and today is Halloween...

Just off old 81 about 40 miles south of Fargo, North Dakota sits a quintessential mid-western small town of Fort Abercrombie that my grandparents called home after moving off the family farm in about 1967. I’ve talked about that town of about 300 here before, and while so many other small towns across the Plains have slowly died, this particular little trade center has managed to keep going...and even grow a bit of late.

The town is not exactly thriving…the bank, the hotel, the hardware store, the small Ford dealership, a couple of filing stations, the butcher, and the café have all shut down since I started visiting, but there is still a city-owned grocer, a town hall, one Standard gas station, a truss factory, a fire house, a grain elevator, an elementary school, a Lutheran church and a thriving bar. Even if everyone were to leave…I have a feeling the bar would still do enough trade to stay open. Note: I have seen towns in Minnesota…where every single of the town’s businesses have closed…except the saloon. I know of at least one town where two thriving bars are the only surviving businesses.

For many years (15 in a row) I would drive from Los Angeles back to that North Dakota town to visit my Grandfather and family each summer. I would stay in his old house, which had served as the area hospital back in the late 1800s and early 1900. My mother was born in that house…and my cousin Annie owns the brass bed that was used to deliver my mother on that faithful day (I know…TMI). I always loved visiting my grandfather. As he got into his early 90s,  we would spend hours and hours driving around the country as he told stories about the old days on the prairie.

My grandpa was pretty old when (in his 80s) when I started visiting him each year, and he was a devoutly religious man that attended the Evangelical Free Church in neighboring Wolverton, Minnesota. Any kind of extracurricular activity was usually off-limits, and drinking alcohol was a sin that doomed you to an eternal future that included a shovel and a whole lot of coal. Thankfully I was pretty straight-laced at that point in my life, and he used to love to introduce me to folks by telling them that I didn’t drink…and that I didn’t even like coffee.

In the evenings he would “hike of to bed” pretty early (sometimes around 7 or 7:30, at which point I’d sneak down the stairs and hop into my car and head up old 81 into Fargo. They had just passed a gaming initiative about the time I started to visit each year, and in Fargo you could walk into a bar and play blackjack. Sounds better than it was…as at that point there was a two-dollar limit on the bets. I would sit there for hours…drinking diet pop and playing blackjack. Usually around 11pm, I would leave and head back to my car and make the drive back south on old 81.

One of the things I love about the Plains is the hellacious thunderstorms that come across the prairie in the warm summer months. One particular night…you could just feel it was shaping up to be a good one. I was driving my red 72’ Ford Pinto (whatever cool image you have in your head…I looked even groovier than you’re imagining in my white bell-bottomed pants and polyester shirt) with the window rolled down and you could literally feel the hair on your arms standing in anticipation of the pending electrical storm.

As I drove southward by towns like Oxbow, Hickson and then Christine, you could see bolts of lightning striking the wheat and soybean fields. I stepped on the accelerator hoping to get to my grandpa’s house before any heavy rain fell…or worse…a whole bunch of hail. Thankfully, I could see the lights of town on the horizon and the security of the blinking yellow caution light that swayed in the building wind above of the intersection of County Road 81 and Broadway.

Just on the left side of that intersection is the cemetery that hugs the Lutheran church on the west end of town. I used to see an old woman that lived in town walking her dog along the road there sometimes late at night, but after not seeing her for some time, I was surprised to see her outline illuminated by my headlights…particularly on this stormy summer night…and especially with the nasty weather closing in fast. To make matters worse, she was walking directly through the cemetery just to the west of the Lutheran Church...and right by her home. I remember thinking as I made the left turn into town that it’s true what they said about North Dakotans…they are a hearty group indeed. There is no way I’d walk through a cemetery at night…in pitch dark, in an electric storm with heavy rain about to fall. I surmised that she too must have felt the storm approaching…and decided to take a short cut back to her house to avoid the rain.

