Unbelted

My truck started squealing and I thought the worst 

Perhaps the throwout bearing. But it was only the belt.

I had Teresa pick one up but they sent the wrong belt:

Flat and not vee. Now the long weekend had started.

I'll take off the old one to show at the shop.

I could see the two bolts to loosen to pivot the alt to get the belt off. 

The top bolt was easy, but the bottom 

Was right by a motor mount, no room to ratchet the nut.

And my hand wrench was not box. The nut was too tight.

Don't round it off!

The bolt's head was accessible.

But too tight for my ratchet or breaker bar

I rummaged the garage and found a short pipe

Slipped over the breaker, the bolt moved. 

The tough nut could be held. 

And the belt came right off. 

Lesson learned:

Never ever throw anything away.

Well the old belt can go.

Scandalous

 It was this past Saturday in 1974 that the first item with a UPC was scanned in a grocery store. The item was a pack of Wrigley gum, which is now in the Smithsonian Museum.

   The technology was first developed in 1952, but it took another 22 years to make it practical. Getting an idea is the easy part. Making it work takes perseverance and luck. The guy who came up with the idea was working for IBM and he just waited till his colleagues, who were working on other things, came up with the technology for his project to take off.

   Soon Univeral Product Codes were on everything. It speeded up check out and kept track of inventory. By the turn of the century, stores had set up self checkout kiosks to save on labor. Roseau County got it's first self check out kiosks this past May. It seems the Super One grocery store was unable to hire enough cashiers. Lines got longer and you'd even see Gary the manger running a register. So four kiosks were installed at the store replacing two register lanes.

   I was delighted. I dislike waiting in checkout lines. Especially when the person in front of me waits until all their groceries are bagged before withdrawing their checkbook, writing a check, balancing their checkbook, and then discovering an error in their receipt that requires the help of the manager. 

   Since they put in the kiosks I have not visited a checkout clerk’s lane. I have not missed the personal interaction. Often, my clerk will be carrying on a conversation with another employee while checking me out. Don't miss that at all.

   I had used self checkout kiosks in department stores previously with no problem, but the Super One kiosks are fussy. The device was constantly locking up and accusing me of putting unscanned items into my bag. Or else I was bumping my knee against the scale which also shut me down. When the kiosk perceives a prop elm, a yellow light goes on announcing to everyone you're an idiot.

   The scale exists to reduce theft. If I scan a gallon of milk, the scale is programmed to receive an 8.6 pound item. If I put the milk directly into my cart instead of on the scale, the voice orders me to put the milk on the scale, but by the time I react, it's too late and the light comes on and I must wait for the kiosk clerk to reset my machine. The clerk and the voice of the kiosk are both very nice. And even if they get nasty, I won't mind. I'm never going back to the checkout line. My time is too valuable.

Don't hate it till you ate it.

   

Bemidji Bemidji Bemidji

    There's a bird on our land that sings Bemidji three times in a row all day long.  The bird is not hard to find, just hard to see. It haunts dense underbrush or lush tree foliage. You can stand for 15 minutes while it sings away and not be able to catch a glimpse of it. 

   Two years ago, I determined to identify the bird, no matter how long it took. It took about an hour of following the song through a low area of willows as the bird flitted from thicket to thicket. I got a positive ID, hurried home and paged through my bird book, and got its name. Then during the winter I forgot the name and what it looked like.

   All next summer it sang Bemidji, but I never sought it out. He was back again this summer. I went out yesterday with binoculars to the forsythia hedge. He was in there somewhere. I caught a flash of yellow as he hopped around. If there's a gap of thirty seconds in the song, you know the bird has moved. But it quickly takes up singing again. I followed the song to four different spots, but never got another glimpse. After an hour I went home.

   I checked my bird book. I was sure it was a warbler. I could eliminate many of them, then guessed it could be the Hooded Warbler. The description of it's song sounded like a possibility but Iowa is the northern limit of its range. Maybe with global warming...

   I was out in the yard this morning when I heard it singing away in the forsythias. I didn't have the binoculars, but I was so close to the bird, binoculars would have been useless. It was in the leafy part at first, then moved to some dead branches which were so thick and tangled I still couldn't spot it. At last it appeared in an opening. Black mask over its eyes. It dropped down into the weeds, then popped up again. White eyebrows connected in the middle. Got it!

   I didn't rush home. I knew my bird would be waiting in my book. And there it was: Yellowthroat, a warbler. Range: southern Canada south to the Gulf Coast. Winters in the Caribbean. Habits: "an active, inquisitive frequenter of dense, low cover on a variety of sites." Voice: "short, vigorous series of clear, high-pitched, 3 note phrases often written witchity, witchity, witchity." Some write bimidjity.

