CROSSLAKE

                                                           

So this will be my last column written in Minnesota for a while. Pat and I are on our way to the desert southwest. We’ve been down there long enough now to make friends, make the house comfortable and give it our touch. Although we look forward to the warmth again in Arizona, Minnesota will always be our home. Someday when it comes to that and my days grow short, here is where my heart is, and here is where I want to be.

There are those who say to me it’s so sad to talk like that but in reality I can talk about it now while I can, or never talk about it at all. I have said before, I am a realist and I deal with the here and now. Crosslake has been my home for a long time and when I look back at my life I never wanted to be anywhere else. I once had a woman in Florida ask me, “Where are you from,” and I replied “Crosslake Minnesota.” She smiled and said, “I have been there and it’s so nice, you must be very happy.”

When I first moved to Crosslake with my wife, home was a trailer house and a garage. But out front was a lake with a sandy bottom and that’s why we bought. You can always change the shelter and we did. One sure thing about lakeshore property is, they’re not making any more of it. Across the road was deer hunting or just nature to enjoy. Down the shoreline in both directions were some of the nicest people you would ever want to meet. The fishing was great and plentiful and we never froze a fish. We caught them and threw them back or ate them. It wasn’t that hard to catch another when you were hungry for them. The town was pretty much as it is now. Oh, Reeds was on 66 and Ace wasn’t there yet. The school property was the old Catholic Church. Ernie’s store was still in business and the Log Jam was rocking. Most of the businesses are still here, albeit some are in other locations.

We, in my family, have come a long way since those days in the mid eighties. Grandkids were born and grew up and are now are having babies of their own. My son and his sons still-hunt across the road and we still sit around the campfire in the summer evenings or wet a line together. Although grandma’s absence has put a damper on things, we try to honor her by just staying close as a family. The house is pretty much like she left it. We have more pictures’ then Kodak of years gone by and I made a special place in the house where the kids and grandkids can sit and go through the albums. Memories just take on whole new meanings when you have the pictures to back up those tall tales.

As for Pat and me, the word is love and companionship so we stay close but still keep our own homes. She mother hens me with her nursing knowledge and my bad eating habits. Makes me eat my vegetables like my mommy once did and drink copious amounts of water.  She tells me I don’t listen to her but that’s not true. I hear every word she says. Do I always do something about it?  Well that’s a story for another day another time. Maybe it’s something like the “old dog and new tricks” scenario but I have to be careful here-- so goodbye.

OCTOBER DAY

                                                          

It’s a typical October day. Its not raining, but its dripping, Seattle style. It’s not cold but there is a chill in the air. The lake is deathly calm but drifting on the surface are hundreds of dead leaves blown in on yesterdays breezes and now they bob like little Sampans in an Oriental harbor. Already, last summer seems to be lost somewhere in the book of memories of days gone by. I’m glad I won’t be here to see the lake freeze over this year. It never was a high point for me but rather it was Mother Nature’s way of saying the seasons over; let’s just cap it off for now.

Once you retire and live at a lake the seasons are personified like the actors in a play, each season coming to its own conclusion. The curtain falls and rises again and then slowly one season ebbs into the next. Fall to winter never has the same anticipation as winter to spring but yet we must sit through all of the acts, or the play doesn’t make sense. The plants and animals now need to rest and so should we.

To the younger ones and the more hearty people that strap on the skis and pull out the fish houses, winter in the Midwest brings a whole new style of fun. But to the elderly it can be a forced hibernation and just because you walk like a duck on the ice and snow, it doesn’t mean you are one and if you were you would have left a long time ago to a place where the water stays liquid.

Oh how I remember those long winter nights of my childhood wrapped up like a cocoon in our attic bedroom as a kid. Nothing was between us and the outside weather but the roof boards and shingles. Nothing showed in our beds but the tops of our heads, the heavy covers muffling all the snores and snuffles. Outside the wind howled around the house and the window glass froze over with frost and the designs on the glass the frost made, seemed like Waterford Crystal. We could hear the crunch of the car tires as they pushed through the snow on the street below and only fifty feet away from our beds but couldn’t see the cars. The sound of the freight trains that rumbled through town a block away, echoed in that attic as if they were just outside. It was a cacophony of wind, steam whistles, and the steel wheels of boxcars clicking down the tracks and that rarely changed. The school building was always a welcome place for us kids because it was always warm there. Mom and dad wished for better times for us and we understood that they did the best that they could with what they had, but it sucked.

Yes, I have come a long way since that attic bedroom and so have my siblings. Kelly Clarkson sang, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” In a way, I’m not sure if it makes you any stronger but it does make you smarter and you vow that you will never shiver like that again but yet you have so much empathy for those who will. On the other hand my childhood isn’t on my list of regrets. It wasn’t easy but then building character isn’t always easy. I loved my family with all my heart and my parents loved all of us kids. You can at some point always buy a nice home and fancy things, if that’s what you want but you can’t buy a loving family.  

WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE.

                                               

A few weeks ago I wrote an essay called what is true love?” Sometimes I feel that those of us who were successful in love and marriage seem to want to dictate to those younger people in our families, what true love really looks like. Not sure if were bragging or teaching but sometimes you hear a story from young person that says, “You really didn’t need our advice did you?”

I heard this story at a family gathering from my nephew and his wife. My nephew had gone out to Oregon to go to college, after a somewhat rocky start out of high school. He needed a change in scenery so he took the trek to the west coast. His family all lives in the Midwest. While in college he met a young lady from Romania and they dated, but the time came for her to go home and so she said they had to say goodbye. He asked her to get engaged and she said she wasn’t sure how she felt about that or if he really felt that serious about her. She went back to Romania. He wasn’t taking no for an answer so he saved his money and went to Romania to find her. Long story short they were married a while later. I asked her what changed her mind and she told me, “She did love him and yes, she wasn’t sure about his love for her but after he chased me halfway around the world I know it was real.” She said.

I sometimes ask myself, “What kept people together so many years ago and has it changed. When I look at my own family and go back to my uncles, aunts and grandparents I find very few broken marriages. Does that mean they were happy ones? Not necessary but yet they stayed together happy or not. Is that good or not?

It’s good for the kids as long as they’re not involved in disagreements. A mom and a dad are necessary to show kids what a good family structure looks like. Now I know there are many single parents that do well but I bet they would be the first to tell you that it’s not easy and I bet most of them don’t really want it that way.

I guess what I am trying to say is, true love is no different now then it was way back then. The feelings of love, the attraction to each other-- that hasn’t changed. What has changed is the rules we used to live by. Divorce once had a stigma that no one wanted to be associated with. It was akin to a personal failure and yes Hollywood did it every day but that was Hollywood and I think that many of us felt they did it for publicity as much as for anything. They felt little shame in it and seemed to be in a league of their own. Something else that has changed was co inhabiting before marriage. 50 years ago that was looked down on but now its common place. Now that in its self doesn’t change how people feel about each other but many of them never get around to tying the knot. They just don’t want that commitment and without that commitment it’s easier to walk away. I also think we don’t look at infidelity in the same shameful way that it was back then. It’s part of the permissiveness and lack of morality that seems to have taken over our lives. So many things that were wrong 50 years ago are no longer viewed that wrong anymore. Those two young people I talked about at the start of this---well they restored some of my faith in love and marriage.

JUDY

                                                                                                                  

My significant other and I went to the movie “Judy,” the other night, the story of Judy Garland. As sad it was to see someone that talented, fall that far, I think it does us good to have this kind of life-style, acted out for all to see from time to time because there is no convincing some people of the pain and suffering that goes into, not only their addictions but what it does to those who love them too. Then there is the price of coping with being someone famous. How many other renditions of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” would Judy have done if she hadn’t left us so soon? Here it is 80 years later and we still love that song

 Our storied history in the entertainment industry is filled with so many examples that are no different then Judy’s story. There was Whitney Houston who must have never found, “That one Moment in Time” and Robin Williams whose life ceased to be funny. All of their talent destroyed by drugs and alcohol and we wonder how people that seemed to have it all, fell into that trap. All the money in the world isn’t going to help you once you’re in the grips of these addictions. Sadly all that was so good in your life will never be that good again, for even if you come clean, you will live with that addiction, the rest of your life. 

I grew up in a world where the primary addictions were alcohol and nicotine, that to be truthful will kill you too, albeit in a slower fashion. The government will always tolerate some of our vices because they need the tax money and to be truthful again we wouldn’t tolerate not having alcohol and nicotine. Go read up about prohibition if you need farther proof of this. Almost any social event we attend is disappointing to us if alcohol is not served. It’s just no fun unless you can get a buzz on.

I have a dear friend who is an alcoholic who has been dry for many years and she has told me how proud she is of that. To some alcoholics being clean is much like being a cancer survivor. Like these cancer survivors you live with the fear that it could start all over again but yet you’re proud you have weathered the storm. Some don’t and they pay the price. My brother was one of those who couldn’t kick the habit and he died an early death living in squalor. Judy Garland died alone on her bathroom floor and my brother died alone on his floor. One was famous and one was not but in the end it mattered little. They both left on the same terms. Victims of an addiction.

There is a term often used about being an “optimist.” To have a cheery attitude and a can do mind set, is to be congratulated but when the word optimism, trumps reality, then you’re in trouble. The world loves an optimist but even the most successful ones know they can’t laugh or wish or sing their troubles away and they have to face their problems head on. This country is also full of whiners that like to blame their troubles on something or someone else. It’s always abusive parents or being poor or getting in with the wrong crowd that got you to the booze and drugs. I guess we need a sign on the southern border that says to the Mexicans “Please don’t bring drugs into this country because we have no self control.” 

