Emil told me to sink the boat. Wasn't going anywhere. Glub, glub, glub.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Note on a Christmas Card
You might already know that our Christmas letter ain't your usual Christmas letter. Mostly that was Lois' idea. Must be close to twenty years since she voiced it. Whenever, her's was a good idea. Tired of the usual informational letter with news of the kids and the passing of close relatives, she figured we should take another tack. Might have something to do with Christmas, might even be remotely newsie, but, above all, it should be entertaining. This year's was pretty marginal.
Oddly enough, with each card and letter we add personal notes. Some are letter-like, some sink well into the weird. And one, to my long time friend, Mike G., always drifts off into the realm of the strange and insulting. Not a problem, he seems to like them all. Claims he's kept each and every one for future reference should I ever be locked up in a looney bin. This year's note was pretty slap-dash but had potential. Unfortunately, I hit a brick wall at the end. I signed the note Uncle Emil. That sure wasn't fair on my part as Emil never started a story he didn't finish. So I figured it best if I turn the tale over to my Uncle. Somehow, someway, he'll plow his way through my mess and make a tale out of it:
Tale Told While Fishing
Till I was inducted in the Army, my Uncle Emil and I snuck off on yearly fishing trips. Sometimes we'd go over the border to Manitoba but more often it was the Quetico-Superior wilderness. It was on one of the Arrowhead country trips that he came up with this tale. As usual, Emil claimed it as gospel truth but like most of his rambles, I had my doubts.
We'd been out on the water for a couple of hours that evening. The fishing had been okay, not great but we'd caught our share of smallies. Since we hadn't intended on crossing the border his pipe didn't come with us. Instead he was rationing out Lucky Strikes at a half pack per day. In all the years and all the tales, Emil never once spun a yarn unless in a boat. Or without some form of smoke accompanying the words of his tale. Picture this: I was paused between casts when my uncle jabbed me between the shoulder blades with his homemade, freshly varnished but beat to hell and gone, ash paddle. Time for me to listen up.
"Markie, me lad, ever tell you about my friend Mike? He's been gone near on five years but the manner in which he passed on to his reward, not that he deserved any, is still spoken of in hushed tones down in Parker's Prairie."
Never one to rush into anything, much less a story he'd been mulling over since we'd glided out from our campsite, Emil pulled his cigarette tin and Zippo. He packed the butt on his lighter, fired up, deeply popped the first drag and dove into his yarn.
"Mike was a man who worked with his hands even though he'd been college educated down at the U. Things work out that way sometimes. Matter of timing. A man finishes school when no one's hiring. He does what he can to make ends meet. Makes a decent living at whatever and never looks back. Except maybe once in a while when he cold cocks his thumb with a milled head framing hammer."
"Anyhow, Mike liked to hunt. 'Specially deer. I suspect, like most deer hunters, he enjoyed his time back at the shack as much as sittin' hours on end in a stand waiting for something to happen. Most years he got his deer. Even gave me a few chops when he and his buddies limited out."
"The year in question was a bitter cold one. Temperatures down near zero at night and not a whole lot warmer during the day. Had to put extra layers down in his nether regions for fear his willie'd freeze and maybe snap off should Mike make a wrong move climbing down out of his stand. He didn't want anything like that to happen to his good buddy. Yeah, Mike and his willie were best friends. Often strolled together hand-in-hand into the sunset."
"Come opener his group of friends would pretty well fill the deer shack. Most returned home on Monday thinkin' they'd had a good time but exactly what that good time consisted of was usually lost in a flood of beer and bumps. Opener morning those who made it to their deer stands usually spent the first few hours sleepin' off the snoot full from Friday night. A herd of twelve point bucks could've paraded by wavin' the American flag and fartin' the Star Spangled Banner, yet been as safe from harm as babes in their mother's arms."
"This particular year his buddy Jim - an easy name for me to remember seein' as how he'd taped his name in foot high block letters to the rear of his camper. You see, Jim had a short memory when it came to recreational habitation but had a pretty good lock on his name - was closing in on his last days in the woods. Gettin' old, nearly blind, couldn't hardly make it up into his stand anymore. Couple of years earlier Mike and his buddies built Jim a staircase to his perch so's he could still enjoy the hunt. Not so smart if you ask me. Wasn't just that Jim couldn't hardly see as it was his itchy trigger finger. A real danger. He'd shoot at most anything that moved. When the wind was up he'd fire off so many rounds at flyin' leaves and waving brush it sounded like pileated woodpecker with an overdose of coffee.
The solution decided upon was to fill his shell box with empty bullets. 'Course the first year Jim cussed himself up a storm at the shoddy workmanship down to Federal Cartridge. Didn't calm down till he was told the truth. Jim took it like a man and laughed as hard as any of the others. Then, in the middle of the night, went out and slashed everyone's tires. Come morning it turned out that, once again, the joke was on Jim. Seems the combination of poor eyesight and alcohol had done him in. Slashed all four of his own tires and the spare."
"Anyhow, the staircase was to be a surprise for Jim. So he wasn't along when they put it up. Made the treads out of walnut and wrapped it around Jim's big oak just like a spiral. Yeah, she was fancy alright. Put four coats of spar varnish on it till it gleamed like the sun. Hand carved the railings with scenes from deer openers of year's passed. When Jim first saw it he broke down in tears. Said it was like a stairway to heaven."
"A week before the year I'm slowly easing up to, Mike headed to the woods to check things out. Make sure all was as they'd left it. There he found the DNR had bulldozed down Jim's stand and tree. Sad story."
Emil paused and lit up another smoke. He liked to do that in mid-story. My uncle figured it added dramatic effect. Also gave him time to make sure his ducks were in order or if he'd need to add a note or two to make the story turn out right.
"Gettin' Jim up atop his new, slap-dash stand was a challenge easily remedied by block and tackle. Once they hoisted and got him hanging alongside, a whack or two with a twelve-foot, two-by-four swung him into position. And bruised Jim's ribs something awful. As usual Jim said nary a word. Figured, 'hell it's dark out. Hard to see anything. Coulda happened to anybody. And I got all day to sit here with nothing better to do than figure out how I'll square things.' "
"But none of that has anything to do with this remembrance. What happened to Mike was a whole lot weirder and not as easy to believe but it's plumb bob true. More or less."
"Like I said, it was a cold hunt that year. Mike's time in the stand passed slowly and miserably. From one end of the season to the other. Day after day he trudged out to his stand. Climbed and sat. Sunrise to sundown. Top that off with Mike being skunked. Didn't see a buck, doe or even Bambi. Didn't see squat till a minute after sundown on the last day. To one side of the sky the sun had just dropped below the horizon. To the other, a full moon was just peeking through the woods. It was then Mike saw something passing by. Big but wasn't a deer. At first he figured it to be some farmer's overfed, hog of a German shepherd. Then realized he was staring down at a wolf. Never seen one before."
"It didn't take Mike but a moment's thought to realize this was the chance of a lifetime. There's a law in the books says it's illegal to kill a wolf in the state of Minnesota. Same book says it's illegal to shoot a deer out of season, which it now was. Also says it's illegal to shoot a deer after sundown. Mike, in that moment think's to himself, 'if it was a deer I'd sure as hell shoot it. And be breakin' two laws at the same time. But if I shoot the wolf I'll only be breakin' one. So it's almost the right thing to do. And the pelt would look fine on my wall alongside the fourth place spelling bee plaque I stole back in '37.' "
"Let's pause a moment before proceeding. You see, Italian blood flowed through Mike's body. The way I see it, as a people they're fine cooks but a little weak in the logic department. Yeah, they've sure come down a peg or three since the days of Virgil and Marcus Aurelius. Anyhow, Mike squeezed off a round and caught the beast square in the left eye."
"Oh yeah, that shot was right on the money. Ol' Mikey had visions of the pelt hanging there on his wall of fame even before the round exited the wolf's skull. What he didn't see was the unaffected, pissed off wolf down below that had other ideas as to whose backside was now in a ringer. Seems Mike's bullet had done nothing more than draw the attention of the wrong party. Yup, he'd shot himself a werewolf. Didn't think your Uncle Emil knew about those kind of things did you? Unfortunately for Mike, he'd left his silver bullet in the backseat of his car about thirty years earlier. Well, the werewolf drew itself up and with a single bound was upon our hero up in the deer stand. Tore him limb from Sunday. A regular rainbow of blood and screaming."
"This werewolf had its wits about it and dragged Mike's lifeless carcass deep into Isaacson's Bottomless Slough. Feelin' up for a little Italian, he chowed down. Long story short, come morning all that was left of Mike was a kneecap and his Turtle Club card. The card was how the County Sheriff ID'd the remains. His was a simple and very economical funeral. The kneecap was sealed up in a Hills Brothers coffee tin along with a few pounds of bent nails. Then pitched into Horse Lake south of town. A stone was laid near the spot. The inscription reads 'You bet your sweet ass I am.' "
"To this day if you head up near the slough during hunting season and it just happens to be a full moon, you can still hear Mike's ghost wandering the woods and endlessly moaning 'Doesn't anyone in this damned swamp have change for a twenty?' Guess they have vending machines on the other side. As for me, I'd gladly fork over the change just to shut him up as his whining spooks the deer."
Oddly enough, with each card and letter we add personal notes. Some are letter-like, some sink well into the weird. And one, to my long time friend, Mike G., always drifts off into the realm of the strange and insulting. Not a problem, he seems to like them all. Claims he's kept each and every one for future reference should I ever be locked up in a looney bin. This year's note was pretty slap-dash but had potential. Unfortunately, I hit a brick wall at the end. I signed the note Uncle Emil. That sure wasn't fair on my part as Emil never started a story he didn't finish. So I figured it best if I turn the tale over to my Uncle. Somehow, someway, he'll plow his way through my mess and make a tale out of it:
Tale Told While Fishing
Till I was inducted in the Army, my Uncle Emil and I snuck off on yearly fishing trips. Sometimes we'd go over the border to Manitoba but more often it was the Quetico-Superior wilderness. It was on one of the Arrowhead country trips that he came up with this tale. As usual, Emil claimed it as gospel truth but like most of his rambles, I had my doubts.
We'd been out on the water for a couple of hours that evening. The fishing had been okay, not great but we'd caught our share of smallies. Since we hadn't intended on crossing the border his pipe didn't come with us. Instead he was rationing out Lucky Strikes at a half pack per day. In all the years and all the tales, Emil never once spun a yarn unless in a boat. Or without some form of smoke accompanying the words of his tale. Picture this: I was paused between casts when my uncle jabbed me between the shoulder blades with his homemade, freshly varnished but beat to hell and gone, ash paddle. Time for me to listen up.
"Markie, me lad, ever tell you about my friend Mike? He's been gone near on five years but the manner in which he passed on to his reward, not that he deserved any, is still spoken of in hushed tones down in Parker's Prairie."
Never one to rush into anything, much less a story he'd been mulling over since we'd glided out from our campsite, Emil pulled his cigarette tin and Zippo. He packed the butt on his lighter, fired up, deeply popped the first drag and dove into his yarn.
"Mike was a man who worked with his hands even though he'd been college educated down at the U. Things work out that way sometimes. Matter of timing. A man finishes school when no one's hiring. He does what he can to make ends meet. Makes a decent living at whatever and never looks back. Except maybe once in a while when he cold cocks his thumb with a milled head framing hammer."
"Anyhow, Mike liked to hunt. 'Specially deer. I suspect, like most deer hunters, he enjoyed his time back at the shack as much as sittin' hours on end in a stand waiting for something to happen. Most years he got his deer. Even gave me a few chops when he and his buddies limited out."
"The year in question was a bitter cold one. Temperatures down near zero at night and not a whole lot warmer during the day. Had to put extra layers down in his nether regions for fear his willie'd freeze and maybe snap off should Mike make a wrong move climbing down out of his stand. He didn't want anything like that to happen to his good buddy. Yeah, Mike and his willie were best friends. Often strolled together hand-in-hand into the sunset."
"Come opener his group of friends would pretty well fill the deer shack. Most returned home on Monday thinkin' they'd had a good time but exactly what that good time consisted of was usually lost in a flood of beer and bumps. Opener morning those who made it to their deer stands usually spent the first few hours sleepin' off the snoot full from Friday night. A herd of twelve point bucks could've paraded by wavin' the American flag and fartin' the Star Spangled Banner, yet been as safe from harm as babes in their mother's arms."
"This particular year his buddy Jim - an easy name for me to remember seein' as how he'd taped his name in foot high block letters to the rear of his camper. You see, Jim had a short memory when it came to recreational habitation but had a pretty good lock on his name - was closing in on his last days in the woods. Gettin' old, nearly blind, couldn't hardly make it up into his stand anymore. Couple of years earlier Mike and his buddies built Jim a staircase to his perch so's he could still enjoy the hunt. Not so smart if you ask me. Wasn't just that Jim couldn't hardly see as it was his itchy trigger finger. A real danger. He'd shoot at most anything that moved. When the wind was up he'd fire off so many rounds at flyin' leaves and waving brush it sounded like pileated woodpecker with an overdose of coffee.
The solution decided upon was to fill his shell box with empty bullets. 'Course the first year Jim cussed himself up a storm at the shoddy workmanship down to Federal Cartridge. Didn't calm down till he was told the truth. Jim took it like a man and laughed as hard as any of the others. Then, in the middle of the night, went out and slashed everyone's tires. Come morning it turned out that, once again, the joke was on Jim. Seems the combination of poor eyesight and alcohol had done him in. Slashed all four of his own tires and the spare."
"Anyhow, the staircase was to be a surprise for Jim. So he wasn't along when they put it up. Made the treads out of walnut and wrapped it around Jim's big oak just like a spiral. Yeah, she was fancy alright. Put four coats of spar varnish on it till it gleamed like the sun. Hand carved the railings with scenes from deer openers of year's passed. When Jim first saw it he broke down in tears. Said it was like a stairway to heaven."
"A week before the year I'm slowly easing up to, Mike headed to the woods to check things out. Make sure all was as they'd left it. There he found the DNR had bulldozed down Jim's stand and tree. Sad story."
Emil paused and lit up another smoke. He liked to do that in mid-story. My uncle figured it added dramatic effect. Also gave him time to make sure his ducks were in order or if he'd need to add a note or two to make the story turn out right.
"Gettin' Jim up atop his new, slap-dash stand was a challenge easily remedied by block and tackle. Once they hoisted and got him hanging alongside, a whack or two with a twelve-foot, two-by-four swung him into position. And bruised Jim's ribs something awful. As usual Jim said nary a word. Figured, 'hell it's dark out. Hard to see anything. Coulda happened to anybody. And I got all day to sit here with nothing better to do than figure out how I'll square things.' "
"But none of that has anything to do with this remembrance. What happened to Mike was a whole lot weirder and not as easy to believe but it's plumb bob true. More or less."
"Like I said, it was a cold hunt that year. Mike's time in the stand passed slowly and miserably. From one end of the season to the other. Day after day he trudged out to his stand. Climbed and sat. Sunrise to sundown. Top that off with Mike being skunked. Didn't see a buck, doe or even Bambi. Didn't see squat till a minute after sundown on the last day. To one side of the sky the sun had just dropped below the horizon. To the other, a full moon was just peeking through the woods. It was then Mike saw something passing by. Big but wasn't a deer. At first he figured it to be some farmer's overfed, hog of a German shepherd. Then realized he was staring down at a wolf. Never seen one before."
"It didn't take Mike but a moment's thought to realize this was the chance of a lifetime. There's a law in the books says it's illegal to kill a wolf in the state of Minnesota. Same book says it's illegal to shoot a deer out of season, which it now was. Also says it's illegal to shoot a deer after sundown. Mike, in that moment think's to himself, 'if it was a deer I'd sure as hell shoot it. And be breakin' two laws at the same time. But if I shoot the wolf I'll only be breakin' one. So it's almost the right thing to do. And the pelt would look fine on my wall alongside the fourth place spelling bee plaque I stole back in '37.' "
"Let's pause a moment before proceeding. You see, Italian blood flowed through Mike's body. The way I see it, as a people they're fine cooks but a little weak in the logic department. Yeah, they've sure come down a peg or three since the days of Virgil and Marcus Aurelius. Anyhow, Mike squeezed off a round and caught the beast square in the left eye."
"Oh yeah, that shot was right on the money. Ol' Mikey had visions of the pelt hanging there on his wall of fame even before the round exited the wolf's skull. What he didn't see was the unaffected, pissed off wolf down below that had other ideas as to whose backside was now in a ringer. Seems Mike's bullet had done nothing more than draw the attention of the wrong party. Yup, he'd shot himself a werewolf. Didn't think your Uncle Emil knew about those kind of things did you? Unfortunately for Mike, he'd left his silver bullet in the backseat of his car about thirty years earlier. Well, the werewolf drew itself up and with a single bound was upon our hero up in the deer stand. Tore him limb from Sunday. A regular rainbow of blood and screaming."
"This werewolf had its wits about it and dragged Mike's lifeless carcass deep into Isaacson's Bottomless Slough. Feelin' up for a little Italian, he chowed down. Long story short, come morning all that was left of Mike was a kneecap and his Turtle Club card. The card was how the County Sheriff ID'd the remains. His was a simple and very economical funeral. The kneecap was sealed up in a Hills Brothers coffee tin along with a few pounds of bent nails. Then pitched into Horse Lake south of town. A stone was laid near the spot. The inscription reads 'You bet your sweet ass I am.' "
"To this day if you head up near the slough during hunting season and it just happens to be a full moon, you can still hear Mike's ghost wandering the woods and endlessly moaning 'Doesn't anyone in this damned swamp have change for a twenty?' Guess they have vending machines on the other side. As for me, I'd gladly fork over the change just to shut him up as his whining spooks the deer."
Friday, November 28, 2014
Head Scratchin' Time
Don't know what went wrong. When I told that story to Mark, he seemed to like it a lot. 'Course it was a whole different world back in '56. Maybe kids were different also. When he read the pig story to his grandkids they seemed to like it alright but only alright. Maybe it was too convoluted. Maybe too much an adult version of a fair tale. Well, that's what it was supposed to be. Could be that's why I liked it more than they did. On the other hand, maybe the story just sucked. Either way, it's got me puzzled.
