– Written by Noel Brazil – Performed below by Mary Black
Better keep your distance from this whale Better keep your boat from going astray Find yourself a partner and treat them well Try to give them shelter night and day ’cause here in this blue light Far away from the fireside Things can get twisted and crazy and crowded You can’t even feel right
So you dream of Columbus Ever time the panic starts You dream of Columbus With your maps and your beautiful charts You dream of Columbus With an ache in your travelling heart
See how the cormorant swoops and dives Must be some thrill to go that deep Down to the basement of this life Down to where the mermaid gently sleeps Not like here in this blue light Far away from the fireside Where things can get twisted and haunted and crowded You can’t even feel alright
And as tide must ebb and flow I am dragged down under And I wait the livelong day For an end to my hunger
So I dream of Columbus Every time that the panic starts I dream of Columbus With my maps and my beautiful charts I dream of Columbus And there’s peace in a traveling heart I dream of Columbus
Airborne at CHIO Aachen, the World Equestrian Festival at the Imperial City of Aachen, Germany, where horses fly.
According to legend, Charlemagne’s horse discovered Aachen’s hot springs when pawing the ground with its hooves, which led to establishment of the Imperial Palace and City of Aachen at the site of an ancient Roman settlement. Charlemagne is buried at Aachen.
Opera has Bayreuth – equestrian sports have Aachen.
My Irish Setter Erin taking a break from our walk on the Arno River in Florence, Italy. Anno 1985. Erin was 15 years old. I got him when he was 8 weeks old.
In his lifetime, Erin traveled the United States, North Africa, Japan, and Europe. Not long after this photo, he would be on a plane with us to Japan, then back to Germany in 1986, where he died of old age at 17.
He’s buried in a Hun burial ground in the forest behind our house there north of Würzburg, Bavaria, Germany.
More stories and photos with Erin, the world traveler:
Take a pictorial walk with me on The Wild Pacific Trail at Ucluelet, a tranquil village of about 2000 on the Ucluth Peninsula of Vancouver Island’s far west coast. It’s about 288 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital, Victoria.
Its location supports Ucleulet’s motto – “Living on the Edge” – as the peninsula is almost completely surrounded by water, making it more island than peninsula. The Ucleulet Harbor provides easy water access to the ethereal mists of Barkley Sound to the south, featuring the Broken Group Islands of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. To the west is the thundering Pacific Ocean.
It’s on this western shore you can walk The Wild Pacific Trail, which clings to the coastline as you meander the trails and boardwalks amid an old-growth coastal rainforest – a labyrinthine wildwood of trees, ferns and moss. Without warning, the trail bursts onto spectacular views from the rocky shoreline of the roiling Pacific Ocean, Barkley Sound, and the Broken Group Islands.
The trail is an easy, relaxing hike, with two large parking areas, easy access (including disabled), and well-signed trails. When I was there, signs instructed you on what to do in the unlikely case that you found yourself sharing the trail with a bear. Sadly, I didn’t see one.
Photography by S.W. Cosgrove.
Looking south from the far end of the peninsula, towards Barkley Sound and the Broken Group Islands. In the mist on the other side of the sound is Bamfield, a tiny resort hamlet that is best reached by packet boat from Port Alberni or by float plane.
Here is a very engaging Blue Jay, who decided to accompany me. Chatty bird, and quite friendly.
Hidden in the woods on the other side of the water is the lodge that I stayed at.
Following is the view from the private patio of the studio apartment I rented in an elegant new wood-built lodge that a young couple shared with visitors. It was in a very quiet location, situated just a few steps from The Wild Pacific Trail. Reasonably priced, very comfortable, with an oversized soaking tub.
The last afternoon, a storm blew in and rain pounded windows and deck. Then, a half hour later, the sun came back out and dried everything off.
At the north western edge of the continental United States, with the Pacific Ocean at your feet, lie a handful of cabins – Iron Springs Resort. They are arranged on a bluff overlooking a vast horizon that stretches westward to the edges of what is visible, then dissolves into what is not visible to mere mortals.
As you walk at the edge of the pounding surf, the sandy shores seem to stretch to infinity from north to south. Keep walking – for hours if you like – and you’ll never reach the end. The sand, the surf and the springs and estuaries that feed into the ocean recede and dissolve until they exist only in your memory. As the tides come in and go out at the resort’s Boone Creek, where fresh water meets salt water, you can watch the fresh water rise up over the more dense salt water, while the salt water beneath pushes its way upstream along the bottom. But as you walk, beware the incoming high tide, or you may find it difficult to return to where you began.
The sounds of the savage ocean shore are primal, as if from a dream. The sea birds, screaming at your thoughtless interruption of their dining routine. The winds, from gentle to so harsh they’ll blister your skin. And the rhythmic symphony of the great ocean beast itself as it moves ever towards the shore, changing from swells to white capped waves to crashing surf, ending the cycle as a churning but ever thinner sheet of water conforming to the irregular nuance of beach, fragmenting into barely visible ripples that disappear, pulsing and absorbed into the sand, only to reform as rivulets of salt water retreating to the ocean to begin the journey again.
