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How I came across this Blog is a bit of a story itself.  While I am still trying to wrap my head around the larger of the two, here's a story that I found too moving not to share.

Mike Shaw Retrospective

1/13/08

The following comes from guest-blogger, Old East Cross:

Ypsi’s last Shaw at Café Luwak

Café Luwak has on display, through the end of January, a collection of artifacts as significant to the subtext of the city’s history as anything you’ll find in the Historical Museum: the art and personal effects of Mike Shaw, the last Shaw in Ypsilanti.

Mike’s ancestors reached Ypsilanti in 1823, the same year the city was founded. They owned the land many our homes rest on, and Mike’s great-grandfather, a mason, laid the stone foundations for many of our homes.

Mike died this past August in his final Ypsi apartment, reportedly of heart-failure, and someone anonymous to me, rescued a portion of his art and belongings from the curb as his apartment was being cleared for the next tenant. What was salvaged is now on display at Café Luwak and includes Mike’s art, hand-stitched coat and journal.

There’s no sugarcoating that Mike was not always an easy person. Mike served as a Huey helicopter gunny chief in Vietnam in from 1964-70. Ninety percent of combat casualties airlifted out battle were carried in Hueys. As Mike relayed to me once, “Sweeping their shit out of my Huey…ya, I’m a big hero now.” That’s how Mike summed up his contribution to the war, sweeping out the dead. Reports conflicted that the Vietcong bullet that sent Mike home was still lodged in his head. Figuratively, anyway, it was.

Mike wore his memories everyday — an oily green army hat snagged with various pins and parachutes, army boots, fatigues. Somedays he’d belt on a six inch bowie knife, its handle, like Mike’s rings, was plastered with approximations of semiprecious stones and colored glass that he stuck on with epoxy. One item never absent from Mike’s uniform was a hand sewn pouch, draped over his shoulder and resting at his belt line full of peanuts habitually tossed at squirrels.

In what always seemed to me to be an act of penance, Mike became Ypsi’s protector of trees and squirrels. He was convinced both were under attack. He took note of cars and kept track in his journal. Putting an end to the violence was his obsession. “This shit has been going on since July,” Mike explained to me once. “It’s not so much the squirrels as it is the presence of death day after day. No one is safe. You also should take measures about nightcreepers, they begin at sundown and only stop when caught or run out of victims.”

Mike came after me with a bat once because a squirrel had disappeared and he thought I must have snatched it, since he hadn’t seen any cats. (He’d threatened a previous neighbor with an axe for trimming low-hanging branches, i.e., squirrel escape routes.) The next day he delivered a large bag of his limited coffee rations to me with an apology note. Mike’s fluctuation between kindness and conflict was constant. He was a violent pacifist; an intelligent, introspective, paranoid; meekly overbearing with a winking wit; and a hermit socialite. Groundhogs ate out of his hand and he trained his dog to bite. He was the type person you could never anticipate, but always, ultimately, trust. He knew many in town and dropped in for long conversations that he would decide when would begin and end. He also spent days-on-end alone in his apartment. He was eventually evicted from the Kircher-owned property after the city condemned it, a year after Kircher had turned off the heat and electric on him in Jan/February (for “repairs") even though Mike paid the utility bills.

After the property was condemned for neglect, Mike spent a few winter weeks homeless in Ypsi, living in a neighbor’s garage, the Harmony Hotel, and finally, the woods. He ended up in Sumpter Twp for a time before finding his way back to Ypsi a year or so before his death. “Damn it, I used to like it here,” he told me once. Mike always served as a reminder to me to ask who we’re creating a new Ypsi for. As the town slowly gentrified around him, Mike found fewer and fewer places to call home among the homes his ancestors laid the foundations of. As we relative newcomers sweep into town, I think it’s worth considering the history we’re displacing. Maybe with Mike’s passing the last trace of living history is gone. I suspect it’s not. Mike was a caution, for me, to not casually sweep out the dead and call ourselves heroes for a fresh coat of paint. As Mike said, “They say they want to renovate the park. How do you renovate a park? Cut down the old trees and plant new ones?” I’m glad Mike persevered to find his last breath in the same place he’d taken his first. Few of us will be that lucky.

I’m also personally grateful to whoever rescued some of his artwork and to Café Luwak for displaying it. Mike was proud of his art, although, often apologetic for there being say, too much green or orange, which happened frequently when he’d run dry of all other colors and was forced to make do with what was left until an art student donated more. He spent most of his time, as he would say, “Doing whatever it is I do,” which, other than maintaining a census of neighborhood squirrels, was gluing, painting, and creating with old paint, rocks, cement, and epoxy.

Whether or not you knew Mike, I’d encourage you to stop by Luwak and pay your respects. It’s a fitting memorial for Mike. I’m not being haphazard or patronizing when I say I think he’d be proud to have his art displayed. And, it’s the final page of what may be the last family story as old as our town.

Again, to whoever collected the display, thank you. And to Mike, rest and peace.

And thank you, Old East Cross. This is a beautiful post.

[If someone doesn’t already have plans for these pieces, please let me know. I would hate to see them lost. It might be a long shot, but I’m thinking that maybe the American Visionary Art Museum or the Museum of American Folk Art would be interested in them. I’d be happy to make a couple of calls and see.]

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