MISCHKE: Ropey

Summary

Garage Logic – MISCHKE: Ropey

Date: March 7, 2026
Host: Tommy Mischke (Mishke), Garage Logic Host
Key Guest: Ropey Buckner (storyteller, subject of episode), Michael (listener and interlocutor)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Garage Logic, titled "MISCHKE: Ropey," delves into the extraordinary, rugged life of Ropey Buckner—a lifelong Ely, Minnesota resident. Through a mix of personal reminiscence, direct interviews, and narrative storytelling, host Tommy Mischke with input from loyal listener Michael, uncovers Ropey’s story. The episode explores themes of survival, hardship in the Minnesota north, brushes with death, and the gritty reality of rural existence. Ropey’s tales extend from family trauma, local prejudice, and Vietnam-era escapades to near-death experiences in floods, with poisonous mushrooms, and a brief, harrowing stint in the American Indian Movement.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. A Listener’s Yearning (02:55–05:17)

• Michael receives a surprise call from Mishke, sharing his anticipation for this very moment and reveals a phrase from Mishke’s past:

  “Is everybody happy?”
  A childhood touchstone and a question that sets the episode’s tone.

• Sentiment: The enduring impact of shared stories and radio—how elements from old broadcasts live rent-free in listener’s minds.

2. Remembering Ropey Buckner (05:25–07:21)

• Michael and Mishke recall Ropey Buckner, and Mishke resolves to retell Ropey's epic life story:
  • Ropey: A seemingly ordinary Ely man, whose deep life stories surface only when someone asks the right questions.

3. The Harsh Realities of Ely Life (07:21–10:39)

• Ropey details his grim family history and lifelong health issues, including cancer linked to chemical exposure (DEET) from “taking baths” in insect repellant.
  • Quote:

    "I've taken baths in DEET… Every joint in my body felt like I had an ice pick stabbing it." (07:21, Ropey)

  • His emaciation due to illness is measured not just in pounds lost, but in pride and identity.

4. Growing Up Slovenian in Ely (10:39–13:42)

• Insight into ethnic prejudice and working-class reality:
  • Quote:

    “We got rocks thrown at us walking home from school.” (12:51, Ropey)

5. Restless Youth & Haight-Ashbury Disillusionment (13:42–16:47)

• Hitchhiking adventure to California in the late 60s:
  • Ropey finds the famed Haight-Ashbury squalid and rejects hippie culture.
  • Quote:

    "People were shitting on newspapers in the corners… hippie scene… just a decay of humanity." (14:30, Ropey)

  • His path leads him to the military, spurred by conscience and a search for structure.

6. Army Life & Trauma in Germany (16:47–18:25)

• Ropey faces anti-American violence as a GI in Germany:
  • Endures a brutal assault in a guesthouse.
  • Quote:

    “They put cigarettes out on our faces… I still got burns on the side of my forehead…” (17:31, Ropey)

7. A Return to Ely and Survival Work (21:05–22:31; 36:00–38:57)

• After the service, Ropey cycles through jobs and homelessness:
  • Lives two winters in an unheated boathouse at forty below zero, surviving on netted fish and layers of wool.
  • Quote:

    “I lived in the cold for two years… You gotta have wool. The wool will take any bit of heat you got.” (36:00, Ropey)

8. Surviving the 1972 Rapid City Flood (22:31–29:15)

• Ropey is caught in one of the worst US floods while living in SD:
  • Saves people from drowning, experiences carnage and loss.
  • Vivid recollection:

    “My place is on its side and I threw the fucking door open... I didn't swim more than 50ft and the first drowning victim happened in front of me.” (23:28, Ropey)

9. Life Among the Outcasts & Lawbreakers (39:38–44:16)

• Ropey’s compassion: Helps a Canadian woman recover from miscarriage.
• Town outcast as a non-drinker in a hard-drinking community.
• Brushes with local law:
  • Poaching a moose for food in a brutal winter; fined but charges dropped due to the judge’s empathy.
  • Quote:

    “Anybody comes in my courtroom on a day like today, and our charges are dismissed. Wham.” (44:16, Ropey)

10. Death in the North: Dangerous Nights (45:17–49:35)

• Encounters with fatal accidents, including rescuing people (and animals) from certain death during subzero nights.
• Two deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning after a vehicle gets stuck in the snow.
  • Michael’s Reflection:

    “That story lives in me, too. As a person who's in Minnesota, like, you give my skin shivers when I think about it.” (56:23, Michael)

11. Brushes with Death: Poisoned by Mushrooms (51:59–56:23)

• Ropey tells of accidentally eating Destroying Angel mushrooms, leading to a coma and near-death experience.
  • Quote:

    “I died once... There were three mushrooms growing among these blueberries... I started puking... went into a coma... I left my body.” (51:59, Ropey)
    “You have to go back. I ended up traveling back. And I remember coming in—boom, there’s nurses.”- Ropey (54:10)

12. Reflections, Resonance, and Legacy (57:03–58:22)

• Michael and Mishke reflect on the value of recording and listening to stories like Ropey's, which illumine the grit and unpredictability of human life.
  • Quote:

    “You give me hope. So thank you for your work, sir.” (58:08, Michael)
    “Thanks for saying that. Greatly appreciate that.” (58:11, Mishke)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

