Duluth, MN
11/18/25
Greetings.
Hope this finds you fine and
fit.
We (Myself, age 70yrs and my
lovely wife Kristine age 371/2.) are doing well. We are not hungry or
displaced, are healthy at ages where threats to that
loom ever more probable. We crave no possessions. We
have enough, more than enough, and for that we are, every day, grateful for our
circumstance.
Billy, unlike his father,
tends to work too much. At least that is the author’s opinion.
Mesa and Joe work too much
too. (Where did we go wrong?) They are doing well.
At least the grand kids,
Siena and Des, don’t work at all. I’d like to boast of their copious attributes
but my vocabulary is not sufficient. And my modesty intrudes. They are
delightful. A gift, these offspring. More cause for gratitude. (For their ages
you will have to await a card from them.)
Gracie, our tender little dog
continues to have psychological woes. But she was born in Texas, where unwanted
dogs are a big export, so that is to be expected
As far as things to crow
about, we took a few trips in the past year.
Most recently a tour of New
England with some old friends in a motor coach loaded with others of a certain
age.
We picked off all those
states up there, spent some time in Boston and NYC. It was a great time.
Mostly.
Our coach, it seems, was also
of a certain age. A bit tired and, on the long stretches I became aware that
the seats tilted, slightly, down in front and this geometry, after many miles,
resulted in an imperceptible glacial-like migration of my underwear, and
everything in it, posteriorly towards my shoulder blades. The strict
gentlemanly codes I always adhere to precluded, in mixed company, adjustments
to same. And even at the next stop modesty demanded any necessary, desperate
crass manipulations, which would come most naturally to the less refined, i.e.
spreading one’s legs wide, arching his back and applying liberal traction to
extract everything from its new precinct forward into proper position once
again, be ignored.
But, as always, far be it
from me to ever complain.
Besides I was not alone in
this predicament, for, later on, in hushed, private conversation with other
victims I learned that they had, nobly like myself, suffered in silence similar
anguishes.
Also, early last spring, we
took Amtrak from Chicago to Tucson. We departed Chicago at about 1PM on Sunday.
A lovely day it was. We made
our way south through Illinois and for many miles followed right alongside the
ancient remains of Route 66, Illinois looking fertile and poised.
At dusk we had dinner in St.
Louis as we rolled past the graceful arch which was looking splendid in the
fading sunset.
Went to bed in Missouri and
then woke up in Texas and had breakfast Monday morning there.
Had lunch in Texas.
Dinner in Texas.
Went to bed in San Antonio.
Our train was delayed there awaiting a tardy train from Florida to join ours.
We had breakfast there and then lunch in Texas and dinner in El Paso and went
to bed, again, in Texas.
Years ago, late one night,
while commuting home from work in Mpls, I stumbled onto an exotic AM radio
station as was my wont to do in those days. On that good old nighttime AM radio
“skip” one could listen to all kinds of abnormal stuff.
Anyway, one night some kind
of geography wiz was talking about remarkable geographical wonders and he
mentioned that if you picked up Texas off the map and put it down with its
northern border at Bismark ND its southern tip would fall on Dallas.
Seems a stretch. But, just
now, again, I went upstairs to the bathroom and measured with my fingers, and
it is so. We have a shower curtain which boasts a map of the world. I consult
it often. Incidentally that fellow also said that all of South America lies,
longitudinally, East of Washington DC. It does. I just checked that too.
So, Texas is big. No doubt.
But it is also ugly. There is nothing there. NOTHING.
It’s as if The Earth uses
that place as a depository for all her failed or unwanted landscapes.
I can only recall one single
attribute and that was crossing the Pecos on a high bridge. A striking scene
soon flushed away by the relentless, unsympathetic monotony of grotesque Texas.
One cranes his neck endlessly
seeking some redeeming feature ahead. There is none. And all that approaches
are tragic rusty plants extending into infinity. Towards evening there were
mountains - at least they would be in MN -but they were forlorn in appearance,
dismal, almost sadly apologetic.
It made me want to seek out
the conductor and, upon bended knee, implore him to command the engineer to
step on it.
Naturally I thought of those,
over my years, who, loudly and incessantly, extolled the ripe and ample virtues
of Texas, bold through song and prose, with brash cawings about how singular
and superior Texas, obviously, is to be.
Well, here’s what I think
about those windbags: There’s something wrong with them.
The attendant woke us at 1:30
AM Wednesday. We were in Tucson. It was pouring down rain. Fortunately our
hotel was just across the street from the station. We splashed over and were
met at the door by folks (The hotel has nightclubs and establishments that keep
late hours) staring out the door in wonder. It had not rained there in 5
months.
We enjoyed downtown Tucson.
Shops, restaurants, a free jump on/jump off trolley that made a loop.
We flew back home out of
Phoenix after spending a couple of days there with generous and gracious
friends.
Unlike Texas, the city has
attributes. But similar to Texas it is endless to drive across. We had rented a
Chevy and there was too much traffic to step on it but one has the panicked
impression that he might just be on one of those hamster wheels, only gigantic,
and as the pavement seems to be flowing by below, a quick view to the sides
remains unchanged.
The neighborhoods are not as
frantic however. The traffic is sparse. One encounters many sedate golf carts
and it is assumed, initially, that the occupants are heading to the myriad golf
courses (Because those folks are all resplendent in ubiquitous golf attire:
striped polo shirts, plaid shorts extending nearly to the knees, and dark
stockings pulled up nearly to the same knees.) but, they are not. They are
going to the post office, the bank, the salon, the market. And obviously they
expect you to know their destination because they seem to find using a hand
signal or obeying stop signs etc. superfluous.
And unlike my morning walks
here at home where I can be jolted skywards by the materialization of a stealth
E-bike bolting by at my elbow, or wearied by that ridiculous 4X4 blustering
along, the driver confident in the delusion that dufus decals, noise, and smoke
belching from a tailpipe the size of grapefruit juice can results in
performance. “Slow DOWN!!!” I yell at him. Or, maybe, a blacked-out, lowered,
Charger lurking along with bass so overwrought that my internal organs suggest
to me they might liquify. “Speed UP!!!” I yell at them. A whiff of reefer
follows the Dodge or, is it that unfortunate skunk who was tattooed to the
tarmac a few days ago and now its only physical legacy is that grease
spot? Or, for instance, that woman up ahead sitting on the curb
gesticulating lavishly while in deep and animated conversation with herself as
she draws, with a piece of chalk on the pavement at her feet, childish
renderings of Satan.
No, unlike Duluth, walking in
Pheonix is disturbing. It is unsettling, troubling.
It is silent. There is
nobody. Nobody.
There are no other
pedestrians. There are no bicycles. One might catch a distant flash of a golf
cart scurrying along far in the distance but, otherwise, no
vehicles.
The houses are flawless, trim
and tidy, lined up perfectly in a row, so neat that their trash cans are even
subterranean. No frivolous lighthearted lawn ornaments. No swing-sets. I’ve
been through Phoenix a couple of times, I don’t recall ever seeing a school.
Not even a playground. In Phoenix there are no children.
But, on second thought, maybe
that is by design?
There are no grease spots on
the streets. I don’t think there are skunks even. Could be there is reefer
though.
And there is no deafening
booming bass. Perhaps they have not installed 8 track players in golf carts
yet.
The street grid is mind
numbing. The lanes apparently planted on top of ancient beaches. Sands
deposited by some primeval sea…with each receding high tide leaving a curving
suggestion for a street eons later. There are no intersections. Only T’s. T’s
leading to other T’s.There are no city blocks.
And the cul de sacs have cul
de sacs.
It is dismaying. There is not
a bag of bread crumbs in the entire world that would be generous enough to
leave a trail back to your starting position. I would take videos at every T,
narrating and pointing to the route I had taken. And, in the end, thank
goodness for GPS.
So, by now you may be
thinking that I am quite the snob.
I’m not.
Because just think, for
instance, if those folks in the golf carts would slowly creep by - or that
braggart Texan under the big hat on his pony would clip-clop by - our house in,
say, mid-January?
What would they think?
The perpetual distant growl
of snowblowers. The daily scraping of snow shovels. The scratching sound of
scrapers on windshields. Or that car of the person who is always running a
little bit late careening blindly down the street because they had only time
enough to scrape a portal in the windshield frost that is the size of a kleenex
box.
Or if they would see me
baby-stepping on the fresh dusting of snow deposited on glare ice while hoping
to avoid a prat fall that would make Buster Keaton applaud. Or my innocent step
into a brand-new slush-filled pothole which propels me forward, arms
windmilling, hoping, in vain, to avoid the bum rush that I am soon to complete
in a salty face splash.
Maybe they could catch the
near choreographed rows of us guys in the parking lot up at Menards with
tortured toe, or, at last resort, heel, kicking, largely in vain, at the
resolute ice dogs clinging to our cars. (If you gotta ask you’ll never know.)
Maybe they could see me
parking downtown and crawling on my belly like a reptile across, the now frozen
solid, grimy towering terminal moraine left in the plow’s wake along the curb.
On the other side I hope to find a snaking little path that might have been
excised by the fatigued owners of the fronting businesses. And then having made
the traverse, I am met with that snow recently liberated from the so-called
sidewalk and deposited on the storefront side of the moraine where I need now
to excavate, with my hands, down to the parking meter.
And no lilacs until the
middle of June.
My point is that I know that
each and every one of us, given the opportunity to visit the folks who live in
universally desirable and coveted locations anywhere on this planet, would be
able to, within a few days find all kinds of things to poke fun at them for.
Is that not a comforting
realization?
Because there really is no place
like home.
And here’s to your home. Hope it is
safe and warm and happy this holiday season.
Happy
Holidays!
Sincerely,
Smitty
and Kristi
12/16/24
Duluth, MN
Greetings.
We are fine and fit and happy to be
able to report that.
No big journeys, triumphs or accolades
to crow about. I (age 69) guess it helps one to feel more satisfied if he
doesn’t set the sights too high.
Our dog Gracie (age 3x7, or so)
finally seems to be accepting her fate and is becoming more comfortable with
the pack. She is a gentle and affectionate creature and much devoted to the
grandkids. Tolerant and content. Still, she does have stubborn psychological
problems. Attributable to her early years of having to be in Texas before
rescue. Existing there at a vulnerable age can leave scars, no doubt.
The kids, too, seem to be content with
the hands they are playing and not too many psychological problems to report.
Bill (43yrs) has an apartment just
down the hill here. He splits his time between that and his home on the lake up
north. He works hours that are beyond describing here on the printed page. He
never complains. Has a loving dog named Fernie (4x7). She, too, an immigrant
from Texas. Makes me wonder how many truckloads of unloved dogs Minnesota sends
to the good old Lone Star.
Mesa (39) and Joe (?) are living in
Eden Prairie and are comfortable.
The grandkids, Des (3), and Siena
(1.5) continue to, as you might expect, be ever more enthralling. Des digs the
guitar and drums, Si Si is still taking it all in. Her vocabulary is now
expanding effervescently, she navigates with aplomb.
They are fascinating. Young children
can, repeatedly, astonish one with their knowledge and behaviors.
As an example, when I visit them in
Eden Prairie they can guide me through the complexities of the remote controls
down there and I can watch TV. Sometimes
I wish they were at the controls up here.
They have even introduced me, too, to
some new shows. Take for instance Cocomelon. The dad is kinda of a dud but the
mom is so kind and so pretty. But that baby with that knob of hair plastered to
its head? Every one makes such a fuss over that brat like it is special or
something. I don’t like it.
