Old Local History

It's fun to read old community history books. Our state dates from 1889 and that makes us 119 years old now; most of these books include early settler stories, even ones pre-dating statehood. I have in front of me now the Grant County history book printed in 1976. I took note of some of the nicknames people were known by: Rattlesnake Dick, Negro Pete, and Old Bull. Rattlesnake lived in the Dogtooth Hills near Raleigh, Negro Pete, a black man, homesteaded somewhere in the county, and Old Bull seems to have gotten his name somehow from a famous Norwegian violinist.

Help wasn't readily available. People needed to take care of themselves. One story told of how a man and his team of horses were filling in an old well. The horses' footing caved away and they slipped into the bottom of the well. He did what he had to do - shovel dirt into the well until the horses rose high enough to step out.

A young boy wanted his sisters to help with his milking chores each morning, but they'd always sleep in, sleep in, that is, until the day he threw a dead rattlesnake into their bed. After that, all he had to do was make a hissing sound at their door.

Cat Coulee John lived in Sims when he was a little boy. Instead of going to school, he preferred to herd, for pay, the cows of families who lived there. One lady never paid anything so he'd always drive her cow into muddy swampland. Another lady who never wanted to give him pay got her cow milked out onto the ground where it soaked away.

Donald Stevenson settled in the area. He owned a freighting company and hauled goods all over the region. One winter his train of oxen and wagons got caught in a blizzard near, I'm quite sure, the area where I was born and raised, Sheldon. A roaring three day storm prevented rescue of the unprotected animals and men, and 21 oxen died. Two men with a dog sled carrying mail froze to death. Recently I had a hand in getting Stevenson elected to the ND Cowboy Hall of Fame when I spoke in support of his election before an annual meeting of those members.

A couple, married in 1906, received a wedding gift of eleven head of cattle from parents. They, along with other families, drove them from Zeeland to a river ferry crossing near Fort Yates. Women, children, and belongings were taken across first. On the second trip carrying the men and the cattle, the ferry struck a sandbar and lodged there until the next day. They all spent a nervous night because they were afraid of the Indians who lived nearby.

The stories go on and on. I read them often to remind myself that the people who settled this country were usually deprived of the things we take for granted.

A Minor Story...

Our local media carried a somewhat minor story a few days ago about a locally based writer, Clay Jenkinson. He has earned a well-regarded status as both a writer and impersonator of various well-known historical personages, including Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Meriwether Lewis, etc. His book Message on the Wind: A Spiritual Odyssey onthe Northern Plains received mention in the recent September issue of Forbes Magazine as "making a superb companion in the waning days of summer." I own that book, have read it, and enjoyed it. I mention all this because of the epigraphs Jenkinson uses in that book; they are all passages from Tom McGrath's poetic work. Apparently McGrath has high esteem in Jenkinson's eyes since he used a number of these quotes in his book.

The foregoing is a feeble introduction to mention an article my son Brandon and his girlfriend handed me this past weekend. The Moorhead State University Alumnews carried a lengthy piece written by retiring professor Mark Vins entitled "Coming of Age at Moorhead State: the McGrath Years." While the article does not speak exclusively of McGrath, Vinz seems to have felt McGrath's presence on campus was a defining and notable period during Vinz's thirty year tenure.

From what I have learned about McGrath and his work over the years and why he has earned a dedicated following, I believe his stature was earned by his outspoken willingness to speak truth to power and how he detested "fat cats" who took advantage of the less than powerful working class. His poetry was the vehicle he used to make his views known. I will quote Vinz: "Tom McGrath retired in the spring of 1983, his life during his MSU years every bit as tumultuous as the times. He was an outspoken man, a man of extremes, but also an incredibly generous man, a profound influence on so many, and the source of some of the best poetry of the era - his long poem in four volumes, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, judged by many to be one of the great works of recent American literature."

Pictures: Dowser, Cap, & a Wanderer

We drove over to Lisbon yesterday to visit my folks. The photo albums came out, started circulating, and I chose a few pictures to bring home to make copies of. I was always fascinated with Dad's ability to take a willow stick and use it to dowse water. One snapshot pictures him doing just that. He'd begin with the forked stick aimed straight at the ground coming from the bottom of his clenched fists. Then he'd raise his forearms until his wrists and fists touched his chest, thereby making the stick parallel with the ground. He'd start walking slowly in a meandering course. Invariably something in the earth, presumably water, would start attracting the stick, and I would watch somewhat amazed while the stick started twisting and wrenching in his hands until it pointed straight down. Often times the wrenching was so severe that it strained and ripped the green bark of the twig and proved to me it wasn't some trick of his where he'd let the branch swivel loosely down. He always gripped it tightly! He said yesterday, "I don't know how scientific it was." I know there are a lot of naysayers, but I do know of a national dowsers organization whose members are believers.

In another picture, a little boy, me, in a photo booth, sits posed and looking off to one side. He's dressed neatly in a double breasted jacket and sports a beanie cap on his head. It was the cap that brought Ma to ask if I remembered it. "No, I was too young to remember that." She told how I always wanted to wear it. One day we were visiting at her relatives' Ted and Molly Strand's farm and I came crying that my cap was gone. They searched, and I must have steered them in the right direction. They found it laying at the bottom of a hole in the outdoor toilet. Apparently that is where it stayed.

The last picture is of me sitting in my maroon '66 Impala, turning the key to start it, and wearing a black nylon jacket and a straw cowboy hat. I remember it well, late August, 1968. (The old barn still stands straight in the background; the tornado hadn't taken it yet.) The occasion: I'm heading north to Alaska. Dreams of making it big up there raged like a storm in my soul. I had been reading magazine and books, watching movies, and dreaming, then dreaming some more of going there. The summer's custom combining concluded, and on the previous day I drove to Fargo and bought a sleeping bag, plus other items I thought I would need. The story of what transpired as a result of that trip is much too long to tell here, but it was the first day of the rest of my life.

Service to Citizens

Rare is the politician who serves his term of office and then quietly goes home to retire. The popular example from ancient history is of Cincinnatus retiring after serving the citizens of Rome. With enemies attacking their borders, he was drafted and appointed by the Roman senate to be dictator, and, by exercising a little muscle, surely could have remained in that job until he died. After the danger passed, though, he resigned to go home and till his fields again.

George Washington's tenure as president could have been a lifetime job, too. He was the hero of the infant country, had the support he needed, and could have had himself crowned king, but he served his term and went home to Mount Vernon. (Some folks still liked the idea of having a king.) His act of resigning the job established the concept of limited terms, the wartime presidency of FDR being the exception.

Ulysses S. Grant lived quite destitute until he published his autobiography, the last of which he wrote on his deathbed. It was only through the income from sales of that book that his widow had something to live on. His book, by the way, is considered very highly as one of the best autobiographies ever written.

Harry Truman was a member of the club. He could have carved out a moneymaking career after his term but chose to go home to Independence,MO and live a modest, quiet life. At the time he didn't have a presidential pension; that perk had not been passed into law yet.

I don't know if there are other worthy examples. Contemporary politicians seem to be wealthy before they run for office or rub shoulders with the elite after the fact to make their bundle then. It's refreshing to see the Obama-Biden ticket, both came from humble backgrounds and neither is rich. Biden has been around a long while and never connected with the influence peddlers (His reported net worth is less than $200,000.) Obama's service work has not landed him in the rarefied air of wealth either.

Comeuppance

I liked Michelle Obama's speech Monday night at the Democratic convention. She came across to me as being very intelligent, yet comfortably plain spoken. The time or two I'd heard her speak before did not resonate that well with me, but I can imagine some of the pressures the spouses of candidates go through. They are unable to perform well all the time. I think many in this country have unspoken reservations about their color of skin and how dangerously close the Obama family might be to inhabiting the White House.

In some ways we can't be faulted for having reservations. As children we were raised in a culture that taught us songs like "Ole Black Joe," made us laugh with radio characters like Amos 'n' Andy, and read us stories like "Lil Black Sambo." Reservations became learned,then ingrained. I had a comeuppance on a cruise ship headed to Alaska nine years ago. Just prior to a big formal dinner event, we found ourselves riding in the ship's elevator heading to the dining room deck. Mary wore a nice dress, and I pulled on a blue blazer jacket thinking I was well enough dressed for the occasion. A black couple rode with us, he wearing a tuxedo and she a formal dress. I knew there was a rental shop on board so I casually asked him if he had rented his duds. He spoke in a very cultured voice when he answered. "No, I brought it along." I felt embarrassed for thinking the lesser of him. I've only worn a rented tux two or three times in my life; this gentleman owned one. When we entered the dining room we noticed our attire fit in with many of the diners, but we had all been upstaged by this couple. Later that evening in the ballroom I again noticed the well-dressed couple having a great time with their friends, all of whom were dressed formally.

Prejudice is a two-way street. It comes back at a person. I worked many years in a setting where I was in the minority and suffered through their put-downs. Ask Native Americans how they like Tonto. Ask them if they like celebrating Columbus Day. Ask Japanese-Americans if they were fond of being sent to internment camps during WWII. Ask Black-Americans to say nice things about their slave heritage. As time passes, and with room for even more open-mindedness, I do think strong feelings of the past have begun to moderate, and that can only be good for all of us. Go Obama!

Who Knows?

What would you get if you crossed an atheist with a Jehovah's Witness? Someone who knocks at your door for no reason at all.

