The Adventures of John and Barney,; Part 1--The Engagement

A year ago I began writing this blog as a memorial to Gwen, my wife, who died on November 12, 2010.  Over the past year I have posted 353 blogs and written 152 poems.

During the past ten years I have also participated in a memoir-writing group here in Ann Arbor.  Soon after Gwen's death I wrote a series of memoirs about her parents, in particular, her father.  This is the first installment of that endeavor,   Parts of this have appeared in other of my posting.

Although Casimir Bartczak was his given name, no ever called him anything but Barney; except when his wife, Bertha, said “Casimir” in the way that only wives can do when their husband has committed some unpardonable offense, often associated with mud and other forms of dirt.  

To say that Barney and I did not hit it off at first would be an understatement of the highest order. 

Barney and Bertha lived with their family of one son and two daughters in a little town called Gaastra, near Iron River, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He was a second generation Polish-American, who, along with so many other immigrants, worked in the iron mines in and around Iron River.  His job, far underground, was to drill holes in deposits of iron ore and then blast it with dynamite.  When not at work he was a hunter, trapper, fisherman and self-proclaimed jack-of-all-trades.

On October 22, 1961, I met Barney’s daughter, Gwendolyn, at a float-decorating party in conjunction with homecoming festivities at Northern Michigan College, where I was entering my senior year and she her sophomore year.  We dated, fell madly in love, and, in the spring of 1962, decided that we should get married.  This was not a lightly taken decision.  The mine where Barney worked had closed, and he was without a job.  My parents struggled to make a living on a farm near Menominee, on the Michigan/Wisconsin border.  If we were to marry, we would have to bear most of the cost on our own.  Gwen would have to drop out of college, not an easy decision for a scholarship student.  I would have to get a teaching job.  We decided that we would both work for a year, save what we could, and celebrate our love for each other by getting married at the end of that year, in spite of the challenges involved.  Our motto became “Love will find a way.”

Gwen discussed our plans with her parents; they weren’t in favor of them. They felt that at age 19 she was too young, and, besides, she would be throwing away all that scholarship money.  It was obvious that I would have to talk with them and declare my intentions. 

Bertha liked me, and told me that although Gwen would be my wife, I must always remember that she is her daughter first and foremost.  “Sure”, I said.

 Barney was in the front yard, sitting in a lawn chair, smoking his pipe and enjoying the early summer sun.  I pulled up a lawn chair next to him, cleared my throat, and said, in my most manly voice,  “Barney, I love Gwen very much and would like your permission to marry her.” 

Barney did not even do me the honor of pretending to ponder my request.  He took the pipe out of his mouth, looked at me with his icy blue eyes, and said, “No.”   

I knew what those iron ore deposits must have felt like when Barney appeared carrying his drill and sticks of dynamite.    

He then turned away, fiddled with his pipe, and pretended to be busy sharpening his skinning knife.  His tone of voice had told me that there was no point in trying to continue discussing my intentions with him.  I returned to the house to confer with the love of my life and my intended mother-in-law.  I’d like to say that we hatched some elaborate scheme to change Barney’s mind, but we didn’t.  Bertha simply said, “I’ll talk to him.”  She did, and soon Gwen and I resumed our wedding plans.  I have never heard the details of just how it came to be that Bertha was able to change Barney’s mind, suffice it to say that my respect for a pint-sized Italian-American woman named Bertha went up considerably after that. 

Gwen and I were married 47 years, five months and four days before she died.  I spent that time loving her with all my heart and soul and trying to gain the good graces of Barney—not an easy thing for a farm kid who didn’t know a lot about hunting, trapping, fishing and being jack-of-all -trades.  He once asked me: “John, is there anything at all that you’re any good at?”  “I think I’m a pretty good writer,” I said.   Those were not words that a hunter, trapper, fisherman and jack-of-all-trades hoped to hear from his future son-in-law.  Ironically, it was Barney’s writing that eventually became the basis for a bond between us.

 My next adventure with Barney involves his desire to teach me the skills of trapping.  Even had I been willing to learn, that was not going to be an easy task.  With my knack for instantly earning Barney’s displeasure, I made the task pretty much impossible.