This is the endless world. The ocean. From the beginning of time through eternity. We have the privilege of being part of the world but for a short time, less consequential than a grain of beach sand that has existed for millions of years. In comparison, our lives are an almost impercipitible flash of energy, barely noted, lasting an immersurabley short time.
So you might as well take advantage of it. Find a place like Iron Springs Resort, with about 25 cabins perched on a bluff stained orange from the iron-filled cliffs, with ruddy cinnamon waters from the nearby Boone Creek staining the beach. In the 19th century, the area was considered to be a medicinal soaking place.
The cabins have ocean-facing decks, almost all with stunning sunset panoramas. The resort has been there for decades, but all the cabins have been extensively renovated, incorporating the original stone fireplaces, with a generous supply of firewood included. Though the cabins retain their rustic persona, they are equipped to the highest standard for your stay, whether it’s for the night or for the week. Kitchens are well equipped, with granite countertops and modern appliances, including a dishwasher. A full complement of cookware and dinnerware is in the cabinets, and there is a nice sharp set of cooking knives – a nice touch. Fresh linens and towels are included, as well as dog towels to wipe your best friend’s feet. Iron Springs Resort not only allows dogs, they love dogs. When I arrived for my first visit, I brought my German Shepherd, Jack, with me the office to check in and they spent more time talking to him than me, letting him pick out a nice tennis ball from the bucket to take to the beach. Oh yes, dog dishes are also supplied in the cabins.
The ambience at Rust Springs Resort is serene and congenial. The cabins are set apart so that privacy is ensured. Several people I met were repeat visitors, and I later found that many have used Iron Springs Resort as a touchstone for family getaways, reunions, bonfires and clam digs for generations. There seemed to be a dog or two in every cabin, with everyone respectfully keeping their buddies on the leash. The exception is the friendly resort dogs, who quite understandably are free to go where they like.
But once you take the five-minute walk to the beach, off comes the leash, and your dog will enter unrestrained cosmic canine bliss. Feel free to do so, as well! My GSD Jack takes off like a shot, with a rooster tail of flying sand behind him, until he gets to the water where he splashes around barking at the waves and chasing gulls. When he finally slows down, somewhat later, we walk and walk and walk. By the time we get back to the cabin, he’s ready for chow and a nice laydown, and so am I. Click here or photo below for video link.
There is no finer end to the day for me than sitting out on the cabin deck with a glass of wine, watching the sun slip into the ocean. Every cabin has a barbeque grill on the deck, if you’re in the mood. If it’s windy or rainy, you just move inside, prop your feet up and enjoy the same view through the expansive glass windows and door.
In addition to the Pacific Ocean beach on your front doorstep, there are hiking trails in the second growth forest behind the resort, with “wolf trees” that must get their name from the branches that look to me like wolf teeth. There’s also fishing, shell fishing, bird watching, as well as marine and rainforest parks. The razor clams are famous. The Hoh Rain Forest, a world heritage site, is not far away.
Iron Springs Resort is an easy two and half hour drive from Seattle. Head west through Olympia towards Aberdeen and then follow the road north to Ocean Shores. Ocean Shores will be your last chance for grocery and other shopping, and then you keep going north on Washington 109N about another 15 minutes. After you cross the Copalis River Bridge, keep watch for the large overturned lifeboat on the left, then turn into the parking lot. Check out of your hectic life and check into ocean time.
For more information on Iron Springs Resort, including the history of the area and resort, go to their website at http://www.ironspringsresort.com/ There, you will find out one unusual feature of the resort, which is that the beach in front is home to Copalis Beach Airport. It is the only known beach airport in the contiguous United States and the only stretch of Washington State beach where it is legal to land a plane. Timing is everything, in case you plan to fly in – the runway and airplane parking area are under water at high tide! Click here or the photo for the Washington Department of Transportation Copalis Airport link.
“Do not return to work. We have terminated your employment. Do not enter the grounds or we will have you arrested for trespassing.”
This Saturday afternoon, I was under the hood of my 1966 Chevy Impala 396 Super Sport doing some engine work by our barn when Mike pulled into our driveway in his shiny white Ford pickup truck to fire me. I worked at his cheese factory, just a few miles away, six days a week, 12 to 16 hours a day – except Saturday, which was usually a half day. If a reefer truck pulled in and needed loading, we’d be working no matter what day of the week it was.