   I should circle Yellowthroat in my book, but I don't ever write in books. I'll just write a post to the internet, where I can look it up next summer, if necessary. I must come up with a memorable title for my post.

Down on the Wilson Road

    It's war here with rodents. They chew up our stuff and frighten the womenfolk. I've tried prevention, but even the White House has mice, so I'm okay with trapping and poisoning mice in and around the house. I don't like it and I offer a prayer for the dead, and do it anyway.

   I used to shoot squirrels, but could not stand watching their death throes, so I switched to trapping. I transport them five miles from home and let them go. I know their chances of survival are slim in a new environment, but at least they have a chance.

   This spring I saw a fisher in the rafters of our garage. Fishers and other members of the weasel family eat squirrels. I noted a lack of squirrels at that time. The fisher probably moved on after cleaning up our place. Now we have an infestation of chipmunks, bold little creatures that scurry around your feet and retreat under the porch when you go for them.

   I set out my Havahart trap last evening and baited it with sunflower seeds. When I arose early this morning, there was a chipmunk in the trap. The sibling who was condoling with him zipped under the porch at my approach. I usually go for my mile long walk along County Road 8 first thing, but I was not going to make the chipmunk wait. Who knows what he was imagining. So I put him in my trunk and headed west on 8. 

   My friend Steve accuses me of dropping my prisoners at the end of his road. Whenever he sees a squirrel at his bird feeder, he presumes it's one of mine. Indeed I once caught a squirrel during a blizzard and left it off at the end of Steve's road because I feared both the squirrel and I would perish in the storm. When I let the squirrel out, he bounded over to the old one room school house nearby and got up on the roof. I presume he went down the chimney and found shelter. He may be there yet.

   In good weather, I'm a strict five mile man. I read that if you drop an animal off less than five miles away, he'll be able to make his way back to his home. So I drive west on 8 and after a couple of jogs, I reach a Wildlife Management Area. Perfect. I point the cage towards the woods, open the door, and after a moment's hesitation, the critter bounds across the ditch and into the thick undergrowth. They almost always climb a few feet up a tree for a look around. We say goodby and I head for home.

   Ennaways, as I drove west this beautiful morning, I decided to drive another mile to the northwest end of the Wilson Road. I love the Wilson Road. It's one of those places like Beltrami Forest and Thief Lake that give the lie to the rectangular flatness of this area. I drove down the gravel road a thousand feet and let my passenger out. I set my Fitness app for one mile and walked along the road, tall trees on one side, a field of buckwheat and rye planted for the deer on the other. After half a mile I turned back to the car. It was a morning in paradise for me. I can't speak for the chipmunk. But he'll cheer up when I deliver his brother later.

Purslane Bloody Purslane

A man of words and not of deeds

Is like a garden full of weeds

   I've quit talking abut my garden and started planting one. And once a garden is planted, it must be weeded. I would prefer to weed standing up with a hoe, but we have a pernicious weed called purslane to deal with. It's called purslane because its plump, shiny leaves look like little purses.

   It's possible to uproot purslane plants with a hoe, but most of them will start growing again. If chopped up, each piece will start a new plant. If ignored, it will turn into an inoffensive looking mat-like plant which will shoot its seeds rocket-like all over the garden.

   The only thing to do is to get down on hands and knees with a small entrenching tool and uproot each plant. The plants must then be placed in a container and removed from the garden. One website called purslane a zombie plant for it's ability to return from the dead. They recommended burying the plants with nuclear waste. Another site recommended sending them on a SpaceX voyage, but for me that would be overkill.

   I have fought purslane in the past, but I've always slacked off by late summer, distracted with the harvest. This year I am forming better garden habits. Every day I enter the garden with my tool and a pie plate and concentrate on one quarter of the garden. The place looks good at a glance, but at ground level, new infestations are always coming up, and I set to work. My kill for the day goes into a plastic grocery bag. I'm still pondering what to do with them. I don't want to infest the landfill.

   On a positive note, purslane is edible. Archaeobotanists have found that people on the Greek island of Samos were eating purslane in the seventh century BC. The Greeks and many other peoples still put purslane in their soups, salads and seed cakes. It has a sour/salty taste they say. But I can't do it. For me that would be like wantonly slaughtering 10,000 buffalo then ordering a bison burger. Wouldn't be appropriate.

   Two final notes: I googled "purslane tattoo" and got zero results. That should tell you something right there. Also, there are two South American soccer clubs nicknamed "The Purslanes" (Verdolagas). You can search their various uniforms but you won't find a trace of the famous weed. Maybe someone ate them.