The answer to my puzzle? I sat next to my grandson this morning and asked him. Right off he said, "Too many names." Simple enough. After first mentioning a name in Hawaiian, I went back to English for the remainder of the tale. 'Spose there's a lot more problems where that one came from.
The answer to my puzzle? I sat next to my grandson this morning and asked him. Right off he said, "Too many names." Simple enough. After first mentioning a name in Hawaiian, I went back to English for the remainder of the tale. 'Spose there's a lot more problems where that one came from.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Uncle Emil and the Hawaiian Pigs
I don't know where this story will go. Maybe nowhere. I don't usually think out a story beyond having general idea as to topic. As usual it all depends on my Uncle Emil. The way I see it, if he knew how to use a laptop, he could be writing this story by himself. Seeing as how his invisible fingers can't work the keyboard, I guess it's up to me to hunt and peck. Seems a bit odd having a middle-aged man as a muse but if that's the way it is…. Oddly enough, my uncle's been around helping me make up stuff since I was a kid, I just didn't know it and wasn't all that good at opening up to let the man have his say. He must have felt frustrated or maybe he was simply patient, willing to bide his time for a few decades.
Anyhow, the other day two of my grandchildren called up to wish me a happy Veteran's Day. I have a hard time with those kind of things. Too many conflicting emotions dance around in my head and none are comprehensible to a six and eight year old. So I'm stuck with a simple 'thank you'. Actually there is something happy about being a veteran. That being I'm no longer in the Army and humping the boonies of Vietnam or having to deal with an alcoholic with stripes (except maybe in my head now and then).
Talking with Mollie and Jakob on the phone takes some effort on my part. Neither ventures much information on their own and it's up to me to either pepper them with questions or set to babbling on about whatever comes into my head. Finally, my son-in-law Ryan came to the rescue and I voiced my dilemma about Mollie and Jakob's silence. His answer was simple, "They're waiting for Uncle Emil stories", or something like that. Got me thinking and led to the idea that maybe Emil and I could sit down and spin us a yarn about my grandkids.
Back a few dozen entries Emil churned out something on Rapunzel. Not bad but could have been better, more polished. Not really his fault as he was driving and only blurted it out to pass the time on a long, long drive with a kid who was just as hard a nut to crack as the children of today. We'll see if we can do better the second time.
First off the story has to be about Jakob and Mollie. Good enough. Then off the story bounced into the world of princes and princesses. Made me nauseous and bored Uncle Emil. Today the tale drifted overseas to Hawaii. Emil thought that had potential. Next we needed animals. Animals that might have been in the islands before us white guys showed up. The choice for fairy tale animals was limited. No lions or tigers or bears in Hawaii. But we figured, why not pigs, wild pigs with big, nasty tusks? Thumbs up from Emil even though he said there wasn't a pig within a thousand miles of Hawaii before people showed up. A couple more suggestions came along from Uncle Emil but I won't let those cats out till I start to peckin' tomorrow.
Uncle Emil always said there was no need being in a hurry when you were off on an adventure or a had a tale to tell. You don't want to miss a moment of a good thing. I was nine or ten at the time and we were sitting in his red, fifteen foot Lund fishing boat with the ten horse Johnson mounted on back. You're probably thinking we were out fishing. If you are, you're wrong. In fact it was the dead of winter in the north land. Up in St. Bruno, Minnesota, winter means knee-deep snow, below zero temperatures and a howling wind out of the northwest. Emil said the wind smelled like Alaska with a whiff of Canada thrown in for good measure. Had we actually been fishing we'd have been out on the lake peering down a hole in the ice hoping we'd catch something quick so we could run off to someplace warm. Like maybe Wessel's Tap in downtown Parkers Prairie. There, my uncle would sip a couple of Grain Belt's and get me a coke with a fistful of cherries thrown in.
No, at the moment we were in his garage. He and my Aunt Lena live in a small, single story, stucco and brick house just outside of town. The house may have been small but not the garage. In fact it was closer in size to a small barn. Half held their two cars. The remainder was Emil's workshop. In the winter months his shop shared its space with his boat 'Silent but Deadly'. Though it was bitter cold outside, in the workshop it was somewhat tolerable for he'd built a cement block fireplace and had it stoked up and glowing.
In his shop Uncle Emil built everything from birdhouses to dining room tables. "I do my best to build things as good as a craftsmen but usually fall a few yards short. My Danish Modern tends to border on rustic. Ah well, at least it looks pretty. Mark my words it'll be worth a lot of money someday as what they call Folk Art. Truth is, it doesn't much matter since I give it all away."
Earlier in the month he and my Aunt Lena had returned from two weeks in Hawaii. It wasn't their first trip to the islands and wouldn't be their last. To them Hawaii felt like a home away from home. "It's got woods and water just like Minnesota. Can't go wrong with that combination. Also has mountains, good food, smells nice and eighty above in January isn't near as bad for your soul as most Minnesotans would think."
On the plane ride back, Emil had plenty of time to kick around the back corners of his brain to see what he could find. As he put it, "While mullin' things over, I tripped over a mental rock 'cause I was wearin' a fancy pair of high heeled cowboy boots. Not a smart thing to have on your feet when traipsin' through an imaginary rain forest. Anyhow, while I was layin' there feeling pretty darn foolish, this story jumped on me out of nowhere and wouldn't let loose till I heard it out. So that's how the story of 'The Hawaiian Pigs' came about. You may like it and then again, you might think it's whole lot of malarkey. Remember, I didn't make it up, so it's not my fault if it smells a bit overcooked here and there. Lucky for me I had a couple of books with me on Hawaiian language so I didn't have to fake names of places. There's a whole world of difference between fake and fiction. When you go to spinning a yarn, keep it as real as you can."
Before climbing in the Lund, Emil walked over to the rack where he stored his fishing gear. "Couple of times every week I head into the workshop just to wiggle a rod or two. Let's me remember the bend of a fish on the line. Helps to get me through the months of ice."
At least a dozen rods filled the rack. All were the white of Shakespeare. "Don't go in for the real fancy rods. These Shakespeare rods seem a better fit in the hand of a man who swings a hammer now and then."
But that wasn't what he was after. Alongside the rack sat a tall, narrow, oak cabinet. From a drawer Uncle Emil pulled a wooden cigar box, "Got this box from a cigar shop in Miami for a quarter. She's not fancy but does the job just right." Inside was a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a Zippo lighter. He pulled a single smoke and we climbed up into the boat.
Emil packed his lone Lucky on the Zippo, fired up it up and while he smoked said, "Had this lighter on me when I was shot in the Philippines. We were clearin' out the last of the Japanese resistance a few months before the end of the war. The area we were patrolling was a known hot spot and we were expecting to get hit. Anyhow, the bullet went in here (pointed to his left shoulder) and came out here (right side of his neck). Next thing I recall I was in the hospital. Long, long time ago. I keep the lighter to remind me how good I've had it ever since."
" 'Bout the only time I smoke these days is when I'm in a boat. A pack'll last me into spring. A carton, a year or more."
"So, while Lena and I were flying back from Honolulu the story of the Hawaiian pigs came calling more than once. And I set to ruminating over it like a cow. Chewed it up, swallowed it down, let it sit for a while then'd pull the cud up again to chew on it some more. Archie me lad, you ever pass this story on, feel free to change any of the names you want. Anyhow, here she goes."
The Hawaiian Pigs
A long, long time ago, way before people landed in the Hawaiian Islands, back in the days when animals walked on their hind legs just like in Walt Disney cartoons, there lived a race of pigs on Oahu, the island that's home to Honolulu these days. Odd thing was, those pigs spoke Hawaiian even before the Hawaiians spoke Hawaiian and they called themselves the Pua'a, which as you may or may not know, means pig. Me, I have a hard time sayin' words in Hawaiian. So, from now on I'll give you a name in Hawaiian then stick with the English if that's okay with you? Life was good for those pigs. Not only did they get to eat slop like pigs do today but even got to eat stuff before it was one step from the trash can. You see, food was growing everywhere, the pigs were good cooks and the weather was fine, in fact it was the best on the planet. Air was clean, so was the water. The pigs had figured out surfing and when the waves were up, they spent their time at the beach. Not a worry in the world.
Up on the north shore of Oahu there's a bay by the name of Waimea. Big waves crash in that bay all winter long and not far away, up the beach a little, was some of the best surfing in the world. Not only some but all of the best in the world seein' as how the Pigs were the only ones who'd figured out how to ride a board and hang four. They'd have hung ten like the surfers in California but were short a few toes.
The pigs this story's about lived in a kind of village, they called it an ahupua'a and gave it the name of Waimea, just like the bay and the deep valley behind it. Where the valley ended at the big waterfall, it rose up into the mountains surrounding it on three sides. In those mountains the forest grew tall and dark, dark as the bottom of a coal miner's boot in the middle of moonless night. Spooky as all get out. It was said ghosts wandered those woods. All the pigs were just a little bit nervous whenever they climbed into the mountains. As a result, they tended to stay down below as much as they could. Did I say they hadn't a worry in the world? Guess I was wrong.
On all the north shore of the island the two best surfers were Moli Malia (Mollie Marie)Pua'a and her brother Iakopa Dini (Jakob Dean) Pua'a. In fact, all the villagers had the last name of Pua'a. Heck, they were pigs and none to creative. Seein' as how there were only a couple of dozen Pua'a in the whole village there really wasn't any need for last names. So, from this point on we'll stick with first names only. Okay?
When the big waves of winter thundered in, Jakob and Mollie rode only the tallest, meanest and toughest. Ordinary ten footers just weren't fun enough. When they were looking to simply goof around with their friends, they'd head up the beach to a spot where the waves rolled in as near perfect tubes. On those days the entire village would turn out to watch their feats. None but Mollie and Jakob were brave enough to paddle far from the shore to the place where they caught the largest of the sets. Then, with shouts of encouragement from the crowd, Mollie would ride in doing a one hoofed, foreleg stand till the wave closed out and crashed behind her in an explosion of foam. Not to be outdone, Jakob would ride the next while standing on his head. Not bad for a couple of very young pigs. My brother Ed raises pigs and I've never seen a one of them do anything more challenging then fit a head of lettuce and two apples into its mouth at the same time.
It was on one of those winter days while the entire village was out watching Mollie and Jakob, that it happened. Somehow, someway, every hut and storage building in Waimea had been knocked down and scattered everywhere. Seeing as how the dozen houses in the village were all made of grass, rebuilding only took a few days. But the cause was a mystery to everyone. The little village had been destroyed several times before but each was the result of a hurricane. This time the weather had been beautiful. Blue skies with puffy white clouds out on the ocean and the gentlest of breezes to cool the villagers when out in the sunlight. Certainly not the type of day to cause such destruction.
A meeting was called to discuss the issue and what to do about it. Some said it was the ghosts of the forest 'cause no one was paying enough attention to them. Other's said it was the gods getting even 'cause the last tribute offered them wasn't but a bunch of over ripe, almost mushy bananas.
Uncle Emil paused, "Speaking of too ripe, did I ever tell you about the idea I had to make cat food out of real mice and birds. Made sense to me seein' as how that's what cats seem to like when they're out on their own. So I made me up a batch and the barn cats over at Ed's sure seemed to like it a lot. It was Lena who put the kibosh on the deal. Said the mix smelled a little on the awful side. Had to admit she was right as I had to wear a gas mask when I mixed the mess together."
Where was I? Whatever the reason, it was agreed the next time the village headed up the beach, a guard would be left behind to see if the blowdown happened again and find out the cause. Kind of a scary job if you ask me. A volunteer was asked for. No one stepped forward so Pelekinako (Ferdinand) was chosen seein' as how he was the only one who hadn't shown up. There's a lesson to be learned there.
Ferdinand was a interesting choice and wasn't happy about having to face whatever it was he was going to have to face. Out of all the Pigs he was the strongest. And the gentlest. And the laziest. Whenever the time came to build a new fishing canoe he was always off somewhere else. Usually he'd be found under his favorite banyan tree where he liked to sit and smell the plumeria and hibiscus flowers. Got him out of a lot of work and, in this case, got him in a tight spot.
'Bout a week went by before the waves were just right for Jakob and Mollie to frolic in the surf once again. Most everyone pitched in to cook up a big picnic lunch and then they headed up the beach. All but Ferdinand that is. Yup, he was left behind to face the ghosts or the gods.
As usual everyone had a good time under blue skies and puffy white clouds. Mollie and Jakob were better than ever and the food was wonderful. However, much to their dismay, when they returned at the end of the day, the village was once again in shambles. And they were none the wiser as to what had happened 'cause Ferdinand was nowhere in sight. Fears that he'd been carried off by the ghosts or banished to the underworld by the gods flew rampant through the villagers. However, a search of the area found him under his favorite banyan tree, sound asleep and covered in flowers. Guess they chose the wrong pua'a, eh?
What to do? What to do? Two small time tragedies and not a clue as to what was going on. The Pigs searched everywhere for clues or footprints but, who or whatever it was, left none. For sure ghosts and gods wouldn't and that had all the Pigs shook up. Once again a volunteer was called for and this time the oldest, most shriveled up pig of them all, the old geezer Emela (Emil - funny how those things work out) stepped forward.
"Yup, this time you've got yourself one top notch, won't miss a thing, guard for this pile of straw. Next time the kids decide to head up the beach and show off, you guys go and have yourselves a good time. Not a thing to worry about back here. Odds are I'll not only find out who's making a misery of our huts but I'll solve the situation once and for all."
That Emil was one cocksure little bugger wasn't he? But he'd been a good worker all his life and usually had a fix that'd work whenever a problem popped up, so everyone was relieved.
For the next two weeks things again returned to normal. Unless, of course, you decided to get up in the middle of the night to relieve yourself. Long about three in the morning, if the riser listened just right, he or she could hear a grumbling, rumbling, growling sort of noise high above in the forest. They'd never heard anything like that before and a visit outside in the dark of the night became an act of courage. Most figured whatever was making that noise was also tearing down the village. Well, makes sense doesn't it?
It was nearing spring when some of the last big waves paid a visit. Though few of the villagers, including Jakob and Mollie, were in the mood to party, once again a feast was prepared and the day spent up the beach. Mollie and Jakob headed out in the surf as usual but their hearts just weren't in doing what they did best. Jakob even fell and cut his shoulder on the sharp reef beneath the curling waves. In short, no one had a good time and instead, stood around worrying about what might be happening back home.
The sun was near to setting when they returned. Once again the village was in shambles but this time Emil had seen everything, " Never seen anything like it before. Don't even know what they were. Big, hairy animals with long snouts, pointy teeth from one end of their mouths to the other and beady, little red eyes. So red they looked like they were on fire. Wasn't but two of the creatures that came running in on all fours. When they got inside the village, both stood up and commenced to destroying everything around them, all the while laughing and yelling stuff like 'Little pigs, little pigs, next time we come we'll eat you up.' but the oddest thing of all was how they knocked down our houses. They simply stood up tall as they could, sucked in an ocean of air and blew the huts down, one at a time."
"While this was going on I was hiding behind a cluster of coconut palms over by the beach. I'd gone out for a quick swim and was drying myself in the sun when the two of them stormed in. Yeah, I was scared alright, right down to my chops. No way was I running in there to try and stop them."
"About the time the last of the storage huts was going down, the shorter of the two stopped, stuck its snout in the air and said, 'Oh Elonu (that's Eldon in case you're wondering) stop a minute. Do you smell what I smell?' So Eldon stopped, stuck his nose up and replied, 'If you're smelling piggies Lali (that's Larry of course), then I'm right with you. Let's us go and find that piggy and maybe have us a little lunch, mmmmm, mmm.'
" Well, they found me all right. Lucky for them I wasn't in the mood to fight or the two of them would already be laid out as rugs. Instead, I figured it best to work out a deal. Wasn't easy since I was crying a lot 'cause I felt bad about not beating the tar out of the two of them. Anyhow, we agreed they'd consider not eating us all at the same time if we followed their instructions to a T. Guess they didn't trust me 'cause they wrote a message on my body."
The villagers looked Emil up and down but saw nary a word till he turned around and bent over. There on his little piggy backside was written the message:
TOMORROW NIGHT AS THE MOON RISES HIGHER
SEND US THREE PLUMP PIGGIES TO ROAST OVER OUR FIRE
THE 'ILIO HAE (wolves)
Wolves? What the heck are wolves asked all the pigs at once? I suppose the truth is, names don't always matter a lot. In a situation like this where everyone you knew could end up on someone else's table for Sunday dinner, it didn't matter a whit what the diners called themselves. What mattered at the moment was what to do about it. A brief discussion led to the decision to roll up in mats for the night and sleep on it. Maybe in the morning one of the pigs would come up with an idea that would save everyone's hides.
The sun rose in the morning as it always does. So did the villagers. While they ate their breakfast of breadfruit, poi and coconuts while sitting in the sand, the pigs talked over their dilemma. Seemed none had any fateful dreams in the night and had not a clue what to do. But not so Mollie and Jakob. Actually, their plan had nothing to do with a dream. While the others had been snoring away as only pigs can snore, the two of them had whispered together far into the night. Not only whispered but actually hatched an idea. They knew what they hoped to do was risky. Might even cost them everything. On the other hand, it might save all of the pigs. They figured it was worth a try.
It was Jakob who popped their plan to the village. Well, not all of the plan. Just enough to get the rest of the villagers off the hook. Not a one of them wanted to climb out of the valley in the middle of the night even if there wasn't a single wolf for a million miles. Who could blame them? It was dark up there and maybe filled with ghosts. So when our two heroes volunteered, a sigh of relief could be heard all the way out to Kaena Point.
"Mollie and I will go. We have an idea that might save the village. But, according to the note on Emil, we need one more volunteer. Someone brave, someone wise, someone all the world is in love with. Someone with a note written on his bottom."