The Unspoken Wisdom of the North

• Ropey Buckner, on struggle and endurance:

  “It’s hard is the word. The word is hard. Everybody new comes in with a fantasy of their own... Never does the winter ever leave you entirely.” (10:39, Ropey)

On Community and Loneliness

• Ropey, on being a sober man in a drinking town:

  “Being a non alcoholic among all the alcoholics of Ely, that'll definitely make you alone… I wish I could just pull them out and shake them… Spread those wings as wide as your arms can go and hug the world.” (41:20, Ropey)

On Facing Death and Coming Back

• Ropey’s near-death vision:

  “All that shit's just a little fuzzy Brillo pad fading away... It was beautiful. Unfucking believably beautiful, man. Any relative you have... all you got to do is a thought. They're there.” (54:00, Ropey)

The Ely Quality

• Narrator:

  “Every story Ropey told me had that Ely quality to it, that sense of being from a different world. Four hours from the cities, perhaps, but four light years away at the same time.” (38:57, Narrator)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro & Call to Michael: 02:01–03:28
• Michael’s “Is everybody happy?” story: 04:17–05:13
• Reminiscence of Ropey: 05:25–06:38
• First person Ropey: 07:21–09:01
• Ethnic divisions in Ely: 12:51–13:26
• Haight-Ashbury disillusionment: 14:30–16:47
• Army trauma in Germany: 16:47–18:25
• Rapid City Flood: 23:28–29:15
• Living in an unheated boathouse: 36:00–36:42
• Wilderness survival/mindset: 36:42–37:55
• Moose poaching/courtroom anecdote: 44:16–44:51
• Death on the blood moon, and carbon monoxide story: 45:17–49:35
• Mushroom poisoning and NDE: 51:59–56:23
• Concluding reflections: 57:03–58:22

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Summary

This "Garage Logic" episode is a testament to the enduring spirit and hardships of life in outstate Minnesota, seen through the lens of Ropey Buckner’s wild trajectory: from a boy in Ely facing abuse and prejudice, a dropout hunting for freedom in California, a soldier scarred by violence abroad, a survivor of one of America’s worst floods, to a loner who finds his place—and his own code—deep in the Minnesota woods. Ropey's stories, delivered in his gravelly, no-nonsense style, lay bare the cost and beauty of a life lived on the harshest margins. As a closing act, the reflections of listener Michael and host Mishke commemorate the power of listening—how oral histories keep hope alive and illuminate the hidden depths in overlooked lives.

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This episode is rich with raw storytelling, stark reflection, and the kind of wisdom that emerges only out of hardship. Ropey’s life carries the wild cold of Ely, the scars of struggle, and moments of pure transcendence, shared for the benefit and wonder of all who listen.

Transcript

[Tommy Mischke]

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[Mishke]

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[Ropey Buckner]

I need to get them every time.

[Michael]

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[Garagelogic Host]

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[Michael]

The Vietnamese beef stew.

[Garagelogic Host]

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[Tommy Mischke]

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[Garagelogic Host]

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[Ropey Buckner]

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[Garagelogic Host]

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[Mishke]

Hello there. What brings you here? Are you wanting to listen to something? Are your ears hungry? By the way, my name's Mishke. What is it you're hoping for from today's program? You have absolutely no idea what you're going to get. Snap, crackle, pop.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The show this time around is going

[Mishke]

to start with a phone call, a random call to a listener, a gentleman named Michael. That's where the show's going to start. But it will veer off, as sometimes happens when two people are talking. I hope you enjoy it.

[Michael]

Hello, this is Michael.

[Mishke]

Well, hello, Michael.

[Michael]

Hello there, Mishky. It's good to hear your voice, sir.

[Mishke]

How long have you been on the listener list?

[Michael]

Well, I guess it's over a year now. Because you've had. You've had your show over a year, right?

[Mishke]

Yeah.

[Michael]

So I guess just a year.

[Mishke]

You're a very patient man, Michael.

[Michael]

It's a practice. Patience is a practice.

[Mishke]

What did you imagine would happen on the day I finally got a hold of you?

[Michael]

I thought about it a lot, actually, for a long time. I imagined the first thing that I would say to you, and it didn't feel right, so I went a different direction.

[Mishke]

I like going with your gut. That first notion, what was it? Let's not bury that. Let's shine a light on it. What was the first thing you're going to say to me?

[Michael]

Is everybody happy?

[Mishke]

Well, what's wrong with that?

[Michael]

It's a message from your past. It's a message from someone else about a different time.

[Mishke]

That's a lovely, lovely message. Such a beautiful part of my childhood. The old man asking if everyone was happy. I'm glad we got to that. I would have hated to just go on to your plan B and never hear your plan A. Yes, perhaps that should be the way every show begins. If I did land on something and was consistent about it, maybe that would be it. Each show would start with me asking if everybody's happy.

[Michael]

It's a voice I hear in my head a lot asking that question. It's weird.

[Mishke]

Well, that's fascinating that it's found a place in your brain and sort of has locked in there.

[Michael]

Yeah, you got a lot of stories. You've brought a lot of stories to the surface. And those, they kind of just live inside. I hear Ropey Buckner's voice as well a lot. I think about Ropey's story and Ely, I think it was. And going up there living the cold life. Yeah.