   

   

Water Day

   Yesterday was the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, a day that always reminds of the time I celebrated it in the Philippines. I was in the Navy, stationed at a little base on the northwest coast of Luzon. My job involved listening in on the North Vietnamese across the sea.

   The Navy provided me with a comfortable bunk in the barracks on base, but some friends and I decided to go native out in the barrio. We rented a small house in a compound and reveled in the Filipino culture. Filipinos are among the nicest people in the world. A local barber told me they liked Americans because we payed our bills. The Japanese just took what they wanted during their occupation not so many years ago. 

   It was two miles to the base and I often arranged with a motorbike driver to pick me up before work. The motorbikes had covered sidecars, with plastic curtains for the monsoon season. I was not aware it was the Nativity of St. John that cloudless June morning when I left the compound. I was surprised to see that my sidecar had its curtains down and the driver was wearing his raincoat. I asked what the deal was, but couldn't hear his response through the plastic.

   The reason came soon enough as water balloons and buckets of water were thrown over the motorbike as we made our way though the barrio. I stayed mostly dry. The driver did not, but I could see he was laughing. He was young. When we got to the base I asked him again. "Birthday of St. John," he said. Ah, we were renewing our baptismal vows.

   I was telling someone yesterday about this little adventure and we speculated that before the coming of water balloons, the people may have dropped coconuts onto each other's heads. Had that been the case, the coming of rubber balloons alone would have raised the life expectancy of the average Filipino by at least two years. On a more somber note, while I was being hit with water balloons the people over in Vietnam were lobbing real bombs at each other. 

Sumaiyo ang kapayapaan.

June 3, 2021 Thursday

   I've wondered what the bottom of the ocean would look like if all the water could be drained in a flash. For one thing  there would be lots of surprised fish flopping about. If this happened near a city, there'd be lots of shopping carts and refrigerators and unmade Mafioso.

   I read that immediately before a tsunami hits, the water near the shore withdraws, then rushes back in a giant wave. When a munitions ship blew up in Halifax Harbor in 1917, the harbor bottom was exposed for a few seconds. Both these methods of seeing the bottom of the ocean are by chance only as well as being dangerous for the onlooker.

   I took advantage of a third option yesterday afternoon by driving south from my home towards the town of Trail, Minnesota, a distance of 65 miles. Teresa and I were on a mission to pick up a mobility scooter for her father Enar, age 103, who lives in an assisted living apartment at the Warroad Senior Living Center.

   Enar used to get his exercise by walking to the dining room three times a day. But when Covid-19 hit, the dining room was closed and his meals were delivered to his room. Enar could have exercised by walking around the facility, but at 103, he said, forget about it. Enar's leg muscles weakened. He was no longer the man he had been at 102.

   Enar had asked previously about a scooter, but the family said no for fear that he would become dependent on the scooter. Also, Enar had had several close calls before the family took away his car in his nineties. There was a fear he'd run into a fellow old timer at the home.

   But now he really was a candidate for a scooter. Teresa thought it was worth giving her father a chance for some mobility for his final few years. She called Marty, our local VA rep. Yes, Enar would be eligible for a scooter, but there was a process. The next step was a call to Altru Hospital in Grand Forks. The man there said the VA process could take months. He said he might have a shortcut.

   A couple of days later a coworker of the man at Altru called. Her father had gotten a scooter from the VA and now that the father was deceased, she would be willing to loan it to Enar, no charge. So that's why we were driving across the bottom of glacial Lake Agassiz yesterday. The ancient lake bottom is flat. There are lots of trees and the crops in the fields are just greening up. It's the time for spraying the fields for weeds so there were lots of trucks and tractors on the road.

   As I say, the lake bottom is flat. No Mariana Tenches, though you could find fossils if you knew where to look. The lake had been formed many thousands of years ago by a melting glacier. At one time the lake had an area larger than the Black Sea. When it drained quickly 8,000 years ago, it raised the level of all the oceans about five feet which affected weather patterns everywhere, even boosting agriculture in Western Europe. 

   As I pondering these earth shaking consequences, Teresa got a text that the battery on the scooter was shot, but that it was easy enough to push. So we got the scooter loaded into the truck and headed for home. My thoughts were no longer on sea bottoms but on matters of battery procurement. 

Ancient Lake Agassiz with Scooter

June 2,2021 Tuesday

   My pic for today is titled Half Moon with Half Section (320 acres) of Tofu. Very Zen. Very Joe. I planned to send the pic to my friend Ed out in Massachusetts. Ed is an excellent cook, but he hates tofu. Lots of other chefs use tofu, especially in Japan. I found a recipe for fried tofu. But it was no good. It had no integrity, no backbone, so I became allied with Ed.

