Through the past brightly
And the Keewanaw light sweeps over the bay And if dreams could come true, I’d still be there with you On the banks of cold waters at the close of the day.
— Craig Johnson from
“Keewanaw Light”
“Getting old isn’t for sissies”
— Bette Davis
Sweet Mother of a merciful God, I should say not. I went to bed early (for me) last night, right after “Late Night” ended, only to wake up at 3:00 with nerve pain in my left hand
(the one I can still pick things up with), so severe that all I could do was sit in front of the TV, gritting my teeth, making animal noises
I took 1600 milligrams of Motrin and three Extrastrength Tylenol. I was, unfortunately, out of my favorite Irish gargle. I ran hot water on it and I iced it down. By 6:00 this morning the pain subsided enough for me to crawl back into bed.
I woke up at 1:00 p.m. to, you know, then put a Youtube lecture about early hominid evolution on my phone and went back to sleep till . . . 5:00 p.m. Yikes,
Fortunately, I don’t gots no job
Such is the nature of various neuropathy brought on by advanced age and type 2 diabetes. That said, if ever I deign to feel sorry for myself, an ad for Shriners’ or St. Jude’s will come on TV showing little kids with no arms and I shut the hell up.
Tonight, except for a sharp tingle in my thumb when I hoist a cup of Italian Roast, it’s like it never happened. So . . . where were we?
“He sat on the logs, smoking, drying in the sun, the sun warm on his back the river shallow ahead entering the woods, curving into the woods, shallows light glittering, big water-smooth rocks, cedars along the bank and white birches, the logs warm in the sun, smooth to sit on, without bark, gray to the touch; slowly the feeling of disappointment left him.”
— Ernest Hemingway, “Big
Two-hearted River” Yes, the Big Two-hearted River in . . . the Upper Peninsula, the UP, remember when we were talking about that? Truth be known, Hemingway really fished the Fox but he loved the romance inherent in the name the Big Two-hearted and the duality of existence it implied. But no real trout fisherman gives away the location of his or her favorite water and the fishing was better on the Fox.
Today we’ll be talking about Ishpeming. First, it’s fun to say. Say it: Ish-puh-ming. See? I’ve never been to Ishpeming, a condition I plan to remedy this summer because it’s the home of two of my favorite things. And they’re connected.
First off, Ishpeming is the home town of the writer, John Voelker who published under the name Robert Travers. Travers wrote “Anatomy of a Murder” which, was made into a film in 1959, starring Jimmy Stewart and directed by the great Otto Preminger. It was filmed on location in Ishpeming.
Voelker was a jazz afficionado and “Anatomy” featured a jazz score written by Duke Ellington, the first Hollywood movie score, incidentally, created by an African American and included the alto sax of Johnny Hodges, the trumpet of Clark Terry and the trombone of Britt Woodman.
It was a ground-breaking film, not only for its musical score, its accurate depiction of court room procedure and its explicit discussion of rape but also for being the first American film to feature the word
. . . “panties.” Whoa. It is critically regarded as one of the best films of all time. It’s on MY Top 10 list.
Voelker was a noted lawyer, author and fly fisherman, born and raised in Ishpeming, where his father owned a saloon. His early professional career was as an attorney and county prosecutor in Marquette County. Voelker was appointed to the Michigan Supreme Court in 1957 by Governor G. Mennen “Soapy” Williams.
Voelker resigned from the Supreme Court after only three years, because . . . it cut into his fishing time too much. I’m not kidding.
Rats, we’ve run out of space due to the length of my selfindulgent preamble. More on Voelker, trout fishing and the UP, next week.
And so it went.