Sentiment over schools must come with age, like 50 years of separation, because I don’t remember even looking back until recent years and my alma mater is still open.  It a different name and a different political configuration, but it’s open…and a lot smaller than I remembered.  

 

The old school in Arco, Minnesota, with its unique separate doors for girls and boys is an example. 

A couple of years ago the brick façade was still putting on a good face, but then the roof gave way and that led to the collapse of the second floor and the brick face is now a only a skeleton, a skull. 

 

As for those separate doors, even my fourth grade teacher, Jo Kratzke and her sister, who went to school in Arco can’t remember the boys and girls entrances being taken seriously.

 

The old high school on the hill in Lake Benton disappeared overnight, to the wrecking ball, just weeks after the last senior class passed through the door.  What’s left will be an elementary district.  

Lake Benton, Minnesota’s, high school on the hill bows to time, demographic tides and the wrecking ball.

 

Even that era passed last spring in Astoria, South Dakota, just over the Minnesota line.  There’s talk of a daycare center to fill some of the vacancy.  Some old school buildings along the Missouri River live on as condos for fishermen. 

 

Then there’s one I just stumbled across. Gary, South Dakota, right on the Minnesota border…literally…is pondering the fate of the old South Dakota School for the Blind.  The 37 acre campus closed in 1959 when the program moved to Aberdeen.  

On the edge of town, on the edge of the state, the old South Dakota School for the Blind in Gary.

 

The city of Gary owned and sold it and now wants it back, possibly to revive as a community center.  It does have that history.  The original building was the Deuel County Courthouse before more centrally located Clear Lake won the tug of war for the county seat.  Former students at the school have offered to work on grants to restore it to some use, but each year time dims that vision. 

 

But not all small schools are caving in.
 

Click the play button and pause the video for a minute to so to see what’s going on at the old WPA project school in Hanley Falls, Minnesota, on Highway 23 between Marshall and Granite Falls. 

The museum hosts a threshing bee every August, and celebrates its closing…only for the season…with a one day festival.  This year’s theme is the ABCs of Back to School on Saturday, September 20^th.   Log onto mnmachinerymuseum.com for more info, but don’t bother looking for the falls in Hanley Falls.  There aren’t any, there have never been any and there's no place for any.  In 1886, the railroad town of Hanley (still a major rail grain terminal today) added the word “Falls” because mail destined for Hawley, Minnesota, was winding up in Hanley and the other way around.  An educational tidbit I picked up in the old school.

I talked with two of my granddaughters in Lincoln, Nebraska on Sunday to wish them well on their first day of school this week.

6 year old Zoey is starting the first grade while 18 year old Allison is one of the fresh new freshmen at the University of Nebraska. 
She arrived on campus over the weekend. Mom and dad were there too helping her settle in and saying their good-byes sort of stunned at the realization that their baby girl wouldn’t be going home with them.

Even though Zoey already has a couple years of pre-school and kindergarten under her belt, you can bet her parents..mom especially..will be shedding huge crocodile tears Wednesday morning when their only child..wearing her Hello Kitty backpack..gives them each a hug and..with the school bell ringing in the background..happily skips off to begin a new exciting chapter in her young life.

I have rather foggy memories of my first day of school at Volga in 1952.  
There’s a home movie showing  me on my bike peddling off to the school house three blocks away but I sure don’t recall mom being terribly sentimental over my historic departure. 
That’s probably because she had to run back into the house and start cooking up something for my brother and me to eat when we peddled back home for lunch a couple hours later.

The more I think about it, though, there are some things about that day that keep rising to the surface of my memory. The strong smell of floor wax as I walked into the building. The smiling face of the guy who waxed those floors, custodian, Clayt DenOtter who..for the 12 years I knew him through school.. always seemed to be holding a large dust mop in his hands. 
The squeak of the wooden stairs as me and a group of kids I’d never seen before walked up to the second floor and were pointed toward the 1^st and 2^nd grade classroom in the northeast corner. 
I remember entering the brightly lit room filled with little desks and hoping to find at least one familiar face sitting in them. 
And there he was, my friend Dixon Hoberg who lived just up the street from our house. He gave me a nervous little wave. 
A row over sat Lynnal Annundson..another neighbor.. who had a big smile on her face appearing anxious for the adventure to begin. 
I also spotted my cousin, Diane DenOtter who looked particularly terrified.

I suppose we were all a little scared to be bunched together with so many strangers.  
At the tender age of six the only other kids I had known to that point were either relatives or classmates from First Lutheran Church Sunday school.

And then…there she was..the most stunning sight of all; our teacher, Miss Lee,  standing in front of her desk at the head of the classroom. 
She was like no woman I’d ever seen: tall, slender, statuesque, dark haired wearing a silky blouse, pleated black skirt and bright red lipstick. Nothing at all like mom or any of my cheerful heavy-set aunts whose wardrobe consisted mostly of  gingham dresses.

