There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.*
Sophomore year, taking yet another exam, – high school was like Chinese water torture – Mrs Westerholm caught me with the lines of The Cremation of Sam McGee by Robert W. Service inscribed with blue ink on my right calf. I just smiled and told her my little brother must have written that when I was asleep. We share a bedroom and I am a sound sleeper.
She didn’t believe me for some reason of her own.
***
A couple years later, entering college, I flunked my writing sample. To be honest, having been an editor of our literary magazine, I was somewhat surprised. As was Mrs. Truran, our faculty adviser. Especially when I was shunted into Remedial Composition. With a bunch of missionaries who spoke English as a second language. Or third. Or fourth. Oh, the shame, oh, the horror.
***
Here’s the problem. We were assigned topics, three as I recall, two I actually recall:
My Favorite Pet.
What I Did On My Summer Vacation.
Our family pet was Mimi, an old miniature poodle with stinky breath. Oh, and Suki, a mean Siamese cat who was always dumping dead mice and pummeled birds at Mom’s feet, like tribute.
So, I wrote about what I did over the summer. Which was fantasize about the lithe and lovely teenage vixen who lived just down the road. I was obsessed, which seems normal for a 17-year-old boy who had trouble getting a date. The girl visibly was sexier every time she left her house. I know, I was watching.
I recently had finished The Collector by John Fowles, so the idea of possessing my own nubile red-head like Samantha Eggar in a opulent underground bunker offered a certain appeal. Wanted her as my pet.
Well, virginal and naïve as I was, apparently, I misjudged the worldliness of the admissions office of a small mid-western Methodist college in 1964. Can’t take a joke.
***
Realize now those two anecdotes speak volumes about the half century that followed.
Broke a lot of rules. Chased a lot of girls. Often found myself in conflict with authority figures.
But ten years or so after flunking that writing sample, I sold my first article.
And just yesterday I received a check for my latest piece. That’s a professional career as a writer spanning four decades.
My point is, don’t let other people kill your dreams.
***
As for running…
I was slow to walk, I was slow to talk. Basically, I was just slow at everything.
Remember when JFK created the President’s Fitness Test? Maybe not. I remember.
So, there I was, a chubby fourteen-year-old, not exactly comfortable in my own skin not to mention completely uncomfortable at school. And because I was so slow, they made me run with the girls.
And I finished somewhere in the middle of the pack.
Not exactly running material.
Not somebody you’d expect to start a running magazine or a running store or finish 91st in the USA National Marathon Championships. Or become a Senior Editor of Track & Field News.
Or become Director of Public Relations for NIKE.
Oddly, for a few years, I even sat on the Governor’s Fitness Council. What seems to me a full circle.
And my point here, I’m not so sure.
Maybe… be open to unsuspected opportunities, that’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Ignore labels.
Hard work and passion can take you far.
Movement is the best medicine for body and soul.
***
When Running Was Young & So Were We was named “The Best Running Book of The Year.”
Won the genre’s most prestigious honor – The Armory Award from the Track & Field Writers of America.
Now, I confess, I have long secretly coveted this award. Talk about your dreams. [PAUSE]
I was not told I was nominated, I was not told I won. TAFWA held an awards banquet in New York City, I was not invited. Since I didn’t know about the banquet, I didn’t attend.
Understand, I know other writers, I am friends with the woman who won last year’s award.
(I sincerely can recommend Dandelion Growing Wild by Kim Jones. Teenage mother becomes world-class marathoner just begins to tell her story.)
I heard the exciting news! from some buddies on Facebook.
There wasn’t so much as a press release.
Long story short, almost three months later, I get a plaque, [HOLDS UP PLAQUE]
which I had to remind them to mail to me.
Hand-scribbled letter came with: “Jack, Congratulations on this year’s award. Here is plaque.”
And that brings me to final point.
Find the praise within.
Keep your own fire lit.
***
Here’s the rest of the poem. Surprised I didn’t get blood poisoning. – JDW
*Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in hell.”
***
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
***
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”
***
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursèd cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead—it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”
***
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
***
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”
***
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God! how I loathed the thing.
***
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
***
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May.”
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here,” said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
***
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
***
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
***
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”; … then the door I opened wide.
***
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm—
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”
***
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.