Job Got Off Easy

Maybe it's the stroke and grand mal seizure he suffered in 1997, which he says makes him "sort of numb, like on Novocain," and his mind "like a computer with a virus."

Maybe it's the fact that he's lived with a prosthetic hook since losing his hand in a machine-shop accident when he was 20.

Maybe it's because his mother ("my best friend") and two-year-old sister were killed in a fire in the St. Paul home he shared with his parents, two brothers, and three sisters. "I was 13," he says. "They found my baby sister under the crib. She must've crawled out of the crib and gotten down there. As I'm thinking about it over the years, I'm thinking that must be human nature survival tactics. Basic stuff they teach us in school: 'Stop, drop, and roll.' When Pops jumped out of the window, he busted his back real good, so he went to the hospital for the longest time and us kids, we went over and stayed with our cousins. Sixteen kids."

Maybe it's the eight years of sobriety he celebrated this month, and the institutional calm provided by the sober house he lives in near Dinkytown.

Or maybe it's the blues, which he has played professionally for most of his 49 years.

Hard to say. But the fact is, Michael "The Hook" Deutsch talks about his life almost like it happened to someone else. That distance—some would call it wisdom—allowed him to step up and "do his fatherly duty" on February 22, the night his son Michael II was killed in a car accident.

"Dad? Dad! Mikey's DEAD! Mikey's DEAD," he heard on the cell phone that night. It was Hook's youngest son, Miles, calling from the scene of the wreckage in Red Wing. Michael had been driving and hit a tree. Now the cops were escorting Miles home, but he was despondent and feeling survivor-guilt, wondering why it had been Michael, a new father, and not him.

Michael Paul Deutsch pere was born on April Fool's Day, 1957. He grew up in St. Paul, got expelled from high school for "regular hooligan stuff," and was in and out of juvenile jails. He received his GED at age 16, and hitchhiked around the country for two years. His memory of those days is all but obliterated, save for the taste of freedom that the road provided, and the street smarts he gleaned.

He started hanging out with blues players and learned to play guitar and bass. He played in several bands, but when he lost his hand, he switched to piano because an old bluesman told him it was the easiest instrument to learn. He bought an upright piano and an instructional book. After experimenting with duct tape, paper towels, and cigarette butts, he settled on using a rubber spark plug boot as a pad so the steel hook wouldn't slide off the black keys.

"For me, this was a godsend, this hook," Deutsch says. "Otherwise I wouldn't be playing piano. I always wanted to play piano, but I didn't have the coordination. Now it's one less hand to think about."

He was forced to relearn the piano after his stroke. "I didn't have the chops I did before," Deutsch says. "I was an award-winning player before. I was top dog. Or, I was getting good, I should say."

Deutsch has played with almost every blues band in town. He lives on welfare and makes a few bucks at the Malt Shop in south Minneapolis, where he's played a few nights a week for almost a decade—"for tips and a meal and spreadin' the blues," he says. His ex-wife cleans homes for a living, and at the moment they can't afford the $7,000 burial expenses for their son.

True to Deutsch's "pack-rat" self-description, his one-room flat is stuffed with knickknacks, gig posters, holy cards, computers, keyboards, recording equipment, various psychedelic baubles, and an ashtray overflowing with spent butts. KFAI (FM-90.7) hums in the background. He wears a black beret with buttons. The arm of his wooden prosthetic is decorated with butterflies, etchings, and stickers. On the computer screen are photos of Michael II, and the makings of a flyer Michael I has been distributing, asking for funeral expense contributions (which are being collected at Wells Fargo bank, 425 E. Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis 55414; 612.667.1334).

This is what Michael told Miles the night Michael II died: "Listen. It's not your time. God works in mysterious ways. It's not your fault." He repeated the advice until it sank in, until, he says, it "turned that cat around, and opened another door."

This is what he tells me, you, himself: "I've been given a lot of curveballs in my life, but I play for the moment. Since I've got the gift, I gotta share it. A little game I play with myself and my pal upstairs is, every day I'm still above ground and not underground, I wake up and say, 'Thank you. Now, what's in store...no, no, no, no, no. Don't tell me what's in store for me today.' I'm still here. I take it seriously. It's not often you get another chance at a second chance."

Jim Walsh can be reached at 612.372.3775 or jwalsh@citypages.com