      I was in second grade when this photo was taken.  I'm square in the middle of row two; the only kid who wore a sport jacket for picture day. Dixon is in row one..second from the right. Lynnal is on the far right of row three, cousin Diane is in the center of that row and at the left stands my very first teacher, Miss Lee.

Miss Lee broke the ice by having each us stand up, say our name and tell a little about ourselves to the rest of the class. 
She carefully went over the things we’d be learning in the year ahead and at recess time she even taught us some new games to play. 
By the end of that first day no one felt like a stranger anymore or quite as fearful about day two.

I imagine that Miss Lee (I never did know her first name) is long gone. I wish now that I’d had the chance to tell her thanks for helping ease us all across that threshold from awkward kid to promising young student.

I hope Zoey and her fellow first graders are so lucky.

 

Is there more to see, or am I just taking note of what’s been there all the time?

Is it because everything on the radio and in my CD and book collection is suddenly boring, or is everything else just more interesting?

 

I found myself asking myself that in the silence of the diesel pickup, silent inside anyway, as I made an emergency golf car run to the hospital in Park Rapids, someplace around that vague, invisible barrier that separates southern and northern Minnesota, the two states like eastern and western South Dakota.  The difference in that in South Dakota “The River” gives us a geographic benchmark where in Minnesota it’s a judgment call that changes with each trip north. 

 
  

Above: the Community Memorial in Belgrade, the spire of the Catholic Church in Browerville and the work of aliens along Highway 71 near Sebeka, Minnesota.

 

It really starts north of Willmar where one can’t help but notice the memorial to something or other on the edge of tiny Belgrade, pronounced “grade” not “grad” like in Yugoslavia.  I don’t know what this memorial marks, but it’s the biggest one I’ve seen.  Where did Bel-“grad” wind up, anyway, when that whole Iron Curtain thing fell apart.

 

Farther up Highway 71, near Long Prairie, I pass two Amish guys clip-clopping along the shoulder piloting a horse drawn caisson with a canoe.  I almost miss the eastern European onion spire atop the Catholic Church in Browerville, not like our Lutheran Catholic Churches down here.  Well, I did almost miss it as I pondered the canoe with a two-horse trolling motor…and the young lady in a tube top riding a bike about half a mile behind the Amish boys.  Quite a contrast in lifestyles. 

 

I think I have found the fringe of Northern Minnesota in Wadena where the town sign in city where lumber grows on trees is made of steel and not unlike what’s left of the marquee on the once thriving, now over-grown drive-in theater across the road.  What represents family values more than a drive-in?  Who knows how many families were started in those darkened rows during a dusk to dawn festival. 

 

Wadena’s Art Deco town sign.  Most are wood or stone.  And power company Bonsai.

 

Maybe trees are taken for granted here on the edge of the woods.  I notice the power company just slashes a vertical Mohawk in them to clear a path for power lines.  It’s like butchering your prize hog one leg at a time because you hate to slaughter a good pig like that all at once.
   

I doubt if there’s as much wind in Wadena as there is in KELOLAND, but that isn’t stopping this guy from selling decorative windmills, not the little garden variety ones you see at craft shows, but big ones.

Just outside Sebeka, I spot this driveway.  Take a close look at the “flowers” along the drive.

Why do I gather that, for some reason, bowling plays a major role in this couple’s lives…or maybe they’ve seen the movie Kingpin once too often. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's lunchtime when I pull into the Castlewood, South Dakota, golf club with a load of carts.  But it appears to be ladies' day so I head for Main Street where I spot a pickup and trailer...like mine...parked in the middle of the street.  I ask a guy on the sidewalk if it's legal to park that way or if it's just that nobody cares.  He snickers and admits it's the latter, so I line up behind him and head for IDA's CAFE.  

You get the feeling that something different is going on here as soon as you walk into IDA’s CAFE. 
You can’t miss the old creamery Christmas giveaway crocks and rusted, shot at and otherwise time-worn metal signs advertizing Langenfeld’s Ice Cream. 

You’re thinking: “Where have I seen that before?”  

In practically every Terry Redlin painting that depicts a wall to on which to depict the sign.  Redlin’s wife’s family were the founders of the Langenfeld Dairy which is long gone as an entitity, but lives on as a logo.  It’s probably the most popular obsolete ice cream brand in the world.  So what’s the connection in this real life moment in time, this small town café whose sign boasts: “Where friends meet?”

Cindy Pommes is the current owner of the café.  It was her grandfather who started Lagenfeld’s.  It was her maiden name.  Her parents, Ida and Judd, opened in the 1930s, and Ida hung on until 1998.  You can do the math on that one, sixty years.  Cindy reopened it in 2004, three years after a fire. 
 

There are no secrets in Cindy’s kitchen.  It’s wide open, at the end of the old bar

that serves as a counter.

