Finding Tim by Charlie

Finding Tim
A Fourth Alternate Reality

by: Charlie

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Episode 156

Team

Before settling on “Team”, I pondered on the title for this episode for quite a while. At first it was named “Improbable.” And that certainly describes the situation. Here we were, essentially a group of ten, setting out to win an Olympic medal in a sport that only two of us had paid serious attention to at any time in our lives, and those two, Auggie and Goose, weren’t the ones that were trying to win a medal! Our sailing master and the supply team chief were teenagers. The two medal-seeking “athletes” were in their fifties, and were expecting to hold down their jobs as university administrators while all of this was going on. Improbable.

It wasn’t to Tim! And if it wasn’t improbable to Tim, it wasn’t improbable to me, Charlie, the older of the two [improbable] sailors.

I chose a different title because “Team” really does describe us. We started as a group of six: Tim and me, Auggie and Goose, Perry and Lynn. Perry sensed that he wasn’t needed, but quickly made himself a key player. That made us two groups of five. Perry made it his business to turn his group of five into a well-knit functioning team, and he did it with remarkable speed.

He got his group to Freeport. He decided that before they started talking about the support task at hand, they should all learn to sail. Goose was at home in Freeport, waiting for Auggie to call and tell him where he was needed. In the meantime he was glad to be a sailing instructor. They had the Nancy, the two small sloops, and the two 49ers. Perry and Goose took the four beginners through a crash course in sailing, beginning on the Nancy and progressing to the 49ers. They got pretty good in the sloops, but only Curtis seemed to get the hang of the 49ers. Perry didn’t care about that. He wanted them all to have a sense of just how difficult it was to sail a 49er and why Tim and I needed the level of support that his team was going to provide. And he mixed up his crews constantly, so that everybody got to sail with everybody. In the process, they all got to know each other very well.

As a part of the Gang, Perry was used to the idea that sex could be an important team builder. However, in the group that he had that didn’t seem likely, so he avoided it. With one gay pair, a single man and woman that didn’t know each other, and a leader that was underage, sex didn’t seem likely to go anywhere. So they had four rooms at the resort, and Perry avoided that issue completely.

They ate all of their meals together, sailed together, and played together in the evenings–they got pretty good at beach volleyball (Goose made for equal teams of three). In the second week they changed the schedule so that they’d have a two hour sail each morning and afternoon, and the rest of the time they met together and discussed the task at hand. They developed lists of major tasks, and then checklists for each of those tasks. The realized that all of these things were works in progress and would be constantly changing, but getting things down on paper was important.

It was time to learn more about the 49er as a physical object–how to rig her, assemble her, adjust her, disassemble her for shipping, prepare her for shipping; well, you get the picture. Perry had contacted Ovington Boats, in North Shields, England, the manufacturer of the 49er. Dave Ovington, the creator of the business and the boat, was glad to welcome the team. So it was off to England for two weeks of intensive training in how to handle a 49er, with emphasis on rigging, shipping and maintenance. Goose came along, and Auggie flew in from Grand Forks for part of the time.

Auggie deliberately didn’t make it for the entire two weeks. He realized that he could easily become the de facto team leader and undermine Perry’s leadership. It was important for everyone to understand that we all depended on Perry and his team, and nobody was going to be second guessing that team, or Perry. Perry and Auggie did have a chance to have a long talk about how things were going, and how the support team would best relate to the sailors. Perry told Auggie, “I think that the best thing is to stop thinking about a support team of five. We have a sailing team of ten, and everybody has their job. I don’t think we should be separating the two groups in our thinking.”

Auggie agreed, and from then on we no longer thought in terms of a support team.

However, the group of five did function as a unit–they had to, by the nature of their tasks. They went back to Freeport for another week sailing with Goose. During that week Perry led their discussion of where they wanted to be based. It was very quickly agreed that they thought that they should all be based in the same place. It would make travel easier and would allow them to plan together while they were “off duty” at home base. Furthermore, they decided that they shouldn’t pick as a base city one of the hometowns of anybody in the group. That pretty much eliminated Michigan.

But where? Millie asked, “Do we need a home base? We’re going to be living out of suitcases. What if we put what we won’t need in storage, and just move with the boats?”

Perry asked, “Well, where do we store our stuff? We’ll need to be able to get at it, if only to replace clothes and switch things around for different climates. And if we’re going to have to go somewhere to get at our storage, wouldn’t it be nice to have an apartment or house there, instead of depending on a hotel?”

“Who”s going to pay for a house or apartment?”

“Fred’s Sports. We aren’t talking money issues here.”

I don’t think that the group had really understood that until Perry made it completely clear.

David finally said, “OK, what are the criteria for a base city or town?”

“Good access to transportation.”

“Not too far from our homes in Michigan.”

“An interesting place to be while we’re there.”

“Not just access to transportation. We’ll save hours and days in travel time if we’re at a major international airport. And it has to have good connections to Grand Forks–for us, and for the other members of the team.”

Gene said, “When you look at that list, there’s really only one city.”

Curtis said, “I know, Chicago.”

