Mary

(Pg. 99 of That’s Outrageous)

Mary (in November, after months of cajoling): “Could you take a friend canoeing, if you go? Call me, okay?”
Fred: (to himself): “Oh Lord! NOW you want to canoe!”

FOR SEVERAL SUMMERS I CASUALLY WATCHED THEM BUILD our colossus. On clear days, you could see the caissons rise from the Straits, and out of their centers grew the stately, graceful towers. My vantage point was the white wicker swing that hung from the bead-board ceiling of the cottage porch at Nipigon, nine miles east of the construction site.

I had just turned teenager and our group of rapscallions paid scant attention to the historic feat, preferring instead penny-ante poker, Coca Cola, and rock-n-roll. But the occasional sightings were enough that I clearly remember them today. But, the true enormity of the bridge came home to me two weeks ago, when a friend and I paddled the family’s old red-canvas canoe, without planning on it, under the entire length of the bridge, from Fort Michilimackinac to St. Ignace and back.

“Well,” my friend wrote, when we had settled on a date, “Wednesday happens to be the Feast of All Souls, so we will be canoeing on a day that celebrates those who have died, and it was one who had died that told me in a dream that I had a lot of canoeing to do.”