Ohio Dirtfishin'

Ohio Dirtfishin'

You might recall from my last blog in which I talked about visiting an old abandoned amusement park not too far from the town where I live. And that it had closed in 1978 and had been enclosed by a fence and locked gate and deserted since that time. And that recently a development company had bought the old park, opened it up to the wrecking ball and bulldozer and was in the process of landscaping the grounds to hold new hotels, restaurants and other “improvements”.

The new owners of the property have been allowing visitors to walk the old grounds of the park on weekends and quite a number of folks have taken advantage of this opportunity to see what was left of the old Chippewa Lake Park. As I stated in the previous blog, there isn't much left there except a couple of the old rides (ferris wheel, roller coaster), some collapsed and/or burnt structures and a lot of bulldozed ground. The walk around the park was interesting and poignant, like visiting the grave of a distant loved one whom you remember from a long time ago.

While I was there I began to wonder about something. And that something was, “would I be able to use my metal detector in this park?” I found out soon enough that the answer to this query was “no”, but that I would be able to use it in in the old parking lot outside the park's gates.

Let me tell you a bit about my hobby of metal detecting or treasure hunting.

Or, as I heard it called on a video online, dirtfishin'.

I got into the treasure hunting hobby many years ago and have been the proud owner of a half-dozen metal detectors, give or take, over the years. I've found scads of items while detecting from class rings and old coins to junk by the pound. I'd like to have a penny for all the pull tabs and screw caps I've pulled out of the ground over the years. But for every couple dozen pieces of junk I'd dug there also came the occasional ring, coin, key, token and other interesting and/or valuable item.

It's been a fun hobby.

In recent years I'd let the pastime slide as other interests attracted my attention. My latest detector, probably a decade or more old, sadly hanging on it's hook in the basement, had seen many miles of work over the years and was an antique compared to the new ones available today. It was also suffering from some poor engineering in the battery compartment where a number of the spring clips that hold the batteries there were broken or missing. I'd jury-rigged some aluminum foil to take up some of the slack, but the detector was on his last legs.

So I had just toured the old amusement park and had eyeballed the now accessible dirt parking lot. And the old itch to start looking around for new treasures had started growing in me again.

So I pulled the old detector off its hook in the basement and tried getting it to work. I spent a few hours and realized that it was a losing battle. It was almost impossible to make the batteries “tight” enough to power the machine.

I was discouraged.

But then I remembered I had set some “extra” money aside for “this and that” and I thought, “maybe I could get a new detector with part of it?” I talked it over with the wife and she was OK with the idea.

So two weeks ago I drove to my nearest metal detector dealer and spent a fascinating hour with him looking at his selection of metal detectors. He had specimens from White's, Fisher, Bounty Hunter, Garret's, MineLab and other manufacturers. He went over the features of each one and gave me a basis to make a decision. Finally I picked one out . It was a White's Prizm 6T. This was a brand-new detector put out by White's that wasn't even in the catalogs yet.

It looked perfect for what I was interested in.

Modern hobby metal detectors are very interesting machines. First off they are very light, unlike the old ones where weight was a definite drawback for long hunts. This one was about 3 pounds. The electronics part was in a small box with an LCD display that sat on top an “s” rod with the search coil at one end and the battery box on the other. You held a padded grip in the center of the “s” rod and a padded forearm rest sat naturally under your forearm. The battery pack counterbalanced the coil on the other end. It was comfortable to swing and felt much like an extension of your own arm. The display showed a lot of information as you swung the machine and went over a metal target. It showed probable target (iron, nickels, pull tabs, screw caps, zinc penny, copper penny, dime, quarter, half and silver plus the range for jewelry), a value from – 80 to + 90 and the probable depth of a coin-sized target. It also generated an audible tone to coincide with the coil passing over the target. The tone would be higher in pitch for the better targets. You also had a pinpoint (all metal) mode where you could narrow the area where the target was as you slowly swung the coil. You could also “notch out” certain targets so they wouldn't tone alert or show on the LCD – stuff like iron and aluminum junk. You could also increase the detector's sensitivity and, if necessary, set it for salt conditions if you were detecting on the beach or in a desert area.

It was a beautiful machine and I was the happy new owner of it.

Last Saturday I took this new tool up to the defunct Chippewa Lake Park parking lot and gave it a tryout.

Let me describe the current condition of the parking lot up there. It's now a field of approximately 9 acres. It's been logged and the trees removed, but the stumps are still there. Some of the area has been bulldozed to knock down the scrub and brush. It's a rough area to work – the ground's uneven and full of ruts, roots and thousands of stumps from 1 inch wide to maybe 10-12 inches. And many other treasure hunters have been working this field. Everywhere you walked you could see evidence of holes having been dug and “something” removed – trash or treasure could not be determined.

I started around noon. I worked for about 10 minutes and received a decent target signal. When I dug down I recovered a General Motors car key. I thought that was an OK target and kept on detecting. I was getting lots of bent-over pull tabs that were ringing in as coin targets. Lots of them. With the occasional flattened aluminum screw cap thrown in that rang in as a good target also. The discriminator in the machine wasn't perfect and some of these targets looked quite similar to nickels or rings, at least to its electronic senses. At the end of 3 hours I was without a single coin and getting discouraged. A car key and a large lead fishing sinker were my “good” finds. I took a short break and drank a cola in my car. Another hunter was getting ready to go out and I talked to her for a few minutes. She stated she had been there the previous week and had found a silver dime and a number of modern coins. I had also talked to a couple hunters the previous Friday and they'd stated that there'd been numbers of old silver coins recovered from that field over the past number of weeks. So I knew there had been good targets found which boded well for further recoveries. After finishing my drink and resting a bit I started out again. I kept telling myself that this was a 9 acre field and that amount of ground had over 56 million square inches, any of which could hide a coin.

Lots of places still left to search.

I soon found my first interesting find, which was a flattened penny with the Lord's Prayer engraved on it, probably from a souvenir machine in the park in the old days. Then I hit a few modern coins. Then a wheat penny dated 1914. Things were looking up a bit. I was getting weary and told myself just another half-hour and I'd have to quit. Soon I got a very interesting signal. I'd learned over the years what a good signal sounds like in my headphones and this one was definitely a goodie. High number, indication of quarter or better, a repeatable signal from different directions and a smooth, smooth sound. It's hard to describe, but when you've dug some nice finds you remember what they sound like in the headphones. This was one of them.

I commenced to dig carefully in the root-filled ground. At about seven inches down the glint of the reeded edge of a silver coin rewarded my diligence and acknowledged that my guesses as to the quality of the target were correct. It was a 1951-D Washington Quarter. It came out of the ground in the same condition it went in probably 50 years earlier – shiny and clean-looking. Unless the ground is very acid, most silver coins come out of the ground looking untarnished.

I was happy with the find and content to call it a day. I'm out of condition to be swinging a detector and digging holes for hour after hour and my muscles were reminding me of that. I had also neglected my sunblock and hat leading to some quite noticeable sunburn. But...

I'd got my first silver for the year and for the new detector! I was satisfied.

Oh yes. I'm going back this coming weekend, too.

Gotta be some more in there. Sitting quietly in their snug little dirt beds, waiting for my coil to pass over them so they can sing their song of silver to my ears.

I can't wait!

The Ghost on Main

The Ghost on Main

Last Saturday was a gem of a day in this part of northeast Ohio. It was a bit chilly and the sky was vast and blue, with only the whisper of high, high cirrus clouds painting the upper reaches of the air. The still-strengthening spring sun lit the earth like a spotlight from the azure heights and every object in view boasted an aura of silvery-gold. It was a day in early April that almost made the gloom of the long preceding winter worth it.

