You Did Say Have Another Sausage

by John Meadows

  “At least you won a game,” I remarked optimistically.

  “Oh, it’s not the score. That doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” insisted Richard. My imagined skills as a sports psychologist deserted me instantly; my brow furrowed with confusion as I listened further.

  “The court was absolutely packed. It was a complete sell-out with some people even straining to see from the branches of the surrounding trees. I sat nervously in the locker-room waiting to be called. I was introduced to my opponent in the corridor and we shook hands. His name was Dean and he was a typical all-American athlete with longish, sun-bleached hair and a tan to match. He could just as easily have been a surfer or a member of the Beach Boys. Then over the loudspeaker came the announcement, ‘Ladies and gentlemen please give a rousing Michigan welcome to our esteemed visitor from overseas... Mr Richard Harris.’ I walked out on to the court and the deafening sound and stamping of feet nearly knocked me over. I raised my racket in grateful acknowledgement, turning a full circle to every section of the crowd as if I was a gladiator entering the Colosseum in ancient Rome. Then I noticed that the thunderous applause faded away quite abruptly as if someone had turned down the volume of a radio.

  “Dean and I warmed up for a minute and then he served to start the match. It wasn’t so much a tennis match but more me dodging bullets on a firing range. Aces, volleys, overhead lobs, the lot. And none of them were from me. It was a match where such a thing as a prolonged rally was an alien concept. I was blasted off court and it was a relief to get to the end of the third set and escape to the sanctuary of the locker room. I was shell-shocked.”

  “Well, at least it is over with,” I sympathised as I picked up my washing, ready to go.

  “Oh, that’s not the half of it.”

  Intrigued, my washing bag was dropped back onto the grass as Richard continued his story with an air of dejection. How can I describe his demeanour? It was as if, dare I say it, he had left a cake out in the rain.

  “I didn’t sleep a wink last night worrying about this match,” confessed my opponent.

  “Why? You are a great player, way out of my league.”

  Dean then went over to his locker and handed me the local newspaper, the ‘Traverse City Record Eagle’. To finish his story Richard simply bent down, unzipped his sports bag, rummaged inside and, without saying a word, he handed me the newspaper. The headline on the back page proclaimed ‘Movie Star Richard Harris to enter Tennis Tournament Today’. My mouth dropped open in amazement. I was lost for words.

  Then we heard a familiar voice shout, “Richard, how did you get on today?” as Moose approached us across the field.

  “Don’t ask!” we replied together. I handed the newspaper to Moose, and it was now his turn to stand there open-mouthed and dumbfounded. We all looked at each other and smiles gradually turned to giggles, then to full laughter and finally side-splitting hilarity like three lunatics standing in the middle of a field howling at the moon which was just rising over the trees.

  “What did you tell the organisers when you rang up to enter my name?” Richard asked Moose.

  “I just told them that Richard Harris, who was with us from overseas, would like to show off his tennis skills. ‘Not the Movie Star?’ asked the guy on the phone. ‘Sure it is,’ I joked. He obviously took me literally.”

  “Richard, at least you should be thankful for one thing,” I suggested.

  “What’s that?”

  “That your name isn’t Bruce Lee and you had entered a martial arts tournament!”

  Paradise Found

  During breakfast one morning, Moose came over to join Richard and me. He seemed slightly breathless and in a state of mild panic as he spluttered, “I sure hope you English guys are able to help me out?”

  “Of course, if we can,” I replied without hesitation.

  “Providing it doesn’t involve a tennis tournament,” added Richard mischievously.

  “Do you have English driving licences, and, more importantly, do you have them with you?”

  “Sorry, I can’t drive,” answered Richard immediately. Moose’s mood seemed to deflate further as he turned to me with a look of ‘last resort’ in his eyes.

  “Yes, I have brought mine,” I responded, wondering what all the fuss was about.

  “Fantastic,” he exclaimed with a sigh of relief. “And does it authorise you to drive a gear-shift vehicle? You know the type, where you depress the clutch and change the gear with your hand at the same time.” He mimed the movements as he spoke.