Speaking of remotes and so forth, the
other day I was walking Gracie and a neighbor from down the hill whispered by
in his new Tesla pickup.
I looked at it and I got to thinking
that that vehicle looks exactly like what cars of the future were going to look
like in the comic books of 1963 or so. It got me thinking of the future and how
it is not what it was cracked up to be.
I’m not talking flying cars. That
would be terrible. Imagine those behemoth 4X4 trucks that bellow and belch and
bluster by on the freeway apparently under the illusion that they are fast and nimble.
Who wants a sky full of them?
No, the future I was expecting was
more simple than that. Not fobs or stacks of remotes. Not scrolling, not menus,
not modes. Kristi (age 34), I am sure, has maybe heard me, on, perhaps, more
than one occasion exclaim, “What’s so bad about two blanking knobs? Huh? Just
give me two blanking knobs!!!”
The future I had envisioned was not me
serving gizmos. No, far from it. I had envisioned: robots.
I
was hoping to be able to one day sit in my chair and say, for instance, “Tron
1-A, turn up the volume on the TV.” “Tron 1-A, switch the channel.” And, maybe,
“Tron 1-A, make me a brandy Manhattan straight up with a cherry.” Or, “Tron 1-A
mow the lawn.” “Tron 1-A shovel the walk.” “Tron 1-A, fast forward through this
song on the 8-track!” (I wonder if they ever had remotes for 8 Tracks? That would’ve
been cool.)
It’s
not like I am a stick in the mud. I’m down with all the new stuff. I’m hip to
the You tube and the google, and the AOL and stuff like that. But all I wanted
was just 2 knobs. And a robot.
But back to those uncanny grandkids
and the things that can surprise a grandpa. Like, they can be brought to Costco
and never voice a peep of resistance. Even when proceeding through, glacially I
might add, Costco Customs on entry and, especially, exit. Remarkable.
At Costco? This calm and complacent attitude?
When the entire Costco experience is fraught with peril?
Just driving into the lot and one
encounters all manner of darting vehicles, harboring distracted pilots with visions
of stuff dancing in their heads. Not to mention those racing home to unload it
all.
Even walking into the place is
perilous as one is confronted with shopping carts so full that the operators must
lean over to the side to see forward, just like the engineers of old-time steam
locomotives.
And, once inside…. there is no peace! It’s
a bouncy house for adults. There is no place where a dude can just abide.
Costco is the singular site on this world where a victim of it is always in
someone’s desperate path. I would never venture into the men’s room.
Say a fellow wants to just stand still.
I challenge you to try it. Go find a place where nobody in their right mind
would be lured, say a far off, out of the way, box freezer boasting 999 wieners
for $9.99. Just try to go there and stand, rest and wait. Within 30 seconds
someone will, not too gently, roust you in their desperate search for wieners.
At Costco I am a lonely pinball in The
Land of a Thousand Flippers.
Speaking of wieners, I must allow that
they have delicious hot dogs there. And reasonable. 99 cents I think.
Unfortunately, the consumption of
same, on the premises, is strained. Eating a hot dog at Costco is to dining
what standing on a gently swaying I-beam 96 floors above Manhattan would be to
sightseeing.
Obviously I am a little bit wary in
Kirkland. You see, Kristi has all the bona fides. I am just an immigrant. A
guest. If I step out of line I fear I might get collared by management and brought
in back and, maybe, might end up in a wiener.
Enough about Costco. More about the
grandkids.
Serene, complacent behavior at Costco
and, just as inconceivably, the opposite upon leaving The Mall of America where
the most boisterous and frenzied resistance is offered. Astonishing because
leaving that place is among the happiest moments one can relish.
And speaking of resistance, a young
child, I have found, has an amazing arsenal of moves which can be devasting to
the responsible party. No, I am not speaking of throwing oneself down prostrate
on the floor and slamming forehead, fists and feet on the ground. That never
works. I know that. I’ve tried it when I have been compelled to go to Costco.
No, small children have very lethal
submission moves they deploy to devasting effect when all patience with their
dimwitted and hopelessly clueless oppressors has been exhausted.
The first tactic I would like to
comment on here is Arch Back Baby where the oppressed suddenly, and without
warning, stiffens out entirely; slamming the head backwards in a devastating
arch against whatever is behind: high chair, car seat, transgressor’s brow,
lip, chin, clavicle, sternum, glasses, eyebrow. A ruthlessly effective ploy and
one must be on the ever alert for it since a relatively minor shortcoming on
the part of the adult might beg for the launch of this attack.
The other weapon, even more sinister,
is Jelly Baby. When this is enacted the author of it becomes, suddenly and
without warning, completely limp, and the tighter one clutches to the purveyor
the more they just slip through the fingers. (Thank you Princess Leah). It is
devious and effective.
In fact I have, on one occasion, only
managed to arrest the decent of the wronged party at the level of my knee.
Jelly Baby is especially effective
against me.
This is because, you see, I have no
hips. When I hold an infant I have no hip to jut out and use as a perch. I must
entirely grasp them at all times.
I have not made a study of other men’s
hips but I do notice a woman, say Kristi or Mesa for instance, can comfortably
hold a baby against themselves, relaxed, while talking on the phone, brushing
their hair, or sipping coffee. While I, on the other hand, must clutch them
securely. With both hands.
Having no hips, I think, explains why;
to keep my pants up, I must yank my belt to such an extent that my eyeballs
nearly bulge out of my skull.
I have a special affinity for those
cats you see on the street with the crotch of their trousers down by their
knees and their underwear etc. showing in back. They have my sincere sympathy.
I suspect they do not have the correct bit, let alone, the drill, to make the
proper penetrations up the length of the belt to secure it properly.
(This requires a word of caution
because when one is drilling though this leather, the bit and belt can develop
a mad and intense affection for each other and so great is their lust that,
suddenly, and without warning, the belt’s affection can extend to the drill as
well, strangulating it and leaving the operator’s trigger hand knuckles
smarting acutely as a result of impact from the belt buckle’s frenzied
diminishing orbit’s impact.)
Back to those kids. They were here
over Thanksgiving. We, all of us, had the terrific foods Kristi (Age 37) and
Joe prepared for all of us. The children a constant source of entertainment and
affection.
Even the adult children.
We are lucky.
We hope you are lucky as well.
And keeping your pants up when you
want to.
Happy Holidays!
-Sincerely
Jeff and Kristi Smith.
11/29/23
Duluth, MN
Greetings.
We are fine and fit and happy to be
able to report that.
No big journeys, triumphs or accolades
to crow about. I (age 69) guess it helps one to feel more satisfied if he
doesn’t set the sights too high.
Our dog Gracie (age 3x7, or so)
finally seems to be accepting her fate and is becoming more comfortable with
the pack. She is a gentle and affectionate creature and much devoted to the
grandkids. Tolerant and content. Still, she does have stubborn psychological
problems. Attributable to her early years of having to be in Texas before
rescue. Existing there at a vulnerable age can leave scars, no doubt.
The kids, too, seem to be content with
the hands they are playing and not too many psychological problems to report.
Bill (43yrs) has an apartment just
down the hill here. He splits his time between that and his home on the lake up
north. He works hours that are beyond describing here on the printed page. He
never complains. Has a loving dog named Fernie (4x7). She, too, an immigrant
from Texas. Makes me wonder how many truckloads of unloved dogs Minnesota sends
to the good old Lone Star.
Mesa (39) and Joe (?) are living in
Eden Prairie and are comfortable.
The grandkids, Des (3), and Siena
(1.5) continue to, as you might expect, be ever more enthralling. Des digs the
guitar and drums, Si Si is still taking it all in. Her vocabulary is now
expanding effervescently, she navigates with aplomb.
They are fascinating. Young children
can, repeatedly, astonish one with their knowledge and behaviors.
As an example, when I visit them in
Eden Prairie they can guide me through the complexities of the remote controls
down there and I can watch TV. Sometimes
I wish they were at the controls up here.
They have even introduced me, too, to
some new shows. Take for instance Cocomelon. The dad is kinda of a dud but the
mom is so kind and so pretty. But that baby with that knob of hair plastered to
its head? Every one makes such a fuss over that brat like it is special or
something. I don’t like it.
Speaking of remotes and so forth, the
other day I was walking Gracie and a neighbor from down the hill whispered by
in his new Tesla pickup.
I looked at it and I got to thinking
that that vehicle looks exactly like what cars of the future were going to look
like in the comic books of 1963 or so. It got me thinking of the future and how
it is not what it was cracked up to be.
I’m not talking flying cars. That
would be terrible. Imagine those behemoth 4X4 trucks that bellow and belch and
bluster by on the freeway apparently under the illusion that they are fast and nimble.
Who wants a sky full of them?
No, the future I was expecting was
more simple than that. Not fobs or stacks of remotes. Not scrolling, not menus,
not modes. Kristi (age 34), I am sure, has maybe heard me, on, perhaps, more
than one occasion exclaim, “What’s so bad about two blanking knobs? Huh? Just
give me two blanking knobs!!!”
The future I had envisioned was not me
serving gizmos. No, far from it. I had envisioned: robots.
I
was hoping to be able to one day sit in my chair and say, for instance, “Tron
1-A, turn up the volume on the TV.” “Tron 1-A, switch the channel.” And, maybe,
“Tron 1-A, make me a brandy Manhattan straight up with a cherry.” Or, “Tron 1-A
mow the lawn.” “Tron 1-A shovel the walk.” “Tron 1-A, fast forward through this
song on the 8-track!” (I wonder if they ever had remotes for 8 Tracks? That would’ve
been cool.)
It’s
not like I am a stick in the mud. I’m down with all the new stuff. I’m hip to
the You tube and the google, and the AOL and stuff like that. But all I wanted
was just 2 knobs. And a robot.
But back to those uncanny grandkids
and the things that can surprise a grandpa. Like, they can be brought to Costco
and never voice a peep of resistance. Even when proceeding through, glacially I
might add, Costco Customs on entry and, especially, exit. Remarkable.
At Costco? This calm and complacent attitude?
When the entire Costco experience is fraught with peril?
Just driving into the lot and one
encounters all manner of darting vehicles, harboring distracted pilots with visions
of stuff dancing in their heads. Not to mention those racing home to unload it
all.
Even walking into the place is
perilous as one is confronted with shopping carts so full that the operators must
lean over to the side to see forward, just like the engineers of old-time steam
locomotives.
And, once inside…. there is no peace! It’s
a bouncy house for adults. There is no place where a dude can just abide.
Costco is the singular site on this world where a victim of it is always in
someone’s desperate path. I would never venture into the men’s room.
Say a fellow wants to just stand still.
I challenge you to try it. Go find a place where nobody in their right mind
would be lured, say a far off, out of the way, box freezer boasting 999 wieners
for $9.99. Just try to go there and stand, rest and wait. Within 30 seconds
someone will, not too gently, roust you in their desperate search for wieners.
At Costco I am a lonely pinball in The
Land of a Thousand Flippers.
Speaking of wieners, I must allow that
they have delicious hot dogs there. And reasonable. 99 cents I think.
Unfortunately, the consumption of
same, on the premises, is strained. Eating a hot dog at Costco is to dining
what standing on a gently swaying I-beam 96 floors above Manhattan would be to
sightseeing.
