Memory # 1 We were going to take a walk out to Bear Claw Point one night and Jim Underhill said to Bill, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. There were some reports of a Yeti up there. I had never heard of a Yeti. Bill filled me in with lots of tall tales. One was about how recently a man had been found mauled and dead. They thought at first that he had been killed by a bear, but they had begun to think a Yeti might have been responsible.
            “Why do they think that?” I asked Bill.
            He paused and took on a serious tone.
            “Well,” he said. “Usually when a bear attacks you it doesn’t eat you.”
            I felt my skin crawl. I believed his every word.
            I was similarly naive when Bill told me a story of a man who was treed by a bear. The bear tried to get to him but couldn’t climb the tree to reach him. The bear left and came back with a beaver that chewed down the tree.
            Again my skin crawled.
           
            Memory # 2 I could easily locate even today the open area in the woods where Bill and I ran into some older woman. We discussed four-leaf clovers. Perhaps by coincidence she was looking for some and so were Bill and I. Can’t remember. What I’ll never forget is how absolutely charming Bill was to her. I remember he went even as far as to smile and wrinkle his nose at her while they were talking.
           
            Memory # 3 I am proud to say that I am the first Cole to meet Bill Underhill. It was in the summer of 1964. I was out in the inflatable yellow raft that my dad brought to Minnesota. I cast a popper out into the reeds near the boat dock. A gigantic bluegill came up and took it, and I put him in the boat. When I paddled back, I saw a tall young man smiling at me. He was so nice and a kindred spirit over anything about fishing. I think he got a stringer to put the bluegill on. We went to the lab and weighed it. It weighed a full pound.
            I remember being surprised that he took me seriously and treated me as a friend and didn’t care in the slightest that I was younger and he was approaching adulthood.
           
           
            Memory #  4   I remember Bill got the job as lifeguard. He told me the people hiring told him that others with better qualifications had applied but they liked him the best. (This is something you never tell anyone if you are following anything close to affirmative action guidelines.) I think their second choice was a woman. I don’t know if it was sexism or not, but I always thought they saw that Bill was built like Hercules or more accurately to my mind like Tarzan, and knew that he could drag anybody out of the water whatever the size. And he did. He saved a couple of people’s lives at least. Jeff witnessed one of these events I think. When Bill got the job as lifeguard he hired Jeff to help him out. I remember when Bill got paid he had an impressive stack of twenties and handed Jeff a generous amount of money. I don’t know what Jeff did to help. He was just a kid. I think Bill just liked him and enjoyed having him around. I will ask him to contribute.
            Jeff: “I think a woman was splashing around, sort of in a panic, and Bill waded out and sort of pulled her, asking her to stand up, ‘cause it wasn’t that deep. Then her friends (daughters, probably) calmed her down. But one guy really was having trouble in the slightly deeper parts, outside the ropes. Bill rowed the boat out to him (as he said was the protocol) and had him hold on; then he rowed him to the shallows.  He gave me some money to hang out with him that summer and do some chores, mainly because he knew he’d be bored all day out there. I’d clean some of the wash rooms, and occasionally trotted down to the Brower Inn to get him something to eat or drink.”  -jf
           
            Memory #5 Once in the rec room/auditoriam where we used to play records, Bill told me about Buddy Holly and how he had died in a plane crash. He then played me, “That’ll be the Day” NO, it was OH BOY. I was impressed with Holly’s voice (more than I am today.) I figured he was famous because of his voice. Music was an important part of life then as now. You see him holding the Rolling Stones album in that picture of him on my website.
           
            Memory # 6 For many years whenever anyone in the Cole family shopped and got change we all looked for a dollar bill with the words, "ALONG COMES MARY" THE ASSOCIATION written in pen on it. This is because once we were going to go to Park Rapids and Bill asked us to buy him a record called “Along Comes Mary.” He wrote the name of the band on the dollar bill he gave us. —TC
           
            Memory #  7 I remember endless rowing across the lake with Bill and trying to outrun the cloud of mosquitoes that were trying to catch us. Another time we rowed back from the other side of the lake at night with a huge clump of bog stuck to the anchor rope. I guess the anchor itself was aboard. Anyway, the clump of bog material had reeds sticking out of it and in the darkness it looked like a hairy monster. We immediately pretended that it was a water monster. “Row! I screamed to Bill. Row or it will kill us for sure!”
            I remember his contribution to this fantasy word for word.
            “It’s a NIGHTMARE!” he shouted.
           
            Memory # 8 Once Bill and I got caught in the wind while fishing. The fishing was bad. We got skunked.
            He was rowing back and we knew we’d make it. The adults didn’t think so apparently because they came out in the pontoon named Tom Poon and rescued us and made a big to-do out of it. They got us aboard and towed the rowboat behind. They were kind of grumpy as I recall.
           