  “Is there any other kind?” I asked incredulously.

  “Everyone here has only ever driven automatic cars and we have just taken delivery of a hire-truck, but it has column-change gears.”

  “Whoa, hang on Moose, what’s a column-change?”

  He gave me a woeful look as if his last chance had just evaporated before his eyes. And, still, Richard and I did not have a clue what was going on. Moose went on to explain that an outward-bound expedition to north Michigan was due to leave immediately until he discovered that they did not have a suitably-qualified driver.

  “Okay, let’s go and have a look,” I suggested co-operatively.

  I expected to see some sort of American pick-up truck, straight out of the movies. You know the type, with the obligatory buffalo horns at the front and perhaps a road-kill moose strapped to the roof. However, to my horror I was confronted by a huge truck as intimidating as a Sherman tank. The two delivery drivers were waiting, anxious to leave, either with the truck or in their second car. They were burly, lavishly-bearded characters who looked as though they resided permanently in the woods. One of them tapped his watch impatiently as he told Moose in no uncertain terms that they were running behind schedule. It seemed as though it was now all down to me, so I agreed to a quick trial run. So my first experience of driving abroad, on the right side (or perhaps I should say the wrong side) of the road was in a 15cwt truck equipped to carry passengers, supplies, and equipment, in this case plastic Eskimo kayaks. I soon got used to the gear leaver being under the steering wheel and changing with my right hand. At least the clutch was still situated under the left foot, otherwise I would have needed the dexterity and co-ordination of a drummer in a rock band. The ‘Grizzly Adams’ lookalike in the passenger seat gave me his seal of approval, but it was not the most stringent of driving tests as I merely drove down the road and back.

  “Can you be ready in about fifteen minutes?” asked Moose with some relief in his voice. It was more of an instruction than a question. All the campers started to congregate with their rucksacks, ready to be loaded on board. It was an all-boys group, a cross-section of age groups led by David Bomberg and Ricky Stadler, who were specialist instructors in watersports, and frontier survival.

  “I will re-schedule your lessons,” Moose shouted to me as I drove off with a certain degree of trepidation, not to mention several kangaroo jumps as I got used to the play of the clutch and accelerator.

  After a few hours driving on the mostly empty highway my confidence soared to such an extent that I felt like the king of the road, a real American trucker. I had a new ambition. One day I must drive one of those massive, aggressive-looking, typical American trucks with the chrome vertical exhaust pipes standing proud at the front, like the one in the early Steven Spielberg movie ‘Duel’. I felt as though I deserved a ‘handle’ something like ‘Limey’, and a C.B. radio so that I could announce ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy... Come on’ (No, I’ve just remembered that that was Richard Burton in ‘Where Eagles Dare’, but you get the idea).

  The drive north gave me time to appreciate the beautiful greenery of the Michigan landscape. David and Ricky told me that the oak was the most prolific tree, closely followed by the four pines: Jack, Lodgepole, Red, and the official state tree the Eastern White pine. There are also several species of fir tree, and C
hristmas tree farms are quite common in that part of the world. It is an environment Vincent Van Gogh would have loved, since woodland sunflowers grow all over Michigan.

  After a couple of hours we reached the Mackinac Bridge, which marks the border of the Great Lakes Michigan and Huron, and we continued north to the Tahquamenon Falls Park. Driving the truck was heaven, so it seemed appropriate, serendipitous almost, that we arrived at a town called Paradise. (I have since been to a place on the Caribbean Island of Grand Cayman called Hell, so I can truthfully claim that my travels around the world have taken me from Paradise to Hell. Perfect symmetry, or should that be spelt cemetery?).We pulled off the highway and bounced along a succession of trails which became so narrow that the bushes and overhead foliage scraped the vehicle constantly for a few miles. It was like going through a dry, never-ending car wash, or hurtling through some kind of science-fiction time tunnel. Eventually we emerged into the daylight of a clearing adjacent to one of the stillest, most tranquil lakes I have ever seen. It was quite small, about the size of a dozen Olympic swimming pools, and totally enveloped by the surrounding woodland. The surface of the water was as smooth as ice with not even a hint of a ripple. It was hypnotic to look out across the surface where the sun’s reflection was almost like a mirror image. You could take a photograph and turn it upside down and the image would be almost identical. David explained that very fine grasses grow to just below the surface and it is this phenomenon, together with the wind protection from the surrounding trees, which maintains the calmness.

