Door County Style

Chirpy Farr

Posted on 02. Aug, 2008 by Tom Bridenhagen in Literature

Thomas “Tee” Marik had felt the wind’s subtle shift from the south, to southeast, to east over the last hour or so. A thickening layer of low clouds had darkened the sky just a bit. The sun had become a dim yellow ball hanging just above the pine-covered bluff of Potawatomi State Park overlooking Sawyer Harbor, three miles west of downtown Sturgeon Bay.

Low pressure moving in, he thought. Mare’s tail clouds two days ago. Maybe four, five o’clock before the snow starts. Might be some lake effect coming. Best keep an eye on things. He flipped open his two-tone grey Motorola Razr cell phone and, shading the face of the phone with one hand, he looked at the time. 11 am.

Tee had an hour and a half drive ahead of him yet this afternoon and he knew all about lake effect from having lived almost his entire 70 years near the shore of Lake Michigan, first Sturgeon Bay, then Kewaunee and finally, for the past 40 years, Manitowoc.

Often when the wind blew out of the east during a snowstorm, the wind would pick up extra moisture from the lake. When that happened, a routine snow squall could turn into a dangerous storm, with a foot or more of soft, powdery snow flakes falling, making the drive home hazardous at best, downright dangerous at times.

The bobbers on his ice fishing line had moved to the west side of the holes in the ice now and the breeze blew almost directly into Tee’s face. He zipped up the collar of his old, blaze orange fishing jacket, the one with the patch on the front were he’d learned a good lesson. Don’t move up against the manifold of a power ice auger. It’s hot and it can ruin a good jacket, or at least a jacket without any previous holes in it!

He picked up his yellow plastic ice fishing shelter and moved it to the other side of the 8″ diameter holes in the ice, putting the wind at his back. That oughta keep me warm for a while anyway. Sure wish I’d get a bite pretty soon. This keeps up, I might as well pack it in.

As if on cue, one of his yellow and white, pencil-shaped bobbers moved upward a half an inch. Then again. Smelt! Or schmelt, as Chirpy would have called’m. Smelt would take a minnow differently than other fish would. They’d grab the bait and swim upward with it, creating a momentary bit of slack in the line, which would translate into a bobber popping up instead of down.

Tee took off his well-worn buckskin mittens, grabbed the light blue monofilament line a foot above the bobber. Get ready. Be ready. Not yet. Not yet. The bobber continued to move around in the hole, then almost imperceptibly it pulled downward just a tiny bit. Now! Tee jerked the line upward and the smelt was hooked.

In a matter of seconds, Tee raised his right hand high, slid left hand down the line to the water, deftly lifted and the slim, silvery, frantically wiggling fish came sliding out onto the ice. The old man grasped the smelt firmly and extracted the hook and torn minnow from its gaping mouth, slid his glasses up on his forehead and raised the little fish up to his face for a better look.

The smelt was about 10″ long, give or take, almost as slim as a snake and shaped like a barracuda. Its glistening silver sides… when you looked at a smelt closely and in the right light… had almost a rainbow colored hue to them.

Tee inhaled deeply. Uncle Joe always said a winter smelt melt like waterlemons. Tee grinned to himself, then slipped the fish back into the hole. With a quick flip of its tail the smelt disappeared into the crystal clear depths. Woulda took 15 of them schmelt to make a dozen, Chirpy would’ve said.

Old Chirpy Farr. I wonder whatever the heck became of him, he thought. Probably buried in a potter’s field somewhere, if he got buried at all. Always down fishing off Grover’s Dock. Man, did that guy ever know how to catch perch. Always had time for a kid. Always had something interesting or funny to say. A lot of it I never dared tell Mom!

* * *

Early May. Tee was back home from college at the U.W. Madison again. The phone call had come. The funeral. And three more days. The others had all gone back to the sanctuaries of their homes, all except Tee. And Dad.

But you couldn’t talk with Dad. Start a conversation, about anything, try to take his mind off of it and Dad’d start crying.

“Mom and I, we were always so perfect together, Tee, you know? I remember the time when…” and Dad was crying again, unable to finish what he was saying. Dad was a devastated man and Tee felt totally helpless. He always remembered Dad as such a strong, confident man. And now…

…it was early-summer warm now. Two weeks had dragged slowly by. Dad was still in bed, doped up with whatever Dr. Grover had given him to help him sleep. Tee went into the kitchen, opened the fridge and took out a package of bacon and a carton of eggs. Over easy is the way she liked’m too and the bacon had to be just right, firm but not burned, he thought, and he fried the eggs over easy and did the bacon just right.

