To a T

     Sent an e-mail the other day in which I used the phrase 'to a T' (was informed it was an idiom.  Made me nervous as that word's awful close to idiot, which is even more close to the truth).  My e-mail followed the T with (tee, tea?).  Lame attempt at humor.  H - we don't know each other well enough for me to involve H in this drivel - sent me a site to click on that ran me through the history of the phrase (idiom).  My interest piqued (peeked, peaked?), I did further research and figured the weight of speculation ran back to the time of the King James Bible and its use of the word tittle, as in 'not one jot or tittle'.  Over time the word was shortened to T, meaning to hit the nail on the head and also to keep the grammar police from working overtime.  The shape of the T got me thinking of the cross and Christ being nailed to it.  Read somewhere that back in the day when crucifixion was the thing to do the typical cross was shaped like a capital T not a lower case t.  'Course that brings up the controversy of whether Christ was roped or nailed to the cross and I don't want to go there.
     All by the by till I recalled the days of my youth when I used to closely follow football.  Came to remember one of the premier pro quarterbacks, name of Y. A. Tittle (coincidence?).  Think he went by that moniker 'cause his full name was Yelvington Abraham Tittle.  I figure it was shortened to his initials to allow the TV announcers to spit his name out before the start of the next play.  Anyhow, Tittle played back in the days when the T formation was in vogue.  Tittle was one heck of a passer.  Most of his flings were works of art, perfection.  His throws usually hit the receiver on the button which suited the fans to a T.  Top that off with Abraham being in the King James Bible and you've got yourself something to ponder.
     Emil: "Yeah, it's drivel alright."
   

Dreams

       It's 3:14am.  Not sure if it's early or late.  Seems like it's more likely early as it's pretty dark outside the window.  Had a dream and couldn't go back to sleep.  If you've read this blog you know that I dream.  They tell me things.  Mostly about myself.  Also offer an occasional, tantalizing eggplant recipe.  Should I wake, find myself rollin' it over and over, there's no way I'm going back to sleep unless I rise and write it down.  So that's what I'm sittin' here doing.
     Anyhow, I was writing novels for publication.  Had written two and sent them off to a publisher.  Can't say I was happy about their content.  Sister Eleanor Marie would have called them too cut and dried and I knew it was true.  No meat.  Then got this idea for at least three more stories taken from back page newspaper articles that'd run serial-like for several days.  Put them together and flesh them out.  Voila!  Story.  Then talked the idea over with some co-workers.  Came to realize how personal I'd have to get to make the stories real.  Next found myself interviewing the family from one of the stories.  Conflicting views and emotion from all sides yet each was based on truth.  Said "there's as many sides to a story as there are to a circle."  Just inside and out or infinite in number?  Gave it some thought and felt both were right.
     A few months ago my granddaughter Mollie simply said to me, "You're Uncle Emil."  Thought of it in bed after the dream and got me thinking.
     Earlier in the evening I'd reread some of the earlier Emil and Deadman Lake entries.  Altogether there's enough strange humor in them to flesh out several stories.  Thought of the last Emil story 'The Walk' and felt it could be made into something like Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man."  Instead of Emil on the hike it's Archie.  Reminisces on scenes of his life and tales told as he walks the woods.
     Not sure yet how the dream and the story idea fit together but somehow they do.
     Been contacted by an editor from Beaver's Pond about my story.  Her name is Hanna.  Good name. Hope she can see the merit of printed idiocy.
     Worked up and scared.  Yup that sums me up nicely.  I need help, lots of help.  Or maybe it's much ado about nothing (read that somewhere).

     

   

Panic II

     What to do when you're done?  Easy.  Go back and edit the whole thing.  And when that's done?  Think on it.  Sleep on it.  See what comes to mind that doesn't sit right.  Go back and change it.  Maybe keep the entry and gut the house.  Yesterday and today it's been a couple of paragraphs about the man who isn't there.  Up in Manitoba in Grass River Provincial Park on one of the remote lakes there's an abandoned trapper's cabin.  Yup it's there alright.  And in the same place I placed it in "Ease."  On the first go around I made up a brief, convoluted story about a gnome-like man who lived there.  No matter how I wrote it the passage it felt wrong, out of place.  Bothered me enough to rewrite it.  Then rewrite it again.  Still bothers me but it's better than it was.