They all agreed. Chicago would be their base. And it had the added advantage of being on a lake–a big lake. While there wasn’t currently any 49er sailing on Lake Michigan, there was lots of sailing. Tim and I could get to Chicago easily, and could sail there for a weekend or week without the logistics of getting to an ocean port. For Tim and me there was one other advantage: Chicago and Grand Forks were in the same time zone–no clock changes that might affect rest as we went back and forth. After talking with Auggie, it was decided to ship the 49ers to Chicago, drop the rental on the Nancy and the sloops, and say goodbye to Freeport. Goose asked if he could base himself in Chicago as well. I told him that he could, but that it might make more sense for him to be based in Grand Forks, Madison, or both, along with Auggie. After talking to Auggie, Goose decided to rent a small apartment in both Grand Forks and Madison, so that he could move with Auggie–they were destined to be quite a sailing pair as the years passed. And Fred’s Sports picked up his rent at both apartments!

So they headed to Chicago, wondering what kind of housing they might find, and debating whether they wanted to be near the airport, or where? Perhaps downtown? They flew into Ohare and checked into a motel near the airport. They looked around at all of the fancy office buildings, motels, high-rise apartments, and sleek shopping malls, and decided that they really didn’t want to be in that environment. So the next day they headed downtown. Perry put them all in the Conrad Hilton Hotel, simply because he thought it’d be fun to stay at such a famous hotel. He knew he was pushing Fred’s budget, so he suggested that he and David share a room, and they did. Perry assured me that that night, and all other nights, there wasn’t even a hint of sex–with David or any of the four.

He called Fred and asked if he had contacts that might help him find housing, and he needed some guidance about the housing–buy, rent, how expensive?

Fred was rather methodical in his answers. He listened to Perry’s story of events since their last conversation, and then to Perry’s questions. He answered:

“1. Great you’re in the Conrad Hilton. You’ve got the right idea of how to handle that group.

“2. I’m glad to be called to ask for help, since it’s a situation in which you think I might be a good resource.

“3. I’ll talk to our regional office in Chicago and get a line on a good real estate agent for you.

“4. Buy? Rent? How much? Those aren’t questions you need to talk to me about. I hired you to make good decisions. A bit of advice, however. Don’t try to buy a downtown Chicago condo on the Fred’s Sports Visa card you’re holding. It’s got a high limit, but that’d be pushing it. To buy real estate, call Andy.

“Got all that, Perry?”

“Sure do, Fred.” He heard the words and the meanings between the lines as well.

In about 45 minutes a Juanita Perez called and introduced herself as a local realtor who’d been given Perry’s name by a friend who managed the local Fred’s Sports store in Hinsdale. Perry asked her to come by the Hilton and meet with the group. She was there in two hours.

Juanita was a dynamo. I have no idea whether she’d been warned that she was going to be working with a teenager, but she wasn’t fazed. That put her on good terms with Perry immediately. She told him that in downtown he had a few choices, all of them being condos or rental apartments–houses either didn’t exist, were slums, were mansions, or were too far from the El to be convenient. The El would connect them to the trains to the airport.

“So, do you want a fancy high-rise condo? There are lots. They’re very nice. Pretty expensive.”

Curtis cut in, “And very sterile.”

Juanita replied, “Right you are. Some people like that. I’m just learning what you folks would like.”

Gene asked, “What about older apartments?”

“You have to be careful of the neighborhood, and the condition of the building. A lot are owned by slumlords who put no money into maintenance–even though the buildings aren’t yet slums. But they’re headed that way.”

“Are there some nice old buildings?”

“Sure. Do you think that’s what you’d like?”

Millie said, “I’m a single woman; I want to be safe. But I’d like to be in a community, a neighborhood. Even if I’m not going to be home very much, I’d like to at least know my neighbors.”

“You aren’t going to be home much?”

Perry said, “This group’s going to be traveling a lot, separately and together. Round the world with a sailing team. This’ll be our home base.”

They talked another hour and then Juanita said, “OK, I have a pretty good idea of what you’d like. It’s going to take a while to see what’s available. How about we meet the day after tomorrow at ten in the morning? I’ll get the office van so we can all ride together. I’ll pick you up out front of the hotel–that’ll save me the impossible job of parking.”

That gave them a day and a half in Chicago–a city that none of them was familiar with–though it wasn’t the first visit for any of them. They walked all over the downtown that afternoon, and the next day went down to the Museum of Science and Industry in the morning and the Shedd Aquarium in the afternoon. Even this was hurrying through the museums, and they realized that they could spend a lot of their down time in the various Chicago Museums.

They were ready for Juanita when she arrived the next morning. “OK, folks. I’ve got a lot of things that I can show you. But I don’t think you’re going to want to see them. One of my fellow agents has an apartment building to show you, and we’re heading there first.”

Well, it was an old stone, five storey building with two spacious apartments on each floor. It was owned by an elderly couple that lived in one of the first floor apartments and rented out the rest of the building. They were getting too old to manage a building and needed to sell it. They would take the proceeds and move into a retirement community.

They had a buyer for the building. He was a young man who hoped to improve the building, live on the top floor, and rent out the rest. His problem was that he didn’t have the credit to both buy and remodel the building outright. But if he could sell one or two of the apartments as part of the package, he could swing it. His name was Brad Wilson, and he met them at the building at 10:30.

