Sundown is such a jam.

maroon barchetta said:

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Good Lord.

I never knew that. Always thought Belushi just OD'd.

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Well, he did. He was a huge drug addict and abusing both coke and heroin. He did ask that woman, another huge drug addict, to shoot him up with speedballs multiple times that night. Dangerous to make decisions as a huge addict and then rely on another huge addict to safely administer drugs to you. Yes, she shot him up with the speedball that killed him. But he wanted that shot, I don't think she did it against his wishes. She went to jail for involuntary manslaughter about 4 years after the death.

The witch of November comes stealin' once again into our lives.

First one without LIghtfoot.

Free the socks!

Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, Whitefish Point, Michigan. August 15, 2023.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy.

With a load of iron ore - 26,000 tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconson
As the big freighters go it was bigger than most
With a crew and the GOOD Captain well seasoned.

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ships bell rang
Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,
T'was the witch of November come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashing
When afternoon came it was freezing rain
In the face of a hurricane West Wind

When supper time came the old cook came on deck
Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya
At 7PM a main hatchway caved in
He said fellas it's been good to know ya.

The Captain wired in he had water coming in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the words/WAVES turn the minutes to hours
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd PUT fifteen more miles behind her.

They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the ruins/ROOMS of her ice water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams,
The islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.

tttf thread buoyancy

Love this thread. TexAgs General Board at its best!

And they rang the bell in the Mariner's Church 30 times when Gordon Lightfoot died.

I have always loved the water. Spent most summers of my junior high and high school years at the beach, used to wade fish shoulder deep, and later in life I have been to places where the water is such a shade of blue that it doesn't look real. And the shade of blue doesn't even have a name.

I have always loved this song, it captures the immensity of the Great Lakes waters, the type of people who work on those waters, and how suddenly it can go bad and lives be lost. I have been caught in violent weather on Toledo Bend and in Trinity Bay and in the Gulf and it was some scary ***** Each time I thought it was my last day. My dad and three uncles spoke of bad weather at sea during the war. Other lyrics capture being out on water as well.

the sky grew dark and it blew a squall
we saw the weather-glass fall and fall
then a wave rose up like a mountain wall
we stared up at the sea;
with a mortgaged boat and a stack of debt
maybe more than your feet get wet
he looked, he shrugged, and he cut the net
he set his fortune free

Those lyrics remind me of something that happened to me back during my formative years, the bit about staring up at the sea. I was 18 or 19 at the time, I had left home, splitting the cost of an apartment, working when I felt the need, making a half-hearted attempt at education, very little ambition and had no plans to get any more than I had.

I had gone home for the weekend and when I got there my dad enlisted me to help him and a friend of his to go get this friend's shrimp boat out of one bay, out into the Gulf, into Trinity Bay, up the Trinity River, and to dock it in the Sulphur Company slip. Sounded adventurous, I felt sure there would be a beer or two on board, and off we went. We left my car and one of their pickups there at the slip and got in the other pickup to go to where the shrimp boat was.

I didn't mention there was a tropical storm/category 1 hurricane coming, the outer rain bands were already here when we got underway.

The shrimp boat was 45' long so could take a bit of punishment. I don't remember being scared, though I am not immune from being so. I always felt safe with my dad around, I figured if he had survived living in a tent for a couple years during the depression when he was 12 and 13, survived the war, anything we got ourselves into, he would get us out of. I felt, and feel, had we had engine trouble, he could have fixed it out on the water. Maybe my blind faith was unwarranted, but that's how it was.

It was rough, the wind blowing hard enough to blow the foam off the whitecaps atop the waves, lol. The rain blew sideways and stung when it hit you. We had no raincoats, just jeans and tshirts, it was summer after all. Had to come in basically by compass, visibility wasn't much. There would be spells where you could see a decent bit, but we sort of "felt our way." I remember thinking the odds of hitting another boat were pretty slim since I figured there were only three idiots out on the water at that time, and all three were on the same boat.

The old Sulphur Company slip was a welcome sight! It had some wave action even though it was protected, but the waves were nothing like the open water had been. We pulled up beside the dock and as we did, I slipped and went over the side (haha, as I typed that, the song from which those lyrics came from had a line "maybe that's when the skipper went over the side, we never saw him go."). I fell between the boat and the dock, miraculously not hitting it. Was a decent fall from a boat that size, and I hit the water and went under. Funny how your mind works, and works so fast, in situations like that. I instantly thought not to come straight back up because the waves could push the boat against the dock and crush me if it did. So I swam underwater to my left 5 or 6 feet and knew I'd surface under the dock. And I did. The world though, looked a bit out of kilter. I realized why when I noticed one lens had popped out of my glasses (pre-contact days). I didn't have a spare pair of glasses, so I put them on the top of the dock and dove down to the bottom. I put my hand on the mud and sand, and within a few seconds found the lens! Up I came, same as before, pulled myself up on the dock and walked toward my car. The rain was still pouring, and my dad asked where I was going. They were busy securing the boat and never realized I'd fallen overboard. I told him I was headed to my apartment, I'd had all the wind and rain I wanted for a bit. I felt I had been lucky to make the crossing, lucky enough to not get hurt falling in the water, lucky to find the lens. Once a cat uses three of his nine lives, its time to pull back, luck ain't limitless.

While we never "stared up at the sea" like in the song, as the waves never got that high. But they got high enough.

who writes the story? i don't know any more
and maybe nothing's what it seems
spare me the glory, just get me safe on shore
and i'll only put to sea in my dreams

That was the first of three episodes and eventually they took their toll on me. I developed almost a fear of the water. I no longer wade fish and I do not go out on the water nearly as much as I used to.

I cannot image the fear and helpless feeling of those on a boat like the Fitzgerald, or on the crab boats up in Alaska, when the weather gets bad. A great big boat can get pretty small in a hurry.