My parents both worked, so my summer day care drop box
Was "Ray and Gen's Cabins," my grandparents' place,.
A Northern Minnesota resort that like them, was aging poorly.
It had little left to offer in the line of amenities;
Dilapidated yellow cottages that gave refuge by the week
To the old, the abandoned, the dispirited and the dissolute.
Across the dirt road beckoned the forbidden romance
Of the weather-beaten Snug Harbor Inn. Often I'd see men
Disappear into its cavern-like doorway
That exhaled odors of cigarettes and stale beer
As they opened the door, then pulled it shut behind them.
Its patrons seemed to me to be brave explorers
Delving far into the bowels of a fascinating cave.
There Grandpa Ray could take shelter from the storm
When Genevieve would hoist foul temper pennants
And find Ransome Cannon already anchored there.
Long before hard living had ravaged his face,
Handsome Ransome had married my aunt.
But like his dreams, his marriage had foundered,
And his two sons remember nothing now
but his boozing, foul tongue and violent temper.
"Stay away from Ransome when he's drinking,"
My parents had warned me,
But the old freshwater sailor seemed to welcome my company.
In a voice raspy as sandpaper, Pall Mall and whiskey roughened,
He would offer me fudge-striped cookies and Nesbitt pop
As an inducement to sit and listen to his tales
Of running bootleg whiskey in from Canada,
Of November gales, of hauling miners to Silver Islet,
Of meeting Capone, of marching with the "Bonus Army,"
Of sweat it took to feed a freighter's boiler fires.
Throw out the lifeline, someone is sinking today.
"Don't move the chair," my uncle sternly warned me,
Then as if to apologize for his sharp tone, he explained,
"My old girl knows where everything is."
His blind Collie moved cautiously, her head bowed
In submission to the dark. Her shaggy mane ringed her face
Like a fur-covered life-preserver, as toward her master
She resolutely plodded, his whiskey scent a beacon.
"You're a good girl, Tammy, he whispered
As he caressed her head with tender, loving strokes.
Throw out the lifeline, someone is drifting away.
He holds a fudge-striped cookie close to her nose
For her to sniff, recognize and accept.
Then kneels to the floor and hugs her,
Tightly clinging to her neck as though
She's his last link to humanity, his lifeline,
The only being who'd ever forgiven him
The booze-induced kicks and curses that he so regrets now
As she raises her head and nuzzles him lovingly.