 

As for Langenfeld’s Ice Cream, it’s not quite obsolete.  Cindy still has the recipes.  She made a batch for one of those small town celebrations in Castlewood.  People bought it down to the last lick, nostalgia in a cone.  She does recognize other brands.  One old sign depicts another long-departed summer repast, Fenn’s from Sioux Falls.  I could almost hear the late KELO anchor Leo Hartig intoning: “The news tonight is brought to you by Fenn’s…that gooood ice cream.” 

And, man, could I go for one of those Fenn’s Walnut Crush candy bars…dark chocolate over a marshmallow and walnut filling.  Yeah, that was livin’.

 

Yes, occasionally, time does spin backwards. 

 

 

 

 

When John Mogen called me about playing drums and singing in his band, Mogen’s Heroes, back in 1988, I hesitated…unsure of being up to the task.

I’d have to fill the shoes of Scott Klaverkamp who’d been Mogen’s Heroes’ first and only drummer and who could sing all the high notes.

I’d heard the group play many times and loved the sound..especially the  tight vocal harmonies produced by Scott, John and guitarist, Tom Steever. A sound that comes with years of working together and featured on nearly every song they played.

“I don’t know, John, I’ve smoked a lot of Marlboros over the years trying to develop  a low broadcaster’s voice. I can’t even “think” as high as Scott sings..much less hit the notes,” I said.

“Ah, you’ll do just fine. We’ll have you sing melody on the tunes that are too far out of reach or you’re not comfortable with..no big deal,” John said.

John Mogen is the most easy going optimistic person I’ve ever met but it turns out he was right about my fitting in. I was one of his heroes for the next 13 years.

"Mogen's Heroes" early 90's I think. That's radio personality and farm broadcaster Tom Steever 
on guitar..me on drums and band founder, John Mogen who plays keyboard with his right hand and 
bass with his left.

In the beginning, John’s calendar was full nearly every weekend. We’d load up the equipment and ourselves into his 1976 Chevy van and head off to Parkston, Mitchell, Brookings or any one of a thousand places to play for a birthday party, anniversary or wedding dance.

Gradually, though, more couples opted for DJ’s rather than a live band to provide music for their wedding dances and we began to have nothing to do on Saturday nights.

When Tom Steever left the Heroes I figured well, that’ll be the end of it for sure but then John found Denny Gale..a terrific guitar player and singer.. to fill the void.

After my departure in 2001, Bill Hoffman came aboard. Not only is Bill an excellent drummer but his voice is amazing. He can sing bass when necessary or do a spot-on impersonation of Frankie Valli on songs like Sherry and Rag Doll..hitting notes high enough to shatter glass.

Although not as busy as the old days, today’s Mogen’s Heroes band sounds better than ever and continues to be in demand entertaining  at concerts, fairs and other events throughout the region. 
  
Hawaiin shirts have replaced tuxes as Mogen's Heroes continues to go strong after 30 years.
Performing at the Day County fair are Denny Gale on guitar, Bill Hoffman on electronic drums and John Mogen still playing the same DX7 Yamaha keyboard.

As part of the band’s 30^th anniversary, John invited me to sing with the Heroes for a few of their shows this summer including McKennan Park 100^th anniversary concert, the Brookings Art Festival, Day County Fair, Turner County Fair and the Brown County fair in Aberdeen next Sunday.  

It has been great fun but I’ll be just fine when it’s time to step away from the microphone again.

John Mogen retired from the Sioux Falls school system this past spring after a long career teaching music. He’s now decided to try his hand at politics entering the race for a seat in the state legislature.

So if he wins will that finally be the end of Mogen’s Heroes after 30 years?

Not on your life.

He just won’t book any gigs during the month of January..unless they’re close to Pierre.

 

I’ve often joked that when you cross the Missouri River, even in modern times, you set your watch back 100 years.  But this week it’s true.

 

For this yarn you have to go back to when Fort Pierre was a port on the Missouri River, before flood control and walleyes were important, but when gold was.  Fort Pierre was the jumping off point for gold diggers and their suppliers when gold was found in the Black Hills in 1874 two hundred miles west of this wet, western gateway.  

Verendrye Museum Picture.  My friend Tryg, the Norwegian bachelor farmer of bib overall (pronounced over-haul) fame tells me that oxen were basically well-muscled steers.

 

The easiest route, if there was one, was a well-worn trail laid bare by buffalo herds, Indians and fur traders, and return trips by the disappointed, disillusioned, disgusted.   The shuttle went on into the 1908 when all the gold that was there to be found had been found. 

In what looks like a painting but is really a photo of a photo, Alden Olsen of Hendricks, Minnesota, fords the Cheyenne River with his chuck wagon.

 

Never a people to pass up a 100^th anniversary, a troupe of wagons and riders from South Dakota and elsehwere is reenacting the trek.  With the assist of modern conveniences like Tupperware for the chuckwagon, global positioning and a host of activities to greet them in towns that weren’t even there a century ago and hang by a thread now, they’re closing in on the western terminus, arriving in Deadwood on Friday. 

