The Atomic Hula
1959
Chapter Five
Bats! Blood sucking vapires from hell!
Mickey had endured them every freakin' summer for the past three years, when he would spend the entire 76 trombones led the big parade star spangled corn roasting month of July, and part of the hot, humid, Street Car Named Desire steam of the fish fryin' month of August at his grandparents cottage.
Grand Lake in Michigans North Country. Fishing and hiking, riding his bicycle, watching freighters go up Lake Huron, and down again...Buffalo maybe, maybe Cleveland. Maybe..maybe through the St. Lawrence Seaway and across the sea to Manila to the dark streets and alleyways of tranny bars and Mama Do-right hiding in a shack. Passing through the Soo Locks like an ore loaded suppository.
Closing his eyes to daydream, and enjoy the intoxicant of pine, sand and juniper. Sensual smells that permeated the wet, swampy mosquito woods that surrounded the red pine cottage. The red was no ordinary American red either. Nor a communist red that appealed only to Slavs. Naw, it was that deep, rich, dark, pumping blood red you see in photographs of log lodges buried ass deep in the blowing white snows of blonde Scandinavia with whole villages of Norweigians, also buried ass deep in the same snows, yelling with accents for more snowshoes. That kind of red.
The navy of early morning fishermen rose bleary eyed early. Ready as hell to launch the fleet of Johnson and Mercury motors to depth charge full speed ahead and damn the friggin' torpedoes urgency in their quest for the nazi fish just below the surface. Bass battling battleships chasing a silent service U-boat wolfpack of smallmouth looking to evade capture and sink the Lusitania first. Grand Admiral Grand Pa at the sunrise helm. Water lapping gently, a finger popping liquid Bobby Darin Vegas beat against the splintered sides of that old grey wooden, weathered boat. Grandfather and grandson. The Old Papa Hemmingway Man and the Sea flashing back, like old yellowed pages in a forgotten book. At times silent, enjoying each other, the stillness and quietude of nature, and the abject lack of words. Words not spoken that allow communication between friends who fish and hunt, that only comes with the dawn.
Soon the silence is broken. Sonars ping and bobbers bob, signalling the attack as the line tugs from the depths below...a kamikaze fish on the line, dinner on the table. It was always the time he looked forward to the most. His special time, but first, to get to it...you had to endure the gauntlet of gore and the obligatory Attack of the 50 Foot Bats!
That first Friday, after school let out for the lazy, hazy daze of summer, the air in an academic balloon emancipated, Mickey would head "up north".
Up North. More than a state of mind, it was the promised land of knotty pine, white birch and yellow perch. Deer heads in the buckshot headlights, mounted on the unemployed pine walls of the local foodstamp bars and bowling alley dives. They kept gaze from above, glass eyed gods of the art of taxidermy over the pool tables with the incessant cracking collision noise given off by the cue ball as it successfully sought out it's next ball/victim and sent it bleeding and slashed into corner pocket hell. A Jack the Ripper eight ball serial killer, if ever there was one.
One of the Ten Commandments of this promised land was simplicity itself. "You catch 'em, you clean 'em". You got to unstring them, knock in their little bulging heads with a stick, and clean and scale the helpless critter. The catch of the day. Once filet'd and finned, you'd toss their little left over heads into a little left over pie tin to feed the masked racoon raiders some left overs when they waddled out at night from under the boathouse.
It was a land of plaid shirts, tackle boxes, shotguns, beer and ammo, along with smoked meats and smoked cheese. Wicker swings on the porch and fireball sunsets. Black bears feeding at the dump, seagulls swooping overhead, all played out on a stage of trash, with an appreciative automotive audience in attendance at a command performance at the Carnegie Hall of Carnivores. Now, dammit, that's mammalian entertainment!
All true blue, red plaid and proud Michiganders referred to "the north" as that magnetic compass point anywhere away from the grime and crime, and the rust and concrete of industrial Detroit. The highways of summer, a California gold rush of vacationers from the blue collar and white collar jails that imprisoned them on a daily 9-5 regimen. An asphaltian armada of Motor City steel and chrome setting sail. Wooden sided station wagons, space age cars, rusticity seeking campers and awesome, sleek phallic Airstreams, heading away from the strewn wounded of the urban timeclock battlefields, for some much needed seasonal rest and recuperation and time to reload.
The new Gold Rush. California may have had it's share of '49s, but in Michigan, it was the invasion of the Knotty Piners! Secret convoys of modern day prarie schooner pioneers, composed of modern day internal combustion Conestoga's, would toss their white collar ties and blue collar coveralls on a funeral pyre. The sirens wailed as they began the escape from the confines of the city after the work week ended, and would begin the four hour northward trek along the two laned sunrise coast.
As enveloping dark descended, and miles of even darker roads were devoured whole, they would eventually arrive "Up North" around midnight. Eight dirt miles to go and the Packard would slowly berth itself in the small parking spot across from the cottage, a freighter from Dahomey making port in old ganja Jamaica. Just the week before, as in rehearsed history, the cabin was unshuttered by Mr. Carlson, local plumber and volunteer fireman, and his sons who helped out during the summer. They put the dock in the water. The boat hoist put in place. Lastly, they removed the coverings on the two boats that had been as silent as unearthed mummies from underground Cairo in a plastic holy sarcophagus, covered and sheltered at the side of the old boathouse to weather the northern winter storms season after howling season.