Brad was delightful. He had a head on his shoulders, and had pretty carefully worked out the finances of the remodeling. He just needed to find buyers for two apartments. They looked the building over and realized that if they combined two apartments on one of the floors, they’d have a spacious five bedroom apartment with two kitchens. It’d be perfect. The building looked rundown, but the architect’s drawings of the remodeling showed a tasteful refurbishing, inside and out.

Perry asked Brad about timing. Brad said, “The current owners have known they wanted to sell for a year, so all of the tenants are month-to-month. None are in a financial position to buy, so all will be leaving. There is one couple I feel sorry for, and I’m going to try to work it out so that I can take ownership of their apartment and rent to them. The rest of the building will be empty in about six weeks. If you took two apartments, you could move into two others on a different floor right away. We’d remodel your two next–changing the design to make one apartment, and you could then move into it. I figure three to four months. The entire building is going to take a year.

Perry said, “Let me propose a different deal. I hate condos; and I hate displacing renters–I’m thinking of your couple, but maybe others. We’ll create a partnership to own the building, and I’ll find you a silent partner to provide the needed capital to add to yours to buy the building and remodel it. The partnership will rent to all of us, and will hire you to supervise the remodeling and manage the building. You’ll be the managing partner and make all decisions. Your silent partner–legally a limited partner–will have to check you out thoroughly, but I feel sure you are what you say you are. You can use your share of the annual profits to slowly buy out your partner. We’ll pay rent like everyone else. We want a year lease, guaranteed renewable for five years.”

Brad was a little shaken by the offer. “You can pull that off?”

“Yes, I can. Are you interested?”

“Of course. How quickly?”

“I would think about two days.”

Juanita and the other realtor who represented the owner just listened quietly and watched a difficult sale materialize before their eyes. They were quiet on the outside, but their minds were in turmoil on the inside. Then Perry turned to Juanita and asked, “How quickly can the paperwork for all of this be put together? I’ll get my attorney involved right away.”

Juanita had been a calm, cool professional up to this point. But she couldn’t hold that pose. She burst out, “Two days? That kind of deal takes months to put together. My office will bust its ass to meet your deadline, but can you seriously have a silent partner involved that quickly?”

Perry just smiled and said, “If you know what you want to do, and you have the resources available, it isn’t hard to make it happen.”

Juanita asked, “You’re new in town. Do you have a lawyer here? I can recommend one.”

“My attorney is a friend of a friend. I’ll have him get in touch with you.”

“What’s his name?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. I have a very close friend who’s worked with an attorney here–they both clerked for the same judge, I believe. I’ll get the name.”

Perry had to be pretty good to remember that connection, since he wasn’t in town during the school crisis that had brought Chrissy to Grand Forks. He called me and I told him to contact Christopher Elvins. That contact was made, and Chrissy immediately got in touch with Juanita, whose first question was, “It that Perry kid for real?”

Chrissy replied, “I don’t know him. But he comes with solid gold references, and is backed by serious money. Fred’s Sports is the sponsor of the sailing team he’s working for.”

Of more importance to our story, Chrissy insisted that Perry and all of his friends join Orville and him for dinner that evening. Perry didn’t want to impose, but Chrissy could insist as well as Fred. Dinner it would be, at 7:00 p.m. “Where do you live?”

“In the John Hancock Center”

“People actually live there? I thought it was offices.”

“It’s both. We’ll show you around the building. You can easily walk from the Hilton. We’re on the 67th floor, right near the elevators–turn right. Look for our names.”

Chrissy and Orville had a small but lovely condo overlooking the city. Most people preferred the lake view, and you paid a premium for it, but Chrissy and Orville liked to look at the vibrancy of the city, especially at night when the lake view was pretty worthless. Curtis and Gene were particularly fascinated to meet another gay couple. Out gay couples were pretty rare in the UP, and it was a pleasure to get a chance to talk to Chrissy and Orville about their life in Chicago. The evening ended with sincere hopes on everyone’s part that they could all get together frequently when Perry and his team were in town.

As they walked home Perry asked everyone, “OK, we could’ve had a condo in a building like that. Who’s sorry that we’re getting a old barn?”

“Nobody’s sorry. That place was lovely, neat, had a great view, and sterile.”

“And even the view is from so high up the people look like toys. We’re going to see real people out of our windows.”

To each his own. They were all happy.

They all headed to their homes in Michigan, to take a break and to get ready for the move to Chicago. For all but Perry it meant closing an apartment, deciding what they wanted to move to Chicago, what they wanted to keep in storage, and what they wanted to get rid of. Perry discussed the storage issue with Andy, and they agreed to put it all in one container which could sit in the Fred’s Sports warehouse in Detroit.

Paul, Amanda, and Nettie were glad to have Perry back home for a few weeks. He packed up the few things he’d want in Chicago–mostly books, records, his hi-fi, and almost all of his clothes–and had them shipped. He got great pleasure in taking his family out to dinner–he drove them over to the Depot Restaurant in Ashland–one of the nicest places to eat in the area. It had opened in the old Soo depot when the abandoned railroad station was completely remodeled and a museum, tourist information center as well as the restaurant were added. Paul and Amanda had once taken Tim and me there for dinner, along with Perry and Nettie. It was delicious. I had the most amazing rainbow trout. I’ve always liked fish the size of a trout baked, grilled or fried and served whole. It means you have to contend with the bones, but I like seeing the whole fish on my plate, not just a couple of fillets that don’t look like a fish. (I know, a steak doesn’t look like a steer either, but who says you have to be consistent?) The Depot had fried rainbow on the menu, and I was assured it would be a whole fish. It was–minus the bones. I have no idea how they boned the fish and still were able to serve a seemingly intact whole fish–head, tail, fins and all. But no bones! It has to have been one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten. I envied Perry when he told me where they’d eaten.

