LABOR DAY

                                                          

Something happens after Labor Day in the lake country of central Minnesota. It’s the same feeling you got way back then, when you’ve had a grand party and the last guest had left and you and her sat on the couch, amid the spoils, all talked out, knowing the party was over. You just patted her hand and give her a small forced smile, like it was fun while it lasted. But instead of a cushy couch, today it’s an old weathered dock your sitting on, with a pair of discarded flippers and a broken plastic bucket impaled on one of the rusty pipes, hanging limply over the edge. An old fishing boat is still tied to the dock; it’s bow pointing upward and its rainwater-flooded stern barely peeking above the water line. A empty Styrofoam container, with the words, “Small leeches” on the cover floats in the water inside the boat, along with a cracked red seat cushion and a Snicker’s wrapper.

There was a fog over the lake that long ago Labor Day morning of which I write, shrouding the still waters like a wet blanket. The cool September air was bumping up against the still warmer lake waters. A bass surfaced long enough to take a water bug and then headed back down into the safety of the lily pads. A ring of small waves, evidence of the hungry fish coming and going, spread outward and finally dissipated and the lake was calm once more. From somewhere across the lake a boat motor coughed to life as an early morning fisherman went out to wet a line. It had been only a few weeks before that on a quiet summer evening when I had sat here at dusk with my arm around my wide-eyed ten-year-old grandson and told him about “Old Jingles,” the monster Northern Pike who prowls these shorelines. “At night he raises his head out of the water,” I said “and he shakes his jaw filled with rusty lures and broken fishing lines from battles he’s fought, hence the name, “Old Jingles.” The boy knew grandpa was spoofing but he just smiled politely.

It was always Memorial Day when it all began. The trees were just getting their new leaves and the lake was clear and deprived of weeds. It was foggy those mornings too but it was cold water and warm air that was the culprit this time. A pair of proud geese with ten little goslings bobbing in their wake had swum by the dock that morning. The lake was alive with fisherman trolling the shorelines in fancy boats. Screen doors banged as excited kids ran in and out of the houses. Someone was frying bacon and the coffee was rich, black and hot and the whole summer was lying ahead. It was summer at the lake and the fun was only beginning. We had a new paddleboat that year and Grandma fell in the lake the first time she tried it but she was an old hand at it now. The grandkids wanted grandpa to get a bigger motor because the pontoon didn’t pull them fast enough on the tube but he knew that all too soon they would tire of it and he’d be stuck with a gas hog that won’t troll down.

But that was then, and then is now and it was the midpoint of the summer-- the 4th of July this year- that I remembered watching the fireworks in town, from the dock all alone. This year there were few visitors or little kids and a lot of empty weekends for the old man at the lake. The flowers came and went, and all those toys I bought sat unused. The weeks peeled away and the trip from Memorial Day to Labor day was closing fast-- and now, here I am and where is all that jingling coming from?

RANDOM THOUGHTS

                                             

It seems like only yesterday that it was April and we just got back from Arizona. I was full of enthusiasm for the Minnesota summer ahead and I had a lot of projects lined up. Some of them fun and some of them work. On this, the middle of August and the dog days of summer, I have safely put a check mark along side of most of them. Mission accomplished. This morning as I walked to the mailbox to get the newspaper there was a bite in the air. Fog and dew are now the norm. The nights are getting longer and the warmth of daylight comes later and later in the day. I noticed the hostas are done blooming and the daylilies are drying up too. Now, at least for my flower gardens, the blooms are all finished for the season.

Yes, the best part of summer has been spent and fall looms on the horizon. The lake has weeded over and the vegetables are being harvested. Fairs are over and kids are getting ready to return to school. A few errant leaves have already fallen-- giving up early it seems.  Am I rushing the seasons? I don’t set the pace, I just write about it. Oh the summer heat still comes back from time to time but it’s deceiving for summer has gone its way. Each month is also another chapter gone in this year of  our earth’s life. Each year, another page in our own personal book of life. We seniors’ grow tired and uneasy come autumn and soon we will head south once more looking for that elusive eternal summer but yet the pages still seem to turn and the parts of the book we still have left to experience grows ever thinner. Geography doesn’t help slow anything down and despite our efforts, someday there will be an ending ---we won’t get to write about it-- we just get to live it.