It has not been an easy trip.  One man died.  Another had to be airlifted to a hospital after a stage coach team spooked while crossing the Cheyenne, and at least two horses have gone down in the heat.  
 

Chuckwagon driver Alden Olsen and wife Jan.  She quit the trail after one day, but he’s going the distance to Deadwood.  Alden runs the lumberyard in Hendrick when he’s not living in the past. 

 

Ironically, it was the Iron Horse, the railroads, that put the wagonmasters out of business a hundred years ago, many of the railroads themselves now out of business because of wagon trains powered by caterpillar engines instead of teams of as many as 20 oxen, 18 wheeled wagons that follow boring interstate highways instead of old buffalo trails, speeding right past our past in a frantic search for the future.  

 

 

 

 

 

What do bears do in the woods?  That may not be the exact way you’ve heard that question phrased, but I do have the definitive answer.  My Northwoods friend Ken Kerr has 110 acres of woods near Grand Rapids, Minnesota.  He’s built a little barn/shed where he sometimes overnights and spends his days building dams and bridges among the trees…along with checking the several automatic cameras he keeps hidden among the trees, particularly near his mineral block. 

 

To the critters, that block is like the funnel cake stand at the fair and they do a night and day business.  Bears and deer are regular visitors.  

Ken recently set the cameras to take video and caught the rapid fire antics of a pair of black bear cubs.  Click play and watch the fun.  If you miss it the first time, he’s looped it in slow motion for you.  The “blackout” in the middle is the mother bear, the sow, inconsiderately walking in front of the camera. 

 

Years ago our Aberdeen bureau reporter for Keloland was reprimanded for what might be considered to be multi-tasking to the extreme. 
A viewer spotted him in the news vehicle on his way to cover a story.
Not only was our guy speeding but he was also smoking a cigarette, drinking a cup of coffee and had the newspaper spread out in front of him across the steering wheel. 
He did get called on the carpet for it but was darn lucky not to get killed.

Well, this morning I spotted a guy doing something just about as stupid; he was riding his motor scooter along busy 41^st street and blabbing away on a cell phone.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  If he makes it to the end of the day unscathed I’ll be surprised.

I try to avoid 41^st street whenever possible because the crazies and the traffic cause my already high blood pressure to soar past boiling.
I had no choice this morning, though.  I had to pay a visit to Karl’s TV to buy yet another replacement lamp for my Toshiba hi-definition DLP television set.  This is the third time it’s burned out in the four years since I bought the blasted thing. Nobody mentioned in the sales pitch that these high voltage lights were only good for about a year and that replacements cost over 200 dollars a pop. 
That little fact coupled with the frustrations in dealing with the craziness of 41^st St. drivers made for a rather sour morning.
I couldn’t go without my TV this weekend, though.  It’s the last major golf tournament of the season, the Twins are in hi-def and so is the NASCAR race from Watkins Glen.

One thing I probably will “not” be watching is coverage of the Olympic Games from Red China.
NBC is trying to hype-up interest by manufacturing some story lines to follow but I just can’t get all that excited about the Olympics even though they are in Communist China for the first time in history.

Boy, just the mention of that country brings up memories of fear and uncertainty.
When I was a kid in the 50’s and 60’s, China was the frightning dark mysterious country that contained one fifth of the world’s population, had the “A” bomb and chosen to shut itself off from the rest of the world presumably to make plans for conquering it someday.
During the Korean War, I remember seeing comic books depicting evil Chinese commie soldiers in their pajamas and flop-eared hats with the red star on the front, sweeping down the mountains in huge numbers aimed at slitting the throats of American GI’s. 

China remained a deep dark secret for the next twenty years until, ironically, relations began to thaw because of a “game.”   
Table tennis is the national sport of China and in 1971, the ping pong team from the United States was invited there for a tournament. Reporters were also allowed in and what became known as “Ping Pong Diplomacy” led to President Nixon’s historic trip to China a year later and bingo..today we’re the best of pals.
Heck, if it wasn’t for the once evil and foreboding Chinese, Wal-mart and the other big box stores in America wouldn’t have anything to sell. 
China in the 21^st century is communist in name only. 
Thanks to the insatiable American market, it now makes and provides us with everything from cheap furniture to under pants; tennis shoes to swimming trunks.  Chinese have become so industrialized that it’s billions of people can now afford to drive cars instead of having to peddle around on bikes. They’re using up all the oil which is driving up the price of gas around the world. They’re putrefying the atmosphere with clouds of yellowish smog hanging over Beijing. 

It’s been nearly 20 years since that guy stood in front of a People’s Republic of China military tank willing to be run over rather than continue living under communist rule.

If the object of that unsuccessful revolt was to have China become more like America, there’s every indication that it has been “mission accomplished.” And it happened without  a shot being fired or some dreamy idealist having his bones crushed into the pavement of Tianaman Square.