What waits for us on the other side is a mystery. Our Christian teaching tells us, but that promise is not the same for everyone who lives on this planet. Many plan for the afterlife with different interpretations. What was it again that Moslem suicide bombers go to? One thing is for certain: we will all find out in the future. Strangely enough not everyone agrees with our beginnings either. An article appearing in my local paper reawakened curiosity I have had for a long time. Since I don't have an aptitude for either mathematics or physics, I've never been able to interpret for myself the findings or theories that scientists hold, but instead I've needed to read the ideas of scientists who phrase in language that this layman can understand.

The major areas of persuasion in the ongoing argument of how we came to be include theories of creation, evolution, and intelligent design. The subject of the aforementioned article is a physics professor at Montana State University. I never think of MSU as being on the cusp of scientific research, but Neil Cornish studied with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University in England. That alone gives his work credibility with me. He speculates, "there is a cosmological horizon that we cannot see beyond - what came before the big-bang... " I think maybe he subscribes to the intelligent design group. Anyway, the subject set me scrambling to my bookshelves to pull out references to the topic. I find it fun and stimulating to read ideas that give body to the theories. Everyone thinks they're right, of course. so an argument constantly rages.

In the book Honey from Stone the author states, "knowledge is an island. The larger we make that island, the longer becomes the shore where knowledge is lapped by mystery...The extension of knowledge is the extension of mystery." I once heard a Jewish rabbi say, when asked how God came into existence, that that argument entails an infinite regression, and no one can think in rational terms that far back.

The arguments stated with my limited thinking are 1. Creation - God made it all in seven days, 2. Evolution - a gradual development to our present state from the simple to the complex, and 3. Intelligent Design - God set the evolution process in motion. Of course, the Atheist or Free-Thinker viewpoint should be mentioned as rejecting religious beliefs as incompatible with reason. And I'd better not forget to list agnostics, deists, and infidels. Maybe I'd better stop thinking about it and just have faith in a better day a-comin'.

A Well-turned Phrase

I love to read and mull over a well-turned phrase. I enjoy some of them so much that I've written them down in notebooks to refer to them. One of my favorites was written by a regional author, Frederick Manfred, in his book Duke's Mixture. This scene comes from a gathering of some fellow authors at a lake: "One day Robert Bly was holding forth, and after a half hour got about a wild horse and began riding over us all with his provocative theories and strong opinions... Finally Tom McGrath had enough. Robert happened to touch on one of Tom's territories with his sharp hooves..." I still remember when I read it for the first time and how well I thought the author used his words to explain how the participants reacted in this setting. Here are some more from a variety of sources.

- I saw FEAR in front of me like a monster.
- He possessed a bull-huge heart.
- Voices can become as angry as a blizzard...
- Knowledge is an island. The larger we make that island, the longer becomes the shore where knowledge is lapped by mystery.
- For the first time I became sensitive to things unsaid, that the waves of sandhills rolling toward the town held a stormy and faintly ominous look.
- And I realized that those golden wild horses of other days had slipped more deftly out of my uncle's rope than he knew, and would never be caught again.
- I await myself in the future. Anguish is the fear of not finding myself there.
- Let us cross the river and rest under the shade of the trees.
- Some day you will be one of those who lived long ago.
- The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.
- Why, a good rain would keep these folks entertained for weeks.
- Where you see a man plowing there will be gulls following him and pecking at the furrow.

Just Havin' Too Much Fun

The wind blows steady and the red line in my thermometer stays high in its little tube. I'm hoping expert predictions of higher priced natural gas this coming winter are wrong - 30% higher. Does the incessant chirping of these crickets outside my bedroom window mean anything? I remember lots of deep-snow winters, maybe another one is due.

Yesterday I sent draft copies of my book of poems to artists for cover design (that would be my two sons). I'm glad it's reached this state because, in its printed format, I noticed a few glaring problems that need rewrites, maybe even substitution. I have time, though. A phone call yesterday gave me another assignment, anyway, that's going to take up the next month of my time.

The local cancer society started an annual festival, for what reason I'm not sure, but they've been looking for entertainment. Someone gave them my name as being a cowboy poet, so here came the phone call wanting my participation. Rank amateur that I am, I still couldn't say no. So I'll be preparing for that event over the next few weeks. I am going to make it clear, though, that I don't want to be tagged as a "cowboy poet." I think a "country poet" handle fits more comfortably. Two half hour shows need to be prepared for. I pulled out the old six-string guitar last night, and it felt clumsy. I've been playing a little four-string lately, so I will adapt that for my purpose. I'll just tell the audience that I left it out in the rain and it shrunk.

Moon Shadows

Warm temperatures, dry ground, and clear skies have hung around here for a few days now. Saturday night we attended the Chuck Suchy and Family concert a few miles south of here and watched a full moon rise in the uncloudy sky. The full moon's presence
was not a phenomenon unrelated to the concert since Suchy has been setting the date of the event to coincide with it. The audience sat facing south towards the wall of the hundred year old Bohemian Hall which made it easy to watch the moon start its nighttime arc in the sky.

Sleeping with an open window these past few nights has let the loud sounds of a multitude of crickets enter the bedroom. I think on Sunday night their volume even woke me up, but maybe it was my sixty-six year old bladder crying out for attention. Whatever, when I walked past the window I parted the shades to look out and saw a strong outline of the house against the lawn, a moon shadow. Last night I paused to look at it again. Two days past full, the shadow already seemed a bit fainter, but it was unmistakably there.

The fact that I'm getting older and living in a city environment both seem to work against my awareness of nature and all its facets, but I remember life on the farm opened my senses to the seasons, weather, moon cycles, etc., and I still see a bobber dancing in the moon after Grandpa brought me home from a day of fishing. Cat Stevens wrote and sang a song titled Moon Shadows, "I'm being followed by a moon shadow...," a song about finding hope in any situation.

Birthday

Today is wife Mary's birthday, and we have a full weekend of activities planned for her. It began last night with tickets, fourth row center, for the Garrison Keillor Rhubarb Tour. It was a great night of entertainment, a three hour show that included lots of singing and, of course, one of his famous, long, rambling monologues that had the large crowd of several thousand laughing out loud and often. Instead of the tightly scripted and timed two hour radio show format that we saw on the UND campus a couple of years ago, this one gave us a bit more with an extra hour. Keillor is a true genius. Blessed with terrific memory, his ability to talk and sing extemporaneously amazes me, and he surrounds himself with great talent. Susie Bogguss, one of our favorite country singers, came to Bismarck with him and Keillor's band can play any licks. He also features a sound effects man standing beside him who reacts with appropriate sound and gestures when Keillor tells wild, improbable stories, some of which are intended to stump the sound effects guy but which never do. Three hours passed by quickly.


Today started with my gift-giving of a new bracelet for her to wear. I think she likes it. This noon we will eat lunch with some of her family, and then this evening, per her choice, I'll take her to her favorite eatery, The Texas Roadhouse. Later we will attend an evening session of a bluegrass music festival in Bismarck and listen to some good music.

Tomorrow, Mary will attend a breakfast meeting of her rose club at the zoo, and in the evening we plan to drive a few miles south of Mandan to attend our state troubadour's concert at the Bohemian Hall. Chuck Suchy and his family have performed there each summer for the past several years. Suchy has attachment to the hall since he grew up and has lived in that rural neighborhood all his life. He wants to keep the memories of good times there alive and talks of social events he remembers attending as a boy. Whatever, he possesses unique talent as a guitarist, songwriter, and singer and puts on a good show under the stars.

If she has any energy left come Sunday, I plan to take her to a movie --- Tropic Thunder --- for even more entertainment. Happy Birthday, Mary !!!

Standing in Two Worlds

Some things do not seem so long ago. The world I was born into was not so complicated as I’m finding it now. (For example with a few wrenches and a screwdriver a shade tree mechanic could tear down a an oil-burning tractor engine and put in new piston rings). Not many people can work on a vehicle at home anymore. We had an experience last week which I hope I do not have many of. Mary called me from Kohl’s Dept Store saying our car would not turn over when she tried starting it. With that, I jumped in the old pickup and drove over, not knowing if I would need to call AAA for a tow to a mechanic or what. As I stood there with the hood raised a gentleman waiting for his wife to come out of the store strolled over. We talked it over and came to the conclusion that our car had a dead battery. I did not have battery cables for a jump start, but Lowe’s is in that same complex of stores so I went in and bought a set of jumper cables. He assisted me in getting it started, and I had every intention of having Mary drive it home, and then I would then go buy a battery in downtown Mandan. She killed the engine. It needed to be jumped again. I raised the hoods again and hooked the cables up and told her to turn it over. Nothing. I reversed the cables. It started. Then she said some lights won’t go off, ABS and brake, the AC stopped blowing cold, and on driving it home discovered the cruise control didn’t engage. I had committed a stupid error of judgment by not being patient and hooking the jumper cables up correctly.

It was late Friday afternoon, and I did not try to find a mechanic, thinking I can wait until Monday. We drove the car all weekend as is, but I asked a car salesman acquaintance of mine if he could recommend a good private mechanic. Yes, he could, and I looked him up first thing Monday morning. Some good old boys over the weekend had told me, “Oh, boy, I hope you didn’t burn out a computer unit,” or “Man, you can really screw the engine up if you hook them up wrong!” I left the car at the shop full of fear that I had set myself up for a costly repair bill. Luck was with us! Our new found mechanic was a true fixer. In the end he did not install a single new part. Instead, he patiently went through a full series of diagnostics, downloaded schematics off the internet, eliminated this, by-passed that, etc. His final analysis found a wire leading into a fuse box under the dash had gotten fried. He pulled it out, scratched off the sooty coating, took a dental pick and scratched the inside of its socket, put it back together, and it runs perfectly. His bill: two hours of labor. I shudder to think how some mechanics would have started sticking new parts into it, and in the end might still not have found the problem.

