Wednesday, May 25, 2016

HARD CRAZY LESSONS

My friend Rick – this was years before he earned his “Crazy Rick” sobriquet – was sprinting in the dark between our pup tents when lightning exploded a nearby tree. The jolt knocked him flat in the flooded field. Thunder was immediate and deafening. Over the raging torrent, from the other tent Arnold yelled, “Damn! That was close. You all right?” Rick crawled into my tent, seemingly stunned.

The vicious downpour had surprised us just past sunset. We were camped on a weedy hilltop overlooking the swampy edge of Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay. The storm had howled off open water bringing wind, nonstop thunder and lightning, and a deluge as if the big lake was emptying on top of us.
Rick was soaked and scared but unhurt. To the feeble light of candles, we stared at each other sitting in an inch of rising water, my canvas tent no match for the fusillade pounding outside. What were we thinking?

Still in high school that spring month, we had ridden our bikes 65 miles from our homes in Flint in order to camp next to the Great Lakes. Check out the scenery. Maybe take a swim. We had pictured a nice sandy beach, not a mosquito-filled marsh. Our ignorance was matched by our crappy gear. Take my bicycle, for example.
Our family was poor. Few got rich working in the Fifties and Sixties as a fire-and-brimstone preacher and that was my dad’s calling. When I was nine years old, my parents scrimped and finally bought me my first bicycle – a shiny red-and-white Schwinn. I paid half.

Later, we moved from our bucolic, Indiana farm town where you didn’t have to lock your doors, to gritty Flint, Michigan. The first time I rode to the city’s swimming pool without a bike lock, that Schwinn got stolen. Buying me a replacement was out of the question.
Taking pity, a lady in our church gave me a bicycle – actually, the pieces of a bicycle that had been taken apart and packed in grease in a box in her garage since World War II. I eventually figured out how to put back together that clunky, balloon-tired, single-speed bike, and rode it all through high school. Including on our ridiculous trek to Saginaw Bay.

Of course we should have known better. Even though there was no 24-7 weather reporting back then, the fierce winds we battled all the way north on M-15 should have given us a clue that we were headed into trouble.
My antique bike’s frame and steel fenders were weighted down with camping gear, including a humongous sleeping bag and heavy tent – the kind of equipment you get when you have to buy the cheap stuff.

We struggled northward, Rick and me on our overloaded bikes, walking and pushing them when the gale in our faces became overwhelming. Arnold rode ahead on his moped – a glorified bicycle fitted with a sputtering motor that could reach a top speed of maybe 25 mph – then would stop and let us catch up. Exhausted, we reached the edge of Saginaw Bay barely in time before dark to find a weedy farm field to pitch our tents.
We survived that ferocious, sleepless night but realized in the dawn light that we were finished. Everything was sodden. Arnold’s moped was wet and wouldn’t start. All I wanted was my bed. We agreed that Rick and Arnold would stay with our gear and I would ride home and send Arnold’s father to the rescue.

I left my friends and pedaled south through the flat farmlands. Early Sunday morning and the highway deserted. Soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Mile after mile. So tired. The blacktop was starting to dry in the early-morning breeze, and I discovered that it was warmer than my body. Several times I got off my bike and lay flat on the pavement, absorbing a few calories of warmth, trying not to fall asleep and get run over.
I arrived home so dazed that I could barely talk and collapsed in bed. Fortunately, Rick and Arnold had found a pay phone and were eventually rescued later that day, no thanks to me. It would not be our last foolhardy adventure together.
* * *
The winter following our aborted bike trip, the three of us went camping near Flint in the Hadley Hills, a wooded, semi-wild, state-owned land of moraines and kettle lakes – remnants of the mile-thick glaciers that melted away from Michigan 10,000 years ago. I had my new driver’s license and drove us through snow drifts to the back country in my parents green and white ’54 Ford. We lugged our mishmash of camping gear into the woods and tamped down snow for a campsite. We cut pine branches for insulation under our tents like I’d read in my outdoor magazines.