[Mishke]

I should bring Ropey's story to this program. Ropey, of course, no longer with us, but his story is still to be found out there. I should bring Ropey's tale to the folks here. I hadn't thought about Ropey in a long time. The man from Ely with the rather extraordinary life. On some level, you would pass him maybe on the street in Ely and not think the man had much of a life. Maybe didn't have much to pass along. But when you start digging, wow, was there a lot there.

[Michael]

Yeah, agreed.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ropey Buckner is a lifelong Ely resident. His family goes back generation after generation to a Time long before there were even mines up that way. Ancestors who cut down trees for a living and fathered children through one night stands with what he calls tent camp. Whores, hard working, hard living raw and rugged. People who. Who struggled through the years, faced hardship and died young. Ropey Buckner fits right in. He's dying at only 66 years of age. He said he always expected as much. It's the way it goes up there.

[Ropey Buckner]

I'm supposed to be in a better climate where I don't feel any cold air whatsoever because of my lungs. My right lung has a cluster of grapes growing in it. It's a cluster of what they call nodules. And at first there was 1, 2, 3, and then all of a sudden the MRI picks up 4 and 5 and six months later, the MRI picks up 6 and 7. And now the MRI says there's a few more, you know, but the ones that were just the size of like, the tip of my pinky are now bigger. Once they reach a centimeter and a half, they're called tumors. My dad died of lung cancer, liver cancer and brain cancer. I've got a 1 inch mass on my liver. I've got a couple of polyps outside of my liver that they think are caused by things such as deet. DEET is the chemical we use in our bug dope up here. So all my life I've taken baths in deet, which is the mosquito repellent we use. We use the 100% up here because it's effective against the ticks. And, you know, Lyme is a big one. I had Lyme's disease also. I had Lyme's disease, pneumonia and hepatitis C all at the same time. Every joint in my body felt like I had an ice pick stabbing it. The coughing with COPD and this strenuous breathing uses every fucking calorie I put in me and leaves me starving. So it's like, where the fuck is this gonna end?

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ropey told me he's lost £40 in recent months. Unintentionally, he confided in me with tears in his eyes that he recently renewed his driver's license and could not get himself to write down 105 pounds, which is all he is now. Somehow it made him feel a little bit better to add even just a few more pounds. He wrote down 111. Now, this is not a man who cries easily. But when you take a human being at the end of his life, through that life, through the many years and the many memories, tears flow effortlessly. It Would be that way for most all of us. Ropey Buckner has a lot to say, as any Ely resident will tell you. He's a well known local character. Even ran for mayor one time years ago. But to me, Ropey represents yet another in a long line of unique human lives. Another unique human story. One deserving to be set beside all the other stories from all the different shows. I marvel at the arc of a human life. The complete picture, end to end. It's such an extraordinary journey. Wild and unpredictable, beautiful and tragic. I guess you could say I peddle humanity for a living. The human story in all its many forms. This time, a life found in the woods outside Ely, in a lone log cabin hidden in the pines beside Lake Chagua.

[Ropey Buckner]

Ropey Buckner, my mother married a hardcore World War II vet who was shot down twice in the Pacific in the 5th Army Air Corps. My dad took no shit from anybody. When I was a little kid, he threw me down steps. He'd beat me up in the middle of the night, come off of shift work. He'd whip me with a belt while I was in bed because I fucked up during the day. Ma would say something. All I'd hear is that dinosaur coming up the steps. There was no Slovenian on that side of the tracks. Who didn't beat their kids, even their daughters. You didn't use words. It's hard to live in the woods. I cut and split firewood for almost 50 years. Now I can't even throw firewood in the stove because I'm old. And that's the way the story ends for us guys. Man, you wonder why there weren't that many old timers. Even when I was a kid. I knew they were dropping off at 60, 70. I didn't really know why. It's hard is the word. The word is hard. Everybody new comes in with a fantasy of their own. They all have an idea of how the perfect environment, the perfect world that they're coming to should be. That's the world they want. It's been pumped into them. This is a mecca. This is a utopia. They get here, the weather's horseshit colder than a motherfucker six months out of the year. Rains. Three months out of the other six that are left. Then you've got three months of maybe weather, but never the California weather. Never does the winter ever leave you entirely. You don't become saturated by solar radiation to the point to where you're super comfortable because the cold returns after dark. So they come up here and they're faced with Mosquitoes. They're faced with all these things that all of a sudden make life not so cool. That's the best place ever, man. Fuck. You can live like Jeremiah Johnson. You can live like Daniel Boone. Bullshit.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The name Ropey is the shortened version of Robert with Finlanders. Ropey isn't Finnish. His family was Slovenian. But he grew up on Finn Hill in Ely, a town where ethnicities meant everything.

[Ropey Buckner]

I was stereotyped as being a bohunk from the other side to tracks. Raised among Finlanders, I experienced a lot of prejudice when I was a kid because I was Slovenian. And there were small enclaves in Ely across the tracks. We call them the Cousin Jacks, which were the Brits and the Irish and those that knew how to read and write English. They were on the south side of the tracks. The Slovenians, the immigrants. The Finlanders were on the north side of the tracks in Ely. We got rocks thrown at us when we walked home from school. We got rocks thrown at us walking to school.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

After his junior year in high school, Ropey dropped out. It was the summer of 69. He was 17, and he was itching for some freedom and independence. So he stuck his thumb out and hit the road.