Perry’d gotten a real thrill out of treating his family, and especially being able to produce his own credit card to pay the bill. That’s a pretty neat trick at age sixteen, but not if you have Fred’s Sports behind you. Fred’d had a second card issued on the same account that Auggie used for team expenses. But he’d told the boys that he didn’t want personal charges on that account. He knew that in their travels they’d have a need for a personal credit card, so he had Fred’s Sports guarantee their personal accounts. Everyone on the team evenntually would have a team credit card except Tim and me. Fred told us, “No credit cards for you two. If you have to buy something for the team then somebody isn’t doing their job. Let me know and I’ll jack them up.” He knew we’d never do that, but he made his point. We were never to hesitate to ask the rest of the team to take care of our needs.

By this time the floodwaters had subsided in Grand Forks and the group headed there for meetings with Tim, me, Auggie, Goose, Lynn, Andy, and Fred–not necessarily all at once. Tim and I wouldn’t be able to get away for a while, so there was no real urgency about their time in Grand Forks. Tim and I, helped by Perry and Auggie, made sure that the newcomers got to know the Gang–an almost overwhelming task considering how the Gang had grown. Marty made sure that they felt welcome working out at the Marty Center. It wasn’t designed for that, but it had good workout equipment to support the gymnasts.

In May Tim and I were able to break away from the chaos of Grand Forks for a weekend of sailing on Lake Michigan. The 49ers had arrived; Auggie and Goose had checked them out and they were ready for us. The apartment in Chicago for Perry and his group was almost ready, but not quite, so we all stayed at the Palmer House (my preference, for sentiment’s sake). We were put through our paces from early Saturday morning till the end of daylight on Sunday. Monday we headed back to North Dakota. By the middle of the week we were confident enough of progress in Grand Forks that we were able to tell Auggie the we could take two months off in the summer–mid June through mid-July and all of August through Labor Day.

Right after Tim and I had headed back to Grand Forks Perry and company moved into the two apartments that they would occupy temporarily until theirs was remodeled. As soon as they were in, Auggie gathered everyone in one of the team’s apartments. Auggie told them, “OK, we have to decide where we’re going to practice during the summer. I think it should be in Europe–that’s where the top 49er sailors are, the weather won’t be so hot, and I want Tim and Charlie out of North America to keep them away from UND. But, I think Australia and New Zealand are really too far–they really might have to get back to North Dakota in an emergency–besides, it’s winter there when it’s summer here. With the change in time zone, if they got a call one day in England, they could be in North Dakota by a decent hour the next day. I’ve narrowed it down to two places, at least for the first month: Dublin and Portsmouth. We’re all going to head there as soon as we can (it turned out to be two days later) and visit both cities, make a decision, and then make all of the necessary arrangements.

On the short hops around the United States and to the Bahamas they’d always flown coach, even though Fred had told them that they could fly first class, and they were ordered to always fly Tim and me first class–to which we objected, but to no avail. However, to cross the Atlantic, Perry and Auggie decided that they ought to use Business Class for everyone.

Fred rarely said anything to either Perry or Auggie about how they were running the show. He believed, I think quite correctly, that if they thought they were being second guessed by Fred, Andy, or anyone else, that they would cease to be effective. He believed in hiring someone to do a job, letting them do it, and removing them if they weren’t accomplishing the task. That didn’t keep him from keeping fairly close watch over both Perry and Auggie. He liked what he saw, and so did Tim and I.

Auggie decided on Dublin, more by feel than anything else. He liked Dublin Bay, he liked Dun Laoghaire the little town on the south side of the bay that was the locus of yacht racing in Dublin, and he liked the Royal Marina Hotel which was right on the Dun Laoghaire promenade along the water. Perry and his team went to work finding a marina to hold their boats, making hotel reservations for the month beginning in mid-June, arranging with a shipping company to receive the boats when they were shipped, and a myriad of other small tasks. One thing became clear, Tim, Auggie, Goose, and I were going to have to become members of an internationally recognized yacht club, in order to get visitor or guest privileges at other yacht clubs around the world. Since a lot of sailing was organized by these clubs, visitor privileges were important–we could sail in their races without such privileges, but couldn’t use their restaurants and other club facilities, except during race times. But we wanted to be around for a whole month of practice as well as racing, and we wanted access to facilities.

Perry assigned David the task of getting us membership in an appropriate club. David flew home early to do that, as he felt it’d be too difficult by transatlantic telephone. He needed to find a club with membership openings so that the four of us didn’t have to go on a waiting list. The Miami Yacht Club turned out to be a perfect fit. Membership wasn’t cheap, but if you wrote a check, you were an instant member, as long as you had good references. Fred’s Sports writing the check was sufficient reference. Bingo, the four of us were members in good standing of the Miami Yacht Club without ever having set foot in Miami. The rest of the team would be able to use facilities almost everywhere as our guests, as long as they weren’t sailing.

