The Bob I Remember

All of us who loved Bob were hoping for a miracle. But miracles are rare, and it didn’t happen. I don’t think we can fault God for that, or shake our fist at this summer forest and the mountains all around. We know, don’t we, what the deal is – that passage we all have to make.

Surely Bob’s life did boast its share of miracles, large and small. And I believe there may have been one of the big literal sort, way back in the beginning. I don’t refer to his birth, which as far as I know involved none of the supernatural forces associated with Christmas. I have in mind a day when I was five and Bob, still a toddler, was run over by a car.

We were living in officers’ housing at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. Our father, who had fought in the World War, was now called back into the Army for Korea, to his dismay. He used to say the best thing about the Army was that practically everyone in it couldn’t wait to get out.

On this day a workman had come to fix something or other. The housing was new, sod hadn’t been laid yet, so Bob and I were outside playing in the dirt. Doubtless I was supposed to keep an eye on him. When the workman finished we walked behind his car to watch him load things in the trunk. Then I stepped away but Bob stayed put. I can still see the rear wheel rolling over him as the car backs out. His head toward me, the tire on his middle.

I see also a room in the infirmary and an Army doctor tapping Bob’s knee with a rubber hammer. Unusual for those days, the doctor is a woman. Bob’s bruised up. Our mother’s there, beside herself. Of course no one believes me, that Bob was run over by the wheel. The doctor says he seems okay – but keep a close watch on him.

What I should have done in the first place.

To me, after that, Bob’s sixty years in this life are miracle enough. I can’t explain how he survived what I saw. But somehow I feel that accident has been the root of our whole relationship, Bob and me. As kids, and as adults (sort of), we raised our share of ruckuses but we never really fought. We’ve been close, though we led very different lives. Bob’s always wanted to peer deep into the mysteries of trunks. I’m the one who’s backed away.

The two of us inhabited the same bedroom until I was a junior in high school and Bob was in the seventh grade. I had model airplanes hanging from the ceiling; he had impertinent decals from Mad magazine on the walls. What, me worry? What’s the latest, Dope? And even back then Bob wasn’t the neatest guy. Clutter seemed to tag along happily wherever he went.

We both loved nature, the outdoors – Bob so much that he always wanted to bring it back indoors with him. He had the instinct of the collector, the keeper, the old-time naturalist. I liked to climb trees and watch birds and sketch them; Bob’s tastes ran to primitive things, salamanders, turtles, frogs and toads – I think because he could catch them, hold them in his hand and squint back at them, square in the eye. He squirreled them away, so to speak, all over the house, in bowls and jars and shoe boxes with holes punched for air. Our mother lived in mortal fear of what might dart, hop, or squirm out whenever she pulled a curtain or swept under a bed. And with good reason. Time and again Bob would drop a box or leave a lid off and a scaled or horned army would fan out and destroy the domestic tranquility, just when she was getting over the previous great escape.

Only last week I asked Bob why he’d liked all those frogs and toads so much. He thought for a moment, and then answered, sensibly, “Doesn’t every kid like frogs and toads?”

For one long summer he kept a young raccoon, the cutest, most abominable of all his wild pets. Charlie, he named it, though a better name, we found later, would have been Charlene. When it came to seeking – peering into trunks – Charlie and Bob were soul mates. The biggest difference between them was the leg count. You couldn’t keep either one in a cage.

Every night, without fail, Charlie would escape. He, or she, could undo any hook or latch and push concrete blocks off the lid of his screened enclosure in the yard. Then he’d pry open a basement window and wander at large in the house. Once, around midnight, he made a clean sweep of a shelf of Mason jars full of fruit, smashing them all on the floor. Charlie was crafty, for sure. One evening when Bob was letting him run in the yard, I watched him creep up behind our mother, nip her on the ankle, then dash up an apple tree. From that lofty perch he scanned the pandemonium below in obvious satisfaction.

Many years later Bob would make this up to Mother – the coon, the newts, all the rest. When she was in her nineties and living alone, Bob went back to Ohio to spend several weeks with her every winter. Toward the end he spent half of every year taking care of her.

Maybe – though the idea might not appeal to her – he learned his care-giving by feeding and sheltering all those wild pets. He loved catching nightcrawlers and bottling up live bugs, to feed them. In due time he turned each pet loose, better fed than when he found it.