The wife and I were on a bit of a trip on that marvelous Saturday afternoon to a small town north of where we live. We had been invited to share in the surprise 85^th birthday party in honor of the mother of a dear friend. While making plans to attend the party I thought it might be an ideal time to also visit a place I hadn't been to for over 45 years. It was only a few miles up the road from the birthday site, so I thought we'd stop there before returning home.

Why did I want to visit that place on that day? Well...

While at work recently I'd heard talk of a big construction project commencing in a village close to the city I worked in. A plot of land in that village was being cleared to make room for the construction of a four-story Hilton Hotel along with cabins and boathouses on the adjacent lake front. Then, in a following phase of construction, a conference center, restaurants and retail shops were slated to be constructed. Then, after that, possibly a Japanese-style spa, a wellness center and an accredited culinary institute would also be built.

It wasn't so much the development of the land that sat on the edge of Chippewa Lake that interested me as much as the previous use of the land now being cleared for that development.

That site, for exactly one hundred years, had been the home of the Chippewa Lake Amusement Park. And this park, which had been closed and abandoned since 1978, now had its gate open (to allow the dozer's access) and, on weekends, was allowing people to wander through the nearly-cleared park once again without the worry of a trespassing violation.

The Park was established in 1878 on 90 acres abutting Chippewa Lake in Medina County, Ohio. In the 1880's the Miss Chippewa Steamboat operated from a dock at the Park and the first roller coaster in the area was built there. It was a primitive contraption compared to the modern ones you see nowadays, by being a single car on a narrow gauge track with one steep drop. After each ride the workers had to manually push the car back to the top to pick up the next load of Victorian merry-makers. The park's upkeep was minimal in those early days and the liquor flowed freely. The park soon deteriorated with trash strewn everywhere and drunks all over. In 1898 a new owner made many improvements to the park. He first outlawed liquor, then brought in a carousel, which was a major craze in those days, along with many other improvements. Later, this owner's son inherited the park and saw it into the Roaring Twenties, when Chippewa's bandstand hosted live music seven nights a week and frequently sold out every show. It was the place to go in those days.

Here's some facts about Chippewa Lake Park you might find interesting:

It is one of the few natural lakes in Ohio and was not created by damming. The 385-acre lake was created by the glaciers that carved the basin the lake sits in around 12,000 years ago.

The first radio broadcast of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra was at Chippewa Lake in the summer of 1933.

Jungle Larry, animal trainer, expedition leader, conservationist and local legend, was at the park every weekend until 1964 when he moved to another well-known Ohio amusement park, Cedar Point.

In the “Swinging Sixties” there was an annual fan appreciation day held at the park that was hosted originally by WIXY radio 1260 AM and later by WHLO radio 640 AM. They booked some of the biggest stars in rock 'n roll to appear at the bandstand there in the park, including: Tommy James and the Shondells, The Outsiders, Music Explosion, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Neil Diamond, Left Bank, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Chylds. There was also Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and Glass Harp.

The price of admission in the rock 'n roll days? Fifty-cents to a buck and a half. Earlier on it was only a dime.

A horror movie, “Closed for the Season”, was filmed at the abandoned park in 2008. It should be released sometime later this year.

After a wonderful time at my friend's mother's birthday party, the wife and I headed up the road toward Chippewa Lake. I suppose the drive took 15 minutes.

As we turned from Lake Road onto Main Street, the short road that ended at the gates to the park, we could see that we were not the only people on that bright Saturday interested in getting a close look at the old park. There were maybe 20-25 cars parked near the old gate and we could see some people wandering inside the fence at the site. We parked our car, grabbed our camera and walked up to the old entrance gates. A man near there was telling us “visitors” that we were allowed to go in and look around, but to stay out of the buildings. They were unsafe.

As we walked past the gate in the fence that had kept people out of the site since 1978, the first thing we noticed were the bulldozer tracks. They were all over. The trees and some of the brush had already been removed leaving lots of stumps and churned up dirt. Most of the buildings that had been there from the amusement park days were either crumbling ruins or were charred from vandalism fires over the long decades of neglect. On the hillside to our right as we walked up the hill was the remains of the grand ballroom. A bored teen vandal had torched the place in 2002 and most of the building had been lost in the fire. There was still even a faint hint of charcoal smell in the air from that old fire.

On our left as we entered the park sat the Big Dipper roller coaster. Although this ride was in ruin, the tracks were still held aloft by the tough old timbers that had held them for so many years. Trees sprouted between the ties of the tracks in places and you could see that some of the railings had rotted away over the years. Further into the park to the left you could still see the loading/unloading platform for the coaster, the handrails to direct the lines of excited riders still standing in places, even some paint still on the old boards here and there. If you closed your eyes and listened very closely you could almost hear the faint screams of the coaster riders as they started down that first steep hill.

Moving further into the park the view opened up to the lake ahead and a number of collapsing buildings near the waterfront. Boat ride pier? Boathouse? Possibly parts of the old bathhouse. Maybe. It was hard to tell now.

About halfway toward the lake and a bit to the south stood the old ferris wheel. It still stood on its vee-shaped stanchion, looking as if a slight touch or even a stiff breeze might cause it to start turning again. But when you approached closer you saw a large tree had sprouted and grown up completely through the wheel. Its turning days were long over.

If you looked down, from place to place you could see the narrow-gauge tracks that used to allow the old steam engine and tour train to travel around the park. They were mostly gone, but if you looked closely you could see them rising out of the earth for a couple dozen feet then descending again into the ground.

Not too far from the entrance sat the remains of the Tumble-Bug ride. It still even had the four round cars sitting on the tracks, looking like, with a little brush clearing, some oil and some electricity, the thing could start right up. The stories I've heard also say there were only four Tumble-Bugs built in the world, three in the U.S. and one in Europe, and one of them was sitting right there in front of us.

There were other sojourners wandering the grounds that Saturday. Most of them gray-bearded men and gray-haired women, contemporaries of the wife and I. We pilgrims passed each other, looked in each other's eyes and saw a kinship, a sharing and stirring of old memories and common experiences. We'd nod and say, “Been a long time” or “Lots of memories” or “Man, would you just look at this place!” Our aged eyes moved over the grounds, recording, measuring the present to the ghost of the past that lived in our memories. Sometimes they jibed in odd and interesting ways. Most of the times you drew a blank. You'd say to yourself, “I remember this and I remember that but where is this now and where the hell is that?”

I remember going there as a child in the early '50's. I have pictures my dad took that chronicle my attendance there. I remember going there on dates in the mid-'60's. I still remember the girl's names. Dad even talked about visiting there back in the 30's and early 40's in his childhood, before the war. And my grandfather even mentioned it in passing a couple times as how he rode the trolley there in the old, old days.

Chipp had been there for a long time.

But today it was akin to going to a funeral. You looked at the deceased and saw who it was but also who it wasn't. The essence of the individual was gone. All that was left was the husk of what once was, an empty vessel.

Chippewa Lake Park is now like that deceased friend. It's still there. It has the same name. It resides on the same 90 acres it's always sat on. But it's not really there anymore. It's a ghost, a shadow, a mirage of its former self.

It sits in the sunlight and the starlight, in the rain and the snow and the echoing years, dreaming its long, long dreams of the long-ago times. It waits for the sounds of the turnstiles in the old ticket booths to turn again, for the excited voices of the people coming into the park again, for the hum of rides getting up to speed and the shrieks and laughter of the people riding them again. It knows that its last days are here and that, in a few weeks or a few months, what it was will no longer be.