As soon as he decided on Dublin for our June sailing, Auggie headed home to Grand Forks. His school attendance had dramatically suffered during the spring semester, but he’d managed to keep up his work and keep his teachers happy. He had a graduation to attend, and three days later a wedding. Lynn had been home making arrangements, but now she headed to Grand Forks to meet Auggie, be with him through graduation, and the two of them headed to Madison–just in time to be married.

The wedding would be in Madison, and the entire Gang expected to make it. Those plans had been put in doubt by the flooding of the Red River of the North, but Auggie and Lynn had quickly decided that they had faith in Tim’s approach to the flood, and to the Gang’s ability to “go with the flow” even if that was the inexorable flow of a river. In the event, things were sufficiently under control by early June that we were all able to get to Madison. With the bridges reopened Fred arranged to have three special sleeper cars attached to the Empire Builder. They were on a siding in Grand Forks on Saturday, June 7, 1997, so that we all could board at a reasonable hour and get to sleep.

We woke up Sunday in Columbus, Wisconsin, the railroad station that served Madison for the Empire Builder. We were ready for two days of celebration that only Lynn, with Auggie’s encouragement, could plan. We were taken from the station to the Mendota Sailing Club, where we met–most of us for the first time–the sailors that Auggie sailed with during his summers. I think they were more fascinated by us than we were by them. We wondered about Auggie’s life in Madison, but they wondered about the environment that had produced this extraordinary kid. And what sixteen-year-old had a troop of about eighty people, of all ages, traveling to his wedding? How many sixteen-year-old kids had big weddings?

A measure of Auggie’s popularity in Madison was that most of his competitors showed up for the festivities as well. And they brought their boats. The huge fleet made it possible for all of us to have a wonderful sail on Sunday afternoon, skippered by the best sailors in Madison. True to Auggie’s luck, it was a nice, warm breezy day, but he assured us that had it been cold and rainy he would’ve bundled us into good rain gear and given us our sail anyway.

Dinner Sunday night was at the Club, catered by Mader’s. If you didn’t like German food that was too bad, because that’s what you got. But we all–more likely almost all–loved it, and feasted upon it. Lynn’s family had visited Grand Forks several times, and had of course been introduced to the Gang when they visited. But I think this was the first time they’d ever met them en masse, and it was definitely the first time for them to meet the Michiganders. At first, they were overwhelmed, but they soon got into the spirit of the Gang and enjoyed themselves immensely. There’d been a little bit of a standoff in the planning of the wedding. Lynn’s mother had always dreamed of a traditional church wedding, with a traditional wedding dress, reception afterwards, either in the church hall or, if they could afford it, a sit down catered meal in a nice banquet hall somewhere. They soon realized that with Auggie bringing nearly a hundred people from North Dakota and Michigan, plus all of his sailing friends, plus their family friends, it had grown vastly larger than they could afford. Lynn’s father had said to them, “Kids, I love your plans for the wedding, but they’re simply beyond what your mother and I can afford.”

Auggie was ever the master of the situation. “Dad, I can’t afford it either. It would tax my dad, and he does pretty well selling paintings. But this wedding is an official production of Fred’s Sports. I’m under contract to them, and they’re one of my racing sponsors. This is part of the deal. Count your lucky stars that Lynn picked the right guy.

The generosity of Auggie’s parents, of Fred, or even of Auggie paying for it himself would never have been accepted. But who in their right mind would turn down a big corporation like Fred’s Sports?

The ceremony itself took place on Monday upon the bow deck of the Maddie, with Ace at the helm and Commodore Wilson and Freddie as crew. The pastor of Lynn’s church thought a wedding on a sailboat was nuts and begged off. Lynn and Auggie knew that one of the members of the club was both a retired minister and a sailor. They asked him to marry them, and he was delighted–he considered it a great honor to be asked, and doing it on the bow deck made it all the more special. With all of the guests gathered around on every A-boat and most of the Es on Lake Mendota, with the ceremony being conducted with bull horns so that all could hear, and with Lynn and Auggie in new sailing whites, Auggie celebrated his sixteenth birthday and his wedding simultaneously. After he’d kissed the bride, Auggie took over the helm of the Maddie, and with Lynn sitting beside him led the fleet back to the Mendota Sailing Club. There they feasted on a venison dinner contributed by all of the members of the club who hunted (a lot of them) and who’d gotten their deer the previous fall (a good many of them).

All of the folks from Grand Forks had spent their nights on their special railroad cars which were on a siding at the Columbus station. They’d been joined Sunday night by the Michiganders. I won’t try to recount who slept with whom for the three nights on the train. I’ll say that railroad beds simply aren’t wide enough for more than two, and that can be a squeeze. So I’m pretty sure there were no threesomes, and for sure there were no foursomes. Tim and I were alone on Saturday and Monday nights, but on Sunday night Dick and Jeff joined us. We put Dick and Tim in the slightly smaller upper bunk in our bedroom, and Jeff and I took the lower. I know that Jeff and I had a good time, and from the noise coming from above us, I presume that Tim and Dick did as well. For Monday night–the honeymoon night–the Gang had fixed up the biggest bedroom on the nicest of the three cars for Auggie and Lynn. And so, after nearly two years of abstinence, Auggie and Lynn consummated their marriage on a special railroad car attached to the Empire Builder. It wasn’t quite as unique as their wedding, but it was definitely out of the ordinary, as were they, and as were their lives to be.