The hardest one to let go was Charlie. Fall came and both our parents were firm – Charlie had to be back in the woods before winter, to hibernate. The poison day came when Bob and I and our dad drove Charlie out to a farm on Big Walnut Creek and said goodbye.

Bob was heartbroken. As I am today. But surely Bob didn’t miss the lesson of that autumn day: part of love is letting go.

There’s a batch of related lessons that somehow Bob learned far better than I ever have. They’re all in the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke: Don’t become attached to mere things. Only store up your treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. Consider the lilies, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Don’t worry about what to wear. Don’t worry, period. That last one’s not only from Luke, but also from Mad magazine.

And that’s Bob, all the way.

Fortunately, Charlie was followed by Homer – who didn’t nip ankles. Bob got Homer for Christmas, a beagle pup. We hunted with this near-human dog for a dozen years, Bob and my father and I. But again the deep kinship was Bob’s alone. When Bob was away – especially when he went off to college in Montana – and anyone spoke the words “Where’s Bobby?”, Homer would roll his eyes up and howl a long lament for his missing pal.

So much, I guess, for letting go.

Homer stayed home when Bob went to Africa, too. It was the mid-sixties, the tag end of true hunting safaris in East Africa. Bob and Dad went – it was summer and I was guiding anglers on Yellowstone Lake. I don’t recall what Bob shot with a rifle on that safari, but I do know what he whacked with his Wham-O slingshot. I’m sure it was his proudest trophy, though not a drop of blood was shed. The safari, it seems, was plagued by troops of baboons. They screeched and heckled from the treetops when the hunters were stalking some animal on foot. The native Africans had least use of all for these nuisance primates.

So on a day that will live in history, with a raucous troop in the trees, Bob whipped out the slingshot he’d brought from home, picked up a rock, and let fly. The rock found its target, the hairless rear end of a really huge male baboon. There came down a howl of pain and a hideous clamor from the outraged troop, and they all swung away as one, out of sight and mind.

The Africans, tall and muscled and toothless, mud-caked men of the earth clad in little more than loincloths, laughed and laughed. Okay, I know – it wasn’t much fun for the baboon. But my brother was a kid. With a slingshot. It had to be one of his finest hours. The story found its way back home to his friends, and after that, they all called him Bwana Bob.

One more. I hardly need say there was a bit of the entertainer in Bob. The comic, in particular. Many years ago Charlotte and I were in Idaho to make a documentary film on the Salmon River. It was a raft trip and Bob had come over to see us off. But then, the night before embarkation, the producer, sensing an opportunity, invited Bob to come along.

So we went out to the motel lot and Bob started yanking stuff from the back of his station wagon. Clothes and equipment of all kinds, an Eskimo death mask, everything in clots and wads and incredible knots. In minutes Bob had arcana scattered all over the parking lot. There had to be sorcery involved. So much dunnage and tonnage couldn’t possibly fit in a single car. The producer came out and saw it all and rubbed his hands in glee.

The one thing Bob lacked was rain pants. It was October already and the spray in the rapids was going to be cold. Without rain pants he’d freeze. He poked around in the stuff and plucked out a pair of secondhand fishing waders he’d bought somewhere. The only problem was, he’d never tried them on. The legs were way too short. So he got out a knife and simply cut the feet off. Now, presumably, he could pull the waders up to his waist.

Well, the next morning Bob walks down to the riverbank, dressed up and ready to float. Only he’s not quite walking. Instead he’s advancing with a kind of stutter-step waddle – his legs, in the waders, looking about half their normal length. He’s got the waders lowered and duct-taped to his shoes, to seal out water. The crotch is nearly down to his knees. “Check this out,” he says, tripping weirdly across the sandbar and making stabbing motions with a stick of driftwood like the neck of a guitar. “The Chuck Berry duckwalk.”

Fast forward to four nights later. We’re a long way downriver, loafing around a campfire with a long day of rafting and filming behind us. The producer has wasted no time revising his shooting script to put Bob in the action. In fact he’s now the life of the film. But now we’re just relaxing, all of us, getting good and warm before heading for the tents. Many bottles of homemade wine have been drained, and with the warmth we’re feeling dopey.

Maybe it’s the brother in me, but I worry a bit: Bob vanished from the firelight a while ago and hasn’t come back. I’m thinking about getting up for a look – only thinking – when there comes a rustling sound from the darkness, a scrabbling on rocks, and then, breaking into the light, in walks a roaring ogre, not so much walks as waddles, its face murky and swollen and haloed with coarse hair like a grizzly’s, or maybe like an Eskimo death mask.