After the sun went down the temperature plummeted to ten below zero. Our water and eggs froze solid. We managed to stay reasonably warm huddled like mummies in our sleeping bags while wearing all our clothes, keeping just our mouths and noses exposed. The fog of my breath froze on the tent fabric, turning to ice crystals that rained back down.
Sometime after midnight, crunching boots and a probing flashlight on the tent walls woke us. Arnold’s worried-sick father somehow had tracked our footprints in the snow from the deserted spot where we left our car to retrieve us. He wasn’t pleased when Rick and I refused deliverance, but insisted on dragging Arnold home with him. From our tent we listened to them packing up to the light of a hissing Coleman lantern, then tromping away into the darkness.

Rick and I should have gotten out when the getting was good. Heavy snow arrived in the morning. By the time we got our frozen tent packed up and the Ford loaded, the road out was nearly impassable. At the bottom of a valley between steep hills we got stuck, miles from the paved highway. We walked until we came to a farm house. No one was home, so we rummaged around an outbuilding and discovered a pair of tire chains. We borrowed them and managed to get the Ford moving. When we passed the farm house we were surprised to see the owners were home. Rather than stop and thank them for the loan, Rick flung the chains into the driveway as we flew by. What must they have thought?
* * *
The next to last time I saw Rick was at my mother’s funeral reception more than fifteen years ago. In the years since our teenage misadventures, Rick had turned himself into “Crazy Rick.”

He definitely looked crazy – black hair and beard long and wild like he was channeling his West Virginia hill-country kin. Short, square-framed, and muscular, he likely would have been a coal miner in an earlier day. As we chatted at the reception in the church gymnasium, Rick’s dark eyes darted about the room, betraying the paranoia that had crept into his brain over the years. He didn’t stay long.

When I went off to college after high school, Rick had joined the Navy. Soon after he told me, “Biggest mistake of my life,” and shared his detailed, year-long plan to convince the Navy’s shrinks that he was nuts in order to get himself discharged. He said he had convinced everyone that he was the perfect sailor, but now was going to start acting, little by little, like a crazy person. I’ve forgotten the details, but his “act” worked perfectly. The Navy gave him a “general discharge” (preserving his G.I. benefits), and he returned to Michigan to attend college. That’s how we came to call him Crazy Rick, though not to his face.
After college, we went separate ways. I started a career as an environmental activist. Rick got married, had some kids, and lived in squalor, based on what I saw during one brief visit. In a moment of local fame, he made the front page of the Lansing newspaper when he cut in half two surplus schoolhouse buildings he bought for next to nothing from the township, intending to move each half down the highway and then reassemble them – I don’t remember to where or if he ever succeeded.
Our last, slightly scary meeting came sometime after our funereal encounter. One day out of the blue I got a call from him at my work in Ann Arbor. He seemed agitated, and insisted on seeing me as soon as possible. I suggested a late lunch at a local café, and he readily agreed. Yes, I assured him, they served vegan.

When I arrived, Rick was waiting for me out front. Within minutes of going in, he was loudly complaining to restaurant staff about our delay in getting seated. It promised to be a long lunch. Once we had ordered I pressed him on the purpose of his sudden appearance.
Rick responded by grilling me about where I’d been on certain dates, asking if I had made such-and-such phone calls to the government. It was all very mysterious, but the look on his face said this was no laughing matter. He leaned over the table, his deep, penetrating eyes hardly blinking, staring into mine like this was an inquisition.

I pressed him for an explanation, while professing innocence of whatever he thought I’d done. He was vague, saying it had to do with anonymous, untrue allegations that he was mistreating his children. For some reason, he assumed the caller had been me.
I flashed back to the picture in my head of a couple of filthy, naked kids running about like free-range chickens in the dirt-packed yard of his house, back that one time I’d visited. The guy was creeping me out, but I finally convinced him I had no idea what he was talking about. At that point he abruptly changed the subject and pulled from his backpack a thick, dog-eared report and placed it face down on the table, his forearm guarding it. It felt like I’d just passed a test. In reward, I was about to be offered secret information about UFOs, aliens, and the big, government cover-up.

He explained that his father had been in the military and come across certain secrets. Now, Rick was keeper of this hush-hush information that the government refused to admit. My eyes glazed over; I remember little of his passionate description of the conspiracy to which he was privy. As for his secret UFO report, he demanded, “If I let you read this, will you promise me you will take it seriously?”
I told him I was curious and would like to read it, but “Honestly, I can’t promise you that.”

