Ed and I

            Great Lakes shipwrecks fascinate me and have since I was a child. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum claims there have been about 6,000, but one historian says it’s closer to 25,000. That’s a fair discrepancy, but either way, a lot of ships lie on the bottom of the big lakes. A lot of lives have been lost.

If you have not experienced the Great Lakes, you might ask what’s the problem? It’s a lake, not an ocean; why can’t they keep these boats on top of the water? Perhaps it’s because the waves can reach 20-30 feet high in a severe storm. And, waves in the Great Lakes are a special challenge because they come closer together than ocean waves. Winds of 50-100 mph are an additional challenge. Lake Superior in particular is known for its terrible “Gales of November.” Still, some freight companies try to make that one last delivery before the lakes become impassable. Many sailors, including the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald, paid the ultimate price for the investors’ greed.

In 1976, we all were singing about that famous Great Lakes shipwreck, the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Given that Disco Lady and Play That Funky Music were big songs that year, how strange that we were crooning about a boat full of iron-ore pellets sinking in Gitche Gumee (the Native American name for Lake Superior.) Gordon Lightfoot put us right on deck with his hit song,  The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

I have never actually been on a freighter nor do I know anything about boats that carry iron-ore pellets (taconite.) But, I have had two Edmund Fitzgerald events in my life. One was a wonderful surprise about a life not lost on the Great Lakes, and one was a weird surprise when a life surely did look like it was going to be lost.

My Edmund Fitzgerald Surprise #1

            My colleague and friend, Barb, and I had a poster accepted for a pain conference at the Cleveland Clinic. We were thrilled to be included at such a prestigious meeting. Off we went with our homemade display. It was built around an old Bulova watch display case. We had dug it out of a dusty, abandoned antique store in Sigourney, Iowa. You remember those cases that turn, stop, turn a little more, and so forth? We rigged it up to turn and show off several small posters on nurses and pain management. The light in the center made the posters glow. We drove from Iowa to Cleveland with our iffy poster display in an even iffier old van. Turns out, not many exhibitors had mobile posters, and from their expressions, not many wanted one. It was kind of jerky and after each quarter turn, the entire display wobbled. Almost all the other posters had been professionally produced by high-end media departments.

Barb suggested we visit her aunt and uncle while in Cleveland. We pulled up to their old brownstone and walked up a few flights of creaky stairs. Barb’s uncle opened the door. He was a short Danish man in his eighties and had a beautiful shock of white hair and sparkly blue eyes. Barb’s aunt also was short with a shock of white hair and bright blue eyes. They looked like one of those cute little sets of salt and pepper shakers. They brought us tea, and we sat to chat. 

Early in our conversation, I mentioned that it was nice to see the freighters and other boats on nearby Lake Erie. The uncle’s eyes narrowed. He leaned in.  “Are you a Michigander?” he asked. I checked to see if I was wearing some Michigan apparel. I was not.

“How’d you know that?” I asked.

“You knew that no matter the size or purpose, if it’s on the Great Lakes, it’s called a boat, not a ship.” Actually, I did not know that. Just grew up hearing it that way.

“What did you do?” I asked. And, if he had said, “I was a serial killer who dressed as a nun and hunted down Lutherans in Fergus Falls,” I could not have been more surprised.

“I was the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” he said. I mumbled those song lyrics to myself to see if I had missed something. Should someone call Gordon Lightfoot?

“Well, you’re looking pretty good then,” I said. “Weren’t all twenty-nine men lost on the Fitz?”

“I was the captain right before the accident,” he explained.

Right then, my trip took a turn from pretty-darn-good to in-my-wildest-dreams. Once he knew I was interested, the captain brought out piles of albums. We sailed through his career on various boats with wonderful stories. He had albums full of articles and drawings, all advancing theories about why the Fitz broke up in a terrible storm. He favored the one in which each end of the 700 ft. vessel was perched atop the peak of a wave with the center portion left unsupported. The Fitz weighed 13,000 tons empty, so loaded with iron and without support mid-ships, it broke in half, the penultimate captain explained.

My friend, Barb, watched me drooling on her uncle’s albums (and probably on her uncle) all evening. I asked her how on earth she had never mentioned to her friend from Michigan that her uncle was the captain of the Fitz! She said she knew he’d done “something with boats.” She did not know she was traveling with a shipwreck freak. Since the trip was pre-cell phone, I borrowed our host’s phone and called home.

“Bet you can’t guess who Barb and I are having dinner with,” I said.

“Bet I can’t.”

“The captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald!”

“Didn’t he go down with the ship?”

 My Edmund Fitzgerald Surprise #2

            My friend, Judi, and I were excited. We had tickets to see Gordon Lightfoot at Chautauqua in Boulder. Good seats, too–front and center. All the way there, I bored her to death with my Fitz obsession. I didn’t care what else he sang or even if he sang anything else. Just wanted to hear “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” sung by the original composer and singer. We sat in the most landlocked place on earth, and I was shivering with excitement, waiting to hear a song about a massive storm and shipwreck. The lights dimmed. A few dusty musicians shuffled out onto the dusty stage. It was going to be a night!

Oh, it was a night alright. Out came Gordon. He took center stage to a cheering, whistling welcome from the crowd. Like all of us in the audience, he had aged since his big hit dominated the air waves. Then, he strummed his guitar, sang a few words, and stopped. He sat down, head between his legs. The place went silent. You could feel the worry rise around you. Now, it’s not uncommon for musicians to suffer the effects of altitude when they come from below to perform in the mountains. Some use oxygen during breaks. But, Gordon did not look well at all. He was rail thin and pale and looked about to faint. He stood and tried again. And, he stopped again. Here and there, shouts arose. “We love you, Gordon.” “It’s okay, Gordon.” “Take your time, Gordon.” I grabbed Judi’s arm and was mumbling, “He better not be dying up there. I don’t want to see this.”

Gordon did get through the first half but was unable to make it all the way through a song. I whispered to Judi, “I sure hopes he sings The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald soon. The lady behind us tapped me on the shoulder and whispered, “He already did.”

We decided to leave at intermission, because it was hard to watch and too worrisome not knowing if he was alright. I knew I’d be afraid to read the paper in the morning. (Turns out, Gordon had done fabulous concerts the nights before and after this one.)

            On the drive home, we sat silently, not so much disappointed as very worried. I took a short-cut across town on an industrial drive. As we wound around shadows of semi-truck carcasses and orange cones, from somewhere deep inside me I heard a voice say, “That sounded like “the Swedish Chef sings the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Judi looked at me, and if she was offended at my irreverence, she failed to maintain it. Instead, she burst out laughing, and the dam broke. All the tension turned into one of those laughing fits you cannot stop. I pulled over in the Mayflower moving van storage area, and in the pitch-black night, we fell against the car windows laughing until no sound came out. All the tension poured out, albeit not too appropriately.

            “What are we going to tell a cop if we get caught here?” I asked. “Officer, we’re laughing because we thought a guy was gonna keel over and die while singing.”

We made it home, and in the morning, I opened the paper ever so gingerly. No headline screamed Death at Chautauqua! So there, Gitche Gumee! You did not claim another life, not on this night, anyway.