On the record

Second Edition

Someday, when I’m sitting in the nursing home talking about my life, I know there will be sad nods and eyes full of pity. They will attribute my warblings to age and a shriveling brain. So, time to get some of the less believable events in my life on the record before they can be dismissed as the  ramblings of a confused elder. Unless it’s too late . .

 

Hill Street in Ann Arbor is known as sorority and fraternity row. It’s a wide, meandering street lined with landscaped lawns, plantation-like Greek houses, and towering trees that have overseen the Greekly students since the inception of the University of Michigan in 1837. But, on the corner of Hill and Olivia Streets sits Henderson House. Henderson House is a lovely, large brick home, a co-op dorm that houses young women who need a financial break. In return, they do the cooking and cleaning. We, the riff raff, lived among the wealthiest students in the world.

One year, I was the social chairman (there weren’t chairwomen or chairs back then.) I received the calls for babysitters, window washers, dates for sailors on leave, and such. Just before final exams my sophomore year, a woman called and said she needed four women to be servers for her husband’s surprise birthday party. She lived four blocks down Olivia and would pay us $50 each for the evening. Tuition was $90 a semester, and I made $1.35 an hour as a hospital clerk, so I was doing a happy dance in the phone booth at the end of the hall. The woman said she would furnish our uniforms and pay to have our hair and nails done. It took about five minutes to get 3 other volunteers.

The afternoon of the party, we were all parading around the living room with newly painted nails and upswept hairdos when the woman dropped off four boxes with our uniforms. “See ya at 5:00,” she warbled over her shoulder. We tore open the boxes to find Playboy Bunny outfits. They were sparkly and feathery and very small. When we were able to speak again, we discussed the validity of verbal contracts and such, but it was 4:00 p.m., and we were due at the party in an hour. We went upstairs to don the “uniforms.” 

First, there were the black, fishnet stockings. When you wear those with high heels, they grate your feet like Parmesan cheese. Then, it was time to put on the tiny pieces of satin. We looked in the mirror, peering out between our pushed-up boobs. We turned around. There they were: four large and fluffy bunny tails. Bunny ears and feathery wristlets were the final touches.

Five o’clock, full sunlight on Hill Street. The front door opened, and out poured four Bunnies into normal pedestrian traffic. We had no car, so we had to parade down Olivia Street. No one gives Bunnies credit for walking in those steel-wool net stockings and high heels. We wobbled along, disrupting post-game traffic all along our route.

Our first task was to set up hors d’oeuvres. Here we were, all bunnied up, in the back room being scullery maids. During the party, we carried trays and drinks to faculty members whom we hoped never to see again. We were told that the birthday boy had composed Frosty the Snowman, though I’ve never been able to corroborate that. He did have a gorgeous grand piano. The evening ended at 11:00 p.m.with the glam squad doing dishes, collecting our fifty bucks, and limping barefoot back to Henderson House and our beds. One can only be grateful that there were no cell phones back then. Happy Birthday, Frosty.

👯👯

On the record

First Edition

Someday, when I’m sitting in the nursing home talking about my life, I know there will be sad nods and eyes full of pity. They will attribute my warblings to age and a shriveling brain. So, time to get some of the less believable events in my life on the record  before they can be dismissed as the  ramblings of a confused elder. Unless it’s too late . . .

 

I had spent two weeks in the Miskitia jungle in Honduras at a medical clinic. I loved the little village, the peaceful and smiling people, the gratitude they had for every mango that fell from a tree. Every day started from scratch; pick the grain, grind it, make the bread. Fetch the water from the river. Along with the incredible hardship and deprivation came this freedom from decision-making. You did only what was needed to survive and then you went to bed. I heard not one complaint. I saw only love and gentleness with the children. Young and old sat quietly for tooth extractions without medication. Maybe one tear was shed. Some people were sent home likely to lose their lives for lack of  basic, simple medication. We could give them what we had, but after that? It was a beautiful experience, but the trip home was an entirely new and unexpected adventure.