Rick was visibly insulted – more with my narrow-minded ignorance than with my personal slight, I suppose. He put his report back into hiding and, with that, our lunch date ended. I paid our bill, left a generous tip, and Crazy Rick walked away down Liberty Street. Recently I heard a rumor that these days he’s toothless and homeless, but I couldn’t say.
* * *
The last time I saw my other old friend, Arnold, also was at my mother’s funeral – at the visitation at the funeral home. We hadn’t been in touch since high school. I learned that, unsurprisingly, Arnold, far from ever a successful student, had spent his life working in a local auto plant. To my complete surprise, he had spent his spare time and retirement becoming a self-taught artist, sculpting metal into all manner of his visions. In the parking lot, Arnold opened his trunk and showed me several albums filled with photos of his fabulous creations. I gushed over his artistry and he beamed.

We reminisced about old times and laughed about our ill-fated ride to Saginaw Bay. He asked if I had seen our old high school principal inside at the visitation. “I had to get out of there,” Arnold said. “You know what he once told me?”
I shook my head and he continued, obviously agitated. “Arnold, you will never amount to anything. He actually said that to me.” Despite the sting of the insult, lingering still after decades, it was apparent that Arnold was proud that he’d “proved that asshole principal wrong.”

A few months later, a small package from Arnold arrived in the mail. Inside was a strange-looking, two-tined fork, artistically fashioned from a pitted, foot-long cast-iron spike. Like a blacksmith of old, Arnold had heated, hammered, twisted, and split the heated spike into this fork. A note explained that while diving in Lake Huron, he had retrieved the spike from the deck of a ship that had sunk during a storm in the early 1900’s.
Probably not unlike that storm off the big lake that had taught hard crazy lessons to us boys back when we still had a whole lot of life ahead of us and a whole lot yet to prove.



~ ~ ~

Third of a series, “Wayne’s Crazy Days.” See also:

Thursday, May 5, 2016

DARK AS DEATH

I flipped off my flashlight to utter darkness. Not dark as in “a dark and stormy night” but dark as in buried alive dark. No sense of front or back or up or down except a vaguely directed gravity. My eyes, seeking a glimmer of light, tried to adjust but nothing changed. No hint of the hand in front of my face.

I leaned into my backpack cushioning a jagged wall of the long-closed mine and listened. Somewhere water dripped. A moan echoed from the tunnel’s abandoned timbers straining under the weight of the world above. A falling rock clattered.

I was alone in the middle of the night nearly a quarter-mile below ground, evidence of cave-ins all around, and not a soul knew where I was. The copper mine I was exploring had been abandoned for more than 30 years.

If something happened, how long before anyone found me? Would time have meaning where there is no light? The dread was unbearable and I turned my light back on.

Far above, my bicycle hidden in the bushes, it was nearing midnight, which this far north in summer was just two hours past sunset. I had ridden 20 miles from my college dorm room in town. Then, waiting for dusk so I could sneak across an open field past the “Keep Out - No Trespassing” signs, I lifted rotted boards capping the mine shaft and dropped out of sight. After descending the first few hundred feet, I paused to catch my breath, relieved that I wasn’t going to get caught. I was alone. Really, really alone.

All to find a rare but worthless rock found in this mine on a remote reach of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Arching off the “U.P.” is the Keweenaw Peninsula, jutting like a stony finger 75 miles into Lake Superior. Here, hundreds of mines once were bored thousands of feet deep chasing copper-bearing ores. But only in this one spot did a peculiar assemblage of billion-year-old rocks have just the right combination of chemicals – primarily copper, zinc, and arsenic – that were mixed over eons to form the heavy, metallic blue-silver mineral, mohawkite. A rock found nowhere else on Earth but here in its namesake Mohawk Mine.

When you hold a piece of mohawkite in your hand, the weight is what you notice first. It’s heavy like lead. Yet if dropped, it shatters like ice. Its color is not leaden gray but sparkles silvery across a rough surface. Where exposed to air, it weathers to blotches of color– unique compounds in shades from tea green to turquoise.