Obviously I am a little bit wary in
Kirkland. You see, Kristi has all the bona fides. I am just an immigrant. A
guest. If I step out of line I fear I might get collared by management and brought
in back and, maybe, might end up in a wiener.
Enough about Costco. More about the
grandkids.
Serene, complacent behavior at Costco
and, just as inconceivably, the opposite upon leaving The Mall of America where
the most boisterous and frenzied resistance is offered. Astonishing because
leaving that place is among the happiest moments one can relish.
And speaking of resistance, a young
child, I have found, has an amazing arsenal of moves which can be devasting to
the responsible party. No, I am not speaking of throwing oneself down prostrate
on the floor and slamming forehead, fists and feet on the ground. That never
works. I know that. I’ve tried it when I have been compelled to go to Costco.
No, small children have very lethal
submission moves they deploy to devasting effect when all patience with their
dimwitted and hopelessly clueless oppressors has been exhausted.
The first tactic I would like to
comment on here is Arch Back Baby where the oppressed suddenly, and without
warning, stiffens out entirely; slamming the head backwards in a devastating
arch against whatever is behind: high chair, car seat, transgressor’s brow,
lip, chin, clavicle, sternum, glasses, eyebrow. A ruthlessly effective ploy and
one must be on the ever alert for it since a relatively minor shortcoming on
the part of the adult might beg for the launch of this attack.
The other weapon, even more sinister,
is Jelly Baby. When this is enacted the author of it becomes, suddenly and
without warning, completely limp, and the tighter one clutches to the purveyor
the more they just slip through the fingers. (Thank you Princess Leah). It is
devious and effective.
In fact I have, on one occasion, only
managed to arrest the decent of the wronged party at the level of my knee.
Jelly Baby is especially effective
against me.
This is because, you see, I have no
hips. When I hold an infant I have no hip to jut out and use as a perch. I must
entirely grasp them at all times.
I have not made a study of other men’s
hips but I do notice a woman, say Kristi or Mesa for instance, can comfortably
hold a baby against themselves, relaxed, while talking on the phone, brushing
their hair, or sipping coffee. While I, on the other hand, must clutch them
securely. With both hands.
Having no hips, I think, explains why;
to keep my pants up, I must yank my belt to such an extent that my eyeballs
nearly bulge out of my skull.
I have a special affinity for those
cats you see on the street with the crotch of their trousers down by their
knees and their underwear etc. showing in back. They have my sincere sympathy.
I suspect they do not have the correct bit, let alone, the drill, to make the
proper penetrations up the length of the belt to secure it properly.
(This requires a word of caution
because when one is drilling though this leather, the bit and belt can develop
a mad and intense affection for each other and so great is their lust that,
suddenly, and without warning, the belt’s affection can extend to the drill as
well, strangulating it and leaving the operator’s trigger hand knuckles
smarting acutely as a result of impact from the belt buckle’s frenzied
diminishing orbit’s impact.)
Back to those kids. They were here
over Thanksgiving. We, all of us, had the terrific foods Kristi (Age 37) and
Joe prepared for all of us. The children a constant source of entertainment and
affection.
Even the adult children.
We are lucky.
We hope you are lucky as well.
And keeping your pants up when you
want to.
Happy Holidays!
-Sincerely Jeff and Kristi Smith.
We continue to live in Duluth, MNDuluth year ‘round. Pressure makes diamonds I always say.
Our dog, Gracie, has now been with us for over a year. She is kind and gentle but still has some peculiarities. But don’t we all?
Billy and his pal, Fernie the dog, live up at his lake place, except when he’s working. And his working arrangements are too complex to reduce into mere words here. He has made adjustments that suit him just fine. He is healthy and I’m sure he would say he is enjoying his share.
Mesa and Joe are healthy and both working. Their boy Des is 2 years old and he is having a blast. He is taking it all in. He displays, sometimes within minutes, and with gusto, the full range of human emotions. He is learning, is fluent, and can fully operate any remote within range.
Last June he welcomed in, well sort of, most of the time, a baby sister. Siena Lee was received into the pack and is lovely and contented, also most of the time. She is a very agreeable little girl. Laid back, observant and undemanding.
Listen, these grandkids are truly exceptional, in a good way. I know you get a lot of Xmas cards from other grandparents claiming that but, in this case, it is true.
Personally, for the two of us, every day, as you might suspect, is still filled with a myriad of wonders.
For instance, last summer we purchased a used camper trailer of modest proportions. It is placed at a resort on Pelican Lake north of here. The resort is Cabin O’ Pines, a place of many attributes. It boasts a fine sandy beach, ample docking, lovely cabins tucked into the pines, a formidable playground and temporary camping sites as well. I’d recommend it without reservation to anyone seeking a summer respite.
The idea was to have a family place for fun. We are fortunate to have Billy’s place there within an easy walk and have accommodations at each place to house the entire family, which we utilized last summer. We had fun.
Curiously, though, there is one event, unique and remarkable, that occurs in the bedroom every night we are there. (No, not that, Cousin Evie.)
Remarkably all the coverings migrate imperceptibly, but resolutely, from my side of the bed to that of Kristi and Gracie. Invariably I am left only with a portion of sheet about the size of a home delivered pizza box cut in half diagonally. (And not ONLY do the covers transport to the other side of the bed. They, also, as if by magic, ROTATE! They revolve upon some kind of transparent axis for often my minute triangular portion of sheet contains the tag that was, when the bed was made, tucked into the foot at the opposite end from me!)
Eventually I hesitantly will turn on the light and timidly point out this dilemma to my bedmates. They will then look at me from their virtual tsunami of covers as if I am a daft nuisance. I see them exchange a baleful look of exasperation. (Yes, a dog can roll her eyes,)
It is then Kristi will, in an act of unselfish benevolence, reach down to the floor and drag out a pillow sham and whip it into my face, saying, “There!” before she rolls on her side away from me and disappears under an Everest of bedding.
This sham, I have found, if I place it just so, with one corner at each of my shoulders, and my arms crossed over my chest, like a Pharoah’s mummy in the tomb, can keep me reasonably warm. Well, at least my thorax.
What accounts for this unusual phenomenon I cannot fathom. Is it something singular about the trailer? Or is it a result of where the trailer is located precisely on the globe? i.e. A planetary tidal cause or, perhaps, some kind of polar effect like a compass works, or, maybe, a version of plate tectonics, or a combination of all these things?
[OVER]
I considered setting up some sophisticated movie equipment that might capture the events in a stop action manner as a way for diagnosis. However, when visitors come over and see all the movie cameras set up in the bedroom, well, they look at you funny. I know that.
One of the remedies I have tried that does work for a little while is to grasp the covers with my fingers and toes and hold tightly. However, that practice was rendered obsolete in the autumn as the nights became colder and I took to wearing to bed Sorrels. And choppers.
No, the problem calls for a more creative response.
Among remedies I have conceived of, I most favor Plan A and Plan B.
Plan B would involve beseeching Patty, who is the Soprano of the Singer, to sew together blanketsSheet combinations. Think of a blanket stretched over a sheet and both sewed fast to each other. Then I would ask that she sew these sandwiches, so to speak, say six of them for instance, to each other along their edges creating a continuous chorus line of covers.
Then, further, I would ask Mr. Waterman of Massachusetts to construct a roller to wind them up on so they could play out, imperceptivity as usual, until bout 3AM when the line roll would be depleted. Then a klaxon incorporated into the design would peal out and a strobe would flash alerting Kristi to get up and insert the crank and wind the bedding back up onto the roller again.
This solution, which appears foolproof I might add, does have a few possible drawbacks.
For one, Mr. W, I have been made to know, builds things of considerable heft and stamina. Thus, I would need to hire a boom truck of some sort to fetch it to the trailer from the siding at Orr.
Also, because of the suspected size and complexity – no doubt his design would incorporate the driving wheels from a prewar steam locomotive, and, not to mention, various parts would be included, gears, ring gears, pulleys, and pinions for instance, from a vintage Autocar Semi truck, or a Diamond Reo perhaps, and thus the apparatus would be of such a size that a lean-to would need be constructed to house it and an incision on the side of the trailer made to feed the roll through.
Also, another hesitation I had in that event, was my concern that when that klaxon rang out and K would have to insert the handle/winder, she would be uncomfortable going outside, especially in the cold and wet. But that was remedied when I realized she could employ my Sorrels as I would no longer be needing them if all worked well. And my choppers too.
Still, I think, initially, I will invoke Plan A. It is a simpler plan, and thus, unfortunately, less elegant.
I have a neighbor, Jeremy, who is a wizard in the wood shop. Occasionally he helps me with projects, the most recent was my protype for my latest concept: The Subterranean Dirigible.
While in his shop I noticed, hanging on the wall, large clamps presumably employed to hold substantial boards together while glue set and so forth. I will ask him if I can borrow the clamps, on an experimental basis only.
What I intend to do is, once I am ready for bed and all snuggled in, is then have Kristi screw down these clamps with all her might, which I have previuosly affixed to the blankets and the mattress, pinching them severely between.
However, there are some risks involved.
One would be that the power imbued within this mysterious inexorable vortex would cause the mattress to then rollup and ensnare me inside like a burrito.
Or, if I affix the clamp to the covers, mattress, AND the bedframe together, the power might be so unrelenting that the torque deposited upon the clamps would cause them to surrender their clasp and then, most certainly, they would thunderously crash down upon me. (This, by the way, is the outcome Kristi, by this time, most enthusiastically favors.)
So having a trailer can be complicated. Where is the rose without the thorn?
Well, there is one. Namely Kristi. (I hope that helps.)
And speaking of hope, we wish you all the best that life can offer. Be well, have fun.
Sincerely,
-The Smiths
11/30/22
Greetings. We are fine and fit and sincerely hope the same for you and yours. We wish you all the happiness you can have.
We
continue at home in Duluth and are enjoying retirement. We still have no
inspiring accomplishments, covetable journeys and so forth, to crow about. Finding
less joy in acquisitions, save for maybe a Hamilton Beach or a Harley Davidson.
We get around, in Minnesota, we have experiences. We abide.
We did
have some grieving when our dearest little friend Rosie had to be euthanized
last summer. Something dreadful, and quick, was happening inside of her.
However
this fall we acquired a new friend, Gracie. She came from Texas where a deputy
found her in a ditch near Lubbock with her 9 puppies. He brought them to a
local vet to be euthanized. All of them. The vet made arrangements to have the
lot sent to Superior Wisco for adoption instead. What a long strange trip it’s
been for this one. She is gentle and reserved, learns quick. Is a good,
unassuming companion. As far as I know one pup of hers remains to be adopted.
Kellie
and Bill are doing fine. Still working for Essentia as nurses, still sharing time
between her place in Duluth and his Up North at Pelican Lake. Their little dog
Fernie, also an orphan from Texas, is a beautiful rendering of indiscriminate
enthusiasm
Joe and
Mesa live in Eden Prairie with their 1-year-old son Des. They are comfortable
and happy.
In August they returned to the scene of their marriage 10
years ago in Florence. (No, Cousin Gary, not the one in MN.) While they were
gone K and I provided care for little Des.
On the
verge of walking then, he was crawling and standing, mobile and independent.
He is
such a good boy. Subjectively we feel he is cute and gifted. Objectively he is
calm, does not plead for attention, amuses himself and is largely content. As
far as babies go, not a thing to complain about,
Still, a
little baby goes a long ways.