Now, if I could get someone to show me how to run the damn publishing program I bought for this computer so I can print my chapbook of poetry!

Prejudice

"Reason has very little influence in this world: prejudice governs." William Tecumseh Sherman in a Civil War letter

I ran across this quote a few weeks ago and thought and thought about it and have decided it rings true. One of my dictionaries says it means a judgment or opinion is formed before the facts are known. A Ford is better than a Chevy? Mandan is a better place to live than Bismarck? Blondes look prettier than brunettes? Robert Frost is a better poet than Carl Sandburg? Private health insurance is better than universal health care? Lawyers are mostly a crooked lot? The US of A is the best place in the world to live?

All of these examples can be argued because they cannot be proven to the satisfaction of everybody. I walk on thin ice regarding one of them - my wife is brunette. It is in the eyes of the beholder, a person's opinions lean one way or the other. Hardly anyone cares enough to find conclusive proof to support his contention, even if it exists. Most of the time we exhibit an automatic reflex in matters of argument. People often think of prejudice in matters of race relations, but it goes further than that: religion, ethnic foods, governmental systems, etc. Ask a Christian what is the true religion and an ingrained answer will automatically pop out of his mouth. A preacher might stand and "preach" of the proofs he has, but a Muslim mullah could do the same thing.

I don't know the context of the Union General Sherman's written statement or what prompted him to write it. I have read Sherman is still detested in the South by some because of the havoc and destruction his invasion of the South caused during the Civil War; he laid waste a path 300 miles long and 60 miles wide, but it hastened the end of the Civil War. We in the North for the most part say that was good, while a reverse opinion is held by some who live down there. Prejudice!

Takin' It Easy

Like Johnny Cash sings, "I was sittin' here thinkin' about old times," I often find myself doing just that now that I no longer head out the door each day to work at a job and am free to do whatever interests me. I think I've got some of the same Norwegian blood as the man I will relate in this true story. We were at a 50th wedding anniversary party a while back for a couple who lived close neighbors to Mary's family while she was growing up. One of this couple's daughters had been widowed and then found herself a new man, a Norwegian bachelor farmer. She is of the stout German stock that doesn't like foolishness, when it is time to work you need to get it done, and now! A group of us sat at a table, and she related a story of her new husband who she told does things in a slow, sometimes dreamy manner, and even occasionally works a team of draft horses in the field. On their farm both a small flock of sheep and small herd of cows ran, and the new couple split wintertime chores, she looking after the cows and he the sheep. One morning they went out to do their chores. As she finished her share she went back into the house to work at household jobs, and waited and waited for him. Finally she worried herself into going out to check on him. She found him laying on a haystack. She wondered what in the world he had been doing. "Oh, I thought it was such a nice day, so I lay down to watch the clouds sail by." Her German blood roiled up by this foolishness said, "You gotta be shittin' me!"

At times I feel those same looks from my wife, but some of us are built that way. I often tell Mary that I like to take it easy, but when I nod off for an afternoon nap she is almost as incredulous as her old neighbor. Whatever, I do have several things I am working at, and I find myself further along than I thought on one of them. I have written lots of poems over the past few years, and I plan to self-publish a booklet containing some of them. Both of my sons are good with drawing pencils so I have asked them each to furnish a few line drawings to illustrate the book. One son and his family will be here this weekend to attend a wedding, and I want to give him a draft to look at and be inspired to draw appropriate pictures.

I have been aiming at a publication date sometime next winter, but after taking inventory, I was surprised to find I have more than enough on hand now. So I will be busy for awhile getting it all put together. It will be a chapbook in form. The origin of the term chapbook comes from old English peddlers called chapmen who took their wares - pots, pans, cloth, thread, etc. - on a horsedrawn cart and roamed around selling to folks in the countryside. Some of the items they sold were small, inexpensive tracts or booklets of reading material, thus the word chapbook took on meaning in our present day as a small, inexpensive, self-published book of poems. Now I'm ready to take a nap.

Speaking Truth to Power

Let us now turn to praising those who see world events and would-be leaders for what they really are and then inform us so that we get the proper perspective. John McCain recently spoke at the biker's rally in Sturgis, SD and told the crowd that he would rather speak to 50,000 bikers than to the 200,000 Germans in the crowd that Obama addressed over there. Yes, on the surface that does seem to be an appropriate comment since Germans don't vote in our elections. But last evening on the Countdown with Keith Olbermann Show on MSNBC he and Rachel Maddow interpreted the situation quite clearly: Obama's crowd of 200,000 people came expressly to see and hear him speak, while McCain's crowd stood waiting for a Kid Rock concert to begin which gave him a captive audience.

The most entertaining part of McCain's presentation was when he offered up his wife Cindy to be a contestant in the rally's Buffalo Chip Beauty Contest. You could hear the crowd roar as they hooped it up over that prospect. If John only would have known beforehand he never would have mentioned it. The contest is a semi-nude affair where all the contestants are issued a banana (your imagination can draw that picture). A self-respecting man of national prominence would not have suggested his wife's participation in such a contest if he had prior knowledge of it. Mrs. McCain, standing near her husband, looked embarrassed and acted like she knew the score. Maybe the following story describes what occurred when they were alone again.

Three men were at a bar. Two of the men were discussing the control they had over their wives, while the third remained uninterested. After a short while, the two men turned to the third and asked,"What about you? What kind of control do you have over your wife?" The third man turned to the first two and said, "Well, just the other day I had her on her knees!" The two men were dumbfounded. "Wow, that's incredible! What happened next?" they asked. The third man took a healthy swig of his beer, sighed and grumbled, "Then she started screaming at me to get out from under the bed and fight like a man!"

Snow in August

It's funny how in this August heat and humidity my mind turns to snow, ice, and blizzards, but that is just what it has gone and done. I was talking on the phone with my brother Howard yesterday to see how things are going out there since they plan to move and be nearer their son's family in Idaho. He said he was in the process of losing some weight and for some reason I mentioned to him that I remember seeing a picture of him standing rail thin on a snowbank in the folks' yard when he was a college student. Of course, I used to look much slimmer back in those days, too, but it was the depth and quantity of that snow in the picture that struck me the most.

I think the photo was taken by our mother in the spring of 1966 when we had such a terrible blizzard in early March which shut the whole state of North Dakota down for three days and left mountainous snow drifts in its wake. Dad was attending a meeting someplace and could not make it home which left Ma alone to fend for herself during that time. I was teaching in Bowdon, ND, and I and my roommates were mostly housebound for the duration of that storm. The night the storm began to blow had found us at someone's house so we were surprised to see the heavy snowfall when we left to go home. The wind was kicking up heavy drifts already, and I realized I would not be able to drive my car all the way. I had gotten to the front of a church near where we lived and parked on the south side of a large brick sign on its front lawn. Fortunately, I found after the storm ended that the sign caused the snow to part, (insert an image of Moses on the Red Sea here) and my car stayed clear of snow for the entire time. Many cars were completely buried in town town and often only a radio antenna could be seen sticking out. When the wind died and the sun came out, we found streets completely filled with drifts, so much so that National Guard front end loaders came in to help clear them.

That storm made a deep and lasting impression of those of us who experienced it. I have a book titled One to Remember: The Relentless Blizzard of March 1966. Obviously, the two authors, Douglas Ramsey and Larry Skroch, were deeply affected since they went through the work of compiling memories of the storm in a written form of 661 pages from family stories and photos and state newspaper archives. I read where my cousin's wife, Eileen Larson, near Lisbon was reported to have climbed a snowbank and stepped down on the garage roof and shoveled four feet of snow off the building to keep the roof from caving in. She stated it was touching the hi-line wires in their yard and that it was not safe for their son to play out due to the danger of snow cliffs which resembled the needles of the Black Hills. My aunt, Lorraine Devitt, worked at her job in the nursing home in Lisbon for over 30 hours before she could be relieved to go home and rest.

Story after story, hundreds of them, are recounted in the book. Since that storm I have been a great respecter of their power and fury. Each winter I make certain the trunk of my car holds lots of survival gear. Those hard times might come again when I least expect them.

Lots of This 'n' That

Yesterday I wrote of the war poet Wilfred Owen and his famous poem "Dulce et Decorum Est." I neglected to write that Owen was killed in action just prior to the war's end and that his parents received this news on Armistice Day. I cannot think of a better example of cosmic irony than that: being killed serving in a war he opposed.
...
This morning I drove across the old Memorial Bridge to cross the Missouri River but will never have that opportunity again. As of 11:00 this morning the bridge was closed to traffic which will be re-routed over the new span starting at 4:00 this afternoon. The old bridge served its purpose for a long time. Prior to its construction a ferry connected the two cities of Mandan and Bismarck, and only four cars at one time could be carried across, not counting assorted horse-drawn vehicles. I think the old bridge was built sometime in the early 1920's.
...
A savage thunderstorm with strong winds woke me last night around 1:00. It takes a lot to waken me, but this one got my attention. Light-sleepin' Mary sat bolt-upright in bed saying, "What was that noise?" She only had to wait twenty seconds for an answer when another clap of thunder cracked. Then the wind came up and all hell broke loose for about half an hour.
...
I just finished mashing up a batch of strawberries as per Mary's orders. She defers those kinds of jobs to me 'cuz she says her arthritis bothers. Whatever --- I just love that strawberry jam. It will taste so good!
...
I ran across a Garrison Keillor column on yesterday's Salon.com. I love his humor and his way of expressing himself. Among topics he wrote about was being tired from doing chores around his place. But, he said, as long as his mother stays alive, he is still young. She is 94, a "tall tree shading him from mortality." Whenever he wants to feel youthful again he visits his mother and sees his high school graduation picture hanging on her wall. He thinks it's no surprise John McCain likes to show off his 96 year old mother. The problem, though, he says, is that she acts a lot perkier than he. We've got tickets for Keillor's Prairie Home Companion show soon to be in Bismarck. The last time we attended his show was at UND and sat in the upper tier of the Fritz Theater. This time I bought tickets for the main floor, fourth row from the front.

