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.