Dimwits and lightbulbs

For a large part of my adult life, I have offered wondered where people get the time to do the things that people do. You know, stuff aside from raising kids and schlepping off to work everyday etc.

Occasionally a few folks will pass through the newsroom on their way to the studio to do a talk show on their recent four-month expedition to the Arctic Circle. Who can get four months off from work?

I've often thought that maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just not willing enough to not know where the next paycheck is coming from, to take that many risks. Heck, I can remember a time when I decided not to go into politics because there's no job security. Looking back, I realize that, sure, you might lose an election, but between lobbying and patronage, those folks are never out of work.

Stupid me.

So why do I bring this up today? This is why:



Yep, it's a lightbulb, and yes, that's an image from this site, which
provides a live Web camera of the light bulb. This isn't just any lightbulb, however. This is one that has burned for more than 100 years in some fire station in Colorado.

OK, so who has time to periodically look at a stinkin' light bulb in Colorado on a daily basis?

Unfortunately it's, ummmmm, me.

The toolbox

My son, Sean, turned 21 a few days ago. I don't know how it happened, but it happened and it beats the alternative of not happenning, which happened -- or didn't -- to my best friend's son a year ago, when he was killed in a one-car crash while driving home early on Sunday morning in Providence, Rhode Island.

I haven't heard from my best friend since and there has never been -- nor will there ever be -- something I can say to ease my friend's pain, even if I were able to make contact. The only thing that bonds fathers... are sons and daughters.

The utter frustration of life is fathers and sons cannot understand each other until it is too late -- or nearly so. My son loves me and I love him and both of us have known it forever, but that didn't stop us from often behaving like, well, fathers and sons.

As he is not yet a father -- thank God -- I thought long and hard about what to give him on the occasion of his 21st birthday. And then his brother, Patrick, called and said he needed to change the light bulbs in his car and didn't know how to do it. "Oh, and all of the lights except for one are burned out, it's night, and I have to drive home," he added. So I gathered some tools, and headed into St. Paul to change his light bulbs. It was there in a dark garage with nowhere near enough tools to do the job that I realized the gift I'd give.




The next night, I went to Sears, bought a toolbox and then -- and you have to understand I want my ashes spread in the hardware department when I die -- raced around to fill it with the right tools to start.

Then I came home and wrote him this letter to put inside:

Dear Sean:

Many years ago -- probably about 16 -- I was trying to get at some water pipe that was frozen below the kitchen at our house in Sheffield. I didn't have the right tools so I just took a hammer and whacked at the cabinet floor covering the pipe. "Mom, Dad's breaking the house," a young child said. That was you, with an early -- yet precise -- assessment of my handyman skills; this, on top of my historical lack of success with tools (See attached).

I don't know when it was that I started getting interested in tools; perhaps it's a "guy thing" that develops sometime, you just don't know when. I was a late bloomer. And since you are like me, this gift will probably mean nothing to you. But someday it will. And just as your grandfather (Papa) gave me my first toolbox, I give this to you, including a few to get you going. Rest assured: you'll need more.

I think tools are a metaphor for life in general. You start out with barely enough to get by and when you try to use what you've got, well, sometimes you end up breaking the house. But you keep at it and you just keep adding more tools. You add more tools first because you might need them someday, and then just because tools are cool.

I give you this with these few words of advice, metaphorical or not:

1) Don't buy cheap, crappy tools. No matter what kind of deal it seems like, no matter how much -- or how little -- you spend, when you get home and open the package, you've got cheap crap. Buy good tools.

2) Don't throw away tools. Find a good home for them instead.

3) Build something someday. It doesn't have to be anything big. It could be an airplane, it could be a birdhouse. Just build it as well as you can and it'll serve as a reminder to all that you were here.

4) Don't be afraid to break the house.

5) If you have a son -- or daughter -- someday, give 'em a toolbox when they turn 21. And then someday later, give him your tools. One at a time, so that when you're gone, they're still building things that remind people that you were here.

That way, when your kid uses a tool you gave him, he'll be reminded that his Dad loved him like there was no tomorrow.

As I love you.


Dad

Lucky 21

My oldest son, Sean, turned 21 today. So today I celebrate his ascension to adulthood and mourn the loss of a damned good tax break.

I wish I had a really great picture to post here, but alas, Sean is one of those people who doesn't like to have his picture taken (pssst.... there's one back in one of the entries in July).

Sean has always been in a hurry. Always. He was born a month early and has been go-go ever since. We lived in White Plains, New York at the time and when my wife said it was "time," off we raced to the hospital. Only it wasn't time, it was too early. So the docs -- we had two great obstetricians -- did what they could to delay his delivery because they weren't sure he'd be fully developed.

So Carolie had to put up with contractions for something like three days. It was a, ummm, interesting time.