[Ropey Buckner]

One of my buddies, we hitchhiked out of Ely. We were gonna go to California because of the Haight Ashbury scene and all this. We were just part of the exodus, you know, the migration. We were headed to California while Woodstock was happening. So people were going the other direction. We were heading out west anyhow. We get to California, he chickens out, goes back. And I decided, I'm getting up there. I want to see what Haight Ashbury is all about. Only 17 years old, you know, I dropped out of high school, I guess you would call it at that point, because I decided, I'm not going back. So I went up to San Francisco and I got into Haight Ashbury. And it was pathetic. People were shitting on newspapers in the corners of these apartments and that they didn't want any windows anywhere. So they broke all the windows out of the buildings, too. Because windows were inhibiting the vibe, the flow of the energy, according to them. Of course, it just made things cold that night. So the eight Ashbury had become a decay. It was just rotting. It was not what all of these flu. Flus were saying it is. The truth was everybody was getting a VD of some sort or an addiction of some sort, or going to jail. I hung around Berkeley for a little bit, actually got an apartment that I shared with a couple other guys. And I got a little tired of the hippie scene because there was nothing. They were just milling back and forth. But I started going into the youth. And I was sitting in on Dr. Lawrence of Lawrence Livermore Laboratory talking about the first cyclotron collisions. So he was talking about future atoms and things that would probably achieve anti gravity or perpetual energy, stuff like this. And I was only 17 years old, man. I'm sitting in the University of California, Berkeley classrooms and nobody in there. Everybody's just, fuck school, fuck this, fuck that, Burn it all. Let it burn. You know, the book's got to burn because they're not true. I'm listening to one of the most intelligent men on the planet. So my conscience hit me, you know, do I want to go back into that shithole they call hey Dash Barry, Berkeley, where all the morals have literally been stripped from people. And they're getting syphilis, they're getting vd, they're drug addicted. It was just a decay of humanity. Fuck it, man. Instead of being drafted, I was 17 years old, joined the United States army, shipped up to Fort Lewis, Washington for basic two days later, moved on and went to Georgia. Trained in Georgia, Flew out of Fort Dix as A. Graduated first in my class. I took 44 extra weeks of training in electronics repair. I was one of the first computer binary logic specialists in the US Military. The day Jimi Hendrix died was the day I landed in Germany. Guy come running up to me, he says, man, Jimi Hendrix just died up in London. I'm like, fuck it, come over here to see him. And that was what met me when I landed overseas first thing.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And you guys were hated by the Germans.

[Ropey Buckner]

They couldn't stand us, man. That war wasn't over with. We were scheisse. We were scheissehounds. We were shithans. We were. We were shit. They hated us, man. We hung their heroes right in front of the barracks I was living in. I could see the lampposts out my window. We hung them guys off them seven lampposts or how many there were there. The shop I worked in, did all my repair. Internet was the actual room or courthouse. It was a dining room for the SS officers. But they converted it into a courtroom for the Nuremberg trials. Where my section chief sat was where the judge in the Nuremberg trial sat, where he passed judgment and all.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Nim guys, how did they exhibit their hatred for you?

[Ropey Buckner]

They would definitely put your head into the cobblestone. Everything was still cobblestone. We were assaulted right and left. I got pushed in front of streetcars I got ganged on. I got tortured one night in a guest house. Me and another guy got cornered. They put cigarettes out on our faces. They put cigarettes out on our arms. We tried to fight, they'd hold us down. I still got burns on the side of my forehead where they tried to get me in the eyes. I think one of these spots over here is from one of them. The owner of the place couldn't stand the smell of our flesh anymore burning, so he called the cops. And that was the only way we got out. We were dead men otherwise.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

How many cigarettes were put out on you guys?

[Ropey Buckner]

I bet you 50 our skin was burning.

[Mishke]

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[Mishke]

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[Tommy Mischke]

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[Mishke]

We'll now return to the story of Ropey. Ropey Buckner. He returned from the service in 1972. He returned to Ely, a man no longer that kid who hitchhiked away from Ely in his teens, heading for the West Coast. No, he had done a lot of growing up, but his old man didn't see him any differently. And Ropey realized his father was still going to try to be the disciplinarian. They got in a physical altercation, father and son, and Ropey realized he had to leave once again. He put out his thumb, once again heading west, hitchhiking somewhere, but he didn't know where. The first place he decided to make a home was Rapid City, South Dakota. Something about it appealed to him. And this is where we'll pick up the story.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Unbeknownst to Ropey, he had picked the absolute worst time to make a home In Rapid City, S.D. it was June of 72, and the town was about to experience one of the worst flash floods in US History. Ropey was umping a Little League double header when the first raindrops started to fall. Two innings into the second game, he was hearing thunder and he called the game as league rules demanded. Within a couple of hours, he was back at his trailer home, noticing a small lake forming on the ground outside. But no one knew that in a matter of just a few short hours, up to 15, 15 inches of rain would create conditions in the Black Hills that night that would cause the nearby dam to break wide open and a harrowing tsunami to come tearing through the darkness.