Oh, by the way…guess where that lamp I had to buy for my TV was made.

I’m refreshed.  I’ve had my mostly monthly, caffeine driven meeting of the Society of Jesuits and Journalists…that would be my friends Dave Kranz and Jimmy The Priest and me.  Appropriately, we usually hold it at Minerva’s, the restaurant that shares its name with the Roman goddess of practically everything; notably wisdom, war, poetry, medicine, commerce, crafts and the invention of music, from the Lute to the Victrola to the IPod.   In Greece, she was Athena, but we don’t have a restaurant named Athena’s, so…

 

When acquaintances like the mayor or Jim Woster (You remember him from KELO.  He’s looking really old) drop over to wonder what a priest is doing with the likes of Kranz and me, we just point out that we’re the reason he has a job. 

 

These meetings are unrecorded because most of what we talk about is hearsay, heresy, speculation, and outright slander; something like the Algonquin Round Table with the likes of Dorothy Parker. 

 

One of the things on our agenda this time was Princess Stephanie’s new reelection signs with Stephanie in large print and Herseth-Sandlin in squinty print.  She is running for reelection to congress with possible aspirations of running for governor in a couple of years.  I opined that Princess Stephanie from the tiny, obscure principality of Herseth in the far Northeast, since she is expecting, might run on a Madonna and Child ticket, since the pundits (us) think she can have any office she wants, short of sainthood.  After some lively discussion, Jimmy The Priest moved that we table that one.  I also wondered if Prince Sandlin of the larger principality of Texas would walk a couple of steps behind her, like Queen Elizabeth and…and…what’s his name, the one who came from Greece, Athena’s home, when it was a monarchy thinking he would be King of England.  I don't know.  The dutchy of Herseth has had better political longevity with queens than kings. 

 

We no sooner get through this and several other items on the napkin agenda when Woster pops back over, telling us that his lawyer/friend’s credit card has been rejected and wondering if one of us has a twenty.  We all plead vows of poverty.   Had I known that Minerva was the goddess of commerce I’d have told him to put the arm on her, maybe telling her a couple of long jokes to soften her up, like he does when he makes a speech. 

 

Kranz is the head of the Jesuits and Journalists Society, which means he decides when we meet since he’s the only one of us that has a real job.  None of it amounts to anything, hardly worth the interest on the payday loan for the parking meters, but we all leave feeling we have said something profound.  We did decide it’s my turn to pick up the check next time.  That’s pretty profound.  As Doug Lund says, the only difference between me and a canoe is that a canoe will occasionally tip.  We sometimes invite guest participants if they agree not to sue and not to tell what they hear to anybody who might sue…and if they’ll pick up the tab.  It’s a little scam we learned from politicians.  

Serious sidenote here:  I've seen a couple of Senator Tim Johnson's ads.  Does it seem like, in his disclaimer or proclaimer or whatever you call it in which he endorses the message, that his speech seems to have regressed rather than advanced?  Maybe it was just a bad day.  

Oh, has anybody noticed that today is 08/08/08.  I'm sure somebody has statistics on how often that happens, only once per day, per century I suppose.  I know.  That's about as exciting as watching your odometer hit all zeroes again...but the modern ones just roll right on by, don't they? 

 

 

 

 

While all of us can sympathize with Senator Tim Johnson’s plight I have mixed feelings about his decision not to debate his opponent.  Mixed because in recent times, debates haven’t amounted to much more than the reiteration of all the soundbites the candidates say they regret having to campaign with.  I know.  I was often the guy trying to move things beyond that. 

 

On the other hand, these debates…often too many of them…are really the only time voters can actually compare the candidates’ stands on the issues and get a fix on their charisma at all, and charisma is certainly a part of politics. 

 

Bill Janklow had a rough form of it that convinced people his way was the only way.  Tom Daschle’s charisma manifested itself as everybody’s paperboy regretting that he has to collect for the papers he’s been delivering. 

Larry Pressler must have had some kind of elusive charisma, maybe everybody’s booksmart grandson.  It worked for 22 years, virtually unchallenged. 

 

Tim Johnson was never much on charisma, just a pretty good roads and bridges congressman in the senate who is more like a traditional, moderate Republican than most of the current batch of right wingers who are more concerned with how we live our individual lives than how they run the country.  South Dakotans don’t demand much of their leaders. 

 

Johnson’s convenient, but logical decision, not to get into the ring with Republican challenger Joel Dystra really screws the voters out of the only opportunity they had to judge the candidates besides the now-traditional multi-million dollar barrage of commercials.  Sure, there will be meetings with editorial boards, many of whom have already made up their minds anyway.  But it’s not the same thing as seeing or hearing the candidates at least pretend to duke it out live on television or radio.  Each of these interviews reaches only a small slice of the voters leaving the candidates with the ability to say one thing in one place and the complete opposite someplace else.  You already see it in the presidential campaign on both sides. 