  “Have we forgotten something?” I asked Ricky as we finished unloading the truck.

  “I don’t think so,” he answered, ticking off his inventory and listing out loud, “Kayaks, paddles, axes, shovels, ropes, pots, pans, fishing tackle, barbeque and food supplies...what else?”

  “Tents...?”

  David and Ricky exchanged a furtive glance, and with the faintest, slightly embarrassed smile answered with a forced casualness, “Oh, didn’t Moose tell you?”

  A rhetorical question if ever I heard one. I merely shook my head with the resigned air of the victim of a ‘fait acompli’.

  “It’s part of the course. We will be building our own lean-to shelters,” David added, apologetically.

  I cast a swift glance around. Not a dunny in site.

  “Toilets...?”

  “We dig a latrine.”

  It’s amazing that a deep hole dug in the dirt straddled by a log to sit on is still referred to by Americans as the bathroom. I suppose peeing straight out from the hut constitutes an en-suite.

  As camp was being set up, I launched one of the kayaks and paddled out to the centre of the lake. I sat there under the dome of a clear blue sky, enjoying the late afternoon sun while taking in the 360 degree panoramic view. I began to understand what Simon and Garfunkel meant when they sang about ‘The Sound of Silence’. The stillness was absolute, a quality which could be enjoyed and appreciated in its own right, in the same way as the warmth of the sun or the pure colour of an abstract painting. There was no hum of distant traffic, or even a vapour trail 30,000 feet above to scar the vista of the sky. Silence descended like an invisible mist. Then a very strange feeling came over me. I realised that I could no longer hear any voices coming from the shore. I began to feel strangely vulnerable and exposed with an unnerving feeling that I was being watched. I strained to listen in the hope of picking up a reassuring voice. Nothing! In my mind the lake started to take on sinister undertones and the tranquillity started to appear eerie. I began to imagine that everyone had vanished without trace and that I was the sole survivor only because I happened to be out on the lake. The hairs on the back of my head stood up as I looked across the water. At any moment the ‘monster from the deep’ would emerge. I felt my palms start to sweat as my imagination started to conjure up a succession of scenarios. ‘Does the Sasquatch have a distant cousin who lives in the forests of Michigan? Have we stumbled upon a coven of cloven-hooved devil worshippers? What if there is a colony of inbred, sexually depraved, mentally and dentally-challenged backwoods men wearing half-mast denim dungarees?’ I listened out for ‘Duelling Banjos’. Where better for an alien abduction? I displayed all the symptoms of anxiety and mild panic that accompanies being trapped between floors in an elevator; I even started to whistle. Butterflies were fluttering in my stomach, not to mention my chest, as I started to paddle towards the shore. Very gently does it, I didn’t want to risk disturbing anything lurking beneath. I dragged the kayak onto a small pebbled beach with some relief as if I had just survived an open-water swim in a shark-infested ocean. I crept stealthily to the clearing but still there was not a sound to be heard, not even from birds. Just inside the woods I saw a mound of recently disturbed soil with a spade stuck in it. Someone had started to dig a latrine and then abandoned it. Or was it a grave? It was like the ‘Mary Celeste’. I stood there feeling helpless, alone and isolated, and I even looked up to the sky to see if an alien craft was making its way to rendezvous with the mother ship. Then, to my great relief, I heard a welcoming sound of laughter in the distance. ‘Thank God,’ I thought, but I was so spooked that even then I wondered if it was coming from one of our boys or from an insane mass murderer lurking in the woods.

