...and there's still a few days to sit by fire

In my mind, this holiday season was going to be different. Despite a very bad trend in recent years of letting it all slip by way too quickly, this December I was going to learn from the mistakes of the past and really enjoy a nice, slow, festive, and rejuvenating holidays. Like a lot of blueprints this all looked good on paper, but as too often happens, the challenge of transferring that theory into action was again too much for me.

 

I've felt increasingly disgusted and resentful over the last few Decembers at the way I've allowed work and everyday life to somehow conspired to rob me of the holiday magic. Whether it’s the seeming 24/7 nature of the job, the inability to ever really unplug from technology (or work in general) or just the increasingly frenzied nature of everyday life, somehow what used to seem like a more relaxed time of year now somehow the craziest. As if that wasn’t enough, this year’s compressed time period between Thanksgiving and Christmas somehow seemed to collude with everything else to make it the shortest holiday season in my lifetime.

Like every year, I had visions of early shopping and being prepared to the point that I could take it all in and just sort of stroll from one holiday party to the other humming carols in the crisp air while truly wallowing in the magic. There was supposed to be chestnuts on open fires, sleigh bells, yuletide carols and frosted window panes. Instead, it’s been cheeseburgers, tense meetings, honking horns and my lawn is still greener than it often is in the summer.

This year there was going to be relaxing nights by the fire, glistening trees,  glasses of red-wine and visiting with friends while Frank and Bing softly serenaded us with holiday favorites. In fairness, there’s been some of that (two…maybe three nights so far), but the truth is I’ve spent more time perusing internet gift sites and stressing about all my undone shopping than hanging mistletoe or sipping egg nog. But just like recent years, and despite the best laid plans, the season’s been mostly a bust. At the end of the day, all that came my way this holiday season was more stress…and for the record, that is the one thing that I already possess in complete abundance.

I guess what is so incredibly sad is that I’m writing this post while working off last year’s draft. As a matter-of-fact, at least a couple of the sentences are simply cut-and-pasted from the post that appeared on 12/20/13. The worst part is I recognize this is a reoccurring  theme and even escalating trend , but for some reason I refuse to make the necessary adjustments that would alter the frustration that comes from letting it all slip away. I’m 53, which means I have at least that many (or is it 54) Christmases in my rearview mirror. I love the holiday season, but despite glaring evidence and repeated opportunities to alter the outcome, I continue to let the hustle and bustle rob me making it all that it should be.

Last night I was driving home from some speaking engagement thing that I moronically allowed to be scheduled one week before Christmas…on the third night of Hanukah. My wife has lit the candles each evening, but I haven’t been around to join in the ritual because I’ve been at work. Yesterday, because of my poor planning, I missed my two favorite holiday parties of the year…and traded them instead for a harried 2-hour commute (each way) and frayed nerves.

What’s the point of all this? Well, if nothing else, it seems to me that it shows that I’m apparently incapable of learning anything. It also might again show that I’m short on fresh material, as I had to rely on a previous post to come up with today’s blog. Whatever is behind it, there is still time to then pop Dean Martin CD (or whatever is the modern-day equivalent…I can’t keep track), kick back by the fire and just chill. It might be good too if you can avoid doing what I’ve done here by not feeling sorry for yourself.

Whatever you’re dealing with, even if it’s the disappointment that comes from yet another season that didn’t meet expectations, there are hoards of people that have it much worse than you. If you think about it, we’re all one diagnosis from making much of what we stress about all seem awfully trivial. So,  try to think for a minute about those with bigger struggles and if you know somebody that’s having a tough time, you might want to give them a hug…or do at least something to let them know you care.

Have a great holiday weekend…

Merry Christmas Baby...

...and I've got to get to another holdiay party

About five or six years ago…a couple of colleagues and I went over to a local cigar bar in DC for a little holiday cheer. The two chaps with me were great friends with each other…and they were literal giants in my field of work. To be honest, I was more-or-less an underling just tagging along as I often did when these two pros would get together…and consistent with their brotherly code…they’d once again graciously let me join them for an evening of camaraderie.

The joint where we were is nice enough for me, but one of the guys complained about the “dive” nature of the place. We were having a blast nonetheless, and as always, it was a treat for me to spend some time with a couple of true leaders that have literally forgotten more about the work I’m supposed to know than I will ever fully grasp.

After sitting there for a couple of hours laughing and telling multiple lies, one fellow mentioned that we should probably go out to dinner. It was about 8:30pm on a school night, and even though I was in my late 40s at the time…I remember feeling so high-browed and important as we ventured out of the bar to have supper at a time when I’m usually passed out at home on the couch. It was a bitterly cold December night…so it took us more than a few minutes to gear up for the elements before going out in the cold.

The wife of one of the guys was just getting off work, so she generously offered to pick us up outside the bar and spare us the uncomfortable walk over to the steakhouse. As we exited the bar laughing and yucking in up, my friends wife waited for us double-parked in the street. The parking spaces along the curb were full…so you had to make your way between the parked cars to get to our waiting ride. I barely noticed but there was a homeless guy passed out on the street in the gap immediately in front of us (the shortest route to the waiting car) so I just nonchalantly stepped over him and made my way to the warmth of the idling car.

