it was a gray day, cool for Florida, spittles of rain. It was also rough--especially for a small boat like Billy's worn-down Whaler. Yet, out we went, bouncing high over the wake of freighters and cruise ships and tugs in the passage out of the port, then bouncing, pitching, popping among the cresting waves of the sea that day. I don't know--four to six feet. The waves did not come regular, rather they came at odd and divergent angles, piling into each other to create diamond-shaped crests that kept the boat tilted one way and another at all times. A churning sea. A washing machine sea. Few other fishermen were out there. But we were out there.

(Me? I like flat calm seas, like those in the Keys. But Billy says fishing is not good in those seas--he likes it a bit rougher. He won't sit in a boat and throw a line out along the reefs, for Snapper or Grouper or what-have-you. he only trolls, back and forth, usually south of the port, to Hollywood, Hallandale, North Miami and back, sometimes a mile or three out, six hundred to one thousand feet of water, fishing for Dolphin (Mahi mahi), Tuna, Wahoo. I've caught those fish (and Barracuda) except Wahoo, which is the fish I'd like to catch, of course . . . But we kept closer to shore that day--400, 200 ft--due to the rough seas.)

I was steering the boat when one of the lines went zinging. Billy got it and--as he usually does--handed the pole to someone else, in this case Francis. Francis was a little sea sick--what with the boat bouncing, the drinking of beer for breakfast, and the fact he was a lake fisherman. But Francis was game and he took it and he could tell it was something larger than he had ever caught before. he fought that fish--despite being seas sick--for a good half hour before Billy spelled him. And then Billy could tell that it was even a bigger fish than he had ever had. So, this was The Biggest Fish. It was a Dolphin. A Bull. Billy thought it was at least fifty pounds, maybe sixty.

I steered the boat (as said, I am not a fisherman and it was probably best I didn't take the line what with such a large fish on it, one that Billy wanted to see brought into his boat), keeping its bow forward in the tall diamond-waved sea as best I could at a very slow-to-null speed. And Billy fought that fish for a half an hour. Billy liked to see other people catch fish--he was/is generous like that and he handed the pole back to Francis who pulled and retrieved and let out line for another half hour or so and then they switched back and, after a time, switched back again.

We were out there for two hours fighting one big fish. It was a dolphin. They got it to to surface, got it close to the boat. And even though I did not take a turn, I sympathized with the fish. (Which is why I'm not a good fisherman, or a good hunter, or much of a good spider-in-the-house-killer for that matter.) That big fish wanted to live. It fought like crazy to live. So, I was of the mind that, you know, it should live--though I never said this at the time, only later that day. Billy wanted it in his boat. Francis--a year or so later, said he was for the fish as well (though I had to promise to never tell Billy this, and I have not) but I don't think because of that he didn't try hard to land this dolphin fish, I know he didn't.

Well, the fish got tired. It did not give up but eventually we got it alongside the boat. Billy got the gaff and, just as he was going to gaff this huge colorful bull---PING--the line broke.

Goodbye The Biggest Fish.

It was free and it drifted--exhausted--down into the depths.

Secretly, I was okay with that.

Billy almost jumped into the churning Atlantic after it. he pounded the gaff in the water, on the boat. he yelled and screamed and cursed, animated, excited, angry and happy all the same. Francis felt horrible for losing it. It was the biggest fish Billy would have ever had in his little boat. No doubt he was already thinking of the photos, the pride, the stories and the great big fat filets that fish would provide.

But it was not to be.

And the sad thing was that that fish--so big and now so tired--would not survive. A huge hammerhead, in fact, came slipping by not long after the fish had escaped. Billy was certain it was going to get itself a nice lunch with our fish . . . So it goes.

Yet, though the fish was not caught, the story of almost catching it has become a legend in Billy-World. It is told and retold and alluded to all the time, especially this last time when Francis was there and I was there and we went out fishing twice (we caught nothing; nothing!; not even a bite).