The next morning I walked up town to have coffee with the boys (my grandpa never came…couldn’t see “giving” 35 cents for coffee when you could boil it up at home for next to nothing) at the town hall. I’ve referenced this group of mostly older farmers before, and I had become a welcome yearly regular with these guys…many of whom I was related to in some way (if you listen carefully you can hear the banjo music). They reveled in my often exaggerated rough-an-tumble “life in the hood” stories of LA, and they also enjoyed my animated recaps of my nightly gambling excursions into Fargo. Often times, if I’d hit it big, I take my 10 bucks in winnings and cover coffee for everyone at the table…I was a popular guy.

On this morning I was telling them about my previous night’s winnings and one of them asked me if I’d driven back in the heavy storm. I told them yes, and almost as an afterthought, I mentioned that I’d seen crazy old Mrs. Erickson* out walking at midnight again…directly through the cemetery on the west-end of town. Some of them laughed a bit nervously, and I continued to go on about how odd it was that she’d be out in weather like that. I noticed my uncle looking at me kind of strange…but before long we moved on to the usually bad Norwegian  jokes, stories about the latest auction sale, or guys talking about how much they had in their respective rain gauges.

When we walked outside to hop into his dark blue GMC pickup to drive over to the Post Office to get the mail (it was literally across the street),  my uncle, seeming somewhat irritated, asked me why I told the story about seeing Mrs. Erickson. I told him I didn’t really know…it just seemed interesting that she’d be out on a night like that. He responded by asking if I was sure it was her. I told him yes…it was her…I have no doubt…I’ve seen her 100 times.  I inquired as to what the big deal was…at which point he looked at me seriously and told me that she had passed away the winter before last.

I know what you’re thinking…but it’s a true story…and the only thing I was drinking up in Fargo that night was diet pop. I still flat out don't believe in ghosts...or really anything thing like them. It was her…but don’t ask…I don’t know either.

One of the trippy things about moving from Los Angeles to the east is the amount of fervor folks have here connected to Halloween. Sure, kids went trick-or-treating in the west, but it was a one-day deal and there certainly wasn’t the fascination with the holiday that there is here. I’ve had some people here tell me it’s their favorite holiday…and it’s clear that even grownups really get into it.  So, I hope you are planning a fabulous and festive Halloween. It’s going to be a great way to kick of a wonderful Fall weekend…so make the best of the changing season doing the things you enjoy with someone you love.

If it wasn't for Jon Stewart and the first game of the World Series...I wouldn't even be aware of this song. It's not really my genre...but what the heck...it's Halloween...

...all the right junk in all the right places...

...and you're not the only one on the road (planet).

It happened again last night while driving westbound on “I Street” in downtown DC on the way home from the office after a long day at about 8:40pm. Traffic was slogging along…even at that hour, and while still moving the cab driver ahead of me flipped on his hazard lights. Though as a product of Los Angeles this whole hazard lights for anything other than a roadside emergency issue was a genuine phenomenon when I moved to the East Coast about 10 years ago, I now know what this maneuver meant. It was the cabdriver’s way of letting me know that there was no immediate place to pull over, so instead he’d be stopping his car in the middle of one of the only two moving lanes, and sitting there until his A-Hole passenger sluggishly paid, made some small talk, and then slowly exited the vehicle as if every single fellow human being stuck behind him was some lower life form with leprosy that somehow didn’t matter as much as their need to be dropped off directly in front of the latest Sushi hot spot.

In LA, you might turn on your hazards if your Lexus stalls on the Freeway and you’ve drifted over to the right shoulder (so your fellow citizens can pass) or to alert folks behind you if you’ve pulled over (so your fellow brothers and sisters can pass) while you change a flat tire on your Mercedes SUV. Here in the east, or at least in the District of Columbia, it’s as if at least some people have been led to believe that the vehicle manufactures somehow included the hazard feature as some sort of low-voltage direct current “Screw You and Everybody Behind You” tool they can use to block the only service lane in Cleveland Park so they can run in a pick up their dry cleaning while you and the rest of society waits on them.