Panic

     The third Emil story has reached an end.  Felt like the air had gone out of my balloon and was at a loss for a couple of days.  Then decided to start over.  Reread and edit all three tales into a coherent whole.  The first entry goes back nearly three years.  Since then, the tone of the three has changed a bit.  Humor that once seemed a real knee slapper now feels like a misstep.  Yeah, it's an odd thing we do up here in the northland, polish up something of no consequence for no apparent reason.

The Walk - Epilogue

     Slept in on Friday.  Must have been near seven when the coffee started perking.  So easy here.  Could even walk about barefoot.  Sun was up and streaming through the lookout windows when I ate my last meal of camp food.  Yeah, the cupboard was pretty bare.  Needed a run down to Grand Marais for food, a store bought lunch, the library, do the laundry and see if the world still remembers I'm alive in my post office box.  Don't get much mail besides bills but you never know.  Tomorrow the plan is to recover my stashes.  Long drive but has to be done.  Hopefully, the coolers haven't spontaneously combusted from the festering contents.
     'Spose all was right with the world but couldn't shake the empty feeling that rose with me this morning.  Not of fan of things ending.  'Specially a trip like this one.  Lived as simple as simple could be for a couple of weeks.  Liked that a lot.  Hiking the trails filled me with meaning.  Nothing I could lay my finger on, just felt right.  And now that it's over… well, it's over.  Door's closed.  'Bout the only thing to do is plan a canoe trip before the lakes ice over.  Get my little world here at the cabin ship shape and head out for a few days.  But no LRRP rations.  Had enough of them for a lifetime.

     Town was still there.  Finished my rounds at the post office, Dairy Queen cherry shake in hand to help me find a few pounds I'd left back on the trail.  Fistful of bills.  Electric, phone - yeah I have a phone, use it a few times each month to check on family - truck insurance.  And a fancy envelope from Archie and Lauren.  Saw it and knew right away what it was.  Holy-moly, they were getting married tomorrow.  Guess my plans just changed.  Coolers'd have to wait.
     Now, this was back in the days when a man wore a suit to a wedding, a funeral or in the box when they buried him.  Mine wasn't exactly in style, lapels too narrow, but I sure had one.  Dark blue, wool blend, no holes, wrinkles or stains.  Even a five spot stashed in a pocket.  And a memorial card from Uncle Wilhelm's funeral.  "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of death." Uncle Willie was in the Great War and did his share of walking through that valley.  Probably crawled through it too.
     Didn't have much in the line of dress shirts.  Went with a Pendleton, plaid, said I was a man of the north who had little use for fashion but did like quality.  No tie.  Figured I'd simply button my shirt to the neck.  Buffed a coat of Kiwi on my funeral shoes and I was set.
     Service wasn't till seven on Saturday evening so I drove down in the morning.  Bummed a room from my sister Dora.  Drove over with her and her hubby, Ben.  Nice service, candle lit and all.  Had both a priest and a minister up front.  Guessed they were keeping their options open.  Options are good.  Hard to reopen a door once you've closed and locked it.  And believe you me, religions are big on locking doors.
     Got a minute with Archie later that night at Lauren's folks house.  Like to say we discussed all kinds of profound things but we didn't.  How much thought and feeling can you pack into a few seconds?  Archie had a big grin on his face.  Happy man.  I managed to squeeze back the tears, happy for him, sad for me, 'til I stepped outside.  Sat with Archie's mom, my sister Mary, on the cement steps out front.  Nice night.  Summer warm.  Bummed a smoke from her.  Kools, not my cup of tea but the occasion called for smoke.  Mary knew how much the boy meant to me.  And I knew how she felt.  Archie's not her only child but was her last by more than a dozen years.  A glance between us said enough.  We exchanged a few meaningless remembrances then simply sat smoking and enjoying the warmth of a late Indian summer evening.
     Long drive home on Sunday.  Bucked a cold, north wind all the way.  By Two Harbors, sleet.  Grand Marais, snow.  A melting inch on the ground at the cabin.  Most of the country'd see this as the arrival of winter.  Up here in the Arrowhead it spoke to me of a last canoe trip and spawning lake trout.

