We seemed to spend more time outside those bars than we did inside in their comfortably dim, warm glow. But my bar bills were a fraction of what they could have been and I have never had such forearm and hand strength since.

With spring, it was time for him to leave ski patrol for a climbing ranger job out west. His last wish before he left was to experience one of the local small-town strip joints that slipped in before tighter zoning restrictions were passed in the 1970's. These places were icons, throwbacks to the boom days of iron mining and union solidarity where working men could be themselves. Rationalizing, they were more a tradition than a porn-shop. As Scooter claimed to have never been in such an establishment, this, he thought, would be a good place for his first. I knew better, but agreed with a couple of ski friends to grant his wish and accompany him.

The sign on the front said, "Entertainment Nightly, 5:30 to close." We showed up at five. Inside, an elderly couple sipped fifty-cent Grain Belt taps. A younger gold-chained man played pool with what appeared to be his girlfriend. A handful of dull-eyed men, ages twenty-one to seventy, sat widely spaced, fumbling with their drinks along a dimly lit runway at the back of the deep, narrow room. We sat at the bar, a comfortable distance away from the stage, and ordered.

"What time does it start?" Scooter impatiently asked the greasy-haired teenage bartender, in apparent disbelief with the claims made by the sign on front.

"Not for a half-hour," he said.

We sipped, the warm spring sunlight streaming in through a small window high on the front wall. Scooter finished his drink and stood.

"I'm going outside," he announced and slipped out the door.

I finished my beer, put on my light pile vest, and stepped outside. There he was, eyes focused on a point high on the building. From just above the neon sign, about eight feet up, to just short of the top of the facade about twelve feet above that were two parallel vertical rows of ornamental work, every other brick sunken in and then the next extended out past the wall.

"How can we get to the bottom of those?" Scooter asked.

He thought, stared, and went inside to check on the progress of the entertainment. Nothing so far. It was almost six.

The other two in our party joined us as we contemplated cheating--using the plywood and neon signs. We played around the base with the thin holds provided between brick and mortar and found, at best, some good fingernails.

Scooter went in a second time to check on the status of the evening's entertainment. "Someone just left to get her at the bus depot," he reported as he stepped back out.

I am still very sure there is a terribly disturbing story behind that statement, that idea of some young woman getting off a bus, alone, on northern Minnesota's thawing tundra and driving to some beer and pool joint to get naked for money. My mind created an image as tragic as I would ever want to know. I did not want to be a part of it. I did not want to go back in.

I looked up at the face of the building again with Scooter, this time with more effort and interest. I could see that the mortar was worn and chipped across most of the front, making for a series of finger and smear holds that might be put together by reaching wide and high.

"You can do that," I offered.

And he did.

I never knew whether he simply forgot in the excitement of the climb or just lost interest after the "being picked up at the bus depot" statement, but we did not go back in the strip club that night.

It has been over eight years since I have seen Scooter. I have just missed him, I have been told, by just hours or days at my home in northeast Minnesota, at the ranger station in Guadeloupe National Park, Texas, and in a climbing store in Jackson, Wyoming.

I stopped getting calls from people who still had some of his stuff in their basements about three years ago.

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