BOYS OF SUMMER

                                                

So today was the last day of the regular baseball season and now it’s time for the “Boys of Summer” to become the boys of October and cap off the season with the playoffs and ultimately the World Series. Baseball is the only sport, were the winners are called the ‘World Champions.’ Although baseball is played in many countries, nothing compares to the level of the play, in the major leagues in the states. Players in every country of the world have as their ultimate goal, the chance to play in the big leagues in the United States.

Baseball has been such a big part of my life even though I never played at any high level in the game. I did coach for many years and it was so heart whelming for me to be able teach what I knew about baseball, to hundreds of young boys and girls that I coached. Baseball was to me the ultimate sport because it was a game for everyone. You didn’t have to be big or tall, overly fast or extra strong. You just had to have a love for the game and the desire to use what talents you had to your advantage and oh yes that fire in the gut, to play your best. As a kid my glove was always there strung through the handlebars of my bicycle, my taped up busted bat tied to the bars. In the summer there was always a “pick me up” game somewhere in town and we would play until dark. We were too busy playing ball to get into trouble, so my parents never worried about where I was but I missed a few suppers.

When I was about ten or twelve my kid brother and I slept upstairs in an attic bedroom. It had one light and that was a bulb that hung from the ceiling. You turned it on and off by pulling the chain on the socket, which I tied a string to, that then ran to the head of the bed. It’s about then that I acquired a small black electric radio. There was no outlet in the room so I found an adapter and plugged my radio  into that light. At night I would lie in bed and listen to the voice of the St Louis Cardinals, which had a signal strong enough to hear up there in my attic hideaway. I listened to the great Jack Buck, Harry Carey and Joe Garagiola as they extolled the play of men like Stan “The man Musial”, Red Schuendienst, Bob Gibson and Enos “Country” Slaughter. I could only dream what it was like to go and sit in that stadium and watch those greats. A few years ago in St Louis, Pats brother–in Ted–law took us to see the Cards and that night I crossed one more thing off my bucket list. 

When I graduated from high school I moved to the Minneapolis and a few years later the Twins came to town and my allegiances switched to the hometown team and they have been there ever since. I wanted to get to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this year but it fell through the cracks. I need to do it soon before its too late. I want to wander the halls by myself because I am sure my emotions are going to run unchecked when I touch Harmon’s Plaque and pause for a selfy with Kirby’s. So many names, so many memories that they scarce all fit in my ageing mind.  The great sports writer Grantland Rice wrote something about baseball that sums it all up for me and I quote. “For when the great scorer comes to call against your name. He marks- not if you won or lost- but how you played the game.” 

THOSE FALLING LEAVES

                                   

Each day as I take my walk down the road that goes by my house, I notice things that have changed from the day before. Maybe it’s an old dead tree that finally succumbed to old age and gave itself back up to the earth. Maybe its something as insignificant as a new row of gopher mounds along side the road or the gathering of geese on the lake before the fall migration. Yes, nothing impacts me like the changing of the seasons, from summer to fall and oh yes-- those falling leaves.

When the words were written to the song “Autumn Leaves” the author most have felt just as I do today. I too equate the deaths of those leaves and the end of summer with a lost love. I too remember her lips, the summer kisses and the sunburned hands I used to hold. Yes, since she went away the days have grown long and I do miss her most of all, when autumn leaves began to fall.

My beloved friend Pat and I talk often about our lost spouses. For both of us this was our first love, the father, or the mother of our children. You don’t erase decades of memories by finding someone else, you just build new memories and when you do they’re not to replace old ones but to add to them. You don’t move on-- you continue on. For you see life goes on without them and although you remember so much of what happened long ago and through the sands of time, you can’t change those memories nor do you want too. Hearts were stilled yes-- but not our hearts.

Each day as the sun sets I think about the finality of it all. What did I do today that I will remember again someday or was it just another wasted moment. So precious is each day, each moment, especially when you think of them in the context that you will never get that moment back again to relive. Oh, how nice it would be if we could go back and right some wrongs or relive some special moments but that’s not the way it works and maybe it’s a lesson in reality for us to get it right the first time.

Today the rains of yesterday have moved on, the clouds have parted and the winds are calm. For at least this day those autumn leaves will stay right where they spent their summer and where we can see them best. There is a goodness in Gods greatness and one only needs to look around to see it. Mark twain once wrote, “God has put something noble and good into every heart his hand created.” My friend Andrea, my neighbor, has shared a picture on face book, she took of Molly and I walking down the road with the leaves of autumn everywhere around us. I have often thought it’s the way I want to be remembered, going forward yes-- but not afraid to look back despite all of the decay around me.

The past doesn’t change no matter how much time you spend thinking about it. Good and bad, happy and sad, they all add up to the efforts of a lifetime and it’s that lifetime that in the end will be the story of your life. Live it, love it, remember it, be proud of it. Now go and enjoy those falling leaves.