I remember the Cardinals and Dodgers were playing in the National League Divisional Series, so Carolie would sleep between contractions and I'd watch the game. But they had a fetal monitor going and it would also show a number that seemed to indicate a contraction was coming.

I thought it was a cool machine, and so a couple of times I'd notice the number on the machine going up, so I'd whack Carolie awake and say, "it says you're having a contraction." I only did that twice.

Eventually Sean was born at 4:36 (or was it 5:36 Eastern Time?). He was colicky and didn't like sleeping much and didn't like us sleeping much either, apparently. Then he had to go back to the hospital for jaundice. Tons of fun, and we thought we were -- as most new parents do -- the first people on the planet ever to have a baby.

We had lunch together today and tonight his friends are taking him out and I'm guessing they'll do some bar hopping because isn't that what you're supposed to do on your 21st birthday?

Alas, I don't want to know. He's an adult now. And I'm not supposed to worry.

Right.

What time is it?

This is my mother, you met her some months ago -- July 4th, to be exact -- a day she considers the last day of summer. She's sitting, I think, on a beach in the Parker River Wildlife Refuge on Plum Island (Newburyport, Mass.) looking at... well, I don't know what she's looking at. Probably nothing.

If I were there, I'd be doing the same thing. Staring at nothing but the water rolling in and rolling back out. Over and over and over again.

Fire is the same way. Light a fire at campsite and you'll sit and look at it burning, doing nothing.

Why? It's hypnosis? Why? Where does it take us when it whisks us from the land of S'mores and boogeyboards?

My mother's favorite time of the day at the beach is around 4 or 5, when people leave it. She's sitting at a beach in October. She thinks summer ends on July 4th.

Wherever we go when we consider fire and water, there's no calendar or clock there.

Life in the wind

This is one of those fall days in Minnesota where you begin to realize what a man feels when taking his dying breath. The sun is warm, the trees are golden, the baseball game is on TV and the air has the faint aroma of fallen leaves spiced with everything good that happened to you when you were young.

Breathe deep and savor it; tomorrow we die. Winter's out there somewhere, moving this way.

And so I raked my suburban lawn today and then knelt into the pile of leaves to gather them into a trash bag...small handfuls at a time, like a man looking for something lost.

For me it's 1967. I was 13 years old with time on my hands. The Red Sox -- the Impossible Dream team -- were playing the Minnesota Twins on the last weekend of the regular season, with a chance -- a poor chance when you think about it, but a chance just the same -- of winning the American League pennant back when it meant something; back when there were 10 teams and no divisions.

I spent much of that last weekend with a glove, a tennis ball, and a radio... listening to the Red Sox game and throwing the ball when Ken Coleman said, "Lonborg winds and throws..." Thump. The ball bounced back and I, now Rico Petrocelli, would field it to end the inning against the dastardly Twins, who were also playing for the pennant.

For the next inning, I moved to the side of the barn just up the street, because it had a tall roof and if you throw the ball just so, it would bounce at the end of the slate roof, and fly back.... back.... back to the five- or six-foot-high stone wall of Mr. Murray's house; the one that protected his prize gladiolas.

It played well the part of Fenway Park's left field wall. And I was now Carl Yastrzemski. Except that Yastrzemski never had to deal with pieces of slate falling from the sky.

And so it went, until the game ended, or the Murrays chased me away from the gladiolas, until finally the Sox beat the Twins, and the team captured the American League pennant.

Eventually the Sox went to the World Series and fell in 7 games to the St. Louis Cardinals and -- though I was a bigger Cleveland Indians fan than a Red Sox fan -- joined the ranks of New Englanders who'd gone before, heartbroken in the fall by a team they followed.

It was many years later -- 2004 to be exact -- when the Red Sox finally won their World Series. "It'll be the worst thing that ever happened to those people, " I said to a friend. "They don't realize that their joy is born from their heartbreak." Take a Red Sox fan's heartbreak away, and you've taken away their soul.

But like fall, Sox heartbreak returns every year. And the true New Englander learns to savor both.

Breathe deep. And find your youth.

The days I always wanted

When my kids were growing up, I didn't really dream of them becoming president of the United States, or changing the world with Nobel prize-winning research (although I've always believed -- and still do -- that either one of these kids could change the world.).

My dream? Having my kids call me in my older years and say, "let's go to a ballgame."

How tough would that be? Every dream can be dashed and I have to admit at times I thought this one would be too. My oldest son had an illness that kept him out of school in the last few years and at times I wondered if he'd be able to survive on his own. The youngest son always seemed to be ready to snap the leash and never look back.

Kids are like that and the moment you realize that they're not going to grow up to be president, you begin to think it'll be a great thing if they just stay out of prison.