[Ropey Buckner]

The dam broke loose and it just literally wiped shit out like a tidal wave. And everything just turned a fucking hayride, man. I mean, the craziest carnival ride you ever been on. I was in a trailer. It lifted it right on up, tore all the anchoring off of it. There were two rows of trailers behind the row I was in, and it just accordioned. The whole fucking works, just crushed all the trailers behind me. My place is on its side and I threw the fucking door open. I jump up and down and I hoist myself up and I'm looking around like, you know, like the gopher to come out of old. It's pitch black. So right away it's abandoned ship, fine shore. You know, I dove in. I didn't swim more than 50ft. And the first drowning victim happened in front of me. I heard somebody screaming, struggling. And I heard after that, there were people hanging in trees, corpses washing up against the shore. And I'm swimming out to these houses, and they're just rooftops. And I was swimming back to shore with people. Because I knew how to swim. And I had learned first aid training and swimming and rescue and all of that at the Ely High School. So anyway, I get over to shore and I hear the wailing. You could hear the wailing. And it goes way up, and then it come back down. And then it go back up and then come back down. It was just as if somebody would quit screaming. The guy behind him would start screaming. It was just the most surreal, unbelievable. And the water is starting to light on fire. Because of all these oils and stuff that were lifted by the water. Home heating and all that got ripped away, you know. And there are underground LP lines going to houses. And they were ruptured. And the gas was coming up. The water that was ignited, you know, the oil, gasoline, stuff on the water that was sliding through. There's sheets of fire coming past. I was swimming in this shit, out to houses, out to trees. Bringing people back to shore on my back or pulling them, you know, the old rescue method, you know, just lay on your back. I'll hold your head up. I'll get you to shore. Stuff like this. Little old ladies, little old men, same shit. Big fat lady hanging in the tree. I brought her to shore and she wouldn't get off of me. She tried drowning me. She tried drowning me. When I was bringing her in, she was so panicked. She just kept climbing on top of me, pushing me under, you know. I had to settle her down.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Help me out. On understanding the screaming thing so that. Where is that coming from?

[Ropey Buckner]

It's coming from the shoreline. The people that escaped it started seeing the death and the destruction. And they had friends and family that were in the houses that got wiped out. There was nothing left. In the morning when everything settled out, there was nothing there. It was gone. It was 20 miles away from Rapid City. They were finding debris from the flood. Here's another part of this night, man, and this is the heaviest that happened to me. I was on the other side of a bridge. And on the other side were four or five fire engines and ambulances. And they did not know if the bridge was out. Because the water was running over the road. And over the bridge. It had risen 18ft. And the water was running across over the bridge. They didn't know if it was out, that current was a strong motherfucker because I was literally at an angle like this, at more than a 45 degree angle, walking against that water, my combat boots, because I was still wearing my combat boots. My combat boots were like razor blades digging into the pavement of that bridge, pushing against the water, the water coming around me. I walked all the way across that motherfucker, man. I get across the other side. Fuck, man, get over there. There's lots of people that are hurting. There's dead people laying every fucking way. And those fire engines, they start pushing through that fucking water. They went across.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

It was by you walking across that they learned that there was a bridge there.

[Ropey Buckner]

Yes, sir, I can walk it out of the fucking dark. Come walking out of the dark, those guys were like, holy fuck. They fired up their fire engines and ambulances. We still see the wake that the water was above the fucking tires, man. I can still see the fucking wake. It's a wonder it didn't wash the fucking fire engines away because they were so long. And 10 o' clock in the morning, I'm still plucking shit out of muck, man. Any hand, any corpse, anything like that, we just pulled it out, you know. Pickup trucks were coming to get them. They took them up to the gymnasium, which was only a couple blocks away from where most of the, the corpses were. We'd throw somebody in the back of a pickup truck, they'd run them up there, they'd hose them off, they'd put them on a gurney, run them in, toe tag them and throw a sheet over them. And there were five rows of 50 bodies, while four rows of 50. And the other row had 39 in it. When I looked about 4 o' clock in the afternoon that day, it was the girl we were looking for. We were looking for the body. There's one Indian boy, flips this door. He had been walking on it all fucking day, man. He flips this door over and we hear the screams. There's this four year old girl in her pajamas.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

When you say you were walking over this door all day, you were stepping on it.

[Ropey Buckner]

Yeah, it was like a little bridge for us, you know.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

And someone decided to lift it up.

[Ropey Buckner]

Right at the end of the day, this Indian kid threw this fucking door over and there she was, she was in her pajamas still. Most of the children that died were in their pajamas. And you know what hit him? All he woke up to was fighting water. They drowned. Her aunt was about 50ft away from me and I see she was going down because it was her niece. So I just ran over to her as fast as I could, grabbed her while she was going down. Because, you know, people were fading right and left when they saw the dead. Anyway, I'm holding on to this girl and believe it or not, she and I stuck together for about 18 months after that. Went up and lived on an Indian reservation in Mobridge. Boy, I don't know how much I should get into this one with you. The American Indian Movement, I trained them. When Pine Ridge went down, I was part of teaching them how to shoot guns. I got to know a bunch of Indians because of the girl I was with. And little by little they kept asking me questions, coming over, wanting to know about military tactics and stuff like that. I shouldn't be talking about this because these are facts that the FBI and other people, when they did their investigations after the Wounded Knee incident, Pine Ridge incident, they don't know about this stuff. They don't know that me and lawyers walked into hock shops and I inspected the weapons and put them in the briefcases of the lawyers who actually paid for them and closed the briefcase and never touched them. The lawyers for the American Indian Movement were buying weapons right and left. That's where all the guns for everybody was coming from. Nobody could question a liar.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ropey would spend the rest of his days dealing with a post traumatic stress diagnosis from his time in Rapid City. Not too long after leaving South Dakota, he would quit drinking, something he has stuck with for over 45 years. He would become a restless soul, wandering the country, working in oil fields or as an over the road trucker or in a sawmill, making his living any way he could. By the late 70s, he would find his way back home, back to Ely. Back to the world he had first left in 69. The old stomping grounds were calling. It was time. This would remain home for the rest of his life.

