Buffalo Gal

I have been reading one of the few magazines I order— but I enjoy the "Newsmax" monthly publication.  I read this in one of the columns by guest writers.  The author is a counselor and related this story from a counselor’s office.

A husband and wife were receiving counseling for their myriad  of problems in their relationship. They had been married for 20 years and the wife went on and on listing every grievance she’d ever had….his neglect, the lack of intimacy, her loneliness, her feeling unloved, and also unlovable.  Finally after letting this tirade go on for some time, the male therapist got up from his chair, walked around his desk to where the wife was sitting, pulled her up to him, put his arms around her and kissed her passionately on the lips for several minutes, much to the husband’s surprise and confusion.   After the prolonged kiss, the wife sits down and does not say another word.   The Therapist turns to the husband and says, "This is what your wife needs at least three times a week.  Can you do this?"

The husband thinks for a moment and replies, "Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Friday, I go fishing."

Reading this bit of humor, I thought about a similar time when My Best Friend and I had a bit of miscommunication also.   It was in the very early 1980′s when I had just begun my new job as a school librarian.  I spent the first year riding with a friend, "Dianne", who was the home ecomomics teacher at our school.  She was a great talker and she had told me as we drove towards school, that her husband always made the bed every morning because he was the last to get up in the morning.   I went home one day and triumphantly re-told the tale of the husband who always made the bed every day.   My B.F. looked at me and said, "We can’t ask "Dennis" to come out here and make our bed every morning—he would have to drive at least 6 miles every day!"

So much for that plan.  I dissolved into giggles and forgot about it.

I found a list of profound statements…actually I found them when one of my cousins sent them to me but they are too good not to pass along.   With our present day economic crisis and the present government’s determination to spend their way out of it (highly unlikely)….some of these statements from writers and politicians and statesmen from the distant past ring all too true right now, in this present time.

"If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed;  if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed."    –Mark Twain       (What? They had biased mainstream media back in Twain’s day too??)

"I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle."    —-Winston Churchill

"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."        —–George Bernard Shaw

"Giving power and money to Government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."    ——–P.J. O’Rourke  (who is part of this present generation of commenters)

"I don’t make jokes.  I just watch the government and report the facts."   —-Will Rogers

"Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."   —-Frederic Bastiat, French Economist, 1801-1850)

In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money from one party of the citizens and giving it to the other."    —Voltaire    (does this remind you of the latest plan to tax the heck out of the "rich" and give it to the "poor" ??)

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings.  The inherent blessing of socialism is the sharing of misery."  —–Winston Churchill

"The only difference between a Tax Man and a Taxidermist is that the Taxidermist leaves the skin."    ——Mark Twain

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have."    ——-Thomas Jefferson

"There is no distinctive American criminal class——except Congress"   —-Mark Twain

"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a Congress."    ——–John Adams

"If you think health care is expensive now, wait til you see what it costs when its free."     ——-PJ O’Rourke

"No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while Congress is in session."   —–Mark Twain

"Talk is cheap—-except when Congress does it."     —–Anonymous (a.k.a. A. Nonny Mouse)  ————————————————————————————————————-

Why do these profound statements from the past mean so much now?  Is it because nothing ever changes— or is it because we are truly in the throes of seeing our great Republic being turned into a Socialist Dependency state, a’ la’  France, Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and the other sadly diminished European countries that once were far greater than they are now…. due to the citizens allowing Socialism to take over their governments?   I did not include Norway in this roster because although it is a totally socialist state, the wealth of oil that Norway has is keeping them from sinking into economic disaster. The other countries are so far gone, economically, that there is little chance for thier recovery or for positive changes.

Every day the news brings more evidence of creeping socialism and it is not creeping very slowly either!!!

It might be the length of winter or the sameness of the days as winter plods on toward its hoped-for end.  Today it is the falling snow and the feeling of being trapped again inside the house.  But whatever causes it, my mind wanders to other times and other places as it did yesterday when I blogged about the old Warming House and Danny O’Donnell—-times and places of my youth.  Today I talked on the phone with one of my cousins and she brought back more memories–this time memories of the old country schoolhouse where she went to school from grades 1-8.  It is the same schoolhouse where my Mom and all her siblings went to grades 1-8 also.  It is the only rural schoolhouse that is still preserved, as it was, when it closed in the later 1960s..the last one to close its doors in Clay County under the influence of consolidation with larger town districts.  Each late summer, especially over the Labor Day weekend—- that little wooden schoolhouse is once again open for visitors who get to see how the country kids lived and went to schools in days gone by.  My Mom and one of her sisters went on to become teachers in that schoolhouse that had been their first school home when they were children.  Each summer, at about that same time when there is an open house at the old schoolhouse, I attend a reunion of its students—I never got to go to school there, but I always wished I could have, especially when as a kid, I visited it when we had vacation in town and the kids out in the country schools did not…..how I loved to attend the old school and sit with a class of 4 others who were in my grade.  The recesses at noon were the best ever…they got to go out into the woods and fields and play for an hour and the creative play was the most amazing stuff I had ever witnessed.  We did NOT have dry clay banks to slide down at our town school!   We did not have a rather big lake to poke sticks in or throw stones into;  we did not carry our lunches in shiny tin, emptied, syrup pails. We did not have the mysterious drinking machine they had…one that was filled every morning with cold well water from which you could get a paper cup of water by turning the spigot on the "whatchamacallit" fascinating water dispenser.  We did NOT have a two-holer outdoor "biffy" like the country kids did.  We could NOT carve our intitials on our bathroom walls like they could.