That's how Emil found himself with our young heroes in the dark and climbing the steep cliff alongside the waterfall at the head of Waimea Valley. Thankfully the full moon had risen over the mountains and made the foot and hand holds easy to see. To say Emil was unhappy would be a grave understatement. He was unhappy to the point of being furious, furious to the point of becoming intelligent, and intelligent to the point of becoming wise. Finally, he'd become wise enough to know it was he who would have to do the talking.
Mollie and Jakob had told him of their plan as the three passed out of earshot from the village. Emil listened then said, "I have to tell you two kids that's the most hair-brained idea I've ever heard. In fact it's so crazy that, with a whole lot of luck, it just might work. Remember, you two have to keep your pie holes shut unless I ask you to talk. Agreed?" But the other two said nothing in return.
Not long after they'd scaled the cliff our heroes stumbled on the wolves. The pair was relaxing in hammocks they'd strung in a grove of nipa palms. When they saw the three pigs coming the two jumped out of their beds and Eldon started yelling, "What in the Sam Hill are you three losers doing up here! We wanted plump piggies not two skinny kids and a wrinkled old geezer. What kind of meal are you going to make? We're hungry, really hungry. Burns a lot of calories blowing down a village, even a cruddy little one like yours."
While the big wolf was ranting, Mollie and Jakob were scanning the campsite for ideas. And there, alongside one of the nipa palms leaned a pair of surf boards. Before Emil could open his mouth to apologize to the two beasts, Jakob jumped in and said, "Looks like you two big boys have surfboards."
The two wolves were stunned for a moment. Larry replied, "That's pretty obvious isn't it? My brother-in-law and I are the best surfers in all the islands. Songs are written about us. Anyhow, what business is it of yours?"
"Well," said Mollie, "it just so happens me and my brother also surf. In fact we're not too bad at it either. Probably not as good as you two but we manage to stay up on our boards most of the time."
The two wolves laughed so hard at the idea of pigs on surfboards, tears streamed down their hairy faces. "That's hilarious", said Eldon, "wait'll we tell the boys back home."
Jakob quietly said, "I've got an idea. Why don't the four of us have a little contest? Kind of a winner take all. If you win, you get to blow down our village one more time and then get to gobble us all up. And let me tell you, we're the finest tasting pigs in the whole world. If we win, though we no doubt will lose badly to a pair of great surfers like you, you get to blow our whole village down but then you have to leave without eating a one of us. Either way you get to have some fun. And if by some impossible way we win, we don't get eaten. Is it a deal?"
In one sense the contest was preposterous and the wolves knew it. Heck, they could eat all the pigs any time they wanted. Now or later, no difference at all. But a contest sounded like fun. There was no way they could lose. What the heck, if the impossible happened, the two of them could eat the pigs anyway. After all, they were the bad guys and bad guys do bad things.
Larry stuck out his paw and simply said, "Deal." All five shook on it.
So, the next time the waves were up, all of the pigs and the two wolves would meet at the beach where the waves rolled in as perfect tubes and they would have it out once and for all.
On the way back to Waimea, Emil said, "I hope you two know what you're doing but why the change of plan? You're good on the waves, but are you good enough? Personally, I doubt it and don't like the idea at all of becoming dinner at this stage in my life. These are supposed to be my golden years not my browning in the oven years. Next time, if there is a next time, will you guys please let me do the talking?"
Even back then the sun always rose and tomorrow always turned into today. And for the pigs, this tomorrow meant the waves once again grew huge. In fact they were the biggest of the year. Perfect for surfing but not so good if you happened to be a pigs.
Uncle Emil rose and climbed out of the Lund. "Uff dah. This is getting so exiting it's a shame I've got to go in and get me another cup of coffee to wet my whistle."
What the heck was he doing? This wasn't the greatest story I'd ever heard but it wasn't all that bad either. I yelled for my uncle to hurry up. He'd led me on this far and I wanted to find out what happened to the pigs. As luck would have it he'd been sidetracked and didn't return for ten minutes. Seems Aunt Lena had him pull all the Christmas decorations out of the attic before he could return. What was she thinking of? Finally, cup in hand, he returned.
"Now where was I?"
"You know darn well where you were, Uncle Emil. The pigs were up and ready to head to the beach for the big contest. C'mon, I wanna find out what happened."
"Oh yeah, the contest. I almost forgot."
Though the pigs were dark and gloomy about what was coming up, the sun was out and it looked, at least weather-wise, like it'd be another perfect day in paradise. Under most any other circumstances it would have been a wonderful day to head up the beach to have a picnic while watching Jakob and Mollie put on a show. However, no picnic for the pigs today. On the upside, they would get to see the surfing show of their lives. Lucky them, eh?
Mollie and Jakob were trying their darndest to seem upbeat. Both jabbered away about how the wolves didn't know what they were in for. However, that wasn't like them at all. They'd never, ever spoken aloud about their talent in the past. Surfing was just something they did for fun. Good for laughs and held no real meaning. But now it was different. Way different. And meant everything for all the pigs.
Larry and Eldon were at the beach waiting, surf boards in hand when the villagers arrived. And what wave riders the wolves had in their paws. Glossy black from stem to stern with bold yellow and orange lightning bolts along the toe. Nothing at all like the beat up wooden ones of Mollie and Jakob. If the wolves were anywhere near worthy of such boards, the pigs had much to fear.
"Well, well little pigs, we were wondering if you'd be brave enough to show up," said Larry. "Not that it'll do you much good. Me and Eldon are figuring on an early lunch today. Something light and sweet like the two little one's we're gonna show up out on the water. Here's the deal, we each do five rides. When Eldon and I win the first three it's all over but the cookin'. And our firewood is already stacked for the party. So, are you two little pigs ready or do you wanna give up right now?"
"No, no. We're as ready as we'll ever be," said Jakob, "Might as we'll go out and have some fun before…." Even though his shoulder was feeling better, Jakob wasn't as sure they'd win as he had the night before. But what choice did they have?
The four of them entered the water together and paddled out to the nearest surf break with the two wolves arriving first. Mollie immediately caught a fine wave and rode in on her front hoofs flawlessly. Eldon followed and did even better with a back flip thrown in, all the while laughing and calling out how hungry he was. Not good.
Wasn't much better for Jakob as Larry beat him fair and square. The wolves were up, one set to none. The pigs could almost feel the heat of the cooking fire.
For the second ride the four of them paddled out to a farther set of waves, about as far as Mollie and Jakob ever went out. Again the two stronger wolves arrived first. This time Eldon did a double back flip on his ride and again whipped Mollie, fair and square. No doubt about it, those bad boys were good. Jakob, though better than his first ride, couldn't come close as Larry spun on his head over and over while steam-rolling a perfectly formed tube. Two-zip. The wolves were laughin', jokin' and havin' themselves a fine time.
Eldon roared out, "This is too easy little pigs. Can't you two do a little better and at least make it fun for us beating you?"
Jakob and Mollie said nothing for a moment, finally Mollie piped up, "How about this time we head out to the farthest break? The one way out there where the white curl of the monster waves can barely be seen? At least that way my brother and I will have a few more minutes to live before you eat us all up."
Larry laughed, "Whatever you wish little lady. The two of us might be wolves but we're also good sports, good and hungry sports. You want to paddle way out there, it's fine with us. Time's a-wastin', let's head out."
Again the four of them paddled forth. Again the powerful wolves led the way and arrived far ahead of our heroes. But this time the result was different, for there was a reason Mollie and Jakob never paddled out to the farthest break. To head that far out in anything but a long fishing canoe was forbidden, for out there lived a strong ocean current, the strongest in the islands. Where it went none of the pigs knew. Some said to the gates of the underworld. Others said to another island far away which no pig had ever seen. Wherever the current went, that's where the two wolves were now heading and were never seen again.
By now Uncle Emil had finished his coffee. He set his cup down and said, "You know Archie me lad, to this day there are no wolves in Hawaii. Why the Hawaiians even have a name for them is a mystery to me. Anyhow, that's the end of my story. Let's you and me head in for some lunch. Lena made us ham sandwiches. Mmm, mm, sounds good doesn't it?"
Before leaving the garage I asked, "What was Mollie and Jakob's first plan, the one they told Emil on the way into the forest?"
Uncle Emil paused at the door, "That, we'll never know."
Anyhow, the other day two of my grandchildren called up to wish me a happy Veteran's Day. I have a hard time with those kind of things. Too many conflicting emotions dance around in my head and none are comprehensible to a six and eight year old. So I'm stuck with a simple 'thank you'. Actually there is something happy about being a veteran. That being I'm no longer in the Army and humping the boonies of Vietnam or having to deal with an alcoholic with stripes (except maybe in my head now and then).
Talking with Mollie and Jakob on the phone takes some effort on my part. Neither ventures much information on their own and it's up to me to either pepper them with questions or set to babbling on about whatever comes into my head. Finally, my son-in-law Ryan came to the rescue and I voiced my dilemma about Mollie and Jakob's silence. His answer was simple, "They're waiting for Uncle Emil stories", or something like that. Got me thinking and led to the idea that maybe Emil and I could sit down and spin us a yarn about my grandkids.
Back a few dozen entries Emil churned out something on Rapunzel. Not bad but could have been better, more polished. Not really his fault as he was driving and only blurted it out to pass the time on a long, long drive with a kid who was just as hard a nut to crack as the children of today. We'll see if we can do better the second time.
First off the story has to be about Jakob and Mollie. Good enough. Then off the story bounced into the world of princes and princesses. Made me nauseous and bored Uncle Emil. Today the tale drifted overseas to Hawaii. Emil thought that had potential. Next we needed animals. Animals that might have been in the islands before us white guys showed up. The choice for fairy tale animals was limited. No lions or tigers or bears in Hawaii. But we figured, why not pigs, wild pigs with big, nasty tusks? Thumbs up from Emil even though he said there wasn't a pig within a thousand miles of Hawaii before people showed up. A couple more suggestions came along from Uncle Emil but I won't let those cats out till I start to peckin' tomorrow.
Uncle Emil always said there was no need being in a hurry when you were off on an adventure or a had a tale to tell. You don't want to miss a moment of a good thing. I was nine or ten at the time and we were sitting in his red, fifteen foot Lund fishing boat with the ten horse Johnson mounted on back. You're probably thinking we were out fishing. If you are, you're wrong. In fact it was the dead of winter in the north land. Up in St. Bruno, Minnesota, winter means knee-deep snow, below zero temperatures and a howling wind out of the northwest. Emil said the wind smelled like Alaska with a whiff of Canada thrown in for good measure. Had we actually been fishing we'd have been out on the lake peering down a hole in the ice hoping we'd catch something quick so we could run off to someplace warm. Like maybe Wessel's Tap in downtown Parkers Prairie. There, my uncle would sip a couple of Grain Belt's and get me a coke with a fistful of cherries thrown in.
No, at the moment we were in his garage. He and my Aunt Lena live in a small, single story, stucco and brick house just outside of town. The house may have been small but not the garage. In fact it was closer in size to a small barn. Half held their two cars. The remainder was Emil's workshop. In the winter months his shop shared its space with his boat 'Silent but Deadly'. Though it was bitter cold outside, in the workshop it was somewhat tolerable for he'd built a cement block fireplace and had it stoked up and glowing.
In his shop Uncle Emil built everything from birdhouses to dining room tables. "I do my best to build things as good as a craftsmen but usually fall a few yards short. My Danish Modern tends to border on rustic. Ah well, at least it looks pretty. Mark my words it'll be worth a lot of money someday as what they call Folk Art. Truth is, it doesn't much matter since I give it all away."
Earlier in the month he and my Aunt Lena had returned from two weeks in Hawaii. It wasn't their first trip to the islands and wouldn't be their last. To them Hawaii felt like a home away from home. "It's got woods and water just like Minnesota. Can't go wrong with that combination. Also has mountains, good food, smells nice and eighty above in January isn't near as bad for your soul as most Minnesotans would think."
On the plane ride back, Emil had plenty of time to kick around the back corners of his brain to see what he could find. As he put it, "While mullin' things over, I tripped over a mental rock 'cause I was wearin' a fancy pair of high heeled cowboy boots. Not a smart thing to have on your feet when traipsin' through an imaginary rain forest. Anyhow, while I was layin' there feeling pretty darn foolish, this story jumped on me out of nowhere and wouldn't let loose till I heard it out. So that's how the story of 'The Hawaiian Pigs' came about. You may like it and then again, you might think it's whole lot of malarkey. Remember, I didn't make it up, so it's not my fault if it smells a bit overcooked here and there. Lucky for me I had a couple of books with me on Hawaiian language so I didn't have to fake names of places. There's a whole world of difference between fake and fiction. When you go to spinning a yarn, keep it as real as you can."
Before climbing in the Lund, Emil walked over to the rack where he stored his fishing gear. "Couple of times every week I head into the workshop just to wiggle a rod or two. Let's me remember the bend of a fish on the line. Helps to get me through the months of ice."
At least a dozen rods filled the rack. All were the white of Shakespeare. "Don't go in for the real fancy rods. These Shakespeare rods seem a better fit in the hand of a man who swings a hammer now and then."
But that wasn't what he was after. Alongside the rack sat a tall, narrow, oak cabinet. From a drawer Uncle Emil pulled a wooden cigar box, "Got this box from a cigar shop in Miami for a quarter. She's not fancy but does the job just right." Inside was a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a Zippo lighter. He pulled a single smoke and we climbed up into the boat.
Emil packed his lone Lucky on the Zippo, fired up it up and while he smoked said, "Had this lighter on me when I was shot in the Philippines. We were clearin' out the last of the Japanese resistance a few months before the end of the war. The area we were patrolling was a known hot spot and we were expecting to get hit. Anyhow, the bullet went in here (pointed to his left shoulder) and came out here (right side of his neck). Next thing I recall I was in the hospital. Long, long time ago. I keep the lighter to remind me how good I've had it ever since."
" 'Bout the only time I smoke these days is when I'm in a boat. A pack'll last me into spring. A carton, a year or more."
"So, while Lena and I were flying back from Honolulu the story of the Hawaiian pigs came calling more than once. And I set to ruminating over it like a cow. Chewed it up, swallowed it down, let it sit for a while then'd pull the cud up again to chew on it some more. Archie me lad, you ever pass this story on, feel free to change any of the names you want. Anyhow, here she goes."
The Hawaiian Pigs
A long, long time ago, way before people landed in the Hawaiian Islands, back in the days when animals walked on their hind legs just like in Walt Disney cartoons, there lived a race of pigs on Oahu, the island that's home to Honolulu these days. Odd thing was, those pigs spoke Hawaiian even before the Hawaiians spoke Hawaiian and they called themselves the Pua'a, which as you may or may not know, means pig. Me, I have a hard time sayin' words in Hawaiian. So, from now on I'll give you a name in Hawaiian then stick with the English if that's okay with you? Life was good for those pigs. Not only did they get to eat slop like pigs do today but even got to eat stuff before it was one step from the trash can. You see, food was growing everywhere, the pigs were good cooks and the weather was fine, in fact it was the best on the planet. Air was clean, so was the water. The pigs had figured out surfing and when the waves were up, they spent their time at the beach. Not a worry in the world.
Up on the north shore of Oahu there's a bay by the name of Waimea. Big waves crash in that bay all winter long and not far away, up the beach a little, was some of the best surfing in the world. Not only some but all of the best in the world seein' as how the Pigs were the only ones who'd figured out how to ride a board and hang four. They'd have hung ten like the surfers in California but were short a few toes.
The pigs this story's about lived in a kind of village, they called it an ahupua'a and gave it the name of Waimea, just like the bay and the deep valley behind it. Where the valley ended at the big waterfall, it rose up into the mountains surrounding it on three sides. In those mountains the forest grew tall and dark, dark as the bottom of a coal miner's boot in the middle of moonless night. Spooky as all get out. It was said ghosts wandered those woods. All the pigs were just a little bit nervous whenever they climbed into the mountains. As a result, they tended to stay down below as much as they could. Did I say they hadn't a worry in the world? Guess I was wrong.
On all the north shore of the island the two best surfers were Moli Malia (Mollie Marie)Pua'a and her brother Iakopa Dini (Jakob Dean) Pua'a. In fact, all the villagers had the last name of Pua'a. Heck, they were pigs and none to creative. Seein' as how there were only a couple of dozen Pua'a in the whole village there really wasn't any need for last names. So, from this point on we'll stick with first names only. Okay?
When the big waves of winter thundered in, Jakob and Mollie rode only the tallest, meanest and toughest. Ordinary ten footers just weren't fun enough. When they were looking to simply goof around with their friends, they'd head up the beach to a spot where the waves rolled in as near perfect tubes. On those days the entire village would turn out to watch their feats. None but Mollie and Jakob were brave enough to paddle far from the shore to the place where they caught the largest of the sets. Then, with shouts of encouragement from the crowd, Mollie would ride in doing a one hoofed, foreleg stand till the wave closed out and crashed behind her in an explosion of foam. Not to be outdone, Jakob would ride the next while standing on his head. Not bad for a couple of very young pigs. My brother Ed raises pigs and I've never seen a one of them do anything more challenging then fit a head of lettuce and two apples into its mouth at the same time.
It was on one of those winter days while the entire village was out watching Mollie and Jakob, that it happened. Somehow, someway, every hut and storage building in Waimea had been knocked down and scattered everywhere. Seeing as how the dozen houses in the village were all made of grass, rebuilding only took a few days. But the cause was a mystery to everyone. The little village had been destroyed several times before but each was the result of a hurricane. This time the weather had been beautiful. Blue skies with puffy white clouds out on the ocean and the gentlest of breezes to cool the villagers when out in the sunlight. Certainly not the type of day to cause such destruction.
A meeting was called to discuss the issue and what to do about it. Some said it was the ghosts of the forest 'cause no one was paying enough attention to them. Other's said it was the gods getting even 'cause the last tribute offered them wasn't but a bunch of over ripe, almost mushy bananas.
Uncle Emil paused, "Speaking of too ripe, did I ever tell you about the idea I had to make cat food out of real mice and birds. Made sense to me seein' as how that's what cats seem to like when they're out on their own. So I made me up a batch and the barn cats over at Ed's sure seemed to like it a lot. It was Lena who put the kibosh on the deal. Said the mix smelled a little on the awful side. Had to admit she was right as I had to wear a gas mask when I mixed the mess together."