We were taken out in long boats. I don’t know what was in the river, but I was careful to keep my elbows in. Then, we were loaded onto dump trucks and driven from pothole to pothole with little or no road in between. I was sure my kidneys would break clean off their stalks. We arrived at the dirt airstrip and were loaded onto one plane that looked like a mosquito and also a DC3. I was on the DC3 with eleven others. We sat on benches along the sides of the plane, strapped in all John Wayne style. In between our rows was a huge barrel marked “gasolina.” I’m a clever girl, so I figured that out. Didn’t seem like the best idea, but whaddya gonna do? Not smoke, that’s one thing you’re not gonna do, except the “attendant” was leaning against the barrel lighting up. The attendant was in camos and combat boots and had a rifle strapped to his back. Peanuts, anyone? A similar individual was piloting the plane and appeared to be about 16 years old. There was no copilot.

About 5 minutes into the flight, there was an explosion and the plane lurched. I will never forget the eyes of the med student sitting across from me. They were enormous, fixed and dilated. I took my journal and placed it inside my shirt. Should my remains not be completely incinerated, I wanted my family to know this had been one of the best experiences of my life. We pointed out the window at the smoking engine and consulted the soldier, who appeared not to notice the issue. “Oh, that,” he said through our interpreter. “It’s nothing. Just a little stick hit it.” A little stick floating along at 5,000 feet?

I looked out the window and noticed the trees getting larger and larger. We were going down. I recalled seeing photos on the news of charred airplane shapes on wooded mountain sides. Then, we hit the ground in what turned out to be a landing of sorts, all intact. We disembarked, and by that, I mean we stampeded off the plane. As we stood on the field, really in a field, they opened the cargo door and unloaded our gear, boxes of fruit, a crude sort of coffin, and–I kid you not–a gigantic man in an orange jumpsuit with wrists handcuffed behind his back and feet in chains. Back into the dump trucks we went. We were told it would take 3 days to get parts for the plane

We were delivered to our hotel to wait for the plane to be repaired. Our hotel was a Honduran army base. It consisted of several long, concrete buildings, open at either end without doors. They looked exactly like those hog confinement buildings on big corporate farms. There were windows but no glass or screens. There were rows of army-style cots, and we settled in, wondering what might be living in those scratchy blankets.

We were beckoned to a building where meals were served and were joined by some teenage soldiers. They were delighted to have company, being stationed in what appeared to be thousands of acres of jungle. It was 110 degrees, but they wore full-on fatigues, combat boots, and hats. After a dinner of red beans and rice, which we’d had 3 times a day for two weeks, we sat around the table and played games. And this is the part I want on the record now in case I mumble about it in a decade or two while slurping my pureed chicken. We taught them the card game Spoons. In this card game, when you get a certain hand you surreptitiously take a spoon from the center of the table and keep it until someone notices. In this particular version, when you got the spoon, you moistened it and stuck it on your nose, where it hung until someone saw it or it fell off. I have this permanent snapshot in my head: young boys in army uniforms sitting across from me, rifles on their backs, spoons stuck on their noses, laughing their heads off. I remember thinking it might be good to let them win. I have relatives who are unarmed and dangerous when they lose at cards, so in retrospect, playing guys with rifles seems risky. In fact, it was unmitigated fun. And, it was a moment.

Three days later, we boarded the same plane. I figured it was now held together with actual airplane glue from a model plane kit. Off we went (with who-knows-what in the hold) to Tegucigalpa, then on to Austin. From there, it was off to Chicago where, at midnight, my last leg to Iowa was cancelled. You can bet there was no griping at the airport counter from this passenger.

On the record!

Driving Miss Crazy

 

My mother liked to talk. If she was reading the newspaper, so were you. She simply had to read it to anyone remotely within earshot. Just before our second child was born, she asked if we had picked a name for the baby. When I said we had not, she began reading names from the Ann Arbor phone book. There were 100,035 people in Ann Arbor at that time, so you can imagine how the afternoon went. The worst thing is we actually chose one of those names. No, the worst thing is that that name was on page 372. Everything interested her. I cannot recall a time when she wasn’t taking an evening class, and she was always excited about what she had learned and ready to share it. All of it. She was not a Cliff Notes kinda gal.

One holiday weekend, my mother and mother-in-law both were visiting. My mother-in-law liked to chat a bit, too When the two of them were together, it was a contest to see who could spin the most and the best tales. My husband performed a Lutheran mitzvah and took them for a drive around the German Amana Colonies so I could rest my ears. Two hours later, he came back. I thought perhaps he’d been mugged by a mad zither player or had some bad sauerkraut. He was not looking well at all. “What happened?” I asked. He told me both mothers read everything along the 15-mile route: traffic signs, for sale signs, mailboxes, billboards, store names, garage sale signs, and bumper stickers, and my mother had turned around backwards and read the ones facing the other way.