But back to the Lipstick On The Lake.  Each morning before school, my cousin, several sisters from another family, and a girl who had to walk east to school, cross- country from the Rollag Store, would meet on "Victor’s Lake"  (in wintertime when the ice was thick and solid).   Marlene, whose parents owned and operated the Rollag Store—that marvelous place where everyone could get groceries and gas, shoes and clothing, hardware, ice cream cones and pop out of the old pop cooler….Marlene had gotten a tube of very  bright red lipstick off the one shelf that held a few other "cosmetics" including the mysterious "Witch Hazel" in a bottle.  She was the "keeper of the lipstick tube" and would faithfully bring it along each morning to the other girls waiting for her arrival on Victor’s Lake.   The lipstick would be ceremoniously uncapped and each girl would get her turn to  put the bright red lipstick on her pale lips, or have another of the girls apply it for her.  All of them would then set off for school, trying to work up the bravery it would take to walk into the schoolhouse and see how the teacher and the other kids would react to their "Hollywood Lips".   They never made it—- although they tried many times.  Each time they approached the school grounds, one of the girls would back off and, with her bare hand or a mittened hand, would rub off the red liptstick leaving either hand or mitten stained a bright creamy red.  Never did one of them ever have the courage to confront their fellow students—-or the teacher, for heavens’ sake, with their bright red lipstick in place.  They used up the single tube of lipstick trying it, though, and the thrill of wearing lipstick had to be enjoyed along the beaten path from Victor’s Lake to the edge of the schoolyard— where they broke down and wiped it off before anyone saw them.  All of them had contributed what they could to the cost of the tube….probably pennies, dimes or nickels since none of the girls were in families that could afford the luxury of kids having pocket money on a regular basis.  Those pennies and nickels were probably hard-earned ones from doing work for someone else’s family.

Does anyone besides me remember your first tube of lipstick?   What I remember is a tube of orange colored stuff called "natural";  you put it on and it would turn a pale shade of pink and it had a delicious fruity smell to it.  It was made either by "Lady Esther" cosmetics, who also produced face powder —-or else it was another brand, the name of which is not coming to me right now.  I hope someone else remembers it because——WAIT—it was "Tangee’" !!!!!

Does anyone remember "Blue Waltz" perfume—the usual first perfume a young teenager would dab behind her ears or pat on her blouse or sweater.  It had a marvelous fragrance, especially when you were 12 or 13 years old and all the old "dimestores" sold it in various sizes but all the bottles were heart-shaped glass ones.

Maybe it is the end of winter….. when we are so tired of the season that it makes us want to think about other things and other times.  My memories of skating and being in the old warming house by the skating rink came to me as clear as they could ever be.  Today I talked to my cousin who had the priviledge of attending the country school just up the hill from my Grandma’s old farm east of Rollag, MN.  She regaled me with a true story about herself and several other girls her age who also attended the old wooden country school house on the hill.  It is the only country schoolhouse in Clay County that has been preserved as a historical site in our county and each late summer, the Historical Society of Clay County has an open house at that old schoolhouse.  My Mother and all her siblings attended through grade 8, some of them going on to highschool but one of them, my only Uncle, became the man of the family and took over the hard work of the man on the farm since my Grandfather had died when my Mom was only about 15 years old…and she was the oldest child in the family.

But the story of Lipstick On The Lake was in another time….the 1940′s when my cousin and her good friends would meet on a frozen lake(Victor’s Lake") before school started in the morning.  They came from two directions:  Marlene came from the west and the little village called Rollag where her parents owned and operated the little country store that was the center of the community in those days.  You could get all your groceries, all your gas and oil, all your shoes and much of your clothing, especially if you wore overalls and other farm types of clothing.  I remember going there on summer evenings with my Aunts and my Uncle and it meant getting an ice cream cone and sometimes even  a cold bottle of pop out of the old fashioned pop cooler which in earlier days was cooled with huge blocks of ice and icy water.  Oh those bottles of Orange Crush, Mission orange, strawberry, creme soda, or rootbeer were delicious.  "Oh-So" grape was OK if you liked the grape taste but I liked the cokes, 7 up and pepsi best—-still do for all that!  The introduction of Squirt" was a mystifying thing.  It did not taste like other "pop".

   Each morning in the 1940s a group of girls would meet each other on "Victor’s Lake" (it was winter and the big lake was frozen solid).  The girls who had come from the south of the lake waited for "Marlene" who would approach them after a long cross country walk from the village of Rollag where her parents owned and operated the Rollag Store.  It was a marvelous country store…you could buy groceries, gas, clothing, shoes and boots, hardware, ice cream cones and cold pop….it was a meeting place for all the surrounding folks who lived on all sides of the little village.  Summer evenings were the time when all the neighbors and friends would gather at the store to shop and to "visit" with one another.  It was truly the social hub of the rural community…it and the two big white steepled churches that were also in the village.

