The Strange Case of Professor Patsy J. Deer
Summers can fly by like an acrobat dangling from a hot air balloon and sometimes all you can do is to hold on by your teeth
As the whaleback steamer Christopher Columbus slipped its lines and pulled away from the Dalrymple dock that autumn day in 1897, bystanders could almost hear the doors of summer emphatically slamming shut. Summer was over, just like that, ended with an exclamation point the size of a hot air balloon, a trapeze artist, a parachute, and a story still told among these islands when summer begins to fade.
This year, I feel the season’s change in less dramatic things — an extra pull on the zipper to close the jacket on a morning run aboard the Little Dipper, the wet chill of the dew in the beach grasses now the same shade of yellow as the sand. There are no hot air balloons in sight but there is a tinge, just a tinge, of color to some of the edges of the leaves on the lakeshore trees, the blueberries are beginning to fade in the bogs.
Some of that summer fade is quantifiable. At this latitude, the sun begins to take a bow this time of year, rising later and setting earlier all throughout the month and costing us a lot of daylight. From the first sunrise of August to the last sunset of the month, we will lose 1 hour and 29 minutes of daylight in the islands.
With the slanting of the sun, air temperatures this time of year are rounding the summit too and starting their long, slow slide out of summer giving the air the beginnings of that crispness of autumn apples. Mornings are just a bit cooler. When the sun drops behind the trees, you find yourself trying to recall where you stuffed your fleece jacket.
Water temperatures are at their highest now but as the air cools, I find myself thinking twice before a cave swim for a photograph and warming my hands a little longer around my thermos of coffee each time I pull myself out of the water.
The season is plotting its course. But it is more than just charts and graphs. There is a certain slant of light that says that the season has turned even more than any calendar or bell curve. It is a nostalgic kind of light that summons thoughts of wool jackets and woodsmoke, and even softens the edges of memories of those hot, sticky high-summer “dog days” when it felt like the world had stopped turning.
It is turning now. That turn is evident in the blooms of fireweed that have reached the tops of the stems, in the silence of the cliffsides and forests as the young birds are fledged and off the nests, and in the richness of the colors ambered in the low slanted light. Summer is coming to an end.
We have entered a season of “lasts” — the last day of summer vacation before the school buses start rolling up the hill every morning, the last day for the volunteer lighthouse keepers on the islands, the last ranger talk on Stockton Island, the last “LICC” (Long Island Cocktail Club) gathering each Wednesday on the beach cut on Long Island.
But for flair and fanfare, no “last” of the season can outdo that strange event that brought down the curtain on the 1897 summer season here in the islands, including the aerial dance of one Professor Patsy J. Deer.
It was September 19, 1897. The Christopher Columbus was in town for its final stop of the season, tied up at the Dalrymple dock with an astounding “2000 people” aboard and every one of them itching for some grand spectacle to cap off the successful summer. Enter Professor Patsy J. Deer. What happened next is beyond any verbal acrobatics I can muster so I leave it to a description taken from the book Tales of Bayfield Pioneers and the eyewitness accounts of local newspaper reporters. Buckle up and hold on tight:
“On Saturday the CHRISTOPHER landed at the Dalrymple dock with over 2000 people on board. Professor Deer made an attempt at balloon ascension while in the harbor. The balloon was held on the windward side by 15 or 20 men, but when two thirds inflated a heavy gust of wind caught it piling up the men in a heap, knocking over the hot air flue and setting it on fire. The men immediately let go of the guy ropes and the large airship blew over into the water where the flames were extinguished. Considerable excitement prevailed, causing two ladies to faint, fortunately no one was injured.”
Hold on, there’s more:
They tried again, this time with “additional staff” holding the balloon in place as long as they could on the forward deck of the ship. With the hot air balloon getting bigger and bigger, the story continues in the words of the newspaper reporter:
“It took about 15 minutes to inflate the balloon as [the] men held her down, it’s constantly increasing size doubling its efforts to get away. Suddenly there was a signal. The men released their hold and the balloon shot upward. Suspended from the bottom of the balloon proper was a parachute. Suspended from the parachute was a trapeze. Professor Patsy G. Deer was seen hanging by his feet from the bar. An instant later he reversed his position and held on by his teeth.
It was one of the prettiest aerial displays ever witnessed.
It seemed an incredibly short time but the balloon was up in the air between 3000 and 4000 feet when the professor pulled a string and let the parachute off. Down it shot with the professor dangling at the trapeze. Inside of three hundred feet the parachute opened like a huge white canvas umbrella and swung slowly down to terra-firma. A good many people thought the dissent [sic] even at this was too fast for comfort. Professor Deer landed a few hundred feet back from the lake in Bayfield, safe and sound.
The balloon, now the size of a hen’s egg, was rapidly emptying its hot air. Relieved of the weight which had kept the opening below; it turned bottom up and came down in the top of some trees. Ten seamen from the CHRIS were waiting for it and picked it up, bringing it on shipboard and the vessel immediately pulled away.”
Like the Chris leaving the dock that day after the season-capping display of daring do, summer is once again pulling out of the islands, though perhaps with less dramatic fanfare this year. No hot air balloons or aerial acrobatics. I do see a patch of sunlight just around the tip of an island and move the Little Dipper into the light to bask in summer even if for just a few more minutes.
For all its bluster and excitement, summer in the Apostle Islands can go by faster than a deflating hot air balloon. When it turns, it turns. There is nothing to be done to stop it. About all you can do is to find a quiet spot, turn your face to the last warm rays of the sun, and, like Professor Patsy J. Deer, hang on by your teeth to whatever remains of the buoyant memories of our fleeting summer days.
— Jeff Rennicke
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