Mike and his partner, Edgar, owned that cheese factory. When I saw them together, I often smiled to myself a little because they reminded me of a Laurel and Hardy pair. Mike was middle aged and over six feet tall, with broad shoulders and an even broader paunch. Every day, he wore a white dress shirt that never seemed to stay fully tucked in his pants, which had their own difficulty finding where his waist was located. Edgar was much older and a good foot shorter, stooped over and almost frail. His glasses were usually sliding down his nose, probably because the lenses were as thick as the end of a Coke bottle. Neither of the two was particularly cordial or pleasant to deal with. Mike seemed a bit of a bully, his face always on the verge of a snarl, and Edgar walked by you as if you weren’t in the room, on the rare occasions he left his office. Edgar did the books; Mike ran floor operations.
It was just a matter of time before they tried to get rid of me, so I wasn’t surprised at Mike’s news. I kept my mouth shut, nodded once, and turned back to working on my car. Mike backed down the drive and disappeared in a trail of dust kicked up from the dirt road that ran from our farm to the main road. I knew exactly why this happened and how I got here, and I had a plan.
Now in my early 20’s, I was an accidental union organizer. Up until a couple months ago, I’d never given a thought to that calling, and I never did again, though I have a working knowledge of unions and union organizers, from Mother Jones to Joe Hill to Eugene Debs to César Chávez. I also knew a thing or two about labor, growing up on a farm where we breathed work from early morning until late at night. When I was 13 years old, I hired out for the summer to a farmer on the other side of the county six days a week for room and board and $75 a month. My parents picked me up Saturday night and brought me back on Monday morning. This was good money for a kid in those days, and I was so busy working I had nowhere to spend it.
The next two summers I rode my bicycle several miles each day to weed, hoe and plant trees six days a week at a large tree nursery. The following autumns, I spent my weekends picking, grading and selling apples at a neighboring orchard run by an agronomy professor from the University of Minnesota. All the apples you could eat. After school and weekends, I worked maintenance at a restaurant and apartment complex, as a soda jerk at a drug store, and as a prep and line cook at a local restaurant. When I was 17, I graduated from high school, started college and worked between classes and semesters at restaurants, sod fields, gas stations, construction companies and even a destruction company, tearing down old buildings, including the school where I attended first grade as a child. I worked alternating shifts for one summer at a window factory. Graveyard shift was 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. One summer I spent hanging on for dear life on a portable scaffolding high above the ground taking down and putting up billboard advertising. Hot, hard work, particularly in the blazing sun holding a blow torch and burning off the old paper posters. I guess you could call me a poster boy.
Yes, I knew something about work and labor relations.
My goal now was to break the work and school cycle to travel Europe and Africa until whatever money I’d saved for the trip was spent. That’s why I moved from Minneapolis to my grandparents’ farm in Wisconsin to keep expenses low and save every penny I could. I first worked at a feed mill, then took a job at the cheese factory. Terrible pay, even by Wisconsin welfare belt standards, but working 60 to 80 hours a week – no overtime pay – still added up. I also bought cars, fixed them up and resold them at a profit. My trip to Europe was on track.
The cheese factory was a dump, an old industrial building with rickety, tacked-on stick additions outfitted with cheese making equipment and storage. It was freezing in the winter and a sweat shop in the summer. We made two cheeses: mozzarella and provolone. The factory bought milk locally and dumped the excess whey in a stream that ran alongside the building. EPA had just been founded a few years earlier, so there was little environmental oversight. Some farmers, including my grandfather, fed it to their hogs. We loaded the cheese on trucks bound for Italian food and pizza factories in Milwaukee and Chicago.
There were two professional cheese makers, but the rest of the work force were people like me – local men and a few women, doing what was necessary, going home at night smelling like whey and brine. We pressed the cheese curds into 12 pound blocks, then moved them from one brine vat to another to age and firm up the cheese quickly. After that, we vacuum packed it with industrial Cryovac machines.
Many of the crew had families, and all were just getting by, one miss-step away from the dole and the welfare roll. You made friends in a place like that, mainly because you could not afford to make enemies. We spent most of our waking day together. There was a small group of young men, some married, some not, who got together on Saturday night, drank beer and bar hopped. That was the high point of the week, and the only entertainment available in that part of Wisconsin. Arnie was my best cheese hound buddy. He was a competition level talker, wiry and tireless. He could drink twice as much beer as I could, and it never showed. Wisconsin boy.
Arnie lived a couple miles the opposite direction from our farm and the cheese factory in a modest mobile home on his father-in-law’s farm. His wife, Betts, was an all-American Wisconsin farm girl. Arnie met her when she was the county 4-H Queen. A sturdy gal, she was bubbly, pretty, and always friendly, with a bright smile. They’d been married about three months, and she was six months pregnant. There may have been a shotgun involved in the wedding arrangements.
It was Arnie and Betts who turned me into a union organizer. Not that they ever knew that, either then or now.
Arnie called me one night.
“Steve, I can’t make it to work tomorrow. Tell Mike that I’ll get hold of him later in the day.”