They awoke an old married couple on Tuesday, June 10, on a railroad siding in Grand Forks, where the three special cars had been left off by the Empire Builder in the early morning. Auggie and Lynn had about four days to themselves, and then they had to head to Dublin to take Tim and me sailing. I told them that we could delay the trip to Dublin for a few days. I think Auggie was ready to rip my head off for that suggestion. “You will sail starting June 17. Lynn and I will be there, as will the whole team. It will not be further discussed.” I knew immediately that I’d better not further discuss it.

Auggie borrowed IT, and he and Lynn slowly made their way around a big circle through the back roads of northern Minnesota. Auggie told me, “We’d drive a ways, see a pretty place to stop, walk around a little, and then make love. If we couldn’t find a private place outside, we’d simply head into the bedroom of IT. Then we’d move a ways down the road, see another pretty place, and repeat our adventure. We only traveled a little over 100 miles in a day, so it was a very easy trip. We made up for years of celibacy!”

The evening of June 16, 1997, found the ten of us in Dublin at the Royal Marina Hotel, the two 49ers settled in at a local marina; all of us eager to get started. All but Auggie, Lynn, Tim and I had been there for four days getting ready. Well, it wasn’t that hard to get everything ready, so they’d had an interesting time in Dublin while they were getting things ready. Perry was a firm believer in doing the job right, but enjoying yourself once the job was done, or under control. He had no hesitation giving the team as much time off as he could in Dublin. This would be the pattern for the next few years.

Back in Grand Forks, I asked Fred about Perry’s free use of time off, and of having team funds pay for a lot of the entertainment. Fred told me, “I was never asked. I never told him he should or he shouldn’t. It was his decision. If he hadn’t had confidence in that decision, he wouldn’t have done it, or he might have asked me. I would’ve preferred the former, but neither was necessary, because Perry has the confidence to do the job. As to whether I approved, do you need to ask? It’s exactly what I would’ve done.”

“I knew that Fred. And I think Perry does. I love the way you handled it–or didn’t handle it. Perry really felt trusted, and he was determined to be worthy of that trust. As a result he worked his balls off.”

“Perry’s a good boy. He’ll go far.”

We had a magnificent dinner at the hotel the evening we arrived in Dublin. Auggie told everyone to go to bed early, because we’d be starting at 6:00 a.m. the next morning. Breakfast in our rooms at 5:30. Auggie would remain that kind of a task master throughout. Tim ate it up. I tolerated it.

It was quite a month. Ten hours a day on the water. Tim and I mostly sailed together, with Auggie nearby–either on the Maddie II or a launch–with a bullhorn to make comments and give us instructions. After about a week of sailing–a week that had provided a variety of weather, for which we were glad, Auggie had a little talk with us. “OK, you two, you’ve only tipped the boat over once. That means you aren’t pushing hard enough. I want you out there on the edge. Push it. Push it. Screw the waves, push the boat. Over you go. Over you go. Push it. You’ll never learn how close to the edge you can sail unless you’ve pushed it and found out what’s too far. Better to find that out now than capsize in a race. But it’s equally bad not to be on the edge in a race, because that’s where races are won, on the edge. Push it.”

For the rest of the month, “Push it,” became our mantra. And we did go over. The bow caught waves, and we flipped. Waves caught us as we leaned into our trapezes and we capsized. We caught squalls and flipped. However, that brought the wrath of Auggie. “That’s not pushing it, that’s sailing blind. Watch the wind. Watch the waves.”

At lunch after getting that scolding from Auggie, I complained, “Auggie, how in the Hell do you watch the wind and watch the waves, when you’re hanging on a trapeze, your ass almost in the water and always getting wet, and you’re flat out, parallel to the water and less than a foot above it?”

Auggie said, “The Goddamned sail is clear plastic so you can see through it. You can see all directions. Watch the wind. Watch the waves. It’s the helm’s job, but the crew can help. You’ll learn.”

I should point our that the 49er was a two-person boat, one was called the helm and the other the crew. I know that isn’t standard usage for those words, particularly using crew as a singular, but that’s the way sailors use them–at least on 49ers. Each has specific tasks, basically the helm steers the boat and the crew handles the sails, which includes running the spinnaker up and down. The spinnaker was raised with a winch in the middle of the boat. There were two handles attached to ropes just behind the mast on either side of the centerboard. You pulled one and then the other to rachet the winch and raise or lower the spinnaker. A lot of time can be lost on 49ers if you don’t have raising and lowering the spinnaker down pat. We were drilled and drilled on it.

We were also drilled on how to right a 49er after it had capsized. Each time the boat went over we got a new chance to right it. We’d been given the basic drill on shore, and we took every opportunity to practice. Basically it meant standing on the centerboard and pulling on the trapeze lines which were attached to the mast. You had to let the sails go so they’d trail the mast and forestay up; otherwise they would form a suction with the water and be almost impossible to raise. By the end of the month we were able to right the boat very quickly from almost any mishap. We almost had it fast enough to make Auggie happy, but it would be at least a year before we actually achieved that level of skill. And, we’d only had two opportunities to right the boat after it had turned turtle (mast headed straight down into the water), and we were a long way from doing any good at recovering from that event, which was luckily very rare. But Auggie pointed out, “I’ve seen boats turtle in big races, and you have to be able to recover. Remember, a regatta is won with the sum of race scores. You may be competing for first or second when you capsize, and now you’re competing for 8th or 9th. But the difference between 8th, 9th, or last, may make the difference in the end between 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th. And that, my friends, in the Olympics is the difference between a medal and a pleasant sail in the waters off Australia. Next month in the Solent we work on righting the turtle.” We did. We did. And it’s a colossal pain in the ass.