But, of Chippewa Lake Park, this I will certainly believe:

On particular days in the future, years and years in the future, from certain hotel room windows or from the front doors of new beach-side cabins, it will still be possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of a gleaming new roller coaster full of riders roaring with screams of delight. If you squint your eyes a bit out the window of the restaurant you're sitting in you might even catch a sudden sight of a brightly-lit ferris wheel turning and turning in a star-filled summer night. And if you pay close attention as you wander through the newly landscaped grounds of the hotel or school or whatever might be eventually built there, the faint scent of hot dogs, caramel apples and cotton candy will be easily recognized wafting in the breezes from some unknown origin.

And if you listen closely you're likely to hear a rock 'n roll classic come trickling and echoing into your ears from a ghostly bandstand just around an unseen corner from where you are standing.

The ghost on Main Street will live a long, long time, both in our memories and in our hearts.

May she not go quietly into that dark night.

I Think Of Gregg

I Think of Gregg

I met Gregg on a hazy summer afternoon back in the late '80's while I was coin-shooting a schoolyard a block or two from my home. Coin-shooting, you say? What's that? Perhaps I should give you an idea about what I mean by “coin-shooting” before I get on with the story about my friend Gregg.

While serving in the U.S. Air Force, I was stationed for almost two years at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. It's a long story to explain why I, an Air Force Weather Observer, was serving his country in one of the largest Army Posts in the world. Too long to go into at the moment. The short answer was: the Army, at that time, had no weather observers and the Air Force supplied them when they were needed. So there I was, sitting in southwest Oklahoma on the lands where Geronimo used to ride and outlaws used to rob the 5 o'clock train – the land of the Old West out any window. I watched the clouds and sent in reports about them every hour to anyone with a weather teletype. And while performing those duties, my eye was often directed to a small mountain range to my north, the Wichita Mountains. I normally paid them little mind other than to use them as a mileage marker for my observations when the visibility was limited.

But one day I ran across a story in a magazine about the notorious James Gang and their leader Jesse James. This particular story concerned his brother, Frank James, and how, before he had died, he had returned to a campsite in the Wichita Mountains and had recovered some outlaw loot buried in an old coffee pot. The story also talked about another treasure the James Gang had buried in the Wichitas supposedly containing over $180,000. Frank had been looking for that one but hadn't quite remembered exactly where it was located before he passed on. I recall one of the last sentences in the story about the loot. It stated: “Yet treasure seekers still dig in lonely canyons, scan out of the way pinnacles and explore musty smelling caves in quest of Jesse James's two million dollar treasure, secreted in the Wichita Mountains at a time when those hills harbored some of the deadliest outlaws of the West.” As you can see, the dollar amount of the lost robbery money varied as to who told the tale. But the fact remained that Frank James made a recovery of some of the loot back around 1910. Near Saddleback Mountain in the Wichitas.

And the site of the recovery was visible from where I sat day after day watching the clouds. I could look at the mountain range, count one, two, three mountain-tops to the left from the big one, Mt. Scott, and that was the place it was found.

I began dreaming about treasure. I read some more and came across the legend of the “Lost Iron Door of the Wichitas”. This was another supposedly lost treasure up there in the mountains, and that legend had lost Spanish gold, dead men, mule trains of gold coin brought up from Old Mexico and Indian attacks. This particular stash was placed in a cave and the cave was sealed by a large, black, iron door. And, as a lot of legends relate, it was lost. Some say a hiker back in the '30's ran across it. When he went home to get companions and helpers to recover the gold, he couldn't find it again.

Even after many years of searching.

With visions of outlaw loot and minted gold Spanish coins dancing in my head, I spent many an hour wandering around those mountains, poking into holes, clambering over rocks and boulders, scurrying down granite gulches where it seemed the only visitors that had been there in the past 100 years were scorpions and rattlesnakes. Of which there were plenty. I realized after some of these “expeditions” that losing something in there would be extremely easy. Like I almost lost myself there on numerous occasions. Some of the areas in the Wichitas are strewn with rocks and boulders from the size of your fist to the size of semi-trailers or even larger. All jumbled together with no trails, no roads and no signs as to where you were. And areas like that might stretch for mile after mile in all directions.

I never did find any real “treasure” while poking around in those old mountains. But I did discover a virtual treasure, a love for the search and a hunger for the idea of finding lost treasure, which I carried throughout the rest of my life.

My first metal detector wasn't much more than a toy. I'd bought it at Radio Shack for a few dollars and was out one morning in the driveway trying it out, not expecting much. I was swinging it around the gravel, just killing time, when it sounded off with an electronic squeal. I poked around in the driveway for a second where the machine had pointed and pulled out a quarter. I felt a smile start on my lips. Granted, the quarter wasn't old and it was only a half-inch down in the gravel. But... I found treasure! Son-of-a-gun!

And if it was in my driveway – hell, it could be anywhere!

My next detector was a lot better than the first. It was a White's and I had many, many hours of fun swinging this machine all around town. Of course it was much happier detecting aluminum foil, pull tabs, iron junk and a thousand other pieces of detritus that'd found its way into the earth than it was in finding coins. I threw away pounds and pounds of this stuff, wore out numerous pairs of blue jean's knees and sweat buckets of sweat digging small holes in the ground. But I found treasure also. Coin after coin would go into my pocket from digging in the dirt. Some of them pretty nice, too. Silver Mercury dimes, the occasional silver Washington quarter, some Indian Head pennies and lots and lots of modern coins of all denominations.

I was lucky. I was one of the first in my town to have a detector and, therefore, was one of the first to detect over “virgin” ground. I was lucky insofar as I was able to recover a lot of the “easier” finds – the ones not so deep.

I upgraded my detector not long after that and, once again a few years later as my finances allowed. The new machines had discriminators that rejected a lot of the junk I'd been digging with the old ones. I found more coins and “stuff” with each iteration of detector – jewelry, old artifacts, bullets, medals and tokens. Some of the coins were the older and rarer ones, too.

It was along about that time that I was coin-shooting the old high school in town when a skinny man stopped and watched what I was doing. I noticed him and pulled off my headphones to see if he wanted to ask me anything. And did he ever! I think he had about a hundred questions for me immediately and another hundred not long after. He was extremely interested in what I was doing and wanted to know everything about it. I gave up doing much more detecting that day, sat down and we chatted for almost two hours.

I think he caught the bug almost immediately.

He purchased his first detector within a month – one of the earlier White's if I remember correctly. He “cut his teeth” on that one, dug his required hundreds of pounds of trash along with some quite nice finds. We went detecting together many, many times. He was quite the researcher, too. He devoured whatever the library had as far as old maps and transcribed them to new ones where he'd marked out the old sites that might hold coins or even caches – old schools, churches, seldom-used picnic grounds, abandoned family homesteads. We went poking around all over the county looking for “treasure”. We'd even knock on the doors of homes in our hometown that looked old and ask permission to search their yards. We almost always got a “yes” answer, too. Sometimes we went alone – usually because one of us had to work or to do other things beside hunting treasure. Family stuff, this and that. But we got together a lot of weekends in the summertime. He'd hear of a place or I would. And we'd get our little expeditions going and start swinging our detectors.

You probably should know that Gregg wasn't a well man anytime I'd known him. He'd left the Air Force with a medical disability back in the late '60's or early '70's. And he'd suffered (and would continue to suffer) from various cancers and other debilitating diseases. He'd lost a kidney, a testicle and a number of feet of intestine when I'd met him. He would go on and off a colostomy bag a couple times while we were friends. He was ill a lot and had a horrible time trying to gain weight. He was always a skinny guy because of it. He was a year younger than I was and looked a dozen years older. He had very little money and eked out a living from a disability pension.

