My Friend Gail

Did I ever mention my friend Gail?  Probably not.  That’s because I didn’t think I knew any of you well enough to let you in on,  Gail.  OK.  Gail is a boy’s name.  Gale is a girl’s name.  Enough said.

Gail was the smartest friend I ever knew.  He took a double major in college but hardly ever attended class.  Physics and Nuclear science were his majors.  That is the first hint.  But he was more than that.  He drank heavily.  Beer, whiskey, schnapps, you name it.  This habit he had was due to his rebellio against his Baptist upbringing where booze of any kind is verboten, proscribed, not allowed.  Now of legal age and being educated beyond his parents he “knew” what to do.

He was 10 years older than me.  We bonded as friends because we both loved the game of chess.  When we met, he was far better than me at the game.  We met as students at  Michigan Tech where he was still without a degree at age 28 and I was there at age 18.  Why didn’t he graduate by this time, you may rightfully ask?  He drank, that’s why.

We played chess during my Freshman year almost every day in the Student Union cafeteria.  I bought books on chess rather than waste my money of school books.  As it turned out many, many, years later I do not regret that choice.  I got better than he was at chess but that is another story.

One episode I witnessed is the chance meeting of Gail and a fellow student who was enrolled along with Gail in a difficult class called: Differential Equations.  Gail had yet to attend any of those classes and a mid-term exam was scheduled at 1:00 PM that afternoon.  The fellow student was asked by Gail, which textbook was being used.  He was shown the copy the fellow student had and Gail thumbed through it for a few minutes.  Then Gail responded OK I’ll be there.  I know this stuff.  A few days later Gail found out he received a B+. without ever attending the class.

But let’s get on to Gail’s other story.  He had stories during his 10 years as an undergraduate.  My favorite is this:

He lived at home with his parents as he attended Michigan Tech.  One evening his staid mother asked Gail to go to the local market, a short walk from their home, if would go and buy some bread and milk.  Gail  readily agreed and his mother gave him some money to make the purchase.  An incredible situation arose a short time later.  You see, there were two bars between the market where the bread and milk were sold and his home.  As he told that part of the story he remembered the bars names were John’s Tavern and Joe’s Bar.  I am not making this up.  I know both of these establishments.  Only one still exists.  So Gail peeks into the window of John’s Tavern and does not see anybody he knows.  So he moves on toward the market but decides to peek into the window of Joe’s Bar.  Ah!  Gail recognizes an old acquaintance and goes in to say “hello”.   So one drink leads to an other and the bread and milk mission is soon lost for all time.

Next thing Gail remembers is being awakened by a San Francisco Police Officer while having been asleep on a park bench where sleeping was not allowed.   This is two weeks after he went to buy bread and milk.  Now get this:  He was in a little town adjacent to Calumet, Michigan named Laurium far north in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula..  It is nearly 2000 miles from San Francisco, California.  How did he get there?  Nobody knows.  Nobody has ever been identified in assisting him on this journey.  It is a journey in time without any reference points to grasp how it occurred.  He may well have “beamed up” but we know that is the substance of fiction.  But he did make the trip.

Now, let me tell you, I have had dealings with many people who travelled and furthermore did crazy things,  but this one tops them all so far.

I have seen Gail only a few time since our year(s) at Michigan Tech.  He subsequently did graduate and was employed by the Boeing Corporation on several occasions.  Notably the “Dyna Soar” project where space vehicles would be able to reenter the atmosphere.  He was recently a Physics Professor at West Virginia University.  My last contact was that he hasn’t had a drink of alcohol for over 30 years.

So what’s the point of all this?  The sober and the mundane is so predictable and the “other” might be what life is really all about.  Gail moved across a continent safely, without knowledge or direction, and finally allowed his intelligence to provide vital input to the future of space travel.  After all he did travel through space and time before it was really possible.