Setting the scope on a Jackal bow

    What is an authentic person? And why does someone who lives in the woods, drives a rusty blue Chevy pickup truck with various pro gun decals, a half dozen empty beer cans rattling around in the back and a "NO WOLVES" bumper sticker, someone who works as a jack-of-all-trades, seem more real than, oh for instance, someone who lives in the suburbs, drives a silver Honda Odyssey van, and writes stories for a living?
    Friday I stopped by the house of Moonshine Mike Guzek in Ontonagon, Michigan—he works as the handyman for my pal Rick, and in general has the lay of the land here. We had the pleasure of sitting in his garage/woodshop, talking about stuff. I don't talk about "stuff" much, especially the stuff Moonshine Mike, 73, talks about — bow hunting, wood chopping (that's his winter's worth of maple firewood above, stacked by his girlfriend Susan who, alas, I did not meet), women, chainsaws, the unexpected connection between the two (later in the day, trying to start a chainsaw that took a long time to get going, he'd say, "I knew a girl like that") property sales, and various other UP topics.  He told me a story about hunting a deer with a buddy's crossbow in snow (much better to hunt them in the winter, when you don't have to worry about refrigerating the results), shooting it through the heart, a shot that — he later learned, dressing the deer — cracked the fifth rib, cut through the deer's heart, then through the fifth rib on the other side, and out. I wish I could replicate his description of the blood in against the snow, but I would not do him justice.
     Mike was quite excited about his new Barnett Jackal crossbow—a bad shoulder makes drawing a composite bow tough— and let me test it out while we calibrated the scope. You pull the bowstring back using a rope with two handles on it, and while it took all my strength, I could just do it. Firing was easy after that, and I got quite good at it. I don't know if I could shoot a deer—probably not—but a big yellow foam cube target is another matter. The arrows travel at over 300 feet per second, and after pulling back the string, the hardest part was pulling the "Headhunter" brand arrows out of the target.
     Mike is a craftsman—he built the cabins on my buddy's place here, and is a reminder that artistry comes in a variety of forms, and that skill and refinement is not always obvious. Maybe that is why he seems more real—because the ability to butcher a moose seems more of a genuine life skill than the ability to, oh, polish a sentence.  There was also an unapologetic quality to him. His pickup had a sticker that showed a wolf, howling at the moon, in a rifle crosshairs, that said: "HUNT HARD, SHOOT STRAIGHT, KILL CLEAN, APOLOGIZE TO NO ONE." That seems like a life philosophy, and as a person who is always explaining, nearly apologizing, I told myself: don't do that so much.
     Our skills sets do not overlap, but I still appreciated his wisdom, and though he was initially puzzled, by my repeatedly turning down a beer (later, when we cut down some trees that were threatening a barn, he saw me and said, "Where's your beer?!" with alarm, as if I couldn't breathe without it, and only then remembered. I of course apologized—old habits die hard—and he said, "No, it's a good thing.") I even suspect he enjoyed talking with me, or at least appreciated my help setting the Jackal's scope, three green dots which skewed up and to the right, at first, but seemed dead on and true by the time we were done with it.

   

Moonshiner

 

     "Yeast is the perfect animal," Moonshine Mike Guzek likes to say. "It eats sugar and shits alcohol."
     An expression that perfectly meshes the blend of science and rustic wisdom that go into proper moonshine manufacture. Readers with long memories might remember we visited with Moonshine eight years ago, in "Setting the scope on a Jackal bow." We visited him again Saturday afternoon, well, because no visit to Ontonagon is complete without stopping by his neatly-mown property. We visitors examined his solar lumber drying kiln, cleverly crafted out of an old school bus—his father was a bus driver. As well as his automatic deer feeder, constructed from a garbage can suspended under a tripod. "Twice a day," Moonshine said, with a touch of pride. Why go hunting for deer when you can just lure them to you and shoot them? He's had his health troubles lately, and didn't tell his usual skein of deer hunting stories, but my friend Rick knows them all, and told one or two, with laughter all around.
     Beers were distributed, and Mike's special Maple Moon brought out, for those so inclined, who pronounced it fine indeed, smooth and satisfying, while I asked him questions: the beverage was distilled from grapes and peaches, making it a kind of brandy. "Though you could distill water..." he added, trailing off, the "but why would anyone want to do that?" being unvoiced.
     The simple white house, he said, was built by his grandfather in about 1900. Though Mike expanded it, and he planted the tree above when he was a boy of about 6, which would make it 75 years old, since he is now 81. The white pine would grow straight and 100 feet tall in the forest but, finding itself uncharacteristically alone, spread out wide, as if in search of the company we all crave. Mike has been making moonshine for 60 years, and announced he has given it up, though not before teaching the art to a grandson. 

"Moonshine" Mike Guzek

     We talked about the local bar, Stubb's—well, there are a couple others, but Stubb's is the one that counts, in our book—named for its long-ago owner, Stubb Nelson, who acquired his nickname because one of his forearms was missing, back when people were named for their exceptional physical qualities. Whether the limb was lost to a logging accident was discussed, but it was so long ago now, it wasn't quite remembered. It probably was; logging was the main industry around here 100 years ago, and among the most dangerous professions ever. 

     While logging feels like part of the vanished heroic past, there are still some 800 logging and trucking firms in Michigan, not to mention sawmills, pulp and paper mills, and wood processors of all kinds. Bars are also doing well, though not around here.  

     "Once there were 11 bars in Ontonagon," Mike said. Rick explained how an unfortunate bypass highway skirted the town's main drag, which fell into decline. The various bars were discussed, including Johnny's, which was out in the woods. "My parents went there," he said. 

     Mike's mother was a nurse, and remembered loggers coming in after brawls Saturday night.

 

They'd have them strip off their clothes and wash themselves, prior to treatment, and once a bag of discarded clothing was so infested with lice that the bag moved, his mother said. Like his father, Mike was a truck driver for 30 years for the Gitchee Gumee Oil Company. Lately he's been a handyman—he built the tight, immaculate cabin I slept in. "Gitchee Gumee," in case you don't know, is not some garble that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow invented, but Ojibwe for "Big Water," the Native-American name for Lake Superior.      

     I lingered in his shop, admiring the neatly arranged, if cobwebbed, tools, and the smell of oil and metal and old rubber. They were beautiful. After saying our reluctant goodbyes, we headed back into town, and I noticed that we passed an ancient bar called "Johnny's," now boarded up and sagging. Time takes its toll on everything, but we persist, best we can.