Give a parent a brain, an imagination, and the ability to project the future, and they'll screw it up every time. Ask me how I know.

My oldest son moved out and onto his "own" more than a year ago and I spent a few late nights looking to the southwest (he moved to Richfield) sending my "Dad messages" by telepathy. My youngest son moved out not long after graduating high school earlier this year. And just like that, I had myself an empty nest and a telephone that didn't ring, and a bucketload of guilt that when I moved out of my house after high school (and off to college), I didn't go back home or call more often. When you're 18, 40 miles seems like a long way away.

But a funny thing happened, son #1 enrolled himself in community college; him with his 145 I.Q., to get his various computer and networking certifications. And when an internship opened up in the information technology department of Minnesota Public Radio, he applied for it and -- on his own -- got it. I work at MPR, but I had nothing to do with it. And I told him that mentioning my name around MPR is as likely to get a door closed in your face as it is to open one up.

My best day in 30 years in the radio business. The day my son called me from his cubicle and whispered, "I feel like an adult." And in the months since, from what I can tell, he's become a valuable member of MPR. I hope they hire him fulltime sometime.

He stops by the newsroom once or twice a day and I think, "how good is my life?

I also begin to realize why my Dad, a successful insurance agent, tried to get me to take over his business as he neared retirement. For a time I did work with him and I was OK at it, but fathers-and-sons often don't mix well and radio came calling. I'll bet the day I started in his business was one of the best in his career. I'll bet the day I left was not. Kids.

Son #2, currently the youngest EMT and first responder in Minnesota, is also in community college (by the way, community college is simply the best bargain in higher education as near as I can tell) to get higher certifications and become a paramedic and whatever comes after that.

This week, he started with the Allina Health System, operating a unit that transports people to and from hospitals. He stopped by MPR yesterday, in his EMT uniform, parking his unit at the front door and like my other son, looking every bit the young man I dreamed he'd be.

I showed him around the new MPR digs and eventually he and his brother connected and then his brother started showing him around the MPR digs, paying particular attention to the technology that's all around the buidling that he can explain, but which sounds like another language to me.

In minutes the two of them were hopping from place to place as I began to fall back, and watch my two boys in my workplace, one being proud of who he's become, the other becoming prouder. And occasionally I'd stop to introduce son #2 to an MPR exec with the words I love more than any other -- for either boy: "this is my son."

Later, as they left to go grab something to eat together, it was hard for me to remember that these were the same two kids that occasionally tried to kill each other.

Last night the phone rang. It was son #2 asking me if I wanted to have dinner at Mickey's, a famous diner in downtown St. Paul (you may remember it from The Mighty Ducks), that neither one of us has ever been to.

So today, after I finish the newscast on the Current, he'll swing by, we'll grab son #1 and my boys and I will go to dinner.

"At Mickey's," I said to my wife this morning, noting that it's not exactly Kincade's.

"These are the days you always wanted," she said.

Yeah.

Explain this to me

I can't really say I'm a big fan of organized religion anymore. I haven't been to church in a few years, pretty much since my wife left her job as church secretary and started saving the world one by one. But that's not to say I don't believe in God; I just don't think you need a middleman and I see too many churches getting built and too few hungry people being fed. I don't think God gives a rip whether I actually go to church; I think that's something blared by, oddly enough, churches. Go figure.

I don't need someone to help me talk to God. So pardon me for just a second while I hold a side conversation here.

God, what the hell are you doing?

I get the whole "mysterious ways" thing, which -- between you and me -- is code for "beats the heck out of me." I understand the concept of free will. I even understand the George Burns concept when he said in Oh, God!, "I don't worry about the little stuff, kid."

You know what I don't get? I don't get how some creep walks into a school -- and not just a school, God, an Amish school -- and lines young girls up against the blackboard and executes them.

I may be wrong, God, but that's not a "little thing." Where were you?

I watch NASCAR every now and again, God, and I see Jimmy Billy Bob hop out of his souped up car after winning and thanking you for winning the race, so I figure you had something to do with it. So why NASCAR and not little girls?

The fact I'm mad at you at all, it seems to me, ought to be enough to show I believe in you. If I didn't think you existed, I'd just be railing against some jag-off in Pennsylvania. Besides, I watched "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" last night and saw a bunch of volunteers build a house in 56 hours for a a woman with 6 kids in Michigan, who lost her husband last year... although -- now that I think of it -- what's the deal with taking a young man -- a firefighter no less -- on Christmas Eve?

I know you exist, because otherwise it's all just random acts of ... whatever. And coincidence isn't powerful enough to account for me and my wife, not to mention the two kids involved.

But, girls in an Amish school. What was that all about? To make a point? You used to make it with tablets and burning bushes, now it's guns in a school and little girls?