The Walk XX - Looking For the Ark

     Never did rain hard.  Didn't rain all the time either.  Probably no more than seventy or eighty of the next hundred hours.  And most of those hours were at night.  Like to say it was no big deal but it was no happy time.  Wasn't a sad one either.  Just a minor misery.  Like a never-ending hand pushing down ever so gently on my head.
     The forrest above and ground cover at my feet were both near the peak of autumn color when I set off.  Would've been spectacular in sunshine.  Wasn't bad in the half light of dense overcast, drizzle and mist.  Most of what I saw was framed by the visor of my ball cap and blinders of jacket hood.  Back in the tunnel.  Constantly absorbed in thought and slowly tiring of my sodden company.  Then hit another layer of acceptance.  It'd rain.  I'd get wet.  Walked through that open door and continued on.  Once I accepted, I could relax.  Oh yeah, I also tugged on a second layer of stockings.  My wet feet soon'd become abraded feet without that forgiving extra layer.  Had more socks waiting at my last re-supply.
     Didn't take long for my world to soak through.  Meals, clothes, shoes, feet, sleeping bag.  Even the water in the lakes I camped beside was wetter than usual.  Found myself jumping up and down every morning, lunch and supper to loosen the moss.  Never'd thought to bring a razor.  Never thought I'd grow orange lichens on my chin whiskers.  Looked like a damned leprechaun, smelled like a dead carp.  Yeah, I was not a pleasant presence to behold through any of the five senses on the last days of the hike.  Odd though it may seem, low grade misery grew to be my friend.  Came to relish the idiocy of what I was doing, the privacy of being hunkered in the solitude of movement and thought.
     And those thoughts kept returning to Archie.  Never had a child of my own.  Don't know what it'd feel like.  How I'd react to the responsibility.  And on the flip side, Archie never had a father to speak of.  Same boat, different lake.  We'd had the best of each other without the emotional baggage.  Years earlier, don't remember where, he'd said something to the effect that not having a father wasn't all that bad.  'Stead of having to deal with the mix of goods and bads of real flesh and blood he was able to make up the father he wanted from bits and pieces of the men he'd met in life or his reading.  Probably no man like that anywhere but in his head.  Don't know how he'd come to feel about himself when he had children of his own.  Probably feel he'd fallen short in most every way.
     Don't want to flatter myself but believe he might have seen me as being as close to his mental image as anyone.  If so, the man in his mind sure wasn't the man in the back of the canoe, though I doubt it mattered.  We took to each other pretty good.  Filled holes in each other's lives for a week or more each year.
     Not much to say over those last four days.  Rained.  Then rained more.  Got tired of LRRP meals.  Got so it was hard to choke 'em down.  On the upside, they filled me up and were warm.  What more did I want?  Except maybe a garden fresh tomato.  Or a banana.  Maybe an orange.
     On the short stretch of the Gunflint Trail a woman in a pickup truck slowed, stopped, rolled down her window and asked me if I wanted a lift.  Said,  "Sure.  Tell me a joke."  Got a stare then a laugh out of her.  Guess I gave her a lift.
     The thought of bagging the hike never entered my head.  Not that I was bull-headed just that I knew it wouldn't feel right.  Never been one to quit on something once I'd started.  Besides, like I said, I was having a good time in a low key kind of way.  Minnesota kind of way.  Yeah, there's a book full of jokes about our attitude up here in the northland.  Mostly founded on exaggeration of underlying truth.  Seems we know life's based on balance and usually stays pretty close to the fulcrum.  That it's raining today doesn't mean it'll be raining tomorrow.  Or sunny for that matter.  Life goes along its merry way doing what it has to do.  With luck a man can catch onto the ride for his three score and ten.  Take it as it comes and be ready for what's around the corner.  Though it would be nice to have dry shoes.
     Gave thoughts to what I'd do once I was home.  Wood to split, shopping in town, maybe a last canoe trip.  Then thought of the future.  My yesterdays now far outnumbered my tomorrows.  And how many of those tomorrows would be spent in good health?  And how many would be spent in my cabin?  All things a man doesn't want to deal with but knows he has no choice.  Life calls the shots and doesn't much care how any one man feels about it.  Simply put, I enjoyed my life and had no immediate intentions to move onto something new.  Figured to put faith in my feelings and, as always, my dreams.
     Sun came out for a few minutes on the bluffs above Rose Lake just past the falls.  Almost did a jig for joy.  Instead, simply enjoyed the moment of steam rising from my body.  Still some color down below but the rain had done a job on the leaves.  Mostly pine and spruce green with splashes of gold and crimson dancing off beneath roving cloud shadows to the Canadian horizon.  'Spose part of my joy was knowing I'd be home for supper the next evening.  September'd already seen its days come and go.  A fitting season for a man who was solidly in the fall of his life.  But October's a good month too.  Drops a few hints of summer here and there.  And calls for long johns more often as the days pass.
     Took my last break alongside the McFarland Road after it'd dropped the lake from view.  Thank God it was still raining.  Wouldn't have seemed fitting had the sun come out.  Almost an insult.  Been wet for four days and wanted to stay that way 'til I stripped the rotting clothes off my back.
     Came to the conclusion as stood under the shower that warm water feels better than cold.  And yeah, damn it, the rain stopped about the time I turned in the driveway.  Got me laughing.  Sometimes I think Mother Nature likes to play jokes on me.  If so, she's got a great sense of humor.