"Marlene" had gotten a tube of bright red lipstick from the one shelf in the store that held a modest display of "cosmetics" including the mysterious bottles of Witch Hazel.  Marlene carried the tube of red lipstick to the meeting place on the lake each morning and the girls would take turns applyng the bright red stuff to their pale lips, alone– or with the help of another of the girls who would apply it, "just right".  Then they would set off on the beaten path through Victor’s cow pasture to the edge of the school yard….and on each day, one of the girls would back off and, with her bare hand, or her mittened hand, would wipe off the lipstick.  Their hands or their mittens would bear a bright red creamy lipstick stain.    They tried over and over to  work up the courage to make it to the schoolhouse door where they would walk in boldly with their red "Hollywood Lips".  The never did get that far.  The bright red creamy perfumey lipstick would get rubbed away on the edge of the playground….none of them could bear the hoots and hollers of the boys or the other kids—-OR the teacher, for heavens’ sake!   My cousin and I laughed anew this morning at the well- told tale of the bright red lipstick.  The girls had each contributed to the cost of the tube with their meager pennies, nickels or dimes.  None of them belonged ot families that could afford to have their kids carrying around pocket change unless the girls had earned it themselves from baby sitting or doing chores for some other family.

How I would have loved to be "in on" that morning lipstick ritual.  I wanted desperately to go to that little country schoolhouse myself and I visited often when town school would have a few days of vacation that did not apply to the country schools.  I sat with 4 other kids in my grade and participated eagerly in the lessons they had.  I loved the noon recesses where a whole hour was spent in creative fun—sliding down dry clay banks, poking sticks and tossing stones into Victor’s Lake…. running wildly in the surrounding woods and going to the outdoor "biffy" where you could carve your name on the wooden wall.  We did not get to do any of this good stuff in town school and, oh how I wanted to go to country school!!!The country kids carried their lunches in shiny tin pails….emptied molasses or syrup containers.  They drank out of a marvelous water cooler with a spigot …the tank was filled each morning by one of the big boys who would carry a pail of cold well water to the back hall and fill the water cooler.  Thye got to do such good stuff that none of us townies ever got to do in our school recesses or daily routines.

Does anyone else remember their first tube of lipstick?  I remember mine.  It was a tube of fruity smelling orange stuff that was called "natural" and it turned pink on your lips after you applied it.   It was made by a cosmetics company called "Tangee" and they made a lot of other cheap costmetics as well that teen aged girls of my era could experiment with make up at a tender age if their parents would allow it.

Does anyone remember "Blue Waltz" perfume…that sweetest of scents… bottled in a heart-shaped glass container???   We all put it behind our ears, on our wrists and often, lavished drops of the precious liquid on our blouses and sweaters.  We just knew that it would make us irresistable to the boys we liked to impress.   Or did it drive them away?  Probably the latter!!!!

It was a crude wooden building that sat alongside our local skating rink for years and years. Then I noticed it was gone… but that was years after I had spent hours and hours getting my skates laced up by Danny O’Donnell in the Warming House. Danny was the one who took care of it and kept the fire burning in the iron stove which sat in the middle of the floor of the one- room building.  The wooden walls were etched on every  side with carvings of names from way back to when the Warming House was built.  Some had even been burned into the wall by a glowing ember from the stove!

When you went skating at the skating rink, as hundreds of us did in the 1940′s and 50′s, you entered through a door on the east side of the Warming House.  There was a rather large entryway and it held wood and coal for the stove plus the shovels and other tools needed to care for the rink outside.   Our rink was located on the corner of an unpopulated block in our town…other than the old mill that sat atop the gentle hill above the Warming House.  At the west end of the block was nothing but open space—–the old baseball field and at the end of the baseball field, in the Fall seasons, it was the high school football field.  There might have been two tiny houses on the south side of the block, but that was it for homes and people.  The baseball field, the football field, the skating rink—-were all ours.

The rink was always flooded by the town workers in early December and soon it was a smooth delightful ice surface for the hundreds of kids who skated every day after school and most of Saturday and all of Sunday afternoon.  It was the only place in town that had lights so we could skate at night…not really sophisticated big lights but a couple of light poles with big bulbs that mostly illuminated the ice at night.  I can still see the starry sky and the dimly lighted rink and smell the fresh cold air when I would lie down on one of the snowbanks that surrounded the rink….I had to catch my breath before careening around the rink again in endless loops and circles, lost in the ecstasy of being able to stay upright on my skates.

You walked through a crude wooden door into the inner sanctum of the Warming House and there you would meet Danny O’ Donnell.  He was always cheerful, always welcoming, and always helpful.  Many of us kids had trouble getting our skates off and on and Danny would get right down on his old knees (he must have been well into his 70s when he took care of our rink and our Warming House)….and he would help us get those pesky skates on and off. A lot of kids had ill-fitting hand- me- down- skates from other siblings, as was so common in those days of little affluence among the families or our day.    He loved children, although he had none of his own.  He and his wife had spent all the years of their marriage as a childless couple.  I always thought that old Danny talked funny but I was grown up and Danny was gone from this earth before I realized that what I was hearing when Danny talked to us, was the strongest Irish brogue on this side of the Old Country.