“What’s up, buddy,” I said. “Anything I can help with?”
“I have to take Betts to the hospital tonight. Something’s not right with the baby. I’ll let you know.”
When I got to work the next morning in the dark at 0600, I passed on the information. Mike grunted something under his breath and walked away. This was the first day I knew of that Arnie had ever missed work since I’d been there. He couldn’t afford to. There was no sick leave, family leave, paid time off – if you didn’t work, you didn’t get paid. And you might get fired.
Arnie stopped by the farm that evening. Betts was back home, and both she and the baby were fine. But the doctor told them that this was likely going to be an eventful pregnancy that would require more trips to the hospital and maybe a longer hospital stay closer to the time of birth. Arnie’s voice was trembling and his hands were trembling.
“I’m not sure how we’re going to do this without going into debt.”
I went in the house and got a couple beers, and we sat out on the porch and talked. Arnie was already in debt. He was my age, and he owed for the mobile home, a new septic he’d just put in, and his economical little Chevy Vega station wagon. Betts’ parents were farmers – they were comfortable, but cash poor, as anyone who’s run a small farm will understand. Arnie’s job paid poorly and provided absolutely no benefits. No paid leave and no medical insurance. Then, as now, private health insurance was costly.
All of us who worked at the cheese factory were in the same spot. Yet, 15 miles away there was another cheese factory where they had those benefits. It was a union shop. They had decent living wages, overtime, holidays and vacation time, retirement benefits, and medical insurance. They also had no job openings. It was considered to be one of the best places in the county to work.
The following day, I got the name of that cheese factory’s union steward and called him to explain the situation.
“I know all about your cheese factory,” he told me. “You’re not the first person to call me.”
He gave me the telephone number of the union’s regional office in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, about an hour and a half away. The International Brotherhood of the Teamsters. That night, the Teamsters representative called me back, and we talked.
“Yea, it’s the same all over,” he said. “First step is that you have to find out if there are enough workers interested in being part of our union. Many don’t because they’re scared of the owner. Ask around, but don’t use work time to discuss it. If you do, they’ll fire you and there’s not much we can do about it. If they vote the union in and they try to fire you, the Teamsters and Wisconsin’s Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations (DILHR) will sue them, and we’ll win.”
That’s what I did. That Saturday night when we got together for our traditional Wisconsin social event, bar hopping, I brought it up. There was guarded interest. They all knew people who worked at the union cheese factory, and any one of them would have taken a job there instantly. So I told them to ask around, and if there was enough interest, the Teamsters representative would meet with us, answer questions, and if we were ready, set us up for the next step, which was a formal vote under Wisconsin labor laws and guidance.
It didn’t take long to discover that there was overwhelming interest. I arranged for the Teamsters representative to meet with all those interested at the party room at a local bar. Almost the entire work force, about 30 people, showed up. Yes, hell yes – let’s do it!
The Teamsters and the Wisconsin labor office contacted the cheese factory and set up the vote, monitored by all parties.
The results: Yes. Unanimous.
The cheese factory owners: mad as wasps who’d just had their hive knocked down. They were out for blood. When they found out who the instigator was – who the organizer was – it was my blood they were after. That’s when Mike came to my home to fire me.
Big mistake, Mike. Monday morning, I called the Teamsters office and reported what had transpired.
“Sorry to hear that, Steve, but that often happens. Here’s what we’ll do.”
They explained that it was illegal to fire me for organizing union representation, and doubly illegal to come onto my property at my home and do so. I had an excellent work record, was never late for work, and never missed a day. The Teamsters attorney sent a letter to the owners instructing them to immediately reinstate me with full back pay. They were to send me a registered letter and not call me or set foot on my property until I’d formally accepted the reinstatement by return registered mail. If they didn’t, they would be sued. On my part, I was not to have any contact with them until I had received and formally replied to their letter of reinstatement. If a factory representative came on my property, I was to call the sheriff.
Within a couple weeks, my comrades in arms welcomed me back to work. There wasn’t really any hugging; we shook hands and patted each other on the shoulder. From a safe distance. I didn’t have to buy my own beer for several weeks. That’s how it was in Wisconsin back then.
The owners glared daggers at me when I walked by. They watched me from across the brine tubs and looked out their office window when I left work. A couple times, I saw their trucks drive slowly by the house. Then I started seeing occasional, unfamiliar cars driving slowly by. Later, I found out that the owners were suspected of having mob connections in Chicago. The Mozzarella Connection. The Provolone Connection. The Pizza Mob.
Grandpa assured me that his rifles and shotguns were loaded, just in case any intruder should get past the dogs, which was unlikely.
The union was soon in place. Wages gradually increased, daily hours decreased and people had more time with their families, overtime was paid, and everyone had access to inexpensive health insurance. It became a sought-after place to work in this northwestern Wisconsin county, which had large pockets of abject poverty.