I still hold out hope that the fish lived. That there was no shark (I did not see it, but I know Billy did) or that the shark was not after the fish who fought so hard to survive. Who can say what happened? I can't. But the story of the fish is, perhaps, greater than the fish. It is greater. And it will live on, for Billy and Francis and me, live on in the neighborhood in Fort Lauderdale and in the minds of anyone who hears the tale and who understands it, other fishermen of that ilk.

The Biggest Fish was not caught, but its mythos survives in oral tales amongst we who know of it.

Family Life 1974

I'm trying to conjure up those days when I was young, that is, a child. Not as a boy, exactly, but more those odd middle years when you are still part of the family yet also preparing to leave that family, though you don't know it. I grew up in a family of seven. Four boys, one girl, a mother and father. I was in the middle of the kids, birth-wise.

My father has been dead for close to fourteen years now. My mother gone for one and a half. My oldest brother has had heart issues, my second oldest substance abuse ones. My younger sister in no longer young and the youngest, my brother who was the baby of the family though we never called him that or thought along those terms, is also no longer young--that is, they are in their fifties. (Though, believe it or not, fifty can be young, depending on who is doing the counting.)

I have my own family--four of us--though that is starting to splinter a bit, as my kids are both late college-age. I don't mean splinter in a negative way, more in the sense that things move along as they are expected to or are going to whether you like it or not.

No, I was trying to recall my mindset, as well as physical details, from when the family I grew up in was still all together. When we--or at least I--were still dependent upon Father and Mother and had intimate history with fellow siblings. But also an age when we--or I--were on the cusp of leaving that family nest. And, it's kind of hard to do. For me, at least, those were awkward ages, those mid to late teens. I flowered later in life, I guess, or perhaps not, and was such an unhappy boy-becoming-a-young-man that I don't like to think much about those years. And so I didn't, haven't, struggle to at this time. And, in many ways, what's the point?

Does it make me sad? . . . Sure, a little. I guess one thing I think, or thought, as I tried to recall those odd years is that it is hard to believe, right now, where I am and who I am now--I mean NOW!--that that was my reality at the time. My scope of living. I don't think I had much sense of a real future in those days, a sense of what I wanted to accomplish and a belief that I would go out into the world and do it. I think I mainly fantasied about fantasy futures that included fame and adulation and probably a lot of money. And girls, no doubt. Ah, it was sad. Not as sad as losing my parents, but sad in a more epochal way--or do I mean ephemeral way? I'm not sure . . .

But I do remember the days when I was in that group and we--my brothers and sister, my mother and father, the pets, the places, the cars and furniture, friends and neighbors--when we were all together and we were all we had. I do. And that was our reality and I had no inkling of this reality and, yeah, I guess that makes me a little sad to think about it.

I don't know why.

Billy's Backyard

I wish I could do Billy's backyard justice. I hesitate to even write about it because I don't think I can quite conjure the magical low-slouching beauty of the place with my words and the great somnolent feeling of repose I have there.

Billy's backyard--like the man, Billy, himself--is in South Florida. Fort Lauderdale, to be precise. Billy was my across-the-street neighbor for, I don't know, at least fifteen years until Fru and I and my two girls moved away in 2012 . . . I spent a lot of time in his back yard. Beer drinking, fire pit sitting, BBQing, fish cleaning, shooting-the-ing. People would stop by--friends of his, visitors, our wonderful neighbors. It was always relaxing. There was always a joke. Always cold Busch beer in a can (Billy Beer, we all called it) among other comestibles.