[Mishke]

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[Grainger Representative]

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[Mishke]

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[Ropey Buckner]

I lived in A cold for two years while I was going to work at the mine and also going to college. I went to college at Vermillion. While I was working at the mine. Paid for my college credits out of my pocket. Instead of using the GI Bill because I was employed. The GI Bill would not pay you if you were employed. You had to buy your own shit. So I had no heat. I was just wearing the wool because it saved my ass. You got to have wool. The wool will take any bit of heat you got. And like a little glow, man, will amplify that heat and preserve it. So anyway, I lived for two years in the cold. Two winters without heat in a boathouse on the lake.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

How do you survive?

[Ropey Buckner]

Well, I netted a shitload of fish. And I had them up on the roof under snow. And I threw together a fire outside. I wore enough gear to be self sufficient or self contained. My body was protected by my clothing. I'd crawl into my sleeping bags and my blankets at night. And I'd just curl up underneath them. No matter how cold it'd be outside. My body would generate enough. Like a beaver inside of a den and wake up next morning. And boots. Sometimes we froze like motherfuckers. But I get them on my feet eventually start walking around. And no matter how bad it gets. If you think of a hydrogen bomb going off, that flash, all of a sudden you get warm. Imagine yourself being in the cold. All of a sudden nothing has color. Everything's black and white. You're going to need a boost. And you're going to have to do it with your own mind. You have to take your own mind and put it to work. You have something to reinforce you. And that's your imagination. No matter how bad it gets, you're going to see your way on through. How do you overcome fear? How do you overcome the unknown? Power up. You got to power up.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

In the 1980s, Ely was economically depressed. The mines had shut down. Ropey was one of the last guys to mine iron ore out of the ground in the wilderness around Ely. Land suddenly became for sale dirt cheap. So he took a small loan and bought some of it on Lake Chagua. $9 a shoreline foot. It was selling for by himself. He cut down trees and on his own built himself a log cat cabin. The one he still calls home. Never any electricity, never any running water. He fashioned a homemade wood burning stove. That still serves for his heat today. Though it's exhausting for him now to even place logs inside it. With snowmobiles banned by the Government. Ropey bought a sled and got himself some sled dogs. Davy Crockett, Jeremiah Johnson, Daniel Boone.

[Mishke]

No.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ropey Buckner, child of Ely. Wildly different from those who visit with their BWCA permits and camping vacation packages. More of a throwback, really. A man who followed his own internal compass and rarely checked to see if it was in compliance with local laws. Every story Ropey told me had that Ely quality to it, that sense of being from a different world. Four hours from the cities, perhaps, but four light years away at the same time. This was a typical introduction to a Ropee story.

[Ropey Buckner]

I ran into this Indian girl who was having a miscarriage on a bar stool.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

You had no idea where it was going, but in its own unique way, it would reveal something about the man. A kind of native intelligence or frontier wisdom that he'd developed over the years.

[Ropey Buckner]

She was from Kenora, Ontario. Canadian girl across the border. Well, one of our Ely boys went up there, got all fucked up. Came back with her, drunk as hell, dumped her. I felt sorry for her, took her under my wing. And she was having a miscarriage. She was infected four months pregnant. Fetus was infected. Go up to the clinic. This girl's bad shape. She's got to go to Women's Methodist Hospital in Minneapolis and they have to do a late term abortion because her fetus is infected. It's going to infect her or kill her. Baby's probably already dying. After she heals up, we hitchhiked out to California. This was all because she needed to heal. And geographical relocation is one of the best ways of treating somebody having mental problems, even physical problems, because all of the dependency around them is gone. And they have to depend on what they need first and foremost so they heal faster. They don't have any outside distractions, so their mind will challenge itself and come to quiescence with their troubles or problems.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

Ropey was not a drinker. And in Ely that meant being a loner. He went to bars because that's where the people were, but he never quite

[Ropey Buckner]

fit in, you know, I was definitely a loner. Being a non alcoholic among all the alcoholics of Ely, that'll definitely make you alone. We could walk into a bar today and we would see the same people that were there when I returned home in 1972. Same people, same places. They've been in that bar ever since. You know, I mean, it's sad. I mean, I wish that I could just pull them out and shake them, man, awaken them, you know, to say, listen, it's a vibrant World. Do something good with yourself. You got a heart. Spread those wings as wide as your arms can go and hug the world.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

The world Ropey often hugged was not the world of humanity as much as the world of nature. He had Ely in him deep down, and that meant staying near the wilderness and spending the hours taking on the elements and maintaining an existence in the woods, much like a frontiersman. And from that life came those unique Ely stories that I never seemed to tire of. Stories, as I said earlier, far removed from the cities. Four hours south, 22 winters ago, it hit 60 below zero up on our northern border. A deadly temperature indeed, but one that you take on in Ely, sure as you take on all the rest of it.