My more civilized colleagues actually walked around and we were all still laughing as we quickly piled into the cozy Lincoln. Once we were all seated, my friend’s wife asked if that was a man I’d stepped over on the sidewalk by the gutter.

“Yes”…I replied… “I guess so.”

“How could you just walk over that guy like he wasn’t even there?” she protested…  “it’s 10 degrees outside.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked… “he was blocking my way.”

“Just take us to the restaurant and don’t worry about it” my friend chimed in… “let’s go.”

“No!” she exclaimed… “I’m not moving this vehicle until one of you has the decency to see if he’s OK. He could be dead…it’s frigid.”

We contemplated just jumping out and braving the elements by walking over to the swanky restaurant, but one of the guys jumped out and walked over to the man lying on the pavement. The rest of us watched out the window as my friend helped the man to his feet, appeared to give him something…and then almost astonishingly, began laughing and chatting with him before finally giving him a hug.

It was no inauthentic obligatory partial clasp either…it was a genuine hug. BTW…there are plenty (maybe more) downsides, but if you ever really wonder the benefits of something like red wine…this was one of those moments it should be perfectly clear. My friend is as good a man as anyone I know, but I’m not sure he would have done that had he just spent the last two and a half hours drinking four glasses of whole milk.

As my friend climbed back into the car, the rest of us just kind of sat there in disbelief and momentary silence.

“Is he OK?” asked our almost annoyingly concerned driver.

“Yeah…he was just sleeping…I think he’ll be fine” responded my friend.

“What did you do exactly?” I asked… “how’d you make him laugh and why in the world did you hug him?”

“I just helped him up…asked if he’d be OK…and if he needed anything. He said he could use a drink…so I gave him $20.00 and told him to get two. That’s when he started to laugh. I decided to give him $10.00 more and told him to get something to eat too. He said it was a great gift and wished me a Merry Christmas…so I just hugged him.”

You know…I think I’ll just stop this story right here.

When I was younger and living in Los Angeles, I would stop every Sunday morning at a Winchell’s donut shop on the corner of Pico and Sepulveda (Across from Anwalt Lumber and the Oshman’s Sporting Goods) while on my way to church in Santa Monica. I was working as a union electrical apprentice at the time and always felt flush…so I’d take a few extra bucks to buy a few nice cinnamon rolls that I’d randomly hand out to homeless folks I’d see on the street in Santa Monica.  

So far this season, and for about the next week or so, I'll continue to make the holiday party circuit moving from event to event, all complete with clinking cocktail glasses and platters of hot appetizers. At a couple of these affairs, they'll be ice sculptures worth more than my entire wardrobe.  Somehow such experiences and my life in this city have hardened me to those less fortunate…and since that night described above, I’ve coldly walked by hundreds of homeless people…including quite a few folks just the other night while returning from a wonderful dinner in uptown Manhattan. Now that I’m older and look back over the last few years, I wish I’d helped more people on cold nights in December. But maybe I’ll get another chance over the next few weeks...and who knows...if I have enough wine…I might even give somebody a hug.

Happy Holidays…

 

Busy feet hustle by him...

...are you ready for some gravy?

Maybe it’s a morning game of touch football with family and friends, half-watching a festive Manhattan parade, the aroma of a roasting turkey or the prospect of watching America’s most evil team get annihilated in hell (Texas) while a national audience rejoices,  but there’s just something about Thanksgiving that most Americans seem to genuinely enjoy. People seem to like the simplicity of it. You don’t have to mess with any presents, decorations are usually pretty limited, and for the most part if you don’t have to cook and clean, all you really need to do is show up, eat, drink, eat some more, and then recline on the sofa in digestive agony while you watch some football and doze a bit.

There’s just kind of a basicness to it as well. It’s just turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, yams, gravy cranberries, gravy and pumpkin pie. You can add a whole bunch of other crap too, but most people are really going all in on the staples. As a matter-of-fact, if nobody was looking I could gladly get by with just the turkey, the stuffing, the gravy, the mashed potatoes, the gravy and the pie…and the gravy. Throw in a couple of bottles of red wine (or more if it’s more than just you) and some friends and family and you have a pretty good holiday.

Attempts to overcomplicate Thanksgiving don’t work either. I remember sitting around a conference table in the nation’s capital the Monday after Thanksgiving a couple of years ago where we began the meeting by going around the table of about a dozen folks with each participant offering their best holiday recipe. Most of the best ones sounded pretty good to me…but I distinctly remember somebody proudly offering a high-browed “bourbon infused stuffing.” Listen, there’s plenty of people in the red states infusing their livers with whiskey, but you don’t need to put it in your stuffing. All you really need is some Mrs. Cubbinson’s dressing, the recipe on the back of the box, and double the amount of real butter that they recommend. If you make a broth by boiling the neck (of the turkey…not your mother-in-law) and such and mix it into the stuffing it’s even better…but if you find yourself chopping too much celery or fussing with pine nuts…you’re going overboard. Maybe one of the other fun things about Thanksgiving is arguing about recipes too.