 

I don’t know what the answer is but there has to be a better answer than: “No debates.”  Maybe separate, but equal interviews would work.  I’ve never put much stock in capitol debates, but a candidate certainly has to communicate with the homefolks on their terms once in a while. 

 

The question each voter will have to decide here, suddenly, is not whether Johnson is competent but whether he is somehow taking advantage of his own bad situation. 

Judging by his voice over about “supporting this message” on his latest commercials, his speech isn’t making much progress and it may even have gone backwards a tad.  It’s not a taste that he is wise to leave in the voters’ mouth.  If his opponants are too kind, or too chicken to say it, I will.  This is the U.S Senate we're talking about; two per state, one hundred princes of government in the whole country among 300 million of us.  This is the big leagues.  

I'm not looking for the job.  Anybody else is welcome to it, but maybe we need a statewide forum like First Monday where the candidates' backers can duke it out.  Do you realize we haven't done that program since John beat Thune, or was it when Thune beat Daschle?  Seems like yesterday, doesn't it?

 

Well, folks, buckle your seatbelts for serious and brace yourself for that airbag to explode.  The traffic roundabout, the traffic circle, is apparently a done deal even in our part of the world which is considered not only flat, but square, in every other sense. 

 

They’re giving lessons in roundabout driving in Sioux Falls where I find out that our first roundabout is about to open.  The article doesn’t tell me where.  I guess they want to surprise us and quite a surprise it will be to the average driver, not to mention the average drunk. 

 

Minnesota fell in love with the damned things a couple of years ago, putting a couple of them in places where they were destined to succeed, like the obscure rural intersection in Grand Rapids, shown below, and later in the Twin Cities burbs.   The reason they’re safer is that drivers no longer have yellow lights to run, according to one expert in one recent article.  They’re also safer if you put them where there is no traffic to begin with.  Keep in mind, this is the state that can’t keep its bridges up. 

 

Below are two pictures: one right after the Grand Rapids traffic circus opened (not to be confused with the Shrine Circus) and the other, taken about a week ago after the powers that be apparently lost interest in this wart in the road and are letting it revert to forest.

The Grand Rapids roundabout at its inception at an intersection

where a couple of even yield signs were less than justified. 

 

of safety you can no longer see what’s on the other side of the

intersection…like oncoming drunk drivers. 

 

I can understand this quirky traffic control in Europe where they discovered that the world was round after they started building their roads, but here?   We discovered that you can keep a grid mostly at right angles with that little gimmick, the county correction line.  The problem came up when they noticed that the longer their roads got, the more they kept running across each other.  Quite a mess for the Roman armies, I imagine.  Columbus later sorted it out by going in the wrong direction to start with.  That should have been a clue.  Besides, many of the European roundabouts and even the ones in the eastern United States are hubs for more than four streets, true traffic circles, at least the ones I have driven.  They’re a byproduct of European urban planning inflicted on our forefathers. 

 

If we insist on plugging round holes into square intersections, we really only need two of them; one at the North Pole and one at the South Pole where the lines of longitude converge…until global warming makes that mute several thousand years from now. 

We could put them at the equator.  No, that wouldn’t work.  The lines run parallel, like our streets, and we wouldn’t need traffic circles. 

 

I hope they add this bit of piloting to the drunk driver course.  Oh, well, click the play button on the video and we’ll whiz through one of these wonders of engineering, this fait accompli, this overdone deal.  Personally, I would try it first in Grand Rapids…Roundabouts 101…

By the way, the roundabouts in big cities also have multiple lanes so you’d better know where you want to come out when you go in, like Dayton’s used to be with that Oval Room in the middle.  I used to just keep walking around, faster and faster, until centrifugal force spun me to an exit, enriched like Iranian uranium.  Same concept. 

 

Oh, and Piccadilly Circus in London isn’t a circus…well, it’s not supposed to be…it’s a roundabout with a statue of Eros, the love god, in the middle.  I dunno.   And Leicester (pronounced Lister, like Listerine, or Lester) Square isn’t a square; it’s a roundabout. 

 

Hmmm. I wonder what these things cost compared to a couple of stop signs?   Oughtta be a blast when some cop pulls somebody over in the middle of one of these circuses.  They’re pretty indiscriminate about their encounters anyway.  Pull way over to the left.  I wonder how snowplow drivers like them.  They already hate cul de sacs.  Where do they pile the snow?  Do they plow in whole streets instead of driveways?   That’s more efficient.  How do you get semis through them?  Dis is gonna be fun.  Wait a minute.  They're putting it where?  Aw, jeez, that's my neighborhood.  Why not, they're dumping everything else there.

As I sit here at the computer this morning, my still ample-size stomach is growling away like Ol’ Yeller at the end of the movie just before they shot him.

I’m hungry. I’m also angry.

