Father-Lore

George Lore, 1932

The Lorelands of Mary Jane's childhood were summed up in her father. He was the only member of his family who remained in Baudette and made his home there with and then alongside the Klimeks. He'd grown up in the town where his father, Fred, was a logger. But the same year that Alyce graduated high school and the Stock Market crashed, someone stole the logs Fred had prepared for sale, and with the logs the Lore earnings for that entire year. Penniless, Fred, Annie, and most of their children moved to Minnesota's Iron Range where there was work. George, already sweet on Alyce, stayed to work for Ma Klimek, learn the complexities of the lake in order better to guide fishermen, and probably most of all to fly Pete Klimek's airplanes and develop skills as a pilot and aircraft mechanic.

Mary Jane's Aunt Barbara, George's youngest sister, would tell her years later that the family harbored anger over the theft of their brother by the Klimeks. It's true that we rarely saw the other Lore's unless one or another of the families drove north from Nashwauk, Swan Lake, Coolie, or Kelly Lake. Mary Jane felt shy around her cousins, most of whom felt to her like strangers.

She never met her grandmother Anna Olson Lore. "Annie." But a story about her impressed the child so profoundly she never could get the images connected with it out of her mind. Anna Lore was killed by fire in a household accident just before Christmas 1935. The two youngest of her children witnessed the accident (John who was about 15, and Barbara who was 6). Annie was dry cleaning clothes with kerosene which she had on the wood stove, a common practice back then, and it caught fire. The flames enveloped her and she ran past John out into the snow. He ran after her with a blanket and put out the flames, but not before her lungs had been too badly burnt for her to survive. She did live long enough for George and Alyce to drive from Baudette to her bedside. Fred and the rest of the family must have been there as well. At her funeral George accepted baptism at her church because it was what she had always wanted for him.

Both George and his sister Edith were said to resemble her, and now I look deeply into her image to find the similarities. Like many daughters, Mary Jane thought him the handsomest of men. Tall for his time—he was maybe 6’2’’—he had stunning gray-green eyes, slicked back black hair, and a mustache like Clarke Gable’s. And best of all, he didn't have a normal job. Aviation continued to be rare in small towns during the 1940’s and ‘50’s when she was growing up.  He projected an aura of romantic ruggedness when he stood on the windswept field beside his Piper Cub or down at the ramp on the Rainy River by his Cessna 180. As a child of nine or ten Mary Jane would hear the roar of her father’s engine and run with her girl friends into the center of the yard where they could be seen, and then they all would lift their arms in sweeping waves as though they themselves had wings. Then her Daddy’s plane would swoop down over them, dipping its wings to return the greeting.

                

She knew him by intuition. He seldom spoke, keeping his counsel. I’m aware now of the way she spun her stories and created him, silence by silence. She whirled around him like a planet round the sun. He could still her with a word, probably because there were so few of them. She came to count on him for the stillness he brought.

                

An airplane in the sky seems not to move over the earth.  She looked down from his Cessna 180, and the ground appeared almost still as they inched along, the plane's shadow like a meandering cloud. She had forever, it seemed, to view the tiny houses below, the roads that slithered over the countryside like wet spaghetti noodles. It wasn’t until they came in for a landing that she realized how fast they had been moving all along. 

You barely can imagine such speed in the midst of a profound stillness until you land safely or fall from the sky. This was the paradox at the core of Mary Jane's father.