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| CHIEF OSHKOSH BEER...PRIDE OF THE NORTHWOODS |
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| JOHNNY'S RED HAT |
Saturday, 9:00 AM. 35 degrees F on both thermometers. Wind SW, calm with occasional light gusts. The sky is sunny, the humidity 74%. The barometer is steady, at 30.02". Highs today and tomorrow will be in the low 40's, becoming cloudy and raining on Monday; turning much colder with snow on Tuesday. It is a gorgeous day, we will enjoy it while it lasts.
Blogging about the deer herd has given me the opportunity to think about deer
seasons past, specifically those when I was in my twenties, fifty years and more ago, when my buddies and I would head north to the
national forest and Langlade, Wisconsin, on the Wolf River. The following tale is
substantially true, given some dramatic license, of course.
JACK’S TRADING POST
Whether deer
hunting, grouse hunting or fishing, my friends and I always spent time at Jack’s
Trading Post, a stone's throw from the big rapids on the Wolf. The North
Woods has always been full of characters, and Jack Kolb was certainly
one of the most colorful.
Jack, AKA Johnny Red Shirt, or Johnny Red Hat
(because he always wore a red flannel shirt and a red felt hat, winter
and summer) was the proprietor of a backwoods gas station and sort of
general store, where one could buy a few emergency canned goods and maybe some
rancid bacon, or a six pack of beer, all at wildly inflated prices. But, more importantly, it was
where all the locals and the visiting hunters and fishermen hung out
after a day in the woods or on the river.
The Trading Post was a ramshackle pile of logs with that looked more like a beaver lodge than human habitation, with a window or two and a door salvaged from somewhere. Heat was provided by an old oil barrel with used motor oil dripped into it, that got cherry red hot and threatened to cremate all the occupants. It was a
place to tell tall tales, a few true stories and a lot of lies, and Jack
was the ringleader in all events. In Jack’s eyes, a stringer of a few
six inch brook trout became “the nicest mess of trout I’ve ever seen,”
and a nubbin buck “a trophy for the wall.”
The trading post was
filled with deer heads and other deceased fur bearers, mounted fish, and jokes…like the stuffed Jack
rabbit with spike deer horns attached, which was named a “Jackalope,”
and which neophytes were told the woods were full of. Also photos,
“real ones, folks” of the horrible man-eating Hodag which waited on
forest trails to pounce on the tenderfoot hiker. It was a great place
to have a few beers, and Jack offered a choice of two; “Chief,” and
“Oshkosh,” and whichever was ordered, onto the table was put, with a
resounding thud, a Chief Oshkosh, “Pride of the North Woods.”
Jack sold gasoline out of an old fashioned pump (there was only one) which he cranked by
hand. When a city slicker drove up to the pump he
would ask him, “How many octanes do you want?”
Jack Kolb was a man
of some mystery, as nobody seemed to know where he came from or what he
did before he opened the trading post back during the war years. There
were rumors that the old scamp was a bank robber who had hidden his
stash in the caves along the Wolf, or that he was a moon shiner during
prohibition, and that he had a still that he yet operated back in the
woods.
Well, after a while I got married and some time after that
we moved to New York, so I never saw Jack again. About twenty years after
my last visit to the trading post, one of my friends wrote to me, I
think it was in a Christmas note, that Jack had been murdered that last
deer season. And, over some subsequent years, Jack’s story was put
together, piece by piece, like a puzzle.
Jonathan Kolb was a poor
Jewish boy who grew up in a tough neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.
He was smart, and a smooth talker, so he drifted into being a small
time grifter and was eventually enlisted in the local mob. He ran
numbers, operated a speakeasy, that sort of thing. But he never got
into the violence of the vocation, never even carried a gun. And being
the only Jew in the gang outside of the
consigliore, he was nicknamed
Johnny The Jew. The boss liked him so he never had to do any of the
mob’s dirty work. Until there was a war between two rival gangs and he
was told to go to the mattresses, like everyone else.
Johnny
panicked, gathered up his belongings and a few hundred bucks, got in his Model A and headed north. But he was painfully aware of what
happened to gangsters who knew a few secrets and left the brotherhood.
So he followed the North Star and Route 32 until his money ran out,
which was on the Menomonee Indian Reservation.
Being a genuinely
likeable guy and down on his luck, he got along with the Indians and the
locals, worked at odd jobs and finally met a local schoolteacher, got
married and started the Trading Post. He built a successful little
business, based on shrewdness and bullshit. He forgot all about the
mob, figuring they would never find him.
And then, one day, they did.
Jack went out to gas up the big black Cadillac, not thinking much of it because
there were a lot of Chicago Cadillacs up North during the heat of
summer. But when the driver’s window rolled down, a gusher of cigar
smoke erupted, and enshrouded therein was the puffy, scarred face and
beady black eyes of his old capo, who said, “Fill ‘er up, kid.” The car
had three other beefy, ominous occupants.
Jack mumbled
something, pulled his red hat further down over his visage, and hastily
filled the tank. He didn’t ask “How many octanes” the driver wanted,
either. At the end of the transaction a thick hand reached out the window, with a Benjamin in its’
fat fingers. “Keep the change, Johnny. We just wanted to stop and say
‘hello’ to an old friend.” Jack Kolb stood for once speechless, his
heart racing like the river across the road, as the Caddy sped off,
spiting granite gravel at his shoes.
So, did the mob finally rub out old
Johnny the Jew? No, it turned out it was two local high school kids,
who beat the old man’s brains out for the couple of bucks in the Trading
Post till…and a six pack of Chief Oshkosh.
