congenial-speak

Dogging the Bounds:

It was an outcropping, a stone rubble of a gateway to my youth. It was there, beneath a weeping willow tree when we bought the place. In 1970 it tempted me, and further, each time I passed by it carrying things, unpacking the station wagon, on the way to the side screen door. The history of the wall, the gate, the unilateral keeper of my Northern Minnesota summer home, dawned on me as it did many dew-dropped foggy windowed mornings. The structure had a hitch in front suggesting that once it hinged on something, or something were to hinge on it.

The foundation of the monolith, like the cabin, like the tower in Pisa, was askew. It leaned. It fought gravity its entire life, but then most things do. It really was a gate in the most liberal form. It was to your right as you walk to the side to enter the Amram cabin. Many did and may remember it well. The gate/wall topped out at about 6'. It sloped from there to disappear into brush and home to mosquitoes and chipmunks. In 1970 I was barely 3' high and I longed to scale the gate. I climbed, first trying to get up the 6' the hardest way. Tying rope to the hitch, I went up like batman walks up the sides of buildings. After many failed attempts, scraped knee, enlightening advice from my sister, I took her elementary path. I went back to where the nested monks may be, to where the sticks and tangled wore the earth, to where we were in danger of crossing our neighbor's property line. I walked hunchbacked up the slope of the stone arch. I planted my flag on top of our little liberal gate, just like I had seen Neil Armstrong do the previous summer.

Later, when my folks were bit by the auction bug, a wooden bike rack found a home in back of the gate. I think my sister had some kind of bicycle there. I parked my thee-wheeler there. Along side it came eventually, from an auction, a sulkey. It was spray painted silver and had a tractor-type seat between two wheels. They are design to be pulled behind horses. I watched a “buggy” race once in Kentucky. My sulkey had a shaft leading from the seat assemblage with a hitch at the end. My dad and I went to the hardware store in Crosby and got a U bolt. He fashioned this on the back of my three wheeler. I gave my friends rides along Count 10, down to the general store. When I was riding, pulling them, looking down to see their feet fluster as they hung unprotected, the part of me that wasn't laughing was vindicated. I was proud. I saw where I had walked 1,000 times so slowly that the sun saw us, my dad and I, as he counted my steps. Now I was dangerously pulling someone, in control of their injury or safety, going fast, past pots of sun and well-trampled and matted grass.

It came as a latent edition to our corral of velocipedes, our bike rack that toed our western wall. Via auctioned transaction we acquired a tandem bicycle. Blue, Schwinn, low handle bars, two speeds, seats gold specked like the least sat-upon eggs, we challenged our married—or engaged—guests to ride it. It was a test of teamwork, of the coordinated efforts a marriage is likely to require. The gear shift was old-school. The riders had to agree on when to pause in pedaling and allow the nature of their beast shift They had to be in sync in going up hills and coasting down. Many times I rode along side, in front, in back, hearing them banter. They argued sometimes and I laughed to myself, guessing the fate of the prospective bride grooms.

Some slabs of sandstone, maybe marble, I think were found at some quarry. They were set in place on the 10' feet of land that went between the cabin and the wall. I skipped or lunged this crooked strait when we unpack the car. It was set in stone, they were the first steps in fishing. Grass grew around them, the slabs, and I pried them all over in my quest to find worms. It was usually the first place I looked, when asked to fish, when my sister wanted to fish from the dock, or my grandparents visited. For them, I had to find the bait, set it on their hook, and take the fish off if they caught something. It was their ground-rules for indulging the grand-kids. I was happy to do it, to watch their face either shine in the odds of catching a fish in one of Northern Minnesota's lakes or shatter in awe and disgust at what found the end of their line.