Where was I? Whatever the reason, it was agreed the next time the village headed up the beach, a guard would be left behind to see if the blowdown happened again and find out the cause. Kind of a scary job if you ask me. A volunteer was asked for. No one stepped forward so Pelekinako (Ferdinand) was chosen seein' as how he was the only one who hadn't shown up. There's a lesson to be learned there.
Ferdinand was a interesting choice and wasn't happy about having to face whatever it was he was going to have to face. Out of all the Pigs he was the strongest. And the gentlest. And the laziest. Whenever the time came to build a new fishing canoe he was always off somewhere else. Usually he'd be found under his favorite banyan tree where he liked to sit and smell the plumeria and hibiscus flowers. Got him out of a lot of work and, in this case, got him in a tight spot.
'Bout a week went by before the waves were just right for Jakob and Mollie to frolic in the surf once again. Most everyone pitched in to cook up a big picnic lunch and then they headed up the beach. All but Ferdinand that is. Yup, he was left behind to face the ghosts or the gods.
As usual everyone had a good time under blue skies and puffy white clouds. Mollie and Jakob were better than ever and the food was wonderful. However, much to their dismay, when they returned at the end of the day, the village was once again in shambles. And they were none the wiser as to what had happened 'cause Ferdinand was nowhere in sight. Fears that he'd been carried off by the ghosts or banished to the underworld by the gods flew rampant through the villagers. However, a search of the area found him under his favorite banyan tree, sound asleep and covered in flowers. Guess they chose the wrong pua'a, eh?
What to do? What to do? Two small time tragedies and not a clue as to what was going on. The Pigs searched everywhere for clues or footprints but, who or whatever it was, left none. For sure ghosts and gods wouldn't and that had all the Pigs shook up. Once again a volunteer was called for and this time the oldest, most shriveled up pig of them all, the old geezer Emela (Emil - funny how those things work out) stepped forward.
"Yup, this time you've got yourself one top notch, won't miss a thing, guard for this pile of straw. Next time the kids decide to head up the beach and show off, you guys go and have yourselves a good time. Not a thing to worry about back here. Odds are I'll not only find out who's making a misery of our huts but I'll solve the situation once and for all."
That Emil was one cocksure little bugger wasn't he? But he'd been a good worker all his life and usually had a fix that'd work whenever a problem popped up, so everyone was relieved.
For the next two weeks things again returned to normal. Unless, of course, you decided to get up in the middle of the night to relieve yourself. Long about three in the morning, if the riser listened just right, he or she could hear a grumbling, rumbling, growling sort of noise high above in the forest. They'd never heard anything like that before and a visit outside in the dark of the night became an act of courage. Most figured whatever was making that noise was also tearing down the village. Well, makes sense doesn't it?
It was nearing spring when some of the last big waves paid a visit. Though few of the villagers, including Jakob and Mollie, were in the mood to party, once again a feast was prepared and the day spent up the beach. Mollie and Jakob headed out in the surf as usual but their hearts just weren't in doing what they did best. Jakob even fell and cut his shoulder on the sharp reef beneath the curling waves. In short, no one had a good time and instead, stood around worrying about what might be happening back home.
The sun was near to setting when they returned. Once again the village was in shambles but this time Emil had seen everything, " Never seen anything like it before. Don't even know what they were. Big, hairy animals with long snouts, pointy teeth from one end of their mouths to the other and beady, little red eyes. So red they looked like they were on fire. Wasn't but two of the creatures that came running in on all fours. When they got inside the village, both stood up and commenced to destroying everything around them, all the while laughing and yelling stuff like 'Little pigs, little pigs, next time we come we'll eat you up.' but the oddest thing of all was how they knocked down our houses. They simply stood up tall as they could, sucked in an ocean of air and blew the huts down, one at a time."
"While this was going on I was hiding behind a cluster of coconut palms over by the beach. I'd gone out for a quick swim and was drying myself in the sun when the two of them stormed in. Yeah, I was scared alright, right down to my chops. No way was I running in there to try and stop them."
"About the time the last of the storage huts was going down, the shorter of the two stopped, stuck its snout in the air and said, 'Oh Elonu (that's Eldon in case you're wondering) stop a minute. Do you smell what I smell?' So Eldon stopped, stuck his nose up and replied, 'If you're smelling piggies Lali (that's Larry of course), then I'm right with you. Let's us go and find that piggy and maybe have us a little lunch, mmmmm, mmm.'
" Well, they found me all right. Lucky for them I wasn't in the mood to fight or the two of them would already be laid out as rugs. Instead, I figured it best to work out a deal. Wasn't easy since I was crying a lot 'cause I felt bad about not beating the tar out of the two of them. Anyhow, we agreed they'd consider not eating us all at the same time if we followed their instructions to a T. Guess they didn't trust me 'cause they wrote a message on my body."
The villagers looked Emil up and down but saw nary a word till he turned around and bent over. There on his little piggy backside was written the message:
TOMORROW NIGHT AS THE MOON RISES HIGHER
SEND US THREE PLUMP PIGGIES TO ROAST OVER OUR FIRE
THE 'ILIO HAE (wolves)
Wolves? What the heck are wolves asked all the pigs at once? I suppose the truth is, names don't always matter a lot. In a situation like this where everyone you knew could end up on someone else's table for Sunday dinner, it didn't matter a whit what the diners called themselves. What mattered at the moment was what to do about it. A brief discussion led to the decision to roll up in mats for the night and sleep on it. Maybe in the morning one of the pigs would come up with an idea that would save everyone's hides.
The sun rose in the morning as it always does. So did the villagers. While they ate their breakfast of breadfruit, poi and coconuts while sitting in the sand, the pigs talked over their dilemma. Seemed none had any fateful dreams in the night and had not a clue what to do. But not so Mollie and Jakob. Actually, their plan had nothing to do with a dream. While the others had been snoring away as only pigs can snore, the two of them had whispered together far into the night. Not only whispered but actually hatched an idea. They knew what they hoped to do was risky. Might even cost them everything. On the other hand, it might save all of the pigs. They figured it was worth a try.
It was Jakob who popped their plan to the village. Well, not all of the plan. Just enough to get the rest of the villagers off the hook. Not a one of them wanted to climb out of the valley in the middle of the night even if there wasn't a single wolf for a million miles. Who could blame them? It was dark up there and maybe filled with ghosts. So when our two heroes volunteered, a sigh of relief could be heard all the way out to Kaena Point.
"Mollie and I will go. We have an idea that might save the village. But, according to the note on Emil, we need one more volunteer. Someone brave, someone wise, someone all the world is in love with. Someone with a note written on his bottom."
That's how Emil found himself with our young heroes in the dark and climbing the steep cliff alongside the waterfall at the head of Waimea Valley. Thankfully the full moon had risen over the mountains and made the foot and hand holds easy to see. To say Emil was unhappy would be a grave understatement. He was unhappy to the point of being furious, furious to the point of becoming intelligent, and intelligent to the point of becoming wise. Finally, he'd become wise enough to know it was he who would have to do the talking.
Mollie and Jakob had told him of their plan as the three passed out of earshot from the village. Emil listened then said, "I have to tell you two kids that's the most hair-brained idea I've ever heard. In fact it's so crazy that, with a whole lot of luck, it just might work. Remember, you two have to keep your pie holes shut unless I ask you to talk. Agreed?" But the other two said nothing in return.
Not long after they'd scaled the cliff our heroes stumbled on the wolves. The pair was relaxing in hammocks they'd strung in a grove of nipa palms. When they saw the three pigs coming the two jumped out of their beds and Eldon started yelling, "What in the Sam Hill are you three losers doing up here! We wanted plump piggies not two skinny kids and a wrinkled old geezer. What kind of meal are you going to make? We're hungry, really hungry. Burns a lot of calories blowing down a village, even a cruddy little one like yours."
While the big wolf was ranting, Mollie and Jakob were scanning the campsite for ideas. And there, alongside one of the nipa palms leaned a pair of surf boards. Before Emil could open his mouth to apologize to the two beasts, Jakob jumped in and said, "Looks like you two big boys have surfboards."
The two wolves were stunned for a moment. Larry replied, "That's pretty obvious isn't it? My brother-in-law and I are the best surfers in all the islands. Songs are written about us. Anyhow, what business is it of yours?"
"Well," said Mollie, "it just so happens me and my brother also surf. In fact we're not too bad at it either. Probably not as good as you two but we manage to stay up on our boards most of the time."
The two wolves laughed so hard at the idea of pigs on surfboards, tears streamed down their hairy faces. "That's hilarious", said Eldon, "wait'll we tell the boys back home."
Jakob quietly said, "I've got an idea. Why don't the four of us have a little contest? Kind of a winner take all. If you win, you get to blow down our village one more time and then get to gobble us all up. And let me tell you, we're the finest tasting pigs in the whole world. If we win, though we no doubt will lose badly to a pair of great surfers like you, you get to blow our whole village down but then you have to leave without eating a one of us. Either way you get to have some fun. And if by some impossible way we win, we don't get eaten. Is it a deal?"
In one sense the contest was preposterous and the wolves knew it. Heck, they could eat all the pigs any time they wanted. Now or later, no difference at all. But a contest sounded like fun. There was no way they could lose. What the heck, if the impossible happened, the two of them could eat the pigs anyway. After all, they were the bad guys and bad guys do bad things.
Larry stuck out his paw and simply said, "Deal." All five shook on it.
So, the next time the waves were up, all of the pigs and the two wolves would meet at the beach where the waves rolled in as perfect tubes and they would have it out once and for all.
On the way back to Waimea, Emil said, "I hope you two know what you're doing but why the change of plan? You're good on the waves, but are you good enough? Personally, I doubt it and don't like the idea at all of becoming dinner at this stage in my life. These are supposed to be my golden years not my browning in the oven years. Next time, if there is a next time, will you guys please let me do the talking?"
Even back then the sun always rose and tomorrow always turned into today. And for the pigs, this tomorrow meant the waves once again grew huge. In fact they were the biggest of the year. Perfect for surfing but not so good if you happened to be a pigs.
Uncle Emil rose and climbed out of the Lund. "Uff dah. This is getting so exiting it's a shame I've got to go in and get me another cup of coffee to wet my whistle."
What the heck was he doing? This wasn't the greatest story I'd ever heard but it wasn't all that bad either. I yelled for my uncle to hurry up. He'd led me on this far and I wanted to find out what happened to the pigs. As luck would have it he'd been sidetracked and didn't return for ten minutes. Seems Aunt Lena had him pull all the Christmas decorations out of the attic before he could return. What was she thinking of? Finally, cup in hand, he returned.
"Now where was I?"
"You know darn well where you were, Uncle Emil. The pigs were up and ready to head to the beach for the big contest. C'mon, I wanna find out what happened."
"Oh yeah, the contest. I almost forgot."
Though the pigs were dark and gloomy about what was coming up, the sun was out and it looked, at least weather-wise, like it'd be another perfect day in paradise. Under most any other circumstances it would have been a wonderful day to head up the beach to have a picnic while watching Jakob and Mollie put on a show. However, no picnic for the pigs today. On the upside, they would get to see the surfing show of their lives. Lucky them, eh?
Mollie and Jakob were trying their darndest to seem upbeat. Both jabbered away about how the wolves didn't know what they were in for. However, that wasn't like them at all. They'd never, ever spoken aloud about their talent in the past. Surfing was just something they did for fun. Good for laughs and held no real meaning. But now it was different. Way different. And meant everything for all the pigs.
Larry and Eldon were at the beach waiting, surf boards in hand when the villagers arrived. And what wave riders the wolves had in their paws. Glossy black from stem to stern with bold yellow and orange lightning bolts along the toe. Nothing at all like the beat up wooden ones of Mollie and Jakob. If the wolves were anywhere near worthy of such boards, the pigs had much to fear.
"Well, well little pigs, we were wondering if you'd be brave enough to show up," said Larry. "Not that it'll do you much good. Me and Eldon are figuring on an early lunch today. Something light and sweet like the two little one's we're gonna show up out on the water. Here's the deal, we each do five rides. When Eldon and I win the first three it's all over but the cookin'. And our firewood is already stacked for the party. So, are you two little pigs ready or do you wanna give up right now?"
"No, no. We're as ready as we'll ever be," said Jakob, "Might as we'll go out and have some fun before…." Even though his shoulder was feeling better, Jakob wasn't as sure they'd win as he had the night before. But what choice did they have?
The four of them entered the water together and paddled out to the nearest surf break with the two wolves arriving first. Mollie immediately caught a fine wave and rode in on her front hoofs flawlessly. Eldon followed and did even better with a back flip thrown in, all the while laughing and calling out how hungry he was. Not good.
Wasn't much better for Jakob as Larry beat him fair and square. The wolves were up, one set to none. The pigs could almost feel the heat of the cooking fire.
For the second ride the four of them paddled out to a farther set of waves, about as far as Mollie and Jakob ever went out. Again the two stronger wolves arrived first. This time Eldon did a double back flip on his ride and again whipped Mollie, fair and square. No doubt about it, those bad boys were good. Jakob, though better than his first ride, couldn't come close as Larry spun on his head over and over while steam-rolling a perfectly formed tube. Two-zip. The wolves were laughin', jokin' and havin' themselves a fine time.
Eldon roared out, "This is too easy little pigs. Can't you two do a little better and at least make it fun for us beating you?"
Jakob and Mollie said nothing for a moment, finally Mollie piped up, "How about this time we head out to the farthest break? The one way out there where the white curl of the monster waves can barely be seen? At least that way my brother and I will have a few more minutes to live before you eat us all up."
Larry laughed, "Whatever you wish little lady. The two of us might be wolves but we're also good sports, good and hungry sports. You want to paddle way out there, it's fine with us. Time's a-wastin', let's head out."
Again the four of them paddled forth. Again the powerful wolves led the way and arrived far ahead of our heroes. But this time the result was different, for there was a reason Mollie and Jakob never paddled out to the farthest break. To head that far out in anything but a long fishing canoe was forbidden, for out there lived a strong ocean current, the strongest in the islands. Where it went none of the pigs knew. Some said to the gates of the underworld. Others said to another island far away which no pig had ever seen. Wherever the current went, that's where the two wolves were now heading and were never seen again.
By now Uncle Emil had finished his coffee. He set his cup down and said, "You know Archie me lad, to this day there are no wolves in Hawaii. Why the Hawaiians even have a name for them is a mystery to me. Anyhow, that's the end of my story. Let's you and me head in for some lunch. Lena made us ham sandwiches. Mmm, mm, sounds good doesn't it?"
Before leaving the garage I asked, "What was Mollie and Jakob's first plan, the one they told Emil on the way into the forest?"
Uncle Emil paused at the door, "That, we'll never know."
Monday, November 17, 2014
Still at it
Maybe a blog book for my grandkids. That's the ticket. I'm slowly going through my fourth proof reading and revision. Not many changes this time. Its either getting cleaned up or I'm continuing to blindly fool myself.
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Uncle Emil Calls
Once again I'm going through the entries trying to clean them up. Not as easy as I thought. Blog book is what I'm thinking. Yes I am an fool.
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
One Day to Go
Tomorrow I begin a re-read of the Markie and Emil story. Give it some thought then start a re-write. Guess tomorrow is the start of re- time. I'm hoping for a beginning, middle and an end. Some humor, a dash of meaning and insight. With luck, something of a new angle or two. Mostly I'm hoping for a good time sweating it through to a finished product.
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Emil Spouts Off
The two of us were walking down a township road. Sand and gravel between muddy, plowed and unplanted fields. Last year's brown grasses, cat tails and burdock in the ditches. We were talking about nothing of importance when I brought up the story I had written about an adventure from many years in the past. Had Emil read it?
"Of course I have. Hard not to seein' as how I was peekin' over your shoulder the whole time. Now and then I'd throw in an idea or two. Most of 'em you didn't hear. Guess you were too wrapped up in what you thought was important. Had you listened up you'd have written a much better story. No doubt about that. And sometimes you were just too damned dull. Cut and dried as Sister Eleanor Marie used to say. You've got more in you than that. Relax. Let it flow. And, damn it, listen to me more than once in a while."
He went on, "Some of me you got right. But not all. Hell, let me rant a bit. I was human wasn't I?"
"No Uncle Emil, you never were. Maybe I made you up, maybe not. But you never toted flesh on your bones."
"So, mister high and mighty, just 'cause you can fart and it stinks doesn't mean you're better than me. Maybe if your fingers had fleshed me out a tad more in the story I wrote with your hands you'd think differently. The idea is to dig deeper, flesh me out. Do the same for yourself. And move the year to 1961. That's a good number and it'd make you fourteen. No way a twelve year old city kid could tote a forty pound pack through a mile and a half of blowdown then go back for a second."
"Also figure out a way to make me grow up without a father without killin' him off. That way you and me could relate on another level. You see, the general story you've got has been told a thousand times. Ain't nothin' new so you've gotta make it personal. And, before I forget, come up with a coupla tales to spark the humor. Maybe gallows humor like the Winnie the Pooh thing. Now that was funny. Last of all, wait out the month. You set yourself a goal, stick to it."
As usual I didn't have much to say in response. Emil was right. Pissed me off a little but that was my problem. Over in the fields a flock of starlings did a couple of zig-zags then settled in an unplowed wetland.
"By the way, leave me alone till you're ready to start it up again."
"No Uncle Emil, you never were. Maybe I made you up, maybe not. But you never toted flesh on your bones."
"So, mister high and mighty, just 'cause you can fart and it stinks doesn't mean you're better than me. Maybe if your fingers had fleshed me out a tad more in the story I wrote with your hands you'd think differently. The idea is to dig deeper, flesh me out. Do the same for yourself. And move the year to 1961. That's a good number and it'd make you fourteen. No way a twelve year old city kid could tote a forty pound pack through a mile and a half of blowdown then go back for a second."