He brought a tray into the bedroom for Dad who was just beginning to stir. Tee knew that when he came back an hour or so later, the breakfast would be cold, untouched. He sighed, frowned, then returned to the kitchen, downed the simple breakfast he’d made for himself, wiping the remaining egg and bacon pieces from his plate with a slice of home made bread, taken from the freezer and thawed out in the toaster. Probably the last slice of home made bread I’ll ever have, I guess.

Tee stepped out through the screen doorway and onto the back porch. From there you could see the bay of Sturgeon Bay. The many moods and blues and greys and multi-colors of the bay always made you pause and just look and drink in its beauty before you moved on with what you were doing or where you were going.

Tee was at a loss what to do. He couldn’t just leave Dad like this. How the heck can Dad even go back to work at Peterson Builders and supervise all those other guys when he’s like this? Tee could imagine an empty refrigerator, an un-made bed, an un-mowed lawn. Dad just sitting there, wasting away.

Should I go back to school, or stay here a while and help, or what? Torn, confused and hurting, Tee descended the porch steps. Two more steps across the sidewalk brought him to the old pump. A tin cup dangled from a thin length of chain by the pump’s water spout. Tee began moving the pump handle up and down. Somehow the squeak of the handle was soothing this morning.

Mom had asked Dad to hang that tin cup there years ago. The pump was well known throughout the neighborhood. The water that gushed out after 20 or so cranks of the handle was ice cold and delicious. The cup was there because anyone was more than welcome to stop by and partake. And lots took advantage of it. Even the guys on the garbage truck that cruised through the alley that separated their house from the neighbors to the south stopped by for their weekly cool one and a minute or two of friendly conversation with her.

Tee took a deep, slow drink of the refreshing liquid, then smiled. He distinctly remembered the time when Mom had to pour warm water on his tongue one cold winter day when, for some kid reason, he’d decided to lick the pump handle. Kinda hard to yell for help when you can’t use your tongue, he chuckled.

What to do? He glanced to his right, toward the broad stump, all that remained of a giant box elder. One thunderstormy night one of the horizontal branches had crashed to the ground, gouging a deep hole in the lawn. The rest of the tree had to be taken down.

Got old, like everything does, I guess, he mused. I sure miss that old tree though.

Tee remembered how he could look out the window of his upstairs bedroom right into the nest of a pair of cedar waxwings. The young waxwings, when they got a bit older, would line up on a branch, wings partially spread for balance, beaks wide open, begging for food from their olive colored, black burglar-masked, harried parents. Gone now. Like everything. Eventually.

On an impulse, he decided to stroll down to the bay… to the point… the boat docks… to Grover’s dock where Chirpy… Chirpy? I wonder. Nah, that was a long time ago. Still…

He had to see.

The street was blacktop now. Glad they finally got rid of the gravel. Dusty. You couldn’t play ball on it. Had to pick your way across it barefoot. Tough to even ride a bike on it. Tee was almost uncomfortably warm, despite his beige shorts and white, sleeveless t-shirt, and he could feel the heat of the blacktop through his sandals. The air even smelled warm.

Across Memorial Drive, onto the grass by the bay. Tee’s eyes swept from west to east along the bay. To his right, Peterson Builders shipyard still looked the same. Allie brothers fish tug tied up to their dock, pond nets on wooden cradles drying in the sun, still there. Dad’s boat… well, a little bit bigger one now. Round bottom. Kit boat, but nice, bobbing at anchor by their little plank dock next to the point.

The point of land, extending 50′ or so out into the bay… no ducks or seagulls there right now. The smells still the same. Dead seawood, mossy rocks, a bloated fish or two. To the east… the other yacht and small boat docks and…

…My gosh! Can it be?

Seated on the end of Grover’s dock, half a block away, sat a solitary fisherman. Faded red, shapeless cap on his head, overalls despite the warm weather. Legs dangling over the end. Cane pole hanging out over the water.

Chirpy Farr! Man, it’s been a long time, Tee thought as he half-walked, half-ran along the shore toward Grover’s Dock. He remembered Chirpy as being mildly profane. He wore old, patched clothes and when he spoke, which was rarely, you never knew what would come out of his mouth next. Picked up the nickname “Chirpy” because folks said when he was a kid he could whistle like a bird. Nobody ever seemed to know his real name.

Kids liked him, especially young boys, because Chirpy dressed and talked exactly the way moms and dads said a guy shouldn’t. And old Chirp always had time for a kid. But when high school came long, Chirpy lost his appeal to younger boys because then they all acted and talked like Chirpy. So kids kinda forgot about him. Down there, alone, on the end of Grover’s Dock.