[Ropey Buckner]

I walked that lake three times that day looking for a dog who had puppies. She wanted to have the pups. She went outside. I didn't know that. She disappeared under the house. There was a set of fresh tracks going across the lake. Well, evidently, she must have gone across the lake and come back or some stupid shit, I don't know. But I followed that fresh track track three times I walked across that lake. I finally found her at the end of the day under the shack with eight puppies. Four were alive, four were dead, four were frozen to death. She pushed them behind her and she had four of them tucked in. I crawled in and one by one, I took them puppies away from her, run them upstairs, threw them under a fucking blanket. When I got the last puppy, she followed me right upstairs, threw that pup under the blanket, lifted her blanket up. She jumped up on the bed, curled up. Baby, you're safe. 60 fucking blow.

[Mishke]

That very same day, Ropey had to go to court for having killed a moose out of season for food. Ropey tended to live like it was the 19th century, not the 20th. And he hunted that way as well. And that often got him in trouble with the law.

[Ropey Buckner]

Shot a moose and prepped it all up. Made 400 pounds of moose meat into jerky. And game wardens raided my place. $3,500 fine plus restitution to put a moose back in the wilderness. That judge comes in, he's still got his mukluks on, winter clothes on, big old winter jacket, big old black judge's jacket with the big old fur around the neck. You know, he's still wearing that when he come in the courtroom. Anybody comes in my courtroom on a day like today, and our charges are dismissed. Wham.

[Mishke]

There was another story Ropey passed along. It was about a night when he was out on the Road. During a total lunar eclipse, the Earth was passing between the sun and the moon, casting its shadow on the lunar surface. Instead of turning dark in those instances, the moon often appears deep red. And these nights are often called the night of the blood.

[Ropey Buckner]

Moon, the shadow of the earth was covering the moon. It turns color during those. Going down the road, eclipse starts happening. Moon's blood red in front of me, there's a car stopped in the road. Moon's blood red. Fucking car parked right in the middle of the road. Tires were on each side of the center line. Perfect. Stop my car. And I'm thinking, no, no, don't get out of the car. This is a setup of some sort. Right as you get out of the car, as soon as you walk up to the other guy's car, they jump in yours and take it. Car ain't moving, brake lights are on. What the fuck's the deal? So I did get out of my car. I pulled up beside him first. Here's an old guy. Hey, mister. Hey, mister. Doors were all locked. I couldn't get in. Cars in drive. Foot's on the brake pedal. I'm worried about his foot slipping off the brake pedal. So I parked my car, backed it up, right up against his front bumper in case his foot slipped. Sheriff's coming. He says, here's how we do this. He says, we always break the rear passenger window. Doors are all locked. Busts the back window. Reaches in, opens that door, opens up, gets in the backseat, opens the passenger door, opens that up, gets in, reaches over the guy, opens his door. Oh, he looks dead, man. He sure looks dead. Holy fuck. He's dead, man. Sheriff calls in 911 the dispatcher. And he starts relaying information. Gives her the car license plate number. She says, that's my father. Blood. Moon, blood red. The shadow of the earth was covering the moon. A couple guys come out to my house one night and I come downstairs because there's a guy outside yelling, hey, Rope. Hey, Rope. I come downstairs, I says, It's 2:30 in the morning. My old lady gotta go to work at 7. Oh, sorry, rope. Sorry. I hear them pull away, right? And vehicles leaving, going up the hill from the shack. Snow on the ground. And all of a sudden I hear it's stuck. Tires spinning, tires spinning. I'm about ready to get out of bed. She said, sounds like they got out, didn't hear nothing no more, tires spinning. So we both went back to sleep. Left the house at 7:50 and coming up the hill. And I'm going past them the old lady says, stop, stop. Something's wrong. Something's really fucking wrong. Stop, Stop. Fuck. Let them sleep, man. No, no, stop, stop. Something's really wrong. Something's really wrong. Okay? So I stopped, got out. I walked down in a vehicle. These fucking idiots got stuck. They backed down the hill. They sat there drinking beer and gas themselves. Exhaust pipe was stuck in the snow. Pitch black inside. It went pitch black inside the vehicle. I opened that fucking door. The fumes that had built up inside the cabin came out like black diesel smoke. Those guys are in there dead. Ran into town, got the sheriff, and the sheriff, he says, well, I've seen this quite a few times. Opens up the back door, takes the beer cans, throws them over the fucking car. Throws all the beer cans out of the car. I'm thinking while he's assessing the situation, comes back around. He says, insurance ain't gonna pay if there's beer cans in a car.

