I hadn’t told the editor I already knew where Reuben lived. My good friend Charles “Charlie" Miller had mentioned he was Reuben Lindstrom’s landlord. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Charlie said Reuben lived in a garage on his land in the town of Sigel, a few miles north of Wisconsin Rapids.
So, I drove to the garage a number of times but Reuben was either not present or he preferred not to answer the door. However, I continued to drive there at least twice a week. One Saturday afternoon, the garage’s personnel door finally opened almost too deliberately. Electrical pulses coursed up and down my spine. All I could see was the interior darkness. Blackness. Maybe I should just get out of there, I thought.
And in the darkness of the garage, there he stood. I had never been that close to this unconventional man. He was taller than I, much thinner, and far dirtier than I ever imagined a person could possibly be. His matted and long, thick, and tangled, dirty, greasy hair reminded me of steel wool stretched and tangled between a couple of gnarly, greasy rollers in some macabre machine built to perform strange, untold effects. He had a filthy full beard and mustache.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I told him his landlord was my friend and I was a reporter for the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune and was interested in doing a human interest story involving him and his bike.
“Come in,” he said.
Dare I? I did so. Cautiously. The garage’s interior had a peculiar odor, cousin to the aroma at our city dump. There was no such thing as a chair or table or couch inside that garage. I recall his bike being there and that he immediately sat down on the floor and looked up, his eyes intense. “What do you want to know?”
“First of all,” I said, “why do you live in this garage?”
“Beats nothing.”
“Two, why do you let your hair grow long and don’t wash?”
“I could die if I cut my hair or washed. Dirt’s natural and it keeps human diseases from penetrating the skin and entering my body.”
Before I had the chance to ask another question, he started relating his life history, about how his older brother who’d been killed in WWI prompted Reuben’s mother to give him most of the money she saved in addition to a loaf of bread, some sandwich meat, and a large bag of cookies. She told him to walk north and keep walking in that direction until that war was over. “And don’t come back until then,” she warned.
“I obeyed her,” he proudly said.
Reuben was ahead of his time, heading off to Canada in order to avoid conscription many years before young men of my generation avoided the draft by taking off for Canada, avoiding Vietnam service.
One story Reuben told me stood out among all the rest. He ventured on to a Canadian trapper’s private property. Apparently, the trapper’s dogs had just killed one of the trapper’s children. Reuben said he thought the man cared more for the dogs than he did his dead child. Recalling that event strongly affected Reuben because he stopped talking and didn’t resume speaking for a long while. I became uncomfortable.
He, however, continued. Returning to the states after the Armistice was signed, Reuben attended an auto mechanics school in Nebraska. Later, I learned he was most adept in mechanical matters. His personal necessities became the foundations for his inventions.
Although this trained automotive mechanic chose to exclusively ride a bicycle for the rest of his life, he powered the two wheeler with a small gasoline engine. Whenever he required its aid, which was seldom, he’d pull the rope and start the engine and off he’d go.
He also “rode the rails.” Reuben welded two flat steel pieces on each end of a telescoping steel rod. He then drilled holes in those flat pieces and inserted two large U-bolts in them. He secured one U-bolt end to a stud he had welded to a flanged steel wheel that turned easily on greased bearings. He secured the other end of the rod’s U-bolt to the bike’s top cross bar.
Our photographer took pictures of his placing the flanged wheel on one track and his bicycle wheels on the opposing track. When he mounted the bike, Reuben leaned slightly toward the flanged wheel, a move which he said helped make the bike more stable. I believe that’s the first time I saw him smile.
Reuben used pedal power while on the tracks, but if there was a stout wind and it was in the proper direction, he’d fly down the tracks with the aid of a sail. “I could go forty miles an hour using that sail,” he claimed. All in all, I figured he carried an extra eighty pounds of gear on his bike.
Later, I interviewed railroad officials and asked them about what they thought of Reuben’s railroad bike invention. They weren’t too happy with his traveling on their tracks and told me they would have him arrested if that was at all possible. Apparently, it was not possible. The newspaper received many positive reader comments regarding the Reuben series. The last I heard of him, Reuben had moved to the Portage, Wisconsin, area. After that, I heard no more.
I liked writing human interest stories, many of which I worked on at night. However, I had a difficult time getting my daily city and county stories out in time. The paper was sometimes held up while I worked on a piece about a car accident or some local political matter. I was never satisfied with my phrasings and continually edited and re-edited them. I continually yanked pieces of paper out of that typewriter, replacing them with fresh sheets and started once again tapping out words. Sentences had to sound right and meet my need for a cadence that I not only heard but had to feel. As a reporter meeting deadlines, I was a failure and knew it. I was no Hemingway or Doherty nor would I ever be.
I recalled how much I enjoyed being a classroom teacher. I decided to return to college teaching, but I knew I’d have to go on for my doctorate because most colleges and universities wanted even their lowly assistant professors to have Ph. D’s (Piled higher and Deeper).
After I made application to the UW-Madison English department, I was accepted in their doctoral program. However, I had to put food on the table in the meantime and turned to UW-Stevens Point in order to check out the possibilities of teaching there temporarily. No openings. The head of the English department told me there were two vacant English teacher positions open at the time, one in a high school near Milwaukee and the second position at the state prison in Waupun. I applied for both, had my interviews on the same day, and because Waupun’s prison school and its students were so different, I thought I could get ideas in that place for future short stories and some poetry, as well. Besides, I’d only have to work there for a short while. Thus, I quit my job at the newspaper probably one day before the editor would’ve fired me.