   Only one percent of the soybeans in this field will become tofu or soy lattes. I wonder if Ed has tried edamame or steamed soybeans, roasted in olive oil and salt. Around half of the crop will be exported. What stays here will be fed to animals, mostly chickens. A lot of it will also be turned into cooking oil and five percent will become biodiesel to haul those soybeans all over.

   When I first moved here in 1973, soybeans could not be grown this far north. It was all wheat and barley then with a fair amount of flax for linseed oil. The linseed oil went into paint, but when everyone switched to latex paint, the flax went away, which was too bad, because flax produces a pretty blue flower. Flax is also made into linen, but linen needs are down there with soy lattes.

   For a while in the 1980s, sunflowers were the hot crop, grown mainly for the oil. Bird seed was the latte/linen byproduct. Then canola pushed sunflowers out. Canola was the ancient Chinese crop originally known as rape seed, grown for the oil. The Canadians started growing canola before the U.S. Some marketing guy in Toronto said that any product with the word 'rape' in it was going to be a tough sell, so they came up with 'Canola': Canadian oil, get it?

   It's soybean's turn now. Thanks to new varieties and a warming climate, soybeans have become the largest crop grown in Roseau County by far. It all about economics. Poor canola is way down and it's rare to see a sunflower field. That's a shame, because sunflowers are beautiful as everyone knows. Soybeans are of no visual interest.

   So here's your picture Ed. Soybeans are here to stay. If you put enough sugar or salt on them, they'll be delish.

Half moon with Half Section of Tofu

May 31, 2021 Memorial Day

     In my post yesterday I mentioned rummaging through the trash. I wasn't so much rummaging, as transferring trash from the kitchen trash container into a plastic grocery bag. Whenever I go to town, I take a bag of kitchen trash along to be dropped in a trash receptacle at the gas station or grocery store.

   These trash receptacles are meant for candy wrappers and pop bottles and I feel sheepish taking advantage of the beneficence of Holiday or Super-One as I stuff my bulging bag into their bin. But it must be. Teresa and I are both retired and must find methods to make ends meet.

   During our working years we paid for weekly trash pick up. It didn't cost much and they drove into the yard to pick up our trash. Then they started requiring us to bring our trash to the end of the road where the neighbor's dog could get at it. I had to buy a heavy duty trash barrel. After the trashman emptied our barrel, the winds would blow it into the ditch, especially annoying when the snow was deep. Every couple of years the cost went up.

   As retirement loomed, I came up with a plan to reduce trash output. All edible trash went into the compost bin. Burnable trash got burned. Tin and plastic got recycled in Roseau. Glass had to be transported in Thief River Falls, requiring a half-day long bottle run. A jolly affair. That left a small residue that went into the kitchen trash barrel and was carried to the bins of Roseau town as described above.

   All of these ploys had their negatives. The contents of the compost bin needed to be turned and dampened frequently in order to produce compost. I'm breaking the law by burning my trash. It's a little brighter for recycling. The plastic we put in bins is recycled as is the tin and aluminum. The glass we haul to Thief River is also recycled. So I'm happy about that. 

   The final category, the non-edible, non-burnable, non-recyclable stuff has me playing rag and bone man in reverse. I know my two or three bags per week will end up in the landfill. Eventually the landfill will be covered over. Grass and trees will grow. Maybe someone have a picnic there. My hope is that they are mindful about their trash.

Oh! Calcutta!

May 30, 2021 Sunday

    Whenever I fix something using my miniature Swiss Army knife, the Classic model, people say, "Oh, you're being like MacGyver." "Thanks," I respond. "Who's MacGyver?"  "He's this guy who solves problems using paper clips and pieces of string on TV." I was intrigued, but it seems the series had ended years ago.

  Then recently, in my dentist's waiting room, I got to see a few minutes of a MacGyver rerun. He seemed to be some kind of undercover cop who's cover had been blown. Some bad guys were after him. He managed to hide in some bushes, but the bad guys were closing in. They had their guns out. They unleashed a couple of  Rottweilers.

   There was a roaring river in a deep chasm next to MacGyver's bush.  The Rottweilers had his scent. But MacGyver stayed cool. He took a toothbrush out of his pocket and strung some dental floss onto the toothbrush to make a bow.  Apparently he had just been for a cleaning that morning. He opened the blade of his little Swiss Army knife, tied the end of the floss to his knife, then shot his knife using the toothbrush/bow into a tree across the chasm.

   Could dental floss support the weight of a grown man? MacGyver proved that it could.  The bad guys took a few pot shots at MacGyver who by then was shooting twigs into the bad guy's tire valves causing the air to run out. The police soon picked up the bad guys thanks to MacGyver's shoe phone.