I felt that Gregg's problems were his and never bothered him much with questions. I just listened when he wanted to talk and gave him as much support as he required, which wasn't much. He did alright for himself, even being as sick as he was a lot of the time.

He was a tough little guy.

And he just loved treasure hunting!

Gregg and I got to be quite good friends over the years. We went coin-shooting as often as we could. Sometimes Gregg was too sick to hunt for more than an hour or so at a time. I was content with that. He genuinely loved poking around in yards and fields with the detector. He wore a nail apron when he was shooting – to carry out the trash he found and to place the “goodies” in also. He was an expert in cutting a trap-door hole in the grass, retrieving the “treasure” and resealing the sod so you'd never know he was there.

After our hunts we'd go to one or the other of our homes and wash up our coins and other finds, exclaim over one or the other, relax and talk about where we'd go the next time.

We always had a great time together.

Once Gregg told me he'd found the location of an old bottle dump and did I want to help him dig around in it? Boy, did I! The dump itself just looked like a small stretch of woods – nothing to show what was buried under the surface of the soil. We took our hand-held digging equipment and spent many hours poking around in that dump, recovering several hundred bottles of varying kinds – medicines, whiskeys, beers, sodas, condiments, even some crockery. It was different than coin-shooting – you had to be much more careful digging in the ground. Most of the time you couldn't see it, but there was LOTS of broken glass in there. I have at least one good scar to prove that! But I also have the most beautiful old glass bottles propped up on my window ledges at home that catch the sun to remind me of our days poking in the dirt for bottles.

Gregg's health never did really get to where you could call him well. It was always up and down for him. It was getting worse and worse in the late '90's and he made a number of trips up to the VA hospital in Cleveland for operations and other therapies. He'd tell me of his treatments there and what a difficult time of it he had. It finally got to a point where he couldn't coin-shoot any longer than a half hour or so at a time, so we planned carefully some hopefully better sites so he could recover something before having to go home to rest.

And we did all right. He got some recoveries, even on the shortie trips.

Gregg had an apartment on the third floor of a low-income housing unit in our home town. It was crammed with the flotsam and jetsam of a life hunting for treasures. He enjoyed haunting the local Goodwill store and buying up little treasures and reselling them in a boutique store in our downtown. He made some money doing that and it gave him something to do other than lament on his health. He also had collections of various things including a bunch of old LP records. He was the first to introduce me to Zydeco music which I now adore.

I visited him as often as I could when he was out of the hospital and in his apartment. He'd moan and groan about his ailments, but he'd always done that for the years and years I knew him, so I never took them too much to heart. That was just Gregg and, even though you knew he was sick, he'd always been that way, so you figured he'd just go on and on.

I should have known better, I guess.

I received the phone call on a sunny day toward the end of July, 2001 from his sister. I immediately knew what was up as soon as I heard her voice. She informed me that Gregg had passed away the day before and would I be available to be a pall bearer for his funeral?

I immediately agreed. After I listened to the arrangements from his sister – the funeral home, the hours, the cemetery – and had hung up the phone it hit me.

Gregg was gone. He'd died in his bed in his apartment, alone as we all are in that hour. He was never going to call me again with ideas for a new hunt. He was never going to stop at the house and chit-chat on a Saturday afternoon. He wasn't going to be there for me to call when I made my “big” find. And he would have been the first on my list for that call.

He was a close friend and losing him was really a gut shot.

Gregg was buried in a beautiful oak coffin with a white satin lining. His thinning gray hair and his salt-and-pepper beard were combed nicely and he had his favorite walking stick in his hands. He'd had an awful time walking toward the end. I helped carry him from the hearse to his last resting place - a veteran's area of the local cemetery where he now rests. He has a simple gray headstone indistinguishable from the other ones nearby with just his name, date of birth and death and military rank. The names on a lot of the nearby stones are familiar. They're friends and acquaintances of Gregg and I who served their country and who chose to be laid with their brothers-in-arms. It's a nice spot and close to the street that runs next to the cemetery. They plant small American flags on each veteran's gravestone on Memorial Day and they stay there until the autumn leaves begin to fall. On trips to say hi to my mom and my gram, who lay nearby, I now say hi to Gregg also.

I like to think he'd appreciate that.

So on beautiful summer days when I take up the old metal detector, slip on the big headphones and listen for it's sweet song of silver while I'm swinging over dewy green grass, I think of Gregg, I think of Gregg.

His grave will be the first place I will visit when I hit the “big” one.

I think he'd like to know.

McCoy's Woods

McCoy's Woods

On the Christmas after my 16^th birthday I received a shotgun from my father as one of my Christmas presents. I'd been hinting and begging for it for months and months and my entreaties had finally bore some fruit. Some people nowadays might think that a shotgun would be a strange gift, even a dangerous one. But my father was a small-game hunter, and he thought it was time for me to have my own gun.

My own gun! Wow! I was like Ralphie in the '83 classic “A Christmas Story”. Except this was NOT a Red Rider B-B Gun. It was a REAL gun.

I still own it, you know. It's not the best shotgun in the world – far from it. It's an old Mossburg 16-gauge with a Vari-choke on the end of the muzzle, probably late-50's vintage. The choke can be twisted to give you full, modified and open chokes. It's clip-fed and bolt-action. Heavy, clunky in a lot of ways and not particularly accurate. The clip had a habit of falling off the gun after every shot. But it was mine and it still holds a warm spot in my memories.

Dad was a good teacher, especially insofar as hunting went. He hunted with his brothers, brothers-in-law, uncles and his dad – most of our extended family liked to hunt, mostly small game like rabbits, squirrels and pheasants. A couple went after deer from time to time but dad wasn't interested in them. For some reason most of the family were 16-gauge shotgun men. When you think about it, it's a little-used size of shotgun. Purists like to go for the 20-gauge, maybe an over-and-under or a smooth auto. The vast majority of shotgunners opt for the popular 12-gauge. A small group like to hunt with the .410. Probably to test their accuracy with the small bore weapon. But for some reason my family liked the 16.

So that's what I opened up that Christmas morning.

Dad believed very strongly in gun safety and taught it before, during and after any trips we made out into the woods or fields. He drummed into me a number of “laws” concerning guns and gun safety. For example: “The gun is ALWAYS loaded until you verify that it isn't.” “Never aim a gun at ANYTHING unless you're ready to kill it.” “The muzzle of the gun ALWAYS faces away from any of your hunting partners.” “Always verify EXACTLY what it is that you are shooting at before pulling the trigger.” He had some more, but those were probably the most important ones that he stressed all the time. He'd been in World War II as an infantryman and was quite familiar with guns.

Besides going hunting with his dad in the pre-WWII years.

When we'd go hunting I'd carry the Mossburg and he'd carry his Fox-Savage side-by-side double-barreled 16-gauge. Some people quibble about carrying a double when you could save the weight by using a single tube with some sort of loader, either a pump or an auto. That's fine if you subscribe to the weight notion. But I always felt that the weight wasn't that much of an issue. And the sight picture as you looked down that WIDE double-barrel at the game you were hunting out in the woods was like looking down a laser straight, two-lane highway. His shotgun was a little on the short side, swung smoothly and quickly and really seemed easier to aim with and to hit your target, especially when comparing it to the Mossburg. It had two triggers, the forward one fired the modified choke barrel and the rear one the full-choke. It was a marvelous rabbit gun. I own this well-used weapon now and cherish it even though I rarely hunt anymore.