Tee hesitated for a few moments when he got to the dock, then slowly moved out past Dr. Grover’s big Chris Craft yacht toward where the old man sat, the sound of Tee’s sandals and the slight swaying of the dock preceding his arrival. A good ten years had passed since Tee’d been there last.

“Hey, Chirp!”

“Hi kid. Siddown. I saved yer seat.” Tee sat down, to the left of the old curmudgeon.

“Been a long time, Chirp.”

“Yep. Been a coon’s age. Ya grow’d a bit since I see ya last.”

“I guess so. I didn’t think you’d even remember me. Pretty warm out here today.”

“Yep, hotter than a two-peckered goat.”

Tee giggled. Same old Chirpy.

“Hey Chirp, ‘f it’s so warm, how come you still have your long johns on?” Tee could see the longies past the cuffs of Chirpy’s pants and tucked into his socks.

“Simple. Keeps the cold out in the winter. Keeps the warm out in the summer.”

Tee pondered on that one for a moment. All of a sudden, he thought of something unusual, something he’d never noticed before. Chirpy didn’t smell bad! The ladies of the small town always said that “tramps” like Chirpy didn’t work and didn’t brush their teeth and they always smelled bad. Chirpy’s cap and overalls were old but he wasn’t dirty at all, not even under his fingernails. I wonder why I never noticed those things before, Tee puzzled.

“How’s fishin’, Chirp?”

“It’s ok. Nothin’ like it used ta be, though. I ketch 10 perch it’s a good day now. Used ta ketch me a hunnert a day sometimes.”

A slim, two-inch long insect, fluorescent blue body, almost transparent, settled on the end of Chirpy’s cane pole. “Dang darnin’ needles!” he grumbled, shaking the pole and chasing the delicate critter away. “Should mind their own business and leave my pole alone.”

They sat in silence for several minutes.

“My mom died, Chirp.”

“I know’d.”

“Pretty tough on my dad.”

“It allus is, when a man’s wife goes.”

Tee paused to watch a sleek, white, 16-foot wooden lap-strake boat go zipping by out in the bay. Lap-strakes planed so beautifully when they had the right size outboard motor on them. Lots of folks like the way they looked but Tee always thought they appeared, with their overlapping planking, like they’d been made from the siding of a wood frame house. He did have to concede, though, that they surely ran nicely out on the water.

“She runs nice, don’t she, Chirp?”

“Goes like a paper devil,” the old man grunted. “Some of them boats is rougher than a whore’s mattress.”

Like a paper devil. I wonder how a paper devil goes, Tee thought, laughing to himself, a little grin at the corners of his mouth. And I wonder how rough a whore’s mattress is.

Then, “Guess I don’t really know what to do, Chirp. I don’t think he can handle it. All he does is sit and cry. Don’t know if I should quit school and stay home or go back and wish I was home, helping out.”

Chirpy removed his cap and scratched his head. He put his cap back on.

“Hey Chirp. You got hair!” Tee had never seen Chirpy with his cap off before. The light reddish locks were sparse and wispy to be sure, but Chirp had hair.

The old man turned his face toward Tee, lifted one eyebrow in mock scorn and snorted, “Course I got hair, idjit. Even a nun got hair but you ain’t never seen a nun’s hair neither, have ya?” He turned back to watching his cane pole.

He’s got a point there, I guess!

Then, “Did you know Mom, Chirp?”

A long pause. “Yep, I know’d ‘er. Everybody know’d yer ma. She was quality. Most everybody knows real quality when they sees it.”

“But we didn’t have any money, Chirp. We always had old clothes and shoes and such.”

“Kid, quality don’t depend on money. Quality isn’t what you has; it’s what you is.”

“Did you ever meet her, Chirp?”

Chirpy chuckled. Tee had never, ever heard Chirpy chuckle before.

“Well, did you?”

“Well sorta, in a roundabout way.”

“Meaning what? Don’t keep me in suspenders.”

I had to throw that one in for you, Chirp, Tee smiled to himself. Come to think of it, lots of things Tee said and did every week seemed to be linked somehow to old Chirpy Farr.

Chirpy took a deep breath, looked away from his cane pole and up to the late May blue sky.

“Well, I remember one spring day, a day pretty much like this one, ya know,” he began. “I was just walking up and down the streets with my burlap sack, just collectin’ thing, ya know. Lots of folks throw things out in the spring. I come by yer house up there and there was lots of things out by the curb. Junk things. Like they come from an attic or basement or somewheres.