   I thought of MacGyver while rummaging through our household trash this morning. I came across an old toothbrush and popped it in my pocket next to my knife. You never know.

"Hey, let's be careful out there."

   

May 29, 2021 Saturday

   We've been meeting Becky and Jack, Teresa's sister and husband once a week for breakfast in Roseau for the past several years. For various reasons, we ended up going to Nelson's Cafe on Main Street. It's a clangorous, steamy place but you get used to it. You recognize some of the other customers and a jolly camaraderie ensues.

   Once we quit working we could meet a little later, at 8:30. Larry Rose, the owner with his wife Donna, makes great cinnamon rolls. He gets an incredible number of swirls in each roll. We rolled one out once in a single strip and it reached almost to the movie theater. 

   When the pandemic hit in March last year all the restaurants in the state had to close. We continued our Thursday breakfast tradition by taking turns making treats and having cofffee at Becky's shop, the Bead Gypsy, across the street from Nelson's. I even tried cinnamon rolls. They weren't as good as Larry's but they got eaten.

   When the restaurants were allowed to open with restrictions, many of the businesses on Main Street, including Nelson's, were lackadaisical about wearing masks. They were merely reflecting the attitude of their customers. We didn't feel comfortable there so we ordered rolls from Nelson's and continued to have our coffee in Becky's coffee room in her shop.

   Spending time at Becky's shop has been good for my own lackadasicality. I lack situational awareness. And to get from the coffee room to the bathroom requires good situational awareness. As I passed through the shop I would invariably walk into the vault. The Bead Gypsy is located in the old Citizens State Bank building. Becky uses the vault for storage. The massive vault door is never closed and the combination has been lost.

   It takes a zig and a zag to finally arrive at the tiny bathroom at the end of a long corridor. Turning on the light also turns on the fan which has been warped by urine fumes over the years and is loud enough to be heard over at Nelson's. When I'm ready to leave, I always forget how small the bathroom is and bang the door against the toilet bowl. The bowl acts as an an amplifier and so much for privacy. I've suggested to Becky that she cut a notch out of the door so it doean't bang into the bowl. She just refers me to Duane, the building's owner.

   One good thing about the pandemic, at least for me, is that my inner robot has now been trained to zig before entering the vault and later, to stop, look and listen before opening the bathroom door. The fan unfortunately is too high for my robotic arm to disconnect.

Bangin' little bathroom

Hang a right! Right now!

May 27, 2021 Thursday

    Ah, the dreaded colonoscopy. It's been ten years so I shouldn't complain. I scheduled an early one because I'm ravening after my clear liquid diet of the day before. My friend Steve picked me up at seven and dropped me at the hospital, where I was issued a backless gown and told not to tie it in the back. 

   I sat on the soft procedure table and one of the three nurses put several monitors on my chest and another tucked a warm blanket around me. The doctor came in. He owns hunting land near us and said he had 600 lbs. of oats in his truck for his food plots. I told him I'd take 10 lbs. for my high fiber diet. 

   An IV was started in my forearm, and soon the anesthesiologist was pumping the good stuff into my bloodstream. Goodnight. When I awoke an hour later, the doctor was gone and my name had disappeared from the big screen that had guided the probe through six feet of darkest me.

   I worked in hospice for several years and we sometimes had a client dying of colon cancer. The elephant in the room was, if he had had the damn test, he probably wouldn't be in this fix. The procedure itself is not bad at all. Everyone agrees it's the prep the day before that's hateful. You can live on a clear diet, but it's no fun. Give me my opaque foods! 

   I won't bore you with details of the concoction I had to choke down last evening. Every 15 minutes I swallowed 8 ounces of the semi-viscous stuff. The liquid acts as a squeegee to empty your large intestine so the doctor will have a clear view of what's up in there. Sometimes I don't have to drink the whole 128 ounces of the fluid, but this year it was bottoms up until I got the all clear signal.

   There won't be a pic today. I was issued a big glossy photo of my back channels, but showing that here would be TMI.

😉

May 26, 2021 Wednesday

    Today we cleaned the ditches along the two miles of Minnesota Hwy 89 we adopted in 1991. It's our thirtieth year! Our adopted section runs a mile north and a mile south from the junction of 89 and County Road 8 near our home. We have unofficially adopted a mile of County Road 8 as well. Since 2004 when the last of the boys left home, Teresa and I have been doing the job alone, which is actually four miles of ditches in total. And the truth is,Teresa has done 90% of the cleaning. She likes the exercise and dislikes my procrastination. 

   There are only a few prime ditch cleaning weeks in the year. You have to wait till the snow melts and the ditch drains before you can start, and you must get out there before the grass gets too high to see the trash. The main items found are plastic pop bottles, aluminum beer cans and glass beer bottles, followed by styrofoam and paper coffee cups and a variety of paper and cardboard debris.

