It was raining on Clear Creek all during a late October weekend. I didn't mind as I was at the great old cabin on two cliffs with my Dad. He was doing what he loved most, remodeling a room in the cabin. I must have been around eight and I know that even at eight, I could not get enough of those old Clear Creek cabins.
I suppose that when the large log house was built, it wasn't on two cliffs. They must have come later. The house had three rooms on the main floor and three bedrooms on the second floor. I remember that my second floor bedroom was always warm in the fall and spring because the kitchen stove pipe ran through it Both my bedroom and the living room had the same beautiful view, that of looking up the broad alfalfa fields to the larger Clear Creek Mountains.
The only thing wrong with that cabin or rather log house, were the cliffs. In addition to two cliffs going down twenty to thirty feet, even worse was that in the middle of the cliffs, a tiny pinnacle stood out. A path led down that pinnacle to the outhouse. Sit in the outhouse during a hard rainstorm and you could hear clods of dirt falling into the creek. Spooky! However, not as spooky as what happened to Dad and me that Saturday night at what was officially called the Johnson place on Clear Creek.
I have written before that there was a stretch of Clear Creek that was thought to be haunted. That stretch of creek was between two ranches where horrible things had happened. Dad said when he talked about that stretch of creek at all, that when he fished down there he got very depressed and felt like there was nothing left in life for him. So, he stayed away from that part of Clear Creek. He had not fished there for years.
Our two dogs of the time were there with us that weekend. There was Duffy the St. Bernard and Doxie the Dachshund. As Dad put some new paneling on the walls of the large living room, they snored quietly on one of the beds in the large room. I remember playing cars in the room all that afternoon.
Around 4pm Dad stopped his project, opened a Budweiser, looked out the huge front window up the valley and commented that there wasn't much of a view in all the rain. He had a New England boiled dinner on the old Majestic range. We ate like there was to be no tomorrow. After dinner and the dishes were done, Bee was just sitting down in the living room to listen to a football game and have a smoke when he jumped up and told me he had to go fishing! Fishing in this rain and in the dark. Who would do that? Well, my father would. He had promised Francis and Laened Black trout with their pancakes next morning when they came to breakfast.
So, out the door he went. It slammed with a bang and the dogs barked.
I don't know what happened to Dad when he went fishing because he could never remember either. But, I suppose that since he was fishing in that dreadful area, that something must have attacked him. He says that he was fishing. And feeling very depressed, but he had caught four beautiful rainbow trout, when a huge vortex opened up in Clear Creek. He could see to the bottom of the vortex and what seemed to be the most horrible monster in all eternity just waiting, looking up at him as he slid down into the inverted water spout!
I couldn't think about that. I was having my own troubles with ghosts. Someone was pounding on the front door of the cabin. The dogs didn't seem like they even heard the pounding. Then the door opened in glided, not walked, but more glided along a man I recognized immediately even though I had never seen him before. It was Grandpa Lucke, who had been dead for a dozen, maybe more years. I had heard a lot about him but never saw him before now. I knew him instantly because there must have been a million pictures taken of him and he looked just like his pictures.
The dogs slept on, their contented snores telling me I had nothing to fear (if I was to believe a dog!)
"Robby," Grandpa Lucke said, "Where is Bee?"
"Fishing," I said
"I knew it. I will be back with him if it isn't too late."
With that he took off, sort of gliding out of the room and out the front door.
I don't know what happened from then on until Grandpa Lucke got back with Dad flung over his shoulder. All I got were bits and pieces from my new grandfather who apparently was a ghost!
Grandpa Lucke was in rescue mode. Maybe that was what he did for all eternity was rescue people for all I knew. Anyway, he got to the vortex, jumped in, smoking a cigarette.
At the bottom, there was Bee with the monster. Bee was quite dead, having what looked like a broken neck. Grandpa Lucke pelted the monster with sharp shards of what looked like glass that he had in his pocket. The monster recoiled and dropped Bee, started screaming, then shriveled up sort of like one of those witches in "The Wizard of Oz". Grandpa Lucke picked up Bee and jumped maybe fifty feet out of the vortex. Then he laid Bee on the ground and blew some sort of cigarette smoke into his face. That made Bee moan but not wake up.
Soon, both were coming in the front door of the cabin. Bee was across the shoulders of his father. Unconscious. Grandpa Lucke stripped off Bee's wet clothes, put him in bed, tucked him into one of the famous Lou Lucke Company double bed sleeping bags that he had invented. Grandpa Lucke turned to me and asked if I was all right.
Other than having met a ghost for a grandfather, I figured I was just fine and told him so. If he didn't bother the dogs, why should he bother me?
Grandpa Lucke said he was sad that he had only met one of his grandchildren before he died but he kept track of all of us and was very proud of us all.
He turned to leave, told me to get in bed and he would turn off the lights. He grabbed me as I went by him and gave me a big hug. He smelled of Clear Creek water and cigarette smoke. As he was leaving, he told me to tell Dad there was a large mess of fish in the refrigerator for the Black's breakfast. With that he was gone!
Next morning at dawn, Dad was up with a start asking why his clothes were all wet? What could I say?
"Maybe it was the dogs peeing on them," I said, thinking how brilliant that was to say! "You never let them out when you came back from fishing."
"Damn dogs couldn't hold that much," Dad mumbled.
I decided not to tell Dad what adventures he had had going through the land of the living and the dead! I don't know why. Maybe I didn't want to share Grandpa Lucke with anyone just yet.
Matter of fact, I never did share Grandpa Lucke with anyone...until now.
And remember even though one monster was vanquished by my grandfather, there are still some places on Clear Creek that you do not fish!
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