            Memory #  9  I remember Bill reading a Tarzan book and stopping to read a section to me. He thought that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan seemed a little racist. The passage went something like this. Bill read it laughing at the politically incorrect old fashioned writing:
           
            Tarzan pulled the bowstring back.
            “What are you doing sir? Those men have not harmed us.” said the white guide.
       “They are black,” replied Tarzan.
           
            I’ve read a lot of the 60-odd Tarzan books but I haven’t found that passage.
           
             I also remember Bill reading an Ian Fleming book. One of those 007 ones. I think he said that he had read almost all of them.
           
            Memory #  10  Bill told me he liked ginger snap cookies when they got chewy and soft during the humid summer days. I was from Arizona where it is so dry that you can leave the potato chips open and they remain crispy.
           
            Memory #  11 Once one of the students at the biology station (very much my senior, in fact so much that today I remember him as being an old guy) invited me to go play guitar with him at one of the cabins. Bill came along. The guy said maybe we could play at Olaf’s. I think he had a nice Fender Stratocaster. Afterwards, Bill said, “You didn’t play as well as you usually do.” He was right. I was so shy that I could hardly play at all in front of the older guy.
           
            Memory # 12 Bill often used a topwater lure called an Injured Minnow manufactured by the Heddon Company. It had propellers on each end. Bill always used a big open-faced spinning reel--you know, the type with the bail in front instead of the nosecone. I remember him casting that lure an incredible distance and letting it sit. He’d twitch it, and the spinners would twirl. Sometimes a big bass would hit it.
            Here's a picture of an injured minnow like Bill's from online.

 

            Memory #  13 Bill told me that he went to have his physical for the draft. His doctor said the only thing wrong with him was his lungs. Nothing serious as I recall. “And I don’t smoke that much, do I?” he asked. I was surprised because I had never seen Bill smoke a cigarette. He was much too athletic for me to even imagine such a thing.
           
            Memory # 14 There was a racist and vile-mouthed kid from Pine Bluff, Arkansas at Itasca. He will remain nameless. I remember him using such foul language that a student or a professor shouted, “Who’s got the filthy mouth?” Anyway, his dad was a student. We all disliked him and called him Arkie Arkansas. We discussed racism and Bill told me that he was once talking to some guys from the south and he told them that he had a friend that used to shoot coons with a bb gun out the window of his car. Bill told me that the guy from the south laughed misunderstanding, turned to his friend and said, “Hey, you hear that Lenny? Bill has a friend that shoots N-words with a bb gun!”
           
            Memory # 15  Once when we were ready to go back to Arizona Bill came up and stuck out his hand. We’d been teasing each other so much lately that I thought he was going to trick me and yank my hand or something. But he said, “I’m serious.” and shook my hand. He told me that I was like a brother to him. He said it in a clowning around kind of way but I knew that he meant it.
           
            Memory # 16 In the 80s there was a show on TV called the Woodwright’s Shop. It was very good and its host was Roy Underhill. He was the only person I had seen with that last name on TV and he had Bill’s laugh. I recognized it. I always thought it was a huge coincidence.
           
            Memory #17 Whenever we went to Itasca we all hoped that Bill would be there. I remember that we didn’t know if he was coming up one summer and for some reason I was in Park Rapids in a VW Bug with I think Mrs. Farnum. We were driving and saw Bill hitchhiking. We picked him up and Mrs. Farnum made me take the back seat because Bill would need more space for his legs than I. I  think we drove up to Itasca in the VW, but it seems a strange memory.
           
            Memory # 18 My brothers and I made a frog cage. It consisted of a box with stretched rubber bands on the top. You could reach through them and grab a frog and they’d close so the other frogs couldn’t get out. We left the frog cage outside on the porch. I came home and there was Bill on the porch with the cage. He asked me what it was and I told him.
            “Oh!” he said. “I thought it was some kind of musical instrument. I’ve been trying to play it!”
           
            Memory # 19 Once I remember my sisters talking to some of Bill’s friends about Bill. I think they might have been drinking but I’m not sure. Anyhow, at one point one of the guys said of Bill, “I’ve always envied his good looks.”
            I think this might have been a friend of Bill’s who had only one hand-- or better, one hand was very much crippled and there wasn’t much of a hand there.

(November 27, 2016: Jack Fids The guy with one hand probably was Murray classmate Larry Tunnel... fwiw)

Bill and my brothers and I would often lift weights together and one time I was fooling around with Bill’s weights with his friend who was telling me how he did bench presses. He illustrated, but I didn’t see how he could lift the weights with that crippled hand. He only demonstrated. He didn’t lift the weights. Later, Bill and I were talking about his friend’s disability and Bill said, “Well, it’s good that he’s a guy.”
            I asked him what he meant and he said. “Well, if it’s a girl it’s bad because guys might not like her.” And then I remember these exact words: “If it’s a guy, the girls won’t hold it against him,” he said.
           
            Memory #  20 Bill would sometimes get poison ivy on the soles of his feet and he took on a funny gait. I think this is why he invented a ridiculous dance that he and my brother Steve would often do as they walked down the road stepping lightly to not irritate the affected feet. I don’t know if the dance went with the song Jeff and Bill would sing before going to the “bathin’ beach.” They’d sing “Going to the bathin’ beach--da da da da da da da!” Matthew Cook, whom we called Yogi in those days also liked to sing this song.
          
