“Just yesterday morning
they let me know
you were gone...”
-----James Taylor Fire and Rain
We had lost touch, over the years. For more than half a century he had, several times, come and gone. He was a soulmate of my youth, so close we could complete each other's sentences.
I met him in Professor John Batchelder's Political Science class while attending college. He was eleven years my senior, was a high school drop-out, and had spent the intervening years in the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine, but he didn't seem that old. There was about him a certain street-savvy, a certain savoir faire, a certain élan that I found, in my provincial inexperience, fascinating.
Ever the gregarious one, he simply walked up after class and introduced himself; “hi, I'm Larry Hamp, pleased to meet you”. His middle name, I later discovered was, more than appropriately, “Freeman”. So began a life-long, if often interrupted, bond.
This was in the fall of 1969. I had reached the mature age of 20, he was 31. I opposed the war, he supported it. Several spirited exchanges ensued, albeit always in private discussion, never in the Student Commons. It would take him about six months to finally come around and see it my way.
In his obituary, someone described him as a lifelong student. That he was, but I would describe him as a free-thinker, a wanderer who all those years ago set me out upon my own intrepid journey. You see, he had, in a sense, returned to old childhood haunts having seen the world. I was just beginning to break loose the confines of my origin. “Here, Señor”, he would intone as he would pass me a joint, “let me lead you astray”.
We would later light up in the basement of Professor Grey's home where he had for several months, after another divorce, taken up residence. Here he would regale me with tales of the high seas, of pulling victims who had drown from the Delaware River, of serving in Alaska. There was the story of flying into a base near Anchorage, while serving in the Coast Guard. The landing gear had failed to deploy and passengers and crew watched anxiously as the plane spent what seemed, according to Hamp, an eternity circling the airport in order to expend remaining fuel as the ground crew sprayed foam on the runway in preparation for the expected fire upon impact. “We made it”, Larry assured me, although the point was already obvious by his presence, “amidst the rattling of bones and beads”. He could turn a phrase.
Later in our collegiate experience we would meet again, this time in one of our History seminar classes, this one dealing with civil strife. The 1960's, after all, just in the rear-view-mirror. Professor Mapes assigned the two of us a project together, later telling me that he thought the combination would prove interesting. We had a choice between a major labor strike, I think it was the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and the New York City Draft Riots. I pressed for the Draft Riots having introduced myself, back in the spring of 1968, to the colorful history of mid-nineteenth century New York, the chicaneries of Tammany Hall, the political power of the the city's gangs, the city's disparities of hope and power.
“Oh I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days
That I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times
when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again
We spent the next 18 months or so researching and writing about the Draft Riots, intending to cement a reputation as historians by publishing a seminal book on the subject. We intended not only to consult primary resources but map the neighborhoods using the 1860 census to definitively describe the likely composition of the 'mobs' that took to the streets in the wake of the victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. You see, Lawrence was deep in military history, especially nineteenth century military history. A descendant of Lord Nelson, he made himself familiar with the technologies and tactics, in this case grape and canister used upon the mob by artillery units fresh from Gettysburg.
However, graduation came upon us and we soon went our separate ways, he off to Western Michigan University, I accepted a full scholarship at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He spent several semesters at Western, I ended up returning to West Michigan in the wake of divorce.
It was Lawrence who met me at the airport as I landed in Detroit from Boston on March 27, 1973 my marriage in ruin. He had driven from Kalamazoo and it was good to see him. Like old times, if only bitter-sweet, a bit of continuity in the madness and just in time to witness, together, the unraveling of Richard Shithouse Nixon, whom we both despised.
I had returned, for what I planned would be a short summer experience, my old job at as projectionist at the theater—a job that paid better than any prospects at the moment—and get me through until I had time to re-group. I pogoed back and forth between sleeping on Larry's couch and my brother's Dennis' front porch as we all watched the scandal unfold. It was splendid diversion in what were personally very difficult days.