As we played "crack the whip" out on the ice or  a frozen version of "pump-pump-pullaway" out on the ice and went in to Danny’s house periodically to warm up our frozen feet and hands or get our skates pulled off by Danny, he may have been remembering his beginnings in our small town.  His family…the O’Donnells…beginning with his father Dan and his mother Molly, were the very first permanent citizens in the old "Reno’s Camp" railroad tent town as the Northern Pacific laid tracks to the west coast from one state to another with its huge crews of workers.  Danny’s father had been a railroad worker himself til he married Molly and then decided to stay in the place where he was….our future town.  He built a wooden rooming house for railroad workers and Molly began cooking in what the railroaders came to call "Molly’s Kitchen".  She was a hard worker and a good cook and she fed hundreds of railroad men before her first child was born….named for her mother, Margaret O’Donnell, was the first white child born in this rough camp along the new NP tracks.  More children were added til the family numbered 9 and Danny was one of the youngest.  He was the only one left in our town….some had died, some had moved westward to homestead in Montana, the sisters had married and moved to other places, and his parents had died.  So Danny must have lived with a lot of memories of the pioneer beginnings in this place.  Dan (Senior) O’Donnell had served as an new Irish immigrant in the Civil War and had survived that terrilble conflict.  After the war was over he did what most young Civil War Veterans did —he went to work on the burgeoning railroads of America. Margaret (Molly) was also an Irish immigrant and met Dan somewhere along the railroad path, probably in the city of St. Paul, MN where so many Irish immigrants settled in those days. After their days in the hotel and Molly’s Kitchen were over, Dan became a homesteader just to the south of the growing town.  He and his many sons worked the land for a generation til Dan and Molly grew old and died.

The O’Donnell homestead has been long- gone…the old farm that Dan and Molly and their growing family homesteaded, gave way when the town decided to buy the land and make a town dump at the old farmsite.  I never knew this til I read the definitive and well-written history of our small town.  How many times I went with my Dad "to the dump" when I was just a child and did not know we were treading on the O’Donnell’s old farm fields near  the river.

I never drive by that old homestead site now without thinking of the O’Donnell family—and the only one I knew, Danny—- because he was so good and kind and cheerful and he helped me get my skates on and off.

The daily feature (February 25, 2009)  on the Writers’ Almanac is a perfect poem for me…..it is titled "Bridal Shower" and describes, poetically, the experience of one person sitting in a coffee shop,  being forced to listen to unwanted cell phone conversations.  It is too perfect!!!!!     Here it is:

BRIDAL SHOWER              "Perhaps, in a distant cafe/ four or five people are talking with the four or five who are chatting on their cell phones this morning/ in my favorite cafe.       And perhaps someone there, some one like me, is watching them frown or smile or shrug/at their inisible friends or lovers,/ jabbing at the air for emphasis./      And like me, he misses the old days/ when talking to yourself/ meant you were crazy, back when crazy was a big deal/  not just an acronym/  or something you could take a pill for. /     I liked it when people who were talking to themselves/  might actually be talking to God/  or an Angel. /      You respected people like that./         You didn’t want to kill them, as I want to kill the woman at the next table/  with the little blue light on her ear/  who has been telling the emptiness in front of her/  about her daughter’s bridal shower/  in astonishing detail/    for the past thirty minutes.  /         O person like me,/  phoneless in your distant cafe, /          I wish we could meet to discuss this, /  and perhaps you would help me murder this woman on her cell phone,/   after which we could have a cup of coffee/  maybe a bagel, and talk to each other,  face to face.  "       (poem by George Bilgere)

I want to thank my friend Fran, for alerting me to this most meaningful of poems…..it has said all the thoughts I have thought over the years of trying to tolerate the senselessness of the constant chattering on cell phones—-in cafes, in stores, while driving, and yesterday….while walking the track at the Detroit Lakes Community Center.

When has "Get A Life!" ever had more meaning than this present age of cell phone talking, endless "texting" and the general addiction to things Technological.  

Where has REAL face- to- face, good, earnest, meaningful, reasoned  conversation been dropped?  Once upon a time, it was one of the best parts of our culture.   I miss it terribly, especially when I find myself sitting in a situation like this poet has so wonderfully described.   I wish I could thank you, George Bilgere……..  face-to-face.

It is a cold winter day in January.  The days are still short and it gets dark early but the two children visited their Grandparents’ farm after school that day. 

It was a Friday and a whole week had been spent learning to read, to spell, to do their "arithmetic" problems…to learn a bit of extra things from the bookshelf in the back of the country school room.   The small country schoolhouse had been built in the 1880′s shortly after settlement in southeastern Clay County grew by leaps and bounds.  Most of the immigrants came from the same valley in southwestern Norway and they had named the small community in Clay County after the main town in their homeland valley…..it was Rollag in Minnesota named after Rollag in the Numedal Valley in Norway.  There were a few settlers in that rural area whose origins were from England—the family names were unfamiliar to the mainly Norwegian immigrants….the Ruggs and the Shores and the Robinsons…what sort of names were those?  But all the settlers got along and became friends in spite of their ethnic differences; all of them had come from rural areas in their native lands and all of them were cut out to be farmers in the New Country as well.