“Look out!” the producer shouts tipsily while wobbling to his feet. “It’s Saucecrotch!”

Bobbing and weaving, he went after the wadered ogre and tried to figure out where its knees were, for a tackle.

Not long ago, in our mother’s house in Ohio, I came across a letter she’d written to her own mother when Bob would have been three or four years old. She tells about a popular song of the day, “I’m Gettin’ Nuttin’ for Christmas,” and how Bob got it a bit mixed up. Singing and dancing around, he revised it, happily, as “I’m Gettin’ Nutty for Christmas.”

So keep that in mind on those dark days in December.

Son, brother, bemused uncle to my three amused daughters, Bob was always the best. I could tell you more, but won’t right now. Because really there’s never any end to Bob.
 
          Parker
          Pattee Canyon, Montana
          August 26, 2010

Photos from the Celebration, by Lael Diehm Gray

Bob's brother Parker Bauer

Friend and poet Mark Gibbons

Ellie Nuno and Emily Cantrell listen to Marco De Alvarado, Bob's friend from Livingston

Danny Sullivan  (note Tim Martin's bull horn)

Dobro Dick, Al and Emily Cantrell, Richie Reinholdt (Ellie Nuno joined later)

Valerie, Charlotte and Stephanie Bauer

Center, Brad Norburn, foreground, Gary Waters, right, Pam Gibbons

Richie Reinholdt

Photos from Cathy Frost, Ohio and Kentucky

Bob at one of his favorite local nature places - Paddle Creek, out back of Ironton 2009

Bob on Paddle Creek trail 2009

Bob's always engaging smile at the "Senior Prom"  2008

Vandalia Bluegrass Festival - Charleston, WV-Bob meets a favorite Bluegrass

                 Musician  2009  

Bob, ever-smiling, the last time he was at my house  2009

Bob at Lake Vesuvius in Ironton, Ohio  2008

Bob playing Banjo at his Mom's in Ironton, OH  2009

Bob singing and playing banjo at his Mom's house  2009

Bob singing and playing his hand-made Kamaka ukelele acquired when he was in Hawaii 2009

Bob, at my son, Matt's apartment with Matt's dog, Lil' Man 2009  (He helped my son move into his apartment)

Pineapple Bob's Birthday, Shell WY 1997

photo by Kerrie Sullivan Stepnick

New Postings to Come

Hi friends of Bob.


Al Cantrell is back at his computer after a 4 day trip, and he's ready to load your photos. But from now on please also send your photos to the Bauer family so they'll have copies without going to the blog.


You can do that by sending the photos to


thecantrells@yahoo.com,p.bauer@att.net


or by putting p.bauer@att.net in the "CC" or "BCC" field of your email screen.


Also if you'd like to create your own online photo album of Bob to share, I've used Photobucket.com successfully for that. Just copy the link and I'll post it on the blog.


Thanks!


Al

DEATH SENTENCES AND LOVE STORIES By Mark Gibbons

The neighbor is moving

Stacks of planks

To the backyard,

Digging his way into the construction

Zone he rented officially today—

The bathroom and kitchen still

Unfinished—and I wonder

Where he found the long planks.

There’s no question

Where the young girl 

Following him came from,

Her posture and gait

The same as her dad’s.

Last night I visited a friend of mine 

Who’s been battling melanoma.

I hadn’t seen him in a month,

And he’d lost a lot of weight,

Resembling those photos of Buchenwald 

Ghosts at the end of the war . . .

Still he’s upbeat about his death

Sentence, thinks he’s got it on the run,

Though he appears to be on the ropes

And struggling to hang on, he’s still 

On his feet, still bobbing and 

Weaving—determined to win.

A couple weeks back I bumped into

Another old friend I hadn’t seen in awhile,

And he got that grave look on his face,

Asked if I was alright—he was afraid

I had cancer. Of course I laughed

It off, told him to kiss my ass,

Assured him I was dying 

One day at a time and took his curse 

As a compliment for dropping twenty pounds. 

We’re so vain and oblivious—

And that’s probably for the best—

But after seeing Bob last evening

And slipping on his shoes, size C, 

I was reminded why they fit perfectly—

All things are a reflection of me—and cancer 

Is here like the birds and the trees.