A Latin Quote

Recently I have noted the use of a Latin phrase Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori in several articles. It originated with the Roman writer Horace and translates in English to "It is sweet to die for the homeland." As might be expected that philosophy doesn't have universal appeal. College students in the 19th century added to it by saying "It is sweet to die for the homeland, but it is sweeter to live for the homeland, and the sweetest to drink for it. Therefore, let us drink to the health of the homeland."

The first time I remember coming in contact with the phrase was as the title of a poem "Dulce Et Decorum Est" written by Wilfred Owen during World War I. It describes a gas attack. Toward the end of the poem he says of Horace's poem that it is "the old Lie." From what I've read of the horrendous killing and suffering on the battlefields of World War I, I would guess there were few of those soldiers who thought it was sweet to die for the cause. After telling of one who got gassed, Owen writes in his last stanza:

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Sad News

I finished mowing the lawn for the umpteenth time this year. Mary keeps fertilizing and timely rains keep falling making it thick and lush. If it only weren't so warm and sultry it would be more fun mowing.
...
I stopped writing this to answer a phone call from my mother. She had just received word from my cousin Lance that his dad, my uncle, Russell passed away. The funeral will be Monday at 10:30. News such as this always makes me stop and bring up old memories. He loved his land and his cattle and spent many years to build both up. He suffered sorrow such as when his son Merrill passed away much too early, and he experienced joy with the recognition he received for his achievements. As a young boy I always looked forward to the times when he drove his family to our place for visits or when we went to theirs. He carved out a good life from a meager beginning and excelled at what he did. May he rest in peace! He was raised as one of eleven children, and now only my dad and Aunt Evelyn survive.

Their Quest

Recorded history throughout the centuries speaks of the movement of people to find a better life. Biblical stories of these events have been written such as Moses leading his people to the Promised Land. European countries today are experiencing resettlement and mixing of different ethnic groups in their midst. The U.S. certainly has had its trouble with illegal aliens coming across the border to work for whatever wages they can find. Last night PBS on their show POV (Point of View) carried a story of jobless Palestinians crossing the border illegally to find work in a prosperous Israel.

The cameraman stayed with a group of them for an extended period of time as they struggled to get across the border, find employment once at their destination, cook their simple meals, sleep under cardboard or tin shelters, and visit about their dreams for the future. I don't think they played to the camera at all, and their remarks were sub-titled in English on the screen. They were watchful at all times for police and security forces, and one time their campsite was burned down. One of the men broke his ankle getting away, and his companions lamented that he was the only breadwinner for his extended family. You could feel their sense of loss as they watched the flames.

I thought it was high irony, but one of the places they found laboring jobs was in building a Separation Wall which, when completed, would bar them from coming across and finding work in the future. A vision of The Great Wall of China flashes across my mind or the Berlin Wall or the fence being built between us and Mexico. Obviously, no answers have been found for problems brought about from have-nots migrating toward the promise of livelihood. Fortunately, my migrating ancestors made a go of it.
........
This morning I watched the "Morning Joe" program on MSNBC. One of the guests was Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Carter administration official, who, when asked what his views were on escalating the war in Afghanistan, replied that he was very worried as to what the outcome might be. I've never forgotten a passage I read 25-30 years ago in the James Michener book Caravans where he wrote that no foreign power had ever invaded that country successfully. Russia found that to be true not long ago.

Plenty of Activities

Yesterday, 7-20-08, Bismarck-Mandan had lots of activities to choose from to spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon. We could have chosen among a melodrama at Fort Lincoln State Park, a violin concert at the old Governor's Mansion in honor of a past governor Art Link, strolling through the zoo, and touring a Parade of Ponds event. We drove over the Missouri River where a huge flotilla of pleasure boats cruised, so if we had had a boat we could have done that. Our choice: an outdoor production of Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" on the capitol grounds.

Shakespeare's work has never been a favorite of mine, but since his work survives several centuries, there is probably something wrong with my literary tastes. The "Twelfth Night" consists of a quite complicated plot and was very hard to keep pace with since I didn't have much knowledge of the story line. In fact, after returning home, I opened the internet to find a synopsis of the play. It was enjoyable to sit through, though, since I admired the dedication of the cast and production crew for all their hard work. Not long ago I read that a good way to exercise the brain is to read and comprehend Shakesperean sonnets, thought to be as stimulating as working a crossword puzzle or learning a foreign language.

I look forward to next weekend. A chautauqua event "Lincoln, Land, and Liberty" will be held at the new Bismarck State College National Energy Center. Its theme visits three historical figures who played a significant role in the shaping of the United States in the nineteenth century - Abe Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and Frederick Douglas. The presentations are spread over three days, and I intend to be there.

Call of the Wild

In the hayfield yesterday I scared up two coyote pups, not quite full grown, maybe 3/4 size, and probably whelps from the same litter. They showed entirely different personalities and entertained me as I watched from my tractor seat. One was wary and ran way ahead to disappear over a grassy knoll top. The other pup at first showed interest in me and my machinery, but that soon turned to aloofness and disdain. Unfortunately, I came to the end of the field and the show ended when I had to turn away. He had stopped loping along to yawn and begin looking at something else. A distance of only 20 feet or so separated us when we were nearest each other.

A large hawk sailed and swooped to the ground in that secluded field. He'd hover and watch for field mice that my rake exposed beneath the two swaths I pulled together into one large, fluffed windrow. It reminded me of the times I plowed ground under a canopy of seagulls that followed me from one end of the field to the other to dive and peck away at the worms and grubs I turned up.

A solitary person driving a shiny yellow pickup pulling a long, silver stock trailer drove past on the dirt road. I recognized him as the rodeo contractor who furnishes bucking bulls for national bullarama events, his family being the owners of the champion Little Yellow Jacket. I knew they had a pasture near the hayfield where I worked and that he would be one of a very few people who had business here.

It is always refreshing to get away from the city and everything we call civilization and escape to this wild world where few humans disturb it, where wild creatures are at home, and when, after I leave it, their world resumes as before.

Elderly?

My digital exam and the results of my PSA test were good, and the doctor told me to check back with him in six months. After I left his office, I went directly to the state dispatcher and picked up a new Chevy Malibu and headed to Fargo to pick up my rider who had gotten there to her meeting by other means. I don't know if it is old age setting in or not, but I was tired from all that driving and last night at home I didn't feel much like doing anything. As we had headed west to Bismarck in the afternoon, we had heard a news report about a man being rescued from his burning trailer home in Mandan by several policemen. The words of the story spoke of the policemen rescuing an "elderly 63 year old man." I turned to my rider and asked, "Did he use the words 'elderly 63 year old?'" She assured me he had. I could only imagine the copywriter to be a very young person who looked at sixty-somethings in that light.

The day before, Mary and I ate a quick burger in our neighborhood McDonald's. Just a block north sits the large Mandan rodeo grounds and oval race track combo. A good many horse trailers and pickups sat there shining in the warm sun with lots of horses tied in their shade. We didn't know what event was taking place, but just then a young gal came walking out of the restaurant wearing cowboy duds, so I thought she'd know. I asked, "What kind of event is goin' on over there?" "A family rodeo," was her reply. "Oh," I said, "does that mean there is something for all ages to do?" "Yes, even for you old-timers!" She turned on her heel and sashayed away in her tight jeans and ponytail bobbing under her hat. I turned to Mary and wondered if I look like an old-timer. She said, "Well, you do have gray hair."

I guess I'll have to relax and start reading the signs that point over yonder. It's like Springsteen sings, "Glory days, well, they'll pass you by/ Glory days, in the wink of a young girl's eye/ Glory days, glory days."

More Than One Way to Say It

On the editorial page of my local Sunday paper today I spotted a phrase written in similar fashion by two different writers with two different venues, one national and conservative, the other statewide and liberal. They were both talking about unchecked capitalism and the credit cards used so prevalently by shoppers. Their names are unimportant, but they both see one thing in the same light, one using the phraseology of "the spell of self-involved consumption" and the other wording it "the new worldliness of self-centered materialism." I thought this was a remarkable similarity and underlined them with a pen for Mary to notice as she sat reading and eating her cereal. She seemed only mildly impressed, and I needed to ask her if she was taken with it the same as I was. Apparently she wasn't; all she gave me were a shrug and a grunt.

Tomorrow I check in with the doctor for my semi-annual prostate exam. I've been through this procedure several times and can color the language in two different ways: a digital-rectal exam or a well-greased finger up my butt. Either way, I'm correct.

A poem percolates in my brain and has for some time now. It carries the theme of how things get said. Even though it is unfinished, it reads in part:

...where the newsman's words
have been rewritten,
weakly,
and I read them,
wondering,
is this what he meant
and knew to be the truth?

