Making a Cake

 

Lucas

Lucas participates in many athletic events and has medals and ribbons to show for it. He is five years old.

Lily

Here's Lily putting on her apron to help out in the kitchen. She is two years old.

Dumpfnudeln

Mother Mary and son Clint search the cupboard for all the "necessaries" to make and serve up a batch of Dumpfnudeln (steamed noodles) that he requested of his mother when we came to Minneapolis. They turned out tasty; grandson Lucas even got into the act when he got to "punch down" the dough earlier in the day. Now if only someone would get interested in learning how to make lefse.

Mpls, MN

We are spending the week in Minneapolis, Richfield to be exact, helping out with the grandkids
because their daycare closed for a week of spring break. It is not a problem keeping them occupied. They're both smart, and at only 2 and 5 years of age can be shown many things that they understand and work with. Luckily for this old driver who doesn't like to drive in traffic there are places to go and things to do that can be reached on city streets. In the picture they are decorating bird houses that Grandma made Grandpa build while still in Mandan.

Spring Weather

Weather is often on our minds, especially so when storms surprise us. We didn't need this heavy, wet snowfall in March, but nothing can be done about it except clean up. An article I recently clipped from the March 18 issue of our local paper bore a Riverton, Wyo byline: "Search and rescue crews have successfully retrieved an elderly fisherman trapped on a floating block of ice on a lake in Fremont County. The incident occurred on Ocean Lake... The sheriff's office says a 71-year-old man was ice fishing when the piece of ice he was standing on broke away from the bank. It was carried a quarter of a mile from shore with the wind... The fisherman was stranded there for a couple of hours before he was picked up by airboat."

First of all, I was a bit perturbed when the 71 year old was called elderly since I just turned 69. But the incident brought to mind an incident I had on that very same lake in the spring of 1970 while I was the high school principal of the Wind River District. I'd gone to visit a staff member who happened to have had a small resort on the lake. He had just purchased three or four new outboard motors to rent out and wanted to try one of them out on a pontoon. For some reason my school's secretary and her daughter were present, too, so this fellow asked if we all wanted to ride along. Sure, so we walked on, he untied the tether, and we slowly drifted away from the dock. He proceeded to pull and pull on the starter rope, but it wouldn't even fire. By now we had drifted some distance from shore and a treacherous wind took control of the situation. The ladies panicked, the engine wouldn't start, and I knew it was time to do something about it. I found a small tool on board and tapped on the carburetor thinking the valve was stuck which proved to be the case. The engine promptly started and we were slowly able to make our way back to shore in the face of that wind. Afterward I learned Ocean Lake was treacherous that way because wind can come up unexpectedly!

Veins and Arteries

March 23, 2011

The face of the rivers around here changes rapidly. This morning I drove across the Missouri and it looked clear of ice, but the Heart River rose during the night and on it float thousands of chunks of ice. Winter hangs on, though; ice storms and blizzards have been predicted for tonight and on into the next couple of days.

Outdoor Restaurant

Just jokin' around. It'll still be a few days.

First Signs

Mary said with a bit of excitement in her voice that the daffodils on the south side of the house are up. That was good enough news that I took the camera out after supper to snap this. Snow has been disappearing the last few days, and I occasionally hear geese overhead. The Missouri still wears its coat of ice, but warm water from the gas refinery plant seems to spread more over a larger area on the surface.

Model A Ford

I love these old Model A’s! When growing up I recall seeing a few of them still in use. An old-timer in Sheldon, Pete Schroeder, drove this pick-up version around town, smoothly purring back and forth on the streets. A classmate puttered for years on one that he had acquired someplace, but I don’t remember if he ever got it going. My favorite memories of Model A’s though were associated with a local character, Bill Dunell, who always found one to drive; when one quit running he rounded up another. Bill seemed to support himself with a variety of odd-jobs: water-witching, animal vet jobs, trapping fish in the Sheyenne River, and shining deer in the sand hills. This story quickly leaves the Model A scene when it recalls his bringing a poached deer into bed with him one night because the local game warden breathed hot on his tracks and was shining a flashlight in
Bill’s window.

How can one forget how the famous poet from Sheldon, Tom McGrath, immortalized Bill in verse:

Bill Dee: last of the old bronc-stompers
From the gone days of Montana mustangs we used on the farms
For light work and for riding and the pure hell of having
Outlaws around…

The same Bill Dee of the famous removable
Eye: which he’d slip in your shot glass sometimes - O blinding and sobering
Sight!”