Survivor of another day

Under the summer sun, one more

Promising afternoon in this green

Dimension listening to the blues,

I gave up on the answers

Years ago, long before I gave up on the questions,

And pretty much think if I ever did

Consider taking a stand on an issue

Like “What really matters the most?” 

Most likely I’d vote for this moment—

And I know that’s totally selfish,

But I think it’s true—that we best

Honor being alive by living,

By paying attention and loving

Our breath, the air—being here. 

Turns out I’m notching love stories today: 

The new neighbors working, bees 

Gathering on the clover, the cats napping 

In the shade of Mississippi blues

Flooding my ears and filling my heart 

Like skinny Buddha-Bob 

Smiling hollow-eyed in his hammock,

Sipping vegetable juice from a quart 

Mason jar, so happy to see us, 

Glad we took the time to stop by 

And share our voices, praise the mysteries—

Tomorrow and yesterday— 

Toast our weepy joys and cramping guts

From laughing too hard or from crying 

Too much—the sweetness of loss, 

Of holding on—we love to 

Live this dream.

As driftwood lodges in a stream

Branch upon branch, limb upon limb

Our lives are fashioned unforeseen

Branch upon branch, limb upon limb

Branch upon branch, limb upon limb,
branch upon branch, limb upon limb...

       -lyrics, Jim Schulz

Bob's Obituary, for publication Missoulian, Enterprise, by Parker Bauer

Robert Bauer, 60, died on Thursday, August 19, 2010, at his home in Missoula, of cancer.

  He had lived in Montana since the late 1960s, when he moved from Ohio.  He was born on January 3, 1950, in the town of Ironton on the Ohio River, a birthplace that influenced his love of woods, mountains, and traditional American music, especially bluegrass and other banjo music.  He grew up mostly in football-crazy Columbus, but while other boys practiced blocking and tackling, Bob went hiking and camping, hunting and fishing.

Like the young Theodore Roosevelt, he learned the habits of wild creatures by close observation.  He collected toads, frogs, turtles, a raccoon, and other animals, drew cartoons of them and kept them as pets, then released them all in better condition than he’d found them. 

With his father, the environmental and outdoor writer Erwin A. Bauer, he made trips throughout the West and to wilderness regions of Canada, Central America, and East Africa. 

His college goal, at Ohio State University and the University of Montana, was to become a wildlife biologist.  But the classroom work seemed dry and confining, and eventually he looked for a freer life.

Stone masonry, a dying craft elsewhere, still lived on in Montana, and gave him creative work to do, as well as time between jobs for other pursuits.  He built fireplaces, cabins, and lodges in Montana, and worked on Maryland mansions and an embassy in Washington. 

He lived one year in an old one-room schoolhouse in the Paradise Valley, near Livingston, working on local stone masonry projects.

At various times he took interim jobs on railroad steel gangs and a documentary film crew, and also planted trees for the U. S. Forest Service.  Fleeing the Montana cold, he spent a sunny winter in Texas, as a raft guide on the Rio Grande in the Big Bend National Park. 

Bob was an advocate of natural foods and living proof of their benefits, constantly revising and refining his diet.  He was an expert in herbal medicine and wrote many columns for an alternative newspaper on collecting and using wild herbs in cures and cookery. 

In the mid-1980s he founded and operated a popular restaurant, the Tropicana, on Woody Street in Missoula, serving everything from bean soup to exotic dishes never before tasted in the city.  His advertising slogan, in island patois, was “Nobody canna like the Tropicana.”

In 1998, at a ceremony at Bowman Lake in Glacier Park, he married Laya Kersti, of East Germany.  They enjoyed travels together in the U. S. and Germany but were later divorced. 

He traveled widely and especially enjoyed camping and living off the land, for weeks at a time, in a roadless valley on the Hawaiian island of Kauai.

With his love of music, Bob became an accomplished banjo player, largely self-taught.  Many of his close friends were musicians, amateur and professional, who shared his happiest times.

In recent years Bob devoted much of his time to taking care of his mother, in Ohio, until she died in 2009. 

He is survived by his brother’s family, Parker and Charlotte Bauer, their daughters Stephanie and Valerie, of Florida, and Katie, of Washington, DC; his cousin Ann Evans and her family, of Ohio; and his dog, Lucky, a stray he rescued in the Ohio hills and brought home to Montana. 

A memorial service will be held at noon on Thursday in Pattee Canyon, near Missoula.

Contributions in memory of Bob Bauer may be sent to the Montana Wildlife Federation.

