A Guy Named Joe

Old movie fans will be disappointed.  This is not a review of, or the announcement of a remake of, the great old Spencer Tracey movie by the same name.  It was redone once as Always starring Richard Dreyfus, Holly Hunter, and John Goodman but this article is not about that either.  (Be a little patient, please.  You’re gonna have to wade through a couple paragraphs of me telling some folks and their place how great they are.   It will be worth reading, and then I’ll get to the story).

Despite the confusing name, this story is about a guy I met named, “Joe.”

A couple weeks ago, my girl Helen and I took my two sons to a resort in the Wisconsin Dells called “Birchcliff.”

Birchcliff Resort is a classic American North Woods resort.  I don’t mean it’s decorated in the “classic” style or that it’s just “classy” (which it is, in a classic North Woods sort of way).  It is classic American summer resort including shuffleboard, horse shoes, bean bag toss, and (I am not making this up!) a no-kidding concrete ping pong table.  The dozen or more pine cabins, apparently spanning at least two different generations (of cabins) contain such things as Cribbage games, books (!), and the standard mix of kitchen equipment and accoutrements, making up a more or less complete set.  The ubiquitous park/resort built-in charcoal grill that turns on a pole and has an adjustable grill height is mounted outside.  The place is clean, well-maintained, and, well, classic!

If you needed to make a film set in a resort in the 1930’s, you could just remove the TV’s and other modern conveniences and ROLL ‘EM!

It’s simply what you’d expect to see in a real Northwoods resort.

I don’t normally pitch anyone’s business in the Daily Diatribe but these people were so nice and the place so special that I’m making an exception.  If you’re interested, you can find them at http://www.birchcliff.com.

When we checked in, we met Janice.  She was warm and sweet as can be.   Janice was very helpful with the usual stuff but when she learned we planned to have a fire, she even went so far as to issue me a starter log and a box of matches.  Nice.

A day or so later after the neighbors moved out, there was a man working on the cabin next door.  He wore a baseball cap with an 82nd Airborne Division patch on it.  For the first time in about 30 years, I was wearing a recently resurrected old Army “patrol” cap with a pair of jump wings sewn on the front and my name and a couple “ranger eyes” on the back.  No introductions necessary but we made them anyway.

Joe had been in the Army from 1957-1960 and we talked about training and we talked about the places we’d been but before we talked too long, I had to continue my barbecue operation and Joe disappeared over the horizon in his well-used utility golf cart (which, in an earlier life we might have called a “Truck, Electric, General Purpose, Small).

Before we started dinner, Joe returned with a couple of CD’s of Airborne Music.  All the giants were in there – Beautiful Streamer and Blood on the Risers by the West Point Boys Choir, Paratrooper’s Lament and The Ballad of the Green Berets by Barry Sadler, along with a collection of Airborne running cadences which, coincidently, happened to be recorded during my short but happy run through the “Home for Wayward Boys on the Chattahoochee” in 1984 (Fort Benning, Basic Parachutist Class #41-84)).  I can still remember the faces of the Black Hats (instructors) and recognize their voices on the CD especially Sergeant York and Sergeant Childress but I digress.

We had stocked up for a solid evening of roasting marshmallows and making S’mores at the main campfire and we were joined by Ashley and John from Texas (John was actually from Wisconsin Dells but Ashely let on that after more than 30 years, the people they know don’t put a “damn” in front of “Yankee” when they talk about him anymore so he’s pretty much accepted as a Texan “thereabouts”) and a couple of John and Ashley’s grandsons.  We talked about Viking and Cowboy football.I asked Ashley if she hung her Texas flag at half mast when Tom Landry was let go and she said, “Yes.”

Ashley asked me if we still held a grudge about “the hail mary” or not.

I said, “You mean the one where Drew Pearson pushed off Nate Wright, committing BLATANT PASS INTERFERENCE to score a touchdown and win the game?????” (almost standing up)…

Not at all…

Soon Joe joined us again and we discussed mosquitoes because some of the folks were complaining.  I offered that the mosquitoes in Greenland are much bigger and more aggressive than Midwest American mosquitoes.

With that, Joe started talking about all the places I’d flown to in Greenland, Narsasuaq, Sondrestrom Fjord, etc…  It turns out that Joe wasn’t exactly in the 82nd Airborne for a good part of his time in the Army but rather the 18th Airborne Corps (parent organization of the 82nd Airborne Division) in their cartography unit.

Joe was an (Airborne!) Army Mapmaker.

Joe’s outfit was apparently surveying a new road for use by the air base in Narsasuaq just before the US decided to close it down (circa 1960) and  he told us some interesting stories about his adventures there.  One one that stands out in my mind was the day their lieutenant ran out of a cave screaming.  They ran to help, figuring it was a bear and it would soon follow him out of the cave and help would be needed.  It turns out that what scared their lieutenant was not a bear and wasn’t likely to follow him out of the cave, at least not in the temporal universe….

What the lieutenant had seen was three Vikings in seated positions, still wearing all their clothes, armor, helmets, weapons, etc..

I thought, “Cool!”

They notified the Danish government of the location of these very special antiquities and got back to work.

The next day when we checked out of Birchcliffe, Janice told me how much her Dad (Joe) enjoyed talking with all of us and that he was very excited to share the CD’s with me.  She also confessed that those CD’s are all he wants to listen to in the car when they go anywhere, which made me smile.

Joe, I know you know that “leg” is really only half a word in our world.

No matter how much we love them, the Legs in our lives will never get it.

Take it easy on Janice.  Let her listen to The Battle Hymn of the Republic and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy once in a while.

cma