...where the words and style
of the poet
degenerate,
and its message deflates
to comply with standards
set by scolds and quibblers...

Time to Think

I drove out to the country early this morning to rake the brother-in-law's hay to get ahead of the hot midday sun. The hay still holds moisture from the evening hours, and the leaves and stems don't get damaged when the rake spirals them into windrows. The rough, hilly countryside south of town is beautiful at that time of day because of the way the sun strikes the grass and crops, and it made me wonder just how many shades of green color the land. Johnny Cash probably wondered, too, since after visiting Ireland he wrote the song "Forty Shades of Green."

Driving a tractor back and forth in a field gets repetitious and gives a man plenty of time to think about things. One of the thoughts that kept recurring was a reference that caught my eye yesterday while roaming around the internet. Lee Iacocca, the one who led Chrysler Corp. to recovery some years back, asks, "Where the hell is our outrage? We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, 'Stay the course.'"

A Google search turns up countless references to his recent book Where Have All the Leaders Gone? And if one thinks Iacocca should be discounted and is the only one who spouts opposition and disrespect of our country's leadership, he can be steered towards many other references of dissatisfaction. The recent issue
of The Nation magazine carries a lengthy article, "Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion." The gist of it is "multinational corporations ... systematically exploit the state of fear and disorientation that accompanies moments of great shock and crisis." One can easily guess some of the examples the author lists: control of oil fields in Iraq, global food crisis where agribusiness cartels control patents on Genetically Modified Organisms, a housing bill that shifts the burden of mortgage default to taxpayers, etc.

This modest blogger and his blogsite represent only a tiny grain of sand on a world wide beach. I wish I had a large front-end loader and a fleet of dump trucks.

Glory Days

I looked again at the Bruce Springsteen video of "Glory Days" on YouTube and was reminded of why it is my all-time favorite song. The opening scene shows him walking onto a playground with a basket full of baseballs to throw at a target as he dreams would happen if he were a pitcher. The next scene morphs to a nightclub, and he sings of leaving a bar but meets an old friend coming in. He joins him and they start talking of the old days, "tryin' to recapture a little of the glory of ..."

The song appeals to me on different levels, but I'm always reminded of the days when I played on a baseball team. We were young, 5th or 6th graders as I recall, and I can still hear Gary Marsden calling me one day all excited because someone had given him the go-ahead to find enough players to field a team. I've forgotten who sponsored the team, but some group - maybe the American Legion - stood the cost of a navy blue t-shirt for each player with the words Sheldon Midgets printed across the chest. I had equipment, a first baseman's glove, so when I asked Gary what position I'd be given, he told me first base. Wearing that glove often ended up with me spraining my thumb because whenever I caught a hard hit ball it did not have proper support built in and the thumb bent back too far; but I sallied forth, ill-equipped as I was.

We played a few games with Enderlin teams, and I remember a game when Gary Dahl pitched for us. Someone had gotten on first base who proceeded to engage me in conversation, then led off as he kept me talking. Gary thought I was in the game and threw a hard pick-off to me. I never saw it coming and still hear it whiz past me into the fence. He hollered out my nickname "Lefty!!!" as the ball shot past, and the runner advanced to second. It was a lesson learned: always keep my eyes on the ball. I'm reminded further of my second favorite song that begins "Those were the days, my friend, we thought they'd never end."

Tin Lizzie

Returning from the fitness center this morning I tuned the radio to our local NPR station and heard an interesting discussion comparing the Henry Ford era of car building to the present day's, the point being made that ole Henry faced the same kinds of problems with developing his cars: high costs and limited range. That story is being told over and over by the folks trying to develop an electric system of propelling the new models. If I ever wondered where the Model T's nickname "Tin Lizzie" originated, I learned that, too. The name Lizzie was a name commonly used for a work horse, so it does not take a stretch of the imagination to see how it was applied to early cars.

On the afternoon of the Fourth we attended a party at a neighbor's house. One of the guests there was employed working on the new bridge in Minneapolis which replaces the one that collapsed some months back. I asked him how wide is the new structure, and he stated they are completing ten lanes now with the potential of adding another four. Also, provision is being made for a light rail line to be built on its deck. Public transportation, in my mind, must be developed to a much greater extent than it is now. Our trip to Minneapolis four weeks ago illustrated the need when I saw how many cars were trying to squeeze into that city on Monday morning. The future will probably say goodbye to suburban sprawl and hello to inner city renewal and development.

While in Minneapolis, son Clint installed a "counter" so I could tell how many looked at this blogsite. The numbers probably don't lie. There were 402 "hits" this morning, so either my wife has visited it that many times or there are a number of people checking it out. I presume the latter, so being there are a few of you out there who read it just means that I will have to try hard to write worthwhile subject matter.

Every Day's a Saturday

I like to say that this retirement business means every day is Saturday, and I can do whatever I want. A favorite pastime for me is driving over to the Bismarck Library or the State Library or the Heritage Center Research Library or the Mandan Library or even the University of Mary Library. A visit to the Bismarck Library yesterday had me coming away with a book entitled Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends; Two WWII Paratroopers from the Original Band of Brothers Tell Their Story.

The story of the Band of Brothers, Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II received a lot of attention just a few years ago. I watched the movie made of it several times on the History channel. When I discovered that a fellow Sheldonite, Myron Ranney, was a member of that unit, I was especially interested in knowing more. A quick look in the index of Brothers in Battle lists Ranney four times. I found those passages and was reminded I had read something a few years ago that his father wrote in The Sheldon Progress after Myron had enlisted, the elder Ranney being the editor and publisher of the paper. With a quick trip to the Heritage Center this morning, I easily found in their newspaper files what I was looking for. In the August 20, 1942 edition he wrote:

"A letter came this morning from my son, Myron, saying he had volunteered for the paratroop division of the army. Myron is 19 and a former student of the University of N. D. The letter brought a lump in my throat and made it hard for me to work. He was not forced to go. But he loves his country greater than his own security."

I will have to finish reading the book before I can make any further comments on it, but with every day being Saturday I will get to it. This room in my house I call my Study needs straightening and cleaning, but I'll probably get to it some other Saturday.

More McLeod

While we toured the schoolhouse part of the McLeod Museum, I noticed several newspaper clippings they have collected regarding events and people from that area. One of these articles featured the brother and sister Crandall who lived hermit-like in a shack they'd tacked together somewhere out in those hills. As a child I remember going with my parents to their place to visit for some reason or other. Their dwelling fit my dictionary's definition of ramshackle: appearing ready to collapse, rickety, carelessly or loosely constructed. Their refrigeration consisted of a deep, narrow hole where perishables were cooled. She took the cover off for us to look down there, and I think that the small boy I was kicked some dirt down there by accident, not to be confused with a boy who spits from a balcony somewhere. I'm certain that county social service people would not let anyone live like them in today's world, but these folks lived to be old people so the lifestyle could not have been all that bad. At any rate, I do not write to criticize anything about them. They just represented holdovers from an earlier time and didn't seem to care about entering the modern world.

I'm presently reading the novel Gap Creek by Robert Morgan. This book was an Oprah's Book Club pick awhile back and has received other awards. Inside the cover flap it talks of the young couple "and their efforts to make sense of the world in the last years of the nineteenth century." In my mind I make a bit of a connection between the Crandall's and the people in the novel. The author is scheduled as a featured guest scholar at this fall's Theodore Roosevelt Symposium at Dickinson State University. I am making plans to attend again and hope I get a chance to visit with him. His themes are often of the hill country and its people, the hillbillies, of Appalachia. His poetry is especially expressive as witnessed by the poem "Squatting" which opens with this line: The men in rural places when / they stop to talk and visit will / not stand, for that would make it seem / they're in a rush.

McLeod

A few weeks ago a member of the board of the McLeod Museum visited with my folks who gave to the museum their gift of several of Dad's carved farm scenes. Dad has wanted to visit the museum since then, so on Saturday we took them there. The doors were locked, but a quick cell phone call to Clayton Johnson brought him over to gladly open up for us. The membership of that museum has done a great job in collecting and displaying a large variety of historical items in several buildings. Those buildings and the grounds are maintained well, and for such a small community, it is an attractive collection of history. A drizzling rain whipped by a strong northwest wind threatened a rodeo set up on the north side of town, but as we drove by, it looked like those hardy souls intended to go on in spite of it.

I never did go into McLeod much in my running-around years except for an occasional drive through, maybe to hang around their now defunct feeder calf sale or attend the Calf Dance held in a small hall on main street. We passed by where the sale barn still stands and memories came back of those times, including the fresh smells of strong coffee and barbecues on a bun mixed in with the cries of the auctioneer Col. Fahlsing pleading for just a bit more. I've never forgotten one incident when my friend Jens and I went to one of the dances. While he sat in his car, he'd gotten into some sort of altercation with one of the local toughs who punched him with his fist through the open window. Just Jens and I were there, but the other fellow had a small gang hanging with him. Somehow our placid sheriff Ray O. caught word of trouble and slowly strode over to us. As he walked to the scene I fell in behind him. As luck had it the bad guy was right beside me in lockstep behind the sheriff, too. Those were the days when I was haybale haulin' strong, and since I was agitated and wanted retribution, I took advantage of the opportunity and jabbed my elbow into his side, and then, with a muscled shoulder assist, shoved him over so that he stumbled and almost fell. I kept walking nonchalantly along, and the sheriff didn't even know what I had done, but we never had any more trouble for the rest of the evening, either.