The yard is not large. Billy's house sits on a corner and his back yard is narrow, then makes an L where his tool shed is, where his laundry/utility/fishing-poles-and-tackle/beer-and-bait-fridge room was and his screened porch with the giant aquarium. from that short L side, you can slip through the young palms and hibiscus on a short trail to get to Silvio and Michelle's yard/house--a passageway often used. The yard has dozens and dozens and hundreds and hundreds of plants. Billy loves plants. (I love plants--one of the things I miss most--if not the most--about Florida and about my house are the plants, my plants, my yard.) It has oak trees and some palms, it has orchids hanging from branches, it is fenced in with an old wooden fence. There is a green house of sorts made from pvc pipe and wire mesh where he grows all sorts of small plants, flowering plants, seedlings and such in an assortment of pots and mugs and jars and strange collectives. Some strange and collective plants there as well. The sides of the yard, along the fence and the house, festoon with greenery and flowers and some vines. And there are bird baths and bird feeders, there's an old white bathtub with hunks of coral all around it and inside the tub his turtle lives there--two turtles. There is the fish cleaning station. There used to be a big orange tree and red grapefruit tree and the fruit was there for the picking (but, alas, they were old trees and died) and there are mangoes in trees around the corner. The place is leafy and cozy and unrefined. There's a table and plastic chairs and one giant fish cooler that overflow visitors can sit on. There's uneven paving stones with duckweed growing like green grout between them. There are his two cats, visiting cats and homeless cats, there is a family of giant toads that eat the leftover cat food, there are many ants and the occasional roach, occasional rat, snakes once in awhile. The many lizards. Iguanas now and then. And the birds.

Billy likes birds. I like birds. He doesn't demand that only the prettiest birds get cared for in his yard--doves and sparrows are as welcome as orioles and owls. Blue jays are common, Cardinals come around less often. There are song birds, small ones with nice colors which I cannot name, hummingbirds, the bright yellow orioles, those little burrowing owls, ibis, vultures, hawk and osprey sometimes fly over. I have been alone in his yard at night with the lights off and have herons come, have had them fly closely under his trees and closely above my head. I had a bird land on my head once, as I sat talking to Billy. He couldn't stop laughing as I shooed it off, not knowing what the heck it was in my hair.

We did a lot of laughing. A lot of talking. Beer and more beer but also grilled meats and vegetables and fresh fish, an oyster roast, clams and shrimp, olives and cucumbers. Lots and lots and lots . . .

The few times I have been back since January 7th of 2012, I spent most of my time in Billy's back yard. It is full of plants and, yes, junk, old and rusting things, some new and rusting things, broken things, but it all fits in its lack of trying to fit.

I fit there. In Billy's backyard. Did and still do.

Between Bend and Burns: Oregon 2011

This was when Fru and I had decided not to stay in Fort lauderdale and after we knew we would not be living in New Orleans. It was a job interview in Bend, Oregon and we had a rental car and I--by myself, on one of the days there--decided to drive out into the desert, to the isolated town of Burns.

It was in September and things were quiet. The weather was nice enough. Sunny. Cool. Empty. The big white-topped mountains of the Sisters and Mt. Bachelor, among a couple of others, were visible in my rearview mirror as I drove east and out of Bend--a pretty little city with the Deschutes River and trees and flowers and such--stopping for gas in a non-town called Brothers (as opposed to the quaint burg of Sisters, OR). Then I kept going east, into the Great Empty that is Central Oregon.


Anyway, this land is desloate. Treeless. Sage brush and rocks, arroyos and sculpted hills, mountains, plateaus, all done in browns and yellows and orange, a little red, shades of purple, gray and almost-black. Few cars. Fewer people. And I don't recall exactly if it was on my drive east, or after I had turned around and headed back west, back towards Bend, but I came across an unusual sight.

Here along the road, almost at a top of a hill, was a guy walking. He wasn't just walking, he was pulling a little cart made of wood with wooden wheels that looked handmade. That looked old-fashioned, pioneer-like, prospector-ish. And the man--gaunt, sunburnt, scraggly-beared, head down to the task under the sun and in the wide nothingness--looked prospector-ish too. Pulling this wooden cart about the size of a refrigerator (and looking about that heavy, too) by hand.

Weird.

And you couldn't help but wonder what that was about. What the heck was he doing out here? What was his story?  I will say that it looked like he was doing what he wanted to do. That this was his choice in life. It looked like he didn't want to be disturbed nor did he want any type of assistance. I certainly didn't stop.

So who was better off? Me, driving a rental through the nothingness on a lark, looking for a place to settle and live? Or the old guy pulling a cart, living in the slow lane, his home in a wooden cart?