Betts did have a difficult pregnancy, but she came through it in good health, as did their baby boy. Last I heard, just before I left the area, they were working on a second baby. Arnie always needed to keep busy doing something, and Betts didn’t seem to object. Arnie was able to spend more time helping his father-in-law on the family farm, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he eventually took it over.
The Teamsters asked me to be the union steward, but I was already busy on my exit plan.
At the end of the year, Theresa and I set out with our Irish Setter “Erin” on a nonstop, 24-hour drive from Wisconsin to New York City in a 1963 Oldsmobile station wagon that one of Theresa’s neighbors in Eau Claire had given us when we told him about the trip. After spending a couple days enjoying Manhattan and Times Square, I gave the car to the valet at the Manhattan Holiday Inn garage on the condition that he drive us the next morning to the New York Port Authority Passenger Ship Terminal in Hell’s Kitchen. We’d booked passage on an Italian ocean liner, the SS Michelangelo, sailing from New York Harbor and bound for Cannes, France. It was the experience of a lifetime to sail down the Hudson River, past the Statue of Liberty on one side and Battery Park on the other, into the Lower Bay, and out through the New York Bight into the Atlantic Ocean.
The end of this story is just the beginning of another. My May 4 post on this blog, “Travels With Erin,” ended almost exactly where the story you’ve just read ends. The next installment will pick up where “Travels with Erin” ends, and I’ll tell you about our extraordinary ocean liner transit – and its cast of characters – from New York City to Cannes, then our journey to Rennes, France, where we bought a purple 1957 Citroën 2CV that we drove from Brittany in Northwestern France through Spain to North Africa and back to Vannes, at the entrance to the beautiful and historic Gulf of Morbihan in southern Brittany.
With that, Dick and I walked away from our girlfriends and our high school picnic and onto two lanes of blacktop just outside of Lakeville, Minnesota. We were 14 years old, had about $50 between us, and were leaving our boring lives attending a Lutheran high school in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the open road and eventually Mexico. We were running away.
We made a clean getaway. No one knew our plans except our girlfriends, Bonnie and Donna. They’d been sworn to secrecy. As the busses loaded to take the school’s students back to campus after the yearend picnic, the teachers neglected to take a head count. So it wasn’t until the busses arrived back at the school a couple hours later that they found out we were missing.
By then, Dick and I had hitched rides down miles of country roads, and the scent was dead. We were getting close to Northfield, Minnesota, following our plans to take the back roads south, staying off Interstate 35, but crisscrossing it so we’d stay headed the right direction. Our backpacks held a map of the United States, a compass, and copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road that I’d checked out from my hometown public library in Stillwater, Minnesota, with no intention of returning it.
What turned a farm kid from a small town – me – and a city kid from a big city – Dick – into cohorts on a teen runaway adventure? I had my reasons. I’d been bounced around schools for the past three years as my parents tried to find a place where my attraction to turmoil, truancy, and trouble might be mitigated. I insisted that I didn’t go looking for trouble, but trouble always found me. They didn’t buy it.
First stop after eighth grade at Stillwater Junior High was ninth grade at a Lutheran school in Maplewood, Minnesota. Going from a class of hundreds to a ninth grade class of 20 was a jolt. Though hardly a religious soul, I found new comfort in the daily meditations, studying biblical history, and the ubiquitous Lutheran fellowship that included hayrides, roller skating parties, and music. Lutherans I grew up with were always singing and playing instruments. I played piano for the choir and trumpet in the small, but award-winning school band. If Garrison Keillor and Lake Wobegon comes to mind, you’re not far off.
As this school only went to ninth grade, however, my parents arranged for me to attend tenth grade with our pastor’s son and daughter at a Lutheran high school in St. Paul, a rather long daily commute from our farm in Stillwater. My 14-year-old persona turned going from the top of the pile in ninth grade to bottom of the heap in the tenth into a provocation. I discovered that many of the students at this small school were there for the same reason I was: they had a penchant for insubordination, incorrigibility, and disdain for authority. We troublemakers found each other immediately. To boot, this Lutheran school was part of an evangelical synod, which just begged resistance and rebellion.
I was in trouble from my first day, when a teacher pulled me aside in the hallway and told me to go immediately to the bathroom and tuck in my shirt. I had the audacity to ask “why.” It was downhill from there, and the stage was set for another trouble maker, Dick, and me to thumb our noses and go on the run. The final straw was when the school principal called me into his office and slapped me across the face because I wouldn’t “wipe that smile off your face.”