Wife Mary had acquired a bit of the McLeod flavor when she worked in Learning Disabilities and called regularly on the small school which had Mrs. Herbranson as its teacher, she being the one who achieved national notoriety as being the lowest paid teacher in the United States. As limited as the school's resources were, Mary always had positive comments about the school and the job that was being done there.
The Sandune Saloon still operates, and I confess to having patronized it a couple of times. A combination store and post office round out the business establishments, but as the town's brochure says, the population of the town is only 23 residents with another 100 residing in the rural area. There are not enough people to support more businesses.

Before we left the museum, I asked one of our hosts, Ken Kensinger, to lay a museum membership on me. They have plans to expand the museum, and I was sure they would welcome the extra money. I always enjoy driving through the hilly grasslands surrounding McLeod and hope to visit again.

On the Edge of Thought

News of the country and the world ride high in the thoughts of many of us. High energy prices probably dominate the headlines. We've gotten used to the deaths and injuries of service people in Iraq and Afghanistan so that doesn't rate much in the way of coverage anymore. What I think will happen with the gas prices is that we will become accustomed to them, too, and some other matter will replace them. I do believe in conspiracy theorists, and I think they know full well that the mindset of the economy will adjust and come to accept big oil's increasingly high prices. I also believe that we are bound by customs, habits, traditions, and dogma, so much so that we cannot break those chains and can only wish for someone to do it for us.

On the edge of thought, knowledge
and insight lie desert-like
beyond that ragged ridge. Years
squandered, deep understanding
sprints ahead, just out of reach.
Limitless hopes get replaced
by limited achievements.

Thoughts fired by a rising sun
dim, then hide under dark clouds
of tradition and dogma.
Wondering years set in late;
then our heading's determined
not by maps of reasoning,
but bee-lines of prejudice.

Desires of materialism
supercede contemplation,
and because we could not stop
it, the shadow of a life's
day has lengthened twice its height.
Who can bring change to a world
that prevents or resents it?

From on High, Part III

I return to my tale of waste and excreta
when I'd sit in the grass and soil my seat-a.
Days are recalled of the shade tree mechanic
who quickly found things could be problematic.

That's mechanic me under that plow with a wrench
feeling a moist spot, accompanied by stench.
I wondered, "Now, what could that be?"
Then I'd hear a gaggle of geese laughing at me.

Or maybe I'd kneel to feed a bottle lamb,
and then, uh oh, too late I felt chicken jam
soak through the knee of my pants,
setting me off on profanity-laced rants.

And there'd be that rooster standing so proud,
cocky, and crowing. Oh, for a thundercloud
to send down a bolt of white lightning
so I could watch his feathers brightening!

A duck and a dozen ducklings enter the scene
eating and spewing like a mindless machine.
But, one thing, they and the others will be able
to get served up, succulent, on the dining table.

This saga's going to have to cease,
I'm tired of talking of the grease
comin' from the rear ends of these creatures.
Tales of a mess found on outdoor bleachers,

the bombarding seagulls while plowing cornstalks,
or sparrow attacks strolling down sidewalks,
they're all just really part of the game,
and I shouldn't he holding helpless critters to blame.

Farewell, good-bye, so long, auf Wiedersehn,
shalom, dosvidanye, see you later, 'til we meet again.

From on High, Part II

After this short one day interlude
I'll conclude there's lots of latitude
to relate this tale of excrement
falling from places as punishment

for being in a place at the wrong time.
I'll continue with the time I earned a dime
for each pile of cow manure I'd load,
then spread like an a la mode

topping which we used to enrich the fields,
increase fertility, therefore improve yields.
I liked this job more than picking potato bugs
at a nickel a hundred that I'd stuff in jugs.

That was Ma's idea of an incentive project.
Fortunately, I had the opportunity to select
one of the two, so if I had a job to do,
I'd take pitching forks full of barnyard pew.

Now, to a farmboy that isn't such a bad job,
except when it's soft, it oozes like blob
right through the tines of your fork,
splatters on your pants, smell like a dork!

The box on our honey wagon was short,
therefore just big enough to transport
lots of loads to earn coins at ten cents per;
To think, I was the King of Hauling Manure!

But problems arose: beaters on the rear
spread the load when I put 'er in gear,
but when the wind's just right, (don't think it queer)
that "stuff" blew ahead to adhere to my ear,

the back of my neck, my cap, and my shirt.
Oh, the things I did to fertilize that dirt!
The wife doesn't much like this storee,
but there's more coming up in Part Number Three.

From on High

On Saturday we drove thirty miles north to the wooded Cross Ranch State Park by the Missouri River and attended the annual Bluegrass Music Festival. That style of music is a favorite of Mary and me, and we occasionally attend functions of that kind. Events of the day coaxed me to write the following versification as well as reminding me of similar circumstances in which I have found myself.

It was hard to think of a better way
to spend a June Saturday
than to sit in a lawn chair in the afternoon
listening to bluegrass, tune after tune.

Making our spot in the shade of a tree,
we sat facing the stage so we could see
the musicians sing and play their stuff;
they were pros, practiced, not off the cuff.

Soon, I noticed the girls squirming around
and brushing their clothes. What had they found?
Little brown spots had begun to appear,
and if you rubbed them they would smear.

And if you imagined them clumped into goop,
you'd realize that what we had was worm poop.
One self-styled expert looked up and said,
"Box elder trees, to worms it's like bread."

But then he looked again into the trees
and said, "Oh, I see holes in the ash leaves,
too. Those worms don't care what they eat,
may as well stay put and keep your seat."

So we did, finding relief with some gentle brushing;
at home we'd wash them off, scrubbing, flushing.
That wasn't the first time crap's been dropped on me,
but those stories need to wait 'til part two, or three.

It's Friday!

These towns of Mandan and Bismarck are good garage sale towns. Every weekend there are plenty to choose from, and in no way can we get to all of them. Each year I come away with one or two prize buys. Things have been slow this year, though, since I can only claim as my great "get" a dozen Ole and Lena jokebooks. Now, Ole and Lena are my kind of folks, and I hate to see them made such fun of, but that's the load we have to bear. I think this one shows lots of insight when Ole described the difference between modern ladies and old fashioned ladies. "The old fashioned gal darns her husband's socks. The modern gal socks her darned husband." Ole does have lots of trouble functioning in this modern world. He says that anymore he gets nervous about doing chores around the house. He says, "It seems every time I crack an egg open, out pops a pair of pantyhose."

I thought I made a really good buy today when I bought a carved wooden plate for 50 cents. The gal who sold it to me said it came from Romania; her father has been there a couple of times and brought it back. A sticker on the back is worded in a foreign language, so I believed her. What the heck, 50 cents is a small price to pay for such a treasure. On closer inspection, in the sunlight, I now see that it was mostly machine-carved with only a bit of hand-tooled work.

At another stop, I bought a set of "Snoopy" golf clubs for $10 - a wood, an iron, and a putter - for the grandson Luke. That amount was more than I like to shell out, but if we want to see him grow and blossom into another Tiger Woods, we have to pay the price.

To write a conclusion, I hope I'm not getting absent-minded like Ole. One day he poured syrup down his back ... and scratched his pancake.

Pipe Dream

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 would start rollin' in.
Now here's where the dream will end.
Wife'd say, "We've got cash, mow again!"

The Homestead Act

The original document enacting the Homestead Act of 1862 and bearing the signature of Abraham Lincoln is on display at the Heritage Center in Bismarck. Encased in a low-lighted area it shows its fading age. The President’s signature pulled at me because I yearned to get close as possible to the man and the aura that surrounds his historic presidency.

Passage of this law set in place a westward movement of many Civil War veterans, Germans from Russia, Scandinavians and others. To facilitate railroad development the government granted a huge amount of land to them as incentive for building tracks to serve the newly established communities. So many came to this area that by end of this “Great Dakota Boom” 69 percent of North Dakota’s population came from foreign countries or were second generation descendents.

History says that many of them failed to prosper under the conditions, probably because of the harsh living conditions. Wild animals, lack of trees for windbreaks, crop failures, loneliness and sub-standard housing caused many to leave. Only rare examples of their houses remain. During these past few years I had reason to drive to Linton and saw a couple abandoned houses still standing, part of their exterior walls weathered away exposing the sod walls. On my last trip I looked but think they no longer stood.

My mother-in-law was born and raised in a sod house southwest of here. She told stories of how the walls were three feet thick and she could sit in the window sill to look out. It had a packed dirt floor and each year a new coat of calcimine was painted on its walls. To manufacture chinking material they tramped barefoot in mud.

One of the stories from the lore of the area still amazes me. A family trekked westward to their new land with their wagon. A blizzard caught them in the open. They overturned the wagon to use as shelter where the woman gave birth to a child.

My Recipe

Anyone want to clone me?
If so, here's my recipe:
mix half cup of Norwegian
with one-quarter cup of Swede
and quarter cup of German.
Set stew on hot-as-hell stove
and cook hard to tenderize.
(Remember, watched pots don't boil,
so busy yourself elsewhere.)

Check kettle every few years,
adding seasoning to taste.
Blend assorted medicines,
vitamins, and elixirs
'til stew reaches full flavor,
remove damaged or useless
body parts to purify,
then turn burner off to cool.

As the concoction congeals,
ladle off fat that's floating
to the surface. Add ample
amounts of experience,
mistakes, false starts, and happy
endings. That, my friends, is me.

