“HOME WATERS,” a response
When I went to the U of Chicago Div School in 1978, the named person in my head was Norman Maclean. In Montana I’d known A.B. Guthrie, Jr. briefly, and it seemed reasonable to expect to meet Maclean. When I went to his office, there was no answer. Eventually someone explained that I was too late — he was “Emeritus” and did not teach or keep office hours.
I settled for Richard Stern, Maclean’s choice as a writing teacher after himself, and that was a different story that went off in a different direction. But I found Maclean’s phone number and called him up. When I explained I was from Montana, he said, “You come over here tomorrow night. I’m going to fix you dinner.” It was shepherder stew and blueberry muffins with excellent coffee. He knew what he was doing.
I had been framing myself as an adventurer and wore a genuine safari jacket. Before I left for Chicago, I had put a handful of sage in my pocket. Now, to offer a gift, I held out the sage for Maclean to smell, but the stuff had powdered and lost its pungency. He looked puzzled and I explained that it had worn out.
The conversation kept going back and back to his choice of where to live now. He had an unspecified affliction that would possibly need top notch medical care, which was available there in Hyde Park, or the pull of the cabin back in Montana was strong — if it were possible for him to live there now, maybe for a shorter period of time. I had no idea what to say, so I just listened carefully.
When it was time to go home, a little after dark, he insisted on escorting me for the two or three blocks back to my room. He took my arm firmly — he did everything firmly — and put me on the side away from traffic as is traditional. We had a pleasant walk and I thanked him sincerely, but I never saw him again.
There was a lot to figure out. I was over forty, on a repeat retread, but some things were only just beginning to be discussed. “Alzheimers” was one of them. In retrospect, even if my pocket of sage had been smelly, he might not have been able to appreciate it because he was far enough into Alzheimers to know one symptom of it was smelling nothing. Alzheimer’s what he had he knew, just not what it meant, what the prospects were. He’d been hoping I might have some good clues. I was way behind.
At the time I was transcribing manuscripts at the U of Chicago Law School and had met Jim White, who was about my age but quite brilliant and a distinguished professor of rhetoric, without losing interest in ordinary friendships and a little literary gossip. He was able to help me think through both Maclean and Stern.
The funniest story about the two men was that Maclean told me frankly he’d hired Stern to keep control of overenergetic young students. He said he needed Stern to be a “mean sunnava bitch” and “he’s been very satisfactory”. Stern was indeed a bulky man with a scary eye that went off to the side, confusing one’s sense of which eye was the “real” one. He had standards as high as Macleans, but his focus was “narrativity” rather than lyric poetry. He loved a good story and had been a translator during the war.
But White and I talked about Maclean’s dilemma, whether to go to one’s special place though it might mean early death, or to throw one’s self on the mercy of scientists and docs at a mega hospital. He said that the young wives of the neighborhood near Maclean’s apartment kept close track of him. He was a charming man and women loved to take care of him.
We also gossiped a bit about Stern’s divorce and subsequent marriage to a student poet, which resulted in his only best-selling novel, “Other Men’s Daughters” which is nearly autobiographical or seems so.
Maclean’s chosen split in life between Montana and the U of Chicago is not quite like mine. Maclean’s life was on the west slope of the Rockies, wetter, less harsh, and full of trees. Mine was on the east slope of the Rockies, savaged by wind and furred with grass. There was also a Presbyterian minister who brought his family to the Blackfeet Reservation, but the story was altogether darker and more tragic. The medical issue was not dementia but paranoid schizophrenia, which is not that different.
I’ve just read “Home Waters” by John N. Maclean. I know nothing about fishing, since Bob Scriver was allergic to fish. We didn’t have plastic gloves then so when he was asked to mount a fish, he itched for days. Nor do I know much about forest fires, though as a child I went with my family to pick huckleberries in the Tillamook Burn, an overwhelming historic fire. August is smoky on both sides of the Rockies. John Maclean has become an expert on fire management.
What I do know is a bit about is living in Hyde Park. Paul Maclean, Norman’s brother who was murdered, was found nearly dead of a bad head wound in the T of two alleys in the Sixties streets past the U of C campus. I lived across from my seminary at 57th. We were taught to never go to the human conflagration past the grassy concourse, a vortex of violence. For a while there was an effort at urban renewal, but the news right now is that the third student this year was just murdered. The U of Chicago has its own police force and patrols constantly.
The movie version of Paul’s death makes it more dramatic, a result of adventures with gambling in Montana, but the truth is more banal and unresolvable. Maclean had this in mind when he firmly marched me home. The book discloses no psychological secrets nor dramatic theories.
One chapter might seem like filler for a small book, but has its own justification. It’s called :”The River of the Road to the Buffalo” which describes Lewis and Clark traveling through what became highway 200. Now and then the West side tribes hungered for bison meat and slid over to the east side to get some. I’ll need to reread it more slowly with a map in hand but that’s because I’m from the prairie side and don’t pay attention on that side. A present a lot of interest exists in old tribal trails and campsites.
This is no longer history but a conversation among living persons. I’m a year younger than John and have never met him. There’s no need, but the talking goes on as does the danger, the beauty, and the memories.
