Interesting.

Flash forward to the fall of ’75, and I’m on a walkabout in Suttons Bay, sitting in Boone’s Prime Time Pub, considering moving north. By then, I’d seen a picture of Jim Harrison in some newspaper article, read some of his work, and knew he lived in the area.

And in he walked. Rubber boots, bird hunting Carhartt jacket, massive head and torso winnowing down to almost dainty legs. He stank of wet dog, gun bluing, and cigarettes; swept the room with a wild-eyed reptilian gaze (I didn’t know he was blind in one eye); and, like a raptor, satisfied that his territory held no usurpers, ordered two fingers of Seagram’s VO. I expected a deeply resonant, basso profundo explosion of a voice, but what came out was a highly pitched, mountain-lion-baby scream from just below his Fu Manchu mustache. As if Truman Capote had gargled with barbed wire. He looked like a Mexican bandito that someone had recently fished out of a murky lake. "This," I remember thinking, "should be interesting."

CONNECT