Wednesday, August 31, 2016

LABOR DAY

                                                            
Labor Day. Wow already. What happened to Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and the summer family reunions? Where did those lazy evenings with spectacular sunsets and loons crying across the lake, slip off too? Where did all the summer celebrations around the lakes go, with endless craft shows, parades, picnics and fairs, so many you could scarce fit them all in. Quiet pontoon rides around the chain and days at the beach with those you love. Now, all of them, just another treasure trove of memories, entered in our book of our life.

Sometime in the next few weeks. The humming birds will steal away in the night for their winter trek and the feeder will swing empty on the hook. Already the birch trees are turning yellow, the apples are turning red and begging to be picked and the acorns are falling. The sumac is turning red and yellow school buses are making their rounds. Sometime soon those loons that played of the end of my dock all summer will be gone and the waters won’t be so inviting. Slowly one by one the docks and lifts will vanish and all the boats and toys will be put away. We will close the windows once again in the evening, as the nighttime breezes bring in a chill. Mornings are all ready darker and evenings are shorter and a fire in the fireplace seems comforting. Only a few stray Mums’ still show their summer blossoms.

They have a saying on the license plates in Florida, “Endless summer.” Seems inviting doesn’t it? But believe me there is something to be said for our theater of seasons. There is something to be said for the warm fall days, with no bugs, when the world is all colored in reds and yellows, as the leaves become our autumn flowers. The words heat index, and tornado watch have been put away for another year. There is something to be said about fishing without greasy sunscreen and for the hunters the fall season is here. It’s a time when farmers can take a breather with their crops tucked safely away in the granaries and bins and mom’s can relax too, with the kids safely back in school.

Years ago Johnny Mercer wrote the song ‘Autumn.’Those falling leaves drift by the window. The autumn leaves of red and gold. I see your lips, the summer kisses. The sunburned hands I used to hold.” For a few years those lyrics rang so poignant to me. I’m sure to anyone who said goodbye to a loved one this summer---you know what I mean.    Since you went away the days grow long. And soon I’ll hear old winters song. But I’ll miss you most of all my darling. When autumn leaves began to fall.  Yes how true it was  but there comes a time for all of us when grief is tempered. When you pull up the shades of sadness and face what’s left of your life with a new perspective on life.

I have always felt that autumn comes on to you like an old friend you haven’t seen for a long time. Its role is to let you down easy, before the rigors of winter. Cold today, warm tomorrow, colder the next and then less warm until you stop looking back at summer and start dreaming about the spring to come.





Thursday, August 25, 2016

REFLECTIONS FROM THE FAIR

                                                
Last week, Pat and I went to the Crow Wing County fair, as we have done many times in years past. Not a lot changes at the fair from year to year but you know what? Not a lot has to change because it’s still enjoyable. We had heard about the storm the night before and the damage it had done but you had to look hard to find any ill effects. So many people had worked hard to put things back in order, when it would have been so easy to quit because they knew the show had to go on.

It was fun for me to once more walk through the livestock barns and see all of the critters; I remembered so well as a kid but had lost touch with after so many years of city living. To see the old tractors and think how hard people worked back in those days when luxury on your tractor, was some foam rubber to sit on and not air conditioning, G.P.S. guidance systems and satellite radios. We sat on a wooden bench and listened to the music for a while. Old country tunes that have worn a notch in the airwaves but you never seem to tire of them. We ate roast beef brisket and rich ice cream and damn the calories because just for tonight-- no one was counting.

