Just Another Story

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon way up in the north of Michigan and I do mean way up in the Keweenaw Peninsula.  Calumet township Yellow Jacket location.  There is a Red Jacket and a Blue Jacket too but I lived on Elm Street in Yellow Jacket next door to Art Stellberg.  Art was a self-sufficient bachelor into his fifties.  A carpenter by trade but the handiest handy man anywhere.  Art was a great hockey player in his day.  I know that because my mother said so.  But that’s just another story.

Art went fishing out on the “big lake” this Sunday looking for lake trout which were plentiful back then but diminishing because of the influx of the sea lamprey.  The opening of the St. Lawrence into the Great Lakes brought in this “unintended consequence” of another government program.  You see, the sea lamprey are an eel like creature that latch onto their prey with a suction like mouth and drain the life out of their victims.  With no natural predator to control them they decimated the great lakes fishing.  But that’s just another story.

During the previous week, Art had discovered a very hard spot in the middle of his lawn.  He began to dig up around the area and found a huge boulder buried just below the surface.  It became a big excavation project trying to unearth a 2 ton bolder.  The hole measured 10 feet across and 8 feet wide.  With tools used in the copper mines he began to lift the rock, drill holes into it and split it with “feathers”, a tool called a “moyal”,  and a sledge-hammer.  But this was hard work and on this Sunday he went fishing instead of digging.

After he left for the lake I decided to help him dig out the rock.  I began shoveling out more dirt and tried to move the boulder with a 20 ton jack.   I was really impressed at how the jack could move such a heavy thing.  Then from across tenth street an old man named Charlie Beaudino arrived to see what I was doing.  Now Charlie was a character in his past and I knew some of the stories about him.  I remember he ran into the Milwaukee Road passenger train just as it was pulling out of the station at 6:00 PM.  His car back then was an old model Chrysler and even had wooden spokes on its wheels.  The right front wheel was twisted and the fender was bent up quite badly.  Steam was coming from the radiator too.    Charlie was speeding home just 2 blocks away because he had to get his band uniform on and get back downtown to play in the Calumet Village Fire Department Band.  Charlie played the tuba but you should have guessed that.  And that’s just another story.

Now getting back to the big boulder.  Charlie, with his wisdom, age, and experience, guided me on getting the rock out of the ground.  I had not really known Charlie that well despite him living so close to my house.  But we hit it off very well.  We both enjoyed talking and working very hard together.  Me about 16 years old and he was 74.  We used the jack to inch the rock up and back filled the hole with dirt.  This went on for about 4 hours without taking a break.  Charlie seemed to relish doing hard work again and I relished finally, in my young life,  doing some hard work.  Real man’s work. We succeeded in getting the rock completely above ground and even had time to split it into several huge chunks.  Then we were both called home for suppers.  We were almost good friends by then but that’s just another story.

I could hardly wait until Art returned home from fishing.  Normally when a fisherman comes home the “catch” is the story of the day.  But this day it would surely be different. Art could not believe his eyes.  I came running out to see and hear his disbelief.  I told him the story about working with old Charlie all afternoon and how much fun work could be.  Charlie waved from his front porch as Art looked in that direction.  Charlie was probably too tired to get up and come back outside.    I was too excited to see Art’s surprise at what the kid and the old man did in one afternoon.  I never got to ask him “how was the fishing”, because that was just another story.