What circuitous paths carry us from here to there. I wouldn’t have been underground if I hadn’t decided to go to college at Michigan Tech, located in Houghton on the Keweenaw Peninsula. I was 19 and majoring in geological engineering. The school was 500 miles from my depressing hometown of Flint and the farthest I could get away and still pay in-state tuition. It’s not that I wanted to be a geologist or an engineer. I didn’t. It’s just that I couldn’t think of anything better to do. And I kind of liked rocks.

To get a general idea of where in the mine’s miles of tunnels I most likely would find mohawkite I had studied yellowing mine maps in musty file drawers at the college library. It appeared that the mine’s 11th and 12th “levels” were richest in mohawkite.

A level is a horizontal tunnel extending from the mine’s shaft. In the Mohawk Mine, every hundred feet deeper a new level was blasted out in two directions following the erratic seams of copper ore. Where a level interrupted a quality copper deposit, it might open into room-sized excavations, even breaking through into the next level above.

The mine’s shafts (there once were six, the first dug in 1899) are 8 feet wide and 18 feet tall, penetrating the earth at a 54-degree incline, matching the dip of the ore-bearing seam. At that steep angle I could just barely clamber down the shaft’s jumble of rocks, maneuvering hand-over-hand while holding my flashlight, all the while trying not to bang my bare head on broken timbers. In some places I was able to clutch the rusted iron rails that remained, once used to ferry miners up and down and hoist out millions of pounds of copper ore.

For the few decades it lasted, the Mohawk Mine made more than $15 million in profits and employed more than a thousand workers. Dirty, dangerous, unhealthy work, to be sure, but compared to what? How else could you make a living in the early 1900s in the U.P. wilderness where winter can bury you in 300 inches of snow?

I slowly descended the mine’s shaft, keeping count until I reached the 11th level. All the U.P.’s old copper mines are shut down now, like this mine since 1932, and slowly filling with groundwater. It was said by my fellow geology students, who had talked to people who supposedly knew whereof they spoke, that the Mohawk Mine, which went down nearly 3,000 feet, was flooded with water at about 1,500 feet. I was still a few hundred feet above that so drowning was the least of my worries. Just to be sure, I threw a rock as far as I could down into the dark mine shaft. It flew for a long time, then bounced and rattled into the void. No splash.

I explored a few hundred feet of the tunnels. Despite my flashlight’s anemic beam, there it was, silvery traces of mohawkite glittering in the reflected light. Some was exposed on a tunnel wall, once blasted by dynamite, flat as a tombstone, and impossible to fracture with a hand pick. Other mohawkite-laden rock glistened in veins from lips of broken ledges, fallen rock, or discarded mining rubble.

I couldn’t imagine spending my working life entombed in this rock crypt. Men once lived and died here. Blasting and cursing filled the air. Now all was silent. As I chipped and banged away with my rock hammer, filling my flimsy Boy Scout backpack with the best chunks and slivers until it strained at the seams, the echoes felt creepy. Like I was alerting spirits that I was there and up to no good. Old cave-ins sealed access to some of the tunnels, chilling reminders that the slightest thing could trigger a pent-up cave-in.

That’s when I rested, sitting on broken rock, and turned off my flashlight to save the batteries. That’s when the world turned dark as death. I jumped as if shocked when a cold drop of water landed on my bare neck. The air I sucked in tasted old, dank, and stale. What the hell am I doing down here?

Certainly, getting a bag of mohawkite was one reason. But how many rocks are enough? I made that perilous trip back down into the mine twice more, exploring other levels, collecting more rocks. Each trip, I would struggle back to the surface, canvas pack straps biting my shoulders and pedal down US-41 in the dark to my college dorm with 25 or so pounds of rocks poking into my back.

It’s not like I could brag about my stunts; that would have gotten me expelled from college (and drafted: Good Morning, Vietnam!). I don’t know. Why do we do anything when we’re young and trying to figure out how to grow up?

Earlier that year of my mining adventures I had gone steelhead fishing on a remote U.P. river. I had to slog through several feet of snow drifts to reach the river bank. The sun was out and thawing chunks of ice raced by in the current. At the mouth of the river where it plunged into Lake Superior, I watched the flow disappear under a sheet of unbroken ice. Far offshore and barely visible was the end of the ice and open water of the world’s largest lake.