            Memory # 21 My brother Steve and Bill went to Park Rapids together. I think it might have been in the evening. When they came back, they had new clothes that they had bought. I think this may have been the time Bill got that belt. Anyhow, they told me adventurous tales of having run-ins with the local townie toughs and so on. Later Steve told me that they had just made it all up. They had gone to a go-cart place and ridden the go carts. He remembers this trip well and may add something.
           
            Memory #  22 One night we took rowboats and perhaps the Cooks’ kayaks out on the lake and went down the shore a mile or so to the swimming beach or “bathin’ beach” as we always called it. We got up on the floating dock some 50-60 feet from shore and started casting spinners for walleyes over the sandy bottom. (Walleyes have good night vision and feed after dark. They also like sandy bottoms.) It is a magical Memory of mine of spinners flashing in the starlight and walleyes striking. We caught quite a few.
           
            Memory #  23 One night we took rowboats and perhaps the Cooks’ kayaks out on the lake and went down the shore a mile or so to the swimming beach or “bathin’ beach” as we always called it. We got up on the floating dock some 50-60 feet from shore and started casting spinners for walleyes over the sandy bottom. (Walleyes have good night vision and feed after dark. They also like sandy bottoms.) It is a magical Memory of mine of spinners flashing in the starlight and walleyes striking. We caught quite a few.

            Memory #  24 In 1966, Bill Underhill played this record "Oh Yeah" for me and told me it was by the Shadows of Knight. I thought it was the Shadows of the Night, but no matter. I remember the first words,

            "I've got a little woman. She is a doll. She said she loved me. But that ain't all!"

              It's very Stones derivative and also awfully dated but back then everything was new!

Memory #  25  Bill told us how to make napalm with newspaper, Ivory soap flakes, and gasoline. He said you put the mixture on a stick, set it on fire, and used the stick as an atlatl, you know—a throwing stick. We never made any, but it was an amusing recipe.

Memory # 26  Bill knew that I loved BB guns. I was of the young age when you're infatuated with such things. I told him how I wanted one of those Daisy German Lugers that used a C02 cartridge to power it. He said he had one and would GIVE it to me. Of course, the air pistol was in St. Paul and getting it was not to be, but it was a generous offer.

Memory # 27  Today I went to get a little "adapter" to do some recording and I remembered suddenly that Bill was the one who had taught me the word. The details are very sketchy, but I remember we were talking about some fishing device or some other piece of machinery or a tool and he said that he bought something at a store for it--to make it work right--and the man said, "I don't know if that will fit the one you've got." Bill then told me that he told the man not to worry; he had lots of ADAPTERS. For some reason he said this laughing a bit. He thought his remark to the man was funny. Perhaps it was because he didn't have ANY adapters or because he was boasting a bit about having a LOT of them when he didn't. At any rate, I didn't get the humor, but I did learn the word.

Memory # 28
I remember Bill was over in the Underhill cabin. Steve and I and Bob Thoreau were there. We were talking and for some reason the conversation led Bill to say, "Well, if there was a fight between Bob and one of you two," he said indicating me and my brother. "...it would be pretty clear who would win. But if they both had guns it would be a toss-up."
    I remember being surprised. I never had noticed that Bob was so much bigger that he could whip us with one hand tied behind his back. But I guess he was.
Bob's on the left here:

Memory # 29
Bill once told me he was walking in the woods and came across a cabin. There was a window that was just slightly cracked open and on the table just inches from the pane was a bottle of whiskey. Bill told me that it looked just too easy to him. He was pretty sure that if anyone opened the window to get the whiskey a shotgun with a wire tied to its trigger would blast them.

Memory #30
The story of the Yeti that Jim Underhill told us reminds me of another time we were totally gullible and completely taken by his tales. We were in one of the cabins. We told Jim that we were on to him and weren't about to fall for any of his wild stories. Bill wasn't there but we were talking about him and asked how he was. "Oh, he's fine," said Jim Underhill. "...that is except for his fighting. I didn't think it was much of a problem, but the other day he came home with a tooth stuck in his fist. Honest, we had to take him to the doctor to get it removed."
     We all grasped our wrists to our chests and gasped, having been totally suckered again. Of course, nothing of the kind happened.

Memory #31
    I remember one summer we went to Itasca and when Bill saw me he said, "Oh, you guys are going to be short."


Memory (of Jeff's) #32
        We were driving somewhere with Bill and he saw him hitching. Bill started yellin, "Groovy! Groovy! Stop, it's Groovy!"
     I remember that sounding really weird.

HERE IS GROOVY. BEATNIKS WERE DEAD BY 1966, HOWEVER:

Jeff with Bill Underhill's Beatnik Friend December 1966.jpg

MORE MEMORIES IN THIS PDF