For some reason, the Atkins experiment has become the Atkins discouragement.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up on losing weight but after four months of going without  potatoes, bread, pasta, starchy vegetables, milk, sugar or ice cream, I’m not seeing the kind of results that others who’ve been on this diet love to brag about;  “Yup,” they’ll say. “Dropped 35 pounds in six weeks on Atkins.” “Feel and look great. Bought a whole bunch of new slim-fitting clothes. The wife can’t keep her hands off me.”

Horse Hockey!

My knees still hurt. I’ve only managed to get from  3X to 2X, my golf pals still snicker at the site of me in shorts and Linda is perfectly content maintaining a proper ten-foot pole touching distance.

Things are about to get worse too.

I’ve been dreading it for a long time and now it’s here: SWEET CORN season!

Next to sanctification by grace, fresh-from-the-field sweet corn is God’s greatest gift to mankind. But it’s obviously off-limits to me this year and that’s why my gut is gurgling and that’s why I’m so ticked-off.

Driving past those stands along 10^th street without stopping to buy a dozen golden ears is as difficult for me as a junkie sitting at a table piled high with cocaine and not plopping his head down for a deep sniff.

Usually by this time, Hokeness has a semi trailer parked next to their vegetable stand. It arrives every morning and is stacked with 12 thousand ears of the best sweet corn I’ve ever tasted for only a dollar a dozen..provided you buy some other vegetable from them.
But the truck has been conspicuously absent this year.
Turns out this season’s crop near Adrian was damaged by hail and had to be replanted. Shipments won’t start arriving until the middle of August.

I suppose it shouldn’t make any difference to me anyway since corn is absolutely taboo on Atkins. 
But I’m feeling weak.

Instead of thinking how nice it would  be to jam my carcass into size 40 relax-fit pants again, it’s the vision of biting into a buttery, salty-sweet, perfectly cooked ear of corn with long full rows of creamy kernels, that now fills my head.

Out..out damn thought.

The kitchen smells of sausage and creamed cauliflower. Yum.

 

Nope, I haven’t gone Christmas crazy in July, heat happy in August, just prairie crazy.  It just came over me one day while reading the Minneapolis Strib.  I needed my periodic fix of the North Woods, where you see nothing but trees instead of nothing but grass, with all due respects to that little oasis, Gilley’s Grove over by White.  Maybe that’s what whetted my thirst for trees, just that one little sip.  I’ve always been a tree fiend. 

 

The paper gave me the rationalization.  The Duluth Maritime Festival was kicking off with the arrival of three tall sailing ships, two of them warships.  I had to go, so I dumped the dog with my son, dumped my meager schedule…a haircut and the Trooien yard party…and took off. 

 

I drove to my sister’s place (free lodging) in five acres of Grand Rapids forest on Wednesday.  On Thursday, she and I headed for the port city, leaving her husband in his recliner watching Regis.  

Duluth, across the water from Parks Point.  Unlike much of Lake Superior,
Parks Point has fine sand beaches. 

 

Duluth has a good eye for spectacle, but is pretty shortsighted on implementation.  The best vantage points for the arrival are either along the ship canal (jammed early) or Parks Point which is a long, peninsular island joined to the rest of Duluth by the lift bridge which is up and down all day allowing everything from sailboats to ore ships to grain tankers into the harbor.  It’s a two-lane bridge, so today it’s a bottleneck.  My thought is: “Why not run shuttle buses from rendezvous points that are less congested?”  Hey, it’s the North Woods. Too much thought would destroy the plaid-clad ambience.  
 

I have to hand it to Duluth.  The city has cleaned up the seedy waterfront into a great array of bars and bistros.  They’ve even lured the big franchise restaurants that usually hang around the malls downtown, along with a lot of locals, like “Hell’s Kitchen, above, proclaiming it has “damn good food.”  This is what Downtown Sioux Falls should put more serious effort into.  You can walk the whole district in Duluth.  The shootings and knifings are way up the hill.  

 

The time of the arrival is also vague.  First reports had it between noon and three.  Then it was four to five.  4:30 turns out to be right and, after two trips through the traffic on the lift bridge, we find ourselves in the right place at the right time on Parks Point.  Just in time to catch the cannons and watch the sails go slack for the trip through the canal.  Not quite as spectacular as when we spotted them under full sail out in Lake Superior that morning, especially that 198 foot square rigger. 

Two tall ships await a rendevous with the third for the grand entry. 

 

The weather couldn’t have been more perfect; blue skies, a nice nautical breeze off Lake Superior, and not many people where we were.  I also have a little fun with somebody else’s car alarm when I discover the remote entry for my truck sets off the alarm on a Subaru Outback.  That was fun. 