I remember sitting in my uncle’s American made Lincoln sometime in the late 1980s and listening to the radio to kill some time one Sunday before the mid-morning 10am service at the Evangelical Free Church in Wolverton, MN. There was a report on the news about a second random freeway shooting in my hometown of Los Angeles (where I lived at the time) due to what they believed was no other reason than road rage. Apparently, people were becoming so fed up with poor driving they would lose their cool and actually fire shots into the offending driver’s vehicle. I remember laughing at the time, and my uncle being perplexed at my lighthearted response. “You just watch” I told him… “this is going to catch on.” I was right.

Well…there are a lot of things I hated about living in LA, but one of few things I liked is that people are just naturally better drivers (the shootings helped). And while there’s no shortage of egotistical A-holes with credit scores suggesting they should be driving a Datsun instead of their 72-month fully financed low-end BMW, people are generally more courteous when they drive…or at least when they think about blocking an entire lane of traffic during rush hour. While some folks in the City of the Angeles may be self-absorbed narcissists that believe you are what you drive, nobody fool (other than a transplant from DC) would knowingly flip on their hazards in a moving lane so they could run into the market to pick up a loaf of bread. If they did, they know they’d run the risk of some Crip, or Blood, or Dentist or Attorney or Nun or Noble Peace Prize winner popping a cap in their ass to teach them some freaking driving etiquette.

Now…I know what you’re thinking, and yes, there are exceptions to blocking a lane of traffic. If you’re headed up 16^th Street in rush hour and you notice some environmental jackass leisurely peddling their bicycle in the middle of the lane slowing every single commuter behind them, it’s OK to stop. But please, don’t give them a heads up by signaling with your hazard lights. Instead slow a bit until they're right on your tail and then slam on your breaks so they careen directly into your rear end. It may not seem like it for a couple of decades, but after you're released from prison, you’ll realize you were doing the world a favor.

What’s the point of all this? Well…it might be that I need a vacation or to recalibrate my medication, but one other lesson could be to think a bit the next time you’re tempted to flip on your hazard lights. You’ve got a duty to your fellow commuter, so the next time the urge strikes, pull your head out of your rectum long enough to look around at the rest of the world. There are other people here too...and we’re all trying to get home after a long day just like you.

It’s Friday, and after a week of hellacious commutes, it’s time to kick back and spend some time with the people and pets that you love. If you can, stay off the road. But if you must drive…be kind to your fellow citizens…and listen to a little music while you roll down the road.

 

Leroy says hello...

 

BTW...sorry about that bad song link for email subscribers last week. I need to take some computer classes.

...and I'd love to push the button to turn on the lights just one more time...

For a kid that grew up in a few miles from the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles directly west of the manic metropolitan Los Angeles Civic Center, traveling back each summer to the tranquility and stability of my mother’s hometown in Abercrombie, ND was a genuine treat. During a period from about 1985 until 1998, I would venture back at least once a year…sometimes twice…and the journey and the time spent there was without question among the most enjoyable times of the year. As a matter-of-fact, the weeks I would spend in North Dakota became so coveted that I would maximize my time and actually drive solo non-stop straight through and was able to make the roughly 1,900 mile road trip in about 31 or 32 hours (I’d usually nap for about an hour somewhere in eastern Wyoming).

There were a lot of things I loved about going to that small rural Midwestern hamlet of about 300 residents nestled by the Red River which bordered the Minnesota line…but one of the best and most comforting was the feel of my Grandpa’s old house. The two-story home with a dirt-floor cellar sat on the north side of the main drag Broadway…just about three blocks in from “old” highway 81, which served as the main north/south eastern North Dakota thoroughfare before the completion of Interstate 29 several miles west bypassed the town in the 1970s.

The house was classic…at least in my mind, and featured three bedrooms up stairs, an attic directly above the kitchen, one bedroom on the first level along with a living room, kitchen and parlor just of the living room. You rarely ventured into the parlor unless it was to play old hymns on the badly out-of-tune ancient upright piano. There was always a bunch of stuff stacked in there…and I remember it seeming kind of dusty and dark.

