The Baileys Harbor Bird and Booyah Club

Reefer Madness

82­ Reefer Mad­ ness Gather ye rose­ buds while ye may,” wrote the poet Rob­ ert Her­ rick, a long time ago. “That age is best which is the first, when youth and blood are ­ warmer . . .”­ Sooner or later, every man in his late six­ ties looks back at his­ warm-blooded days and won­ ders if he spent too many of them at work and too few at play. And he asks him­ self: Do I have ­ enough bad hab­ its?­ George ­ O’Malley is one of those men. In a mod­ est way, his life has been a suc­ cess, but achiev­ ing that suc­ cess cost him a lot of fun and ad­ ven­ ture over the years. In the 1960s, for in­ stance, when his con­ tem­ po­ rar­ ies were driv­ ing Volks­ wa­ gen buses with dai­ sies­ painted on them and kill­ ing off their brain cells with rec­ re­ a­ tional chem­ i­ cals, ­ George was too broke and too ­ square and too busy to join in. The 1970s and ’80s ­ passed in a blur of ­ nights on the copy desk, and in the ’90s he was still work­ ing. And now that he is foot­ loose and able to kick up his heels,he can’t shake off his ha­ bit­ ual re­ straint. Guin­ ness Extra Stout is the strong­ est in­ tox­ i­ cant in reg­ u­ lar use at Coot Lake Lodge, at the rate of a bot­ tle a day, and the only chem­ i­ cal on the menu is the lye in ­ Helen’s lute­ fisk. But ­ George has one re­ deem­ ing fault: he ­ smokes a pipe. In fact, he owns about ­ twenty pipes. He ­ smokes them, he says, be­ cause the rit­ u­ als of fill­ ing, light­ ing, tamp­ ing, and puff­ing give him time to think, and the older he gets, the more think­ ing he needs to do. He in­ vests some time in con­ tem­ pla­ tion al­ most every eve­ ning, sit­ ting by the fire­ place with a briar and a glass and a book. Reefer Madness 83 Some­ times he re­ mem­ bers ­ Herrick’s poem and won­ ders if there are any rose­ buds left with his name on them.­ George and Helen were dry­ ing the ­ dishes after lunch on a bril­ liant Sat­ ur­ day after­ noon in May when the mail­ man ­ tooted his horn and ­ turned ­ around in their drive­ way. “I’ll go fetch the mail, Helen,” ­ George said, and ­ dropped his towel on the coun­ ter. He was back in a ­ couple of min­ utes, car­ ry­ ing a card­ board box in one hand and a stack of junk mail in the other. He put it all on the bar by the west win­ dows and began to sort it. “Oc­ cu­ pant, res­ i­ dent, res­ i­ dent, oc­ cu­ pant. Helen, have I told you about my lat­ est ­ scheme to as­ sure ­ wealth and se­ cur­ ity in our old age?” Helen came in from the ­ kitchen. “No, but I have a feel­ ing ­ you’re going to,” she said. “Ac­ tu­ ally, I ­ thought it up just this min­ ute,” ­ George ex­ plained. “Half of the mail we get is ad­ dressed to ‘occupant’ or ‘res­ i­ dent,’ right? And we just re­ cy­ cle most of it, so we don’t make a penny on the trans­ ac­ tion. “Well, ­ here’s my plan—we tell the post of­ fice that I am Mr. Oc­ cu­ pant and you are Mrs. Res­ i­ dent, and as soon as their com­ puter gets the hang of it, ­ they’ll de­ liver all the mail ad­ dressed to‘occupant’ or ‘resident’ in our zip code to us, bales of it, free of ­ charge. Then we’ll load it in the ­ pickup every week,haul it to the re­ cy­ cler our­ selves, and sell it. Even at three cents a pound, we’ll be rich be­ yond the­ dreams of av­ a­ rice.” Helen was a Nor­ we­ gian farm girl from Pe­ nin­ sula Cen­ ter, where money had al­ ways been in short sup­ ply. She per­ formed a ­ couple of quick men­ tal cal­ cu­ la­ tions, re­ jected ­ George’s idea as un­ work­ able, and gave him one of the in­ dul­ gent ­ smiles she had per­ fected when she...