Mickey and Me

Mike Baker’s funeral was yesterday. Some of us called him Mickey.

In some ways, we were so alike that it might be obvious why we became friends: red hair, freckles, sunburn stories, an often silly sense of humor punctuated with a willingness for self-deprecation. We joined the same fraternity, though that was long before we knew one another. We were not classically handsome and thus sought our acceptance through humor. Bouncing funny thoughts back and forth with Mickey was a delight and a challenge, as we sought to best each other for laughs.

But we shared less hilarious topics, as well, as young men seeking to discern our ways through a particularly frightening time in history and our own maturation. The war in Viet Nam hung over our heads like the sword of Damocles, an ever-present threat to our hopeful lives; I still have the pocket book Mickey gave to me entitled, “A Doctor’s Guide to the Draft” (now out of print). Our nation wrestled with protest and upheaval. Society itself was in the throes of reinventing its standards, just as the real prospect of “growing up” became ever more vivid. So the time was one of emerging friendship, but also shared anxiety. We were roommates together during our earliest employment forays in Minneapolis, and the discussions together often contained far less humor and far greater worry, about things like jobs and future and our then-girl friends (eventually our wives) Katie and Mary, who had also been roommates.

But we were also so very different. Mickey loved The Carpenters; I listened to Led Zeppelin. He was an accountant; I never took one such course. He traded a Big 8 accounting career for a partial return to the farm; I gave up writing for a corporate living. But above it all, Mike Baker was arguably the most outgoing, friendly, socially gifted man I ever met. He met and befriended people faster than anyone, with a genius for ferreting out details of their lives, likes and possible connections with him. And he could remember those recitations long after, miraculously recalling them at some later time when meeting them again. I could only travel in his wake during those years when we spent more time together, often shaking my head at his engagement in such interviews, not capable of understanding the magic of his social mind. We were different: I could manufacture a conversation, but Mickey reveled in it, and people felt it.

I know few people who enjoyed the exploration of food more than Mickey. Food was often the object around which he made his connections. On a long, guided hike through the dense woods of northern Wisconsin, Mickey and Mary fell behind after a while, along with several other hikers. Those of us ahead could hear them, but they had slipped out of sight. After a while, we halted in order to allow them to catch up and not become disoriented in the nearly-impenetrable woods. Soon enough they caught up, but not before we heard Mickey exchanging recipes for broiled beef with one of the other hikers. As they re-joined us, Mickey then explained who these fellow hikers were, and how they had discovered a mutual acquaintance. All on a hike through the Madeline Island sloughs. All I knew was that my boots were muddy.

Mickey was never limited in his food choices to healthy fare. He was a king of the chips. He extolled the virtues of my mother’s bean dip until he was compelled to improve it, with apologies to my mom. He loved desserts of nearly any kind, a fact which made him a dangerous roommate for me. When I would tout some new protein bar, he would offer a fresh brownie. When he tinkered with a new recipe, I’d settle for a frozen taco. On the food front, we were the odd couple.

Mickey never understood my pursuit of physical fitness; it simply never resonated with him in his entire life. It was perpetually a point of teasing between us. One of my life’s most cherished memories is a Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) canoe trip that Katie and I took with Mickey and Mary. Rarely have I laughed so hard and so long at trail travails. To this day, if I need a. tonic of laughter I think about moments from that trip.

So I find myself today wondering how it was that the two of us unlikely candidates became lifelong friends, in light of so many differences. Maybe it was the empathy we each felt toward a fellow redhead. Maybe it was the context of the Sigma Chi’s, and whatever the word “brotherhood” meant to us. Or perhaps it was our mutual dependence on Nacho Doritos and the need for understanding addiction. If we never articulated our mutual importance to one another, it was nonetheless understood. Whatever the cause, he was a presence in both my personal and existential life, a presence that is now based upon memory alone.

Evidence of Mickey’s amazing connectivity with people was ample at the church yesterday. The pews were nearly completely filled on this Tuesday morning, an unlikely scenario for almost any occasion. And those of us sharing in the grief were not just Baker family members, but people from every niche of life where Mike resided. There were many members of his church, people from his accounting life, members of the community, some local many from other states, customers of his sweet corn raised on their farm, old (figuratively and literally) fraternity brothers and other friends, all collected along the way in his gregarious life. Our common thread was the need to say one more good-bye to Mike, and to share at least one more laugh in his memory.

We can never foresee exactly where friends are to be found, or what they will look like, or even whether they will be much like us. We cannot anticipate how a passing acquaintance might become the closest of friends in time. But once found, such gifts need to be cherished, and I treasure having had Mickey along in my journey….

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