Things Learned This Weekend

We drove to Minneapolis over the weekend, high gas prices be damned. Clint's family has settled into their home there, and we wanted to see how things looked. When we left to return home by heading west on Monday morning I couldn't help but think where do all these cars heading into the city fit? Incoming traffic didn't seem to thin until we had driven about 20 miles out. The more miles we drove down the highway, the more I relaxed. Traffic and I do not blend well. We stopped at the monastery at St. John's University and bought a couple loaves of the monks' bread - good, hearty whole wheat bread. Our next stop was in Lisbon to visit with my folks.

Dad remembers lots of interesting stories, and it's fun to listen to him tell them. Tales of the prohibition days always entertain me. For a few years his family lived near Nome, ND. When they were getting settled, Art and Emil Kaatz were helping put a cow in a pen in the barn. She fell into a hole and when they inspected it, they found a whisky still nested neatly down in there under a false floor. For a couple of years after that, apparently-thirsty strangers, not knowing the property had changed hands, would stop in the yard asking for Jack.

This story especially amused me. Dad's Grandpa Menge and Joe Spiekermeier owned a still. They must have been on good terms with the sheriff because he called one day to warn them he was coming out to have a look. They showed their ingenuity then by hiding the still up inside the cupola of the barn. In another incident in the sand hills area the Ransom County sheriff must not have been on such terms with moon shiners because when he came out to one place to snoop around they shoved his car into the river.

Prohibition ended 75 years ago, and people of my generation have not experienced the shenanigans carried on during that time. There is always talk now of legalizing some drugs like marijuana to eliminate some of the legal problems and maybe that will come to pass someday, but I don't think the stories surrounding it will be as amusing as those of the homemade distilled spirits that the old-timers can tell.

Main Street, Part IV

I started running down this track a few days ago when I looked closely at the picture on my wall entitled "Main Street, N.D." Speaking of a track, I'm reminded of how close the railroad track ran closely parallel to the main street, just out of the picture. As a young boy I remember seeing the steam locomotives pulling freight and passenger cars and blowing heavy clouds of black smoke and white steam as they rumbled along. A local section crew was employed maintaining the track and in the depot Earl Farnham served as the depot agent presiding over the freight and passengers coming and going through his world. I'm even further reminded of a little passenger train that ran which we called "The Galloping Goose," and I remember still another fact: I rode its last run in 1961 when I went to Fargo to make a bus connection to return to UND in Grand Forks. Only a few passengers rode with me that day. There was no fanfare for the event when we arrived in Fargo. It just quit running, period. No profit, no service, it had run its useful life.

What actually prompted me to look deeply into that picture of main street was after I had re-read Oliver Wendell Holmes' poem "The Deacon's Masterpiece or That Wonderful One-Hoss Shay." The buggy, or chaise, that he wrote of must have been similar to the buggies in my picture, and I wanted to have a look. An avowed Unitarian, Holmes wrote this in 1858 to poke fun at the Puritan theology of the time. An internet search turned up many discussions of the poem that begins

"Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then of a sudden it..."

The deacon of the church built it so it wouldn't break down. He built it from the very best of materials so that each part was as strong as every other part. In Holmes' view, the shay works well until it ... went to pieces all at once, and nothing first, - just as bubbles do when they burst. It was built in such a logical way that it ran a hundred years to a day.

Holmes' humorous indictment of religion was adopted by the field of economics, too. The term "one-hoss shay" is used to describe a model of depreciation, in which a durable product delivers the same services throughout its lifetime before failing with zero scrap value.

I thought long and decided there is another application, too, for the little towns and schools that run along quite nicely for long periods of time, and then, by the time we realize what's happening, we have nothing left except the memories.

Main Street, Part III

A few odds and ends remain from the notes I took at the Heritage Center. People in the Sheldon area have always shown the tendency and ability to take care of matters themselves. I couldn't help but notice this. "A movement is on foot for a farmers' elevator at Anselm and $6,000 stock has already been subscribed. Fred Wall, Jake Kaspari and other leading farmers are pushing the project. There is strong talk among farmers who have money to back their talk of a farmers' elevator at Sheldon also."

Maybe dimes were scarce and this was a high enough price but a store advertised a three pound can of beans for ten cents, and sirloin steak cost fifteen cents a pound.

A drunk in the town drew attention to himself as noted by this story in the February 28, 1908 issue: "John Burke tired of the quietude furnished by farm life, peacefully strolled into the village last Saturday afternoon. Unintentionally, he partook too freely of the 'White Eye' and became hilarious, so much so, that it was necessary for Marshal Mougey to delve out a few handsfull of law before Burke would really give in. Burke, not liking the idea of remaining in the cooler over Sunday - which, in reality, is the finest kind of cooler at this period of the year - finally decided to hire a livery to take him to his abode, so John let him off easy. This is Burke's first visit to Sheldon since the episode of a few weeks ago."

And another animal story: "Billy, the brown spaniel belonging to P.J. Hoff, is no more. A few days ago a neighbor drew a bead on him and plunked one pellet of cold lead into his frame. This disagreed with Billy to such an extent that he expired on Wednesday morning. Billy was a good-natured, harmless dog, ever ready for a little fun with the boys and seemed to especially enjoy chasing thrown base balls and stones."

And one more story about animals appearing in the June 5, 1908 issue: "Sheldon is to have a circus here Friday, June 19. This will be the first circus that has ever showed in this town ... There have been one or two miserable little affairs camp here, one had a coyote and a badger and the other a few horses. Tom-Tom the largest elephant in captivity will be here..." A news blurb followed the appearance of the circus and told of how they had gotten into town late and had to dispense with the parade. They had gotten lost on the trail from Milnor and lost time.

One more blog on this topic to follow...

Main Street, Part II

All through our high school years we proudly sported the colors of red and black. It was such an ingrained tradition, I doubt if anyone ever gave any thought to the origination of that choice. So I read with interest in the January 24, 1908 issue of The Sheldon Progress just when and how it occurred: "Several combinations of school colors were voted upon for our school colors last Friday. Red and black received the most votes and were the colors adopted." Then, in a May issue, the following story appeared: "The first commencement exercises of the Sheldon High School were held on last Monday evening in the opera house. The background of the stage was a large U.S. flag, draped with red and black, the colors of SHS."

Someone was having grandiose dreams about the future of the school: "Small beginnings frequently have large endings and many of our greatest educational institutions started with very few scholars. Harvard University started upon its career with but three students on its rolls." This statement was a reflection upon the size of Sheldon's graduating class having just one student: "C. G. Bangert, president of the school board, presented the first diploma granted to a Sheldon High School graduate - John Wilson Goodman." The story went on to say: "Next year it is thought several more would be eligible."

A story related to another school carried a Fergus Falls, Mn byline with its headline blaring: "Boy Is Eaten By Wolves." It seems he was kept after school and had to walk home alone without his usual companions. When he never showed up at home his father took a lantern and began to search for him. He came upon a scene where he found two wolves feasting on his half-eaten son.

As I wrote yesterday the horse culture ruled and another interesting story found was: "The old bay mare owned by Mrs. Eastman ... took a notion to be bad the other day. All went well 'til the man driving her stopped and laid down the reins. The old mare looked around and said to herself, 'Well, if these old fools don't know enough to hang on to me, I won't have to hang on to myself.' She immediately dug out and turning short upset the buggy. After this she kicked out the dash board and then once more settled down to the quiet line of conduct which she has been following for the last twenty years."

To be continued ...

Main Street, Part I

I often study a picture hanging on the wall of my study on which someone has written, in a wiggly cursive script, the caption "Main St. Sheldon, N.D." Bearing no date, I will guess it is a scene from a hundred years ago. Trees stand barren of leaves so it could be early spring or late fall. In the foreground I count three buggies and one fringed surrey, all parked and still hitched to their waiting teams. It is obvious that lots of horse and wheeled traffic moves up and down this street because numerous hitching rails line it. Looking even more closely you can spot piles of horse manure, too. Five men in dark clothing cluster around the front of a building marked Restaurant - Pool Room, which is four doors down from another building where its readable sign advertises Department Store. A tall telephone pole about halfway down the street supports five crossbars suggesting that quite a few homes communicate over those lines strung on them.

Our state's Heritage Center has done a good job of preserving much of the past. This interested reader enjoys visiting there to study microfiche copies of The Sheldon Progress and has decided that one hundred years ago the town still supported a horse culture. A large ad sponsored by the Ransom County Immigration Association headquartered in Sheldon wanted men and teams to plow and seed about 5,000 acres which they had recently purchased in the Carrington area.

A local auction offered by the Tregloan Farm five miles north of town listed 35 head of horses because they were downsizing. A free dinner and horse feed were provided. A week later a news article said conditions for this sale were not very favorable. Bad roads kept away many who would otherwise have attended, but good prices were paid for the animals. Emil Kaatz bought the first team sold, and a minister, "getting a bargain," bought a six year old driving mare. Other purchases were made by George Cullen, Alfred Rife and F. B. Grinnell.

This part of the country was still young and road improvements could only be wished for. A news piece in the same issue as the Tregloan sale, March 22, 1908, stated, "The roads are unmentionable in the language of polite society. Rural carrier Shelver started out yesterday on runners and came home on horseback."

Through the reading of several issues many more horse auction sales were listed. Frank Koehler wanted to close out his stock of harness and shoes, maybe because in a following issue this ad ran: "Our harnessmaker, Frank Orvocki, has filled his shop and ware room with the largest line of machine and hand made harness ever had in our town..." A. S. Taylor advertised fencing wire for sale as being "Pig Tight, Bull Strong, Horse High."