 

I briefly entertained the thought of coming back to tour the ships the next day, but I’ve been on the Cutty Sark and the Mayflower replica, and it’s the spectacle I’ve come for, not the crowd.  That turns out to be a wise choice.  Watching the news, I see that even people who’ve bought their tickets in February wind up waiting five hours for the three-ship tour, the three ship tour, five hours on a stifling couple of days.  The organizers extend the hours and offer refunds for those who give up.  Again, I raise the issue of that implementation thing.  But I get what I’ve come for. 

 

Click the play button on the video, pause it for a few seconds instead of five hours and enjoy the tall ships in the air conditioned comfort of your eight foot ceiling…

Still ahead from the North Woods, Zimmie’s Restaurant in Hibbing, Dylan fans, an ice cream cone in Ely and Tall Timber Days in Grand Rapids.  The tall ships used to be tall timber. 

My back is really aching after playing golf every day this past week. 
It’s not that I want to play so much, you understand, I’m retired and it’s the law.

On several occasions recently, my friend Denny Graves and I have teed ‘em up. 
We play to about the same handicap and have tested our limited skills at the Westward Ho Country Club, Brandon Golf Course, Spring Creek, Watertown Muni, Six Mile Creek in White and at Rocky Run in Dell Rapids. (more about that in a minute)

On each occasion, the weather has been absolutely perfect for golf; a rarity in these parts, and without fail one of us will comment during  a round about how the lush, green, picturesque pastoral settings of golf courses must be what heaven is like. 
“Maybe without all the swearing,” Denny says. 

The view from 18 toward the clubhouse; heavenly.

It’s true. Despite a concentrated effort to keep emotions in check after a lousy shot or missed putt, bad language..in varying degrees of severity..often, and uncontrollably,  boils up and erupts from our lips.

Oh sure, we are always repentant after each profane outburst; asking that our French be pardoned as if the French had anything to do with it; Je pue au golf et blâme le diable. (I stink at golf and blame the devil.)

Yes, it’s true. I do blame the evil one. 
I’m convinced that Beelzebub himself…the great deceiver..lurks amid the serine settings of golf courses just waiting for the chance to make us forsake all the principles we’ve held dear since Sunday School.

Dell Rapids..deceptively beautiful.

He has his favorite hang outs and seems to be fond of the number twelve.

For example, hole number 12 at Spring Creek where Lucifer causes about  75 percent of the balls to go flying into the creek in front and to the left or into the trees on the right. It’s the same story at number 12 at Willow Run and at 12 in Brandon except its more water on the right instead of trees. 
These holes have caused young ministers fresh out of seminary to lose composure, take the Lord’s name in vane and fling drivers up to a hundred yards or more.

But perhaps nowhere will you hear George Carlin’s 7 words you can’t say on television more often than on hole number 16 at Dell Rapids.
It’s beautiful to behold with a babbling brook meandering through the fairway but it is the gateway to hell. Not only do you have to cross the water three times you must also hit a small green that slopes forward. 

Dell Rapids #16. The devil lives here.

After Denny and I both took triple bogy eights.. spoiling our scores for the day..we laughed sarcastically over those earlier comments we’d made about golf courses being a little slice of heaven on earth. 

Not today &*%$!*^&%!!

Pardon my French.

A heat burst occurs when warm air from 10,000 to 20,000 feet above the surface is forced to the ground.  Typically when air comes down to the surface with thunderstorms, it is much colder than the air at the surface.  However, especially during the late night and morning, very warm air can be forced to the surface if the air reaches the surface without rainfall occurring.  When this happens, the temperature will rise as much as 30 degrees, and the dew point will drop by 20 to 30 degrees. Heat bursts are also accompanied by strong to damaging winds.  However, unlike many cases with damaging thunderstorm winds, little to no rain will fall when the heat burst occurs.  This is because if it were to rain, the air would rapidly cool and moisten due to evaporation.

A graph of the temperatures recorded from our WeatherNet site at the Pavillion is below.  You can clearly see where the temperatures shot up and the dewpoints crashed right around 4 am.

 

Is it just some primal hunter/gatherer instinct that comes out from time to time? 

Is it a love of farm machinery that I’ve had since I sat my first tractor? 

Or was it that old Alan Ladd-Robert Preston movie “Wild Harvest,” a standard Hollywood mellow drama with the forces of good and evil opposing each other as custom combiners in a wheat field?  How old?  I was two when it was made.  

30 thousand acres of wheat await an onslaught of combines west of Fort Pierre.  That’s one farm.

 

Whatever it is, I can’t pass up a good harvest.  There’s a finality to seeing the results of our short growing seasons beat the odds and wind up in a bin where it faces the final challenge; the price.  Was it worth the harvest?

 

But it’s the process I like the best, American wheat or corn gracefully bowing before a synchronized ballet of man and machine.  That ballet has spun a long way from that 1947 Alan Ladd movie that centered on a woman and grand theft, wheat.  The machines are bigger, the farms are bigger and, as I found out recently to the endless wheat fields west of Fort Pierre, women are in the cabs of the combines.