At one point, during the Spring of '73, Larry said to me: “Champ, when I met you there were books all over your apartment. You were reading 5 or 6 books at a time. I haven't seen you reading anything at all, that mind of yours will atrophy if this continues.” He then presented me with a stack of books, including De Tocqueville's work, Edmond Burke's “Reflections on the Revolution in France”, and “The Federalist Papers”, all part of a boxed set of conservative classics (he had openly campaigned for Barry Goldwater, after all), as well a book on militarism and a biography of John Paul Jones. His motto: “Why reason when simple force will do”, Lawrence would invariably return to the military and to the sea.
In the spring of '74, I found myself up in Chassell, Michigan high up in 'Yupper' country; that's Michigan's upper peninsula, otherwise known as 'copper country'. Lawrence had lined up work with a landscaping firm planting trees on the embankment between Michigan Tech and the channel separating the Keweenaw peninsula from the rest of the U.P. I had applied for a managers position with Butterfield Theaters, after years working as a projectionist with the company, and was awaiting assignment. I thought, “why not?” and went north, spending a couple of months in copper country finally returning to take up management of the Vista Drive-In Theater in Grand Rapids in August of '74 returning in time to share with my brother Dennis old 'Shithouse's resignation.
Lawrence and I would correspond over the next couple of years. He made the journey south a couple of times to visit friends and family, he being a native of Hastings, Michigan a city located about 30 miles southeast of Grand Rapids, during which we would re-connect.
But, alas, we would once again drift apart.
Then, facing another marital crisis, this a second divorce, I found myself needing to hear that voice, to consult my old oracle, to seek an old touchstone. I called his ex-wife Nancy asking where I could find him. Nantucket she told me, by way of Richmond Virginia. This was early 1996. When I finally caught up with him he was back in Hastings, his parents growing old and frail, his brothers in the immediate neighborhood. His advice was to be kind to her and move on. Wisdom gleaned from years of experience, wisdom that should have been heeded during my first divorce; wisdom from a man whose soul was well lived in; wisdom well taken. My second divorce, though much more painful than the first, turned out much better. I remained in my child's life, my ex and I sharing custody.
In any case, life made its demands, time slips away, days, weeks, months, years. I always thought that we would return to the 'project' and finish the work; but always suspected that we wouldn't. Lawrence, a 'life-long professional student' as his eulogist described him in his obituary, was always about leaving loose ends. His curiosities, as well as the demands of simply making ends meet, would get the better of him and he would move on. He was a sailor. Under sail, one makes a thousand course corrections. We had that in common.
“Let me set you free,” he would intone. The straight-laced, up-tight, goal obsessed young man he met in the fall of 1969 would, by degrees, learn to relax, learn to 'let go' and evolve into a bohemian troubadour; like himself, a wanderer.
Lawrence was an agent sent to help me complete what I had set out to do all those years ago, when I was fifteen or so: to retrieve the little boy, lost in his youth. To rediscover the wonderment, the curiosity crushed by childhood; to see the world stripped naked in awe of it's complexity and marvel at its beauty
“Let me lead you astray”....
It was a commandment to think outside the box, to eschew convention and shed the straight-jacket of conventional wisdom, to see things anew. Precisely.
I had last seen Lawrence back in 2008 as Obama put the 'Straight-Talking Express' on a permanent siding. I talked him into submitting what would turn out to be a couple of contributions to these columns but we would again go our separate ways. But as we observe the 50th anniversary of the summer of 73, a half-century since John Dean testified before Senator Sam Ervin's Select Committee on Watergate, I once again sought out my old soulmate only to find that he had loosed the bonds of this mortal coil and is now, at last, free. Sail on, olde friend, sail on.
"I've seen fire and I've seen rain
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I've seen lonely times, when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I'd see you again."
I always thought that I'd see you one ... more,,, time...again.
_______
1. For an example of his very descriptive writing style and my analytically acerbic response to the inspiration see Protagonist: November 6, 2008: Big Wind at Nantucket, A Hurricane Boat Wreck, Misadventures of 'Maverick' (wandererandshadow.blogspot.com)
And my response; Protagonist: November 7, 2008: A Splendid Wreck, Not A Sailor in the Lot, Wretched Exhibition of Seamanship. (wandererandshadow.blogspot.com)
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