These hardy settlers knew the value of their children getting an education and so the first log schoolhouse had been built on the hill in a central part of the township shortly after the settlers arrived… it was only about a mile from the tiny village they called "Rollag."     When the first building burned, a second one was built and this one was from real lumber, not logs.  It still stands to this day on its original spot and hundreds of children went to school there from grades 1 though grade 8, when the older ones "graduated" and often did not go to any more formal schooling but rather took their places among the adults on the farms, spending their entire lifetimes within a few- mile radius of where they were born and raised.

The two children this day, were about  3 miles from their home and I do not think they walked to their Grandparents’ homestead….the roads were full of snow and only a team of horses pulling a sleigh could allow travel in the dead of the winter.  Their father, who was an only son of the Grandparents—-Herbran and Torgun—had, no doubt, driven his sleigh and team cross-country to bring his two small children to visit Grandma and Grandpa.  They were going to stay overnight at Grandma and Grandpa’s farm and it was exciting for them, because they were not used to being away from home all that much.  They never traveled more than 5 miles from their birthplace….only to school, to church, and to visit relatives who lived close by.

By the time they arrived there, it was already getting dark outside, but the two children wanted to play outside before supper and begged to be allowed to take their clumsy wooden skis to a hill just north of the homestead grove of trees.  Grandma said they could play for awhile but they had to get back to the house before it got completely dark.  They promised her they would come to the house on time— but you know how it is with small childeren when they start having fun sliding down the hills.   The late afternoon dusk turned into darkness without their being aware of how dark it was.  

Suddenly, the two children saw a dim figure coming toward them.  Their eyes had adjusted to the early winter darkness and they could make out this form—it was coming at them and it was wearing a long black coat and a black hat that covered its head—-it was a scary sight for two small children who were far from the grove and the old house that sat on the homestead. Or was it wearing a coat and hat?    It almost looked like a black bear was stalking them and they could not even cry out or move by now.  The children froze in fear  as they watched the advancing figure which was walking "funny"–kind of hobbling and heaving as it came over the snow right towards them.

Then the worst happened.  The black creature made a noise—it sounded like a growling bear—  but then, in a human voice—dark and strange—it shouted at the two frightened children who were still unable to take flight back toward the grove of trees.   "WHAT DO YOU KIDS THINK YOU ARE DOING?   DON’T YOU KNOW YOU SHOULD BE HOME?"

 This gruff and growly tirade spurred their paralyzed limbs into action and they abandoned their skis and went screaming across the field, wallowing in deep snow, falling down, getting up, fleeing for the safety of their Grandparents and the dimly lamp-lit windows that they could now see through the bare trees.   But the black figure followed them.  Would they be able to get away in time before it "got them"???      As they floundered and fled and screamed and cried out in fear, a sound like laughter began to come from the horrible black "thing".   In the snowy yard besides the little house in the grove, they suddenly heard their Grandma Torgun’s voice calling them……it was SHE who was the black monster that had nearly scared them clean out of their wits.  Now she was pulling off Grandpa Herbran’s big black fur coat and matching fur hat…..she could hardly walk—due to her laughter and the prank she had played on her two grandkids.  The two children recovered from their terror and went in to the warm, lamplight and the woodburning stove which had the kitchen all cozy and safe.  They could smell the delicious scent of supper simmering on the old range.   They were safe; they had escaped the monster—- and Grandma and Grandpa had a hearty laugh at their expense.  They had a wonderful over- night stay in Grandma and Grandpa’s little house; they went to sleep bundled up in warm featherbeds and homemade quilts and slept the sleep of innocence…..all tuckered out from their vigorous play at school, earlier,  and then on the hill north of the grove. Both of them were red-cheeked from the cold air and snowy outdoors.

The "children" are now both into their mid- to later 70′s— but both of them will never forget the lesson they learned of what happens to naughty kids who do not go home when they are supposed to go home!!!    Now they tell it to their grandchildren who can scarcely believe that any Grandma would scare their own Grandkids so badly.

But that is the way it was then.   Playing country tricks and pranks and scaring kids nearly senseless was just another way of having fun—- and laughing til you could hardly stand it.

——————————————————————————————————

( the drop leaf round  oak table they ate supper on that night is now in my living room…a wonderful memory of my Great Grandparents, Torgun and Herbran, who had both come as part of homesteading families in the 1870′s to eastern Clay County from Rollag, Norway. Both lived til they were well into their Nineties.)

( true story told to me, by one of my mother’s First Cousins, who is more my age than that of my Mom.)

My only male cousin, Charlie, died on Tuesday.  He had been plagued all this life by bad asthma.  I can still see in my mind’s eye, my small cousin struggling to breathe in the middle of a summer night at my Grandma’s farm.  His cardio/pulmonary system, after being under assault for all of his 64 years finally gave out and now he is at peace after so much illness.  I am relieved for him but sad for myself and others who loved him so much.  

Memories of better days as children come flooding back and they all center around summer at the farm near Rollag, MN where the 5 cousins spent so much time with our Gramdma and our aunts and uncle.  We were a very small family with only 3 of the siblings in my Mom’s family having children—- so there were only  5 of us….4 girls and Charlie.  We all got along and never fought like many youngsters do, at least occasionally. 