I remember going squirrel hunting with dad when I was a new hunter. I remember one of the first trips we took together after I got my own shotgun. Dad liked to get into the woods way before dawn, when the sky was still black and the stars still shone, so that meant getting up really early. He had a “pet” cast-iron skillet he made his breakfasts in and he'd use it to make bacon and eggs for both of us. We'd eat that with toast and coffee (for him) and milk (for me), then load up the car with our hunting coats, the shotguns and some 'number six' shot shells. It was almost always on a Saturday morning when we went out, as he worked two jobs during the week and rarely ever took any vacation time. He liked to hunt squirrels in a woods north of our hometown. He called it “McCoy's Woods” so it must have belonged (or used to belong) to someone named McCoy. I don't think I ever knew. He apparently had permission for us to be there.

We'd park next to a barn on the property, get out of the car, put our coats on and pick up the shotguns. It was a bit of a walk across a field before we hit the wood line and it was a dark walk. We'd usually have wet boots from the dew by the time we got into the trees. We'd load our guns at that point and walk quietly and slowly until he reached what he thought might be a good spot. It was generally near some nut trees – walnuts, oak, hickory. The hickories seemed best. We'd sit near each other, stay quiet and wait for the woods to wake up.

You'd generally hear some of the birds awaken first. They'd start calling to each other, squawking, chirping, marking the boundaries of their territories, greeting the first hint of light in the sky. There was usually some ghostly mist slowly rising from the cold, wet ground and evaporating when it hit the treetops. If you were lucky, the day was close to windless. We liked those days particularly well as squirrel hunting requires a lot of listening and looking. Swaying branches and wind noise made it a lot more difficult – a quiet woods was the best. We'd sit there silently, watching the black woods begin to gray a bit and then a touch of color would start appearing as the false dawn approached. Along about then, if you were lucky in your selection of spot, you'd generally hear a nut drop. You'd turn your head toward where the sound originated and listen really, really hard. And wait. And wait some more. Then another one might drop near where the first one did. Hmm... Interesting. Just might be ol' mister squirrel starting to cut some hickories and have him some breakfast. We'd generally stand up then and slowly and very, very quietly ease our way a bit closer to that area.

If we were lucky we'd soon spot one of the furry rodents up in a tree. You'd usually just see a quiver of his tail, just a twitch, but that was usually enough to pick him out. You'd slowly and quietly move closer until you were close enough for a decent shot. On some of my earlier hunting trips with him, Dad sometimes would have to point out the game to me. He'd raise his hand and point his finger. “Do you see him?” he'd say. “Right there where the branch kinda makes a vee. Can you see him now?” I'd look and look and look and then, like some sort of magic, I'd see the squirrel.

“Yeah, dad, yeah. I see 'm now!” I'd slowly raise the Mossburg, lay the fore sight on him and pull the trigger. The resulting boom was very loud in the still morning. If we were lucky and the Mossburg anywhere close to accurate, the game would drop quickly to the ground and we'd go pick him up. We'd smile at each other while I slipped the animal in my coat's game pocket.

I can still see dad tapping out one of his Camel cigarettes, putting it into his mouth and lighting it up with his old Zippo after taking a squirrel. We'd relax for a minute, smiling, talking quietly, enjoying the moment, letting the woods calm down after the shot. Soon the birds would begin to squawk and call again and the animals would go back to ignoring us.

Then a nut might drop somewhere else nearby. Or one of the furry beasts might start barking. They did that sometimes when they'd see you before you saw them. They were scolding you for sneaking around in the woods. At least that's what dad said. Hunting a barking squirrel was always fun. Sometimes we'd even employ a squirrel call, trying to temp the little buggers to respond. This was a little wood and rubber device that, when you tapped on the rubber bellows, would make a sound remarkably similar to a squirrel bark. And sometimes, if a nearby squirrel heard it and was incensed enough, he would answer. I never did find out whether he was trying to say 'hello' or he was saying 'get the hell out of my territory'. It was always a chuckle to “talk” one over if you could. They were curious little beasts and would try to investigate what was going on.

If it was a good day we'd get 3 or 4 (or maybe more) squirrels and head on home. Dad always made sure you helped him clean the game you'd harvested. That was part of the bargain of hunting. You only killed what you were going to eat and you didn't waste any of it. He had a good technique for cleaning the game and I use his method even now. After we had cleaned and gutted the carcasses, we'd take them to mom and she'd put 'em in a pot of salted water and let them soak in the 'fridge overnight to, as she'd say, remove the gaminess from them. Then, usually on Sunday for dinner, she'd cut them in pieces, roll them in flour and fry 'em up. Along with mashed potatoes and gravy and peas or string beans.

Don't let anyone tell you that squirrels (and rabbits and pheasants) aren't good eating. They are. Very much so. And they do NOT taste like chicken. Chicken tastes like chicken. Squirrels taste like squirrels. It's a rich, dark meat and quite tasty. We were not a rich family and the extra meat for the table on the weekends was quite welcome. It never went to waste and was an expected autumn meal.

I even remember getting a lead pellet or two of the buckshot in my mouth that we'd missed when cleaning them. It was no big deal to spit it out and keep on eating.

I've often been disgusted when listening to someone complain about the barbarity of hunting, how the taking of an animal's life with a gun was an atrocity and how it should be banned. This conversation usually took place while the complainee was filling his mouth with beef. Or chicken. Or pork.

Don't. Give. Me. That. Crap!

At least the hunter is involved in the ENTIRE food gathering process. He KNOWS where his meat came from. He KNOWS how it was harvested, how it was cared for before cooking. He is aware of the entire cycle of how his meat came to be on the plate before him. He knows that the plastic-wrapped piece of beef in the grocery store was a living and breathing animal not too many days before and he's thankful and aware of its sacrifice to provide him nourishment. He's aware that he's an omnivore and that he eats meat. He's NOT ashamed of it.

Enough said about that. I wanted to tell you a bit about how pleasant it was to go hunting with my dad and didn't actually want to go off on a diatribe against anti-hunters.

I never got to spend much time with dad when I was growing up. He worked a LOT in those days, so it was always a great treat to have him all to myself on our little hunting trips. We could talk or not talk as the mood struck – we were comfortable with both. He could impart fatherly wisdom with his words and his actions. He could teach you the way life operated by the way he humanely harvested a squirrel, the business-like way he cleaned the animal and the enjoyment he took at the dinner table with the game as the guest of honor.

I learned lots and lots from him without a word being spoken.

On several of our last squirrel hunting trips, when he was getting on in years and had some difficulty getting into the woods, I'd make sure to really savor the trip. I knew in my heart that there wouldn't be too many more of them. I cherished every moment out there with him, father and son, sharing a bond that was forged in the primitive mists of time when the first hunter took his son out with him to hunt. Being in the woods early in the morning at the beginning of autumn is every bit as spiritual and breathtaking to me as is a beautiful church or cathedral is on Christmas morning. The quietness of the dawn as black night slides softly into greyness which is then, in turn, slowly overtaken by the coming sun. The first peek of the sun's light as it illuminates the woods from the bottom, moving the shadows back to the west. The finally arisen sun's golden rays shining through the misty green leaves which are sprinkled here and there with the flaming reds and the vivid yellows and oranges of the turning fall leaves. The perfection of everything in its place and in its time.

If heaven exists, I pray that it will resemble Old Farmer McCoy's woods on a sun bejeweled early autumn morning. With dad waiting for me in there next to a shaggy ol' hickory tree.