The Walk XIX - Homeward Bound

     Dear Uncle Emil,

     It's for sure.  The Ninth Division has been divided into two groups.  Two thirds of us (by us I mean me too) are going, the remainder have been reassigned to other divisions.  Of course my steps were dogged by my good friend, irony.  I'm not sure if that's the right word.  Maybe strange coincidence is more accurate but irony seems to make the story better.  As to where we're going, rumors ruled the roost until last week.  Fort Ord, California one day, Fort Collins, Colorado the next.  Once in a while Schofield Barracks in Hawaii popped up but who could believe something like that?  Well, Schofield won.  Back in infantry training when those of us with glasses were issued prescription sunglasses we joked we were getting them for our future duty in Hawaii.  Guess that turned out to be true for two out of a hundred, ninety-two of us.  Who'd have thought it would pay to be three days AWOL?

     When the sorting out process began, those staying in country were weeded out first but not all at once.  Over two cycles to the field faces changed.  New men arrived, others simply vanished to other units.  We were never told exactly what was happening during each step, things just changed.  However, with each passing day the rumors got more accurate.  Finally, we stopped going to the field and the war in the delta was taken over by the ARVNs.  Good luck with that.  From the little I'd seen of them they didn't seem to be much of a fighting force.  Hope I'm wrong.

     As the next few days passed those who were heading back to the World but had the least time in country began to be reassigned to other duty.  My two best friends ended up working at the PX.  Each morning in formation a dozen or two names were called out to be assigned.  After a week all but nine of us were either ordered to other duty or told they would remain with the company.  Finally, eight of the remaining nine were ordered to remain with Bravo Company but not me.  Last man on the fence.  It should have come as no surprise.  Part of me feared retribution from our First Sergeant for the time when he told me I wasn't paid to think.  When you're the last man it's easy to think you're being singled out for the very worst reasons.