My relatively new brother-in-law was chosen to drive my mother a couple hundred miles to a family wedding. Poor thing didn’t know why he’d had this honor bestowed upon him. After a 250 miles soliloquy, she had to stop to breathe. Then, she turned to him and said, “You don’t talk much, do you?”

When the entire Michigan group was driving to Iowa City for the football game, there was no drawing of straws or rock-paper-scissors game; absolutely no one could face 16 hours in the car with my mom, especially when she was excited about a fun adventure. But, we wanted her to come because she loved these gatherings. So, we hired a friend of mine to drive to Michigan, bring her to Iowa , and then return her home. Got that? My entire extended family was coming from the same place she was, but no one could face that trip with her. I tell you this in case you think I am exaggerating her loquaciousness. I was very honest with my friend about the task he faced, telling him the driving was not going to be his biggest challenge. “I’ll be fine,” he said. I was busy cooking for the gang when his first call came. Oh, no, I thought; they’d only been on the road about two hours. “How’s it going?” I asked. Since he was in the car with her, all he could say was, “Oh, my. Oh, my my my.” No matter what I asked, he just said, “Oh, my.” They had 6 more hours to go. Money well spent, I’d say. It was an adventure we came to call Driving Miss Crazy.

My sister, my daughter, and I were driving home from Oregon after a wonderful Sierra Club trip. My mother had been on a trans-Canada train ride with Elderhostel. We were to collect her in Eugene and bring her home. From Oregon to Michigan via Iowa. My other sister had also been on our trek, but said she had to fly home to get back to work. (Uh huh.)The rest of us got in the car and off we went with my mother. And, off she went. She had been alone on her trip and had much to report. After a couple hours, I said, “My ears need a little break. Maybe you could read or take a little nap.” Those in the back seat were pretending to sleep, but I could see them stifling smiles and elbowing one another. My request was not granted. By the end of the first hour, she had only covered her trip from Michigan to Windsor; she was still talking about getting to the train. I said that truly, my ears were worn out and she needed to catch a little nap or read a book. At this point, I believe my tone was still quite conversational. As we sped through flat eastern Oregon, she gave her report on Ontario. By the time she reached Saskatchewan, I could take no more. I pulled over on the interstate, turned to my mother, and said, “If you do not stop talking for a little while, I will put you out of the car.” You think that was mean, right? But, I may as well have said the President was missing and Patrick Swayze married The Queen of Ethiopia. It had no impact whatsoever. This trip was 1,916 miles. By the time we hit Iowa City, I looked mildly deranged. Oh, my, indeed. I dropped off my daughter and then, off we went to return my mother to her home on the far side of Michigan, an additional 8-hour drive.

When she finally moved to assisted living, my mother called and told me they’d given her a job. She was made volunteer receptionist in the physical therapy room. That was one wise social worker who thought of that. My mom had been the school secretary, so she knew everyone in town, their histories and hysteries. She had the dirt on everyone. When I came to visit, I heard her talking and stayed out of sight around the corner. She was sitting at the desk, directing people here and there, telling them she had their grandchild in school or knew their husband, the shop teacher. I listened to her shaking down everyone waiting for PT. No one got to the whirlpool with being debriefed by Sylvia. She was in hog heaven.

Had she not had to give up a full-ride scholarship to support her mother and herself, I think my mother might have been a fine journalist or interviewer. She would have asked question after question. Idi Amin would have waved a white flag and given up the answer. If Aristotle had known my mother, he might have tweaked his theory: nature abhors a silence.

“Mary is a Grand old Name”

Mary Marguerite Dearing Gilbert Dekarske, my grandmother, was born in 1890. This was shortly before George M. Cohan wrote his famous song. If he’d have known her, he might have written Mary is a Grand Old Dame. She was admitted to the world the same year Idaho and Wyoming were admitted to the Union. She preceded the gasoline-powered car. Ellis island was not yet processing immigrants. The president who reigned over her home in Michigan (and the other 41 states) was Benjamin Harrison. She lived until 1984, pre-car to post-moon landing. She couldn’t vote until she was thirty but lived to see nearby Michigan coeds burning bras on the Diagonal. She rolled with it.