The big spreading tree by the lake:  We spent hours at "the tree"….it was a short-trunked, low-branched tree , probably just a Boxelder but it was magical to us cousins.  We could sit in its low branches and dangle our feet while we watched the small lake on our Grandma’s farm. It fed a creek in the Spring which in turn fed a weedy swamp and the next lake to the west. We delighted in watching for fish that traveled in the creek to the other lake.  My little sister at one time, was so terrified when our Uncle grabbed a huge northern pike out of the creek and slapped it up on the land where it flapped around dramatically til my uncle returned it to the creek….my sister, who was about 6 years old at the time, began to run blindly, screaming, "It’s an alligator!" and I ran to stop her from running into the little gravel country road where there was not much traffic, but I had been trained to take care of her.   Everyone but my sister had  a good laugh over "the alligator".      Charlie liked to go fishing with my  Dad who had built a small green flat- bottomed tipsy fishing boat called "the pram". It was prefect for one or two to sit and fish and I spent a good amount of time in that boat on various small lakes waiting for the walleyes to bite.  On the lake at my Grandma’s where Charlie would fish with my Dad, there were only Northerns that my Dad and some of his fishing friends had planted in the small private lake.  After a number of years there were some real "lunkers" to be caught and my Dad hooked one when Charlie was on board with him.  It must have weighed between 10 and 15 pounds because the catch was a real struggle between my Dad and the fish and also with my Dad trying to keep the boat from tipping too badly.  That flat bottom caused a lot of troubles.  Charlie stayed calm for a 10 -year old and helped my Dad land the huge fish.  It was an experience that Charlie never forgot and he loved to remember that day.

My sister, who found a sympathy card a few days ago, chose one that had a spreading tree by a body of water….it looked just like "our tree" by the lake at Grandma’s farm.  It brought back so many good memories when she showed it to me.  It is so appropriate for a memorial card for our beloved cousin.

My sister and Charlie were only two years apart in age so they were natural playmates at the farm.  Charlie’s sister and I were both born the same year so we were also playmates…but all four of us loved to help our Uncle when it was time to "go haying".  Charlie was mechanical from the time he was a child, so he was the one who got to drive the tractor slowly up and down the hayfield, while my Uncle, who had the muscles and the stamina, followed on foot picking up the bales and slamming them up on the hayrack.  Then we girls took over, and either picked up, or dragged the bales into place as we filled the hayrack .  Before my Uncle got a baler, we made "loose hay" and it had to be put into a huge canvas sling to be hoisted up to the hayloft where we helped distribute it evenly throughout the loft. When the loft was full of new hay, Charlie and my sister figured out how to turn this upper loft of the barn into a playground.  What farm kid has not figured out a way to jump in the soft hay?   Charlie would operate the rope that moved the sling across the loft and he would get my sister into it from her  perch on a high ledge in the loft.  Then Charlie would pull the rope and the sling, carrying my sister, would move from one end of the loft to the other….when they were over the deepest piles of hay, Charlie would release the sling and drop my Sis into the hay.  It was repeated over and over with him teaching her how to operate the rope and release the sling so he could take the thrilling fall into the hay.  Those nights must have been asthma "hell" for him,  but it did not stop him from doing it…it was just too much fun and I doubt the adults knew, unless my Uncle had been in on it at one point.  Our Uncle knew how to introduce us to fun on the farm—including letting the young calves in their summer pen, suck our fingers after we had fed them from the calf buckets.  We also got put on the broad backs of the two work horses—-monstrous horses who were of Belgian/Percheron or other large work- horse stock….and we would get to ride to the lake where the horses drank after a hard morning in the field pulling the farm equipment in the early days of our farm days.  The horses’ names were "Katie and Jerry" and I always wanted to ride "Katie" because she was such a beatiful brown color.  Once in excitement, I yelled at one of my Aunts…."Look at me! I’m riding Katie!"    Katie, who was not used to small people on her broad back and especially small people who yelled loudly, reacted by starting to rear up with me aboard clinging to her mane.  Fortunately my Uncle had the reins and stopped what would have been a very hard fall to earth for me.  My Uncle and my Gaurdian Angel were both on watchful duty that day.   Another highlight of our day was picking eggs from the chicken house or in places the hens would lay them outdoors in their own hen-made nests.  We all wanted to find the most eggs so it was a contest and a wild one at that.  Somehow we obeyed the adults and did not break any eggs. We also had to wash them as often they were pretty dirty—-chicken manure—but we put on our "bravado" and stuck out hands in the manurey water bucket for egg washing!

There is a book, a novel by Minnesota Gary Pausen, titled HARRIS AND ME, that is a lot like the adventures we had on our farm.  In the book, the narrator tells of his adventures with his cousin Harris on a northern Minnesota farm, and the story is a lot like our days on our Grandma’s farm.  I bought a copy of the book because it is so entertaining and in so many ways so true, of days spent in days past, on small farm in Minnesota, just like we 5 cousins did in our summers long-gone.

