Back about 1983 I took Kenny and four of his 13 year old friends to see a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
It was rated R which required persons under 18 to be accompanied by a parent. One of the kids was Dwight, a black teenager. The ticket lady asked if all five boys were mine. I said they that were with a glare and she looked at Dwight and said "what about that one?"
"He's mine, too" I responded. A Tampa policeman with more than a usual amount of good judgement waved us all through. There are places in the movie where everyone in the audience shouts out responses...One is where the guy with big lips falls into a pool and they all yell..HEY WAITER, THERE'S A TRANSVESTITE IN MY SOUP.... SHUT UP OR EVERYBODY WILL WANT ONE. ...
So when I first saw "Scarface" in 1983 and Tony Montana has the big shootout with the Colombians and gets killed and falls off the his balcony into the fountain, I just had to yell in the theatre...WAITER, THERE'S A DRUG DEALER IN MY SOUP.... SHUT UP OR EVERYBODY WILL WANT ONE...
Maybe I lacked good judgement back then...anyway..."Scarface" is playing again on the satellite. Al Pachino is back on "mob week" along with all his Godfather flix...Anyway, we're bouncing along the bottom of Lake Superior mashing our toes in the warm lake shore sand. We found a very strange tennis court surface in a remote area of rural Michigan.
It seemed to be metal covered with rubber...strange but very functional.
In 1953, under intense questioning from American Senators, Charlie Wilson declared, "What's good for General Motors is good for the country". Charlie was the former head of GM and the current Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower. GM stock has always been considered a bellweather. It goes up or down before the rest of the market. Today GM shares dropped below $10 for the first time since 1954.
We're on the St. Mary River just east of the Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie (Sue Saint Marie). Sault is an archaic French word from the 17th century meaning rapids. The locks move the big iron ore haulers up or down 22 feet between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. You get a sense of the strategic importance of the locks watching the river traffic. in 1942 there was concern that the locks could be bombed from Norway. A number of radar stations and anti-aircraft facilities were established in Ontario to protect them.
There is a busy groundhog close to where were are parked and a flock of Canadian geese float by occasionally.
We spend an hour at the locks watching a 763 foot empty ore hauler get lifted up to Lake Superior
.
In the downtown we find a small winery. They are making wine in five gallon jugs. Their wines aren't bad. They go for $10 - $25 a bottle. I estimate that's a 400% to 1,000% markup on cost. I could do that. It might be my next adventure. I always thought you had to grow grapes to have a winery. Stupid me.
The area we’ve been traversing for the last week or so is called the “Upper Peninsula” of Michigan. The two parts of Michigan are not connected. We’ve been travelling along the southern shore of Lake Superior.
I’ve developed a taste for lake trout. These monsters come in sizes up to 60 pounds. The flesh, unlike their smaller cousins, is an orange hue. They are delicate and delicious on the grill. Every small town along the lake has a fish store or two where you can buy lake trout, walleye, king salmon and whitefish.
It’s now been officially 3 months since we set out on this latest journey. My mind is turning to spreadsheets and databases and I’m beginning to yearn for gainful employment. Whenever that happens I try to lie down until the feeling goes away.
We went to the upper falls the first thing this morning. It’s billed as the second largest fall east of the Mississippi, but I know three right offhand that are bigger.
We move on to a tour of a cranberry farm. We bought some raisin-like dried cranberries, cranberry bar-b-q sauce, cranberry jelly and cranberry desert topping. The cranberry farm has been in the same family 125 years. Mrs. Phred says she couldn’t live in the woods and raise cranberries. I think more empathetically. I imagine all I know is cranberry farming and think about dropping everything and looking for employment in New York City. Cranberry farming has its own hooks.
Next stop is the “Shipwreck Museum” at the lighthouse on Whitefish Point. The narrows here have accounted for a fair share of the 6,000 shipwrecks and 30,000 lives claimed by the great lakes. One old Captain made me laugh. He sunk four other ships in a month from collisions before going down himself in a fifth wreck. His attitude was “I’m carrying her Majesty’s mail and they need to get out of my way”.
The bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald was on display. That one made an impression on the locals. The modern “Big Fitz”, an ore carrier built in 1958, disappeared in a 1975 November storm with 100 MPH winds. The Captain reported a bad list, no light at Whitefish Point and both radar masts swept over board. That was his last transmission. They play some eerie music in the museum and cut over to the Gordon Lightfoot song now and then. I meet the Whitefish Point light keeper and ask him why the light was down during the storm. He is strangely silent.
We buy some lake trout and wine in the afternoon in the little community of Paradise and settle in to read. They’re playing “Dark Side of the Moon” in the fish store. I’m relieved that nobody notices my t-shirt. It’s very green here, high summer. The wildflowers are lovely. The north woods are lush and green this time of year. Everything is in a hurry to grow during the short summer months. The fall here is probably lovely. In the winter, the waves on the lake create huge ice sculptures on the frozen lakeshore.
I’m dreaming of something else, maybe a long dive trip in to Truk, maybe a job as a light house keeper, maybe something else entirely, like a flat in Ankora or a 100 acre tobacco farm...
We’re heading tomorrow for Sault Ste. Marie and then Sudbury and Ottawa before entering the U.S. in Cornwall, New York. Ontario has a lot of remote lakes where you can catch walleyes and pike.
Our campsite in the State Park is on the shore of Lake Superior. There are a lot of biting black flies here to go with the view. The only canoe trip available is 15 miles on the Ontonagon River. The river doesn’t have any current flow to help things along.
Our guy drops us off in a remote area. He has tried to warn us off, explaining that there are eight hours of determined paddling needed to get to the end of the trip. We tell him about much longer paddles in the Everglades. We trade stories about drunken Chicago cops. The same group of 50 that went diving with us in the Bahamas also came up here and pulled in about midnight..
We launch and the flies buzz around our heads as we paddle. Mrs. Phred has a mosquito hat. It helps.
The river is pristine. It’s never been logged and the banks are covered with lush ferns and summer grass. We see dozens of bald eagles and a beaver dive into the river next to the canoe.
There are lots of shallow rocky places where I have to get out and push.
After 10 hours we pull into the marina in Ontonagon, Michigan. We’ve stopped a couple of times. Once I strip off all my clothing at a sand bar and go swimming. Mrs. Phred takes several full frontal shots. I have chosen not to publish these.
After 11 miles, a fisherman offers tow us the for last four miles. Mrs. Phred whispered, “Yes!”, but I felt that it would ruin the story so we doggedly paddled the last four miles. We both have minor muscle aches in our arms today.
Today we moved east to Marquette, Michigan on Lake Superior. They have diving here on old three-masted schooner shipwrecks, fishing for 70 pound lake trout and more canoeing. We may stay awhile and recreate.