There was also a dirt floor cellar just below the kitchen with a single porcelain keyless light that you had to illuminate by pulling a chain once you descended the crewed wooden stairs. My grandma (who passed away in the late 1970s) used to keep fruit-and-such which she canned down there…but as a kid I was always afraid to even open the cellar door fearing that Boo Radley would be lurking in the dark…just at the base of the stairs.  

The most amazing thing about this big house was that it really had only one real bathroom…and small upstairs room contained only a commode, a tub and a sink. If you wanted to take a “shower” you had to kneel down in the porcelain tub and use an old leaky rubber sprayer-hose that you’d have to force on over the tub faucet. It would usually slipped off multiple times during even a short shower…but that just seemed to be part of the place’s charm.

There was a screened in porch on the front of the house which faced out onto the main thoroughfare, and while I don’t recall there ever really being much in the way of furniture out there, I used to sit there as a kid in one of my grandmother’s old wheelchairs. I remember going out there one afternoon and sitting in one of those chairs and putting my head back before dozing off. I’m sure I took naps as an infant and youngster, but that is my first conscious memory of being relaxed enough that I dozed off and took an extended nap in the middle of the day.

If I was visiting my grandfather by myself…I’d usually sleep in the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. There were a couple of pushbutton brass-platted 3-way light switches to turn on the stairwell lights at the bottom and top of the bending wooden staircase, and though I rarely worried about Boo getting out of his preferred digs in the cellar, I was always grateful to be able to illuminate the stairs before ascending the stairs to go up to bed on a dark Midwestern night. The wallpaper was peeling off the walls in the bedroom, and the only light in there was another porcelain keyless light bulb that you had to turn on by pulling a chain. In later years, my uncle Donald (my mom’s older brother) had tied a couple of old neckties from the brass bed headboard up to the light chain so that anyone sleeping in the old bed could simply reach up and grab the neckties to pull the chain and turn on the light. Growing up in the depression with the added misery of the dust bowl years could make a guy pretty inventive (and for that matter industrious)…and my uncle Donald was a great example of that rewarding combination.

The brass bed (with the necktie light switch feature) in that room was the same bed where my mother had been delivered when the old house served at the area “hospital” in the late 1800s and well into the 1900s. My grandparents purchased the house in the late 1960s to move off the farm and have the comforts of town…and I guess some of the furniture must have conveyed. That polished and fully restored bed still sits in my cousin Annie’s beautiful home in Fargo, which has more bathrooms than the old Abercrombie house had bedrooms. I think my grandparents paid about $5,000 for that house in the 1960s…which is a little less than I paid for just one Leroy Neiman painting which sits in my DC home right now. Though I could be wrong, I don’t believe we sold it for much more than about 30K after my grandfather passed away in 1991.

What’s the point of all this? If you know…please use the comment tool and let me know too. I just kept with the first real rule of this useless blog…which is to put to paper whatever happens to come to mind at 4am on a Friday. As I get older and life seems to get more complicated and hectic (and much, much shorter), I’m sure I romanticize what I at least fondly recall as a simpler time. You think a lot more about the way you lived your life when you get my age, and though I’ve been blessed to spend a fair amount of time in the Midwest, I wish I’d spent even more time in North Dakota.

The writing in this blog is subpar at best, but hopefully the music is usually pretty decent. The best part of this whole exercise is it’s Friday (even if subscribers sometime don’t get the email until Saturday), so please enjoy the beautiful Fall weekend and make some time for the people and pets that matter to you the most. If you can, visit somebody you care about…or maybe take your kids to see their grandpa. As you get older, you will find yourself reflecting much more about people and the value of relationships, than you ever will about work.

 

BTW...I seldom have the time to proof these each week...and even if I did, I'm an electrician not a writer so there will always be some mistakes in the prose. So, I'm sorry for all the misspellings, pour grammar, lousy punctuation and bad vocabulary. Actually...in all honesty...I'm really not all that sorry. Maybe it's a stubborn wannabe Midwestern thing.

I'd really love to dance across the kitchen floor