All five of us cousins liked to go to the pasture in the late afternoon to bring the milk cows home to the outdoor milking pen.  I remember jumping from one soggy hummock to another with my cousins…Charlie leading the girls—-as we hoped the cows would not already be on their way home.  It was much better when we had to go deep into the woods to find them and follow them home.  One of the adults—an uncle or an aunt— would go with us all the time…we did not realize that they were looking out for us as we were prone to do the wrong things  with the cows in our enthusastic "cow-hunt" and could have been kicked by a cow when we got too enthusiastic about getting them home for milking.  Then we would all get a turn to try our hand at real milking—no machines existed at that time on the farm…REA did not make it out to southeast Clay County til the late 40′s and early 50s so milking was all done by hand on the little farms up and down that old narrow gravel road that ran from the school house on the hill, past my Grandma’s farm and all the way to the end of the road about 2 miles south.  Most of the summer milking was done in the small milking pens where each tame cow would wait for her turn with a milker.  We always stood next to one of the aunts or my uncle, along with the farm cats—all of us waiting for the moment the Milker would squirt a stream of milk into our open mouths.  Sometimes the stream went awry and we got it in the cheeks, the eyes or our hair.  This was always a time of hilarity among us.

Then we all took our turns cranking the "Separator" in the milking shanty.  We were all fascinated by the amazing thing that would spout blue milk from one tap and rich yellow cream from another.  The cream was kept in large tin cream cans that were lowerd into a specially dug keeping pit down by the well where it stayed cool til it could be brought to town to "the Creamery" and there it was churned into butter, in the small town near the farm.  All the small towns had creameries at that time.  All the farms had small herds of cows and all the familes brought their full cream cans to town each week or twice a week. How different it is now.  None of this would even be allowed by current regulations but some of the best butter was made in those small town creameries.  I now have the oaken table that sat in the milk shanty and held the cream cans.  It had come from our Great Grandparents farm and I now have it in my home—all refinished and beautiful in spite of its many years in the milk shanty where it got a huge crack on the table top and had its legs painted Allis Chalmers orange!

I particular remember a hot humid day in July sometime in the late 1940s or very early 1950s when we were all going "to the Fair" at Barnesville on that summer night.  The excitement was papable all day long as we did our chores and helped get ready to go to the fair.  All of us were nearly unconscious from anticipating the "wild rides" on the Tilt-A-Whirl, the Merry Go Round, the Ferris Wheel and the treats of popcorn, cotton candy and carmel apples.  It was almost more than we could bear all that long day.  Then in the afternoon, all of us were brought outside for baths and shampoos ….rain water was taken from the barrel by the lean -to kitchen and warmed up in a huge boiler in the kitchen. Big laundry tubs were set up in the grass on the side yard by the milking shanty.  We all had our turns getting clean and I remember I was the one who shampooed Charlie’s soft brown hair.  There are wonderful black and white pictures of our preparations for the Fair.  I know all our excitement was rewarded with an absolutely wonderful night at the Fair with my cousins and my Aunts and Uncle.  By that time Grandma was pretty badly affected by Parkinson’s Disease so she never went with us to places like the Fair….she stayed home with the many cats and the faithful dogs "Pal" or "Tootsie".

All these great memories are running through my mind as I consider the passing of my cousin, Charlie.   We had so much fun together when were kids and then we all grew up, and our lives took the inevitable adult paths….we went to school, to work,  three of us became teachers and one a  skilled mechanic.. another became a Biologist—-and we did not get to see each other as much as we would have liked.

One treasured time in past two last decades. was when Charlie came here to meet old friends from his high school class.   He stayed with my Sister in their temporary apartment while a house was being finished.  I came into town to see Charlie too, and we had a wonderful afternoon talking and laughing.  Charlie and I did the dishes for my sister…I washed and Charlie wiped.  It is now a precious memory of a day of simple companionship and much love between cousins. 

We are so diminished now.  There are four of us now instead of five.  And we are poorer for it— with our Charlie gone from this earth.

Almost every day we are confronted with news about murders that are totally senseless. Now we are learning about the shooting of a Mahnomen Country Deputy—26 years old, newly married, whose life was nearly ended when he went to investigate a report of a drunken driver leaving the Shooting Star Casino.  The trail led to a home in Mahnomen where the young Deputy was shot in the head and abdomen after he knocked on the door to question 2 men who were inside.  Now his life is forever changed—-if he survives.  He has a severe brain injury in addition to abdominal gunshots that are serious enough,in themselves…but a severe brain injury?  Who knows if he will ever recover completely….and all because he did his duty as he was asked to do.  

The senseless crime in Mahnomen is directly linked to the use of alcohol, as so many violent crimes are.  Much of what we learn, as these senseless crimes unfold and the criminals go to trial, is that the perpetrators were drunk when they committed the crimes.

There are many comments already, on today’s FORUM site regarding the shootings in Mahnomen.  They are worth reading because some exhibit wisdom and some are blatant blather but you get a wide angle shot of people’s reactions to this particular senseless crime.

The other senseless crime reported in just the recent days is the killing of a woman in Connecticut by an enraged "tame" adult male Chimpanzee who had been kept as a "pet" by a woman who was a friend of the victim of the attack.  The details that are coming out are so gruesome that they are hard to read about….the frenzied male Chimp literally ripped off the woman’s face in the attack and she has also lost both her hands.  Can you imagine living through that and having to recover from it????   Of course, it is not yet being treated as a crime, but as an accident.   But is the woman who kept this male Chimpanzee as her companion and substitute "child" worthy of being called a criminal????     This incident brought to my mind the brutal attack and killing of a woman somewhere in California a few years back by attacking dogs who lived in the same apartment building as the victim.  These dangerous attack dogs went after the woman as she was unlocking her own door and trying to carry bags of groceries into her home.   The owners of the dogs, at that time, defended their "pets" but were eventually prosecuted and convicted for their "pets’ "  killing the neighbor.

