By Scott Longman
“You want to go break ice on the Chicago River tomorrow morning?”
It was a joyous blindside.
I was 12 years old. The words were spoken to me by my father. By 12, I had come to flatout revere the man: he was kickassery writ large. A former Army Ordnance officer. He’d been a state-level swimmer. He was a Great Lakes shipwreck SCUBA diver, noted in that then-small community for pulling dangerous dives. He raced amateur class road racing. He was deeply skilled in combat arms.
This was my first invitation to at least witness his diving crew.
Of course, I already knew of the boat. I had heard about the boat since early childhood. It was a 1930s gill net fish tug, as industrial as it gets.
The boat’s name was the Ann B, and they all lovingly called her the Annie. And the loving part had been come by honestly: the Annie had carried them through untold numbers of difficult-to-dangerous wreck dives and, perhaps more telling, the Annie had brought them home through some extremely bad Lake Michigan seas. For the uninitiated, that’s a really, really big deal.
The heart of the Annie was a massive Kahlenberg two-cylinder diesel engine. Instead of being politely tucked away behind some cowling, that powerplant sat smack exposed. The only way to get that engine started was to fire up blowtorches which blew huge, open flames at the cast iron cylinder heads, until the temperature got high enough that a crank-over would ignite diesel. It was sensory overload: vision and sound and scent.
I’d already known much of this from early childhood, but now, I was, unbelievably, finally, going to get to go do it.
But then: How about a real weapon?
My dad’s compadres carried handguns like most men carried wallets, a whole range of them too long to recount here. I could NOT touch his real weapons, or I’d’ve ended up like Charlie on the MTA.
And then it hit me: The Crosman!
While I did not have authority to touch a live firearm in the absence of his overwatch or emergency, there was no such prohibition on the Crosman.
He had, the year before, gifted me with something called the Crosman 38T, that being a .177 revolver pellet gun, powered by standard C02 bottles. Crosman had seen fit to do a zinc-cast reasonable resemblance of a Smith & Wesson .38 Combat Masterpiece.
I put it in a big inner pocket. Then, I added two extra CO2 cartridges and a full tin of the pointed hunting pellets he’d issued to me.
That morning, it was still dark. The Annie was moored behind the captain’s run-down house on the North Branch of the Chicago River. Dad helped me aboard through a big side door and I was suddenly, actually, there.
The starting ritual was well underway, with the blowtorches blazing. Then, magnificently, right there in front of me, the enormous Kalhenberg fitfully came to life.
As we headed downriver came the call of “Rats!” Chicago did then have and continues to now have an enormous problem with Norway rats. For those blessedly without experience, Norway rats are not at all just big mice. They are aggressive, nasty, intrusive, destructive beasts and they often carry horrible diseases. And they were big, with bodies running about a foot long not counting the tails.
There was a brief discussion about how every man aboard would love to shoot them. But none of them unholstered, because they were responsible, squared away men: there were habitations and businesses not at all far beyond, and even one rock-hitting ricochet could be lethal to some poor innocent. They were the sort of restrained men you want defining society.
There came another holler of “Rats!” That was when I swallowed hard, and made a decision. My pellet gun had sub-one percent the energy of what they were packing (about 3-4 foot-pounds versus 400-600), and thus was a socially responsible artifact, but still plenty for rats.
“How about this?” I unlimbered the Crosman.
There was a moment of shocked silence.
Then my father began laughing, and then they all began laughing, and started thumping me on the back. I handed the Crosman to Dad (muzzle down, grips first).
He immediately went to town, and rats convulsed and fell.
My father lit up a couple more, before saying: “Hell, you brought it, you should shoot it.”
No pressure there.
Oh, thank heaven, I connected on my first shot.
To my astonished delight, every man aboard then took the Crosman and went to town. We opened the pellet tin and went on to the second CO2 bottle.
Ultimately, our forward progress was stymied by the river ice right at Michigan Avenue, oh-so close to the locks that would have let us out onto the Lake, but still so far.
On the return trip, we went through the entire second CO2 bottle and loaded the third.
It had been the best day of my young life. I was to find out eight long, formative years later when I finally got my C-Card (SCUBA Certification), that the crew remembered that day, and it played at least a small role in allowing me–finally–to join them out on the Lakes.