     At last I was reassigned.  Turned out they were forming a new Field MP platoon and that's where I was headed.  Grabbed my gear and struggled off across base a happy man knowing I was on my way to Hawaii.  Would have cried for joy had it not been improper for a man who'd faced the enemy and not crapped his pants.
     So that's where I am, in a barracks filled with MPs and MPs-to-be.  We received one week of training then started working duty shifts.  Since us new guys are at the short end of the stick, we get the night shifts.  Odd how attitudes change in a heartbeat.  As grunts we had no love for MPs and now that we wear the black armband, MPs instantly turned into decent people.  Night on base sure beats night in the field and sleeping in a bunk feels much better than the floor of a rice paddy or under a haystack (yup, me and the Farmer slept under a haystack to escape a night time downpour).
    On my first shift I came to learn about the AWOL problem.  Apparently there were a few GIs who'd decided the war wasn't to their liking and walked off base with intentions of never being seen again.  Then word came down that the division was pulling out and they started to sneak back under cover of darkness, one at a time.  That first night, me and the regular MP I was riding with, had to arrest one of the AWOLs.  Felt sorry for the guy.  Both for the time he was going to spend in the stockade and for being dumb enough to do what he did and mostly for where he did it.  I figure he felt time in jail beat having to face the NVA should they win the war. 
     At night we get access to a WATS line.  I don't know if that's the right word for free long distance phone calls.  There's usually a half hour wait in line but it sure is great being able to call home.  At the moment there's a wedding in the offing.  I'm not sure of the date as it all depends on when I can get leave.  Once again rumors fly.  At the moment they're saying our leaves will come when we're finally assigned to existing units back at Schofield Barracks.  Who knows, maybe this one is right?

     Aloha,
     Archie

     That was the last letter I received.  Might be the last ever.  Archie's life is on the fast track.  Combat, release, marriage, all in a few weeks.  Doubt he'll find the time to write.  Or get his head screwed on straight for a long time.  Maybe our trips are done for good.  That I wrote 'maybe' is the hope of an aging man knowing life is passing him by.  Boys grow to men.  Men to fathers.  Free time gone to the winds.
     Awoke in the middle of the night, tent lit by the full moon.  Lap of waves on the shore rubble and a soft rustling along the tarp walls.  Popped the flashlight on a pair of beady eyes.  Probably following the scent of crumbs on my heaped clothes.  Doused the beam and lay musing on the mouse.  And that I was able to hear his probing.  A good sound when your hearing's as poor as mine.  Passed onto thinking of the unseen and unheard layers of life.  Felt like I was close to some kind of truth.  One that was about as substantial and lasting as the froth on the morning's stream as it passed beneath the log bridge.  Fought hard to get a grip on whatever that truth was but sleep got me first.  Maybe it had me all along.
     Clouds rolled in during the early morning hours.  Didn't feel like rain but strapped my rain jacket on the outside of the pack just in case.  Thinking of Bingshick Lake for camp tonight.  Either that or Harness less than another quarter mile up the trail.  Not much excitement today, just miles.  Dreamt of a maple tree in my neighbor's yard last night.  Double trunked, both dead at the top.  The man kept dropping hints he wanted it felled by your's truly.  I took one look at the surrounding power lines and knew there was no sense in me trying.  Didn't have the skill.  Don't know what it is about people in dreams.  Not a one of them shows respect for the feelings and skills of others.  'Specially me.  Been thinking of hiring a new dream crew.  Maybe some good looking ladies instead of idiot neighbors.  Maybe a couple of comedians.  Dreams of my youth had more pizzazz.  These days it's neighbors with sick trees.  Makes me consider foregoing sleep altogether.
     Reached Bingshick lowering under clouds but with near seventy degree air.  Time for a swim.  Don't know how cold a well digger's belt buckle is but I've heard they're near as cold as the water I swam in.  Raised my voice two octaves and gave thought to a late life career with the Vienna Boys Choir.  Couple of logs intended as benches graced the fire grate.  Have no love of logs when I'm canoeing.  Six hours paddling is pain enough in a man's backside.  But after a day of walking they had their appeal.
     Slept 'til near three before I stepped outside.  Felt the first raindrop on my return.