I've seen all the Albert Brooks movies, God, so I know that when I die -- and by the way, I'm staying out of Amish country for awhile -- I have to "defend my life."

But you know what? You've got some 'splaining to do too.

It's enough to make me want to go build someone a house, and stop watching NASCAR.

Wait 'til you see the action figures!

A week or so ago, Minnesota Public Radio hired a fine photographer to snap some "publicity" photos of people who are on the air. Since I'm occasionally on the air, I was on the list.

Now keep in mind, I still have almost all of the business cards MPR gave me 10 years ago, so I don't exactly rip through the outside world, handing out cards and photos. But since they went to the trouble of putting on make-up, well...

Anyway, he took three. One I really liked, but nobody else did. I won't tell you which. You'll just have to vote. The winner replaces that one over on the left there.

But, you know, I look at these and think: I should run for something.

Any openings that you know of?

Here we go:

Space cowboy

I've always been interested in the space program. When I was a kid, my folks gave me a Panasonic reel-to-reel recorder and I'd stay home (maybe I was faking, I forget) and watch Frank McGee on NBC or Walter Cronkite on CBS broadcast the various Gemini missions and I'd turn down the sound and talk into the thing. I figured I'd end up being an astronaut. I ended up instead being the guy who "talks into the thing." Go figure.

Anyway, here's a story I wrote about an aquaintance of mine, who has built the same kind of plane that I'm building. If you've been following the current Atlantis flight, maybe you've seen him on the TV. His name is Paul Dye. He's the lead flight director for the shuttle.

Now, this picture below is really cool. It was taken from France and, yeah, that's the sun. But check out the spots (click the image for a larger view). Unbelievable.

That's the shuttle on the left, after undocking with the space station on the right.



My mother had a beauty shop in our basement and, of course, it had a sink she'd wash customers' hair in and it had a chair that would lean back. It was a good place to play "spaceshot." So I'd take my brothers football helmet, put Saran wrap around the front and that was my space helmet. Then I'd wear a big heavy red parka and that was my spaceshuit. I'd get in the chair and that was my capsule.

I built a flimsy cardboard "control panel" of a capsule that had a bunch of paper switches that did nothing but light the stick of dynamite I was sitting on. And I'd turn on the tape recorder, on which I'd taped mission control. And then I'd "lift off."

It's a wonder I didn't suffocate.

Just wondering

How many churches do Islamists have to firebomb in order to make their point that the Pope was wrong to have quoted 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus who said everything the criticism of the Prophet Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached"?

OK, so may be not everything. Is that the point?

It could be worse; you could've been born on February 29th

Today was my wife's birthday. She needs a break; bad things tend to happen on her birthday. In 1986, my grandmother died on her birthday. Then in 2001, well, you know. It wasn't a very good time.

We had a nice dinner at the Afton House, but earlier in the day, son Patrick left a frantic message that he pulled into a gas station on his motorcyle last night, took his backpack off and filled up with gas. But when he went in to pay, he forgot to take his backpack with him and when he returned it was gone.

It included all his text books, his homework, his cellphone, his PS2 and a key... an important key; an important master key to one of the facilities where he works part-time.

Things have always gone well for Patrick, so this has given him a punch in the gut and he really doesn't nkow where to start. It's one of those things where you can only take one thing at a time. But he hasn't calmed down enough to start. Maybe tomorrow.

My oldest son Sean, Carolie says, talked to her today and assured her that he and roomate Nick -- who we consider our son too -- will take care of roomate Patrick and "he'll be fine."

Good kids.

Happy birthday, Carolie.

Waiting to exhale

I come from a long line of worriers. Or maybe it's a short line. And maybe it's not "worrying," per se. Maybe it's just the inability to exhale.

I was at a get-together in Minneapolis last night for Minnesota bloggers and was talking to Gary Miller, who is one of the writers at the Kennedy vs. the Machine blog when the subject turned to kids -- my kids, of course -- and when I mentioned that both of my kids are now out of the house, Gary said "it must be nice to sit back and relax and say "yeah, we did a good job" ?

Yes, it must be. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I wouldn't know and, frankly, I'd be scared to find out. "Exhaling" is destined to invoke karma. I've done that exhaling thing a couple of times and the results are not pretty. Back in 1986, I remember sitting on the couch in Belmont thinking, "living in Boston, working in radio, there's food in the 'fridge and money in the bank. Ahh, this is living."

A couple of months later, WHDH ran into budget problems and I was on the street. No more of that, even if it gets me a reputation at my current employer of being a pessimist, since they're unable to distinguish the difference between a pessimist and someone who knows disaster is just around the corner. It doesn't mean I think it'll come. It means I don't think it can't. One must not, I figure, tempt the gods with the awesome power of contentment.