Now here we were, on the road, and committed to the run. As night was falling, we were getting hungry and thinking about where we were going to sleep. Hadn’t really factored that into our planning, but runaways are resourceful. Our last ride of the day dropped us in the small town of Cannon City, just outside Faribault, Minnesota. It was early June, so the days were long and the weather was fine. We stopped at a small grocery store and bought a loaf of bread and some summer sausage for dinner. We dined en plein air in a park by the side of the town’s lake, then walked to the edge of town where under cover of darkness, we appropriated the front and back seats of a large old car in the back row of a used car lot. We slept well, in spacious comfort, and woke early. We finished the last of the bread and sausage for breakfast and put our feet on the road once again.
“The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.” – Robert Frost.
Our first ride was with a farmer in a beat-up pickup truck.
“Where you boys headed?”
We smiled at each other. Now began the fun. We had just been given license to lie through our teeth! We couldn’t let on what our plans really were, so we lied, and lied, and lied. We made up everything. We made up our names. We made up where we were from. We made up where we were going. We made up why we had left where we were from and why we were going to our fictitious destination, always just beyond where our driver would drop us off. We told each of our rides completely different stories. Sickly aunts, uncles who’d just died, parents who’d dropped us off and were meeting us later, life stories that were pure fantasy, stories of lost family wealth, stories of heartache and sorrow. We faked our accents. Dick could do a great British accent, so he was from London. Or Ireland. Thanks to my aunt and uncle, I did a mean Texas drawl. We really were incredible liars.
I don’t know if anyone believed us. It didn’t matter. That day one of our rides shared his lunch with us, and another bought us more bread and sausage for supper at a small store. We’d bypassed Faribault and Owatonna on the back roads, and we were now just north of Albert Lea. Our last ride dropped us near a freeway entrance. There was no town nearby, so we started walking down an adjacent country road. It was getting dark, and there were no towns, or even houses or farms. We came across a deserted portion of the freeway that was under construction and decided to take shelter for the night under a partially completed overpass.
As we settled into our concrete cave, it grew increasingly colder. We curled up in our jackets and pulled some of the few clothes we brought along for warmth and insulation from the ground. We had packed our bags for Mexico, not Minnesota.
Eventually, we both fell into a troubled sleep. Then we woke to a sound. It seemed to be coming from directly over us on the overpass bridge. Then we heard it again. Could it be someone walking around up there? Was it the police? Had they found us? Or was it…what? A criminal escaped from prison? A wild animal? A werewolf? An ax murderer?
We froze in stillness, afraid to move lest we give away our position. We conversed in whispers. We remained wide awake until morning. The sound was still there. Summoning up courage from the depth of our souls and using extreme stealth, we crawled on our bellies to gain a vantage point and see what the hell was up there. As we slowly, slowly peered over the side of the bridge we saw it.
An empty paper concrete bag flapping in the breeze.
We smiled, then we started laughing. We laughed so hard tears were running down our grimy faces. We had been held down all night by a paper bag!
We got back on the road and started walking, thumbs out. Almost immediately a car stopped to pick us up. The driver opened the door and took a long look at us.
“What on earth are you boys doing out in the middle of nowhere this morning?”
Now we woke up. Time to do our best improv duo for the nice man in the car. We did “lost boys.”
“We’re on our way to visit our grandparents in Albert Lea. I’m Bob and this is my brother Brian. Our parents let us off just down the road because mom felt sick so dad was going to bring her to the doctor. We didn’t want to wait, so dad said we could go ahead. Well, we musta’ took a wrong turn back there, but if you could drop us off at the next town, we’ll call our grandparents and they can come pick us up.”
“Why sure, boys, there’s a little town just ahead. Do you want me to call your grandparents for you from the pay phone there?”
“Oh, no sir. I have a dime for the phone. We’ll be just fine.”
We washed up at a gas station and bought more bread and sausage at the grocery store. A loaf of Wonder Bread was about 20 cents, so our meals were costing us about a dollar a day. We put a couple candy bars in our pockets as we walked out the door. We figured we’d be good until we got to Mexico, where we could just eat the fruit off the trees. That afternoon we crossed into Iowa at Emmons. Our last ride brought us into the sleepy little town of Lake Mills. Just four states to go.
It was still early in the evening, so we decided to see if we could get one more ride. We were getting pretty crafty. We watched to see if oncoming cars might be police cars. We hadn’t seen any so far. But when we looked closer, we could see a car with those bubblegum machines on top coming down the road. We jumped off the shoulder and ran into the bushes. As soon as the police car passed, we got back on the road.
Well, two boys jumping into the bushes at the sight of a police car roused the officer’s curiosity, so he’d turned around and come up from the other side when our backs were turned.
“Hello, boys. You’re not from here. What are you doing in Lake Mills today? Come on over and hop in the car so we can talk.”
I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be able to lie our way out of this, but that didn’t prevent us from giving our best effort. We started with false names, relatives in the next town, etc. The officer wasn’t having any of it.
“Let’s see. Those names don’t ring a bell. How about these names?”
He already had our names. Should have known.
