“You remember Groucho Marx. Cigar, mustache, walked all kooky. Real funny guy, unless you were married to him, ha ha ha. Groucho didn’t get his due. When he died, I mean. It was just a few days after Elvis left the building, and that was unexpected and Groucho had been old for a real long time at that point, so when he said the magic word for the last time, no one much noticed.
“Huxley. Aldous Huxley. You read Brave New World in high school. Maybe you read his drug books in college, I sure did. Our boy Hux died in ’63. C.S. Lewis went in ’63, too. He wrote about dragons and magic, and he wrote about Jesus and faith. Sometimes, he wrote about all that stuff all at the same time. The two of ’em kicked off the same day in 1963: November 22nd.
“It was weeks before anyone besides their wives and agents noticed they were dead.
“You don’t remember Roger Peterson. I bet his friends called him Pete. Just 21 years old when he bought it in a plane crash. He was married already and had a baby on the way, cuz it was 1959 and folks familied up real quick back then. Pete was the pilot and the weather wasn’t so good in Iowa that day. Cold as hell and storms romping and stomping all over the sky. Funny story: Pete wasn’t actually qualified to fly in those conditions.
“But he took up three passengers. Musicians. Guy named Buddy, and a guy named Richie, and another fellow called himself the Big Bopper.
“Now, the readouts and reports and all that whatnot said that the plane hit the ground at about 170 miles an hour, which is full-throttle for a little prop plane like that. Wing first, then it did some cartwheels. That means Pete had put her in what’s called a death spiral. Happens a lot in low visibility. Plane starts to tilting, but you can’t tell just by looking. Gotta trust the instruments over your eyes. Tough to do. And when you tilt a plane’s wings without increasing the throttle, you lose altitude.
“So you pull up, right?
“Don’t yank on that stick, flyboy! Gotta level out your wings first or you’re just gonna corkscrew all the way down. You won’t know nothing’s wrong until it’s too late to make it right.
“Those four men, none of ’em even 30 years old yet, they got tossed outta that little single-prop called a Beechcraft Bonanza and all of ’em died on impact, and only three of ’em got a song written about ’em.
“Poor Pete. Imagine getting overshadowed during a storm, ha ha ha.
“So now that I told you all about death getting ignored, I’m gonna talk about lumber.
“This is all gonna tie together, cats and kittens. You know your old pal Frankie Nickels likes to paint a backdrop before she lets the players on the stage. Just step back and lemme work, okay?
“The past was built outta wood. The farmers are always crowing about how we’d starve without ’em, but a shovel needs a handle and those oxen need a plow. Some men made their fortunes in the mines. Most just toiled. But those mines would’ve collapsed on themselves without support beams. Wanna build a city? Need some wood. Carry goods between said cities? Better getcha some wood for them wagons! Maybe you just wanna sit in a chair and read a newspaper. C’mon, I don’t gotta spell it out for you.
“And boats, too, and the piers and docks they interfaced so wetly with.
“Rich folks’ church was made of brick, and real fancy hotels. Forts, I guess. They was made of stone, not brick, but you get my point. Otherwise, the past was built outta wood, but America was made outta trees. Lucky us, ha ha ha.
“50 percent. That’s what the Arboreocidalists over at Harper College say. Half of what we call America nowadays was wooded. Spruce and ash and maple and pine. Hardwood trees. Good for making into stuff.
“Just sitting there! Didn’t have to till trees, or worry about the rain or locusts. Weren’t required to hunt ’em. You could just walk right up to one and cut it down. Never-ending forests’ worth, from sea to shining.
“Now at first, getting your lumber was a local affair. You wanted a house? You walked into the woods, cut you some trees, and stacked ’em on top of each other. Call that a log cabin. A guy in a famous hat was born in one. Might be the most American house there is, the good old log cabin. Terrible syrup, fine accommodation, ha ha ha.
“But nothing stays local, not in this country. By the middle of the 1800’s, the population was growing and cities were expanding to the point where it became more efficient to have someone else cut down the trees, shape ’em into planks and beams and boards and whatnot, and ship all that to you rather than doing the lumberjacking yourself.
“So you had what were called sawmill towns.
“You got Roseburg up in Oregon, and Scotia right here in California. Norwick in Pennsylvania. Peshtigo in Wisconsin, too.
“All these towns were alike in a couple real important ways. First off, they were near forests. Tough to be a lumberjack without a forest. You’re just a guy walking around in a plaid shirt at that point. Two: they were on rivers. Even better, they were where a few rivers meet. We call that a confluence, cats and kittens.