"Also figure out a way to make me grow up without a father without killin' him off. That way you and me could relate on another level. You see, the general story you've got has been told a thousand times. Ain't nothin' new so you've gotta make it personal. And, before I forget, come up with a coupla tales to spark the humor. Maybe gallows humor like the Winnie the Pooh thing. Now that was funny. Last of all, wait out the month. You set yourself a goal, stick to it."
As usual I didn't have much to say in response. Emil was right. Pissed me off a little but that was my problem. Over in the fields a flock of starlings did a couple of zig-zags then settled in an unplowed wetland.
"By the way, leave me alone till you're ready to start it up again."
Monday, March 31, 2014
Quo Vadis?
I don't know what's next. Didn't know where the story of Emil and Archie was going till they told me. Don't know what to do with it now that it's over. I'll probably go back to the beginning, do some adding and some chopping. Maybe let it rest for a few days. We're heading north tomorrow, our time in the Southland is at an end for the year. That our time in Alabama and this story ended at the same time wasn't intentional. Not completely anyhow. Truthfully I'd like the Emil and Archie show to go on till I turn up daisies. It was a great time. Almost as good as being there.
Canada XLVIII - Departure
There's not much to be said about our last day. Another bugger for sure. The portage trail was as good as not there but didn't require the use of a compass. Jumble, jackstraw and wet in places. Emil was right about it not being the difficulty of two days earlier. Barely took four hours. A cakewalk, or crawl, or climb.
The paddle back to the lodge wasn't much of a reprieve. A brisk headwind made progress slow and not sure. We did a lot of island tucking and resting. Might have been low on calories and seriously deflated after all we'd gone through. Simply put, the trip was near over. Kaput.
We arrived at the lodge mid-afternoon. Not much damage there at all. A few trees down and already sawed and split into firewood.
Seemed there'd been some concern over our whereabouts and thought given to a rescue trip should we not show up in a couple of days. Nice to know we wouldn't have been stuck out in the bush for too long. I guess saying we were fortunate covers it nicely.
We both looked like we'd been dragged out the backside of a mudslide with a side order of pitch and bark. Dirty head to foot but our hands were clean. Blair set us up at the lodge for the night with the stipulation that we bathe first. Didn't want us stinking out the paying customers I suppose. Even threw in a couple of hot meals to complete the deal. Emil got his LaBatts. The best they could do for a coke was a couple of small bottles. No complaints. Topping it all off was a mattress with clean sheets. I'd almost forgotten what they were like.
Come evening all the sports took off in their boats to limit out on pickerel. Me and Emil wandered down to the dock. We'd fished enough to last quite a while. The idea of doing what we did best, having time on our hands with nothing that needed doing, was enough for us. We watched the light dim and the sun go down over the Manitoba wilderness one last time. Talked of the future, mine wide open, Emil's growing shorter by the day. He said he wouldn't have it any other way.
That a mid-fifties man took a fourteen year old kid on a boonies trip was not questioned at the lodge. No point. Could just as easily have died out on the highway on the way up. Life's a series of chances with little control over the results. Yeah, what my Uncle Emil did was way off the chart as far as danger. But he knew what he was doing, at least as far as anyone could. It was his depth of instinct and knowledge in the face of the storm that saved us.
Emil drove me all the way home the next day. Up at daybreak, home at sunset. Long drive. Just miles on pavement. Yeah, home would be good but a part of me was still in the Canadian forest. Always would be. Damn. It was over.
We pulled up in front my mom's little white house. Emil reached over and pulled something out of the glove box, "These silver dollars and the one I gave you back in Alexandria were all minted the same year I was. Put them in a drawer or cigar box. Pull 'em out once in a while, think of your Uncle Emil and our days in the bush. If you're up for it, consider another trip next year."
Next year? Heck, I was ready to stay in the Nomad and head out right then. But I didn't. Emil came in for a cup of coffee and ended up spending the night. Most of the pitch was gone from our deeply tanned hands and faces. My mom did no more than raise an eyebrow when we told a very watered down version of our adventure. Good for her. Knowing her brother, she suspected there was more to the tale. But we were home, looked not a whole lot worse for wear and didn't smell too bad.
The paddle back to the lodge wasn't much of a reprieve. A brisk headwind made progress slow and not sure. We did a lot of island tucking and resting. Might have been low on calories and seriously deflated after all we'd gone through. Simply put, the trip was near over. Kaput.
We arrived at the lodge mid-afternoon. Not much damage there at all. A few trees down and already sawed and split into firewood.
Seemed there'd been some concern over our whereabouts and thought given to a rescue trip should we not show up in a couple of days. Nice to know we wouldn't have been stuck out in the bush for too long. I guess saying we were fortunate covers it nicely.
We both looked like we'd been dragged out the backside of a mudslide with a side order of pitch and bark. Dirty head to foot but our hands were clean. Blair set us up at the lodge for the night with the stipulation that we bathe first. Didn't want us stinking out the paying customers I suppose. Even threw in a couple of hot meals to complete the deal. Emil got his LaBatts. The best they could do for a coke was a couple of small bottles. No complaints. Topping it all off was a mattress with clean sheets. I'd almost forgotten what they were like.
Come evening all the sports took off in their boats to limit out on pickerel. Me and Emil wandered down to the dock. We'd fished enough to last quite a while. The idea of doing what we did best, having time on our hands with nothing that needed doing, was enough for us. We watched the light dim and the sun go down over the Manitoba wilderness one last time. Talked of the future, mine wide open, Emil's growing shorter by the day. He said he wouldn't have it any other way.
That a mid-fifties man took a fourteen year old kid on a boonies trip was not questioned at the lodge. No point. Could just as easily have died out on the highway on the way up. Life's a series of chances with little control over the results. Yeah, what my Uncle Emil did was way off the chart as far as danger. But he knew what he was doing, at least as far as anyone could. It was his depth of instinct and knowledge in the face of the storm that saved us.
Emil drove me all the way home the next day. Up at daybreak, home at sunset. Long drive. Just miles on pavement. Yeah, home would be good but a part of me was still in the Canadian forest. Always would be. Damn. It was over.
We pulled up in front my mom's little white house. Emil reached over and pulled something out of the glove box, "These silver dollars and the one I gave you back in Alexandria were all minted the same year I was. Put them in a drawer or cigar box. Pull 'em out once in a while, think of your Uncle Emil and our days in the bush. If you're up for it, consider another trip next year."
Next year? Heck, I was ready to stay in the Nomad and head out right then. But I didn't. Emil came in for a cup of coffee and ended up spending the night. Most of the pitch was gone from our deeply tanned hands and faces. My mom did no more than raise an eyebrow when we told a very watered down version of our adventure. Good for her. Knowing her brother, she suspected there was more to the tale. But we were home, looked not a whole lot worse for wear and didn't smell too bad.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Canada XLVII - Shore Fishing
Emil wasn't kidding about our evening. Fine with me. I made supper while he set up the tent. Man was I tired. Took all I had to fry up some Spam to go with a pack of hard tack my uncle had saved for a time like this. It ate dry even with the Spam on top but we'd filled our canteens on the way over. Skin and bones meal for sure but Uncle Emil also turned up a few more dried apricots. Good man. We ate in silent exhaustion.
Took a lot of gumption to get in the water for a swim. All I wanted was sleep and the water was still near ice. Not a happy combination. But it felt good to get somewhat clean. Even better to crawl into the bag. Long, long day.
Morning brought us a day of rest. With a little fishing on the side. While I pitched spinners from the island slab Emil pulled out Of Mice and Men. Also finished it that evening. I sucked back tears at the end. Emil's cracking voice said he felt the same. It was that kind of story. Also got us talking about what it meant to be a man. I'd have thrown in my two cents worth had I any change. Heck, I didn't hardly know what it was to be a kid.
"That's okay Archie me lad. If you're like me you'll be trying to figure it out 'til the day you die. About the only time I thought I had the answer was back in my twenties. Then sometime during the war the doubts snuck in. Began to think I'd wasted most of my life. It was time to sort it out. And I mostly did. Kept the parts I liked. Dumped the rest. Of course, you may be entirely different. But I wouldn't count on it. We're all pretty much alike. It takes some living to learn you're not God's gift to mankind. Took me quite a while."
That night we paddled out and fished the two closest bays. They're not big but have to be fished slow because of all the action. The shore had changed since the week before. A dozen or more pines, spruce and birch trees were now laid to rest, straddling shore and water. Many, many northerns found new homes in the trees. In the outer branches small pike perched like water hawks in hope something might come swimming by. Deeper, near the trunk, lay the big ones. Giving a tree a paddle whack invariably provoked a monster sized thrash within. More fun whacking than diddling with the outlying hammer handles. Emil called it messing with the monsters.
I caught the biggest pike of the trip that afternoon. Lost it also. We got a glimpse and Emil said it was a thirty pounder for sure. At first I thought he might be stretching his estimate a bit. Most older guys would. But my uncle wasn't the kind to fudge on a measurement of any kind.
"Thirty's the way I see it. Should someday your remembrance grow to forty pounds, I don't want to be the one who got you started on being a fishin' liar. There's enough of them around gassing their lives away in bars and standing in clusters, one hand in pocket, on fishing docks. In the other hand a beer and, of course, a belly to match. All the while remembering what fine specimens of manhood they once were. And all their deeds of legerdemain."
"It'd be one thing if what they remembered had actually happened. Yup, we all like to color our memories some. Hard not to. But the truth is the truth. See your life as it is. Remember what worked for you and what didn't. Learn from your past and let it guide your future. Most of all, be the man you were meant to be."
Those words came back to me twenty years later. My life on the inside was getting a little ragged and probably would have gone downhill from there. But it didn't. Wasn't easy breaking the fetters of illusion and learning to see the truth of my life. In fact, I'm still working on it.
My fondest memory of the trip was Emil reading aloud. Don't know if anyone does it any more. Except me. Decades later when my son and I were off on our wilderness trips, the stories we read were as much a part of them as paddling or fishing. Emil didn't have a deep, resonant, baritone voice like a James Earl Jones. No, his was a midwestern, nasal twang with a twist of Minnesota German/Swede that refused to go into hiding. When he set to emphasizing a point he could 'yah sure, you betcha' with the best of them.
His soft accent was there when Emil read aloud but not when he did a voice like Lennie's from Of Mice and Men or Long John's in Treasure Island. His take on a character's voice wasn't dead on but if you relaxed your expectations a little, Emil's voice would carry you deep into the story. Let you hear and feel the author's intent. At least that's what happened to me as the two of us sat on our slab in the bush, twenty miles from nowhere. That night I made our last pan of fry bread to the words of John Steinbeck.
Before we turned in Emil said, "You know what tomorrow's gonna be like, don't you? Think back on yesterday. Like that, only not so long. But we'll do her Archie. Home stretch don't ya know." Followed with a chuckle and a soft elbow to my ribs.
Took a lot of gumption to get in the water for a swim. All I wanted was sleep and the water was still near ice. Not a happy combination. But it felt good to get somewhat clean. Even better to crawl into the bag. Long, long day.
Morning brought us a day of rest. With a little fishing on the side. While I pitched spinners from the island slab Emil pulled out Of Mice and Men. Also finished it that evening. I sucked back tears at the end. Emil's cracking voice said he felt the same. It was that kind of story. Also got us talking about what it meant to be a man. I'd have thrown in my two cents worth had I any change. Heck, I didn't hardly know what it was to be a kid.
"That's okay Archie me lad. If you're like me you'll be trying to figure it out 'til the day you die. About the only time I thought I had the answer was back in my twenties. Then sometime during the war the doubts snuck in. Began to think I'd wasted most of my life. It was time to sort it out. And I mostly did. Kept the parts I liked. Dumped the rest. Of course, you may be entirely different. But I wouldn't count on it. We're all pretty much alike. It takes some living to learn you're not God's gift to mankind. Took me quite a while."
That night we paddled out and fished the two closest bays. They're not big but have to be fished slow because of all the action. The shore had changed since the week before. A dozen or more pines, spruce and birch trees were now laid to rest, straddling shore and water. Many, many northerns found new homes in the trees. In the outer branches small pike perched like water hawks in hope something might come swimming by. Deeper, near the trunk, lay the big ones. Giving a tree a paddle whack invariably provoked a monster sized thrash within. More fun whacking than diddling with the outlying hammer handles. Emil called it messing with the monsters.
I caught the biggest pike of the trip that afternoon. Lost it also. We got a glimpse and Emil said it was a thirty pounder for sure. At first I thought he might be stretching his estimate a bit. Most older guys would. But my uncle wasn't the kind to fudge on a measurement of any kind.
"Thirty's the way I see it. Should someday your remembrance grow to forty pounds, I don't want to be the one who got you started on being a fishin' liar. There's enough of them around gassing their lives away in bars and standing in clusters, one hand in pocket, on fishing docks. In the other hand a beer and, of course, a belly to match. All the while remembering what fine specimens of manhood they once were. And all their deeds of legerdemain."
"It'd be one thing if what they remembered had actually happened. Yup, we all like to color our memories some. Hard not to. But the truth is the truth. See your life as it is. Remember what worked for you and what didn't. Learn from your past and let it guide your future. Most of all, be the man you were meant to be."
Those words came back to me twenty years later. My life on the inside was getting a little ragged and probably would have gone downhill from there. But it didn't. Wasn't easy breaking the fetters of illusion and learning to see the truth of my life. In fact, I'm still working on it.
My fondest memory of the trip was Emil reading aloud. Don't know if anyone does it any more. Except me. Decades later when my son and I were off on our wilderness trips, the stories we read were as much a part of them as paddling or fishing. Emil didn't have a deep, resonant, baritone voice like a James Earl Jones. No, his was a midwestern, nasal twang with a twist of Minnesota German/Swede that refused to go into hiding. When he set to emphasizing a point he could 'yah sure, you betcha' with the best of them.
His soft accent was there when Emil read aloud but not when he did a voice like Lennie's from Of Mice and Men or Long John's in Treasure Island. His take on a character's voice wasn't dead on but if you relaxed your expectations a little, Emil's voice would carry you deep into the story. Let you hear and feel the author's intent. At least that's what happened to me as the two of us sat on our slab in the bush, twenty miles from nowhere. That night I made our last pan of fry bread to the words of John Steinbeck.
Before we turned in Emil said, "You know what tomorrow's gonna be like, don't you? Think back on yesterday. Like that, only not so long. But we'll do her Archie. Home stretch don't ya know." Followed with a chuckle and a soft elbow to my ribs.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Canada XLVI - The Hump
Emil made breakfast before we hit the sack to save time. Would have saved even more time had we also eaten it as a bedtime snack. But my uncle figured that wouldn't make much sense as we'd just be hungry again come morning.
"Archie me lad, we'll skin this cat a different way. Gather some wood and I'll get a fire going. When she burns to coals we'll bake us some bread and I'll smoke up whatever you can catch from shore."
We heaped the wood high and fired up a blaze they could have seen down in Cranberry Portage. Made me want to strip to skivvies, slash muddied stripes across my face and dance around the ring 'til I sweated myself clean. Instead I hit the beach with the burden of bobber fishing for my breakfast. Emil rummaged through the tarp and started packing for morning.
Half dozen walleyes and a pair of jumbo perch in twenty minutes. Not bad. "Enough to make us a little supper Archie and smoke what's left. Two birds, eh?"
For the first time I made the dough ball for pan bread, added a joy of sweet stuff and propped it to brown. Emil did up a small pot of dried apricots and floated a couple of seasoned fillets in a frying pan of foamed butter. Smelled like home. Now there's an odd thought. Twenty-five miles into the bush and it smelled like home.
While we ate, Uncle Emil banked the coals, salted the fillets and laid them tenderly on the edges of the grill to slowly soak up some heat. "Umm-umm, she'll be some good eatin' in the morning. Should be enough left for a little snack or two on the trail."
"Any idea how long it'll take to reach Wedge?"
Emil looked at the ground, raised his eyes to the woods behind us, looked to the sky, tested the wind with a wetted finger, held a raised thumb like a plumb bob and began to write out a few calculations in the air. Paused, stroked his chin,
"Call it five hours, twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds, give or take. Archie me lad, your guess is as good as mine. Our way in from Wedge was pathless. So is our way out. Only this time our pathless path will be a bit longer and a little more seat of the pants. Who knows how many of our markers are still be standing? And if we'd be able to follow them anyway."
Not much left to do but sit on the preservers and once again be absorbed by the growing dark. Took a while and never did quite make it. Didn't matter to us. It's hard to get bored in the bush. Too much going on all the time. Pillars of midges rose to the sky between the few scrubby jack pines left surrounding our site. Thousands of tiny feeding rings slowly spread shore to shore on the mirror in front of us. Couldn't see the sun go down but I guess it did. The pelicans returned and flotilla-ed by, giving us nary a look. What did they care? We'd be gone in the morning and hadn't put a dent in their larder. Soon they'd again be lords and ladies of the lake.
"Dark enough. Time to turn in. I'll bank the coals, give the fillets another turn and leave them to the night. Tomorrow will be a day we'll not soon forget. Best way to approach it is after a good night's sleep and with a full belly."
Sleep took its time. Felt like Christmas Eve. Yeah, I was excited. Way excited about what was coming. And scared. Not like we were going to die scared. Scared like we were in for a lot of work. Painful work. Climbing over and under kind of work. Must have tossed and turned a good three minutes fretting about the morning.
You see, sleep was my friend. Nothing at night or waiting in the morning was so momentous it ruined a good night's sack time. Years later, in Vietnam, I also slept like a baby. B-52 strike, monsoon downpour, highway for a mattress, rice paddy floor, tree line, didn't matter where I made my bed, my eyes would close and I'd drift off to another world. 'Specially when misery was in the offing. Whether or not unhappiness was waiting back in the Manitoba woods was yet to be seen. Probably was. But nerves or not, this boy conked right out.
I awoke to find myself alone. I'd have laid there wondering where Uncle Emil had disappeared but my bladder told me to go out and find him.
'Uncle Emil, you might wanna come back here and take a look."
I'd stepped aways into the woods to take a leak and finally had a good look at what the storm'd done. The few trees that had dropped around our site didn't do the damage justice.