While
the kids were in Europe we were reminded of how much devotion it takes to care
for a one year old. And a laid back one at that.
In fact,
entropy comes to mind a bit and I suspect Mr. Sauer could’ve employed a Classroom
Baby to good effect in the demonstration of this feature of thermodynamics. In
the presence of a child, order descends into chaos so effortlessly and undramatically
that one is left wondering “What happened? How did this precipitate?”
And
speaking of order, modern day toys demand a return to it: Most of them now frenetically speak or flash lamps
or both. For instance, at bedtime one must put all the pieces back into the
puzzle. For they are photoelectric and as the morning light penetrates the room
next door, and the pieces have not been returned snugly, one can easily hear Mr.
Sun being greeted by ducks quacking, cows mooing and the wheels on the bus go
round and round. This cacophony is thus a seductive invitation for any sweetly
slumbering child to get up pronto.
Therefore, an invention of mine would be a Toy Safe. After
all there are grown men out there who keep their toys in a safe, The
Playskool Toy Safe would be impenetrable to light incursion and to noise
escape. Think of it: at the end of the day one could just make rounds of the
house and scoop up all the toys and, simply, dump them in the safe. (Another
invention there: Playskool Toy Skoop.)
And as long as I am sharing a modicum of my ideas here, I
must applaud one of the baby toys. A contrivance which I admire greatly. The
rolling Jumparoo.
If they
could be manufactured for adults, I predict they would be a hit. Plastered with
Harley stickers, they could even put ape hangers on them, maybe. Just imagine
going to the tavern at Happy Hour and piloting Jumparoos around with your
buddies. It would be a blast! It would make those lame, spastic, bucking bull
things obsolete overnight.
Yes, I
know there would be drawbacks. For instance, your beer would have to be
delivered in one of those little boxes with the miniature hole in the top
through which a tiny straw must penetrate. And a cocktail would necessarily
arrive in a Tommy Tippee Kup.
Also in
need of addressing would be the problem of mounting the Jumparoo. For if your establishment
did not have a friendly giant to lift you into it, you would have to clamber up
somehow and this would be a challenge. Certainly one would find himself head
down in the contraption with his legs kicking the air. Hardly dashing or
ladylike. Maybe overhead hoists or rope ladders? I don’t know, I am more of an
idea man and, generously, leave all the little details to others.
I have
come to know that a baby is singularly incapable of fear. One day K was gone
and I watched as, after I took away the scissors he had in his mouth, (Babies
love to put stuff in their mouth when teething.) he traversed the kitchen. He
pulled out a drawer and let it crash to his feet spilling out the contents, (sharp
knives, forks etc.) and then pivoted, made his way to the range and turned on
all the burners red hot. While I doused the range, he made a lap through under
the sink and came out with a can of Drano. By the time I caught up to him to
relieve him of the lye, he slapped, with one of those fallen knives, a light
socket and pulled up, tottering dangerously, at the top of the basement steps.
Hand with knife outstretched.
In a
matter of seconds a baby can blithely traverse a course most perilous. One that
would certainly have left James Bond trembling. At least Roger Moore, maybe.
This
gave me the idea that babies would make perfect secret agents. Impervious to
fear, their capacity for destruction inestimable, facility at escape daunting,
and all the while exhibiting an innocent, devil may care attitude whilst
manifesting a charming, if not irresistibly fetching, appearance. Just think of
what a team of babies could’ve done to any one of Blofeld’s Lairs. Or Dr.
Evil’s for that matter. An infant would unceremoniously find that red destruct
button. Dispatch that Doomsday Device with aplomb.
(Be
advised that Mesa and Joe have, since that time, employed an arsenal of baby
thwarting gizmos about the house. Plugs in the light sockets for instance. And
caps on the range controls, stubborn gates across the steps, and clamps on the
cupboards, drawers etc. All very effective. Much more elaborate than the bungee
cords of yore. Of my yore at least. In fact, some of them are so inscrutable
and impervious to passage that I must ask Des to help me free them.)
At any
rate last summer was a reunion for us with how much is demanded of the parents
of infants. Recently I have heard this life era described as one where “The
days are long and years are short.” Clearly accurate.
Those
evenings after the tubby and the reading and the settling into bed we had oft
planned to have a nice quiet candlelit dinner together.
Instead,
we’d find ourselves at the table across from each other, the wine bottle in between.
Each of us lost in their own, private, 50-mile stare. Occasionally emitting a distant
sigh. Every once in a while I would find Kristi spooning cottage cheese into my
mouth or I would look over at her and she would be absently poking a Cheerio
around her plate with an index finger. Or pinching a blueberry. (Even now, here
back at home, Kristi will sometimes walk by and, whether it needs it or not, and
without warning, vigorously wipe my mouth off with a rag.)
Were we,
at that time, on some level, wondering secretly to ourselves if we had waited
too long to become grandparents?
Lately I
recall once when my brother Dale and I were watching our own pairs of kids
toddling around. He sighed and with rare, and uncharacteristic, wisdom, noted,
“You know, you’d think 2 kids would be twice as much work. But they’re not.
They are 3 times as much work.”
Will
that be confirmed again? If all goes well, we will find out next June.
A girl
is predicted.
Thank
you for your endurance. May The Season bring you lots of fun.
Happy
Holidays!
Sincerely,
Kristi and Jeff Smit
Duluth, MN
11/27/21
Greetings.
We are fine and fit. We sincerely hope the same for you.
We
continue at home in Duluth and are enjoying retirement although we have no
great accomplishments, trips, etc. to crow about. We get around, we have
experiences, we abide.
Billy
does too. He spends his time between here in Duluth with Kellie at her place
and, up at his lake place. He voices no complaints.
In July
Mesa and Joe bought a house in Eden Prairie MN and are happy there. Besides
that, they had a baby in late August. A boy, Des Jeffrey, and he brings much
joy to all of us. He is perfect and we are all filled with gratitude. My lovely
wife Kristine (age 37) and I (age 66) are grandparents. I never thought I would
ever say that.
What a
special little guy he is too. You know how it is with some Other People’s Kid
and they tell you all about it and want you to look at it and you say to
yourself when you see it, or maybe a little later, that kid does not look like
it’s all that it’s cracked up to be?
Well
that’s not the way it is with little Des. I am sure that within months he will
be giving people The Claw just like his mother (And uncle) did very early in
their infanthood. They still know how to do it. You can just ask them.
Baron
Von Raschke’s Claw is a gift that keeps on giving. So much more sophisticated
than that dopey “So Big!” antic. Just go and ask any of these kids nowadays;
say in their late 30’s, 40’s, maybe even early 50’s, How Big they are. They
just look at you funny. And some of the ladies even seem hostile when you ask
them. The only adult I know who can reliably be depended upon to respond in the
So Big! display - you know, excitedly throwing up the arms with a big goofy
grin – is Cousin Gary. When you make the mistake of asking him about the catch
on his last fishing trip. Like to Lake of the Woods for instance.
But
those same kids will still give you The Claw if you ask them to, providing
that, at a young age, their parents taught them how to do it.
I
wouldn’t be surprised if he learns talking extra quick too. Our kids started in
talking early. Why just the other day here, all gathered around the
Thanksgiving table, we were talking about what Mesa and Billy’s first swear
words were. Billy’s we established immediately because his was one of his
grandma Carrie’s favorites. But with Mesa it was unclear. That is likely
because she employed so many of them at a remarkably early age. Or, we thought,
maybe because her mother has always drawn from a creative and nearly
inexhaustible supply of them.
I suspect, though, that just as likely, it is because she
was The Second Kid. Nobody ever remembers stuff about subsequent kids. I know
that.
And that
is because I am The Middle Kid (worse yet). For example there is scant
photographic evidence that I ever existed. At least before I procured a camera
for myself. And this even though I was apparently photogenic. Confirmed by the
rare, grainy photographs of myself when studied through a magnifying glass,
because I am usually found in the background at some Other Kid’s birthday
party.
I
suppose it will be different now, giving the widespread infestation in our
culture of cell phones and so forth. My phone is already bulging with photos,
videos and so forth of Des. Can’t dispose of a single one. But that might be
because I am a Middle Kid. And you can believe I will record his first swear
word. Or maybe words – He is Mesa’s kid after all.
And I
will do the same with the Second Kid if that happens. I swear.
Happy Holidays!
Love,
Kristi
& Jeff Smith
[OVER]
Duluth, MN
11/17/20
“You’re just as likely to get in a fistfight at a boat landing as
you are at a beer joint.”
I was a little kid when Uncle Maynard made that casual
observation. We were in his boat on Mille Lacs, patiently circling the busy
landing on Cove Bay. Waiting our turn.
A busy boat landing is a fraught parcel. There in garish display
is the entire spectrum of the male ego: from merely incompetent to brazenly
despicable. We watched as bargers, on land and sea, sought to cut in,
fussbudgets dithered, slobs littered and trailers jackknifed on backing. In
short, the usual. It is a stage that richly rewards absurdity. One of those
places on earth where a man can look at his fellow man and say to himself
without reservation, “You are doing that all wrong. You stupid idiot.”
This past summer we once again found ourselves at a boat ramp. We
decided to moor our diminutive runabout, Goldie, at a slip in
the Lakehead Basin here in the bay. In fact we could’ve seen her from our
house- had it not been for all the charter fishing boats, cabin cruisers, huge
sailboats, and occasional yachts. We secured the last slip in the marina in
early June.
On finalizing the arrangements in the office, the young lady at
the counter idly asked where we were launching our boat. I answered, “Well,
here, there’s a ramp here…right?”
She fidgeted and allowed that, indeed, there was, but, some past
seismic event occurred which had sheared the lower parts of the ramp clean off.
She murmured something about previous calamities, tow trucks summoned, broken
axles and the like…in short, I had been warned. Undeterred I sauntered out of
there and rolled to the ramp at the far end. On scrutiny I determined the ramp
was in fact very steep, covered with some kind of growth that was immune to
friction and, maybe a bit narrow. (Most boats there are launched, I think, by
means of an overhead crane-like contraption.) I could see no sinister drop off
as mentioned because the ice-cold water in the bay, and the river for that
matter, is coffee colored. I’ve been told, this is due to upstream “tannins”.
Whatever those are. Where is Mr. Sauer when you need him?
So, I concluded, it was perfect. Goldie does not
need much water to launch. Should be a snap. I backed her down with aplomb and
floated her. Unhooked the winch line as Kristi stood on the dock holding the
bowline. I skipped back to the Toyota when I heard her plaintive cry:
“SMITTY!!?!?!”
Although a lucky man hears that intonation only rarely in his
life, still, he instantly knows that something has gone very awry. I dashed
back there. She was standing looking at Goldie. Kristi had the
bowline in her hand as planned but…the bowline was untethered! The boat was
serenely drifting away. AND, in that instant, I could read her thought. She was
going to jump.
Now if any of you are my age or thereabouts, (65 years) I ask you,
have you tried to jump recently? I have. Summer before last. At the ocean,
visiting my brother, on an early morning walk I came to one of those temporary
rivulets where the water was following the tide out. I was going to jump it
but…I couldn’t. It was like I didn’t know how to do it. I had forgotten how to
jump. I was stunned. I would kind of bound up to it and slide to a halt and
stand there fixed. Or, I would swing my arms, windmilling for lift off but
could not launch. It was confounding. I wondered then if it would help me to
get some Kedds. Or Red Ball Jets?
