Reminds me of a friend of mine who died young of colon cancer. Shortly
before he died, he confessed to me that he thought his life had been a
failure. I was shocked by this admission because I had always thought
of him in the opposite way.
I first met Frank when I became involved in cave exploring. He lived
in a cardboard box on the front porch of a falling down frame house
near the university. Frank had almost no need for money and obtained
all of his clothing from dumpsters behind frat houses. He never washed
clothing but simply tossed it into a mouldering pile and got more for
free. This was especially true of "cave clothes". Whereas the rest of
us had to take our mud encrusted coveralls home and hose them off, he
just threw his away and even planted grass seeds on them.
Eventually Frank threw a rope over a tree limb and climbed it into the
house attic where he lived unbeknownst to the other occupants. The
house began to improve in appearance so much that the owner eventually
discovered Frank and let him stay. We had to climb a cable ladder to
his place which looked like a cave where he slept in a sleeping bag in
a tiny alcove.
All of us cavers would gather at his place to practice vertical caving
techniques, learning to climb thousands of feet of rope on prusik
knots. There was a sorority house next door and as cavers dont care
about it being dark, we often had a great view. Frank was unimpressed
because as it turned out he had an "alternative sex life".
We went caving a lot together, him, myself and Bill M. (Bill later died
in a bizarre cave diving accident exploring the longest underwater cave
in the world). Bill would crawl ahead, I'd run compass and clinometer
and Frank would record and sketch. When you spend hours (we once spent
36 hours in Climax Cave) laying in the mud with no vertical room and
with someone elses boot in your face, you talk about odd things. Frank
told us about his lifestyle where he would "service" rich frat boys.
He told us he would always leave a change of clothes outside in case it
got too weird. Franks admissions were no stranger than spending time
laying in mud and bat guano and enjoying it.
Sometimes he did work but his speciality was repairing strange medieval
musical instruments. Mostly, he did not work but went caving nearly
all the time. Frank kept "THE MAP". This was a huge yellowing
mouldering map of Climax Cave with more than 12 miles of mapped
passage, all mapped the hard way, crawling through godawful passage to
find just a couple hundred of feet more. Data was fed into the campus
mainframe computer that then tried to minimize errors by distrubuting
them between individual shots of "closures". It would spit out a plot
of connedcted points onto which we'd transfer the drawings from Franks
map book and then glue this small piece onto the nearly 9 foot long
map. We'd stare at ot for hours in the dim light of Franks attic trying
to see patterns in the fractal-like structure. Once Frank "dreamed" a
room into existence and when we went there, it really existed. Such
trips would take 8 hours of crawling just to get to the place to map, a
few hours of mapping and another 8 out. We joked that what could be
dreamed into existence could also be dreamed out of existence, while we
were in it.
Once, a yuppie business prof went caving with us and spen the entire
trip to the cave trying to impress us with how much money he made.
Finally, he turned to frank and asked him what he did for a living.
Frank matter of factly replied that he hadn't worked for 6 years. End
of conversation.
Being around frank was like magic because he lived in an alternative
underground universe that was so close by but so far away in being
unlike anything else. Frank could dream passage into existence and
remember passage that had long ago (seemingly decades ago) been closed
by sand washing in. The universe he lived in was like one that is like
those sci-fi places that are a reality that barely touches ours but his
cave universe really existed. Sometimes we would find vast open
chambers that our lights wouldnt cross and it was like being present at
the moment of creation before God filled the universe with light.
On exiting the cave one time Frank fell against a rock and for weeks
after compalined about the resulting bruise. Soon, he revealed he had
learned it was really colon cancer that had progressed very far. He
wasted away. Once he asked me what I'd like to do with my life and I
told him I wanted to save to buy a computer so I could do x-ray
calculations I was interested in and thejn start a business. We all
assumed Frank was penniless and offered to help him with medical
expenses. He calmly told me that several years ago when he had small
amount of money, that he had purchased a catastrophic medical policy
for a one time fee and that now it was paying for everything.
When he died, we all assumed he was penniless but 6 months later I got
a letter that he somehow had arranged to be delivered after his death.
In the letter was $1750 in cash with instructions to buy that computer
and start my business.
For a man who thought he was a failure, he impressed the hell out of me.