The month came to an end, and Tim and I headed back to the comparatively relaxed tempo of a city recovering from a major flood. Nobody could throw problems at us as fast as Auggie, and he’d been relentless.

We were home for two weeks, and then we were back in Europe–at Portsmouth this time. Perhaps a little geography lesson will be helpful. If you start in the middle of England and go south you’ll end up on the Isle of Wight. The Solent is the water that separates the Isle of Wight from the island of Great Britain. (That’s right, Great Britain is the name of an island, not a country. The name of the country used to be the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland [another island], but the Irish weren’t happy with that and declared independence, which they achieved except for the “six counties” which comprise Northern Ireland. So now the country is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.) At the east end of the Solent, where it hits the English Channel, lies Portsmouth, on the north side of the water, that is, on Great Britain. It’s a lovely town with a long seafaring tradition, and now home to serious competitive sailing.

When Tim and I arrived, everything was in place, including our clothes and personal belongings moved to a new hotel. The boats were in a marina, we were established as guest members of the Portsmouth Sailing Club, where Auggie expected us to eat most of our lunches, as its facilities were right on the harbor (well, it’s England; it’s a harbour).

What can I say about that month? I can hardly remember any specific details. We were up at 5:00, eating by 5:30, at the harbour by 6:00, sailing by 7:00, lunch at noon, sailing by 1:00, end sailing at 6:00; dinner at 7:00, exhausted by 8:00, but meeting with Auggie and Goose to review the day, fall into bed at 9:00, think about sex, fall asleep. Do it all over again for thirty days straight. The variation was to stop sailing an hour early some days for classroom-type discussions, strategy sessions, and advice from Auggie, which generally involved the repetition of our manta, “Push it, push it, push it.” We pushed it.

Except when we traded off, and either Tim or I sailed with Auggie and the other with Goose, Auggie and Goose sailed a much more relaxed schedule. They’d see us off from the harbour before seven, but the Maddie II wouldn’t join us on the Solent for about an hour. Same in the afternoon. I’d ask Auggie what he was doing and his answer would be, “Taking it easy. I’m not heading for the Olympics, you are. Now get your ass out there and push it.” Two of Perry’s crew were always on hand with a motor launch when we were sailing. Sometimes Auggie or Goose would be in the launch, but more likely on the Maddie II. ]

Lynn got a little skiff and would motor out to one of the buoys that we sailed around and tie up to it. She’d sit with a sketch pad and sketch by the hour. Other times she’d set up an easel near shore–either painting the scene in front of her or turning sketches into paintings, or combining those. Auggie had a camera with him constantly. He carried it in a waterproof case that was either tied to his belt or roped to a boat. He took pictures by the dozen. Between them, they built up a huge graphic documentation of Tim’s and my progress. Since mishaps can make for great graphics, viewing the body of their work suggests that we pushed it too hard too often. But that wasn’t Auggie’s view. His mantra was “Push it,” as long as we sailed with him.

There was one change from previous practice sessions. Before the time in Portsmouth, we’d been all business from start to finish. Meals were good, but not gourmet, and there was little luxury. That changed in Portsmouth, as a result of a deliberate decision of Perry and Auggie, but as I understand it, mostly Perry. It was decided that the all work, no play model wasn’t the best model. So meals improved–we ate at the club, and ate well, and dinners were at the best places to eat and relax in Portsmouth. The sailing was just as intense, but we took one day off for a very lovely tour of the Isle of Wight. We were assured that we could’ve had a couple of more days off, if only the calendar had cooperated. But Labor Day was the first of September, denying us the few days in September before Labor Day that the calendar sometimes provides.

There were other changes in Portsmouth. Goose approached Curtis and Gene and told them that he was gay. Since being gay was totally unacceptable in his home community in the Bahamas, he’d learned to stay deep in the closet. However, living close to Curtis and Gene as well as Tim and me, he’d realized that this was an environment in which he could be himself. He’d also worried about race. While blacks were certainly in the majority in the Bahamas, and there were no issues of civil rights, segregation, and so forth like in the United States, there was still a color line, especially between the British elite and the native Bahamians. So Goose wasn’t at all sure that his acceptance as a friend, co-worker and co-team members would mean acceptance in the sexual realm. Curtis and Gene had proved to be the special people we thought they were. Gene’s response to Goose’s coming out was simple, “Hey, why don’t you come up to our room this evening and we’ll see what happens.”

By the end of the month Goose had given up his single hotel room.

Things moved much slower for Millie and David. They quickly became a pair, in the sense that as the group paired up, they were left as a pair–if you removed Perry who was sixteen and not really available. David and Millie did things together, usually ate next to each other when we ate as a group, and dined together when we divided up. We all thought they made an cute pair, and hoped to see the relationship flourish. It did, but slowly, and there was no suggestion that one of them give up their separate hotel room that month in Portsmouth, nor their separate rooms in the Chicago apartment.