There was a family reunion last July. The seven surviving siblings of my family are trying to pass the torch and keep the tradition going. This year was the fortieth time we got together as a family. As the oldest I never dreamed that the day would come when I would have relatives I can no longer identify. Snuck in the back door they did. My siblings and I are showing serious signs of wear and that’s just a nice way of saying we’re getting old and wrinkled. To be truthful the second generation of this family is showing some effects of the trip too, but life goes on, it has too.

Like summer, we seniors too are fading. We used to go to the doctors when we were sick but now we find ourselves having all of these scheduled checkups. They’re just trying to find some hint that something isn’t working the way it should anymore. They have us drawing clocks and remembering words they just uttered to us a few minutes ago. They want to know if our kids are abusing us. Hell, I could take a little abuse if they’d just come and see me. Half the foods I used to eat are no longer good for me. Half of the other half doesn’t agree with me anyway. Most of what’s left isn’t edible, so I’m back to oatmeal and Melba toast. I got a recipe the other day for fried kale. I have found if you use lots of oil in the pan, it makes it easier to scrape into the trashcan. Just kidding Pat. Had a funny thing happen this morning.  My dog Molly was laying on the porch sleeping with one ear flopped over. A humming bird decided to see if there was anything worth eating in there. Never saw that dog get up that fast before. Until next time

COUNTY FAIR

A while back Pat and I went to the Crow Wing County Fair. We try to get down there almost every year and have found that not a lot changes. Same old cows and horses, just a year older, and I guess that goes two ways. But the smell of the barn brings back some farm memories to me that need refreshing from time to time. I have always said, if I had it to do all over again, it would have been on a farm of my own. Something about roosters crowing in the morning and a kinship with a bunch of animals, whose yearning eyes look like Labrador dogs at a rib fest. 

The rest of the exhibits are fun, too, but all of this is just part of the reason we go, and not the main one at that. It’s the people we meet and jabber with that makes it all worthwhile. Pat taught nursing at C.L.C. for a long time, and so she knows a lot of people in the Brainerd area. If not a student, another teacher. If not a teacher, then a patient she took care of somewhere. Then, surprise, surprise every now and then when, believe it not, we find someone who fesses up to knowing me, too. I often try to imagine what couples say about us after we leave. Probably goes something like this. “Wow, the years have been tough on him, haven’t they?  I wonder what she sees in him, anyway. She looked good. Bet he was looking for a nurse when he found her. Old farts get kind of needy in their old age, don’t they?”

All joking aside, the county fairs are the grass roots of the get-togethers that are called fairs. It’s a place where you can show off your canning, crafts, paintings, and photography skills. Where 4H’ers can display their animals and farming skills. For many of them, it’s a prelude to the state fair a few weeks later. It’s a place where farming equipment, from a time gone by, is dusted off and put on display. A place where the little ones get to spin around on the carnival rides until they throw up all the candy and ice cream they just ate. Ah yes, good times.

I remember talking to my father once about farmers and I told him, “They always look so tired.” He said, “Most of them are tired, but it’s that good kind of tired that comes from working at something you love so much that you don’t know when to stop.” It’s a job that is never finished. It’s a job when husbands, wives, and entire families come together to make it work, because it’s bigger than one person can ever handle, and move over prostitutes, because it’s older than your profession. Later, we went down to the grandstand, found a bench, and took in some Country Classics music. Somewhere between “The year that Clayton Delaney Died” and “The Green, Green Grass of Home,” my emotions got the best of me. I looked at Pat and said, “Damn Allergies.”

The Crow Wing County Fair has resisted change over the years. Efforts to serve alcohol, and charge for admission, have been rebuked. People love it for the way it is, and has been, and they know that once the progressive thinkers get their way and the nostalgia wears off, it will become just another beer party or money maker, and all of the wistful affection for the ways of the past will go away. “Yes, they’ll all come to see me in the shade of that old oak tree, as they lay me ‘neath the green, green grass of home.”

WHERE HAS IT ALL GONE?

It was 1984 when we first started looking for a lake place. We didn’t have a lot of money so we were looking for a “fixer upper.” We found an old trailer house, on a lot with a garage, on Big Pine Lake. I brought an ice auger with me when we met the realtor that day so I could drill through the ice to see if it was sand or muck out front, and bringing up sand, we both said together, “We’ll take it.” So much has happened in the last 33 years. We used the trailer for a while and then we built a new home and retired there. Built another garage and fixed up the old one for all of the toys.