I leaned my fishing rod against a leafless shrub and, still in my chest waders, struck out alone. A half-mile later I was standing on the very edge of the two-feet-thick ice shelf. At my toes stretched 50 miles of empty water. Small waves lapped the ice, their irregular splashes the only sound. Wind from the U.P. wilds blew against my back and it dawned on me that if an ice floe broke off with me on it, I would die an ugly death.

I found no epiphany that day on the edge of Lake Superior’s ice sheet. Just relief at surviving. Like after going down in that mine. Doing it for the thrill.

Was it really that simple? Or might it have had something to do with the crushing insecurities of youth? Courting danger to compensate for fears about a terrifying future? Burdened with still having something to prove.

Like so much that we accumulate over the years, most of those hard-earned rocks of mohawkite became dead weight and got buried in a hole along the way. Yet not all. A few chunks sit on shelves in my house today. They’ve been wrapped, packed, and unbundled in a lifetime of moves from here to there. Their original burnish of blue‑silver is dulled with tarnish. But every now and then, I’ll chip a corner off one to see again that fresh sparkle of raw mohawkite. Its naked glint will carry me back to adventures of my youth, alone in the depths with nothing but a cheap flashlight, and all life’s terrors and wonders luring me ever deeper, curious, driven to check out just one more level.



~ ~ ~

First of a series, “Wayne’s Crazy Days.” See also:

AYN RAND GOT ME HIGH


“A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.” – novelist Ayn Rand
Each time the aircraft warning light blinked red next to my head, I closed my eyes to keep from being blinded, clinging for dear life to the ice-cold ladder. As for why I was perched atop a 275-feet-high smokestack on a blustery February night, I mostly credit Ayn Rand.

Technically, I suppose I should blame Crazy Rick. My long-time friend had a way of leading me into trouble. He was a wiry, tough little guy who, during our college years, loved showing off and bragging about his feats. Like how many miles he could walk while balancing on the iron rail of a railroad track without slipping off, a stunt he took straight from one of Rand's novels.

We both idealized the ego-crazed hero created by Rand – “a man who perseveres to achieve his values, even when his ability and independence leads to conflict with others.” (Wikipedia)

Instead of "What would Jesus do?" we asked "What would Ayn Rand do?" Her philosophy proved a dangerous catalyst for our self-absorption.

Crazy Rick challenged his own considerable ego with daring nighttime exploits on the campus of Michigan State University near where we lived. He had, for example, figured out how to sneak into the university’s mammoth powerplant and reach its smokestack’s ladder.

So late one night, there we were, standing in darkness just beyond reach of garish security lights, looking across a snowy field to the powerplant. We made a run for it, ducking past a line of coal cars waiting to be unloaded and into a long, enclosed structure that carried coal from mountainous piles along the railroad tracks to the powerplant’s boilers. The giant, black conveyor belt was silent, and we crept up it into the plant. Once inside, we slapped off coal dust, then slipped across metal gangways and up several floors to a door leading to the roof and gigantic brick chimney, massive at its base and tapering to a twelve-foot diameter top. A ladder up its side faded into the night like an Escher illusion.

I took a deep breath and exhaled a frozen cloud. “You coming?” said Rick, looking down at me from the ladder, just a hint of sneer on his lips.

Up and up we climbed, hundreds of steps. Cold from the steel rungs burned through our gloves. We paused often, hanging onto the ladder with our arms while trying to warm our hands, but the wind was brutal, cutting through our jackets, and we had to keep moving. Far below, a few cars crawled silently along Farm Lane. Downtown East Lansing twinkled in the distance. An airport light blinked way off to the northwest. When we reached the smokestack’s flashing red light, we knew we could get no higher.

In truth, the view from the top was a bit of a letdown – mostly snow-covered farmlands in the dark. We’d actually gotten a better view on an earlier climb. Weeks before, Crazy Rick had found a way into the university’s other powerplant. Its brick smokestack was a local landmark, towering 239 feet above the center of MSU’s campus, vertically emblazoned at the top with immense white letters, “MSC,” for the school’s name, Michigan State College, when the powerplant was built in 1948.

Getting in was easy. We crept up late one night to the gigantic metal door used for letting in coal-carrying railroad cars and hit a button. I didn’t know what to expect but certainly not the explosion of racket as the immense door rolled and clattered upwards. We ducked inside and hit a button to reverse the door’s direction. The powerplant’s operating noise was so loud that no one working there noticed the door’s starts and stops.