   I hate it when a car hits a deer along our stretch.  If the deer doesn't get hauled away, it gradually returns to nature. In some stages nature stinks. Nearby will be broken pieces of chrome and plastic. We're not as thorough as the CSI people, but a piece of tail light stands out a mile away.

   Today we only did a quarter of our stretch. We walked south a half mile in the west ditch and back to our car in the east ditch.  It was cool and windy and we wore plenty of clothes under our fluorescent vests.  Teresa's most disgusting find was a panty liner. I found a disposable diaper. I gave the former owner a half point for putting the diaper in a plastic bag. 

   I have reached the point of not hating the litterbugs. Perhaps that DQ wrapper in the ditch blew out the window when the driver opened his window to let the smoke out. That plastic pop bottle full of sunflower shells? Maybe the guy or gal accidentally took a swig from the discard bottle instead of the drinking bottle. Choking on shells, the driver slammed on the brakes and gave him or herself a Heimlich maneuver the fender. The bottle of shells meanwhile was forgotten by the road in all the excitement.

   The diaper in the plastic bag brought back memories of a trip to Winnipeg in 1983. We had gone to the Museum of Man and Nature there. There were eight of us traveling in our friend's big van. We were just about to head for home when we realized little Joe needed a diaper change. I should have taken Joe back into the museum, but this was before the time rest rooms had diaper changing stations, even in Canada.  

   So before we left the parking lot, Teresa and I got Joe changed.  Wet wipes had been invented by then thank God.  This was winter and a powerful aroma filled the van. Our friend didn't say anything, but his eyes in the rear view mirror said it all.  I surveyed the area. No one around. I slid open the door and set the tightly wrapped package next to the van. I didn't realize our friend would cut the wheel so sharply. Ka-boom!

   There's nothing like an exploding diaper to lighten the mood, as long as no one gets hurt. We didn't linger in Canada. I was relieved to see the gates were open at the border. We had been riding for two hours by then so we were able to say we had nothing to declare with straight faces. I still feel guilty about that diaper so I cut diaper tossers some slack as I walk the ditch.

Biodegradables get left in place 

May 23, 2021 Sunday

    I went to the auction yesterday of our neighbor Frank Cwikla. Auctions are popular in this area. Many people will attend with no intention of buying anything but as a mini-holiday where they can see people and have lengthy chats. There is always lunch available.

   There were no auctions last year because of Covid and even though it was a cool drizzly day, the mob that descended on Frank's farm yesterday was enormous. I got there at 9:45, just before the auction began and my bidding number was 186. By the time I got my coffee, the bidding had started. I hadn't left myself time to inspect any of the boxes on the two big trailers by the shed.

   Auctions always begin selling boxes of miscellaneous stuff: small and obsolete kitchen appliances, dishware, old dictionaries etc. The auctioneer was good, He had a tremendous amount of things to auction off before he could move to the real moneymakers, the guns, furniture, vehicles and farm equipment. He would start a box at $2.50. If it didn't go to $5 immediately, he sold it for $2.50. The crowd learned his rhythm. If he couldn't even get $2.50, he added another box. Most of this stuff went cheap, but if something was really old, the price would climb. Boxes of orange glassware approached $100. You could have fooled me.

   Eventually Steve Reynolds showed up (#310). Steve is related to a lot of the people there through the Palm family. This auction was in Palmville Township and Frank had married a Palm woman. Steve also knew a lot of people from the place he used to work. We chatted with the woman who had taken over Steve's job. She showed off the box of eight track tapes she had gotten for $2.50. Why? Because she has a vintage car made during the two year period that cars came with eight track tape players.

   I like to go to an auction once a year. We used to take them more seriously when we were younger. Our house is full of stuff picked up at auctions. But we don't need more stuff. A couple of hours is enough now. Frank's auction is the end of an era for me. Frank was our neighbor directly to the south. Our little forty acre patch is surrounded by his hundreds of acres. He told me once he wanted to buy our place when it came on the market in 1974, but he had a cash flow problem. I should thank the Arabs for starting the war that led to the oil embargo that made the lenders nervous. We had a cash flow problem too, but we wanted the place more than Frank did.

   Frank had extensive wooded areas along the river where large numbers of deer wandered. Frank considered these deer as his own and was delighted to learn I was not a hunter. He was paranoid about other hunters shooting deer on his land. I guess such things do happen, so he asked to put "No Hunting" signs on my land to help seal the border.

   I only saw Frank during farming time. If he saw me in the yard he'd stop to chat. After a bit he'd ask if I supposed I'd like a beer. Frank had a taste for room temperature beer which doesn't matter with Schmidt. Frank discussed the difficulties of farming, sprinkling his palaver with "son of a biscuits," an oath I've since adopted.

