a musing julius…

i hope my series of stories give some people an idea of how my childhood turned out. i was latch key kid during the week, but during the weekends, i went on some serious adventures. aside from the bigger stories, i’m gonna share some quick jaunts about my parents and me when i was a young kid.

1. my dad, mom, and andy my dad’s friend were driving henry’s 1969 mercedes sl one evening downtown. its a two-seat car, so 3 people in the car is highly illegal. my mom, being somewhat playful decides to wave to cars behind them down the street. one of them was a cop. when the cop pulled them over and walked up to the side of the car, he suggestively said, “you people must be from germany right?” nodding his head vigorously. everyone in the car said, “yes!” (although they hate germans and are polish). next question from the cop was, “in germany its legal to have 3 people in this car right?” again nodding heavily. they were let off with a warning.
2. my dad and his friends took a boat to cuba, from florida. they almost died twice during their journey. i learned from my dad, everyone in cuba can be bribed with a can of coke. they caught a barracuda off the coast of florida and ate it, not knowing that barracuda’s have poisonous meat.
3. my mom and dad went cliff diving in utah. they took me. i can’t dive, but i jumped off a 40 foot cliff onto my feet. i lived. my parents are good swan divers.
4. my parents know every dance on the face of the earth. they tear it up. i can’t wait until my wedding, where they’ll likely put me and my future wife to shame (unless we take lessons)
5. they watch a movie everyday. usually foreign. they make it a point to see each and every academy award nominated film. they usually know each winner before the show starts.

i love those guys…they’re great role models, and awesome people.

my life was dominated by a nightlife that rivals all but college alcoholics. from the age of 12 to 18, i spent nearly every single weekend at a bar or lounge or restaurant or club in chicago. my parents took me everywhere (except strip clubs…but they didn’t go to those) and i would usually sit, chat with everyone, active in conversation with people over 3 times my age.

when i went to college and turned 21, my friends always wanted to go downtown. “hey man, lets go to man vs. margarita,” a friend would say, to which i would respond, “been going there on the back of my dad’s bike since i was 12, not interested, have fun.”

anyway, i recall one night where we had a guys night and girls night, so i was naturally with the guys. we were out, having fun, and after a few hours, we someone decided to leave. so we all jumped in the car, a range rover that belonged to a dad’s friend. so we’re driving down and minding our own business when we get cut off by a mercedes benz on the street. at the next light, we pulled up to the driver, and the two dudes in the mercedes flicked us off, and they started laughing. why? i guess they thought they were cool, little did they know the net worth of the car they were flicking off was probably in the 8 digits (my family contributes nothing to that total).

for some reason naturally, this infuriated my dad. he immediately jumped out of the car, and everyone else “got his back” ludwik calmly walked over to the drivers side of the mercedes, where he literally reached into the vehicle grabbed the guy by his shirt, and removed him from his vehicle through the window. in one fluid motion, after removing the man from his car, he placed him on the hood of his mercedes. he said calmly, “you cut us off, you flicked us off, and you were laughing at us. now…who’s laughing.” he let go, walked back to the car, and we drove away.

my dad is not violent, and i’ve never seen him use force…but the one time he did, i was incredibly impressed. we talked about the story this past christmas, and all my dad will ever say about the incident was, “that guy pissed me off”

lesson: don’t piss of ludwik.

hopefully it’s evident by now that my family enjoyed the outdoors. we liked camping, jetskiing, the works. when i was 17, my dad and his friends hatched up a ridiculous plot. to our knowledge, no one had attempting something so daft.

they were going to cross lake michigan on jetskis.

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the plan was simple…leave Belmont Harbor early in the morning, use a compass to point roughly east south east, and just do it. 2 jetskis, 1 jetboat (which is nothing more than a glorified jetski that seats 4), 2 extra cans of gasoline, 1 cooler filled with beer, some wetsuits, and 2 gallons of fresh water. the trip is about 46 miles… Read the rest of this entry »

my parents and i camped often as a hobby. we’d go 3 times a year, sometimes 4 or 5 times a year. we loved it…basically, we’d drive to the upper peninsula of michigan towing our jetski with 3 other couples, also towing jetskis. we’d camp in fayette state park, or pictured rocks national lake shore. both are great places to camp, and surprisingly, both are home to the only remaining iron ore smelting furnaces in the united states. how ironic that i’ve camped at both?

anyhow, two separate instances that i recall were rather amusing…there were dozens of fun camping episodes that range from freaking awesome to freaking time-to-go-to-the-hospital-awesome.

1. we once visited fayette state park in the summermonsoon season of 1999. it rained all 5 days we were there. obviously everyone was pissed except one person.  henry, one of my dad’s friends (one of the captains responsible for demolishing the engine of the 72 foot yacht) made the best of all situations. he decided after two days of rain, we would sit outside in the rain, and sing. all day. all night. next to the camp fire, which became my job to upkeep. yay. so, in the drunken stupor of everyone except me…my dad decided to take pictures with our old 35 mm camera. it wasn’t anything spectacular, but in it’s day, it was a fancy camera. the humidity took its toll on the poor camera which never wanted to work. without thinking, my father threw the camera into the campfire. here, i learned batteries explode furiously violently. it was funny. plastic smelled. my shoes were damaged by the exploding battery.
2. in 1997, we went to pictured rocks on lake superior. for those uninformed, lake superior is the coldest of the great lakes, and usually runs at 35 degrees year round. our campsite was nice, but for chilling during the day, my parents and their friends preferred the extraordinary, and so it was their wish to travel around to the north side of grand island, about a mile offshore from where we drop our jetskis into the water. this was our first year on the water of lake superior, so we didn’t know it was so cold. so we pack up our stuff, like we have done in the past…me and dad on one jet ski, henry on another, mom, andy, ola and stuff in a jet boat. begin the mile long travel off shore. in 35 degree weather. in nothing but swim trunks. hey, it’s just like lake michigan right? my dad entered hypotheric shock about a half mile from shore and began shaking uncontrollably. i freaked out, signaled to the other jetskis (which were far ahead of us) with flares shouts of uncontrolled rage. realizing it was up to me, i had to manuever the jetski from the back seat, while i thought my dad was having a seizure. nearly 5 minutes of my dad shaking, me crying, and driving a jetski as quickly as i could to shore, the other jetskis noticed we were severely off course and followed us. i got to shore, put my dad on the ground, and jumped on top of him to help keep him warm. the other boats figured out what was wrong when they got to shore, and immediately grabbed towels and blankets spiced rum to warm my dad. dad and i shared swigs of rum from the bottle that day. we continued on our course after warming up. upon our return from that camping trip, the family bought long wetsuits for future trips to the cold lake.

those are just two camping stories. there were dozens of other great memories, jetskis or not. but now i’m cold just thinking about it…i need a blanket.