"Could it be you mean all the jackstrawed timber between here and Wedge? I gave it a look-see yesterday. Even walked went back a few yards to check it out. Didn't want to say anything 'til we had to wade in and have us some fun. Couldn't see the point in talking about it. But I did give what was coming some thought. It'll be a bugger for sure. Probably demand twice what the carry in did. But we'll do her and when it's over, be glad we did."
Before sitting down to eat we paddled out on the lake.
"Last chance on the water Uncle Emil?"
"That and filling up the water jug and canteens. We'll sweat up a storm on the bushwhack. May as well drink all we can hold before setting out and carry a gallon with us."
Took our time with breakfast. Why not? Five minutes more or less wouldn't make much difference in our day. While we ate I happened to notice my uncle had a new eye, a pine tree inserted sideways. Guess that said it all. By nine we were off.
What can you say about misery? Kind of goes like this: At first it's a challenge, almost easy 'cause it's new. Hoist a pack, carry it 'til it hurts, set it down and go back for another. Next, it gets tougher, hurts sooner and you think you can't do it. Finally, you get used to the pain, accept that it won't get any better, won't kill you and just keep plodding on. You get lost in thought but pay close attention when working your way over or though a pile of splintered timber.
The good news was no more than half of the forest had been blown flat. That was also the bad news. Some twisted and torn trunks had reached the ground and laid there like a thousand weather vanes pointing down wind. Those trees you could straddle over or if too high, crawl under. Some had ricocheted off other trunks on the way down and crisscrossed with others on the ground. Jackstrawed was what Emil called them. I'd go around the piles if possible. Only had to go over one and it wasn't very big. Some had tipped and hung up in the branches of other, still standing trees. He called them widow makers. Those I usually scurried under, hunched and braced should one fall. Not sure what I was preparing for. If one fell I'd have driven into the ground like a tent peg by a pile driver.
"Never know when they'll come down. Should you be standing under one when it does, that's all she wrote. Send a letter to your wife, she'd be the widow, the tree the maker, letting her know her what a great guy you'd been 'til you went and did something stupid."
We did the carry in stages, a lot more stages than the trip in. Emil still had enough ribbon to mark our gear piles where we'd set them down. Made them easier to find when we returned. Retrieved them as we passed on so as not to run out. Again it was a compass guided course with as much allowance for swamp as possible.
Our three planned rests stretched to eight, each a pipe, snack and conversation break.
"Archie me lad, this sure is something. Probably feel better if I wasn't smoking. Probably also feel better if I was twenty years younger. You know what? If I'd have known this was in the cards before we set off, we'd've still done her. So long as neither of us gets hurt and if we keep our wits about us neither of us will, going through what we're going through makes it that much sweeter. The only thing I'd change is to have a cold beer right now. And maybe a coke for you. But first a beer for me. A LaBatts fresh out of a tub of ice. Sounds sooo good."
Our signal to go was always a "saddle up" followed by a grunt of rising from Emil. We'd reload and go at it again.
The biggest bugger was the canoe. Emil'd move it solo when possible. More often than not it'd be the two of us, one at each end, hoisting it over or dragging it under the toppled trees. A slow, sweating, grunting carry.
Break four had me lusting for the coke Uncle Emil had mentioned back on stop two.
"Twenty-five ouncer in the big glass bottle. I'd drain it straight. And lick up the foam that'd come pouring out my ears. And maybe four cheeseburgers just like the ones from The Clock Drive-in over on Broadway. Line 'em up and knock 'em down. Wash 'em down with another big coke. I've done nothing but think about that combination for the last hour. When we get out can we see if the Canadians down in The Pas can fry up some burgers?"
"Didn't we already do that? And don't you remember what the burger was like?"
"I don't care. And maybe they've gotten better since we were there. If not, I'll go for the gravy next time."
So it went. Hour after hour. A city block in we were already mud spattered and pitch covered. And it kept layering on with every straddle, crawl and climb. My hands, clothes and packs were thick with pine tar and sap. Smelled like turpentine mixed with honey. Needles and bits of bark stuck to the pitch. As my sweat began to flow I'd wipe my face with a sleeve or back of hand. More pitch, more bark, more needles. Halfway through I looked like I'd been tarred and feathered. Tar baby from the Uncle Remus stories was what Emil said.
Uncle Emil was no better. On break five we just pointed at each other and laughed. Food tasted like pine as did the smell of Emil's pipe tobacco. Seemed he'd dropped his pipe a couple of times and it too had started to coat up. Yeah, we were a sight to behold.
By the time we reached Wedge we were moving not much faster than the glaciers that had passed through a few thousand years earlier. We'd finished every morsel of food in the day pack - had to drink the molten Hershey bars - drained all the water and hurt everywhere. I swear, even my hair hurt.
"We'll take a short break, then load and hit the water. Maybe drink up the entire lake on the way to camp. Of course once the lake's dry we'd be back to portaging so be careful with your intake. First order in camp will be to eat. Then set up the tent. Take a swim. Go to bed. That's it. Don't know about you but I'll be a paddling dead man."
Being back on the water beat the pants off going through the woods. Of course so would being dragged down a gravel road behind a speeding pickup truck.
"What time is it Uncle Emil?"
"Six-forty."
We paddled on.
"Archie me lad, we'll skin this cat a different way. Gather some wood and I'll get a fire going. When she burns to coals we'll bake us some bread and I'll smoke up whatever you can catch from shore."
We heaped the wood high and fired up a blaze they could have seen down in Cranberry Portage. Made me want to strip to skivvies, slash muddied stripes across my face and dance around the ring 'til I sweated myself clean. Instead I hit the beach with the burden of bobber fishing for my breakfast. Emil rummaged through the tarp and started packing for morning.
Half dozen walleyes and a pair of jumbo perch in twenty minutes. Not bad. "Enough to make us a little supper Archie and smoke what's left. Two birds, eh?"
For the first time I made the dough ball for pan bread, added a joy of sweet stuff and propped it to brown. Emil did up a small pot of dried apricots and floated a couple of seasoned fillets in a frying pan of foamed butter. Smelled like home. Now there's an odd thought. Twenty-five miles into the bush and it smelled like home.
While we ate, Uncle Emil banked the coals, salted the fillets and laid them tenderly on the edges of the grill to slowly soak up some heat. "Umm-umm, she'll be some good eatin' in the morning. Should be enough left for a little snack or two on the trail."
"Any idea how long it'll take to reach Wedge?"
Emil looked at the ground, raised his eyes to the woods behind us, looked to the sky, tested the wind with a wetted finger, held a raised thumb like a plumb bob and began to write out a few calculations in the air. Paused, stroked his chin,
"Call it five hours, twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds, give or take. Archie me lad, your guess is as good as mine. Our way in from Wedge was pathless. So is our way out. Only this time our pathless path will be a bit longer and a little more seat of the pants. Who knows how many of our markers are still be standing? And if we'd be able to follow them anyway."
Not much left to do but sit on the preservers and once again be absorbed by the growing dark. Took a while and never did quite make it. Didn't matter to us. It's hard to get bored in the bush. Too much going on all the time. Pillars of midges rose to the sky between the few scrubby jack pines left surrounding our site. Thousands of tiny feeding rings slowly spread shore to shore on the mirror in front of us. Couldn't see the sun go down but I guess it did. The pelicans returned and flotilla-ed by, giving us nary a look. What did they care? We'd be gone in the morning and hadn't put a dent in their larder. Soon they'd again be lords and ladies of the lake.
"Dark enough. Time to turn in. I'll bank the coals, give the fillets another turn and leave them to the night. Tomorrow will be a day we'll not soon forget. Best way to approach it is after a good night's sleep and with a full belly."
Sleep took its time. Felt like Christmas Eve. Yeah, I was excited. Way excited about what was coming. And scared. Not like we were going to die scared. Scared like we were in for a lot of work. Painful work. Climbing over and under kind of work. Must have tossed and turned a good three minutes fretting about the morning.
You see, sleep was my friend. Nothing at night or waiting in the morning was so momentous it ruined a good night's sack time. Years later, in Vietnam, I also slept like a baby. B-52 strike, monsoon downpour, highway for a mattress, rice paddy floor, tree line, didn't matter where I made my bed, my eyes would close and I'd drift off to another world. 'Specially when misery was in the offing. Whether or not unhappiness was waiting back in the Manitoba woods was yet to be seen. Probably was. But nerves or not, this boy conked right out.
I awoke to find myself alone. I'd have laid there wondering where Uncle Emil had disappeared but my bladder told me to go out and find him.
'Uncle Emil, you might wanna come back here and take a look."
I'd stepped aways into the woods to take a leak and finally had a good look at what the storm'd done. The few trees that had dropped around our site didn't do the damage justice.
"Could it be you mean all the jackstrawed timber between here and Wedge? I gave it a look-see yesterday. Even walked went back a few yards to check it out. Didn't want to say anything 'til we had to wade in and have us some fun. Couldn't see the point in talking about it. But I did give what was coming some thought. It'll be a bugger for sure. Probably demand twice what the carry in did. But we'll do her and when it's over, be glad we did."
Before sitting down to eat we paddled out on the lake.
"Last chance on the water Uncle Emil?"
"That and filling up the water jug and canteens. We'll sweat up a storm on the bushwhack. May as well drink all we can hold before setting out and carry a gallon with us."
Took our time with breakfast. Why not? Five minutes more or less wouldn't make much difference in our day. While we ate I happened to notice my uncle had a new eye, a pine tree inserted sideways. Guess that said it all. By nine we were off.
What can you say about misery? Kind of goes like this: At first it's a challenge, almost easy 'cause it's new. Hoist a pack, carry it 'til it hurts, set it down and go back for another. Next, it gets tougher, hurts sooner and you think you can't do it. Finally, you get used to the pain, accept that it won't get any better, won't kill you and just keep plodding on. You get lost in thought but pay close attention when working your way over or though a pile of splintered timber.
The good news was no more than half of the forest had been blown flat. That was also the bad news. Some twisted and torn trunks had reached the ground and laid there like a thousand weather vanes pointing down wind. Those trees you could straddle over or if too high, crawl under. Some had ricocheted off other trunks on the way down and crisscrossed with others on the ground. Jackstrawed was what Emil called them. I'd go around the piles if possible. Only had to go over one and it wasn't very big. Some had tipped and hung up in the branches of other, still standing trees. He called them widow makers. Those I usually scurried under, hunched and braced should one fall. Not sure what I was preparing for. If one fell I'd have driven into the ground like a tent peg by a pile driver.
"Never know when they'll come down. Should you be standing under one when it does, that's all she wrote. Send a letter to your wife, she'd be the widow, the tree the maker, letting her know her what a great guy you'd been 'til you went and did something stupid."
We did the carry in stages, a lot more stages than the trip in. Emil still had enough ribbon to mark our gear piles where we'd set them down. Made them easier to find when we returned. Retrieved them as we passed on so as not to run out. Again it was a compass guided course with as much allowance for swamp as possible.
Our three planned rests stretched to eight, each a pipe, snack and conversation break.
"Archie me lad, this sure is something. Probably feel better if I wasn't smoking. Probably also feel better if I was twenty years younger. You know what? If I'd have known this was in the cards before we set off, we'd've still done her. So long as neither of us gets hurt and if we keep our wits about us neither of us will, going through what we're going through makes it that much sweeter. The only thing I'd change is to have a cold beer right now. And maybe a coke for you. But first a beer for me. A LaBatts fresh out of a tub of ice. Sounds sooo good."
Our signal to go was always a "saddle up" followed by a grunt of rising from Emil. We'd reload and go at it again.
The biggest bugger was the canoe. Emil'd move it solo when possible. More often than not it'd be the two of us, one at each end, hoisting it over or dragging it under the toppled trees. A slow, sweating, grunting carry.
Break four had me lusting for the coke Uncle Emil had mentioned back on stop two.
"Twenty-five ouncer in the big glass bottle. I'd drain it straight. And lick up the foam that'd come pouring out my ears. And maybe four cheeseburgers just like the ones from The Clock Drive-in over on Broadway. Line 'em up and knock 'em down. Wash 'em down with another big coke. I've done nothing but think about that combination for the last hour. When we get out can we see if the Canadians down in The Pas can fry up some burgers?"
"Didn't we already do that? And don't you remember what the burger was like?"
"I don't care. And maybe they've gotten better since we were there. If not, I'll go for the gravy next time."
So it went. Hour after hour. A city block in we were already mud spattered and pitch covered. And it kept layering on with every straddle, crawl and climb. My hands, clothes and packs were thick with pine tar and sap. Smelled like turpentine mixed with honey. Needles and bits of bark stuck to the pitch. As my sweat began to flow I'd wipe my face with a sleeve or back of hand. More pitch, more bark, more needles. Halfway through I looked like I'd been tarred and feathered. Tar baby from the Uncle Remus stories was what Emil said.
Uncle Emil was no better. On break five we just pointed at each other and laughed. Food tasted like pine as did the smell of Emil's pipe tobacco. Seemed he'd dropped his pipe a couple of times and it too had started to coat up. Yeah, we were a sight to behold.
By the time we reached Wedge we were moving not much faster than the glaciers that had passed through a few thousand years earlier. We'd finished every morsel of food in the day pack - had to drink the molten Hershey bars - drained all the water and hurt everywhere. I swear, even my hair hurt.
"We'll take a short break, then load and hit the water. Maybe drink up the entire lake on the way to camp. Of course once the lake's dry we'd be back to portaging so be careful with your intake. First order in camp will be to eat. Then set up the tent. Take a swim. Go to bed. That's it. Don't know about you but I'll be a paddling dead man."
Being back on the water beat the pants off going through the woods. Of course so would being dragged down a gravel road behind a speeding pickup truck.
"What time is it Uncle Emil?"
"Six-forty."
We paddled on.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Canada XLV - Completing the Lake
My Uncle Emil was from another planet. No doubt about it. No other way to explain what he was doing. There we sat eating breakfast like we had all the time in the world. Nowhere to go, nothing to do. Except finish seeing the remaining lakeshore. That there were hundreds of downed trees between us and Wedge Lake seemed to be of no matter to the man.
"Archie me lad, what can we do about it? What's there is there. It'll still be there tomorrow. For the moment we're fine, have enough to eat and a lake full of fish should we run short. But we won't unless you're up for more of the same. Today we finish what we came here to do. Maybe you'll do us the honor of snagging a few walleyes on the way. Tonight we'll take it easy. Start up 'Of Mice and Men.' Tomorrow we set to work moving this camp through the jackstraw."
We fished and ate till seven in the evening. Nothing else. Emil did a lot of chuckling and never seemed to tire of paddling us around the lake. We hit every remaining reef, island, point and bay. Surveyed the storms damage. Our north shore looked pretty torn up, the south not so bad. Our time on the water took all of ten hours under the deep blue sky. My uncle would call time out every so often and we'd pull to shore. There we'd snack and he'd talk.
"Thought I'd seen most everything there is to see out on the water. Had a ship blown to pieces around me, seen the ocean aglow at night while we steamed the tropics, slaked my thirst with rain barrel water in the Philippines, rolled a canoe 'cause I was an idiot and once I went swimming in Lake Superior just to enjoy the pain."
Here he paused for a minute. Stoked the pipe. "Seen the sun rise, and seen it set but I'd never seen St. Elmo's fire 'til yesterday. Don't ever want to see it again. Something about it says a man's days are numbered and that number can be counted on half a finger. Felt as though my body was filling up with electricity and could explode any minute. Could have lit a light bulb all by myself. Way back when, the sailors used to take it as a sign of the supernatural, evil or even God. Maybe from Heaven, maybe Hell. They figured it didn't matter. Either way something powerful was coming for sure. Can't say I felt any different. That's why we went ashore as fast as we did."
"The way I see it there's as many signs in the Heavens and on Earth these days as there ever was. Why should it be any different? A man just has to step back now and then, pay attention. Take it seriously. Call it God talking, call it what you want. It'd be a lot easier to understand if God spoke English and took out ad space in the Tribune. Whatever it is up there, out there or in there, it's still talking. But a body has to be quiet, both inside and out, to hear that whispering voice. Sometimes it's no more than a gut feeling. Like maybe yesterday and staying out on the slab. 'Course, sometimes that gut feeling's only gas and heartburn."
Good grief. What could I say to something like that? Okay, he was right about last night. Was even smart enough to stay out of the tent. And now didn't seem in any hurry to get out of here. Maybe he knew something I didn't? Probably a lot. Don't know what was the cause but from the moment I got off the train back in Alexandria I'd felt happy being where I was. Safe like I was in good hands. Honestly, I did feel a little on edge hunkered down on the rock in the storm with lightning booming down but that only lasted a few minutes.
"Uncle Emil, you ever want to do another trip like this one and you need someone in the front of the canoe, I'm your man."
"Archie, that you are. If you're still saying the same thing when we get back to the lodge, I'll be sure to take you up on it."
We trolled our way back to camp. Last chance to find out what it was that tore up my spinner. Monsters of the deep are usually caught in the very last minute of every wilderness adventure. That's what Sports Afield said anyhow. And I did hook up. And it did feel huge. But it was only an eight pound pike. Disappointed? Yup.
"That sure isn't much of a pike. But Archie, from what we've seen, it may be the biggest jack fish in this lake, with the biggest teeth. So I guess, in that sense, that fish is The Lake With No Name Monster (cackle of horror movie laughter followed by deep cough and golf ball sized wad of gob into the lake). Uf dah, thought I was gonna blow out my liver."
"Archie me lad, what can we do about it? What's there is there. It'll still be there tomorrow. For the moment we're fine, have enough to eat and a lake full of fish should we run short. But we won't unless you're up for more of the same. Today we finish what we came here to do. Maybe you'll do us the honor of snagging a few walleyes on the way. Tonight we'll take it easy. Start up 'Of Mice and Men.' Tomorrow we set to work moving this camp through the jackstraw."