I'd be content with that.

Game On

Game On

So, maybe I am a bit bloodthirsty. Maybe I do enjoy peering down the barrel of a weapon pointed at a bad guy, gleefully pulling the trigger and watching him splatter all over the place. Perhaps I might be a bit too fond of rolling a fragmentation grenade into a room full of no-goodniks and listening to the explosion and the screams.

I like it. It gives me a strange kind of pleasure that's missing in the rest of my life.

Of course, my dear reader, I'm talking about playing a computer game. The very idea of actually doing those horrible things in real life is completely preposterous.

I am a fan of what's called FPS video games. The FPS stands for First Person Shooter. It's a variety of video game where you see the action on the game screen as if through the eyes of the hero, and what he sees is what you also see. Generally there's the snout of some kind of weapon in front of you plus an aiming point for that weapon. As you walk around (or crawl or crouch or ride a hang glider) the viewpoint varies. When you click your left mouse button the weapon fires and, if you've aimed correctly, a bad guy gets shot. And who are the bad guys? That depends on the game. In some games he's a enemy soldier, perhaps a Nazi. Or maybe an alien. In others he could be a member of an opposing combat team. Lots of times the bad guy is one of a pantheon of monsters, their ferocity and ugliness only limited by the game programmer's imagination. In a “normal” game of this type it's common for the enemies encountered early in the game to be easier to kill or overcome than those you have to kill later in the game. In lots of games of this type you encounter “bosses” or particularly tough opponents at the end of each “chapter” of the game. Some of these bosses require you to do special things to kill them. Others just require lots and lots of hits from your weapons to bring them down. Most of them are real pains in the behind.

The latest in the series of these games which I've completed is named “Far Cry”. It won some awards as being the action adventure game of the year a few years ago. It's pretty straightforward as far as these games go. Your main enemies are mercenaries, with the occasional genetic monster thrown in for spice. What was great about this game was that it was played in a background of islands. You could swim from island to island or steal a boat. You could walk pretty much anywhere on each island and the bad guys could be almost anywhere. And if they saw you, they'd start hunting you, circling around behind you, using cover and working together. They could be incredibly tough.

You started out early in the game by getting a pistol and that's what you used to overcome your first mercenary enemies. You then could upgrade your weapon with one of the ones the enemies had dropped. You eventually had choices from your original pistol to a bigger pistol, several varieties of machine guns, assault rifles, sniper rifles with multiple-power scopes and eventually, hand-held rocket launchers. You could even use a machete for some incredibly bloody close-in work.

As you would play and encounter baddies, you would be killed yourself many, many times. This was normal and expected. You had to learn the techniques of besting your adversaries and those techniques would vary and change as the game progressed. You learned a lot of them by getting killed. A lot.

Some of the enemies you could shoot from a long distance away with the sniper rifle (good for clearing guards in towers). Others you could sneak up behind and shoot in the back (strangely gratifying). Still others required the John Wayne approach where you just ran into the group of enemies and started shooting them down. And hoped you'd kill them all before you were, yourself, done in. This melee approach was lots of fun and I used it from time to time.

Each chapter of the game gave you more information about the back story and what you were actually trying to achieve, vis-a-vis the adventure you were playing through. There were evil scientists, varied groups of mercenaries who ranged from pretty stupid to doggone dangerous, monkey-hybrids and other freaky cloned animal hybrids who were fast, loud and vicious as hell. Each chapter brought you closer and closer to the masterminds and ultimate biggie who was behind most of the nastiness.

The sound work on this particular game was extraordinary. You could hear the mercs talking amongst themselves or swearing at you as they attacked, the water sounded like water when you swam or waded in it, the leaves rustled when you walked through them. And the mutant creatures who were trying to kill you would growl and roar and scream and scare the living be-jesus out of ya. That was usually when you were quietly sneaking down some dark, dismal hallway in a underground fortress on one of the islands. There were occasions where my hand would shake so much from one of those growling attacks from the rear I could hardly aim my mouse hand and push the button to kill the beast. I got killed a lot from those son-of-a-guns.

During play you had a couple of meters you kept one eye on. One was your health, one your stamina and one your armor. When you would run or when you held your breath underwater your stamina would decline. When you took hits from an enemy, your armor would go down to zero. Then your health would decline to zero also. At that point you'd die. Sometimes it'd take a bunch of shots to finish you off, sometimes only one. That depended on what you were getting hit with. You could get hit with a lot of pistol shots and still keep fighting. But one shot with a rocket and you were toast. You could find first aid packs laying around that'd restore your health and you used them as you found them. Sometimes the enemy would shed his armor when he was killed and you could add that to yours. You could also find scads of ammo laying around for the various weapons you might be carrying.

During a few of the chapters of “Far Cry” I found myself getting very frustrated. I'd be getting killed over and over and over again trying to achieve some goal. And one of the peculiarities of this game was that you couldn't just save the game at any point like a lot of games let you do. Saves would only occur where they were programmed and they liked to establish them just after a big battle. And you didn't know exactly where those save points would be. You just had to keep playing until you achieved one of them. I grew frustrated enough I installed a cheat on this game whereby I could do an “instant” save pretty much anywhere in the game. I don't consider this a cheat, really. It's just a feature that “should” have been in the game from its inception. And it helped. A LOT.

I always chuckle when I read reviews of games I'm contemplating buying. They always say something like, “A good 10-12 hours of playing time.” Ha!

A good 4-6 weeks of playing time is more like it for me! Of course I'm not fanatically playing 10-12 hours a day and eating in front of the computer like a teenager might do. For me it's more like an hour or two here and there. Plus you have to realize that I'm not a 15-year-old kid with the reflexes of a king cobra any more, either. Those kids might be able to mow down dozens of mercs in a single burst of machine gun fire precisely aimed. I gotta see the buggers first, try not to flinch as they start shooting at me (or attacking from a dark corner with claws and humongous fangs) and click the fire button as fast as I can with my old, stiff fingers.

But then again, I'm not really in a hurry, am I? The baddies can wait.

I gave a little thought after finishing “Far Cry” recently as to the issue of violence in video games leading to violence in real life. You read about so-and-so having gone nuts from playing violent video games and then going out and performing some violent act. The media loves to paint all gamers with the violence-leads-to-violence brush. I just want to go on record here and now as saying I do NOT subscribe to that conclusion. I've NEVER been tempted to take a shotgun (or a rocket launcher, for that matter) and gun down anyone in real life. Never! It's never even crossed my mind. Apparently I, along with the 99.9999% of people who play these games are EASILY able to differentiate between pixels of light on a video screen and flesh-and-blood folks.

But, of course, it's the .0001% that grab the headlines.

Wanna know something? Most of those nut jobs would have done that or something similar even without the addition of a video game in their lives. They were doing actions like that long before the advent of those games. Maybe the pundits attributed the abnormality of those individuals in those days before violent video games to some other external stimuli. It seems like the “explainers” want to point their fingers at something, doesn't matter what.

My question is, why don't we just accept the fact that a tiny minority of us are nuts from the get-go and let it lie?

I do wonder though, from time to time, in the dead of the night... Am I having too much fun playing those games? Do I get too much of a visceral thrill from plugging a baddie? Am I grinning like an idiot too much as I survey the carnage I caused to the enemy?

Am I a candidate to climb a bell tower somewhere with a high-power rifle in hand?

And sometimes I wonder.

In His Own Words

In His Own Words

I talk to myself occasionally. Generally not long conversations, but I do ask myself questions once in a while. Who, what, where and when are the usual culprits and the answers to those questions are usually close at hand. It's the whys that really cause you to think. And a “why” question came up recently that I've been thinking about ever since.