[Mishke]

I want you guys to do me a favor. If you're using the services of Minneapolis Saint Paul Plumbing, Heating and Air, I want you to text me, let me know how it went for you. Minneapolis St. Paul plumbing, heating and air. Imagine the years, 1920s. Hi. Here to fix your boiler. Here to install a boiler. The 1940s. Hello there. We're here to fix the furnace. How about that war, the 1970s. We'll get that air conditioning going for you right away. Notice you're watching the Watergate hearings. They just have such an extraordinary track record and today there isn't a place you can go in the Twin Cities and to find more skilled technicians. It really is a wonder to visit with these guys. And that's the thing I want to stress is visiting with them is where you get a feel for who MSP is. You get a feel for these guys and you say to yourself, this is who I want in my house. This is who I want doing the work I need done every time. And you just never call anyone else. Tell me about your experience sometime, please. 651-321-8949. MSP will now close out the show with one final segment with Ropey Buckner. Fittingly, his story will end with another wild tale from the wilds of northern Minnesota. Up until meeting Ropey, I had never heard of Destroying angel mushrooms. That's their actual name, Destroying Angel. They are apparently among the world's most deadly mushrooms containing amatoxins that often shut down the liver and kidneys, causing death. These all white, innocent looking mushrooms are frequently mistaken for the edible kind. They look a lot like the mushrooms you would see at the store. Ropey was picking and eating blueberries near Ely when he stumbled upon some mushrooms and decided they looked just like the ones he would see at the store. So he ate them, too. Here's what happened.

[Ropey Buckner]

I died once when I was poisoned up in the woods. I got poisoned on poisonous mushrooms. Went into a coma. There were three mushrooms growing among these blueberries. I was eating handfuls of blueberries. I saw these three mushrooms. Just ate them that fast? Thought nothing of it. I was brushing for the county up on the Echo Trail. We had brushed like 25 miles of trail before this happened. So I was swinging machete every day, right? And the only woman I ever loved in my life, that would have been my wife and the best friend I ever had in my life. She and I were real tight. And when I got poisoned, I started puking. And I thought, I'm just going to get down to Spring Creek, drink the spring water and flush out. I didn't know what it was. I thought I got beaver fever. And it got worse, though. I started getting cramps. I started buckling real hard under the cramps. They were knocking me down. I couldn't get up. I'd fall down, get up, fall down. I got up to the goddamn road, the cramps are so fucking bad. I'm like the Hunchback and Notre Dame or whoever, the fuck, you know, just all zombie, trying to go down the road, all twisted up with cramps. Anyhow, I got up to the road. Well, Gracie would come up during lunch breaks. And me and Gracie just sit in the car, play with each other, go down, jump naked in the lake, you know, do our thing. Then I'd go back to work. Gracie was a good girl. She was. Fuck, I should have made a big mistake letting her go. Gracie was a nurse at the hospital. So when Gracie found me, I was going to go just walk in a brush and curl up because it hurt so bad. And Gracie found me on the road. She knew something was wrong because she was watching me. Contorting, you know, she knew something was real wrong. We went down the Echo Trail. I swear to God, she was going 90 miles an hour. She went down Main Street. She had cop cars chasing us up to the hospital. Went into a coma. My body actually died. And I left my body. And as I was leaving, all of a sudden, the Earth, the sun, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe starts leaving the universe. All that shit's just a little fuzzy Brillo pad fading away down there. Everything is ethereal, super Purple, blue, clear. There's no substance to matter. And it becomes clear. Super fucking clear. It was beautiful. Just unfucking believably beautiful, man. Any relative you have, any ancestor you have, all you got to do is a thought. They're there to talk with them. And I called it an angel. There was no physical or any kind of form. It just said, you have to go back. I ended up traveling back. And I remember coming in, boom, there's nurses. What'd you do that for? Why'd you bring me back from heaven? And they're looking at me like, it's okay, you'll be all right. No, what'd you do that for? The dude I was in the other bed I went to high school with, he said, rope, I thought I was in here with a dead man because the flatlines went off. And the nurse went and got atropine and adrenaline and she gave me a massive dose because of the flatline. She was a friend of my mother's. She hit me with atropine and adrenaline and brought me out.

[Michael]

The emotional things, things that resonate with me in my life, they stick with me. And that Ropey story really, really did. I think it's the tone of his voice, this gravelly seriousness. It really. He grabbed me. The story about the vehicle, I believe, that got stuck in the snow and then finding his friends that had passed in the vehicle because the carbon monoxide had filled the cab. That story lives in me, too. As a person who's in Minnesota, like, you give my skin shivers when I think about it.

[Mishke]

In some ways, my visit with him up in Ely and my visit with the fella in the middle of Yellowstone, the gentleman who was the winter keeper at Yellowstone from 1972 on. Living alone in the middle of Yellowstone in the winter. A two and a half hour snowmobile ride from any other human being. There was a lot that was similar about those two. Ropey would have been a fine winter keeper at Yellowstone. I'm glad you brought that up. Getting me to re. Listen to good old Ropey, who I haven't thought about in years.

[Narrator/Interviewer]

So thank you for that. I have kept you long.

[Mishke]

A lot of people I talked to would have hung up by now and have said, I got work to do, man. At the very least, laundry.

[Michael]

Really do appreciate the conversation, and not only the conversation now, but the conversations you recorded and you broadcast because it helps people like me, the dreamers out there just know more about the human condition. You're really doing it.

[Ropey Buckner]

You.

[Michael]

You give me hope. So thank you for your work, sir.

[Mishke]

Oh, thanks for saying that. Greatly appreciate that. And I had a lovely conversation with you. Thanks for spending this time with me. Hope to talk to you again sometime.

[Michael]

Looking forward to it. Be well, sir.

[Mishke]

Thanks.

[Michael]

Bye.

[Mishke]

Bye.

[Michael]

Bye.

[Tommy Mischke]

Bye.