Stewart Dawson
Jake
I want to write a story about Jake. In fact, I should write a whole book about Jake. But first things first. Many people called him Jakers. Jake was my friend. He was everyone’s friend. If you didn’t like Jake, you didn’t understand him. Or you didn’t want to understand him. Quite simply, if you didn’t know Jake, too bad for you. If you did, there is no too bad about it. But alas, I am at a loss. I don’t know where to begin.
During the summer and fall, Jake lived in a tiny log cabin out beyond the Ridges Sanctuary In Baileys Harbor, Wisconsin. Out beyond the yacht club. Out beyond us all. He lived in a log cabin that he helped his father build a long time ago. Sometime back then. To this day it is still filled with Jake. When I used to visit him, Jake was everywhere. He was not just a person, he was an ambience. He was an aura. I loved Jake. The cabin was just one little room.
My buddy, “Oh Bob” who lives in the old school house on German Road once described Jake as “the last of the existential rangers”. I’m not sure where he came up with that description, but it’s perfect I think. If “Oh Bob” doesn’t mind, that’s what I will probably call the book. “The Last of the Existential Rangers”. Yes. Watch for it, coming soon to your local bookstore!
Now, the more I think about this, the more I realize that writing about Jake is just about as hard as pounding the nails into the lid of your own coffin. With a hammer made of Jello. Blindfolded. It’s not that Jake would defy description, it’s more like not knowing just where to begin. Maybe I could simply relate an anecdote. But first, for those of you who never had the pleasure of knowing Jake, Let me tell you what I think.
I knew Jake for about twenty years and I think I might best put it this way: ART. Jake was an artist. No, too simple. Jake was art. Jake was deco, Jake was dada, Jake was abstract, cubism, surrealism and expressionism all tied together. Jake was a landscape with a rainbow in one direction and a beautiful sunset in the other. Jake was living performance art. He was his own philosophy and his own religion. Jake was a one-person cult. And he was his own movement. Jake was a scientist and a scholar. He was musician and ecologist. Composer and preserver. Jake was a lovely human being. (But, of course, on the normal scale, Jake tipped quite far toward the insane side.) He was a saint in a nut’s bible.
Now I will tell a little story about Jake.
Once upon a time, just off of a wooded lane in the County of Door, there was a very high bluff. The bluff overlooked the beautiful Green Bay, giving anyone who ventured to its edge, a view so grand that it would just take your breath away. All along this bluff, you could explore this edge, but if you weren’t careful, you could tumble off. Being careful was the name of the game up there. The view was immense and powerful. It had the ability to make you feel very small. If you weren’t quite up to it, it could even frighten you.
One day some big machines came and ripped this bluff apart. Instead of having a place to walk, there was a chain link fence with signs that read: “KEEP OUT. GO AWAY. MY LAND. NOT YOURS.” And then there was a VERY big house. The house was so big that you could see it from the other side of the bay, twenty miles away. It took up a very big part of the bluff. The house was so big that if you stood outside the fence, it made the Sun seem small. I was little and walked that edge once when I was young. Now I can’t get close. There are probably ten families that could live in that house all at once without ever meeting each other.
One day, Jake and I were taking a drive to no place in particular for something to do, and we happen to drive past what used to be a beautiful view. Jake was sitting in the passenger seat, making little clucking noises with his mouth. That is something he did to fill the spaces between conversation. It was odd, but not distracting or annoying because with Jake, you didn’t need to talk a lot to enjoy life. As we drove past the house that was too big to see out of its own windows, I asked Jake what he would do if he had millions of dollars. He didn’t take any time to think about it. He stopped making little noises and said, “I’d share it”.
I turned and headed east back out toward the highway, leaving the view I had in childhood behind. But I was happy to be with someone so rich. Jake’s log cabin was only one room. It was filled to the brim with Jake. The years of Jake filled that tiny space. But it was a much bigger house with a more beautiful view. Part of my view was robbed by someone else’s wealth, but that day, Jake replaced it with his.
(Published in Peninsula Pulse, July 1997)