  Just as I was on the point of accepting my fate as the next victim, or abductee, the laughter and chattering got louder as everyone came into view following a firewood-gathering forage. I have never been so pleased to see a group of people, but I still had a compulsion to carefully scrutinise the faces of a couple of the campers just to make sure that they really were human and that their souls had not been possessed by alien beings, like in ‘The Invasion of the Body Snatchers’. Perhaps Minichello had been taken over during a previous invasion (something which I had suspected for a while). Or maybe there was a much simpler, down-to-earth explanation... I watch far too many movies.

  “We are just going out on to the lake, John,” shouted David cheerily, “Are you coming with us?”

  “Er, no, I think I will help dig the bathroom,” I responded meekly.

  The most important task for the remainder of the afternoon was to construct our shelters. None of the boys had been on this particular course before, so David and Ricky instructed and supervised each stage of the building programme. It took me back to my childhood days of making huts in Blackbrook woods as we spent a couple of hours building a mini village. David and Ricky were pleasantly surprised when I revealed that I wasn’t a complete novice, having built a large hut on (coincidently) Paradise beach on the Greek Island of Mykonos only two years earlier, when six of us travelled through Europe in a mini bus.

  It was with a great sense of pride when we stepped back and looked at our camp. We felt as though we should cut a ribbon or something. Each shelter was in the form of an A-frame, like traditional tents, and involved a combination of techniques and materials such as interwoven twigs, sods, ferns, pieces of bark as roof shingles and large leaves arranged like roof tiles. Each one was a work of art, and I should stress here that most materials were collected from the forest floor and that we were in a designated area set aside for such outdoor activities. In such a beautiful part of the world a sense of pride in the environment was taken for granted. Warning signs along the lines of ‘Take nothing but photographs; leave nothing but footprints’ were superfluous. We had a barbeque for evening meal followed by general chatting around the campfire. No ghost stories this time, after my earlier spooky experience. The three counsellors shared a hut and again it reminded me of schooldays when we used to make shelters inside our bonfire wood when we would take turns to protect it from thieves and arsonists on the estate prior to November 5th.

  Ricky said that they always leave the campfires burning during the night to deter any inquisitive nocturnal creatures.

  “Don’t tell me anymore,” I said forcibly as I tried to drift off to sleep with images starting to invade my subconscious
mind: polecats, cougars, grizzly bears, Bigfoot, E.T., the Maplehurst cat. They were all beginning to float above me like in the Henri Fuseli painting ‘The Nightmare’.

  The programme of activities for the following day included a raft-building competition, the kind that business executives take part in during team-building ‘bonding’ sessions in the Lake District. No doubt they acquire the skills necessary to escape a flooded corporate building on the off-chance that a biblical deluge should reach the eighteenth floor of the office block. Our priorities were more fundamental: children simply having fun.

  The following morning we set off on a full-day hike along the trail which follows the Tahquamenon River. After a couple of hours the sound of the waterfalls could be faintly heard in the distance, the volume increasing steadily as we got closer. It was a constant, thunderous roar, like the sound of traffic on a busy motorway. The hike through the Red Pine forests was certainly worth the effort as the impressive sight of the fifty-foot falls came into view. I was amazed to see that the Tahquamenon Falls seemed to be comprised of vertical stripes of gold, brown, ochre, cream, and white water. David and Ricky told me that the falls are nicknamed the ‘Root Beer Falls’ because of the golden brown colour of the water. The colour is due to tannins from the nearby Cedar Swamps which drain into the river, which eventually drains into Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior. In fact, we were all feeling drained and I started to have hallucinations that I was looking at endless beer on tap. Now that really would be paradise.

  Back at our camp, the following evening was particularly memorable as we sat fishing by the lakeside. The sky twinkled in high definition, free of any haziness or ‘light pollution’ found over cities. The scene before us was more like a monochromatic painting in white, silver and grey on black velvet. Then something magical started to happen. Greens and yellows started to seep into the scene like ink on blotting paper or a celestial watercolour. Swirls of light started to appear, highlighting the tops of the trees and reflecting in the mirror of the lake. ‘Oh no’, I thought, ‘this really is a Martian invasion’.