We fished and ate till seven in the evening. Nothing else. Emil did a lot of chuckling and never seemed to tire of paddling us around the lake. We hit every remaining reef, island, point and bay. Surveyed the storms damage. Our north shore looked pretty torn up, the south not so bad. Our time on the water took all of ten hours under the deep blue sky. My uncle would call time out every so often and we'd pull to shore. There we'd snack and he'd talk.
"Thought I'd seen most everything there is to see out on the water. Had a ship blown to pieces around me, seen the ocean aglow at night while we steamed the tropics, slaked my thirst with rain barrel water in the Philippines, rolled a canoe 'cause I was an idiot and once I went swimming in Lake Superior just to enjoy the pain."
Here he paused for a minute. Stoked the pipe. "Seen the sun rise, and seen it set but I'd never seen St. Elmo's fire 'til yesterday. Don't ever want to see it again. Something about it says a man's days are numbered and that number can be counted on half a finger. Felt as though my body was filling up with electricity and could explode any minute. Could have lit a light bulb all by myself. Way back when, the sailors used to take it as a sign of the supernatural, evil or even God. Maybe from Heaven, maybe Hell. They figured it didn't matter. Either way something powerful was coming for sure. Can't say I felt any different. That's why we went ashore as fast as we did."
"The way I see it there's as many signs in the Heavens and on Earth these days as there ever was. Why should it be any different? A man just has to step back now and then, pay attention. Take it seriously. Call it God talking, call it what you want. It'd be a lot easier to understand if God spoke English and took out ad space in the Tribune. Whatever it is up there, out there or in there, it's still talking. But a body has to be quiet, both inside and out, to hear that whispering voice. Sometimes it's no more than a gut feeling. Like maybe yesterday and staying out on the slab. 'Course, sometimes that gut feeling's only gas and heartburn."
Good grief. What could I say to something like that? Okay, he was right about last night. Was even smart enough to stay out of the tent. And now didn't seem in any hurry to get out of here. Maybe he knew something I didn't? Probably a lot. Don't know what was the cause but from the moment I got off the train back in Alexandria I'd felt happy being where I was. Safe like I was in good hands. Honestly, I did feel a little on edge hunkered down on the rock in the storm with lightning booming down but that only lasted a few minutes.
"Uncle Emil, you ever want to do another trip like this one and you need someone in the front of the canoe, I'm your man."
"Archie, that you are. If you're still saying the same thing when we get back to the lodge, I'll be sure to take you up on it."
We trolled our way back to camp. Last chance to find out what it was that tore up my spinner. Monsters of the deep are usually caught in the very last minute of every wilderness adventure. That's what Sports Afield said anyhow. And I did hook up. And it did feel huge. But it was only an eight pound pike. Disappointed? Yup.
"That sure isn't much of a pike. But Archie, from what we've seen, it may be the biggest jack fish in this lake, with the biggest teeth. So I guess, in that sense, that fish is The Lake With No Name Monster (cackle of horror movie laughter followed by deep cough and golf ball sized wad of gob into the lake). Uf dah, thought I was gonna blow out my liver."
Monday, March 24, 2014
Canada XLIV - Recovery
We slowly rose to our feet once the storm had dwindled to sprinkles and a cool breeze. Shook ourselves off like wet dogs. My shoes and socks were soaked, as were Emil's, but most of me was dry. Guess it pays to get down on my knees once in a while and be concerned about my immediate future. Could be that's what kept the trees off my back. More likely the old man knew what he was doing and I was overjoyed he had.
"What was it you yelled at me when the storm was blowing through?"
"St. Elmo's fire. That's what the glow was. Never seen it before. Tell you the truth, once is enough. And you calling me St. Emil while we were aglow was pretty darned funny. Woulda yelled it sooner out on the slab but I was laughing so hard about the fix we were in, I farted. The idea of having the Spam farts made me laugh even more. Afraid I was gonna asphyxiate myself. What a way to go. Sure made me thankful for the breeze but I feel for the poor folks downwind in northern Minnesota. Five minutes and they'll be wondering what died."
Off to our right the Eiffel Tower still stood guard.
"Well I'll be darned. Archie me lad, if she'll stand a blow like that I'd say we've done ourselves proud. Maybe I'll get us satin jackets with Cairn Construction Crew spread across the back in gothic letters entwined by a dragon."
"Or tattoos. Ever tell you about the one I almost got in San Francisco before shipping out? Archie it would have been a thing of beauty. And one of the great puns of all time. Might even have made the Pun Hall of Fame. It would have been of Toulouse-Lautrec. You know, the French painter? Anyhow, below, it would have simply said, 'Born Toulouse'. Well, the tattoo guy had no idea what Toulouse-Lautrec looked like. Oh, well. Good thing I didn't. Lena would have skinned me alive."
The tent and tarped over gear packs didn't look like they'd done as well as the three of us. A once towering spruce now spread across the campsite. The tent was flattened but the packs looked to have been spared. The canoe was buried in pine branches but unharmed.
"Not often things work out as you think they might, or fear they might." said Emil. "The tent tells me we did the right thing by staying outside. Woulda cleaved us in twain, or pierced us or maybe just pancaked us. We stayed outside because the thought of being inside the tent's dark and not seeing what was going on outside scared the bejeezus out of me but good. Besides, I figured the farther we could get from the trees without actually wading in the lake, the safer we'd be. Curling up in a ball in a lightning storm was just something I'd read. Don't know if that worked but I know for sure it didn't not work. Feel so good about how it turned out I almost want to pat myself on the back."
We studied our tent problem in the slowing drizzle. She was pinned by a pair of snapped branches. Those same branches also kept the trunk a few inches off the ground.
Emil turned, "Why don't you borrow a few slabs from the tower while I see if I can rummage the branch saw from the tarp."
Ten minutes later, the spruce trunk supported by the slabs, Emil slid down on his back and began to saw off the pinning stubs. Outside of two small tears and snapped poles, the tent was fine. Emil was able to cover both holes with an undershirt and secured it with a needle and fishing line from his tackle box. "Slicker than snail snot, lad. Now we're in business. No skeeters for us. If she clears off tonight we can peel the shirt back and look at the stars without having to go outside. Wish I'd have thought of that sooner."
Took a while for me to squirrel the gear from under the tarp even with most of the limbs removed. By the time our tent was moved, new poles sawed and gear repacked we both looked like we'd low-crawled through a bog. Felt like it too. But we'd survived. And had re-stacked the tower to its original fineness. Not much left to do but grab a snack, sit on the preservers, watch the curtain of clouds withdraw and the first stars let us know it was time for bed.
"I tell you Archie me lad, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Unless of course it snaps off both your legs or bashes in the side of your skull and leaves you with the same brain capacity as a rutabaga." Emil paused. "But that was sure something, wasn't it? And it's not over."
"What? Is there more storm on the way? If I had my druthers, I'd say we've had enough."
"No, nothing like that. But day after tomorrow we have to bushwhack our way back to Wedge. Our food pack says we've only got three or four days left. Maybe the return carry won't be much different than the last but I doubt it. Sure sounded like the storm dropped a lot of trees back in the woods. If so, get ready for a full day's work. One way or the other, we'll find out."
His tapping of the pipe said it was time to brush our teeth and head in. Turned out the pillow of my air mattress was no more. A folded wad of dirty clothes did the trick. Coulda been a lot worse. I was so tired, the rising swamp smell from beneath my head sang me to sleep like a lullaby.
"What was it you yelled at me when the storm was blowing through?"
"St. Elmo's fire. That's what the glow was. Never seen it before. Tell you the truth, once is enough. And you calling me St. Emil while we were aglow was pretty darned funny. Woulda yelled it sooner out on the slab but I was laughing so hard about the fix we were in, I farted. The idea of having the Spam farts made me laugh even more. Afraid I was gonna asphyxiate myself. What a way to go. Sure made me thankful for the breeze but I feel for the poor folks downwind in northern Minnesota. Five minutes and they'll be wondering what died."
Off to our right the Eiffel Tower still stood guard.
"Well I'll be darned. Archie me lad, if she'll stand a blow like that I'd say we've done ourselves proud. Maybe I'll get us satin jackets with Cairn Construction Crew spread across the back in gothic letters entwined by a dragon."
"Or tattoos. Ever tell you about the one I almost got in San Francisco before shipping out? Archie it would have been a thing of beauty. And one of the great puns of all time. Might even have made the Pun Hall of Fame. It would have been of Toulouse-Lautrec. You know, the French painter? Anyhow, below, it would have simply said, 'Born Toulouse'. Well, the tattoo guy had no idea what Toulouse-Lautrec looked like. Oh, well. Good thing I didn't. Lena would have skinned me alive."
The tent and tarped over gear packs didn't look like they'd done as well as the three of us. A once towering spruce now spread across the campsite. The tent was flattened but the packs looked to have been spared. The canoe was buried in pine branches but unharmed.
"Not often things work out as you think they might, or fear they might." said Emil. "The tent tells me we did the right thing by staying outside. Woulda cleaved us in twain, or pierced us or maybe just pancaked us. We stayed outside because the thought of being inside the tent's dark and not seeing what was going on outside scared the bejeezus out of me but good. Besides, I figured the farther we could get from the trees without actually wading in the lake, the safer we'd be. Curling up in a ball in a lightning storm was just something I'd read. Don't know if that worked but I know for sure it didn't not work. Feel so good about how it turned out I almost want to pat myself on the back."
We studied our tent problem in the slowing drizzle. She was pinned by a pair of snapped branches. Those same branches also kept the trunk a few inches off the ground.
Emil turned, "Why don't you borrow a few slabs from the tower while I see if I can rummage the branch saw from the tarp."
Ten minutes later, the spruce trunk supported by the slabs, Emil slid down on his back and began to saw off the pinning stubs. Outside of two small tears and snapped poles, the tent was fine. Emil was able to cover both holes with an undershirt and secured it with a needle and fishing line from his tackle box. "Slicker than snail snot, lad. Now we're in business. No skeeters for us. If she clears off tonight we can peel the shirt back and look at the stars without having to go outside. Wish I'd have thought of that sooner."
Took a while for me to squirrel the gear from under the tarp even with most of the limbs removed. By the time our tent was moved, new poles sawed and gear repacked we both looked like we'd low-crawled through a bog. Felt like it too. But we'd survived. And had re-stacked the tower to its original fineness. Not much left to do but grab a snack, sit on the preservers, watch the curtain of clouds withdraw and the first stars let us know it was time for bed.
"I tell you Archie me lad, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. Unless of course it snaps off both your legs or bashes in the side of your skull and leaves you with the same brain capacity as a rutabaga." Emil paused. "But that was sure something, wasn't it? And it's not over."
"What? Is there more storm on the way? If I had my druthers, I'd say we've had enough."
"No, nothing like that. But day after tomorrow we have to bushwhack our way back to Wedge. Our food pack says we've only got three or four days left. Maybe the return carry won't be much different than the last but I doubt it. Sure sounded like the storm dropped a lot of trees back in the woods. If so, get ready for a full day's work. One way or the other, we'll find out."
His tapping of the pipe said it was time to brush our teeth and head in. Turned out the pillow of my air mattress was no more. A folded wad of dirty clothes did the trick. Coulda been a lot worse. I was so tired, the rising swamp smell from beneath my head sang me to sleep like a lullaby.
Thursday, March 20, 2014
Canada XLIII - Message from Above
I'd had a good time with Uncle Emil's fly rod. Casting wasn't easy. Working the line out described the process to a tee. Yes it was work and required paying attention. Sure wasn't the most efficient way to fish. Flipping a spinner beat it all to pieces when it came to getting the lure to the fish. Whip it out, crank it in. On the other hand, fly casting was a skill I wanted to learn. Seemed as classy as all get out and didn't matter as much if I caught anything. Simply laying out a dozen yards straight as an arrow was a pleasure in itself and didn't often happen. A couple of times having a walleye hook up proved an annoyance, a break in my rhythm. But seeing as how I was casting with the idea of catching, landing an occasional fish was a burden I felt obliged to live with.
"So what's the game plan for today Archie me lad? Outside of putting a dent in Treasure Island and completing our lap of the lake, I've got nothing I want or need to do. By the way, I've also got an old, beat-up copy of 'Of Mice and Men' stuffed in a pack I haven't read since before the war. I figure it'll be a good way to pass a few hours before we leave the bush. Probably won't get to it 'til Wedge, if then."
Way out? Yeah, from the beginning I'd known we'd eventually have to leave but the days were swimming by so fast I didn't realize a whole week had passed. As yet I hadn't caught every fish in the lake and we were running out of time. Where's the justice?
Over the days Emil had transformed our camp into something nearly civilized and at the same time, like it belonged in the wilderness. Fit in. He'd split a small stack of firewood and laid a fire ring from shore rock that served double duty as a stand on which to perch the grate and Coleman stove. We were ship shape from taut tent to racked rods and overturned canoe. About the only thing we were lacking was a pair of chairs, so we forced to sit on our life jackets with boulders as back rests.
"For fun I've got the notion we'll build us a cairn. We'll need a dozen good sized rocks and a sense of balance. Then set to it and build something that says we've been here and seeing as how it'll be made from what was put here by Mother Nature, we'll only be rearranging the beauty. After breakfast we'll scout the shoreline in the canoe and gather what rock we need."
Ours was a good life. Would have been perfect with an occasional change of menu. We'd eaten fish, a lot of spam, canned beans, canned or dried fruit, peanuts and bannock. "A diet like that makes men of us," said Emil, "also inflates us some. We can eat like that in the bush 'cause there's nary a person around to feel, smell or take offense."
The saving grace was Emil's store of sugar mixed with cinnamon and raisins. Made the bannock almost into sweet rolls. The bread was good enough by itself, but would have been better with a glass of cold milk. Don't get me wrong, with my appetite it all went down good. My gut always needed filling. However, by day seven even the lemonade had lost its charm.
Instead of sitting on our slab and watching the world go by before heading out on the rock hunt, Uncle Emil taught me the basics of pan bread. How much water, salt and baking powder to add to the flour, how to punch it and fold in just the right amount of sweet things. Finally, shaping it to the greased pan and place it atop the fire for a couple of minutes 'til the bottom was browned. Then while he read aloud, the bread, propped and tipped toward the campfire, baked. Since we were in no hurry, extra care was taken to brown it to perfection. A little bit of heaven in the wilderness. I have to say our days and nights were the perfect boy's life, or anyone's for that matter. It was like we'd found a little hole in the ways of the civilized world and crawled in for a few days while the rest of life down in the States went flying about its usual busyness.
Late morning we paddled out seeking slabs for the cairn, an Emil grunter on the heavy side, Archie grunter on the small. I'd thought it'd take only a few minutes but, as Uncle Emil said, "Nearly everything takes longer than planned." It was afternoon when we had our supply in camp.
"This calls for some study. Stacking stone's a different ballgame than laying brick or nailing wood. Those two can be bought already sized and then shaped to fit a plan. On the other hand, stone tells you what the plan is. We're looking for form and balance in our cairn. Should be a thing of beauty. Or at least not ugly. I figure I'll fire up my pipe, watch for clues in the smoke drift and listen to the rock."
Yeah, my uncle danced to his own drummer alright. We sat in the shade of a single passing cloud. Looked, listened and thought. Bird twitter. Wind soughing in the spruces. Nary a word from the stone that I could hear. But we didn't hurry through Emil's pipeful. Our time to move was signaled by the pipe being tapped and emptied on the fireplace.
A look up, an eye twinkle and "Eiffel Tower. Archie me lad, sound good to you?"
Took a moment to get his drift. Yes, I could see his vision. We might have to scrounge a few more rocks but the Eiffel Tower it had to be. No doubt about it.
First came lunch. Couldn't decide whether to have pan bread and spam or spam and pan bread. We went with the latter to spice things up. Dried apricots for dessert.
Then what? More rocks of course. This time we went to the left in hope of something more liberal. Anyway, that's what Emil said. And the stones were special. Streaks of sparkled black in the gray. I know that might not sound all that beautiful to you but I had low expectations.
We filled an afternoon hour with construction. The erection site was on the far side of the slab about a foot above the high water mark. Should anyone come roaring by in a motor boat after being flown in by float plane, the tower would be sure to catch their eye. Maybe even get them to pause a moment and say, "My oh my."
Took a bit of care and a handful of little rocks to level out the first course of four slabs. Then it was a matter of stack and taper 'til the tower reached the height of a canoe paddle. We stood back and admired our work.
"Uncle Emil, I doubt Mr. Eiffel would recognize our tower as much more than a pile of rocks."
"Archie me lad, seeing as how a cairn's not but a stack of rocks in the first place, I'd say we've done ourselves proud. Since Eiffel's been dead for a while, I doubt he'd be real critical of what we've made. Should we ever return to this lake we'll shoot for the Brooklyn Bridge."
The tower got me wondering about the future. Maybe our tower would still be there in forty years. And maybe I'd see it with a son of my own. But first I'd have to make it through puberty. About then the little rock on top fell off. Emil had me spit on it as an adhesive then carefully returned the stone to its place in the sky.
While we were stacking, Emil's eyes occasionally drifted to the tree line to our west. Not sure what he was searching for. Could be he was only moving his pointer a couple of degrees south of normal. By that I mean Uncle Emil's normal, which was already a few notches off. Those things happen to older men. One minute they've got the world by the tail, the next they're walking into church with their barn door open and wondering why the guy up front is dressed so fancy.
"Are you expecting someone to come flying in from the west Uncle Emil? The way you keep staring at the tree line has me thinking I'm missing something of importance."
"Nothing at the moment. But the day's been so perfect it's got me worried. Lake's glassed out, skies are blue and she's in the seventies. Couldn't ask for better weather. It's been my experience in life that things balance out. For every beautiful spring there's a hellacious winter. Pipers to pay. So, to my way of thinking this perfect day will eventually end and a coupla minutes later the balance will come pay a visit. What I'm looking for over the trees is a peek of thunderhead."
"Down on the Plains a day like this with hot, dead air could mean a tornado. Or a storm like the one that took my eye. Up here, I don't know what it means. My plan is for us to be as ready as possible when the moment arrives."
"We still going fishing tonight?" Now that was a stupid thing to ask but I did want to fish. And it wasn't raining yet.
