The meanest man alive

John Pike helps us with the mowing and maintenance of our equipment and property. He’s lived most of his life in this area, except for some time in prison, and some time out west working in coal mines with his brothers. He’s one of nine children of a hardworking and respectable local family. John quit school at thirteen to help his dad, who was the city’s maintenance crew, back in the ‘50’s, when his dad was injured working on the job. His mother just died a year ago at the age of 96. We were the first person he called (although he doesn’t have a phone). John has survived throat cancer, two heart attacks, and most recently, removal of his bladder, but it hasn’t slowed him down much. When he had his last heart attack, which put him flat on his face in the bowling alley, they used a defibrillator to revive him. When he came to, he punched the police officer who was assisting, and pulled out the IV’s. I tease him about getting a tattoo on his chest for the next time; the universal symbol for NO (a red circle with a cross through it) using the medical acronym for the defibrillator. He swears he’ll never let anybody put one of those things on him again.

With any journey, and this time for us in Minnesota has been a journey, it always helps to have a guide. Our guide has changed a few times; first it was the realtor who introduced us to the rural community and being Minnesotan. (I kept calling him to get directions out to our property. I swear every corn field looked the same.) Then it was Joe Rude, who we bought our land from, and the man who among other things, got Cooder of the wild ride in a bulldozer, to knock trees down for trails in our woods. For about the last eight years we’ve had John Pike. John Pike is fond of telling us that he’s the meanest man alive, or so bad that when he dies, the devil doesn’t want him in hell, and I believe it. My son and all my son’s friends hate him. They describe him as scary. Or maybe it is because we made John Pike the straw boss for Harry and his friends on whatever project we had going, (and to describe us as opportunistic about child labor would be fairly accurate). John does take some getting used to, but any more I consider him one of our best friends and, unfortunately for my son, part of the family.

My favorite John Pike story is the time John was moving an old Chalmers plow for me, and a piece of the plow hit John in the face, splitting his lip and busting his dentures. A day after the incident, John’s girlfriend (who is eighty), called me to say that John did not have insurance and would need new teeth. I was all for it. John had the worst teeth of just about anybody I’d ever met, so I told his girlfriend I would notify our insurance and have the adjuster call him. That night John Pike called to speak to my husband. “I tain’t talkin’ to no insuree agents and I tain’t fillin’ out no forms. I fixed my teeth myself and they are fine.” Well, he soldered them with one of those soldering torches. And I have to admit they do look fine. And that’s pretty much the way he his with just about everything which includes everything he owns. There is nobody who can breathe life into old, worn out, or broken better than he can. He is living proof.