In one tortured paradox, I realized the other night that while I always hope the kids will stay in touch, when the phone actually rings and the caller ID indicates it's either Sean or Patrick calling, Carolie and I always have the same reaction. We say "oh,no" out loud.

Carolie and I were both going to go to the pub last night for the bloggers' event, but at the last minute Patrick called and invited her to dinner with him and his ex (I guess) girlfriend, Pam. He called in the afternoon looking for her, too (she was in St. Cloud trying to get the Department of Human Services to get its bureacratic head out of its bureacratic ass), and it sure sounded important that they have dinner together and fast!

This is not normal, I thought. A kid who a few months ago started every sentence with "I'm 18 now..." desperately trying to have dinner with his mother. I could only reach one conclusion: someone's pregnant. But, no, it was just dinner.

Life is good. I guess.

A good walk not wasted

Click for a larger image.

Patrick and I played what is probably our last golf game of the summer. And perhaps one of the reasons why I'm not particularly good -- which is a kind way of saying I really stink -- at this game is that it was only our second game together this summer; the last being in June when Carolie's dad joined us for 9 holes.

A really great guy by the name of Bob Krupski of Sheffield (Mass.) took me out for my first game back when I lived in the Berkshires. Now, it takes a lot of patience to show someone how to play golf, but Bob was great at it and I really enjoyed the game even though I was pretty much the same golfer then that I am today.

We played, perhaps, a dozen rounds together and I never did break 100. So when we moved to Minnesota, my last words to Bob were, "I'll send you the scorecard when I break 100." Let's just say whatever mail Krup is hauling in from the mailbox, isn't weighted down by a single scorecard from Minnesota.

For some reasons, I prefer the physicians' approach to golf. "Game, heal thyself." I figure that even though I've never taken a lesson, and even though I only play a few times a year, my game will get better. Bulletin: it hasn't.

Patrick and I played up at Keller Golf Course in Maplewood, a fantastic county course that used to host PGA tournaments. Beautiful course. Damn tough course.

But I left the house today thinking, "I shot a 45 over 9 a few weeks ago, I'm putting well, my slice is manageable and this is the day." Golf can do that to you; rip you apart through overconfidence. But the big question is: how on earth can a guy who hasn't broke 100 in 17 years be overconfident?

Well, of course, the problem wasn't overconfidence, underconfidence or somewhereinbetweenconfidence. The problem is I've got no game; none, zip, nada.

Bottom line? Sixty on the front nine. Sixty-five on the back nine for a total of 125 and I might've forgotten a couple of strokes in the process.

I do love being out with my boys, though. Golf's a great game.

The national pasttime

One of Carolie and my favorite pasttimes is taking pictures of people who might not be in their most -- shall we say -- positive light. One of these days, I'll dig out the picture of the "pickle man" from the Fort Worth zoo and post it here.

The technique is when we see someone, I'll stand nearby and Carolie will pretend to be taking a picture of me, but then she zooms in on the other person. Juvenile? Oh, hell, yeah.

We went to the State Fair yesterday and found this guy...



Wish she'd zoomed out just a bit because the effect would've been better, especially since the spouse -- at least I think it was the spouse -- was also fairly passed out. They were at the Leinenkugel's area. The chairs are all oversized and so was this guy. But it doesn't show up well close in.

Update: One of my pals at work -- Julia Schrenkler -- has sent me a little online tool that transforms images. Here it is. It's a good time-waster.

What's next? An IPod?

Every now and again, I get slapped in the face by the confirmation that I'm changing; swept into a different dimension by technology. No better than the hordes of lemmings who latch onto the latest fad today, only to ditch it tomorrow. In this vein, I am reminded that I am not special.

These little "confirmations" come at odd times and places. The latest one -- and don't read any Brad Pittiness into this -- came on top of a mountain: Bald Mountain near Lake Willoughby in Vermont.

When Carolie and I arrived at the cabin a few weeks ago, I flopped on the couch and started leafing through some old copies of Vermont Life magazine, only to be intrigued by an article on the joys of climbing Bald Mountain, which as it turns out is only a few miles from the cabin. The article indicated the location of the easiest route up the mountain. Being not particularly adroit at mountain climbing or hiking (It's a flesh is weak thing. The spirit gets a pass on this point.), I dutifully recorded the directions and the next day Carolie and I set off on our excursion.

Carolie said her parents and her aunt and uncle made this climb a few years ago and as they're in their '70s, we felt confident that a couple of adroitless 50-somethings could handle the climb. We pranced through the first half mile or so, looking for the elusive pink, fuzzy somethingorother, but eventually the grade steepened and the spirit revealed its ugly side.

"Jesum Crow," I said with increasing frequency (it's a Vermont expression that, trust me, completely fools God when it comes to keeping score.), falling farther behind Carolie who, while huffing a bit, was suddenly reminding me of those mall walkers at the Maplewood Mall, usually featuring a handful of spry 80-year-olds in new jogging outfits, followed by their husbands, toting their oxygen tanks.