In Dublin, Auggie and Lynn enjoyed their first month of marital bliss, and never suggested any alternative arrangements. But Auggie was aware that he’d been Perry’s partner before the magic birthday, and in Portsmouth he spent the night with Perry a couple of times a week. Perry had insisted that he stay with his wife, but Lynn was equally insistent that she was willing to share him with Perry. She also told him, “And let me tell you this, buster. When you turn eighteen and a month or so goes by to tire out Brian, then I expect you in bed with Auggie and me from time to time. Brian will be welcome too, he’s cute. But if Auggie’s gotten his chance at your cute little bum, I get my shot too.”

“God, I’m really going to have quite an eighteenth birthday. I’m not sure I can wait.”

Auggie said, “We all know the rules. You have to wait.”

We were back in North Dakota, exhausted, on Tuesday, September 2, 1997. Exhausted, but having the sense that this might actually work out. According to Auggie, we were “damn good sailors,” and Auggie did not give out false praise.

The university opened on schedule that fall, and the worst of the flooding had been cleaned up. People that had any doubt about the wisdom of the plan that Tim had virtually thrust upon the city only had to drive over to East Grand Forks to look at the devastation. As you crossed the Red River you could look down at this quiet little river, gently flowing under the bridges. It was hard to imagine the destruction it had wrought, and how much worse it might’ve been. There wasn’t a single person in the town that didn’t believe that Tim could’ve walked right across the river without a bridge and without getting his shoes wet. For the umpty-umpth time in my life, my little kid was a hero, to me and to the world.

Tim took it all in stride. We invited Goose and Auggie for dinner shortly after the fall term started. The item on the dinner meeting agenda was our sailing schedule for the year. Auggie would’ve liked to have had us sailing virtually full time, all year. All of us knew that was impossible. So we tried to map out a reasonable schedule to extend from the present to the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000. Auggie told us that they’d pick the US team about a year in advance, summer of 1999. That meant that the six months prior to that, the first half of 1999 was the most critical time period. We should expect to be full time sailors for those six months. If we were picked as the 49er sailors for the US Olympic Sailing Team, we’d be expected to be at all of the major races from the time we were selected until the Olympics. But that wouldn’t involve such serious time pressure. With the support team we had, we’d have no responsibilities between races; we just had to show up, sail, win, and disappear. Counting travel, that shouldn’t involve more than half time, or less.

Between then, fall of 1997, and six months before selection, about New Year’s 1999, we should try to get in as much sailing as we could, participating in most of the major races, but also finding time for solid weeks of practice like the time in Dublin and Portsmouth. And while all of this was going on we needed to run a university and a law school.

I had some good associate deans; Tim had a problem. His number two was the Chancellor, who just happened to be away sailing whenever Tim was. But he needed to find a number two who could function as acting president when he was away.

It didn’t take him long to think of the right person. You’ve met her, but I haven’t told you much about her since Tim hired her. She is Liddy Lidholtz, his Vice-President for Development for the previous fourteen years. During that time she had achieved an amazing fund-raising record, moving the endowment to unheard of heights for a small public university; moving the percentage of alumni giving to the highest among North Dakota schools (an easy accomplishment), among Northern Tier public schools (a little harder accomplishment), and the very top among the fifty states’ lead public universities (a truly remarkable accomplishment); and tripling the Endowment for Faculty Salary Enhancement (which in her original interview with Tim she had said needed to double). In so doing she’d had three different associates that’d gone on to fill her job at a larger state university and had eleven students who’d worked on the student-led Endowment for Faculty Salary Enhancement become professional fund-raisers–including one that had become one of her three Associates that had gone on to bigger and better things. She’d turned down more job offers at more prestigious universities, public and private, than most people dream about in a life-time, always saying that she worked for the best university in the world, led by the best boss in the world. It should go without question that she was a favorite of Tim’s, and the first person that he thought of when he was looking for an acting president.

My Chancellor’s office was taken away from me–I was told to use my law school office–and Liddy was moved into my office so that she could be close at hand when we were in town in order to learn the ropes, and in the right place when we were out of town sailing. (Tim told me that he would’ve let her use his office, but he didn’t have the luxury of a second office like I did! To be honest, the office changes were my idea; Tim would never, ever have suggested such a move, but it was the right move and I did suggest it, and Tim did accept the suggestion.)

The only real danger of putting Liddy in that position was that she might do a better job than Tim. I told Tim, “If we don’t make it into the Olympics and win some kind of medal, they may just keep Liddy as president.”

“You don’t need to worry, you’d still be Dean of Law. Where the Hell would I be?”

“Vice President for Development.”

“I could never do as well as my predecessor; she’s been fantastic in that job.”

“Then we’d better win a medal. And I’m going to break a rule: Let’s aim for gold.”

“Consider the rule broken. But I won’t cry over bronze; bronze would be a remarkable achievement.”

Before we leave Portsmouth, I need to mention that events of great moment were occurring elsewhere on the team. OK, I haven’t loaded this story with cliffhangers, so I’ll at least tell you that the leading role in that story was played by Perry.

To be continued...

Posted: 06/17/11