My best friend Mike.

[Captainkirk]

Sorry for your loss, Dale. Sounds like one helluva guy and he would have fit right in here.
You have some cherished memories, for sure.
Thank you for sharing them.

[Graps]

When I first met Mike I had been at my new job for a couple of weeks and it was one of those jobs where I didn't have anything to do once in a while because I was support for production.
But when I did have something to do it was like a pit crew at NASCAR, production was down and it was very costly.
Now I brought that up because to keep busy I would make things for myself or others.
This one day I was making a downrigger release for my dad because the ones he had were for salmon and he was after walleye.
It needed to be able to trip much easier because the walleye are not aggressive when they bite.
Mike came into the tool room and looked at the lathe and said " That looks like a Walker downrigger release."
I asked him how he knew that and that's where it all started.
It was a few weeks later that he told me that he was going to a woods walk for black powder and he needed a throwing knife for the shoot and figured that if I was a tool maker I could probably make one.
So Mike actually got one of my first knives. It was a 10" blade and it had 5 ounce leather laminated on the handle so of it hit wrong, the handle wouldn't break.
I would like to have a dollar for how many times he threw that thing into his stump end target.
He even showed me how to do it too.

[Graps]

When I first started hunting with Mike, he was still in the Airborne Reserves.
He would quite often bring along some MREs that we would munch on when we needed some lunch.
One day he handed me a heat tab ( Trioxane ) and told me that I needed to carry one with me when I was out in the wilderness.
He explained that they are a very fast way to get a fire going. So I always had one with me when hunting.
Fast forward a couple of years and Mike and I were rabbit hunting in the dead of winter with our black powder shotgun's along a swamp that was next to a wooded area by a near by lake.
Now at the time I would sit to home and study topo maps of areas where we hunted. I all of a sudden yelled to Mike " If my memory is correct, there is a creek that runs threw here someplace.
I no sooner said that when he yelled " FOUND IT! "
I hurried over to where he was and he was in water up to his shoulders with his shotgun over his head.
I laid down and reached and he handed me his shotgun and then proceeded to pull himself out of the water with the overhanging vegetation.
Now the temperature that day was around 5 degrees Fahrenheit and we were over a mile from my truck.
I hurried to a small high spot and started breaking up some dead wood and put that heat tab under the pile while Mike stripped his cloths off.
The wood was blazing in about a minute and I was getting very nervous if he was going to be OK.
He stood next to the fire rotating like a Gyro spindle and I started to laugh.
Now Mike was one of those guys that when he was stripped completely, he still looked like he was wearing Mohair pajamas.
He asked me what was so funny and I told him " You're smoking."
He then started to laugh too and it only took about an hour to dry his cloths and we hunted a few more hours after that.
We looked back on that and laughed about it for years.....

[Captainkirk]

Now Mike was one of those guys that when he was stripped completely, he still looked like he was wearing Mohair pajamas.
He asked me what was so funny and I told him " You're smoking."

The surgeon general would surely disapprove...
Funny story! Sounds like Mike was of good humor even in a bad situation!

[Graps]

Mike told me this story.
When he was 21 years old, he bought a Ruger Blackhawk .357 Magnum.
He was living with his parents and his baby brother was about 17 at the time.
The baby brother was home alone and he got Mike's gun, strapped on the holster and was in the living room watching a western on tv.
He started quick drawing and twirling the gun.
And then he drew the gun, cocked it and proceeded to shoot the television picture tube.
When everyone got home Mike was furious because he got into his things. Especially the gun.
I'm sure the parents were impressed as well.

[Graps]

The last chapter.
Mike struggled with his health the last few years that he had. His lungs were bad and every cold that he would get would go straight into bronchitis so bad that he needed oxygen.
About a week before he passed, I got a call from his wife that he was asking to see me and he was in the critical care unit.
I took the day off from work to go see him. Where he was at was over an hour drive and when I get there, the nurse at the desk wouldn't let me in to see him because it was family only.
I told her that he had requested to see me and about then another nurse asked my name.
I told that nurses who I was and she told me to follow her. She took me to his room where he had a large tube down his throat and his hands tied down to the bed.
He was sedated and kept trying to pull the tube out and that's why the hands were tied down.
I talked with him for about an hour and prayed with him before I left.
About a week later my wife and I were in a new drug store and we were checking it out when my cell phone went off.
It was Mikes sister and she told me that Mike had passed. I handed my phone to my wife and walked out of the store and sat in my truck.
He was closer to me than any family member and that was a very difficult thing for me.
My wife came out to the truck and filled me in on the details and Mike had died from a heart valve infection.
The next day Mikes wife called me to ask if I would be a pallbearer and I told her I would.
Now at the funeral they asked if anyone would like to talk about Mike and his brother, nephew and sister talked.
Then my wife told me to get up there because I knew him better than anybody, so I did.
I shared a couple of the stories that I put on here and a few times the congregation was laughing so loud I had to pause.
Mikes brother told me he never knew about any of the things I talked about and his wife never knew about him falling through the ice.
So now my wife and I are in the procession behind the family on the way to the cemetery and remember how I mentioned that things always got messed up with Mike?
This was perfect and I laughed so hard and said out loud " ONLY YOU MIKE "
The Hurst stopped in the middle of the road, paused for a minuet, then did a U turn back the way we came and we all followed.
They had missed the cemetery by about twenty car lengths and then had to part the procession to get onto the drive.
That seemed to be very appropriate for Mike and even his kids and wife laughed about it.
So Mike, you are truly missed and you were my best friend........

[Elkman]

Dale you are truly blessed to have a friend like Mike.
It is so very hard to find such good friends these days.
I am sorry for your loss and have been very moved by your post. From what I have read here on Tradhunter, Mike was blessed as well.

[stumper]

What a thread! This will certainly go down in history as one of the best threads on tradhunter. Thanks for sharing your friend with us!

[Captainkirk]

Wow...must be dusty again here because I keep getting stuff in my eye...They don't make friends like Mike any more. Or like you, for that matter, Dale.

[Graps]

I found this video of my best friend Mike.
The pictures of him at his daughters wedding were just a few weeks before he passed.