Many rest stops and Jesum Crows later -- about 2 hours later -- we emerged at the top of Bald Mountain and while Carolie climbed to the top of an abandoned fire tower, I -- and here comes the "confirmation" -- opened my cellphone to see how many "bars" I could get on the signal indicator.

"Wow," she said as she surveyed the view. "I can see Lake Willoughby from here."

"I've got 3 bars," I said back, desperately trying to think of someone I could call if only to say "I'm on a frickin' mountain in Vermont."

When did this happen? When did I become somehow spiritually connected to a cellphone? I don't use it much, and nobody ever calls me, so why am I suddenly flipping open my cellphone to see if I have a signal? Why am I so much like.... you know...them? I don't even like cellphones, which are only slightly higher on my stupid-o-meter than the people who use them. I vowed never to have one.

Of course, I vowed once -- 1986 if memory serves -- never to own a computer. Look at me now! Something special, eh?

Post script: it turns out that I read the magazine article wrong. The trail we took was not the easiest, according to the magazine. It was the easiest to find. And Carolie's parents and aunt and uncle never made the trek. It was another gentler journey.

I plan on finding that one next time I'm there. I'll call you when I get to the top.

Completing the Circle Tour

I have returned to Minnesota after a two-day drive back from Fitchburg, Massachusetts with a stop overnight in Napoleon, Ohio. My mother told me once she always thought I would be a traveler, but while I live farther away than any of my brothers and sisters, I don't travel that much.

In fact, I still think the concept of being somewhere different for dinner than you were for lunch is pretty cool and whenever I drive across country, I think about those pioneers who said goodbye to their family and headed West. Let me tell you, if you've never driven across half-a-country, you cannot possibly appreciate the reality of their decision to leave, because there was no way they were ever going to see the friends and family they left behind again.

Fortunately, that's no longer a problem and this two-week trip has reinforced the notion of getting off the main thoroughfare. On the way back, I drove down through Southern New York, around Watkins Glen, along the Susquehana and then Allegany Rivers, over Chataqua Lake until I made tracks for Ohio.

This country, really, is unbelievable in terms of what it offers in the way of a view. The things you can see in a short period of time is mind boggling.

You can start in a place like Woodbury, Minnesota and in no time at all...

You can be in Galena Illinois...



Through the cornfields of Indiana (I wanted to stop and watch a cropduster yesterday but the corn was too high to see the horizon!)...



Outside Jacob's Field in Cleveland...



Looking out at the largest mountain in Massachusetts -- Mt. Greylock in the Berkshires... (1,300 miles from Minnesota)



As your wife plays cribbage with her mother in the vanishing twilight...



And then you're a few hundred miles north, on the Canadian border, sitting on the camp deck...




And climbing a mountain (2 hours) and an abandoned fire tower to view Vermont...



You can go from the oldest schoolhouse in Vermont...



To the house you grew up in in Massachusetts.



You can start the day in Boston...



Have lunch along a winding road in Southern upstate New York.



And in a flash you can go from the grime of Gary, Indiana...



And the stench of the huge BP oil refinery...



To an unhurried (really) drive along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago (the interstate was dead stopped, by the way)



One note here. If you're an aviation enthusiast, this particular part of the trip requires you to hold your nose at the unbridled corruption of Mayor Richard Daley, who sent the bulldozers in at midnight to destroy the perfectly lovely lakefront Meigs airport.

And pretty much home again.

I'm going to make the trip again by car soon, I think. But someday -- someday -- by "car" will be in the air and I'll be stopping at places like Burke Lakefront airport in Cleveland and Elmira Airport in New York.

The little room

Since he died in February 2004, nobody has done much in "the little room," the workshop of my father in the barn just down the street from the house he and my mother shared for 60+ years; a house that was built for her by her father by taking down part of the barn.

"Workshop" is perhaps too nice a word. Let's just say it was pretty much where my father spent most of his time since retiring from the insurance business in the early '80s. And its condition was a testament to his ability to try lots of different things while mastering, I'm afraid, few of them (except for vegetable gardening. He was very good at that. My mother says dad "put her to work the day he retired," because she ended up running the vegetable stand). But try he did.

Whenever I come East I try to help my mother do a few things around the house. This year I cleared some brush, repainted a part of the house that was peeling, tried to fix her computer and finally installed a new one. Today when I went to the barn to put the ladders away, the little room beckoned.

There's a little bit of everything in the little room, including a lot of stuff that gives a glimpse into my father's personality. He, apparently, never threw anything away. And just as apparent, he wasn't much for trash cans or cleaning for that matter.