“Anyways, some of them things was in a old, beat up-looking wagon. I figgered the wagon was for the junk man, too, so I just grabbed a holt of ‘r handle and away I went up the street.

“Well yer ma, she must seen me cuz she come runnin’ down that sidewalk breathin’ fire. ‘HEY!’ she yells, ‘Where you going with that? That wagon belongs to the kids!’” A trace of a grin flashed quickly across Chirpy’s face, then disappeared just as quickly.

“Well sir, she didn’t have ta say it twict. I dropped that there handle and away I went and I didn’t never look back neither cuz it was like ol’ Satchell Paige, he was a nigger baseball pitcher you know, a real good one, too… anyways, ol’ Satch he said, ‘Never look back. Somethin’ might be gainin’ on ya.’ So I didn’t.”

Tee was struggling to contain himself. He wanted to roar with laughter so badly but at the same time he wasn’t quite sure that Chirpy found it all that funny. Come to think of it, he kinda remembered when that incident happened. He hadn’t witnessed it but he remembered Mom, at the supper stable, still steaming mad, telling four fascinated kids and Dad all about it.

“I used to drink outa yer pump sometimes, too, ya know,” Chirpy went on.

“You did? I never saw you there.”

“I did. I know’d she didn’t like me none, but sometimes if I was walkin’ by and I seen the car was gone and nobody was around, I just kinda walked up there kinda nonchalant like and helped myself. Everybody else did, ya know. She didn’t like me none, but I liked her. I seen she done a good job a raisin’ you kids.”

Tee smiled. He was, as Chirpy would have said it, “gabberflasted.” He never knew Chirp was a sometime visitor in their yard and drank at their pump. He wondered what else he’d never known about the old guy.

“I don’t think Dad can make it, Chirp. I never saw him like this.”

“He’ll make it ok, kid,” Chirpy replied. “Just takes a while. Ya know, kid, women is kinda like dogs in a way. Ya get a bad one and she just wears on ya and never leaves ya alone and sooner or later one of ya gotta go. Sometimes ya kin tolerate the dang thing, but mostly, with a bad one, it’s either you or it.

“But ya gits you a good’n, now that’s a different thing altogether. Git a good’n and everythin’ jist seems to fit jist perfect. Can’t really ‘splain it. It’s like… ummmm, with a good woman it’s almost like the two a ya’s only got one mind. Even when yer sleepin’. You move, she moves. She moves, you move. It’s almost like a song ‘cept ya never git tired a hearin’ it.”

Tee sat, stunned. Chirpy talking like this. Never in his wildest dreams would he have imagined it.

Chirpy went on. “Yer ma, now. She was a good’n… a real good’n. Ya could see it in the way she was to people. The way she raised you young’uns. The way she was with him. Ya know, jist settin’ here on this here dock, many’s the time I seen her, when you and him were out fishin’ in the boat and gone away… just like… almost like magic. I could tell when yous was comin’ home cuz down the street she come. And out on yer little dock there, by the point where yer pa keeps his boat. And she’d wait and purty soon, ’round the bend by the boatyard yous would come.”

Tee’s eyes teared up. He brushed the tears away with the back of his wrist.

“Ya know, kid, when a man loses his wife, ‘n she’s a real good’n like that, there ain’t nuthin’ like it. I mean, ‘f yer friends die it’s bad. Yer kids go, it’s even worse. Lose a good wife… ain’t nuthin’ like it. Tough to get through it. Takes time. He’ll get over it, kid… ‘ventually. Tell’m to go fishin’. It helps.”

Tee’s eyes moved to Chirpy. The old man, just sitting there, day after day, staring at his cane pole, ketchin perch. Feet dangling off the end of the dock. Shapeless cap and patched clothes. Then, on impulse, Tee looked down. There. On Chirpy’s left hand. Third finger. Ring finger. The finger was smaller between the first and second knuckles. the way a finger gets if it’s worn a ring for a long long time. Tee’d never known. He’d always thought Chirpy Farr was just a grumpy old loner.

Off to the left a ways, on the next dock toward The Lake, Rueben Muess was getting ready to go fishing by himself. Chirpy always like the name Mr. Muess. Rueben, a widower who lived right across the street from the bay shore, had a pretty little Thompson Speed Demon, a 12-footer, with a big, green Mercury outboard bolted to the transom. The foredeck on the Thompson was sparkling white. Its gunwhales, seats and trim were made of beautifully polished mahogany. Right in front of the middle seat was a bright red steering wheel, the only steering wheel Tee had ever seen on a small boat.

“Howdy, Chirpy,” Rueben Muess called out.