Grandma Mary and Aunt Ellie plowing

Mary was not a delicate rose. She was a big, sturdy girl. When she hung her bloomers on the line, we thought the sun had gone behind a cloud. She drove a team of horses to plow fields on the farm on North Territorial Road near Chelsea, Michigan. She raised four children without plumbing nor electricity, sending them off on horseback to Pumpkin College, a country school. She married a Scottish immigrant, and they toughed out a life without luxury and without security.

Women who had a rough marriage in the ‘40s just had to suck it up. Divorce was scandalous. My grandma forgot to read that chapter in the marriage handbook. She ran off with the hired man and married him. He was a very congenial fellow and of a stature that rivaled Mary’s. My sister and I recall one weekend when they came to visit and went upstairs to bed. The bed was in the hallway. It had an uncomfortable compressed mattress that sat on metal rails. Soon after they said their goodnights, we heard a huge crack! and then a crash coming from upstairs followed by their hysterical laughter. The portly couple had bent the bed rails and ridden the mattress down to the floor. My dad had quite a time extricating them. Herm and Mary lived in a third-floor tenement in Detroit. When we visited, we could see her bloomers hanging out to dry, now from the railing on the exterior staircase. Lucky it was in the pre-HOA era.

Mary was a big girl (with my dad and Aunt Mary)

Mary took care of her daughter who had MS for years in their Ann arbor home. They watched soaps and played euchre. A portrait of the Kennedys hung above the couch, as it did in many homes. It hung between two strange parrot paintings and a framed, embroidered poem:

“You don’t have to thank us

or laugh at our jokes.

Sit deep and come often,

you’re one of the folks.”

Grandma loved to fish, and bluegills feared her. She was wicked at cards, and it was a good thing, because she was not such a gracious loser. She was never happier than when one of us brought over a new great-grandchild for her to hold. Mary was not a scratchy, bony grandma. A baby would just sink into her as though her house dress were full of whipped cream. She had a strange little lullaby she always sang to babies as she rocked them. The words were “dy dee, dy dee, dy dee, dy….” but the babies seemed to understand. As the kids got older, Grandma could not stand it when we scolded them. When my older sister was a child and visited her in Detroit, there were lemon pies on the table. My sister licked off all the meringue, but she was not chastised. Grandma simply replaced the meringue before company arrived. How lucky to have someone who was always tickled to see you and thought you could do no wrong. How lucky to eat lemon pie without knowing its history . . .

My dad (eldest child and only son) and my grandma were not effusive people, but it was clear they had a mutual admiration society with two members. I consider the timing of their deaths to be one of our family’s luckiest moments. As we were preparing to go to Grandma’s funeral, my dad died after a long illness. Neither knew of the other’s death. They took their last breaths without suffering the loss of  the other.

And now, in my new little house, I have the Grandma Mary room. Her house number is on the door–928 Rose Drive. The hooked rug has pink roses as does the wallpaper border. There’s a chenille bedspread, some depression glass, and many family photos. She wasn’t the kind of grandma you want to forget.

WELL DONE, GOOD AND USELESS SERVANT

             No matter what AARP claims, eventually we turn into a pile of unusual skin formations and obsolescent skills. Their magazine shows “mature” folks, thin and tan, leaning off the edge of a sailboat, reeling in lines and smiling. We all know those spiffy deck shoes are hiding bunions like radishes and heel skin they have to attack with a cheese grater. We can try to keep up, but a three-year-old can convert document formats faster than we can pull on our socks. It’s not just a matter of losing physical prowess. Many skills I have valued my entire life have lost their value in society. 

In country school, cursive penmanship was a subject equal in stature to math, language, and social studies. We had workbooks with two solid lines and a dotted line in the center. We drew hundreds of miles of loops and slanted lines. Capital letters could never extend beyond the line nor fail to reach it. Small case letters reached the dotted line in the center. Angles had to be consistent.  I worked a long time on making the W in my name more dramatic than a round, squat, common sort of letter. And now, I hear people saying cursive writing is obsolete and will not be taught any more. I see younger people with claws awkwardly clenched over the top of a pen, printing like we did on the back of a Valentines card in second grade. We’ve gone from appreciating “a beautiful hand” to tapping away on screens with our opposable thumbs, a skill we share with apes, some frogs, koalas, pandas, possums, opossums, and even some birds. When you get the mail, as you sift through catalogues, flyers from realtors, grocery coupons and such, if there’s a handwritten letter, how fast do you drop the other stuff and open it? As my friend Judi often says, “Sigh.”