Later I mentioned this observation to Kristi. It was the
summertime and we were walking at Bayfront Park and we decided to have a little
contest. Jump over something, the sidewalk, a bush, I don’t remember. I do
remember she won, well, actually I made it too but went sprawling on my
landing. How long has it been since you’ve had grass stains on your pants? I
decided maybe it wasn’t a jump thing but, rather, a landing problem. I thought
maybe I needed to practice, get it back, you know? But then our home is too
small for meaningful jumping and to do that in the yard, or while walking
Rosie, right here in town, well, people look at you funny.
Back at the marina Kristi was about to make the jump for Goldie.
True she had won the contest and is considerable younger, (Age 37 years) still
I had the horrible realization that I would shortly be faced with a terrible
decision. Precisely the kind a man dreads: Go after the boat or the bride? (And
what about our phones?)
I envisioned Goldie clattering about in the
harbor, caroming off huge boats with names like “Shegavein”, “Mamma’s
Mink”, “She’ll Get Over It”, etc. while I would leap, or rather, clamber
from one to the next warding off the impacts with outstretched foot.
Just then, honest, at that very instant, a favorable breeze ensued
and wafted Goldie elegantly towards the sea wall, an imposing
spine of menacing boulders. I undulated and crabbed my way, crawling on my
belly like a reptile, over those ragged stones and got to her just before she
shoaled. I got a line on her. No damage done! All’s well that ends well, I
always say.
She fired up and we made our way to the slip. There I had
perceived a complex system of lines and fender bumpers that we would rig to
keep her clear of damage while moored. Several hours later while still perfecting
this novel plan I noticed an old fella, who had passed by several times, each
time more slowly, stop. He said, “Mind if I give you some advice?” Naturally I
was about to dismissively decline when Kristi immediately shouted “Yes!”
He said, “It’s not going to work.” Ten minutes later I had wisely taken his
advice and we were finished. Without having to use a single fender! He asked if
he could offer one more bit of advice: “Have fun.” So, there was a nice welcome
to the basin subculture. I wonder how it would’ve been if it would’ve started
with our unoccupied boat banging into all the others.
It was a fun summer. Lots of boat rides. Cousin Gary and Evie came
for a stay at the marina, like they do, in September. This year it was in their
new 5th wheel. It is a generous and luxurious affair. So big
you could put our boat and trailer inside it and still have room for their
fireplace. Really plush.
We went for a boat ride one day. We were rumbling along heading up
the St. Louis and I had just finished a compelling and engaging dissertation on
marine navigation, for instance, Red/Right/Returning: Keeping the red buoys to
the right when returning to port or going upstream. Shortly after - suddenly,
and without warning - we ran aground on a sand bar! I looked around,
incredulous, and there was the red buoy about 50 yards to our
left! I secretly fumed at whoever it was that moved that stupid thing,
even though it is about 3 stories tall and probably weighs tons. But then, on
second thought, I had to admit it was most likely Gary’s fault for distracting
me with our heated discussion of the two bears we saw making out up at Orr a
few summers back. *
By redistributing the cargo, i.e. moving the girls to the bow and
the judicious Neanderthalian use of the paddle we were on our way again. No
harm done. Later, after directing their attention to many wonders, we made our
way out onto the big lake via the Superior Ship Canal. It was beautiful out
there. Singular. Calm as glass. Serene. Distant sails looked as if they were
floating in the sky. As we zipped along I pointed out all the debris revealed
in the calm. Lots of tributaries contribute to Superior. Branches, lumber, a
rare rusty barrel with TOXIC stenciled on it, the odd, empty, mystery
kayak and so forth. We saw the silent ancient logs, big as power poles, barely
buoyant, hardly cresting, not quite fully waterlogged. Maybe escapees from some
ancient boom, some gigantic raft being tugged from Grand Marias across to the
mills of Ashland in the late 50’s? The kind of thing Sylvester Stallone favored
in his new house, back in the 80’s, before the salvaging of them from the
bottom was prohibited.
Later we returned to port on the troubled waters below The Lift
Bridge. Perilous always. I swear those confines hold, and magnify, every wave,
riffle and wake of each craft that has ever traversed its manic length since
1871. Compressed, the waves reverberate, they rebound. Waves might have a right
angle in their middles and each successive one is of a different frequency and amplitude.
There exists cantankerous and combative currents too. And it is one of those
places where “No Wake Zone” is taken to mean floor it. Because people are
watching.
We got back to the marina and Gary and Evie did this cute little
display where they got down on their knees and kissed the piers. They claimed
this was a hallowed Lake Koronis boating tradition. Curiously, we can still see
the impressions of their fingernails in the lifesaver seat cushions that they
were clutching while we had been larking about.
So it was a lot of fun last summer but soon we were back at the
landing in late September. And, naturally, some clueless landlubber had left
his giant truck and huge trailer right by the ramp! That trailer had 6 wheels
on it and it was large enough to carry Gary’s 5th wheel. No
kidding. The guy had just parked it there. Stupid idiot.
I was about to unhook my trailer so I could thread it alongside
the other one and then slip the Toyota in and rejoin. I had a sinking vision of
our liberated trailer magically rolling down the ramp, over the precipice and,
into the abyss, never to be seen again. But just then 2 older fellows emerged
from a huge Mercedes RV and helped me physically lift the trailer over into
position. I was grateful. Sometimes good things do happen at a ramp.
Got Goldie on the trailer and up and out. No
problem. Oh, except for I had forgotten to raise the lower unit. The skeg
dragged. A little bit. No one saw it though, so no harm done. All’s well that
ends well, I always say.
We sincerely hope your 2020 was good, or at least, endurable. We
are fine. Kristi retired in early March just as the Covid was about to pounce.
Sure, it spoiled some travel plans but we have no reason to complain. Stay at
home is better than go to work.
The kids are all still employed. Mesa and Joe remain in downtown
Mpls with their two cats, Leo and that other one.
Bill and Kellie work in the same office and divide their time
between Kellie’s place here in town and Bill’s up on Pelican Lake. They have a
new puppy, name of Fern. Really cute.
In short, for every moment gratitude is in order.
And so, finally, here’s wishing all the best for you and yours in
2021: May your breezes be soft and favorable… and may you never drag your lower
unit. At least while someone is watching.
Happy Holidays,
Kristi and Jeff Smith
*On October 15, while crossing the High Bridge to Superior, I happened to look
down and saw a Corps of Engineers dredge down below working over “Gary’s Reef.”
As for my lovely wife Kristine, (age 23), and myself, age (age 58), we are sound. Kristi bought a scooter this summer. We go riding. She looks way cute
Oh Johnny, he was delighted, bouncing up and down on the seat, slugging me in the shoulder, enthusing, “You got busted! You got busted!”
But, like I said, he moved away. The first phone call we had after he moved cost me 80 bucks. “International rates.” Duh. Thank you Verizon, must've cost you at least a nickel more to service that call.
-Kristi,Bill, Joe, Mesa, Smitty.
12/9/11 FRIDAY 1109
Greetings. We are fine and fit; we hope the same for you and yours.
Not much has changed for me (age 56) and my lovely wife Kristine, (age 26). We are still both employed; Essentia Health still will have us. We get around. Kristi’s pregnancy has been uneventful. She’s in her 5th trimester now. Never a complaint, she’s a trooper.
The kids are good. Billy graduates next Wednesday and then State Board Exams will follow, if all goes well he’ll be an R.N. also, proving that the old tomato doesn’t fall too far from the trees.
Mesa and Joe are expected to arrive here in Duluth this P.M. They spent last night in NYC after missing a connection. They have been this week in Istanbul. They looked into a graduate school there and, have seen many wonders. “Amazing” is a word I captured in one of her messages. Speaking with Mesa one night, she said of the city, “Istanbul is like Rome and Athens and NYC on crack and multiplied by a 1000!”
Proving again that the raisin doesn’t fall far from the tree, just this autumn, when Kristi and I took a rip-roaring trip to Winnipeg, I clearly recall exclaiming to her, “Thief River Falls, it’s like Granite Falls, Hanley Falls and Hallock on Blatz Lite multiplied by 100!” (Like I said, we get around.)
I cannot forget to thank Orhan and Asli, and their families and friends in Turkey, who have been gracious hosts to Mesa and Joe and have been invaluable resources to them. Life has wonderful twists of fate.
You know, for me, 2011’s been a good year. Life’s been interesting - some exceptional things have happened.
For instance, one day I was driving along one of Duluth’s major arteries, Miller Trunk Highway (Hwy 53), just minding my own business, speeding up to about 50mph so I could make an upcoming green light, when suddenly my attention was rudely drawn to a terrific WHAM! that struck the rear of the car. (I was driving Kristi’s car.) The car reeled sideways and slurred about. I kept it in control through lightening quick reflexes and aimed the crippled vehicle towards the median. I angrily looked back in the rearview to see who hit me and….there was nobody there, except for other cars that were making marked adjustments to their own trajectories, giving me a wide berth. “What the?” I remembered asking myself. About this time I noticed a wheel go bounding alongside me on the driver’s side. As it sailed past I was thinking, “That looks a lot like one of Kristi’s wheels.”
As I scraped along, shooting, I am sure, a robust rooster tail of sparks out of my tail; I watched the wheel bounce over the median and bob into the lane of oncoming traffic. It wove and feinted its way through the busy lanes, miraculously most of the cars had to take little in the way of evasive action.
When I finally ground to a halt, and I determined all was well I said to myself, “That was exciting! Now I can say I’ve done THAT!”
Realizing I needed it, and with much less aplomb than it had displayed, I sported across the two busy lanes of traffic in pursuit of the wheel. It was a cold and bitter blustery day, 2 days before my birthday, late February. Ahead on a cross street - they all cross 53 on diagonals, this was Haines Road - I saw a guy standing by a car looking at the ground. I ran over to him and there was Kristi’s wheel. It had made it remarkably far in its foiled escape attempt. The man was gazing at it in mute wonder. He looked up and said to me, “Where’d that come from?”
I pointed back up the highway and Kristi’s little car leaned awkwardly in the far distance. He said, “I was just waiting for the light (The one I was trying to race through.) when WHAM! I felt something hit the car.”
We looked at his rear passenger side door. There was a smudge and ding there. (Not too bad, probably could be buffed right out.) I pulled out a card someone had given me and started to scrawl my insurance information and so forth on it. He took it and seemed very indifferent. He pointed to the front door. It had a big decal boasting that this was a courtesy car from one of the local dealerships, and the thing was kind of a beater at that. He seemed a bit pleased that it had suffered an insult. I suspect the dealership had lost his allegiance somewhere along the line. I bid adieu to him and again wound my way through all the traffic, this time with the dirty wheel in my freezing hands.
Already I had to admit it was a day of outstanding luck. While I waited for the inexorable tow truck I looked across the road and there was a car rental agency, a kind of minor league affair. So again I dashed across through the traffic and whipped open the door upon a guy at the desk who seemed very startled to have an actual customer. He leapt from his desk, looked out the window and said, “Where’d you come from?” I pointed up the highway and he said, “Oh.”
I told him I wanted a car for the weekend. He ‘Put me into” a milky silver Toyota of relatively recent vintage. A more nondescript conveyance cannot be conceived. Just standing alongside of it drained color from one’s own soul. And driving it was like being in some sort of fevered contraption from a late Victorian Era Science Fiction novel: One suddenly became invisible.