“Now, Peshtigo wasn’t at a confluence. It was just on one river, which was also called the Peshtigo. And down that river, about 60 miles away, was Green Bay. Chop a tree, chuck it in the water, collect your money. Simple.
“Understand this: Peshtigo was a lumber town. It was a one-horse town, and that horse was a one-trick pony. You got a sawmill right on the banks of the river, and then you got some houses and bars, and then you got the forest. Wasn’t much to it. 1700 folks lived there, and around 800 of them worked directly for the lumber concerns. Rest of ’em ran the bars, I suppose. Chopping trees is thirsty work.
“And, man, those boys built up that thirst in 1871! Working so fast clearing those forests that they didn’t have time to remove the branches they cut off the trunks. Just left ’em there on the ground. That mill made something besides lumber, too. Sawdust. Piles of it. Looked like sand dunes. Plus, it had been real dry that summer. So dry, in fact, that the Peshtigo River was too low to carry away the timber. The men just stacked it up real high and waited.
“Wouldn’t have to wait long, ha ha ha.
“It’s October. Hasn’t been so much as a drizzle since July. The air is like sandpaper. Little fires all over the place, which is to be expected. Heat lightning and all. Fires even take out the telegraph lines, so by the 4th, Peshtigo is cut off from Green Bay. Cut off from everywhere else, too. They had a newspaper called the Peshtigo Eagle. Few days later, they reported a strange yellow haze that erased the sun. The paper printed in the morning. That would be the last edition for a while.
“A low-pressure system opened up over the town. Nine o’clock, roundabouts. No one knows for sure. Lots of things no one knows for sure about that night.
“The sky roared. That’s what the survivors said. Like a furious locomotive, and all at once, and the world went black.
“But then it lit up real quick.
“There was nowhere to run to, baby. There were places to hide. A couple families lowered themselves down into their wells. Folks had wells back then. They didn’t burn. No, they suffocated. Fire sucked all the air out. Root cellars. Nothing to burn in a cellar, but that didn’t matter. When the air’s 600 degrees, nothing matters. Gets so hot that the flames start feeding themselves. Called a firestorm. Imagine a giant tornado made out of heat.
“Only place to go was the river. If you didn’t keep dunking your head under, your hair would set ablaze.
“There was a Catholic priest in town, guy named Pernin. Father Pernin said the Mass at St. Mary’s. He managed to get the tabernacle out of the church. Tabernacle’s, like, a holy container for the eucharist. Father Pernin, he set that tabernacle in a wagon and pushed that wagon into the river. Next morning, they found it downstream.
“And the fire had not consumed it.
“They called that a miracle. 1500 people dead, but a cookie jar didn’t break. You take your miracles where you can get ’em in America, cats and kittens.
“Lots of folks got buried without their names. Wasn’t enough left alive to identify everyone, and plus all the records had gone up. Mass graves. Maybe that was for the best, since there wasn’t enough wood left to build coffins out of. You gotta stand back and marvel at that sort of irony! Only God gets to tell jokes that funny!
“Peshtigo wasn’t the only town that got hit. Fire was the size of Delaware. Twelve towns got burned, but Peshtigo got it the worst. 80% of the town, dead and gone before the morning’s light.
“And you never heard of it. Why?
“Well, about 240 miles south of little Peshtigo is a great big city. It was called Chicago. It’s still called that. And on that October night in 1871–the 8th, to be precise–Chicago was on fire, too. 320,000 people lived there. 300 died.
“Which is sad and all, but nothing compared to our lumberjacks up in Wisconsin.
“Didn’t matter. Chicago was where rich folks lived, and famous folks, too. Power and influence and whatnot. Lots of newspapers. There was even a tidy little story about a lady named O’Leary. Hoo, boy: death, destruction, and an immigrant to blame! Can’t pry that off the front page with a crowbar!
“And so that one-horse town got its thunder stolen by a cow.
“But now you heard the story. I know it’s a sad one, but most stories are. The true ones, at least.
“You wanna hear some music? Frankie Nickels Show is supposed to be a music show, but I digress sometimes. Sometimes, we all remember too hard. Luckily, we got rock and roll. I’ll make you a deal: I’ll play something loud if you turn your radio up. That sound good? I thought so. Sounds good to me, too.
“Turn it up too loud. Here we go.”
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