The cool thing is that it’s all just kind of straight-forward. Friends, family, food and a time to be thankful before the insanity and hustle and bustle of the rest of the holiday season blaze by at an unforgiving pace. You eat some turkey, blink, and the next thing you know you’re de-decking the halls and getting ready to freeze your butt of for a few months as you look forward to Memorial Day. If you don't think so...think about how many days have passed since Halloween.

So…take some time this weekend and in the days that follow to really enjoy the shortened work week. If you can, try to take a minute or two to think about the things that matter most…and the things you’re most thankful for too. If you’re struggling to find things to be thankful about and you’re sleeping indoors on anything other than a cardboard box…start there. Then on Thursday, huddle with some friends, or family or even just your dog and then kick back in the Lazy Boy and set up two IVs. Fill one bag with Pinot Noir, and the other with gravy. The Cowboys game starts at 4:30pm EST.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

Not cease from distressing...

...and it's a good week to thank a Veteran

“Hey Slug” my dad would say as he faked a punch to the gut of my Uncle Ted… “How the hell are you?”

My dad always seemed to greet my Uncle Ted the same way when my aunt Helen (my dad’s younger Sister) and my uncle would come over to the house. Then he’d usually follow it up with the same question… “What are you having…the usual?” That was always a double bourbon and water on the rocks in a tall glass…and in all the time I was growing up and they’d come over to our home in West Los Angeles (or host us over at their home in Long Beach), I never recall any of them having more than two drinks. For that matter, I don’t really ever recall my dad having more than one.

My aunt and uncle were always impeccably dressed. They both passed away a couple of years apart about 10 or 15 years or so ago, but in all the time I knew them I never saw them wearing anything that didn’t look like they’d just stepped out of a Bloomingdales catalog. My fiery red-headed aunt always had on a high-end dress and usually some kind of mink (especially in the winter months…where the wind chill in southern California can dip into the 60s with a stiff Pacific breeze) and my uncle Ted always wore pressed slacks and a nice sports coat. He’d usually have on a tie too…but I remember he gave that up on most visits sometime in the mid-seventies…times were a changing for sure.

After my dad would mix the drinks they’d usually move out by the pool on the back patio. Though it’s at least 25 years since I saw them there, I can vividly picture my dad and uncle sitting on the patio, knocking back some bourbon and seeing the glow of their cigarettes as they each took drags on their respective Lucky Strikes. I never knew my father to smoke…but he’d always bum a cigarette or two to share with my uncle Ted…and he always looked like he’d stepped off the silver screen when he did it too…so it was pretty obvious he’d had some practice when I wasn’t around. Frank and Dean probably had something on these guys, but it wasn’t much. They were pretty cool.

At some point early on, my uncle Ted would invariably and modestly mention that he’d just got a new car, and without fail, my dad would leap up from the lounge chair and enthusiastically walk down the side driveway to check out the new rig. We’d buy a car about every 8 years in my family…and we always only ever had one. My uncle however, who was a devoted Ford man, would trade them out every year or so…sometimes more often than that…so it was always exciting to see his latest purchase.

He always drove these huge sedans…but then again, seems like everybody did. He was particularly fond of LTDs…and I remember he’d purchased a couple that had this kind of dark avocado paint job with a dark vinyl roof. My father, who only had a high school education, was an absolute a Dale Carnegie master of making my uncle feel like a big shot. He’d walk around the car a couple of times, demand my uncle pop the hood, stand and marvel at the engine a bit before checking out the interior and commenting on how beautiful it was. Just as a side note, my uncle used to wipe down the engine and carburetor top of his vehicle several times of week. When he would pop the hood, the actual engine looked every bit as good as it did on the showroom floor. That was under the hood mind you…I’ll let you imagine how the rest of the car looked.

Both my dad and uncle served in the U.S. Navy, and that’s where they had met when my uncle started courting my dad’s sister. As noted here before, my father served on a couple of big ships including the Battleship Mississippi and the carrier Ticonderoga (the one that was later used to pick up the Apollo astronauts). My uncle was in Pearl Harbor on December 7^th, 1941…and though I’d have to pry them out of them both…they had their share of stories. My uncle could provide a blow-by-blow eyewitness description of  that Sunday morning in Hawaii…and I’d give a lot right now just to hear him recount that day just one more time. Those guys both endured so much…and it never dawned on me for a second at that young age that they wouldn’t be here forever.

What’s the point of all this? Well, if you’d been following this blog for any length of time you know there isn’t one. Just following the number one rule on this site, and writing down the first thing that comes to my mind on a Friday morning at 4am. So happens that this Veterans’ Day week, I was thinking about these two guys and the legions of other men and women that have served sacrificed so that I could worry about my big problems like whether the gardener shows up on Monday to pick up these damn leaves or about getting the hood ornament replaced that was stolen on my luxury sedan.  

Anchors Aweigh.

 

I'm coming home...late tonight...

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