“Howdy, Mr. Miss,” Chirpy replied, without even a trace of mirth. “Ain’t much doin’ today, but maybe ya kin ketch you some perch out there in them weeds. More than I got in here anyways.”

“Hope so,” Ruben replied, setting his two casting reels and a can of nightcrawlers down on the shiny, varnished floorboards. He cranked up the Mercury and soon the Speed Demon was moving away, leaving just a small wake behind it. Rueben didn’t look back.

“Hey, Chirp. You got any kids?” Tee asked. Somehow it never had dawned on him that maybe Chirpy had a family.

“Got a couple. One I ain’t seen in years. She moved away sommers. Have no idea where she is now. T’other lives in town here. Big house. Never comes to see me neither, though. Too busy or something, I guess.”

They were silent for several minutes.

“I don’t know what to do about Dad, Chirp,” Tee continued at last. “I mean, there’s no way he can take care of himself the way he is.”

Chirpy Farr took a long look at the young man sitting next to him down there on Grover’s Doc, lifted one eyebrow the way he always did when he was going to say something worth listening to.

“Well here’s what ya do, kid. First, ya got a couple a sisters in town here, right? Jist make sure they drop in on ‘im once in a while. Then ya gotta make sure, somehow, that he gits outa the house some. A house will just haunt ya to death sometimes when yer hurtin’. Make sure he gits out where there’s people… people and water. And kids. Kids are the best thing. Don’t even have to be yer own, necessarily. Just somebody’s kids.

“I ‘member when I was hurtin’. Long time ago. I come down here. Always some kids ketchin’ crabs or fishin’ or skipping stones or somethin’. One kid ‘specially helped me a lot. Blonde kid. Bright blue eyes. Smart. Come to think of it, the kid looked a lot like you. Ain’t seen’m in many a year now, though. All grow’d up and gone and too busy now, I guess.”

Tee swallowed hard. I never knew. I never, ever knew, he thought. All the time, I thought he was helping me.

The sun was higher in the sky now. Dad would be up and around, and if he wasn’t, somebody had to get him up and around. Talk him into going back to work and getting out of the house some. Maybe even get him to go fishing a little bit.

“Thanks, Chirp. You’re a big help. Tell you what. The next time you see that blue-eyed kid won’t be nearly as long, not nearly. You’ll see him again a lot sooner this time. I promise.”

“Well, we’ll see. I heard that one a’fore. I’ll save this here seat for him, though. He’s welcome any time. Any time he can make it.”

“He will. He will… and Chirp, can I ask you a question before I go?”

“Sure kid, shoot.”

“How hot is a two-peckered goat?”

A twinkle came into Chirpy’s eyes, then he grinned broadly. “Damned hot, kid. Damned hot.”

Epilogue

* * *

And Chirpy had been right. Dad did make it, though the sparkle was gone. He never really regained the ready smile and the joy in life he once had. He went back to work and put in his time ’til his retirement. He remarried, to a widow-woman from the north side. She was nice and she was a companion, but she wasn’t a real love. Dad and his lone remaining brother spent many hours fishing together on the bay.

Fact was, in just a small 14′ boat, the two of them landed a huge king salmon, that held the Wisconsin state record for that species for quite a few years. The two old timers landed the monster without even the benefit of a landing net. That must have been a real “Grumpy Old Men” moment, perfect for another movie that could be made with Walter Matthau playing the part of Uncle Joe and Jack Lemon playing the part of Dad.

Then Uncle Joe passed away, too, and as Dad often told his Tee, “When Joe died, I died.”

Twenty years short ago this May, Tee’s Dad passed away as well. He lived 25 long years after the death of Mom, the love of Dad’s life.

How can years be so long, and yet how can they rush by so quickly at the same time?

* * *

It was getting to be around noon, out there on the ice of Sawyer Harbor. Off to the east, not far from the home where he grew up in Sturgeon Bay, not far from the the house and the point and Peterson Builders and Grover’s Dock, the sound of the shipyard noon whistle from PBI came echoing across the ice from the city. The wind was picking up now. Time for Tee to head home.

He gathered up his equipment and trudged through the ankle deep snow to shore, to the parking lot.

When he got to shore, Thomas “Tee” Marik stopped. Turning toward the city, he paused for a long moment. Then, quietly, he spoke just one short phrase:

“Thanks, Chirp and Mom and Dad. You were a great help. Tell you what. The next time you see that blue-eyed kid won’t be nearly as long, not nearly. You’ll see him again a lot sooner this time. I promise.”

Tags: Tom Bridenhagen