I saw some smiling kids on the pony rides and I remembered a time and a place when my three little kids did the same. Then I saw a tired mom who was trying to keep two kids and a baby happy, short on cash and energy and I wanted to say to her,”Hey let me buy them kids some ice cream and some ride tickets,” but I knew that in today’s society that’s a no, no. I think my empathy had been triggered by a long suppressed memory of a time in 1947 when our Mom, my kid brother, and I and our baby brother in a buggy had walked to a carnival on the outskirts of town. I remembered watching all the kids my age on the rides, squealing and laughing and having a great time. I remembered watching older people work the digger machines trying to get that elusive gold watch. I saw them throwing the rings around the pop bottles trying to win a stuffed animal. But we, as a family, could only watch because we had no money. Then on the way out we passed a cotton candy machine and for a moment we stopped and watched the man spinning the cotton around those pieces of cardboard. Then somebody saw us and gave mom a couple of coins and she bought two of them for my brother and I. On the way home mom tripped on a broken sidewalk and fell cutting both of her knees. She was bleeding and crying and we all cried because our mom was hurt but I know today, she cried mostly because we were so poor and she had wanted so badly to do more for us.


I think often about the things that were so instrumental in my life, growing up from those humble beginnings. Things that still set the standard for me today. You see those things that were so important back then, for building character and being a good person, are still important today. We haven’t found any shortcuts in life to accomplish this any better or faster. No magic potions, nothing you can download or upload or buy at the store of good intentions. It’s always been there in the hearts of people, just like the man giving mom those nickels. Love and caring is like taking a shoot from a plant and starting your own plant. All it needs is a place to grow.

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

MY AUGUST LAMENT

                                               

Today I turned the calendar over, to the month of August and in some ways it felt like the last dance. Summer in Crosslake is mostly measured in three short months and August for many is the last hurrah. County fairs, ripening crops and kids trying to pack all the fun they can, into the last dog days of summer before they turn their attention back to school. Sometime soon the leaves will loose their green luster, wilt around the edges and drop. Those humming birds that drained my sugar canister this summer, will head south once more where the flowers are still blooming. Morning sunsets will now come later and evening sunsets earlier. The garden will be littered with rotting vegetables that didn’t make the cut and the apple trees, burdened down with their crop, will beg to be picked.

For me it will be remembered as the summer my loving friend and I stood on a deck at McKinley Lodge in Alaska, like kids waiting for Santa and waited patiently for the clouds to part, so we could see Denali. She knew my love for that Mountain and wanted so badly for me to see it but it was also the day when I realized in my heart that seeing the mountain would have been nice, but being there with her was the most important thing to me. It was another summer of reunions, pontoon rides, fishing and picnics. Concerts in the park, sail boating on Lake Michigan and evenings that we just sat with a gin & tonic and didn’t say anything because the evenings were made for just absorbing the world around us and not spoiling it with chatter. There will be time enough for that when the seasons done.

This will be remembered as the summer when I found out I have great grandbabies on the way and the start of whole new generation. The summer when friends I loved, went home to their just reward and left me with another hole in my heart. The summer when six inches of rain flooded the lake and strong winds took some of my oldest trees. The summer when Molly went nose to nose with a skunk and somehow came out smelling like---well still smelling like Molly, hallelujah. The summer when the kids next door came back to the lake another inch taller and I finally realized what happened to all of my grandkids. When some projects that needed doing, got done, and I found out that my old body needs better care, more rest and easier projects.

It sadly is also the year when people found out they could get some attention by killing other people and our politicians lost all of their self-respect in a never-ending scrum for power. The year more glaciers melted, the air got more polluted and the water too. The year our kids learned less in school but cost more to educate. But this essay started out to be what was right about this world and not what’s wrong with it, so let’s just end it at that.


For seventy-five years August has rolled around but never has it meant, what it means to me today. Maybe its because the coupon book of my life has fewer August coupons then it had before and I’m finally realizing it.

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

REUNION

                                                           

I think when my parents started our 1st family reunion, some thirty-nine years ago; they knew that it would accomplish many good things. That at least for one weekend a year, their kids, grandkids and great grandkids would gather to renew old acquaintances’, reminisce and enjoy each other’s company once more. They knew they won’t be around forever but they hoped that this family would be here forever, for each other. They knew over time the family would grow and change with new faces and sadly some would leave the family. They also knew it was important that we never forgot where we came from, no matter how much time has passed. They also knew that somewhere in our D.N.A lies a common bond.