As it was I needed it only overnight. The problem was not major; it actually was fixed that evening. I’d had a brake job done by a back yard kind of guy. On that wheel he must’ve trusted his fingers rather than a torque wrench. Some kind of weird internal failure inside the wheel. I examined it in detail while I shivered along the road. The lugs were all tight, but internal lugs of some kind were all unthreaded. A strange system it seemed to me. I would think the engineers at Kia could’ve lavished the thing with a better design. I hadn’t felt it coming.
All’s well that end’s well I always say. The repairs were simple, the towing was by AAA and I was within sight of Firestone. I had ready access to a rental to pass my time. I didn’t get hurt and Kristi’s wheel didn’t hurt anybody. I’ve yet to hear anything from the loaner car folks and I gave some people something to talk about over dinner that evening. A day of remarkable luck.
Although I cannot draw even a gratuitous line between the event above and the next story I am about to tell, I am going to tell it anyway.
Last August Kristi, my brother Dale, and myself returned late from Bluesfest. Before we left I had unearthed the old Christmas light timers and Kristi had 2 crockpots plugged in, one with a beef roast and one containing a pork roast. (I suppose we each would’ve had our own roast if she’d had another crockpot.) We returned home to a house of delicious scents.
I let Jack out on the back deck where he likes to glower down on the neighborhood and the menagerie that is Duluth: raccoons, coyote, foxes, a bobcat this fall, and deer, deer, deer. For example, the other night coming home from work, under a nearby streetlight I saw the biggest deer ever, huge antlers, posing in a neighbor’s yard. I thought, for a moment it was one of those fake deer you see in some yards. (The very definition of redundant in Duluth.) Then one of its ears twitched, quite a sight.
There are more deer in this city than squirrels and am I glad they don’t walk on the power lines like squirrels do. By the end of winter, the wretched snow remaining in my yard looks as if a malted milk ball bomb exploded on it. Some day I will hook an empty Whopper box out of the trash at the movies, make a collection from in the back yard and bring them to work in a bowl and set the box alongside. Some there have a real tooth for chocolate I’ve noticed; it would be a fascinating experiment.
Anyhow, I closed the door and behind me Jack immediately detonated. I went out there to see what was exciting him. He was beginning to tear at the flimsy toddler gate that keeps him, improbably, imprisoned on the deck. He never has tried that before. (Think of all those horses in all those cowboy movies, standing obediently outside all those saloons with just a wimpy little rein whipped lackadaisically around a post.)
I followed Jack’s glare down the steps and there, apparently drawn by the odors of the roasts wafting through the window, was a BIG BEAR. I almost did a double back flip. It is not every night you encounter, on your very own porch, something that can eat you.
I should not have been so surprised. I’d been seeing bear evidence in the back yard all summer and I want to caution you against striking same with your weed whacker, at least while looking down. I’ve mused over that evidence. We live right downtown. If you were in a city view room at the cylindrical Radisson and looked up the hill, we’d be up 6 blocks and slightly to the left. This evidence proves that bears do not only do that in the woods but also in the city. Makes you wonder if the pope is always Catholic.
Well that evidence was of a putative bear and I was now faced with the real thing.
Immediately I reviewed all the sage advice regarding bears I’d given the children back in the day.
For instance, always show affection to bear cubs, pet them, fuss over them, dress them in little goofy outfits and so forth, and, when the mother returns, she will find heartwarming the fact that you cherish her cubs as much as she does.
Then there was the deployment of “The Churchill Manoeuvre.” (Fig. A below – also known as “The Moe”)). But what if the bear knew The Block? (Fig. B) Besides, I could not spread my fingers that wide anyway. I noticed in that instant that a bear's eyes are too widely set. I’d need to use both index fingers, which would by clumsy but, on the on the other hand, would void The Block. No, I decided then,” The Moe” would best be used only upon small to medium sized dogs, like those small Collies and Pomeranians, perhaps.
The third thing is the deal about figuring out which legs are longest on the bear. Supposedly one pair is always longer. If the rear legs are longer, you run downhill and when he chases you, the short front legs will cause him to bowl over and roll down the hill. Likewise, if the front legs are longer, you run uphill. For him it would be like trying to chase you up a stairwell while he was driving a fork lift
I could not tell which legs were longest on this particular bear. (Often I’ve wondered what you would do if you met a bear where it was flat. Say like in Rugby, North Dakota. Did you know that Rugby is “The Center of the North American Continent?” I’ve been there but I don’t know how they figured that out. It is flat. (Fig.C) I suppose, though, you could see any bear that was coming after you from a long ways away and then you could just jump in your car and drive off.
Well, I gathered up Jack and bravely ran into the house. I charged through the kitchen shouting BBBIG BBBBEAR!!! Kristi and Dale looked at me, looked at each other, either picked up or put down their bottles, and followed me through the house.
We shut Jack behind the inside door where he continued his apoplexy unabated. Sure enough, here came the bear around the corner and he paused just outside the screen.
I was struck by the surreal quality of this tableau. It was like having something weird and malevolent appearing, unbidden, to one’s front door. Like a strange space alien for instance. Or Michele Bachmann maybe.
The bear eventually turned away and gamboled up the walk and took a left down the center of The Boulevard. He hung a right up my neighbor’s drive and headed, presumably, to the woods where the towers pierce the sky. I wrote you about those woods last year. (Must’ve been a poor season this year. I only found 2 deer remains along Orange Street. There is a long grisly red spinal column though. Looks like something a paleontologist painstakingly puzzled over in a museum cellar for decades, assembling shards tenderly extracted from cartons lovingly shipped from Montana. Jack always manages to take a sneaky nip from the sacrum of it as we stroll by. And there is another dismembered deer at Enger Park too. In this case the guy who disposed of it must’ve had an interest in history because the greasy trail that slides down to the totally disarticulated carcass begins at the plaque explaining the history of the seaport, 2300 miles from the Atlantic, 602 feet above sea level, etc.)
Dale decided just then to growl at the bear. At this the bear paused, turned and considered us. Kristi admonished him smartly; maybe she’d heard enough of the growl that day?
In retrospect, repeating the scene in my mind, Dale’s growl was more Roy Orbison than MGM. He’d had so much practice brandishing it upon the pretty women at Bluesfest that day.
At any rate, not unlike most of the women at Bluesfest, the bear almost visibly shrugged and went on his way. Whether the bear felt threatened by that growl, or deemed us too insignificant a target for violent reaction, or, maybe, found it an insufficient invitation to consider mounting an amorous response, I cannot fathom.
Meanwhile I mentally measured how many steps it was to the door and which way to turn the knob. I pictured myself calling 911. Would they use a Taser on a bear? That would be a thrill in the house. There’d be quite a mess. Rather, maybe I’d call my neighbor Phil. He could be depended on to bring the right kind of ordinance. I exalted in the fact that I was closest to the door.
Luckily none of those scenarios materialized. We returned to the house for a nice candlelit dinner. All’s well that end’s well I always say.
Still, for the remainder of the summer, every time I went outside at night I cleared my throat loudly, banged the door explosively, and approached every blind corner and furtive shadow with stealthy trepidation.
Now it’s time for me to craft Fig A, B and C. I hope your year was a good one as well and that the next will afford peace, comfort and some excitement.
Happy Holidays.
Kristi, Jeff, Bill, Mesa, Joe.
P.S. The enclosed picture is of us at Rugby N.D. last spring.
#2
12/13/10 MONDAY 1033
Today I woke from a dream thinking about our old Jeep. A ’78, rusty but trusty, it had a heart of gold. I thought about the odyssey it took us on when we sold it. I figured it was time to write it all down for posterity.
So this is an Xmas letter supplement. I was going to stick with the deer head one; I told myself to hell with it, I’ll go with it in spite of Kristi offering me a subtle nonverbal review. She had rolled her eyes, pinched her nose and jabbed a finger down her throat.
As I said I intended to proceed anyway but, well, when I get a not quite exuberant response from someone I depend on to praise me, I do take notice. So suffer through another one, If you so choose.
I decided to sell that Jeep one fall day, “When you could ask more for it,” according to the nearly limitless sage advice offered by Cousin Mike.
I ran an ad in the Pioneer Press for maybe a week including the Sunday paper. Didn’t get one call. So I shrugged and decided to keep it, even though it had become superfluous.
It was a remarkable vehicle. A Cherokee Chief. ( A strange name when you think about it, did Saab ever build a car called the Swede Parson?) Had a big V-8, you couldn’t pour Premium down a sewer faster than it could guzzle it. And it could walk and talk. Or at least make enough noise to make you think you were going fast. Like the time its throttle stuck wide open for Kristi and the kids. The throttle was getting sticky so I had showed Kristi how to stomp it and release it and that usually worked. One day she tired this simple cure but it didn’t release this time. They shot down the road like a rocket sled. I can picture that bellowing yellow projectile and the look on their faces. She had enough presence off mind to switch off the ignition. Good thinking but this also locked the steering. They flew over an embankment, cut a swathe through some saplings and came to land on a huge pile of beer cans. A veritable Cheops of empties. I suspected Big Joe but he always drank from a bottle, more handy because he could always keep one in his back pocket.
You can imagine my concern when I got home from work that night but, I was happy to see nary a blemish on the Jeep. It was tough. Kristi called Paul Pream who helped her out of the ditch, freed the throttle and got them home. Here’s to you Paul. A true knight in rusty armor, that Pream.
A little Liquid Wrench to the throttle and we were back in business. All’s well that ends well I always say.
Towards the end it was getting tired, though. Once, when the kids were just recovering from chicken pox, we decided to joy ride up to Checkerboard Park by N. Branch because I hadn’t been there yet. We were going to shove off when Mesa called forward to me in alarm. She had pulled the seat belt out of its anchor and was holding it in her hands. There was a gaping hole in the wheel well. I don’t remember what I stuffed in that hole to keep out the dust and to keep stones from rocketing about the cabin. Maybe steel wool. From then on the middle position over the huge hump had to be used. Whenever we went somewhere after that I would make sure the kids were buckled in and then give the belts a gentle tug to make sure they were safe. (I still have that seat belt hanging in the garage, the recoil with its scab of rust swinging from a nail. I also have the lighter knob. One morning I came out and found all of the knobs bent over to the side…but that’s another story.)
Well, one Sunday afternoon, several weeks after the ad ran, the phone rang. A low, monotone growl of a voice asked if the Jeep was still for sale.
I said, “Sure.” After asking some perfunctory questions the rumble said he would buy it for the asking price under the condition that I would keep it until springtime. He would pay me for the storage. Then he asked if I would deliver it to Yankton S.D. He would pay for the gas. He refused to give me a call back number.
Here was a dandy deal. Paying me for something I intended to do anyhow. And as far as Yankton was concerned, I knew about it, it was a long distance away and I had never been there. Here was an adventure offered on a yellow platter. So I said, “Sure.”
So all went well. Got his check, tucked the Jeep away. Then, another Sunday the phone rang again and there was the Darth Vader breathing. He asked if, in the spring, I could bring it to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Now Cedar Rapids was closer, so that was a drawback, but I’d been there before and it is a nice town and we could make something of it. “Sure.”
Then another Sunday afternoon - it got to be so I was shying away from the phone on Sundays - and the flat sinister voice. “Could you deliver it to Mason City?” Now that was better, I’d never been there and could do some Buddy Holly snooping at Spirit Lake. “Sure.”