I first met Bob in 1971 or 1972 when I was living on the south side of Missoula. Bob was living in one of the old Missoula trolley cars behind our house on Strand Avenue. I learned a lot from Bob over the years – bluegrass, herbs, fishing – you name it. He always had a way of showing up at just the right time. Here is a photo I always enjoyed, I think it was taken at Dobro Dick’s in Livingston.

Jeff Jenson

Boulder, Colorado

"A Gift from Heaven" by an angelic friend, August 24, 2010

New Date: Memorial for Bob Bauer, Thursday Aug. 26th, Missoula

The Bauer family invites you to a memorial gathering for Bob Bauer Thursday, August 26, noon, under the trees at Pattee Canyon Picnic Area "C". There will be a picnic reception after the memorial. Please bring rain gear, it will be "rain or shine".  Please RSVP for the reception. No need to RSVP for the gathering itself. We hope you will bring stories to share. If convenient, you should bring a chair. There are several large picnic tables at the site. 

Please do your best to see that the news gets out about the new date, as many of Bob's friends are not on our email or phone list.

Plan on cool weather, because Montana can turn cold anytime.

Pattee Canyon Picnic Area is 3 miles east on Pattee Canyon Road, on the left. 

From downtown: take Higgins Street south to Pattee Canyon Road and turn left. Pattee Canyon Road is just before Higgins Street turns right and heads west, in the SE corner of the valley.

From the west part of town: take South Street or Reserve Street east to Russell. Turn right on Russell and go south to a light where the left turn is onto Higgins Street. Take Higgins Street east to Pattee Canyon Road. Turn right. Pattee Canyon Picnic Area is 3 miles up Pattee Canyon Road on the left.

If the weather is cooperating there will likely be some jamming at the picnic reception so feel free to bring instruments!

More Visitors, Missoula

Railraod Dick, Tom Robinson, Brad, Gary Waters, Missoula August 2010

Bob's Vistors

Tom Robinson, Brad, Gary Waters, Emily Cantrell, Bob, August 2010, Missoula

"i think all of you folks might enjoy these pics of Bob, the mason when he was here (Jan '92) building the soapstone masonry "Christos" heater at Starshine Celestial Hermitage, Angel Fire, NM with Alan Turner who at that time was with TuliKivi. Also, a very nice one of him up in his room strumming!" piaa 

Robert Bauer, January 3, 1950-August 19, 2010

Robert Bauer, January 3, 1950-August 19, 2010

7 am, August 20, Al wrote:

The first song I hear on the Starbucks stereo, as I join the Missoula sun coming up, is "Rainbow Connection" by Trespassers William, the first song I've heard since Bob Bauer passed on to another form last night. Around 8 o'clock last night he stopped breathing while being held by his dear friend Vickie. Although he seemed to be unable to find a comfortable position the last few minutes of his life, there was no complaining from him, so we hope he didn't experience very much pain.

He had been to the doctor in the afternoon, and he had described his pain level a 3 on a scale of 10. Bob was apparently spared the pain that we hear liver cancer can bring on. We are thankful for that, as we are thankful for Bob and all the good times he shared with us.

Bob was surrounded by friends and family yesterday. Vickie had impressed us by arriving  a week ago with her portable office in her computer, intending to stay indefinitely while doing her job by internet. Parker his older brother had been visiting a week, and his wife Charlotte flew in yesterday afternoon, bringing a smile to Bob's face when she walked in to hug him. Emily and I through intention and happenstance had spent most of the last two months with Bob. Vic and Virginia, long time friends and keepers of the grotto, were there too, and there would have been many more had Bob not requested a pause in the constant visits that became too exhausting for him. He was deeply loved and widely appreciated here in Missoula.

"The Rainbow Connection" is not a song I would associate with a man who would not have hesitated to vote for Ralph Stanley for president. Bob played clawhammer banjo, singing the old songs from the Ohio hills he grew up hiking. But somehow that song will now be connected with him, for me anyway, and I won't be surprised when some meaning there reveals itself. 

I don't know yet when a memorial service will be scheduled. I'll try to let you all know as soon as one is planned.

Bob Bauer - herbalist, naturalist, fine art mason, outdoorsman, banjoist, music and art collector, writer, raconteur, gourmet chef, brother, uncle, friend -  a Dios, amigo!

-Al Cantrell

thecantrells.net

myspace.com/thecantrellsmusic

thecantrells@yahoo.com