I don't know.

It was just a strange sight . . . And I think I was headed back to Bend (I didn't get to Burns, not on that trip in Oregon), because I remember a car was coming in the other direction and the walking man was coming up a hill and his cart made him stick part way out into the lane of the narrow desert highway road. And so I was a little concerned that he could be hit at the crest of the incline . . . I assume he was not. I assume he may still be out there, doing his thing.

Speaking of Pets

I don't know why I woke up so early this morning--4:22 am--on a Super Bowl Sunday, sat on the couch in the dark and  began to think about the pets in my life. Pets and their names and the locations I lived in, pets from when I was a kid. Cats mostly, a few dogs, an assortment of other creatures. cats and dogs from when my parents were still alive, from when I was first married, from when my kids were little, from my own childhood. Their names. Their deaths or disappearances or their being given away . . .

I Sioux Falls there was, first, Goldie, a cocker spaniel of my father's who--after I was born, #3 out of five kids, or perhaps after my sister #4 or my brother #5--was given away to someone. I can barely recall the dog yet the day of her departure it is still a vivid image in my mind. Then there was Blackie, another cocker, again my father's dog. She lived in South Dakota and went with us when we moved to Vancouver, Washington and then she was lost at a rest stop when we traveled to San Francisco. We had a puppy that was killed. My oldest brother had a rabbit--Maximilian--for a while. We had maybe some gerbils/hamsters/rodentia of some kind, a parakeet or two. In Sioux Falls we had a cantankerous cockatiel that had been given to my mother, which she gave away.

But, starting in Vancouver, we mainly had cats. We got two or three kittens, one of which was Spunky. And Spunky disappeared. My mother always wanted a Siamese cat--a Seal Point--so we drove to Camus one day and bought a Seal Point kitten. She was named Nefertiti or some such but we kids only called her Kitty so my mother said, "At least call her Witty." and so that's what we called her. Witty lived a long time, in Washington and when we moved to Tennessee and when we moved to Iowa. In Tennessee we had a dog named Pokey, a dog named Fluffy neither of which lasted. We had a cat named Viva, who we gave away. We got another Siamese named Jason, who went to Iowa with us and who had a nasty disposition and we ended up giving him away. Then there was Ming Tai, a sweet Siamese who died of poisoning when I was away in college.

In college we briefly had cats: Sparky, Alfredo Garcia.

In north Florida I had a stray cat I named Snake. Monica's cat named Sheldon. I had cats named Lucy and Velcro.

Then I met Fru and she had a cat: M.R. . . . M.R., despite the name, was a wonderful cat--smart, sweet, gentle. She was Siamese-looking but with long fur like a Himalayan. M.R. was from New York City, originally, but lived in Champaign, Illinois and then went with Fru and I to Montana and then back to Illinois and then down to Fort Lauderdale, Florida (where she died and where I buried her beneath the royal palm in my back yard). Jack The Cat was from Montana, a sweet cross-eyed big cat with the same markings as M.R. He was run over when I brought him to Champaign. I never let a cat outside the house after that. Then we had Kitty cat Stone in Champaign--an outside cat who had been the old man's behind us until he died and no one came to get his cat. But we left him in his milieu when we moved to Florida.

After M.R.'s death my girls, age 8 and 10 maybe, maybe younger, wanted cats so we got two cats one Thanksgiving which we spent in Miami at the Standiford's. Came home with them and their names--after a bit of trial and error became Herky and Mr. T. Sister and brother. They are old cats now but we still have them. Then later--as I have posted before--we got our dog: Lia. Wonderful dog. She is here. As are two illegal cats my oldest daughter brought home and would not relinquish and kept them long enough to be part of the family. They were from South Florida but now live with us here: Bubbles and Maya. Four cats and one dog. Here.

I had lizards, a crab and stuff like that, but it's mainly the cats I remember. A few dogs. Pets . . . Why do we keep pets (beyond the initial practical reasons--hunting, security, pest control)? How is it that we associate and relate and love them and, even more so, how do they to us? Doesn't matter, really. We just do.