I never heard that disturbing voice again. I remember wondering about all this, standing at the window looking at that Jeep in the snow bank. Finally I decided he was some kind of Jeep headhunter, finding just the right vehicle for epicure Jeep collectors in those unlikely places.
Then several weeks later and one dark morning, at about 0630 the phone rang. This time an elderly lady, frank sounding, not very enthused, asked if I had sold the Jeep to so and so. “Sure.”
She explained to me she was Deep Throat’s mother. She asked if I would deliver it to Aberdeen S.D. “Sure.” Now we’re talking, I thought, never been there and new roads to boot. (I’d been within miles of Mason City anyway so the allure was not as fetching.) She informed me that I would be communicating with her only and I finally got a number. Further she said her son was in a, I think federal, penitentiary in Sioux Falls. (He only got to make one call a week, hence our Sunday afternoon visits.) She said he was there on some sort of weapons charge and that was a no-no for him since he was a previous felon. Gads.
So on one fine April late afternoon we lit out for Aberdeen. A lovely drive into the setting sun and the dark, we finally stopped at a hilltop motel in Ortonville. A button glowed in the darkened, stuffy little lobby. I buzzed it. A casual glance about revealed lots of gun-nut paraphernalia, placards and slogans, wood carved mottos and so forth.
A beady eyed short guy emerged from a too bright room beyond where talk radio was blaring. Clad in cammo from tip to toe, he appraised me with a thinly disguised disgust. Funny thing about that cammo, in most cases it is self defeating because these guys sport it with the intent of being noticed.
Over my lifetime, believe it or not, I’ve had many opportunities to be made aware of someone not liking me. He took my cash with distaste. Apparently, since I wasn’t EXACTLY like him, I represented everything he loathed.
Nothing open for food there in town, I recall Kristi emerging from a convenience store. I think we had a little picnic in the room. Think Planes Trains and Automobiles.
[OVER]
The next day bright, the view of Big Stone Lake was marvelous. We stopped at a little pull out where an old wooden boat was under an awning. The boat was not unlike the old launches I saw on Mille Lacs when I was a kid. There was a copper tablet there with a legend about lake excursions, a tragic thunderstorm and a rescue back in the 30’s.
The road from Big Stone City to Aberdeen is not too curvy but it sure is flat. We thundered along between roadside marshes absolutely alive with birds of every sort of make and model. I had never been across the Great Plains in springtime. I recommend it.
Aberdeen seemed a fine town, a healthy hustle to it, at least in those days. There was an airport with a nice WPA era terminal. We met Jeep Guy’s Mother at a predetermined place, a sunny atrium style coffee shop.
We had bonded a little over the course of several calls. She grieved over her son who was a paranoid schizophrenic and noncompliant with his medications. She and her husband were retired college professors from the local college. Her husband
was suffering from Alzheimer’s, homebound, and needed constant care. He was deteriorating.
She was smartly dressed, bright of eye and of conversation. We learned she had authored a book on the prairie plants in a nature preserve, if I remember right, near Enemy Swim Lake. (I recall chastising myself when it sprang to my mind: “Exorbitant and so feebly updated every 3 years that you could practically smell the reek of White Out. And the newest edition: Required for this class.) She was a leading expert on the natural flora of the Coteau des Prairies.
It was a nice conversation, I could’ve lingered but soon it was time to follow her through town to a rental unit where I was to park the Jeep. She asked if I would help her load something into it. “Sure.”
I unloaded a new gas generator from her minivan and put it in the Jeep. I rolled up the garage door and peered into the depths. Back in the dark, was a blacked out monster Yammy dirt bike, stripped and menacing. It dwarfed my own and I immediately coveted the thing. So Jeep Guy was going to go off the grid by the looks of things. I gave silent thanks that I never had to meet him.
I paused at the door, gave the Jeep a last longing look and rolled the door shut.
We said farewell and I watched her in the rearview as she got into that minivan: A sharp lady, stooping under heavy burdens through her Golden Years.
We retraced our miles, now both of us in the little red Festiva. We stopped for sun at a lovely Wayside Rest along the Pomme de Terre River, boisterous with spring contributions. We parked away from the road. It is surprising what the consenting can accomplish in a little Festiva. We left one door open, I think. No knobs bent over either, if you know what I mean.
Onward. We explored up to Swift Falls where there is a park Scott Wordelman told me about one time. We picnicked on the banks of the stream that yields its name to that place.
Later we dined in an old fashioned supper club in Cold Spring, it was good, it’s till there. We saw it this fall. Arrived back home late, having crossed the entire state at its slimmest waistline that day. I don’t recall what happened to the kids. Maybe Grandma Margit was with them. That’s the way it goes with kids, it’s hard to remember what they were doing while you’re out having a sweet good time.
Afterwards I began to worry about Jeep Guy. What if his mental image - and he maybe had more of them than you or I do - did not match the real Jeep article? What if some unexpected Kablammo rendered the old ride immobile? Would he seek me out for retribution? I thought about hearing a big Yammy thumping into the drive and him hulking over it bristling with Kalashnikovs. (Then again, maybe he was a short guy in cammo.) I shuddered.
So I asked my old friend Dr. Orhan for an opinion. He reviewed the details of the case and with the same astute deliberate consideration he must attend to all his neurology consults, i.e. one or maybe two seconds, he replied, “If he’s not taking his meds he’ll be lucky to find his way back home….let alone finding you in Chisago.”
Well it was a comfort to hear that. Still Jeep Guy would cross my mind every now and then for many years, but not anymore. My trail has grown so cold over the years that my high school couldn’t find me for my last reunion warning.
So, like I always say, all’s well that ends well.
Happy Holidays,
The Smiths
#1
12/1/10
Greetings. We are fine and fit; hope the same for you and yours.
Not much has changed for me (age 55) and my lovely wife Kristine, (age 19). We are still both employed, we enjoy Minnesota road trips and Kristi’s pregnancy has been uneventful. She’s a trooper.
Mesa, her fiancé Joe, and Billy all live together here in town. I don’t remember how old they are anymore. They shiver together in a beach house they rent across the lift bridge on Park Point. It’s quite a house, a birdcage is better insulated. The floors are so uneven that a pail of water dashed into a corner would evaporate long before ever concluding the frenzied quest for its own level. Each room seems to have been added in a different epoch, by conflicted carpenters employing random disagreeable units of measure. If some of these landlords here in town ever had a convention their combined laughter would be thunderous.
The stairway is cramped and canted in cockeyed cambers and traversing it sometimes confuses me as to whether I am actually going up or down. It’s like being in one of those “Wonder Spots,” those “Cosmic Vortex” tourist traps where if your buddy stands in one corner he looks runty but then, when he crosses over to the opposite corner, he looks like Abe Lincoln. You know…those places where a ball bearing has been trained to painstakingly ascend a minute incline? Well, I bet these kids could open a rip roaring roadside attraction right there, if they wanted to.
(But I don’t know about that transforming from puny to enormous deal when going from corner to corner. I haven’t tried that in their house, yet. I think that the next time we’re down there I’ll ask Kristi to stand in the corners while I carefully watch her.)
Still, it must be a great place to live. Out front one can sit on the porch and enjoy the colorful summertime parade of Minnesota Avenue: runners, skaters, boarders, bicyclists, picnickers, day trippers, tourists, sports cars, hot rods and choppers. Some people even walk. And many of those are game to strike up a conversation.
But out the back door is a sand dune, and just over that is the glorious beach, the longest fresh water sandbar in the world, and they patronize it daily. The breeze over the lake is their air conditioner and the breakers a lullaby.
As for me I plug along. I still walk Jack (age 13 yrs) daily around this town, most often right here in the neighborhood, and above it by a block or two where the city streets become country roads in the space of an intersection.
As I said last year, we walk Orange Street. I still find things and rarely come home empty handed: bolts, nuts, knobs, stuff like that. Early last month a white object in the woods caught my eye. I wrestled my way through the brush and found a beautiful deer skull just sitting on top of the leaves, glowing like alabaster. I wondered how it came to be there, alone like a statue with no other bones around. I picked it up and took it home. I felt a trifle conspicuous as I walked down the sidewalk with this skull in my hands. I tried to act nonchalant. I hung it on Kristi’s garden trellis to surprise her, she has not seen it yet, but I guess she knows about it now. It looks cool, kind of Old West-like.
Speaking of skulls, Orange Street is one of the favored locations for hunters to dump their deer when they get back to town and can’t figure out what to do with it now that they have one. Last year I counted 4, maybe 5, such deer deposited along my route. It’s not just Duluth either. I have located while walking Jack, a similar place in Superior, across from the Fraser Shipyards, where the Wisconsin hunters do likewise. These fellows prefer to pile them up in one place, rather than scatter them about like their Minnesota counterparts. Tidier that way, I suppose.
My uncommon good luck at finding these remains is due to Jack who is in possession of a particularly acute nose for their discovery. Otherwise I would most likely walk right by and miss them. (Curiously he showed not a whit of interest in that skull I found - because it was so dried out I think.)
This year, early in deer season, the first of these ditchings appeared by a service road to one of those huge antennas. This was an unusually grizzly scene as the deer had been crudely dismembered. Disarticulated actually, it looked as if it had been vivisected with a dull Garden Weasel. Not one piece of it remained attached to where it should’ve been. Its rump was in the air, and a leg jutted out here and the other over there, and its arms too were disjointedly poking out of the mess. I could just see the nose sticking out at the bottom. I don’t know what caused the author of this carnage to do such jagged violence to the carcass but if he or she took any meat for consumption, I didn’t see the evidence. It was as if the perpetrator was in a frenzied search for a pearl inside that creature.
Why I mention this is because a week or so later, after the cold had come in and it had snowed, as we were walking up Orange we could see something up ahead on the road. When we got there we saw it was a deer head. This one had been severed with more aplomb than with what the previously mentioned deer’s head had been cleaved. This one was neatly rendered, just like if you’d draw your finger across your own throat.
I could not explain how this deer head got there. Like Kristi’s deer head there were no other bones around it. That first chopped up deer was almost across the road from this head so I went down there in the ditch to examine it. I pushed at the remaining pile with my boot and kicked off some of the snow and so forth and I could still see that deer’s head down at the bottom like before.
My mystery was soon solved though because, as we walked on, just around the corner, we found where another deer, presumably the source of the mystery head, had been dumped and clouted by the snowplow. Judging by the stain, this deer had been chucked on the road, apparently this dumper was disdainful of using the ditch. There was a long trail of deer parts along the road in the plow’s wake and the crows were having at it. So my deer head had been booted along by the plow to where we found it. [OVER]
On our way back I stopped to consider the deer head at my leisure. Jack seemed particularly fond of the deer’s lips and I had to swat him away several times while I made my examination. This was strange in itself because I thought he would be more prone to the stump of a spinal cord sticking out the back end of it. And speaking of that, I could not locate a trachea, which makes me think that this was kind of a strange deer.
I say that because this deer had a stupefying arrangement of teeth. It’s true I never looked in a deer’s mouth before but, this deer had two rows of teeth – on the roof of its mouth! Teeth just like you and me have. Reach with your tongue and feel those big flat ones in the back. These are what this deer had from fore to aft in two rows. They were almost like long unitooths, so tightly where they arranged.
I wanted to see if it had teeth like Kristi’s deer head has in the expected place (flat ones in back like ours) but I couldn’t get that deer’s mouth open any farther. I think its mouth was frozen shut. Or it could’ve been the rigor mortis, maybe. But can you get that with only just a head, or does it have to be attached to the rest of the body first? I don’t know, maybe I’ll ask a doctor someday. Or an undertaker.