            Studying grammar made the world and my brain more orderly. In grade school, we raced to diagram sentences. By sixth grade, we were challenging one another with the most complex sentences we could invent, and the blackboards were covered with beautiful maps of our language. I will never stop twitching when I hear  “fewer” and “less” misused. I drive by billboards that make me want to scream; the world has abandoned adverbs. “Think uncommon” a university tells potential students racing down the interstate. I am aware of the prejudices that accompany my assumptions when I hear someone butchering the language. To me, proper grammar is like a sock drawer with socks properly paired as opposed to tangled with some “forever singles” and a couple of rogue knee-highs.

            When I learned to drive, I  crawled around our tiny town with its one stop light with a death grip on the steering wheel. There was no power steering, and the car was a stick shift. Unfortunately, the test for my license took place in busy Ann Arbor at 5:00 pm on a Friday. First, I turned right out of the left lane. Then, I turned left out of the center lane. The cop shook his head and looked sad. We were on Main Street, and I’d never seen such traffic and so many lanes. Then, he said, “Let’s parallel park.” I had never done that–just seen the diagram in my driver’s ed manual. The parking spot he chose was two inches longer than the car. I pulled even with the front car and slid right into the space on the first try. The surprised cop applauded. On the other hand, it took thirty minutes and approximately 300 turns of the wheel to get out of that spot. He gave me a mercy license. Now, I consider parallel parking one of my best talents; I can get in and out of a small place in one try with few exceptions. In college I had a $90 Studebaker Lark. The price was so reasonable because it did not have reverse. I’d pull even with the front car, and my roommate, Elaine, would get out and push me backwards as I steered into the parking place. I had to get it on the first try because Elaine was not interested in multiple attempts. And now? Now what do they do? Make self-parking cars! That’s an insult. Have they no pride? Pikers.

            How can I remain proud of my ability to rock a car out of any snowbank when even the most boring old-people cars are 4WD? How can I experience the thrill of building a gorgeous fire on the first try when you can toss in a noxious chemical block that explodes like the Chicago fire? No one cares if I can nurse along a tiny flame, nudging the kindling, gradually creating a slow-burning, glowing fire in the fireplace. And, few people bother writing letters when you can create something on the computer and simply personalize a few sentences at the end. Sigh, indeed.

            Things we older folks were proud of have fallen out of favor or become obsolete. It’s said that “pride goeth before the fall.” More like pride goeth, and then you fall.

­­­­­­The Game

🐖    Pigs and Pigskin, A Family Retrospective   🏈

            You may think The Game refers to Michigan-Ohio State or USC-UCLA or even Harvard-Yale. Not in our clan. When we became the family outcasts and moved to Iowa, The Game occurred when Iowa and Michigan played football, but it didn't happen in Michigan or Kinnick Stadium. No, the real game took place off the field. Unlike many family traditions, I can pinpoint the perp, the day, and the venue when this one began.

            The perp was my brother-in-law, Mike, a quiet man and not known as a trickster or instigator. Heaven knows we have many other candidates for those positions in our family. The day was a September football Saturday in the early ‘70s. The venue was Gianettis Hole-in-the-Wall in Northville, Michigan, not far from Ann Arbor. After Michigan once again trounced Iowa, about 25 extended family members gathered at Mike’s favorite restaurant. It was a big, family-style Italian place. You didn’t order food there; they just brought it when they were good and ready. Served the whole place at once. They brought what they wanted you to eat and in large quantities. The Gianetti family members were servers, and they were loud. They slammed big platters of gooey Italian food on the tables, and they sang and yelled smart-ass comments to one another. After dinner, one of them took a mic, and the rowdy crowd quieted down.

            “Anyone go to that game over in Ann Arbor today?” he asked. Our table raised hands and cheered.

            “How’d that turn out?” he asked. Some of us cheered; some of us whimpered.

            “Anyone here from Ioway?” he asked. A fifth of our table reluctantly raised our hands.

            “Okay, boys,” he yelled to his staff, “you can take the silverware off those tables.” He then proceeded to malign us in a hilarious routine. Since he had been informed there was an actual Iowa professor at the table, Bruce became his special target for the rest of the evening.

That was a fun and unexpected event. All weekend, Mike looked permanently satisfied. I am sure the phrase “can of worms” (or “Pandora’s Box”) never crossed his mind, but it should have. My family does not go quietly into that good night, and it certainly does not go quietly into the kind of night when one is pranked.