Why do I write?

Why do I put pen to paper (or electrons to computer storage as this would properly be described)? Why do I sit down and write stories or reminiscences or just thoughts and post them on the blog in front of the critical gaze of friends and strangers alike? Why do I take the time to organize my thoughts and then place them in a coherent fashion in a piece of writing? And yes, this really is a legitimate question that a lot of people who write, even a little bit as I do, are wont to ask themselves from time to time. I mean, I could be doing something else. I could be reading, which I do a lot of anyway but I could be doing a lot more of. I could be working and making extra money in the time I spend pounding on a computer keyboard. I could even be sleeping, or goofing off or doing any one of a million other things with these hours that I put into doing what you're reading now.

I could be. But I'm not.

I've thought about it a lot recently and have possibly come up with a few reasons that feel like they might be close to the truth.

Are you at least a tiny bit curious? If so, read on...

First and most simply, I do it because I like to. I enjoy putting words together that make sense and convey a thought. I like the way the words look when they're all strung together into sentences and paragraphs. And I marvel that they originated in some dusty recess of my cluttered mind – some dark corner only lit by an aged 40-watt bulb, hiding under a box covered in cobwebs.

I also like the order, may I even say the art, of a well-crafted sentence or paragraph or story.

It pleases me.

Next I do it to chronicle memories that might well be lost. I'm not getting any younger, or at least that's what I've been told, and a lot of the things I write down I may not remember tomorrow or the next day. Not that they are of any import, but it might be nice in later years to pull up these scribblings and refresh my possibly failing memory at that time with them. And it's certainly a way to gather together pieces of my life into one place where they can be accessed. Perhaps I'll win the lottery next week or be called upon to do some valiant deed whereby someone might then be interested in how this lottery winner or this hero lived his life. It's not very likely but it is in the realm of possibility.

I do it to pass on to my son some things that we may never talk about. Or, in some cases, to reiterate stories or thoughts that I've related to him in the past which I wanted to revisit. My son and I have never had a comfortable relationship and, by doing this, I feel I might be able to communicate to him some memories that might allow him to see things in himself he might otherwise not recognize. He might not think he takes after his old man so much, but one day he might read or remember these words in relation to some circumstance he might be in and he might say, “Damn. Dad used to do/say that!”

It happens to me all the time.

I write for the sheer love of the mechanics of placing letters together to make the words – the correct words – and to place those words together in the precise way as to convey the message and the spirit of the message. It's difficult to describe the mental acrobatics necessary to achieve this but the result, when it's done correctly, sings a song to you when you read it. Metaphorically sing, that is. I couldn't hold a tune to save my soul. Perhaps that's another reason why I write?

To let my fingers sing from the keyboard.

Maybe I do it because I have to. Now don't laugh. Habits are laid down by repetition – good and bad. And once a habit has been initiated and has been repeated many, many times, stopping that habit is difficult. Write a bunch of stories yourself, receive some positive feedback and encouragement and you might have trouble not writing also. Or if this compulsion isn't actually a habit, then maybe it's some other itch that's begging to be scratched – some psychological addiction that manifests itself in the urge to write. Perhaps my psychologist friend might describe, in full Latin no less, the exact compulsion that drives it. She's always been helpful that way.

Hell, maybe it's just that I like to type, I'm good at it and I hate typing THE QUICK RED FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY BROWN DOG over and over. I kind of doubt that, actually. Typing on a keyboard, when you are competent, becomes just a vehicle that you use to place your thoughts on the computer screen. You generally don't even think about the mechanics of striking keys. You just think AND SHE SAID and the words “and she said” appear on the screen. Simple, eh?

But maybe, deep down, it's a genetic thing where an individual tries to leave something that will go on after he is no more. A legacy, if you will. Even a tiny effort such as these blogs. Someone, down the line a hundred or a thousand years from now might see these words and say, “That dude was right on. That's exactly how I feel too.”

It isn't Hemmingway and it isn't Steinbeck but that'd be so cool!

Or an ancestor 5 or 6 generations removed might stumble on these words and marvel at the antique notions of his great-great to the umpteenth generation grandpa/uncle/cousin.

As an infant in the fraternity of writers, I am constantly amazed at the gift a lot of them have and how prolific they are. For example, I recently became reacquainted with an old friend from my days in the Air Force. He has undertaken the task of writing a column/newsletter on line, he's done it for the past two years and he does it weekly! And the columns he creates are quite readable and always interesting. But the operative word I want to stress here is WEEKLY! I have not reached the point where I'm comfortable enough with my skills or my fortitude to guarantee some words on paper on a schedule. I am still only writing when the muse, as they say, strikes. She sometimes bites a couple times a week. But more likely it's a couple times a month.

I suppose if I were a journalist and had to write every day it would become commonplace and mundane. A job. A chore. But I'm glad it isn't yet. Every time I sit down to a blank piece of “paper” it's an adventure, a fascinating challenge to see if I can, again, come up with something I'm not too disappointed in and which I am not too squeamish about placing in this blog.

And so I approach the end of this communication and I look at the words above this line. Are they readable? Are they clear and do they make sense? Are they interesting, even if they're on a subject that might not be everyone's “cup of tea?” Are they acceptable to me?

Do they sing? Even a little?

I think so. I hope so.

Off Mouse Island

Off Mouse Island

Being in a position where the distinct possibility exists that you might lose your life can cause you to reflect, albeit briefly, on the circumstances that brought you to that point, and the stupidity that can cloud the minds of usually half-way intelligent people. As I sat in the rocking boat with a torrential downpour beating against my unprotected head and lightning bolts crashing into the water all around me, I thought back at the steps that had lead me to that position. And which might prove fatal.

It was the mid-'70's and I'd been married only a few years. My wife and I had recently visited a big boat show up in Cleveland and, after touring the sleek sailboats and gorgeous motor yachts, had caught a small dose of the “going out on the water in boats” fever . Obviously we didn't have the capital to invest in one of the biggies we'd drooled over, but the cash situation wasn't bad enough that we couldn't look around at some smaller, used watercraft. It wasn't easy finding a lot of boats in the landlocked portion of Ohio where we live, but there are a few man-made lakes not too far away, so there were boat dealers around. You just had to look for them. We visited a number of dealers both near and far and finally stopped at a small dealer at a crossroads of a place about 15 miles south of our hometown with the appropriate name of Lakeville. There we found a nice little used boat that seemed to be calling our names. It was a 14 foot MFG fiberglass boat with an elderly 40-horse Johnson outboard on the the transom. The price was well within that which we felt we could afford, so we bought it and made arrangements for it to be prepped and we would pick it up in a week.

The wife and I had been smart about making ourselves more educated about boat handling and had taken a U. S. Coast Guard Auxiliary boating and seamanship course at the local vocational school on the basics of boating. It was a very interesting, intensive course and we were apt students. We learned about PFD's (personal flotation devices – life vests to the uninitiated), anchoring (what kind of anchors there were, what were best for what kind of boating, how much rope was needed, etc.), rules of the road (passing other boats, etc.) and what the lights on the boat and the lights at harbor entrances meant . We looked at navigational maps and learned the different symbols and we charted imaginary courses here and there. We learned about safety and the uses of horns and flares, boat hooks and life rings. We learned what equipment was required on every boat and how to trailer, load, unload and dock the boat. We studied everything necessary to get ready for boat ownership.

Almost everything.