   About twenty years ago Frank started renting out his land and just did the cattle, then even that went, and he moved to an apartment in Thief River and finally to the nursing home. He died last August at the age of 88. He was a good guy.

Frank loved a lukewarm Tuborg after a long day in the fields.

   

May 22, 2021 Saturday

    My Aunt Mary is dying in Chicago. She is 95. Aunt Mary was always very generous. One time she and her husband Ed sent her only sibling, my father, a large check so he could get the wooden hull of his dream boat built up in Maine. Once he had the hull, my father was able to build the rest.

   Aunt Mary was full of vim. She got a degree in phy ed at Boston University then went to Chicago where the schools required physical education every day. She met Ed there and taught at an inner city high school for the rest of her career.

   The first wedding I ever attended was Ed and Mary's. My brother Bill got to go too. Aunt Mary was Bill's godmother, which I resented, because Bill was always getting great presents from Mary. The day of the wedding, a limo picked us up at our house. It had cigarette lighters in the salon-like back seating area. The wedding itself was equally amazing. I danced all afternoon. Afterwards everyone went to my grandparent's beach cottage. The normally sedate refrigerator there was filled with a solid wall of cans of beer. Bill and I were ushered off to bed.

   Ed and Mary drove out every summer and stayed with us at the cottage. Ed always brought along a bundle of pastrami, a delicacy not available in Boston then. Ed was fun. He'd play little games with us which usually ended up with us winning enough coins for a trip to the nearby ice cream parlor.

   Before long Ed and Mary were bringing their little daughter Liz along which added to the fun. Eventually my father finished his boat, a 28' ketch. Mary loved the water and went sailing with her brother every time he went out. In 1967 my parents bought a year 'round house on the water in the same town as the cottage. One year Mary and my father sailed to Maine where Bill had settled. This was a big deal since Maine is often beset by fog and my father didn't believe that sailboats should have motors.

   Unfortunately, Uncle Ed died in 1976. But Liz and Mary continued their summer visits. Mary went sailing with her brother and Liz partied with her cousins. Liz inherited her grandmother's cottage on Lake Michigan, an hour east of Chicago, just into Michigan. When Teresa and I would drive to Boston with the three boys for our summer visits, we would often stop at Liz's cottage for a day or two of respite. Of course Mary would be there and we'd see Liz's friend Ralph too. It was great.

   Once she retired, Mary started going on extensive travels with the Roads Scholar program. She and her old teacher friends would also compete in the Senior Olympics. Once I got old enough, Mary sent me a thick packet so I too could register to compete, but I'm no Mary. Mary could be a little pushy at times. I learned that it was best to seem to agree, then fail to follow up. The passive-passive approach.

   Mary could also be precipitous. Sometimes she would go overboard in her haste, but she usually got out of any trouble. She was a good swimmer. But not always. A few years back she was enjoying a girls night out at her favorite Italian restaurant. She was in her late eighties by then and was at risk for falling and Liz was always reminding her to wait for help. But this night she didn't listen and ended up falling and breaking a hip. Two weeks later she had a massive stroke which put a crimp in her lifestyle.

   After a nursing home stay, Mary came home. She was able to get around, but her vision was reduced to a pinhole. This didn't seem to bother her. She was able to read the paper and watch her favorite sports teams. She had always attended the women's Final Four basketball tournament with her friends. When her friends got too old, Liz started going along. She's the caregiver par excellence.

   Mary made it to our son Ned's wedding two years ago, but that was her last big trip. After that she stayed home mostly. She still had her afternoon cocktail while watching Jeopardy. Then she stopped coming downstairs, and the cocktail became a mocktail. She remained in good spirits through it all. Then last week a bowel obstruction led to surgery on Monday. She has not regained consciousness and will be going on hospice in a nursing home soon.

   I know Mary would expect us to keep our spirits up no matter what.

After a good sail.

May 17, 2021 Monday

    

   There was a confirmation service at Sacred Heart in Roseau yesterday. The bishop was there and the church was as crowded as it has been in over a year. Earlier in the week Governor Walz announced a relaxation of restrictions. You don't need to wear a mask if you've been vaccinated. 

   On last Sunday about 90% of the congregation wore masks. Yesterday it was a less than 50%. Every other pew is blocked off, but there were so many people the six foot distancing was not observed. There were eleven high school juniors confirmed. They came up one by one with their sponsor and the bishop anointed their foreheads with oil as he addressed them by their confirmation saint's name.