"Yes. But we won't stray far from camp. Should the weather begin to change, the fishing will no doubt get crazy good. Maybe the best ever. Hard to believe it could get any better than it's already been but maybe."
Dinner was short and sweet. Before we slid onto the water we battened down camp. Tied every pole and corner of the tent off to trees, brush, root and boulder and twanged every taut rope.
"B sharp. Best tighten 'er to a full C. Don't want any dissonant notes upsetting the symphonic symmetry of the coming storm."
Packs were wrapped in a tarp and weighed down with rock. Nothing but nothing laid loose. Ready, willin' and able.
First things first. Emil pulled out both Treasure Island and his pipe. We read for a bowlful.
Turned out the walleye fishing was as good as the gods of Field and Stream on the table in Ole's barber shop intended and might have been written something like this:
"The first pickerel nearly ripped the rod from my hands. I screamed, 'My God Bill, this one's a beast. She'll pull me in for sure if I don't do something quick. Throw me the pearl handled .45 so I can subdue the monster.' The first behemoth dispatched to glory, it only got worse. Each one bigger than the last. My torn and bloodied hands were begging no more, please, no more. At last after hours of this torment, with a canoe filled to the gunwales with scales, blood and random walleye body parts, the sun sank beneath the pines and we paddled home exhausted but fulfilled. Once back in camp we finished our last half gallon of Canadian Club and slept, mosquito coated, under the stars in a drunken stupor."
Or something like that. Oh it was good alright. Even tied into a school of pound sized perch quickly followed by walleyes big enough to eat them. How big? Hard to say but even Uncle Emil was impressed,
"Yup, this little lake's as good as I'd hoped. Doesn't always happen that way. That it does once in a while is cause for thanks. Quiet thanks. A body gets to sharing this kind of wonderfulness with the outside world and the next thing you know the virginity of virgin water becomes a thing of the past.
"I don't see me ever coming back Archie me lad. But should I, there won't be a rod involved. There's plenty of fish to catch elsewhere. This bypassed Eden is best left as is."
We never strayed more than a ten minute paddle from camp. And Emil never tired of scanning the skies. The longer I fished, the warmer the air became. Sultry. Not a puff of wind broke the purity of the lake's slick. Pines, spruces, deadfall and rock reflected in the water looked no different than the scene on land. Sometimes I'd try to turn my head over so as to see the world upside-down. No difference outside of becoming dizzy and disoriented. Out aways from shore I got lost in the notion there were four of us afloat on the lake in two canoes. The world and canoe below separated from us above by a sheet so thin it almost wasn't there. Got me wondering what the upsidedowners were thinking of us.
No matter how far I threw my spinner I could see it from the moment it broke the surface 'til it reached the canoe. And as easily could see the fish as they swarmed the bucktail, racing to see which could eat it first. I began to catch Emil's point. Fish as innocent as these did not deserve to be caught. As the canoe turned toward camp I took up the long rod. Something about the grace of fly presentation seemed more fitting to the moment and softened the guilt a bit.
I didn't notice when the sun left the water. But Uncle Emil did. "No hurry. Archie me lad, it's a pleasure watching you throw flies. Keep fishing while I turn and mosey us toward camp."
Finally I took notice and saw the line of black peeking above the west end of the lake. Not a thunderhead in sight but even I could feel the menace coming our way.
Emil moseyed. I fished and caught. The sky was quickly swallowed by the rising line of black and every so often we could hear a distant rumble. A minute from camp my head began to itch. I pulled off my ball cap and started to scratch. Can't say I'd ever heard my hair crackle before. Didn't scare me but the tingle got me scratching again. Once more my hair crackled. Interesting. I put my hat back on.
"Archie, you might want to have a look at your rod tip."
Even though it was getting darker by the minute the glow coming from my rod wasn't easy to see. But it was there alright. I turned to face my uncle.
Now there was a sight. His brown Stetson was awash in flowing blue and yellow waves of light. "Looks like you've turned into St. Emil. Your hat appears to be on fire."
"Time to skedaddle Archie," said Uncle Emil. The look in his eyes told me this was serious business.
We slid sideways along the slab, hopped out one at a time, dragged the Grumman far onto the slab nose to wind, tied it to a rock, pulled the gear and slid it under. All in less than a minute. What Emil did next surprised the bejeezus out of me. Instead of heading into the tent where it was sure to be dry he simply pulled out our rain gear from inside.
"Put it on fast Archie, we're staying out here." Once dressed we headed out to the slab to watch the show. For less than a minute.
"Here she comes. Get down and curl into a ball. We'll wait her out right here."
No doubt in my mind I was with a crazy man. But what choice did I have? He was the master and I was just a kid. So I hunkered down next to the man.
Ten seconds later all hell broke loose. A wall of wind slammed through and didn't let up. Just kept rising. A peek out to the lake told the story. In less than a minute the glass became ripples, waves, then solid lines of white, foaming and hissing off to the east. The forest roared right along with the gale. Trees snapped like gunshots inland and around us.
Next came the wall of rain driven by the gale to a fine, painful mist, and lit up white by the swarm of snaked lightning dancing through the air. Deafening roar. No other way to put it, I was scared stiff figuring this might be the end. There was so much noise around us I couldn't understand Emil, no more than three feet away, when he yelled something at me.
That wasn't the end of it. While this was going on the temperature began to drop. Not slowly either. It was like eighty above one minute, sixty the next, then forty. Two seasons in a minute and a half. The rain turned to sleet. Fine pellets of ice stung like birdshot from a .410 shotgun. I never figured I was gonna die out on that rock but it sure wouldn't have surprised me.
Finally came a wave of what looked like snow. A half minute blizzard. I began to laugh. Laughed so hard it hurt. Not sure exactly what struck me funny. Perhaps because we were the butts of a tremendous practical joke played on us by Mother Nature. I'm here to tell you that old lady sure has a strange sense of humor.
Then, no more than fifteen minutes after it started, the storm passed. Even warmed up a bit. She was still brisk but a whole lot better than the moment of winter that'd just roared by.
"So what's the game plan for today Archie me lad? Outside of putting a dent in Treasure Island and completing our lap of the lake, I've got nothing I want or need to do. By the way, I've also got an old, beat-up copy of 'Of Mice and Men' stuffed in a pack I haven't read since before the war. I figure it'll be a good way to pass a few hours before we leave the bush. Probably won't get to it 'til Wedge, if then."
Way out? Yeah, from the beginning I'd known we'd eventually have to leave but the days were swimming by so fast I didn't realize a whole week had passed. As yet I hadn't caught every fish in the lake and we were running out of time. Where's the justice?
Over the days Emil had transformed our camp into something nearly civilized and at the same time, like it belonged in the wilderness. Fit in. He'd split a small stack of firewood and laid a fire ring from shore rock that served double duty as a stand on which to perch the grate and Coleman stove. We were ship shape from taut tent to racked rods and overturned canoe. About the only thing we were lacking was a pair of chairs, so we forced to sit on our life jackets with boulders as back rests.
"For fun I've got the notion we'll build us a cairn. We'll need a dozen good sized rocks and a sense of balance. Then set to it and build something that says we've been here and seeing as how it'll be made from what was put here by Mother Nature, we'll only be rearranging the beauty. After breakfast we'll scout the shoreline in the canoe and gather what rock we need."
Ours was a good life. Would have been perfect with an occasional change of menu. We'd eaten fish, a lot of spam, canned beans, canned or dried fruit, peanuts and bannock. "A diet like that makes men of us," said Emil, "also inflates us some. We can eat like that in the bush 'cause there's nary a person around to feel, smell or take offense."
The saving grace was Emil's store of sugar mixed with cinnamon and raisins. Made the bannock almost into sweet rolls. The bread was good enough by itself, but would have been better with a glass of cold milk. Don't get me wrong, with my appetite it all went down good. My gut always needed filling. However, by day seven even the lemonade had lost its charm.
Instead of sitting on our slab and watching the world go by before heading out on the rock hunt, Uncle Emil taught me the basics of pan bread. How much water, salt and baking powder to add to the flour, how to punch it and fold in just the right amount of sweet things. Finally, shaping it to the greased pan and place it atop the fire for a couple of minutes 'til the bottom was browned. Then while he read aloud, the bread, propped and tipped toward the campfire, baked. Since we were in no hurry, extra care was taken to brown it to perfection. A little bit of heaven in the wilderness. I have to say our days and nights were the perfect boy's life, or anyone's for that matter. It was like we'd found a little hole in the ways of the civilized world and crawled in for a few days while the rest of life down in the States went flying about its usual busyness.
Late morning we paddled out seeking slabs for the cairn, an Emil grunter on the heavy side, Archie grunter on the small. I'd thought it'd take only a few minutes but, as Uncle Emil said, "Nearly everything takes longer than planned." It was afternoon when we had our supply in camp.
"This calls for some study. Stacking stone's a different ballgame than laying brick or nailing wood. Those two can be bought already sized and then shaped to fit a plan. On the other hand, stone tells you what the plan is. We're looking for form and balance in our cairn. Should be a thing of beauty. Or at least not ugly. I figure I'll fire up my pipe, watch for clues in the smoke drift and listen to the rock."
Yeah, my uncle danced to his own drummer alright. We sat in the shade of a single passing cloud. Looked, listened and thought. Bird twitter. Wind soughing in the spruces. Nary a word from the stone that I could hear. But we didn't hurry through Emil's pipeful. Our time to move was signaled by the pipe being tapped and emptied on the fireplace.
A look up, an eye twinkle and "Eiffel Tower. Archie me lad, sound good to you?"
Took a moment to get his drift. Yes, I could see his vision. We might have to scrounge a few more rocks but the Eiffel Tower it had to be. No doubt about it.
First came lunch. Couldn't decide whether to have pan bread and spam or spam and pan bread. We went with the latter to spice things up. Dried apricots for dessert.
Then what? More rocks of course. This time we went to the left in hope of something more liberal. Anyway, that's what Emil said. And the stones were special. Streaks of sparkled black in the gray. I know that might not sound all that beautiful to you but I had low expectations.
We filled an afternoon hour with construction. The erection site was on the far side of the slab about a foot above the high water mark. Should anyone come roaring by in a motor boat after being flown in by float plane, the tower would be sure to catch their eye. Maybe even get them to pause a moment and say, "My oh my."
Took a bit of care and a handful of little rocks to level out the first course of four slabs. Then it was a matter of stack and taper 'til the tower reached the height of a canoe paddle. We stood back and admired our work.
"Uncle Emil, I doubt Mr. Eiffel would recognize our tower as much more than a pile of rocks."
"Archie me lad, seeing as how a cairn's not but a stack of rocks in the first place, I'd say we've done ourselves proud. Since Eiffel's been dead for a while, I doubt he'd be real critical of what we've made. Should we ever return to this lake we'll shoot for the Brooklyn Bridge."
The tower got me wondering about the future. Maybe our tower would still be there in forty years. And maybe I'd see it with a son of my own. But first I'd have to make it through puberty. About then the little rock on top fell off. Emil had me spit on it as an adhesive then carefully returned the stone to its place in the sky.
While we were stacking, Emil's eyes occasionally drifted to the tree line to our west. Not sure what he was searching for. Could be he was only moving his pointer a couple of degrees south of normal. By that I mean Uncle Emil's normal, which was already a few notches off. Those things happen to older men. One minute they've got the world by the tail, the next they're walking into church with their barn door open and wondering why the guy up front is dressed so fancy.
"Are you expecting someone to come flying in from the west Uncle Emil? The way you keep staring at the tree line has me thinking I'm missing something of importance."
"Nothing at the moment. But the day's been so perfect it's got me worried. Lake's glassed out, skies are blue and she's in the seventies. Couldn't ask for better weather. It's been my experience in life that things balance out. For every beautiful spring there's a hellacious winter. Pipers to pay. So, to my way of thinking this perfect day will eventually end and a coupla minutes later the balance will come pay a visit. What I'm looking for over the trees is a peek of thunderhead."
"Down on the Plains a day like this with hot, dead air could mean a tornado. Or a storm like the one that took my eye. Up here, I don't know what it means. My plan is for us to be as ready as possible when the moment arrives."
"We still going fishing tonight?" Now that was a stupid thing to ask but I did want to fish. And it wasn't raining yet.
"Yes. But we won't stray far from camp. Should the weather begin to change, the fishing will no doubt get crazy good. Maybe the best ever. Hard to believe it could get any better than it's already been but maybe."
Dinner was short and sweet. Before we slid onto the water we battened down camp. Tied every pole and corner of the tent off to trees, brush, root and boulder and twanged every taut rope.
"B sharp. Best tighten 'er to a full C. Don't want any dissonant notes upsetting the symphonic symmetry of the coming storm."
Packs were wrapped in a tarp and weighed down with rock. Nothing but nothing laid loose. Ready, willin' and able.
First things first. Emil pulled out both Treasure Island and his pipe. We read for a bowlful.
Turned out the walleye fishing was as good as the gods of Field and Stream on the table in Ole's barber shop intended and might have been written something like this:
"The first pickerel nearly ripped the rod from my hands. I screamed, 'My God Bill, this one's a beast. She'll pull me in for sure if I don't do something quick. Throw me the pearl handled .45 so I can subdue the monster.' The first behemoth dispatched to glory, it only got worse. Each one bigger than the last. My torn and bloodied hands were begging no more, please, no more. At last after hours of this torment, with a canoe filled to the gunwales with scales, blood and random walleye body parts, the sun sank beneath the pines and we paddled home exhausted but fulfilled. Once back in camp we finished our last half gallon of Canadian Club and slept, mosquito coated, under the stars in a drunken stupor."
Or something like that. Oh it was good alright. Even tied into a school of pound sized perch quickly followed by walleyes big enough to eat them. How big? Hard to say but even Uncle Emil was impressed,
"Yup, this little lake's as good as I'd hoped. Doesn't always happen that way. That it does once in a while is cause for thanks. Quiet thanks. A body gets to sharing this kind of wonderfulness with the outside world and the next thing you know the virginity of virgin water becomes a thing of the past.
"I don't see me ever coming back Archie me lad. But should I, there won't be a rod involved. There's plenty of fish to catch elsewhere. This bypassed Eden is best left as is."
We never strayed more than a ten minute paddle from camp. And Emil never tired of scanning the skies. The longer I fished, the warmer the air became. Sultry. Not a puff of wind broke the purity of the lake's slick. Pines, spruces, deadfall and rock reflected in the water looked no different than the scene on land. Sometimes I'd try to turn my head over so as to see the world upside-down. No difference outside of becoming dizzy and disoriented. Out aways from shore I got lost in the notion there were four of us afloat on the lake in two canoes. The world and canoe below separated from us above by a sheet so thin it almost wasn't there. Got me wondering what the upsidedowners were thinking of us.
No matter how far I threw my spinner I could see it from the moment it broke the surface 'til it reached the canoe. And as easily could see the fish as they swarmed the bucktail, racing to see which could eat it first. I began to catch Emil's point. Fish as innocent as these did not deserve to be caught. As the canoe turned toward camp I took up the long rod. Something about the grace of fly presentation seemed more fitting to the moment and softened the guilt a bit.
I didn't notice when the sun left the water. But Uncle Emil did. "No hurry. Archie me lad, it's a pleasure watching you throw flies. Keep fishing while I turn and mosey us toward camp."
Finally I took notice and saw the line of black peeking above the west end of the lake. Not a thunderhead in sight but even I could feel the menace coming our way.
Emil moseyed. I fished and caught. The sky was quickly swallowed by the rising line of black and every so often we could hear a distant rumble. A minute from camp my head began to itch. I pulled off my ball cap and started to scratch. Can't say I'd ever heard my hair crackle before. Didn't scare me but the tingle got me scratching again. Once more my hair crackled. Interesting. I put my hat back on.
"Archie, you might want to have a look at your rod tip."
Even though it was getting darker by the minute the glow coming from my rod wasn't easy to see. But it was there alright. I turned to face my uncle.
Now there was a sight. His brown Stetson was awash in flowing blue and yellow waves of light. "Looks like you've turned into St. Emil. Your hat appears to be on fire."
"Time to skedaddle Archie," said Uncle Emil. The look in his eyes told me this was serious business.
We slid sideways along the slab, hopped out one at a time, dragged the Grumman far onto the slab nose to wind, tied it to a rock, pulled the gear and slid it under. All in less than a minute. What Emil did next surprised the bejeezus out of me. Instead of heading into the tent where it was sure to be dry he simply pulled out our rain gear from inside.
"Put it on fast Archie, we're staying out here." Once dressed we headed out to the slab to watch the show. For less than a minute.
"Here she comes. Get down and curl into a ball. We'll wait her out right here."
No doubt in my mind I was with a crazy man. But what choice did I have? He was the master and I was just a kid. So I hunkered down next to the man.
Ten seconds later all hell broke loose. A wall of wind slammed through and didn't let up. Just kept rising. A peek out to the lake told the story. In less than a minute the glass became ripples, waves, then solid lines of white, foaming and hissing off to the east. The forest roared right along with the gale. Trees snapped like gunshots inland and around us.
Next came the wall of rain driven by the gale to a fine, painful mist, and lit up white by the swarm of snaked lightning dancing through the air. Deafening roar. No other way to put it, I was scared stiff figuring this might be the end. There was so much noise around us I couldn't understand Emil, no more than three feet away, when he yelled something at me.
That wasn't the end of it. While this was going on the temperature began to drop. Not slowly either. It was like eighty above one minute, sixty the next, then forty. Two seasons in a minute and a half. The rain turned to sleet. Fine pellets of ice stung like birdshot from a .410 shotgun. I never figured I was gonna die out on that rock but it sure wouldn't have surprised me.
Finally came a wave of what looked like snow. A half minute blizzard. I began to laugh. Laughed so hard it hurt. Not sure exactly what struck me funny. Perhaps because we were the butts of a tremendous practical joke played on us by Mother Nature. I'm here to tell you that old lady sure has a strange sense of humor.
Then, no more than fifteen minutes after it started, the storm passed. Even warmed up a bit. She was still brisk but a whole lot better than the moment of winter that'd just roared by.
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