We picked up the boat on a sunny Saturday morning and took it home to admire. It was shiny and green and white and looked fabulous, at least to us. In actuality it was just a little boat with a medium-sized motor that we were just going to use for fishing and putting around in. But it sure looked nice sitting outside our home on it's trailer and begging us to take it to some water somewhere. Soon!

I thought it needed a name. I thought on it for a while, trying to come up with the right one and finally came up with a moniker that I felt was appropriate. (I knew I couldn't name it after an old girlfriend!) My wife and I, during that time period, used to go to visit her grandparents in a larger city about 30 miles away and play bingo with them at a local American Legion (40 et 8) bingo hall. On our first trip to play bingo with them we won a hundred dollars on the last game of the evening. Since that wasn't long before we'd bought the boat, we had used that money as part of the payment on the boat. So I thought she should be named “Bingo”! I went and bought the appropriate letters and applied them to our new baby. After loading all the safety equipment that we knew were required to have on board, we were ready for the water!

Our first trip was to a lake called Clearfork Reservoir, not too far from my in-law's home. We picked up my father-in-law and the three of us headed off to the lake. On arrival we made sure to have the boat inspected and got an Ohio watercraft inspection sticker to make us compliant with Ohio boating laws. Then we launched and had a marvelous day on the water. We putted around the lake and dropped a line here and there. If I remember correctly we caught a mess of crappies and had a fish fry at home not long afterward. “Bingo” performed fine.

It was a great day. It was also a sunny day, a calm day, the lake wasn't terribly big and we could see both shores. We neglected to realize that might not be the case all the time.

A few weeks later I had some time available to go fishing and I asked my father if he'd be interested. He asked me where I was planning on going and I said, “Lake Erie.” I was itching to get on the big lake. He was immediately interested and we headed up one Saturday morning. It was a “guys only” day and I left my wife at home.

It was just the two of us.

I noticed on our approximately 2-hour trip up to the big lake that the clouds had started moving in and the day wasn't near as bright as it had started out being. I tried to ignore the deteriorating day. We were going fishing, dammit! We arrived at the West Harbor boat ramp on Catawba peninsula around noon (we hadn't left home real early) and launched little “Bingo”. Dad held the boat close to the ramp as I parked the car and trailer. I jumped in shortly thereafter and we were off.

The passage through West Harbor to the open lake took us maybe a half-hour as it's a no-wake zone and we had to go ultra slow as to not rock the big cabin cruisers that were docked all along that waterway. The owners would yell at you if you tried to gun it, so we were careful. As we were heading toward the lake entrance we were concerned to see that most of the boats that were moving were coming in from the lake. We seemed to be the only boat heading out.

This probably should have concerned us more than it did.

We entered the open lake shortly thereafter, hung a left and headed north along the eastern shore of Catawba Peninsula. If you hold out your right hand and stick your thumb up like you're giving the OK sign, you can visualize our course. West Harbor is the crease your thumb makes with the rest of your hand. We were traveling up the crease then up the right side of the thumb to the tip and then a little bit further out into the lake to a tiny speck of land called Mouse Island. I'd heard that the fishing was good near there and had decided that Mouse would be our destination. Plus we were in a small boat and I was uneasy getting too far away from land.

It's actually not a long voyage from the entrance of West Harbor to the vicinity of Mouse Island, so it didn't take us very long to get there. We anchored and put our lines in the water. We'd caught a few fish and I was getting into the spirit of our fishing trip when dad mentioned that it was really getting dark to the west. I looked up and my blood chilled. It was really dark to the west and we could hear the rumbling of thunder approaching. West is where the weather comes from around there, so I knew we were in the path of whatever was heading our way.

There were no other boats around.

A small observation, if I may. My little 14 foot boat was an open boat. It had a covered bow but that was really only a storage space. 85% of the boat was open to the sky. A fact that was soon very apparent.

It started to rain.

Then the rain got harder. Then it got really, really hard and the waves picked up substantially. I suppose it was the lightning that really got us spooked. We figured it probably wasn't a good idea to have fishing lines in the water while the electricity was flashing and the thunder was booming very, very close to us. We reeled in and I pulled up the anchor. We were planning on heading back to the car. Dad said, “I guess we better start bailing a bit.” I looked back in the boat and noticed about 5 or 6 inches of water sloshing around in the boat. I gulped and agreed with him. I didn't think our boat could sink as I was pretty sure there was flotation foam in the hull but I wasn't totally sure. So he was in the back using our coffee can “pee” bucket and scooping out water as fast as he could. I'm not sure if he was keeping ahead of the rain or not. I had fired up the motor and had headed... where?

The rain had reduced visibility to about a 20-foot circle around the boat. On the way up to the fishing site we had never lost sight of land. I knew we were only a few hundred feet (probably) from the edge of Catawba Peninsula but... which direction? I knew we needed to head south.

I then realized the one item of equipment that the boat did not have. It didn't have a compass. A stupid damn $10 compass.

And that lack might be the difference between getting back or not making it at all!

I turned the boat to what I thought was the correct course and slowly started moving, worrying about the rocky shoreline along the peninsula. The rain was still coming down in buckets and the lightning was still crashing all around us. I shivered from the wet clothes and the unnerving thought of a lightning bolt hitting the boat smack dead center and cooking the both of us. I thought we were heading south, which was the way we should have been going. Dad thought we were veering more easterly and should come about further to the right. We were drenched to the skin and hadn't a clue which way was the way back.

It was pretty scary.

All at once we saw a sailboat nearby on a course similar to ours, running with full sail through the storm. We putted over to them and hollered to see if they knew where we were.

Of course they had to be all French speakers! Just our luck. We caught one word which was Lakeside. I wasn't even sure where that was but figured it wasn't where we wanted to go. (I checked later. It wasn't.) So we veered off and watched the sailboat disappear back into the rain shower.

It disappeared fast.

I motored a bit further and realized that I had no idea where I was and where I was headed so I just idled for a while, helped dad bail water and tried to ignore the electrical storm we were in the middle of. And prayed a bit.

Not too long after our rendezvous with the sailboat the rain slacked off and then stopped. The storm was over and we could see again! We discovered that our boat, which I had figured to be headed south or at least south-ish, was headed directly east and pointed toward the middle of Lake Erie through the shipping lanes and on toward Canada. Landfall was a long, long damn way that direction.

We continued to bail and finally got the majority of the sloshing water out of the boat. We then sat and looked at each other, smoked a cigarette and thought about our recent adventure. The sun had come out. It was becoming a fine late afternoon.

We looked at each other again. Well... Yes, we'd just had what anyone might call a close call. Yes, it could have been not so good for us. Yes, we could have possibly drowned. But... But...

We were sitting on a boat on Lake Erie in a great fishing area. We had plenty of bait left. We liked to fish. We didn't drown. We might not be able to do this again for a long time. So...

We motored over to the buoy that marked the entrance to West Harbor and anchored nearby. We promised ourselves that if the weather got nasty again we'd zip directly back to the harbor and safety. It was 2 minutes west.

We went back fishing and caught a mess of perch. They were biting well after the storm which was welcome but a bit unusual. We fished until almost dark then motored back to the dock, put the boat back on the trailer and headed off to a fish-cleaning place we knew of where we waited a long time to get our fish cleaned.

By the time we returned home it was almost midnight and my step-mother and my wife were agitated beyond words. Dad and I both had to talk fast and quick to keep out of the doghouse.

Of course that didn't work.

The next day I went into town and bought a compass for the boat and installed it. It looked so nautical screwed to the dash of the craft. I couldn't wait to see it in action.

I waited. And waited. And waited.

And, of course, I never needed it again.