Will the Chimp’s owner be charged also?  She should be.  Anyone who keeps a wild animal—especially an adult animal, as a pet, is asking for it.  The owner herself could have been attacked eventually.  There are people in our area…not too close—but near enough, that have kept an adult Siberian tiger in a caged compound for several years.  It was highly controversial at the time the tiger was brought to a rural area to be kept caged in what the owner said was a fail-proof enclosure.   But the near-neighbors were not convinced , and I do not blame them.  The adult male tiger is still kept and is treated like a "pet".  One wonders what will eventually happen to either the owners or to others if this Big Cat ever escapes.   Some of the owners of wild animals say they are doing this to protect  endangered species but how kind is it to keep an animal in a relatively small enclosure and alone—with no companionship from its own kind.  This is neither normal nor is it natural. It seems that Zoos are the entities best equipped to keep wild animals in captivity and there are plenty of people who oppose any sort of captivity for wild animals.

Both recent attacks—on in northern rural Minnesota, close to us, and the Chimpanzee attack in Connecticut are examples of totally senseless crimes.  Those who commit them should receive the full penalty of the law and in the one case in Mahnomen, I am sorry that the death penalty is not an option in Minnesota.  When I think of the destruction of the young life of that deputy, it seems that an "eye for an  eye" ought to be applied.

So yesterday was THE big day.  My two Silver Sneakers buddies and I went back to the Community Center for the first time since the middle of December when we took time off to get ready for our families’ Christmases.  Then "C" went on an extended visit to one of her kids and "R" was kept busy with assisting with holiday parties at the local country club dining room.  I took the time off to stay with grandkids while the parents went on a trip (I love to tell my friends that I have been "South" this winter—-I went to Sartell, MN, for almost two weeks!)   We have two other "Sneakers Buddies" that commute with us but both of them are truly enjoying the warm weather in faraway places…one in Florida and one in Hawaii.  But the Three Intrepid Musketeers went back to Silver Sneakers yesterday ,and also to the swimming pool.   It was a great day.  We all came away feeling tired, but satisfied , and ENERGIZED….as good excercise always does for one’s body.

But I have a few "ouches" left over from my rejuvenated exertions.   My Best Friend, one of whose majors in college involved a Kineseology (I know this spelling is wrong but I am not going to look it up just now)…anyway… it is the science of muscles and their movement.  He informed me that whenever there is muscular activity such as steady excercise, there is a chemical reaction in the muscles that is caused by the burning of oxygen which then leaves the residue of the oxygen burning in the muscle…and that is why we feel stiff and sore until the residue is expelled from the body.  We know an accomplished track and field athlete who is only 20 years old and already winning top place in college track and field.  After participating in a track meet, he always takes an ice bath at the college facilities…something that is hard for me to contemplate–putting your entire body into a bath of ice and ice water…but it helps him to recuperate quickly from the exertions he puts forth when competing in either the heptathalon or the decathalon events.  I think this ice bath keeps him from experiencing any muscle or ligament pain after a track competition.

In need an ice bath badly!  My knee, leg, and lower back muscles are complaining bitterly today.  But I am pretty surprised that my arm and chest muscles are not complaining at all and I worked them pretty hard with weights and the bands we use to excercise our upper bodies.  Maybe I am not as much of a Wimp as I used to be when any arm exertion brought on pain and fatigue.   You CAN teach an old body new tricks after all.  My arms are a lot stronger since my Silver Sneakers workouts for more than a year (not counting my extended Christmas vacation this year).   I strongly advise any seniors like me, to check into Silver Sneakers at a Y. or a community center….if you have a certain Humana suppletmental insurance, you are eligible for a free Silver Sneakers card at any participating excercise club or center.  I am eager to go back to the twice a week visit to the SS classes at the community center I  am part of.

We Three celebrated our return by hitting our favorite eating place on the way home—Taco Johns in the new west Detroit Lakes shopping area that has sprung up since a super WalMart was opened a few years ago.  Now there are eating places, a strip mall with a great Dollar Store and a Chinese buffet, plus other businesses, a huge Menards and many other smaller businesses that have moved west of the town.  There was a huge controversy, as there always is when a big Box Store like Walmart moves into the outskirts of a once-busy mainstreet community.  But this town has managed to keep a lively main street in spite of the WalMart on its western edges.   Pamida has not survived however…that struggling small box store on the other edge of the city is closing as are many others in that chain of businesses.   The Pamida in Perham is a booming enterprise because it is the only one of its kind in that town.  They have really good merchandise also—nice clothing.   I love to go to Perham because it is a unique smaller town—-lots of mainstreet activity there at all times but especially in the summers when so many "lake people" become a part of the community for 3 months. Perham also has some unique dining places that women go for—like the Gathering Grounds ; there are also some interesting gift shops and coffee places. I never leave Perham without stopping at the "Goose" store—I can never remember if it is the Blue Goose or the Wild Goose but it is the nicest gift shop with great greeting cards not seen anywhere else.  The coffee is wonderful also and a great way to close out a "Perambulate to Perham" day of fun.

A new day dawns with bright sunshine!  What a welcome sight… especially since the days are getting longer each day as we progress towards the Spring equinox.