For the original siblings the gathering has become bitter sweet. We lost our parents, our little brother a couple of years ago, my beautiful wife and cousin Jim too and time has taken a toll on our bodies and minds. This becomes more obvious to each of us every year. We have learned that time shows no mercy and sometimes an hour can be like a day. But yet that hour is there and you have to live it, in the best way you know how. I think most of us feel that same time, ticking and pressing down on us and know that our turn will come someday and maybe sooner then later. But sometimes-good things fall apart to make room for better things to happen. New spouses and new partners, have been brought into the family and from those unions have come beautiful replacements to carry on in the coming generations for those who have fallen by the wayside. It’s our hope that all of this renewal overshadows the sad changing of the guard and keeps things up beat and growing.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Every man is a quotation from his ancestors.” Another quote I have always liked is. “Like the branches of a tree, our lives may grow in different directions, yet our roots remain as one.” From the time of that first reunion, until today, our world has evolved from what we knew then, to what it is today. As with all changes, some of it can be a hard pill to swallow but I’m sure that was as true back then, as it is now. I remember at one of the first reunions coming dressed in some bell-bottom trousers that were in style back then and my dad shook his head and said. “What in the hell is the matter with you? I never dreamed I would raise a hippy. Go change your pants before anyone else sees you.”

For many years our reunions went from campground to campground. We went on the cheap and had storms and bugs and campgrounds that said they were booked up when we tried to come back. Funny how they can be filled up for the next year, the day after our reunion ends but oh well, we did have a good time. Back then a night sleeping on a tree root and a rock, in a leaky tent with three bawling kids got old in a hurry and evolved into fifth wheel campers and motor homes. We have now graduated to our brother’s hobby farm where he might want to kick us out but can’t and now it’s up to the younger generation to keep it going for the next one.











Wednesday, August 3, 2016

ALASKA

                                                       
I just returned from a vacation in Alaska and being the nature lover I am, you can guess how happy I was. For you see Alaska is nature on steroids. I went there hoping that it was going to match my expectations and came home to say, “It far exceeded my expectations.” There are no words to do justice to it. It is called the “Last surviving Frontier” and although that is fitting, that title smacks of cynicism, as if that is a temporary title, soon to be replaced by the words “It was the last surviving frontier.” The signs of its demise are starting to show, and how soon it will be called that, depends on how soon man can ruin it.

When I speak of man ruining the earth I acknowledge that much of what happens is inadvertent and that just by being here and contributing to the waste products that are the culprits for our demise, we bear responsibility even though for the most part this was not our intention. Once we get to this point instead of the attitude that many in our country have.-- The attitude that says, “Lie about it and say it isn’t so,” then at least we have something to work with. We may not be able to solve the problem completely but at least we can put it off so future generations can enjoy it also. Those who scoff at this need only to go to Alaska and see the evidence of melting glaciers and disappearing wildlife because you can only lie about it so long before reality bites you in the butt and then only a fool will believe the lies.

Discussions are being held all over this country about where to drill for oil and what to do with public lands. The money barons see the outcome only in their pocket books and not what’s good for the country they don’t see what John Muier saw when he founded our National Park system. Their greed is a parasitic action that in the end allows you neither the wilderness nor the wildlife. But they don’t care because its what is in the bottom line of their ledger book that counts and not what is done to this earth. In some cases, it is intrusive enough to just let the people in our national parks to look; the balance is that delicate but to be realistic that has to happen.


We as a society have done much to destroy our country because we can’t get along with each other. We have seemingly insurmountable drug problems in our country. We have a country teetering on the edge of financial ruin. We have a dysfunctional government that can’t get anything done and can’t give us a decent candidate to vote for. We have a country that once had common sense rules against much of this but in an effort to be everybody’s friend we threw out the rulebook and much of what we brought back as rules, is the reason for the animosity and leniency for those who won’t live by the rules. But even all of that is fixable. Even if it takes a new society to do it and it may well be. Destroying our environment however is a whole new ball game. Once a species is gone it’s gone. Once a glacier melts and the seas rise and not only destroy our environment but the homes of Gods creatures with it, there is no fix. Alaska may be our last chance to get it right.