Well, anyway, that’s what comes to mind when I start reminiscing about Model A Ford’s.

Atomic Energy

So much going on in the world of atomic energy. Japan might not exist after their problems are all said and done; it’s the second time they’ve been introduced to problems with that form of energy. Even with their skill and caution in building physical nuclear plants they could not could have predicted or prepared for the awful energy that visited and damaged them in the tsunami. Yesterday I attended another session of “Conversations at BSC” where the topic was “North Dakota - the world’s third largest nuclear power.” President of the college Dr. Skogen, a participant yesterday, spent his military career with intercontinental ballistic missiles. The picture he drew of nuclear weapons makes one shudder. North Dakota has deactivated half of their missiles, those in the Grand Forks Air Force base region, but hose in the Minot region still can be fired off, all 150 of them. They’ve been deactivated in the Grand Forks region except for one, that is. One site has been preserved at Cooperstown as a museum of the cold war and is maintained by North Dakota Heritage Society. I believe a short day trip in this period of high gas prices will be appropriate this summer, so we’ll drive over there one day. It is said to be very well maintained and informative.

Last week’s session of “World War II Memories” at the Learning Institute featured a guest speaker who handles North Dakota’s Homeland Security office. He outlined how easy and prevalent the threat of terrorism is up to and including atomic weapons.

We finished the final class of the Institute’s poetry offering. I hate to see it finished, but now I’m fired up about writing again. The local management of the Institute is very open to suggestions for new offerings, so with my mind hungry for new material I suggested introduction to photography and introduction to good books. She seemed interested in those topics so maybe next session …

Dogtooth Hills

I have always been fascinated how place names come about. Mary's home town of Raleigh, ND rests below a line of hills called the Dogtooth Hills. Here is a picture taken in 1936. When driving by on the highway it is easy to see how someone with just a little imagination could have imagined a jawbone with canine teeth jutting out of it. I can think of several other names that have caught my attention over the years: Killdeer, Cutbank, Cache le Poudre, Wind River, etc. I should have opened an atlas and scanned it because there are many of this type.

Teddy's Statue

This statue is on Mandan's main street. I took the picture this afternoon since I was reminded of TR recently. Dickinson State University somehow got the rights to be the portal sight for Roosevelt's digitized papers. Now anyone with an interest in his historical perspective will need to go through the Dickinson website to get at them. That institution is proud of that distinction. Harvard University and the Library of Congress hold hundreds of thousands of his documents, but they wouldn't be readily available to the casual looker. Now, instead, you can learn anything about him you want to know on your computer.

Gas Prices

It is no secret that gas prices started rising again. Will the $4.00 mark be reached? It did not so long ago. For a session at the Institute yesterday I dusted off a poem I'd written at that time to share with my group.

It was time to mow the grass.
Gallon and a half of gas
cost me over six green bills,
think I'll put goats on these hills,
milk the nannies, make cheese
and smell that odor on the breeze.
Spurge spreads in pastures and everything,
so when the goats beget offspring,
I'll rent 'em to the highest bid
so they can eat and get rid
of that grass chokin' weed.
Hope I don't create a stampede
of goat-hungry folks to my door
asking, "When will you get more?"
I'll set up and register a brand.
operate with supply and demand,
sit back and salivate with greed
since I've created such a need
that the money will start rollin' in.
Now here's where the dream will end.
Wife'll say, "We've got cash, mow again!"

Used Book Sale Tomorrow

An event scheduled tomorrow at the Bismarck Public Library always gets my attention; however, by looking at the picture I need more books ...? Yes, I'm always on the prowl for a cheap used book. Many of the books in this bookcase have been purchased at used book sales. The Bismarck library runs this huge sale, selling by the pound, twice a year, and the Mandan library runs a big one annually. And I'm always checking out thrift stores, the best one for books being the Seeds of Hope store in downtown Bismarck.

A casual look at the picture might bring the response that that's not so many books. True, but it is only one of my bookcases. A similar one sets beside my easy chair in the living room, another is hidden in a closet in my study, and another in the spare bedroom next door. Mary might want to add hers, too, a big one in her office area. Oh yes, then there's the family history library in a closet upstairs.

Maybe my penchant for buying books can be related to this story of gluttony: "I went on a diet, swore off drinking and heavy eating, and in fourteen days I lost two weeks."