Each year, 3 generations of Gilberts and their unfortunate, innocent relatives caravanned to Iowa City or to Ann Arbor for The Game. These were the years of Hayden Fry and Bo Schembechler. Naturally, a humongous, gaudy plaster pig named BoFry became the loser’s trophy. We painted the years and the scores on his side. The losers had to house the monstrosity, which took up half a back seat. Mike’s little surprise caught on, persisted, and grew. Inexplicably, the victims of these intensifying pranks became brothers-in-law, Mike and Bruce. Maybe that was just safer than irritating a Gilbert.

Ever seen the endless airplanes circling Michigan Stadium pulling ads and political banners? Ever see one pulling a disparaging message with your name? Round and round and round?

No way in my family does that call for an equal and appropriate response; it calls for something more akin to scorched earth. So, the next year, off I went to a West Branch, Iowa farm where a confused farmer rented me a young pig, about the size of a Cocker Spaniel. I got to choose from about 5,000 of Iowa’s finest, as this was a huge confinement. I needed to sequester him until game time, so one of Bruce’s colleagues volunteered. She took him home, gave him a bubble bath, and made him a nice warm bed.

Next day was a beautiful fall day, a great day for our tailgate picnic along the Iowa River. About halfway through, we heard an odd commotion in the crowd of tailgaters, a kind of squealing and crowd murmuring sound. It was getting louder. Then, as planned, out of the crowd came said colleague carrying said pig. He was wrapped in a baby receiving blanket.

“You Mike?” she asked as she approached him. He nodded. “Well, this is your pig.” And she placed the sparkling clean little guy in Mike’s arms. Surrounding Michigan and Iowa fans cheered and clapped. The li’l pig continued to squeal, probably because everyone was toasting him with brats. Mike suddenly pushed the animal out to arm’s length, and it dropped a large piggy puddle at his feet. On his feet. Another cheer from the crowd. Aunt Ellie fell laughing onto the tailgate full of potato salad and pickles. Photos were taken and the pig went back to bed for the game. That evening, as the pig was being lavished with affection by nieces and nephews in my basement, Mike and my sister had an extended discussion about the pig’s future. Mike had become attached. Since the little fella could grow to 800 lbs., my sister thought Iowa might be a good venue. I was helpful by explaining it was actually just a rental pig. My sister smiled. What are sisters for, really? “Well, not really a rental,” I explained.” “I did buy him."  Now, Mike smiled. Again, what are sisters for? ( I didn't mention that the farmer had agreed to take the pig back if Mike didn't want him permanently.) Deep down inside, Uncle Mike knew Babe was going back home to West Branch, just like Herbert Hoover. He, pigless, was going back to his bacon-eating life in Michigan. I always pictured that little pig walking back into the barn, shaking his little piggy head, and saying, “You guys won’t believe what happened to me this weekend.”

And so, it went on for a couple of decades. We had a nice post-game dinner at The Ronnenburg restaurant in Amana, Iowa, with a large man in lederhosen playing the zither in the corner. A family restaurant. I was so surprised they agreed to my request. As dessert arrived, a door opened nearby and a beautiful girl emerged and slithered over to Mike. He turned the color of his strawberry-rhubarb pie. She was a belly dancer, not a cheesy belly dancer but a professional and an expert, a professor of the history of dance. She was however, not dressed like a professor. No, she wore the traditional veils and sparkles and well-placed swatches of gauze. It was black and gold gauze with Hawkeye touches here and there. She danced right in Mike’s face, draping veils around his head. The zither player froze mid-stroke. I have photos with other diners in the background, forks held aloft and mouths agape. Son Jake slid under the table in embarrassment, and Aunt Ellie did another laughing face plant, this time into the sauerbraten.

As elders were lost and a few members moved or lost interest in football, some games went by without fear and mayhem. The tradition quietly ended. And so it should be. If that trajectory had continued, it’s hard to imagine what might have been required to up the ante every year. But, weren’t we lucky to have those days? And those resilient brothers-in-law who graciously accepted their fates? Graciousness sounds nice, but personally I think they had a deep-seated fear of what might have happened if the Gilberts had turned upon one another instead of them. Because of their sacrifice, after The Game this October 5^th, we shall toast them, and not burn one another. To the Brothers-in Law!

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.