I don't think the reason nobody has touched it in the last two years is because they couldn't bring themselves to face the loss of my dad by doing so; we pretty much get it. I think that the enormity of the job has been too much for most any human. My dad, in effect, left us all one hellacious shitbox. But with nothing else to do today, I cleaned out "the little room." As much I could in one day anyway.

It was here just a few years ago that I picked up a rusty and bent hinge and tossed it in a nearby beat-up trash can. "Hey, what are you doing?" my father said as he fished the hinge out of the trash. "That's a perfectly good hinge. We can do something with that."

What he did with it, I don't know. But I've found plenty of other things just fine: old fishing gear, half-bent wooden frames from windows long past, old oil cans, equally oily rags, pieces of slate, nuts and bolts in old cans that I'm sure he intended to sort out someday, lots of keys that could fit about anything as long as it wasn't made in the last two centuries.

And sawdust. Lots and lots of sawdust. Late in his life, my father decided to take up woodworking with a lathe, which is odd -- and was a little terrifying to the rest of us -- since my dad was pretty well blind by then and the prospect of a rapidly-spinning hunk of wood and my father with a sharp object was sure to lead to tragedy.
He made a few things which appear to be bowls with large cracks in them, and left the sawdust behind. Today, I vacuumed up the sawdust.



My dad's fix-it jobs were legendary. If it got the job done, it was good enough. Beauty of the fix was not a prerequisite and frequently not a result either. I thought of that as I swept out around the cement shower stall base that he put in the basement back in the'60s, and later removed....only to use it for the base of a wood stove he used in the little room.

I also found a fair number of bottlecaps. We didn't have alcohol in our house; my mother forbade it. And so my Dad had a small stash of beer in the "little room," apparently chilled with the small dorm refrigerator my sister had at college in the mid '70s, now rusty but apparently still -- like the hinge -- good for something. As we kids moved into our adult years, the little room became a good place to stand around and have a beer with my father, and talk about things -- "code" I always called it -- while wondering if my mother would suddenly appear and find out he had beer at the barn.

I ended up with about 3 barrels of trash and that was just off the floors. I haven't tackled the workbenches or shelves yet; that'll have to wait until the next time I'm here -- probably in January. There actually are some terrific tools there I'd like to keep, if I could only figure out a place to put it. Barns are cool things.

The little room, I think, was more than just a workshop. It was a refuge for dad -- and no doubt as he used his sharp objects on the whirring hunk of wood, perhaps a place to declare his intolerance for his late-in-life infirmities that caught up to him in 2004.

The barn, the little room, and a lot of these tools and machinery would have been great for building an airplane, and perhaps he'd enjoy helping, although in his later years he didn't sound too sure about flying in an airplane you build yourself. Not as safe, I guess, as a blind man and a spinning lathe.

The irony of discovering possibilities for old things in the little room is not lost on me.

I never did find that damned hinge, though.

Phony patriotism

The great Eastern vacation has moved to the homestead in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. My mother, bless her heart, was just telling me about the neighbors across the street who felt compelled, as well they should, I guess, to fly the American flag. My mother comes from the Greatest Generation, a generation that knew a little something about patriotism and I don't remember our family ever flying the American flag. It didn't have to. My Dad was in World War II and didn't feel compelled to tell you. That's the funny thing about the Greatest Generation; it never did.

But this is the "look at me, I'm a patriot" generation and as long as that means doing everything but actually, you know, signing up for military service, then everyone seems to be on board. Back to the neighbors. They flew a flag to tell you how much they loved it. They flew it at night -- unlighted -- they flew it in bad weather...they flew it until it was in tatters on the pole. Now if you know anything about the American flag, you know that those are three cardinal sins.

Finally, my mother found an ad in the paper for an American flag, taped it to a card, and mailed it to the people across the street who must've gotten the message because they took the flag down.

It's curious that she was just telling us this story because I just stumbled across this picture from Minnesota Public Radio's Web site.



This is our flag-loving congressman from the 6th Congressional District and his patriotic wife. I'm sure they're very nice people. They just happen to have a lot in common with the flag burners I'm sure they hate.

Given that the guy makes our laws -- and is a supporter of a flag amendment so he must know the flag rules -- I shouldn't have to call his attention to US Code Title 4, Section 8d.

The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery. It should never be festooned, drawn back, nor up, in folds, but always allowed to fall free. Bunting of blue, white, and red, always arranged with the blue above, the white in the middle, and the red below, should be used for covering a speaker's desk, draping the front of the platform, and for decoration in general.

What we have here is phony patriotism.

Expect a note from my mother.

Shagging golf balls and living forever

I suppose it's time to get back to the business of this column, musings on life from the empty nest.