We sneaked up open metal stairways to reach a door to the roof and the smokestack’s ladder. The 20-year-old stack was showing its age, and as we climbed silently in the dark we bypassed several ladder rungs that were rusted nearly through and ladder anchors pulling loose from the bricks and mortar.

At the top, a glorious, bird’s-eye panorama spread around us – the city’s lights; glowing paths, streets, and buildings of campus; and looming below across the dark ribbon of the Red Cedar River, snow-covered Spartan Stadium.

Crazy Rick was like a monkey – strong, agile, and fearless. He roamed the rooftops of any building he set his mind to, always finding a way to sneak up there, whether through unlocked windows or by scaling walls. He also went below ground, exploring the ten-mile web of tunnels underlying the MSU campus, which house steam-heat pipes running from the powerplants to university buildings. I followed him on his four-story-high, slate-covered-rooftop romps a few times and down into the rat-infested tunnels just once. What finally got me in trouble, however, was trailing him across a campus pedestrian bridge.

By “across” I mean under it. It was dark and it was winter and I should have known better. But there was youthful testosterone in the air and ego at stake. If he can do it, I can do it, I told myself. Standing in the snow on the steep riverbank, I watched him grip the flat, frozen I‑beam on the underside of the bridge and quickly move hand-over-hand out over the river, feet dangling five feet above the water.

Back in high school, Rick and I had been on the wrestling team. He was good and won most of his matches. I was awful and lost nearly all of mine. During one after-school practice, our coach had teammates wrestle each other in “grudge matches,” starting with the two lightest. The winner would take on the next heavier guy. You kept wrestling until you got pinned.

That’s how I ended up paired against Rick, who was two weight classes lighter than me. It felt personal, the way he came after me. A bit scary, like he had something to prove. Although I was heavier, he was stronger and a far better wrestler. I vowed to not let him beat me and found some untapped fortitude to avoid humiliation. The coach finally had to declare a draw.
Me & Rick (right) -- winter church camp, 1964
Rick always wanted to best me, and under that MSU campus bridge that wintry night, he succeeded. The bare metal was brutally cold on my fingers as I inched out over the river. Halfway across I knew I was in trouble when I saw the tree branch from the opposite riverbank blocking our progress. I watched as Rick swung like an ape under the branch to keep going, then scrambled to the opposite bank.

I tried to copy his trick, letting go with my right hand to swing under the branch and catch the I-beam, even while knowing it was hopeless. My left hand lost its tenuous grip and down I went into the dark depths of the too-polluted-to-be-frozen Red Cedar River. I bobbed up and splashed to shore, slipping, sputtering, and shuttering, then ran the mile back to my dorm room.
It didn’t take long. Within hours my body started purging that germ-infested river water in ugly fashion. Still the middle of the night, I walked to the campus infirmary. When I explained what had happened, the nurse just shook her head, then admitted me. I was in there sick for two days.
We were young and foolhardy, testing every limit, challenging authority, looking for truth. Ayn Rand’s novels, since branded as “the most exquisitely adolescent of fictions” (essayist Nancy Mairs), gave us such nuggets of moral guidance as:

“Your mind is your only judge of truth – and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal.” (Atlas Shrugged)
Such were the foibles of youth. Some of us grow out of them. Some of us don’t. There are still people who take Ayn Rand seriously. One guy online calls himself “The Profitability Coach.” Send him money and you can learn how to “Live a Life and Lifestyle of an Ayn Rand Hero, Know Your Purpose, Build True Wealth, Love The Journey.”

It’s been nearly 50 years since my Red Cedar River dunking; I suffered no obvious lasting effects, but who can really say? That pedestrian bridge is still there, crossed every day by throngs of students. The iconic MSC smokestack we climbed was demolished long ago. The taller stack that we scaled still sits atop MSU’s T.B. Simon Powerplant, which since has been expanded, repeatedly fined for air pollution, and now has two smokestacks. I’m pretty sure nobody gets to sneak in and climb either of them these days. Ayn Rand would not be pleased:

“One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

~ ~ ~
Second of a series, “Wayne’s Crazy Days.” See also: