This is a tough one....
“Magic” Mike Boetger, the unofficial mayor of Eastsound and proprietor of the World Famous Lower Tavern, died on Halloween Eve...
He was 48....
I’ve known Mike for over 25 years, playing on the same softball team (man, we sucked....), working at the Orcas Hotel with him all those years ago, watching him build up the Lower Tavern when it was located in front of Christina’s, and hanging with him at the Lower when we were the only 2 people watching the Mariner’s opening day ballgame on a rainy Tuesday afternoon....
These are music pages, and Mike had strong opinions about his music. He was a *huge* Jimmy Buffett fan, but if someone punched up "What I Am" by Edie Brickell & The New Bohemians on the jukebox, the power mysteriously went out on the machine, sometimes for hours on end....
We used to have an open mic every Wednesday night at the Lower, and he invariably would sing the Kingston Trio’s “MTA”...
Cool little tune...
And he loved his karaoke...
He recently invested in a karaoke machine with something like 497,523 songs in it....
It’s really a shame he didn’t get to sing every last one of them....
This from Bob Phalen:
“There was soccer game today on Orcas. After the game I went to meet Keenan (my 12 year old son) at Padbury's house. Mark and I were taking a bunch of the boys out on what would probably be their last time trick or treating. Keenan, Robbie, Randall, Miles, Robin, all growing up too fast -- when the aid call came across my pager.. Male, 48, not
breathing.. and as we always fear--this time I knew the address..
My friend Magic Mike, who I played softball with 25 years ago, played poker with every week, who dedicated himself to his adopted kids, who was never very healthy (mostly through no fault of his own---his oversized body that his heart could not support, were a part of the cards he was dealt) and who stood by me in times of strife.
Today, that old magician is gone. He was a gunslinger with a giant tenor voice which rang clear. He wouldn't shut up when it would have been easy to do so. Instead he pointed out hypocrisy. He was the mayor of Eastsound, Chancellor of hard luck, bad luck and sometimes no luck at all. He was alone inside his distance -deep into his well.
He laughed until he cried and he cried, every time, I'm almost certain, till he laughed.
He died alone today, October 31, 2006.
I haven't quite made it to laughter yet.
Oh yeah, and the boys-the boys, with Randall in tow, helping him in the transition ahead by allowing him his last night of carefree boyhood. As we drove them around from the Community Church to Smuggler's Villa, to Bonnie Bray, etc, It became apparent to both Mark and I that it was not chocolate that they were hunting-it was the girls.
Life is transition and tonight was Randall's giant leap.
Peace”
Thanks, Bob...
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This from Jennifer Travers:
Bruce -if I may- a few words about Magick Mike.
As a native Bostonian I always LOVED it when Mike sang Charlie on the MTA.
In fact I might have been one of the only people in the crowd that always
sang along with his rollickin rendition:
Oh will he ever return?
No he'll never return
And his fate is still unlearned
He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned
He's the man who never returned....
But the song I identify as Mikes great tune is "The Sinking of The Edmund
Fitzgerald", a Gordon Lightfoot tune from a 1976 album called Summertime
Dream. The song commemorates the sinking of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald
on lake Superior in 1975 in a "perfect storm " kind of incident , with 33
lives lost. It's an epic seaman's type of tune and Mike sang it , always,
with a poet's kind of grace.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitchee Gummi
Superior, they said ,never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early
This was back in the day. I believe Rita still had the Lower then. Mike
worked behind the bar , stepping out front from time to time to sing. Those
open mikes were always crowded -with players and with listeners, revelers
all. The air was always thick and smoky and people came out week after week
- on Wednesday night -because something exciting was in the air. The music
scene was happening and people felt it.
Mike wasn't a trained musician. he didn't play an instrument, and he
couldn't read music or write out charts for himself. Also if you recall, although his
voice was a big beautiful tenor, he had a hard time singing with an
accompanist after years of singing acapella in his own keys. But the
musicians were accommodating and generous and helpful. I vividly recall a
winter night when I walked outside the back door of the tavern to get some
air and came upon Mike working on a song with Patio ( another brother gone
too soon).The moment is forever frozen in time in my memory. A cold fog
hanging in the air, wintry moonlight on the water, the shoreline dark and
still. A weak cold light shone down on them from the doorway like a
spotlight. I was spellbound -first by the sheer beauty of the moment, then
by the intimacy of it, and finally by the SOUND. Patio's percussive rolling
chords and Mikes powerful voice rising up, filling the space between earth
and heaven like a sacred bridge:
" Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours
And all that remains are the faces and names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters?
The legend goes on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitchee Gummi
Superior ,they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early."
Like rolling thunder a powerful force gas move through through our lives , a
great sound has moved over us drawing our eyes and spirits upward toward the
song. He will be missed.
Jennifer Travers,
San Juan Island
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There will be a service for Mike on Sunday November 12...
Here are the details:
Where: Eastsound Fire Station
When: 2pm Sunday November 12, 2006
Please CARPOOL as there will be limited parking. We are making arrangements for parking off site.
If you have any photos of Mike please get them to Mike Stolmeier, Scott Whiting or Bob Phalan ASAP.
Contact Carolyn Bledsoe (376-2913) if you would like to donate finger food.
If you would like to be put on the program as a speaker email Bob Phalen.