To this very day, whenever I write, I invariably edit and re-edit and re-edit some more until I’m almost satisfied. I’m hardly ever satisfied. Even with this piece.
So, I drove to the garage a number of times but Reuben was either not present or he preferred not to answer the door. However, I continued to drive there at least twice a week. One Saturday afternoon, the garage’s personnel door finally opened almost too deliberately. Electrical pulses coursed up and down my spine. All I could see was the interior darkness. Blackness. Maybe I should just get out of there, I thought.
And in the darkness of the garage, there he stood. I had never been that close to this unconventional man. He was taller than I, much thinner, and far dirtier than I ever imagined a person could possibly be. His matted and long, thick, and tangled, dirty, greasy hair reminded me of steel wool stretched and tangled between a couple of gnarly, greasy rollers in some macabre machine built to perform strange, untold effects. He had a filthy full beard and mustache.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I told him his landlord was my friend and I was a reporter for the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune and was interested in doing a human interest story involving him and his bike.
“Come in,” he said.
Dare I? I did so. Cautiously. The garage’s interior had a peculiar odor, cousin to the aroma at our city dump. There was no such thing as a chair or table or couch inside that garage. I recall his bike being there and that he immediately sat down on the floor and looked up, his eyes intense. “What do you want to know?”
“First of all,” I said, “why do you live in this garage?”
“Beats nothing.”
“Two, why do you let your hair grow long and don’t wash?”
“I could die if I cut my hair or washed. Dirt’s natural and it keeps human diseases from penetrating the skin and entering my body.”
Before I had the chance to ask another question, he started relating his life history, about how his older brother who’d been killed in WWI prompted Reuben’s mother to give him most of the money she saved in addition to a loaf of bread, some sandwich meat, and a large bag of cookies. She told him to walk north and keep walking in that direction until that war was over. “And don’t come back until then,” she warned.
“I obeyed her,” he proudly said.
Reuben was ahead of his time, heading off to Canada in order to avoid conscription many years before young men of my generation avoided the draft by taking off for Canada, avoiding Vietnam service.
One story Reuben told me stood out among all the rest. He ventured on to a Canadian trapper’s private property. Apparently, the trapper’s dogs had just killed one of the trapper’s children. Reuben said he thought the man cared more for the dogs than he did his dead child. Recalling that event strongly affected Reuben because he stopped talking and didn’t resume speaking for a long while. I became uncomfortable.
He, however, continued. Returning to the states after the Armistice was signed, Reuben attended an auto mechanics school in Nebraska. Later, I learned he was most adept in mechanical matters. His personal necessities became the foundations for his inventions.
Although this trained automotive mechanic chose to exclusively ride a bicycle for the rest of his life, he powered the two wheeler with a small gasoline engine. Whenever he required its aid, which was seldom, he’d pull the rope and start the engine and off he’d go.
He also “rode the rails.” Reuben welded two flat steel pieces on each end of a telescoping steel rod. He then drilled holes in those flat pieces and inserted two large U-bolts in them. He secured one U-bolt end to a stud he had welded to a flanged steel wheel that turned easily on greased bearings. He secured the other end of the rod’s U-bolt to the bike’s top cross bar.
Our photographer took pictures of his placing the flanged wheel on one track and his bicycle wheels on the opposing track. When he mounted the bike, Reuben leaned slightly toward the flanged wheel, a move which he said helped make the bike more stable. I believe that’s the first time I saw him smile.
Reuben used pedal power while on the tracks, but if there was a stout wind and it was in the proper direction, he’d fly down the tracks with the aid of a sail. “I could go forty miles an hour using that sail,” he claimed. All in all, I figured he carried an extra eighty pounds of gear on his bike.
Later, I interviewed railroad officials and asked them about what they thought of Reuben’s railroad bike invention. They weren’t too happy with his traveling on their tracks and told me they would have him arrested if that was at all possible. Apparently, it was not possible. The newspaper received many positive reader comments regarding the Reuben series. The last I heard of him, Reuben had moved to the Portage, Wisconsin, area. After that, I heard no more.
I liked writing human interest stories, many of which I worked on at night. However, I had a difficult time getting my daily city and county stories out in time. The paper was sometimes held up while I worked on a piece about a car accident or some local political matter. I was never satisfied with my phrasings and continually edited and re-edited them. I continually yanked pieces of paper out of that typewriter, replacing them with fresh sheets and started once again tapping out words. Sentences had to sound right and meet my need for a cadence that I not only heard but had to feel. As a reporter meeting deadlines, I was a failure and knew it. I was no Hemingway or Doherty nor would I ever be.
I recalled how much I enjoyed being a classroom teacher. I decided to return to college teaching, but I knew I’d have to go on for my doctorate because most colleges and universities wanted even their lowly assistant professors to have Ph. D’s (Piled higher and Deeper).
After I made application to the UW-Madison English department, I was accepted in their doctoral program. However, I had to put food on the table in the meantime and turned to UW-Stevens Point in order to check out the possibilities of teaching there temporarily. No openings. The head of the English department told me there were two vacant English teacher positions open at the time, one in a high school near Milwaukee and the second position at the state prison in Waupun. I applied for both, had my interviews on the same day, and because Waupun’s prison school and its students were so different, I thought I could get ideas in that place for future short stories and some poetry, as well. Besides, I’d only have to work there for a short while. Thus, I quit my job at the newspaper probably one day before the editor would’ve fired me.
To this very day, whenever I write, I invariably edit and re-edit and re-edit some more until I’m almost satisfied. I’m hardly ever satisfied. Even with this piece.
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