I crossed the line as a timid 4-year-old. It was pouring rain. Baggy clouds broke and suddenly found me in my yellow hat, boots and rain slicker. My pop's mother was on the dock with my sister, which in itself was worthy of a revelation. Here is this very proper German-Jewish woman who had gone from somewhat privileged in Germany to very unprivileged in the 1930s—and continuing here in America—to spending her life trying to find that privilege again. She was a trooper, out of her refined North Miami element, fishing with my sister in Tame Fish Lake. Thick accent, borrowed rain poncho and plastic head kerchief, they watched their bobbers through the rain. On a sunny, placid day, nothing but the musings of a fish creates movement, ripples in the water just before it strikes. In the rain, in the dark windy abysses that a small Minnesota lake becomes, the bobber is illusive. Not until the strike, after the wait of the play in the rod, do the rookies reel with all that they have. My Oma's (grandma's) fish struck. Her bobber submerged and let out a few German exclamations and eventually surrendered her rod to my sister. Oma had her fill and went in the cabin to the warmth of a fire. I envied her. But we were young anglers in the trappings of youth, finishing a job the mother of our father had started. She had gone out of her way to entertain us.

Susan called to me to get a net. I ran to the pump-house, a tiny structure in front of the wall containing all out needs for maintenance, fishing and boating, all surrounding (burying) a water tank that gave us running water. I rummaged through the assortment of nets, on the floor and hanging on the walls, and selected one. It was always the biggest one, hung high in the corner of the house, which I had to stand on the tank to reach. I felt the gentle vibration that propelled water to the cabin. I heard the gentle hum and watched the drips in condensation. I grabbed the net and ran out on the dock, feeling important and instrumental in assisting my sister and returning my grandmother's favor.

A long dark shadow rose to the surface. It broke and was otherworldly, alienated from any fish I'd seen. It had tentacles and a green so dull it might as well have been black. It splashed us, rising up from the churn like the expulsions from a tornado. We both nearly fell in getting the 3' amphibious denizen into the net. It lay there, curled and hideous, like an alien creature pulled from the river Styx. Its gills gaffed, respiring like it knew its oddity, the repulsion and curiosity its presence caused.

“Take it to the neighbor over there,” Susan said, pointing beyond the wall. “He'll know what it is.”

Our neighbor, beyond the wall where the earth meets the tall nests of grass, where the wall slopes to so chipmunks play, was a naturist. He was a little Jim Fowler and a little Andy Taylor. He knew his animal kingdom, but he was also a lawful man. It wasn't his job, but he respected his boundaries. He was no recluse, no hermit man like in the Scooby-doo cartoons who always muttered when the mask was torn from their face “If it hadn't been for you meddling kids....” He was a kind man, but I thought twice about walking through the wardrobe to his property.

By now the rain was covering us in sheets. I was sure my sister had abandoned me and the project and moved to higher ground. I imagined them all sitting at the fire fabricating the tale without all the evidence. Water had entered my boots in the gap between the top and my small shins. I heard a slosh above the falling rain. I was over the line, into alien-deciphering territory. I held my reticence and the fish on the stinger with every ounce of strength I had. Approaching the house-like cabin I hoped for a break in the rain, to look out to the lake and judge for myself if it was different from his vantage point. I tapped on the patio/deck window with my free hand. I saw a paper fold in the light and the release of a rocking chair. Our neighbor came to the door munching on a pipe looking very Sherlock Holmesian.

“That's quite a fish. Do you know what it is?” He said, testing me, my retribution for crossing the line.

“A mutant bullhead,” I shrugged with a childy smile.

My dad had caught a few. It was the only tentacled fish I knew. They were good eating, sweet and scavangy tasting in a beer batter. Best of all, they were easy to eat. One back bone and you could dig in without looking at your food like a minefield. We took out the bone and created a fossilized fish. My dad always held up the boned column and suggested we bring it to school for show & tell. Our neighbor stood shaking his head, chuckling as his pipe clicked in his teeth.

“No, what you have there is a dogfish.”

I looked, frightened, over my shoulder at the lake, the cavernous hell from which my Oma had dubiously pulled this oddity, this monstrosity, this amphibian canine. It was dark, and churning as far as I could see. Aksarben gardens, the min, mini, mini theme park across the lake was barely there. I had accomplished my mission and felt my time past the slopping wall was nye. My time on his property was encroaching, suffocating, sure-to-expire.

“Thank you.”

Even as I squeaked down the wooden steps of his deck I thought of my family—my extended family—sitting down to supper. Our neighbor had told me that it would be insane to eat the fish and we should destroy it. I can't remember what I finally did with the fish. I carried it around in the rain, safe on our territory, my arms cramping, thinking my family and Oma had given up on waiting for me. They ate the bullhead frozen from yesterday and shared stories of the strange fish.