Seasons sped by, filled with a never-ending litany of get-togethers. For me, it was the culmination of a dream I’d had for a long time. A place at the lake for us to retire and a place for the kids to come and visit. For many years it was the family entertainment center. Christmas, Memorial Day and 4th of July; deer hunting and opening of fishing. Visiting grandkids, swimming and water skiing, snowmobiling and ice fishing. It was Crosslake and why wouldn’t you be happy? Still, I used to take a boat ride around the chain and tell her, “Someday Babe, we’re going to be like the Jefferson’s and move on up to the east side.” She’d smile and say, “No, we’re not.”

Then something happened and it was subtle at first. The kid’s visits were farther and farther apart. Something was always going on with them. Johnny had softball or Susie had dance competition. Their friends and neighbors wanted them to go on trips with them. Work became more complicated for them and they couldn’t get away. Then graduations, college, and weddings, and all of the time Grandma and Grandpa sat and waited for another chance to entertain. The allure just didn’t seem to be there anymore. Then six years ago grandma took sick, and for a while they did their best to visit. Then she passed away, and now my world revolves around my companion Pat and I, my friends, my writing, and Molly, my dog. Oh my son comes when he can, but he works a lot so it isn’t much but I give him credit, he tries hard to be here for me. Last fall I bought a house in Arizona. I have lung disease now and need to avoid the winters. Pat and I enjoy our relationship and that part is wonderful but it’s all so different and I’m sure that’s true for both of us.

I have so many friends that had the same dream I had but have moved on, back to the cities or closer to family. Some of them widowed, some of them not able to take care of themselves any longer. I know my time for that is coming, but I don’t like to think about it. The house is cluttered now with thirty some years of pictures and mementos that I don’t have the energy or desire to go through and weed out.

So I take one day at a time, and try to find happiness wherever I can. I go to church and thank the good Lord for the good life I have had, and ask for a few more good years. I go to coffee and reminisce with the rest of the old farts who have the same problems I do. Pat doesn’t like me talking like this because she’s more of an optimist than I am. Maybe that’s why she’s so good for me. This summer just started and it’s already half over. Lord, where does the time go? Lord, where has my life gone?

MOVING ON

                                                            

Parishioners of Immaculate Heart Church, here in Crosslake, said goodbye to Father Ryan Moravitz a few weeks back. There are a lot of accolades that I could use to describe the man but with respect for his successor, I will only say he will be missed and I’m sure that’s the way he wants it to be. I have a couple of good reasons to feel so thankful for knowing him. He was just new here when my wife passed away and her funeral was one of the first ones he officiated at. He was a comfort to me at a difficult time. Later on, I was blessed to go with him and others to Rome on a faith filled pilgrimage and got to know him as a man too-- and not just a Priest.

There is always some sadness when you have to say goodbyes to Priests, Pastors, anyone you have turned to for religious guidance and this happens a lot in the Catholic Church. Maybe Father Ryan said it best at his last Mass when he said, Priests are expected to mimic the Apostles to some extent and that’s how they preached and taught while they were here on this earth. They did their job and then they moved on. That being said it isn’t easy to say those goodbyes for either him or us, but its what’s expected of pastors and we his parishioners need to accept it.

I have said a lot of goodbyes in my lifetime besides teachers and pastors. At graduation you leave all your classmates behind. Anyone who has retired after working for years with friends and fellow workers, knows all of a sudden the feeling of not having much in common with people you worked with and for, all those years and soon you drift away.  Or you buy a new home and leave long loved neighbors behind or perhaps they move and leave you behind. You watch your kids grow up and go their separate ways in life, and yes you don’t say goodbye but you do have a degree of separation you’ve never experienced before. Then there is the end of life goodbyes and those are the toughest because there is a finality that eventually sinks in, that you will never see them again. At least not on this earth.

But as each door closes, another opens and new friends, new loves, new relationships and neighbors come into your life. None of them are meant to replace anyone who was part of our lives before but rather they are new friends and family you never knew existed or for that matter knew were coming. Its all part of this journey we call life. I have often said that as we reach our senior years, if we could somehow dissect our minds and personalities, you would find bits and pieces of everyone we ever came in contact with that we have let into our lives. For those of us that took the good bits and pieces and not the bad, we gained something we never could have found in any other place and out of that, we became a far better person and a more complete person.

As for the people of Immaculate Heart. Father Ryan’s leaving is not simply our loss and somebody else’s gain. It’s for us a new adventure, a new opportunity to get it right and yes, somewhere, someplace, where Father Blake our new Pastor just came from, I’m sure someone is feeling just like we do.