If there was a flaw in our plan, it was that Dick’s father was the chief of detectives at the St. Paul Police Department. So when our little adventure was discovered, every police department in the five-state area was notified. If you remember Car 54, it was an APB – an All-Points Bulletin. Two runaway boys. One’s dad is a St. Paul police detective. Find them.
“We’re notifying your father, Dick, and he’s going to come down to pick you up. He’s been expecting the call. Congratulations! You made it quite a ways. As you are both a flight risk, we’re going bring you to our jail and lock you up. We don’t have anyone in jail right now except Carl, our town drunk, so you’ll have the place to yourself. We’ll get you supper, and there’s a shower. Then you’re going home.”
My first thought: please leave us in jail. When we get home we are going to be in so much trouble. When we get back to school, we are going to be in so much trouble. We are in trouble, right now.
It was a comfortable jail. There were two officers on duty. They brought us a hot Midwestern supper with generous portions from a local restaurant – thankfully, not sausage – and they sent Carl out to buy us a six-pack of Coca-Cola. It was about midnight when Dick’s parents arrived. They were very calm. I’m sure they were mad, but they were more relieved than anything. They’d brought snacks for the long drive back to St. Paul. Dick’s dad drove a big white Chrysler Imperial sedan, so we were both asleep in the back seat almost instantly. We woke up at Dick’s house, where they fed us breakfast and we all had a little, ahem, talk. My parents arrived an hour or so later. I could tell my mother was seething, but my Dad just smiled and said, “Well, Steven, how was your little journey.” My little journey. As I was likely to be grounded for the next year, it was going to be my last one for a while.
We were back at school the next day. More long conversations. The teachers stared daggers into our hearts. The principal of the school asked me if I was planning on attending this school the next year. Nope. No way. He said that would make it simple because he would not then have to go to the trouble of denying a request for my return.
When they let us lose into the halls for our classes, we found that we had become legends in our own time. Upper classmen came up to us and said: You two have balls of steel! Our girlfriends hung on our arms, and the other girls were all smiles, with come hither looks. We retold our story over and over, enhancing it as we went. We got a ride with a race car driver who was going 100 mph, the bag flapping on the bridge became an old man with a shotgun firing at us as we ran away in the dark of night, and the police officers in that little town in Iowa told us they were locking us up for good and throwing away the keys. Or something like that.
The next year I was back at Stillwater High School, as a junior. Four schools in four years. I was on a first name basis with every school counselor.
That would be the end of the story, but several years later when I was attending the University of Minnesota, I ran into Dick on campus. He looked exactly the same. He was majoring in criminal justice – going to be a detective just like his dad. We went out for beers several times and remained good friends until our paths once again parted.
One of the last times I saw him, Dick said, “Hey, Steve – let’s run away again. I’ve never had so much fun!”
When I opened my eyes to the bright winter sun that morning on our terrace in northern Bavaria, Erin was gone.
The old gray muzzle lay on my lap, his last breath, a sort of sigh, caught in his chest. There wasn’t so much as a slight breeze, and my own breath, hanging in the air, partially clouded my glasses. This was the first breath I’d taken in 17 years without my constant companion and fellow traveler, Erin Alex of O’Lannon.
“He had a very strong heart,” said the vet as she packed her bag and made her way out. I listened to the door close and to her footsteps down the concrete walkway. I heard her car door close, the engine start, and the car drive off. Erin was now completely limp, the tension of fighting death blissfully gone.
Yes, he had a strong heart, a true Irish Setter heart, but in the end that was all he had left. He was a big dog for an Irish setter, from field trial stock, and he weighed about 85 pounds. But the last several weeks had seen a dramatic loss of strength in his hind quarters until there was little feeling or movement left. I was not giving up, and I fed him a vitamin packed mixture of food he loved, meat and cooked carrots, then carried him outside and held him up while he relieved himself. We got along like this, and he was giving it his valiant best. I brought him to the vet for shots and therapy. It helped for a while – he seemed to recover. Then he relapsed.
When he stopped eating and no longer had the will to pull himself up on his front legs to greet me, the time was at hand to make that decision every dog lover dreads. Erin had taken to barking softly, until I sat on the floor and stroked his head, which laid in my lap. His message to me was clear: “I must go now.” There would be no more walks in the forest behind our house. Our world travels would end here, in this tiny Bavarian village of Schraudenbach, just north of Würzburg. He needed to shuffle off this mortal coil, to be released, to die, to sleep: perchance to dream for an eternity of chasing birds, running beaches, and swimming in cool water. I’d bury him next to an ancient Hun burial ground we’d discovered on one of our long walks.
I hoped he might die naturally, just drift off from sleep as he went from my hands to those eternal hands of lasting peace as nature took its course. But the natural world has a most cruel and incomplete aspect that almost never lets that happen. We must play God. We cannot let our animal friends suffer.