On weekends, family would come up to visit. Cousins, aunts and uncles, and when his mom would come up with her fiance they would sometimes bring up one of Mickeys commando comrades to spend a week, and return home the following weekend. Alone, most of the time, Mickey had his hearty crew of imaginary and invisible pirates to keep him company. Wind at their backs, and in their mainsail, they would sail the bounding main, and ply the green waters of Grand Lake searching for strange languaged Spaniards of a swarthy nature, and rob their rich ships laden and tilting to one side with too much Filipino gold. Madrid wouldn't be seeing these riches anytime soon, Matey.
The imagined crew would disappear into the hold of the ship when his friends would arrive for a visit. They, Italian adventurers from the Olde Neighborhood, and not the Olde World, would replace the phantom crew of pillaging pirates, and become their flesh and blood plundering, blundering counterparts, Shanghai'd drunks pressed into His Majesty's Service.
Wooden swords held high, bad sea dog accents and enough vanity to think they'd actually find it, they searched for treasure on the beaches, buried deep. They'd explore the grounds of the haunted lighthouse looking for the fabled remnants of the great ghosts of the Great Lakes. Spook each other like Tom and Huck emerged from a time machine, telling tall tales and ghost stories in the graveyard, and spend sunny afternoons building rafts that wouldn't float.
He smiled as he soared on his magic carpet of memories, adrift in a subliminal sea, and caressed by the drone and hum of the engine, a V-8 mantra, horsepower replacing haiku, and rpm displacing Om. Finally, the Packard pulled into it's parking spot near the abundant poison ivy. Mickey and his grandparents, careful not to brush against the obnoxious weeds, would get out of the car, grab the bags and flashlight, and make their way to the doors of what passed for Shangri-la.
As they neared the doorway in the black-blue of midnight, Mickeys eyes got wild, large and as big as flying saucers in the New Age skies over New Mexico. He looked up in horror, noticing that the night sky was not only filled with thousands of planets, solar systems, super nova and stars, but also alive with the nightmare of hundreds of flying blood sucking dread. Bats!
Certain their only purpose in life was to torment him, swoop down and bite his neck, and thus turn him into a mindless zombizi Lugosi "yes Master" creature of the night. Doomed forever to seek helpless victims as he plunged into the B-movie abyss of bad dialogue and eternity. His heart raced and the blood pumped. "Oh God, no, not the blood". Soon he'd be served up on a platter, an all you can eat buffet for every bloodsucker in Transylvania. A feast for the beast to devour.
He would hear the latch of the door unlock and soon they would seek shelter inside. Safe for the moment. Safe from the bats. Safe from a life of as a campy, vampy vampire. He loved the great outdoors. He loved nature..but bats?
Bats suck!
The sun would explode above the horizon the next morning, and the bats would be sleeping, thankfully, resting up for another night of child fear, and the seagulls would take over dominion of the skies. No wonder he dreamt of pirates and high sea Jack London adventures. The lake would be bathed in the early dawn golden hues of the solar gift, and the small waves would sparkle with the dancing refelctions of many tiny shards of sunlight. Diamonds and jewells, floating in concert with driftwood above, and minnows below.
Some mornings he'd put on his pirate garb and grab the rowboat and row out to one of the many islands in the lake. One large one, he called Treasure Island, would draw him into it's own peculiar Robert Louis Stevenson fantasy where he would land with his crew and search high and low for the treasure he was sure lie buried in the past and the dirt of history. Men o' war with one legged, eye patched, foul, rum soaked Captains with real swords, and not wooden ones, plyed these waters he kept telling himself. Marooning men and burying treasure and selling white, big soft breasted maidens into Arabic slavery.
On occassion he would come across one of these fair maids, hear her cries, pleas, and dash, a handsome Hollywood swashbuckler, to her rescue, ala Errol Flynn. Rescued, they would sail to her castle, evil in pursuit, and once safe would be feted by the King, her father. After a night of feast and festivity he would once again board his vessle and sail away, into the bosom of adventure and the arms of more maidens and lands of strange Argonaut monsters.
When not saving the Crown he would spend hours walking in the woods on old game trails and rotting, half buried logging roads cut through the forest in the early part of the century. Coniferous caverns and deciduous dens of cool woodland comfort and strange animal sounds. Animal prints and scat leading the way into the depths, and all he could think about was the disappearance of tree after tree, the exit of the elms back home in his neighborhood, now lightyears away.
His spirit and his bicylce always took him to the narrow spit of beach penninsula up the road where he had made friends with the elderly couple who lived at the Old Lighthouse. Decommisioned for years, and now a museum, it was a nautical beacon of solace for Mickey. The old couple, he a former Great Lakes sailor, and she a teacher, treated him like their own flesh and blood and let him have the run of the place.
He'd ring the giant bell that reverberated across the bay, unleash the cry of the banshee playing with the antiquated foghorn and most of all, got to run up to the beacon tower where he could survey the present, and peer into the past, but he never felt quite alone up there. Along with the past, comes it's ghosts, and rumour had it, the Old Light was haunted and alive with spectral death!
Summer of 1959.
Pirates, treasure and ghosts. Corn on the cob and fresh frying fish. Days of innocence that were getting short, shorter. Soon, the summer would end and in the years to come, so would the innocence. The decade of Korea was decaying into the quicksand years of Vietnam and in ten years, man would land on the moon. In another five years, the cottage would be sold, the red, painted over a hunter green by strangers with a mortgage.
The woods cleared for further development, the beach eroded and the lighthouse caretaker would die in his sleep and take his place with the other ghosts of the beacon on the beach. As he returned back to Detroit, the real tragedy awaited him. While he was playing the part of a plying pirate, the large elm in his grandparents front yard succumbed to Dutch Elm Disease, and lie crippled on the lawn. Dead.
End of Part Five - 1959