My wife and I arrived at Newark Pond in Vermont. I think it's more of a lake and any Minnesotan would agree. But in Vermont, I guess, this is a pond, the homestead of my wife's family on her mother's side. A picture will follow but rest assured it's a lovely camp that has risen from a chicken coop in the last century to a self-respecting second-home of the 21st century, except that as I write this, the power has gone off after a wimpy rainstorm moved through. Life is fragile, I guess, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.

Her family has kept a journal of each visit going back to the 1980s and I determined today that the last time we were here sans children (her being pregnant in a 1985 visit does not qualify) was 1983. So this is our first time here without the kids in 23 years, and our first visit here since the death of her Uncle Henry, with whom I would play golf on our semi-yearly basis, an event that would easily be the highlight of my year and that has very little to do with the type of game I played.

His wife, Carolie's Aunt Bev, still won't stay overnight in the camp they have next door, but she and her family were here yesterday and it was great to have a picnic and then sit by the campfire for a spell. I suppose, as my wife says, that it's too hard to be here and not have Henry nearby.

I miss the semi-annual golf game, and I miss Henry's classic Vermont twang and easy nature, but in this spot, I do not feel that he is anywhere but here. Where people go when they die I don't know, but I tend to think they stay right where the place is that define them to others. For me, since I rarely saw him anywhere else, that is this spot and while I look out the window here and see an empty hammock and a closed-up camp next door, I do not feel there is a loss here, unless this spot should somehow itself disappear.

My children, I think, were quite young when they first started coming here for a few days at a time, usually in the middle of whirlwind New England tour in the short time we had available when visiting from Minnesota. We had so many people to see and so little time, we were the hummingbirds of summer vacationers.

There's very little television here and no computer connection and I'm sure they dreaded the thought of such a spot, but just as my wife did when she was a little girl here, they found plenty to occupy themselves on a small spit of grass next to a big, well, pond, surrounded by forests and mountains.

For us, it was hitting golf balls into the lake, then snorkelling to get them, only to hit them in again. Hour after hour, day after day. Often I would row the boat and one boy would jump off the back at the site of a submerged target, the other would patrol on a leaky raft, giddy at the sound a golf ball makes when returned into the equally leaky metal rowboat.

Today, alone, I hit, then retrieved the same golf balls, delighting in the new discoveries and the memories of those days with younger children.

Years ago, we took the kids to the spot where I had the most fun as a kid -- the north shore of Massachusetts and I recall watching my oldest son play in the sand and the water and feeling vaguely as though I was watching myself as a boy.

And today as I searched for each golf ball, I thought of that moment, the moments chasing golf balls with my kids, and all the moments here with Uncle Henry and the moments to come that keep them all alive. Sometime, somewhere, my kids will again hit a golf ball into some body of water somewhere, perhaps with their own kids -- perhaps not. They will dive in and shag them and they will remember this place and that time. They will remember their father and mother, and Uncle Henry, and Aunt Bev, and all the people who defined this place and they will feel as though they are looking back in time, as well they are.

And everyone will thus live forever.

45!

You know how I said I had a feeling I'd break 100 golfing during this trip. Well, I haven't, at least so far. But I came close. Today I went up to Stamford, Vermont, which is just a stone's throw from my in-laws' house (pictures on all of this when I get to a computer with USB). I always like to golf at a 9-hole course there, with a small shack that serves as the clubhouse. The shack, however, is gone, replaced by a beautiful new building with a wrap-around front porch that looks out on the Berkshire mountains, green from a spring -- and now a summer -- full of rain.

My father-in-law, Don Thurston, and I spent the morning after a night of rain trying to read the greens, and succeeded to varying degrees. Apparently the secret to improving my golf game is not to play; the game will correct itself. Why this philosophy has not worked in the previous 20 years, I cannot say, however. But today the drives were straight, if not long enough for me to make caveman sounds. And the putting was excellent and I settled for a 45. Although I choose to project that this would have been a 90 on 18 holes, thus qualifying for my desire to break 100 before my eventual death, I am at heart a Collins and so we consider such things as the liklihood of falling rocks in these projections. Given all of the possible calamities of another 9 holes, we stopped at 9 and chose, instead, to explore the wonders of Sam Adams and a ham and cheese club sandwich, leaving me -- at least for now -- content that I can golf.

New England courses are not like Minnesota courses. There are no houses built around them and they are, if nothing else, a good walk through nature. The greens are also usually slanted -- in some cases steeply -- and diabolical. The trees are mature in both stature and the ability to mock you in there own tree-like way.

When I left New England 14 years ago, I thought my golf game would improve as I left these courses for the flatter, more gentile (I thought) courses of Minnesota. But, alas, my average was over 100 when I lived here, it is over 100 now.

But for one night -- the night when I am sitting in a parked car on a deserted main street, ripping off a closed coffee shops wiFi, I can dream that I am a golfer.

At least until next time.