I called the vet. We had rehearsed this the last time I brought Erin to her office a week before. She’d provided a very strong sedative to give him early on his last morning. When she arrived, Erin and I were sitting on a warm blanket in the sun on the terrace. He was sleeping soundly, the drug his last respite from pain and from the frustration of not being able to enjoy life as a dog. A quick, painless injection and he passed gently, so gently, into that good night. Old age did not burn and rave at close of that day, and there was no rage against the dying of the light. I was grateful for that.
Now I was alone, without my cherished friend and traveling buddy, for the first time in almost two decades, which at that time was about half my life. I have not stopped thinking of Erin all these years, and now it’s time to tell the story of my travels with Erin.
Seventeen years earlier
“I’m going to get a dog.”
Certainly it wasn’t the best time, working nights tending bar to support myself while I attended university. But would it ever be? I grew up on a farm, surrounded by animals, and I always had a dog. Now, years later on my own, I missed those animals, and I really missed my dogs.
“What kind of dog are you going to get?”
An Irish Setter. I’d spent a winter ski bumming at Aspen, and my first job was working part-time as an attendant at Aspen Airport to pay for my meager lodging and a three-mountain ski pass. One clear mountain day, a family traveling with their Irish setter asked me to mind him while they got ticketed, checked in and were ready to board. I immediately fell in love with this most handsome Irish gentleman, so dignified, yet warm and friendly. Within that 15 minutes, we became best friends. Then, it was time to go. He had a plane to catch with his family, and I had a plane to unload, and more passengers to assist. But his image and his demeanor persisted in my thoughts.
Though I’d grown up with herding dogs, I was about to get an entirely different kind of dog. I located a Wisconsin breeder of field stock Setters and picked my puppy, eight weeks old, registered Erin Alex of O’Lannon. We could not imagine that the next dozen and a half years would bring us to cities, countries and continents unknown. Little did I know that at the end of his life I’d bury him in a Bavarian forest, his grave surrounded by Hun burial mounds. No one would know such things, nor want to.
He got used to travel right away. During the first car ride we took in my girlfriend’s father’s new car, he vomited, peed, and pooped all at the same time on the back seat. Having gotten that out of the way, he never did any of those things in a car or a travel kennel again. But what a way to start things out with Theresa’s dad, my future father-in-law!
The day we left Wisconsin in a raging winter storm and moved to San Francisco. Erin’s in the lower right. Bye snow!
We traveled. Traveled and moved, moved and traveled. I wanted to live everywhere. We lived in the city, in the country, and out of the back of cars and vans. We rested our traveling bones in motels, hotels, and tents in the forest. Colorado mountain streams, north country Wisconsin lakes and woods, Pacific and Atlantic Ocean shores, and African deserts became familiar territory. Though Erin took to every environment and made it his home, he loved the Wisconsin family farm more than any other place. There were fields to race through, nose to the ground, with swamps and ponds to splash and swim. He cut his foot wide open once on a piece of glass submerged in a smelly bog. I wrapped his foot in my shirt and drove 90 mph to the nearest vet. He was bleeding so badly that there was no time to put him under for surgery. I held him down while the vet sewed him up. It was messy. That slowed him down for couple days, but he bounced right back.
Inside Shakespeare and Company in Paris. “Be not inhospitable to strangers lest they be angels in disguise.”
We decided to go to Europe. I’d been reading the expat Lost Generation writers: Henry Miller, Ernest Hemingway, Anais Nin, John Dos Passos, Djuna Barnes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. I dreamed of renting a room above a boîte in the Quartier Latin of Paris, drinking wine on the terrasse of an outdoor café and discussing philosophy with Jean-Paul Sartre (who was still alive at the time), or settling into a well-worn couch to browse a beat up copy of Rimbaud’s’ “Une Saison en Enfer” at Sylvia Beach’s bookstore, Shakespeare and Company. You have to start somewhere! But I never did meet Sartre.
Oh, and Erin was coming along. We were going to travel until our money ran out, and I wasn’t sure when we’d be returning to the America, so Erin would be with us. We went to a travel agency around the University of Minnesota, and the travel agent scared the hell out of me with stories about the possible misfortunes awaiting dogs traveling in the belly of an airplane. Erin was going with us, but not like that.
While looking around the agency, I picked up a brochure about transatlantic ship crossings. There was the answer! Nine days crossing on an Italian luxury ocean liner, all meals included. Dogs were welcome, there were kennels on board, and to top it off, there was a “student price” that was even less expensive than air fare. We pulled out our eternal “International Student Identification Cards,” booked passage, and began preparations to board the SS Michelangelo in New York City a few months later.
Let the adventure begin!
From the roof of our hotel, the Holiday Inn, NYC, the day before boarding the SS Michelangelo.
Deck of the SS Michelanglo as we steamed out of New York Harbor. Destination: Cannes, France. World Trade Center twin towers in the background.
SW COSGROVE 