On Dead Squirrels

Franny figured out, as best I could. Now, who in the hell is my father?

Easy enough—google him. Of course, you do have to add Wisconsin to the search list, because otherwise you get the REAL (to everybody except us) John Newhouse, also a writer.

And then, of course, you have to disregard LinkedIn, which will tell you about John Newhouse, Esq. Some sort of lawyer in New York….

(Come on, Johnny—who in the hell is an esquire in this family!)

Well, you come to page three, or screen three, or whatever it is, and then you get to the John Newhouse of the chase—that would be Jack. The father…

…I don’t know.

It appears that he left some stuff he wrote for Lee newspapers to the University of Montana. I remembered that—Eric was out there, at the time of the donation, and was a go-between (though I suppose if Johnny can be an esquire, Rick could be a liaison…) So you click on that—not the stuff, but the google link—and then you read about him.

Written in 2010, it’s mostly accurate. Sure, they get the date of death wrong (officially it’s May 18, 1993—I suspect it was May 17, 1993) but that’s hardly surprising. Actually, nobody is quite sure when he was born, either. It had been celebrated—as I recall—on the 20^th of April for years. But in his fifties, Jack discovered that his mother, years before, and gone to the County Clerk and filed an amendment, stating he was born on the 21^st. And she was dead…

Oh, and never told him.

Well, it’s a round-about way of knowing your father. Easier it was to call up Dave.

That’s Dave Nelson, a guy I don’t know. But Dave was an obliging sort, and sent me a picture.

And readers of this blog will know—that’s Link!

“The old boy himself,” as Dave called him.

But oddly enough, it may also be Jack. Because I peered at the photo, and thought, “geez, I bet Jack took that….”

And that started me off on a hunt through the Wisconsin State Historical Society. Turns out there are over three hundred images—most of which I’ve never seen.

Well, I knew that story, too. They’d been down at the State Journal all those years when Jack worked there, and then traveled home—in a cardboard box—when he retired. Then, when they moved to the Acres, Jack had to get rid of ‘em—no room. So he dumped them on the State Historical Society.

(Parenthetically—although I probably can’t use that word and enclose it in parentheses—an old lover asked me, seconds after learning my name for the first time, if I wasn’t John Newhouse’s son. “Yes,” I said, tired of again being John’s son, especially with a guy I had just had sex with. But it turned out that Gary knew Jack not from the Journal, or from meeting him, but from the collection….)

So there I was yesterday, wondering—is that Jack who took the photo of Link? Sure looks like it.

And what about Link? What the hell was he doing out there, shooting the damn squirrels?

Well, Dave had an answer for that.

“He was probably manic depressive,” he said. “At least that’s what his son thinks….”

The son being Dave’s link to the…Link family….

(sorry!)

Well, that makes sense. Some of that conduct—one thinks of the morning visits and the Hershey bars—was off the mark behaviorally. But what a wonderful face—craggy and individual and fearless. A guy with a gun. A man with a mission.

And looking at the photo, one sees the bird feeder in the background. Was that old bastard luring the squirrels to their death? Did he prefer birds to squirrels? Too damn cheap to give some bird seed to what were (are) rodents? And we know how Link felt about them!

And am I the only one who feels—maybe—that it’s a shame, our current view of mania? I’ve almost been there, you know, but got the hell away before I plunged—or was plunged—into it. It’s living life on the lip of the volcano—an image from Robertson Davies—that moment before the plunge.

And Link—was that where he was? Always a step from madness, and sometimes over it and in it?

And Jack, observing, recording—and sending me a picture through the decades….

…and through a stranger.

The letters from Link would arrive—“John Newhouse, a scribe” they would be headed. The air temperature and atmospheric pressure would be stated. “Karl Paul Link, rattor,” they would conclude.

They came for years, they stopped. Both guys are dead….

And oddly fragrant.