   The sacrament confers the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the Lord. The qualifications are you have to have been baptized, and you have to be at least seven years old. I was confirmed in seventh grade. My mother said my behavior was improved after confirmation, so there must be something to it. 

   In later years, church leaders decided a seventh grader couldn't appreciate the gifts they were receiving so confirmation was delayed to junior year of high school. The students go to weekly religious education classes and at the end they must profess they are serious about their faith. One of the fun parts is picking a saint whose name then becomes part of your full name. 

   In my day we stuck to the main saints, Paul, John, maybe someone would go wild with an Augustine. I chose James, because my sponsor was my cousin Jim Keaney. But the kids nowadays dig a little deeper. I think they want to be original. The church recognizes more than 10,000 saints, so they have plenty to choose from.

   I had never heard of several of the saints these confirmands had chosen. Saint Honestus? According to tradition he was a third century nobleman from southern France who went to Spain to preach and was martyred for his troubles. Saint Catherine of Bologna? She lived in the 15th century so we know a lot more about her. She was from a wealthy family and was sent to a nobleman's palace to be a lady-in-waiting to the nobleman's wife. But the nobleman executed his wife for adultery, so at age 13, Catherine entered the convent. She was a writer and a visionary. She met with Jesus, Mary and Joseph and predicted the fall of Constantinople before it happened. She died at age 49 and her body did not decompose. You can still see it in Bologna. She's the patron of artists.

   I was particularly intrigued by St. Joseph of Cupertino. St. Joseph was another Italian, from the 17th century. He began having visions as a child which made him an object of scorn among his family and neighbors. He applied at the local monastery, but was rejected because of his lack of education. He said he'd be happy cleaning the stables which he did for the next 15 years, until someone realized his spiritual gifts and he was promoted to priest. 

   When St. Joseph was praying, he was observed levitating above the floor. This earned him enemies so to prove his seriousness, he ate only two solid meals a week, and sprinkled bitter powders on his food during the last 35 years of his life. At first I flippantly imagined St. Joseph was the patron of IT workers, you know Apple being in Cupertino, but the reality is even better. He's the patron of aviators and astronauts. 

Pick a Saint, Any Saint

May 16, 2021 Sunday

    It's the birthday of my sister Mary-Jo who is sixty. I always think I'm 12 or 13 years older than her but when I see she's sixty, it's starkly revealed that the difference is 14. I had just received my commemorative John F. Kennedy coin the day Mary-Jo came home from the hospital. My mother was in a bit of a bad mood that day. After giving birth to four boys, she had finally gotten her girl and the joy was slightly dented by the headline that day in the Boston Globe: "Kennedy Hurts Back on May 16."

   "Why did they have to say May 16?" My mother wondered. She felt the paper had besmirched the sacred day of her daughter's birth. It was too late to stop the presses. The papers had been delivered all over the city. And it would be silly to send a nasty letter to the editor. After all, the president had injured his back, or reinjured it. It had originally been injured in the war. I think he had been planting a commemorative tree somewhere when the press caught him locked in a bent over position.

   Kennedy's physician was a woman, which was quite forward looking on Kennedy's part. Dr. Janet Travell, among other treatments, prescribed a rocking chair to help with the president's back spasms. There was a run on rocking chairs in New England when that was revealed.

   But back to Mary-Jo. As her oldest brother, I took her pre-school education in hand. I taught her to walk. I taught her to love and care for books, and I took her on instructive jaunts around the countryside. She turned out extremely well. She walks elegantly, her house is filled with interesting books, and right now she and her husband Sunny are jaunting in Key West. Say hi to Hem, MJ.

Roseau River, last evening

May 15, 2021 Saturday

    It was foggy when I went out for my daily walk around six this morning and the sun was just coming over the trees. There's a meadow along the west side of our road and I saw something unusual out in the field. It was a black lump that started to move. Then I could see it was a skunk. Skunks are nocturnal and avoid humans. 

   This skunk stared at me. I knew it was rabid. Rabid animals sometimes attack people, but this one just turned and ambled towards the woods. I continued on my walk and when I returned, the skunk was still there. It was acting erratically, first looking up, then snuffling in the ground. Should I get my gun and put it out of its misery? Wouldn't that be my civic duty?

   I went home. I took the lazy option and decided to go out after breakfast with my gun. Teresa said she would text the neighbors about the skunk. We've been seeing lots of unusual wildlife. A river otter walked across our porch. There was a pine marten in the garage. The skunk completed the triad.

   It's good to get out for an early morning walk. In the winter we go for a snowshoe on our almost a mile long trail through the woods, but that ends when the river breaks up in March. For a few weeks it's nasty in the mornings until May comes along and I can start my day briskly.

County Road 8

God Bless You Reader. May Your Needs For Tomorrow Be Met.