The May 1, 1908 issues ran this news: "There seems to be either a horse or cow episode to chronicle each week of late. This week it is Andrew Arntson and Floyd Eastman's saddle horse that holds the stage. On Wednesday Andrew decided to give a little exhibition of fancy riding. The horse decided to give a little bucking exhibition. He stiffened his legs and bowed his back and jumped straight up, and with a look of determination in his eye seemed to be saying to himself, 'If I can't unload this thing in one jump, I can do it in two jumps.' At the first jump Andrew's suspenders gave away and at the second he gave away himself and describing a half circle in the air descended quickly to mother earth. The saddle pony laughed quietly to himself and trotted off. Andrew walked slowly from the scene of activities with rather a crestfallen mien."

To be continued ...

Havin' Fun with Words

I was just sitting here thinking I should try to finish a poem I had started some time ago. With my favored seven syllable line, this is what I came up with.

We've all seen horseback riders
atop galloping horses
standing tall in their stirrups
and throwing coiled lariats
at desperate rodeo
calves. Hell, I've even written
a poem about Bill Dee's
stirrups and how he gave them
to Dad. But many don't know ---
they had to be invented.

You see, Genghis Khan had men
in his Mongolian horde
who needed to have solid
footing so as to drive spears
hard into the hearts of foes
who stood in their path. Bareback
riders just could not direct
desired muscled energy
into victims' flesh without
bracing themselves for the blow.

This concerned the old man Khan
enough so that he sponsored
a contest giving his horde
a rare opportunity:
design a better platform
upon which to deliver
your spears more efficiently.
And so it was, the stirrup
came into being, proving
"there are no gains without pains."

After the Poem

I survived the annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Medora this past weekend and was satisfied with the way my presentation went. This crowd likes to be entertained, and for the most part, humor goes over the best. My poetry was on the sober side, but I think I had them with me the whole way. I tried to make a cowboy connection with World War One since it was Memorial Day weekend. My poem fills two typed pages so I will not try to repeat it in this blog. One part of my poem seemed to really connect with the audience:

"Many horses were killed in battle, too,
and with each explosion that blew
more carcasses piled up in view.

There's been passed along this story
of a horse whose praises should be sung in glory,
he had six deep wounds and an eye that dangled - gory.

His driver wanted to shoot him there by the side of the road,
but he couldn't raise his gun to end the episode
because that horse was still pulling his share of the load."

The poem has sparked memories to burn again among descendants of Grandpa Sandvig's participation in the war. My cousin Andrea Sandvig of New York City stumbled onto my blogging efforts, and when I shared the poem with her she remembered that "Grandpa talked a little about the war to me. He said he hated to hear the horses scream and that he was always thirsty."

This morning's mail brought more interesting information. My Uncle Darrel Sandvig of Moorhead, MN wrote to me of the cowboy connection as he had heard it from Grandpa, "He liked to tell the story about a train load of new recruits came into the camp, and as drill instructors like to do, started yelling at them to hurry, hurry and get off the train now. One of the cowboys said I came into this mans army to fight and I might as well get started now, and with a good right hand decked one of the SGT's. Next train arrived from Montana, they met it with rifles and fixed bayonets."

I capped my poem with my version of Billy Ray Cyrus' song, "Some Gave All" and ended with a guitar version of "Taps." All in all, I think my presentation was fitting and appropriate.

Scrambled Eggs

This Memorial Day weekend will be a big one for Mary and me, as it has been for several years running. I’ve been busy preparing another presentation for the annual Dakota Cowboy Poetry Gathering. A call to my doctor got me another prescription of my stage-fright medicine, and I’m ready to go. Who’d have thought, not me, that I’d walk on a stage with a guitar to sing and play “stuff” I’ve written. It went over well enough last year. I know because I was asked for copies of that stuff so it could be used other places. This year I’m turning serious and tying together my cowboy poetry theme with the spirit of Memorial Day. My Grandpa fought in World War I with a division made up of cowboys from the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, etc. so I’ve had an interesting time researching and writing this all up and think it will fit in quite nicely.
..........
Yesterday a letter in my mailbox came as a complete surprise. It was from a cousin I hadn’t seen or heard from for 40-50 years. She has been living in New York City and sounds as though she has done quite well for herself. She stumbled upon this blog while cruising around the internet and was prompted to get in touch. She spoke of her fondness for our grandpa so I forwarded much of my Medora presentation to her. Personal letters have become something of a rarity and are always appreciated when they arrive.
..........
It is dry in this part of the country. Plants and trees are greening up, but strong winds want to blow and suck moisture out of the ground. Weathermen tease us with their percent chance of rain, but nothing has fallen yet. Rain fell in a timely fashion last year and the good hay crop furnished enough so that one can see quite a little carryover in ranchers’ yards to use next winter if the hay doesn’t grow this year.
..........
Word came this week of the death of a friend’s father. The paper stated he was 101 years old. His life was an example of a hardworking farm life not hurting him but instead probably contributed to his longevity. I have lots of good memories of him.
............
Well, I’ve done enough bloviating for this week. I’m tempted to put a counter on this blog so I can find out if anyone besides my cousin reads it. In one sense, it doesn’t matter a lot to me since this is a log, akin to a diary, where I place random thoughts and themes. Forcing myself to write once a week makes my brain work.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

We witnessed an event this past Sunday that made us proud. Our daughter-in-law Robyn received her medical degree and now can write the initials M.D. behind her name. I suppose we can’t take any credit for this happening except for the fact that she is married to our son and he had the good fortune, or is it wisdom, to marry someone with the intelligence and drive to get to this point.

Fifty-nine medical students graduated with this class, and it was fun watching each one being conferred and called with the title “Doctor” as he or she walked away with the diploma in hand. As graduation ceremonies go, it was similar to most any of them. High-powered academics on campus participated in the ceremony, and the keynote speaker had been born and raised in North Dakota who now bore the title of professor and chair of the Department of Plastic Surgery at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

His speech, “Being the Best You Can Be”, was good enough but was sprinkled with the garden variety of jokes such as when he admonished the class to never prescribe sleeping pills and laxatives at the same time. Our son Clint said that the University president usually tells that joke each year, but this fellow beat him to it. To sum the day up, it was an event to which I’ll never be a part of again, so I tried to make the most of it.

Fitness Workouts

I joined a fitness club about a year ago and like to work out on their Nautilus machines three times a week. I haven’t lost much weight but have re-distributed some of it into different shapes and hardness. A few years ago I read a quote by someone that really resonated with me, “The less you do, the less you can do.” It is hard to imagine how soft I was a year ago, and I hope I don’t regress to that condition again. A couple of days ago my father-in-law came knocking at the door asking for help with the water well on his property. It had stopped pumping water, and he wanted to lift the pipes to see if the sandpoint was still in working order. He had rented a jack to do the heavy lifting, but the jack was clumsy to operate, and I was able to act the part of Superman and do most of the lifting myself. I didn’t get stiff or sore from the exertion and will chalk that up to being in fairly good condition. A year ago I couldn’t have done it.

Fitness clubs have become popular, and Bismarck-Mandan have built their fair share. The one I joined couldn’t make it any easier to work out. Their facility is available 24 hours per day for their members. All you need is a key, and you can go in.

There are several of us who are about the same age that show up at the same time, and we have become acquainted in a light-hearted and jovial way. One of those fellows is a particularly good example of how physical workouts are beneficial. He is a diabetic who took several shots each day to function. He told me that when he first started out on the treadmill he was so weak and out of shape that he fell off it after a minute or so and had to be helped back up by a couple of women. With a strong will he has kept at it, and now only takes pills for his condition instead of the shots and can walk on the treadmill for an hour each session.

“The less you do, the less you can do” philosophy has become something of a goal for good living with me, and I am trying to apply that to mental exercise as well. This damn aging process steals plenty from a person and I’m working hard at staying functional for as long as I can.

A Funeral

He would have liked his own funeral if he could have been there I thought yesterday as I drove home. Today my thoughts still linger with that high school classmate whose sudden passing shocked us all. Many friends and relatives attended and mourned his passing. The site of the service was a small Lutheran church standing in the lonely countryide where he made his home. It filled quickly, and the overflow sent to the dining room swelled so that those chairs soon filled leaving only standing room, which itself was elbow to elbow. Someone, a clergyman perhaps, had placed a head of wheat in the breast pocket of his suitcoat. It seemed an appropriate symbol, both of his life as a farmer and of the church’s message of birth, death and resurrection.

Forty-eight years have passed since we graduated. The ceremony was the first event ever conducted in Sheldon’s brand new gymnasium. We had fun in school; studying was never held in high esteem by many of us. Whenever members of the class gather, we share stories of the antics. The memories remain. Now the school district has joined with a larger neighboring district and left our old school building vacant. It has been sold to a private concern with some grandiose plans. I drove past it yesterday. Besides various piles of junk and old buildings that the new owner has seen fit to pile on the grounds, he has also cut a large hole into the end of the gym and has driven trucks onto the floor to pile things on. Our time there has passed. Someday that building will tumble to a pile of rubble much like the old Catholic school building in town that you can still see if you know where to look.

We are faced now with the fact that the friends we made there have started to pass on just like those old times passed on. His father died last winter, but his body had not yet been interred, and the sad fact arose that the father and the son were going to be buried on the same day. Rest in peace, old friend.