Besides, I don’t think deer can open their mouths very wide anyway. We have plenty of deer in the yard all the time and I never have seen one with his mouth hanging open. Even in the hot summer time.
So how can a deer chew with teeth on the top of its mouth? And how can it avoid grinding its tongue to ribbons while in the act? I looked carefully at this deer’s tongue; it was poking out as if the deer had been sharply clapped on the back unexpectedly. The tongue was big and I can report it showed no sign of unitooth inflicted damage.
I returned with these things on my mind and I examined Kristi’s deer head closely. There is no evidence for uniteeth on the top of its mouth which makes me think maybe this isn’t a deer skull after all. True it is kind of pointy in shape like a deer’s head but maybe it is from some other kind of creature. Like maybe a mammoth skunk or something.
Anyhow, the next day I returned to the deer head with the idea of having another look but it had been punted down the road by passing vehicles and was quite scuffed up by then and there was now slush frozen to it and the thing just wasn’t of much account anymore. I wished I had set it aside. Funny though, the next day after that it was gone entirely. Maybe some other guy brought it home for his wife.
Since then, still in pursuit of answers to some of these questions I have about them, I have paid acute attention to deer heads mounted on the wall. This has yielded precious little in results because all these deer heads are about the same. All tightlipped and somber like, maybe one with his head twisted this way or that for variety but, overall, every single one has the same sober expression. I know, I know, I’d have a pretty somber look on my face too if it happened to me but what’s with these taxidermists anyway? Do they just learn how to put that one doleful face on every deer?
Just look what a crackerjack painter can do with dogs for instance. I’ve seen many, ever so lifelike, depictions of dogs shooting pool, sporting jaunty little hats, wearing little plaid vests, playing cards, puffing on stogies and/or slugging whiskey - in short, doing everything that would come natural to a dog if he could do it.
These mounted deer heads are going to be up there for a long time, so why not have some fun with them? Why can’t these taxidermists put a little effort in to tell a story? Say have a big buck look real angry and menacing, or have a frightened look on one with its eyes kind of bugged out, or having one with a goofy grin or something? Maybe you could have a rakish buck leering lasciviously across the room at a saucy doe who could be favoring him with a randy wink in return. Or, maybe, have the buck with his head arched way back with lips puckered, caught in mid wolf whistle while a coquettish demure doe shyly peers up at him through long thick lashes. (The deer head I saw didn’t really have much for lashes, or it could’ve just been that the plow had knocked them off, but regardless, women stick lashes on themselves all the time and I’m sure a good taxidermist could do the same for a deer.)
I can’t accuse all taxidermists of negligence though. Up the road, out in the country, there is a supper club that does have a two headed pike on the wall. One head on each end and it looks astonishingly lifelike. I have looked at it closely and it sure is something. It kind of has a smirk on its faces too. Now there’s a real artist for you. But, then again, it should be noted that all pike smirk.
I allow that a deer does present a limited palette. Being the stupidest animal ever to grace this green earth, it would be a challenge to wring much expression out of one, I admit. But add a pipe and he might look like genius. See what I mean?
Speaking of that, now where’d I leave my pipe? Kristi???
Happy Holidays,
The Smiths
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
12-19-09 SATURDAY
Greetings. We are fine and fit; hope the same for you and yours.
As for myself (age 54 years) and my lovely wife Kristine (age 28), not much has changed since last year.
Billy (age over 25) lives here in Duluth and will resume school soon, taking after his folks this time around. He is wily and elusive but we do make sightings of him every now and then.
Mesa (about 25 I guess) and Jo (I have no idea) returned on the 16th from South Korea where they have been living for over a year. Though Kristi did make a visit to Pusan last winter, and we’ve kept in touch on the Skype, it was a long time and it is so sweet to have them back. They brought their cats back (age uncertain, cats being so inscrutable and touchy). They didn’t give those cats any dope before the trip this time so I didn’t miss seeing them get stoned again. Now THAT was funny.
Our dog Jack (age 12x7) keeps on rolling. We take a walk every day and we see things. He reads his peemail and I conduct complex and convoluted internal dialogs. We walk Orange Street. It starts just over the hill in back here, about 2 blocks up. And although it is about 10 blocks from right downtown Duluth, it is a wooded country road as wild as any in Granite Ledge or those near Almelund. Except when you crane your neck back. Then you see the huge antennas that pierce the wilderness. Maybe if you’ve been to Duluth you’ve seen all those towers. They are massive and they hum. Sometimes they howl when the winds shriek off the big lake.
On the corner at the lower end of Orange St there was a Pomeranian. She, without fail, would bark excitedly at Jack every time we’d walk by. She’d stamp her feet and read him the riot act while I exchanged pleasantries with her master, an old man who often sat in the shade at a patio table having a smoke.
One day, in a magnanimous gesture of benevolence, I divined that it might be a good thing to have the 2 dogs meet, get close and personal. Maybe that would relieve some of her tensions. I announced my theory as I dragged Jack towards her.
The old man started to protest. I waved off his objections. “Jack’s good with other dogs,” I assured him. Still, he became ever more agitated and began struggling to his feet.
“Just watch,” I declared.
Jack duly wagged his tail and was about to sniff the nose of the now apoplectic Pomeranian, when, suddenly and without warning, she stiffened out, her eyes rolled back and she keeled over on her side like a tenpin. She began to vibrate and a thin gruel of foam issued from her lips, now drawn into a gruesome rictus.
“Wow!” I said. Jack looked at me and I looked at him and we looked at her. We leapt back as if that Pomeranian was about to explode
The old man shuffled over painfully, “You see,” he stammered, “You see, she’s got a real bad heart,” he tapped his own chest and shook his head sadly, “She can’t take much excitement anymore.” He nodded down towards the dog who was now starting to flag a bit, “She’ll do that.”
The Pomeranian slowly began to throttle back. She stopped her undulations. “She’ll come around again,” he said hopefully, “I’m pretty sure.” She snored coarsely.
Then unexpectedly she awoke. She regained her composure, shook herself, saw Jack, and started to stamp and yap again. That was a relief.
They are both gone now. I miss them.
Anyway, I find stuff up there on Orange St. I have found a fax machine, cans full of beer, a seashell, a lap top computer, a bag of pot, tools, a console T.V., lots of bouquets, and enough bolts, nuts, screws, springs and fasteners to stock the drawers in my mancave downstairs. I find money: dollar bills, dimes and quarters, pennies, but never a nickel. The nickel is on its way out, I think. Going the way of the shekel.
I find keys. Recently an entire cluster of them, with a fractured tie still attached. (Probably was bound under a car.) I even found OUR house key up on Orange St. A lady who was housesitting for us once lost it, while walking Jack. It was ravaged but recognizable because it had a red plastic ring on it. The business end of the key was gone, the avulsed point probably lodged in some poor guy’s tire.
The housesitter had apologized effusively upon our return. She was a nurse Kristi worked with and later, when I found that key, I had Kristi secret it into the woman’s purse. I thought it would be a good trick for her to find that mangled stub in there. Maybe see the look on her face. But she left for greener pastures; we never did hear how that came out. Maybe she lost that purse.
Speaking of a lost purse, on the Sunday before Thanksgiving I found one in the ditch. I struggled it out of the weeds. It was bulging. Oh boy, I thought, maybe full of dough? It was full, but no money. There was candy, a lighter, cigarettes, BCP’s (A robust combo) and a pilfered pocket book. The lousy thieves left her license. She looked to be an attractive young lady form a nearby small town in Wisconsin.
I walked along with this big pink purse and began to feel self-conscious. It didn’t go with my outfit. Even back here, what if someone drove by? I thought about the day I walked up Orange St and on the way back was surprised by my neighbor Andy who emerged form the woods in full cammo, looking like a commando. He had a bow with enough pulleys on it to raise the Titanic. (The city permits some bow hunters to combat the Duluth deer infestations.) I remember thinking that day, I hope I wasn’t scratching my butt the first time I walked by.
Anyway, what if Andy was in the woods now and saw me mincing along with this pink purse? I could sense his eyes narrowing; I would prove an irresistible target. I swiveled my neck too and fro, scrutinizing the woods, would I even hear the zing or just feel the arrow smite me? The skin between my scapulas began to pucker. I decided to leave the purse on a lonely stretch of sidewalk with the plan of fetching it upon my return. [OVER]
While I walked I imagined myself swooping up to her door, gallantly bestowing the beloved pink purse into her grateful hands. I would then turn on my heel, waving off all offers of a rich, well deserved, reward. All it would take for me is some simple sleuthing.
But then I began to think that, what if, on that day, with her lovely vulnerable shape in the doorway and the tears on her cheeks, suddenly a large young beast of man in a Packers jersey loomed up behind her and began to ask questions and then started in to sock me a lot? I was beginning to develop some reservations about that pink purse.
No matter. When I crested the hill on my way back I could see ahead a pickup parked alongside the purse, which now looked oddly alien sitting there on that abandoned stretch of walk. As I approached a window whirred down.
A man said, “Did you see any girls around here?” He nodded at the purse.
I told him about finding it. He said, “I called the cops. They’re on the way.”
Well then, here was a turn of events. I felt uneasy about the cops. I fought back a nearly irresistible urge to free Jack and shout, “Scram! We’ll meet up back at home!” I’ve seen lots of movies where fugitives are handcuffed and on the lamb. Being bound together is almost always a detriment, unless the other fugitive is a beautiful woman.
But the guy was interesting, turns out he lives right across from the erstwhile Pomeranian. We chatted and soon a cop came. Then there I was giving my name and so forth to a cop, again, in broad daylight, in my own neighborhood.
It is curious that only the women who I have told about that purse, not counting the cop who was a guy, have asked me if I saw anything else around the place where I found it. Like a body. The thought never crossed my mind, to tell the truth. So much for my simple sleuthing, I guess.
As long as I am writing about my neighborhood, dogs, and finding things, I’ll conclude with a story about my neighbor who I’ll call Ray.
One day he saw a rope - with a German Shepherd attached - out in his yard. He recognized it immediately as another neighbor’s dog. Let’s call this neighbor Joe.
So he grabbed the rope and headed down to Joe’s with the big dog in tow. Joe was up on a ladder doing something. Ray approached, beamed up at Joe and announced, “I got something of yours.”
Joe descended the ladder and said, “Stay right there.” He disappeared around the back of the garage and returned shortly with a rope attached to his own German Shepherd. “I don’t think so,” he said.
This was now Ray’s problem. Luckily the dog had a collar with an address on it. So Ray loaded the dog into his car and drove the 20 or so blocks to dog’s place. He pounded on the door. No one was home. So he tied the dog to a tree and drove away. I am sure he was content in the fact that a random act of kindness is still good. But a young lady, shapely silhouetted in the doorway, gratefully extending reward for her beloved pet’s safe return would’ve been a lot better.
Some days later Ray was walking through our neighborhood, as he so often rarely does, and spotted the rope again. It was tied to a tree and to the German Shepherd. There was guy in the yard and Ray said, “Is that your dog?”
The guy looked at the dog and said, “Yeah?”
Ray told him his story about the dog and the guy said, “You know, we were wondering about that. The guy who bought our house last year called and said, your dog came back and tied himself to a tree.”
Happy Holiday’s
The Smith’s and the above.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
2-10-08
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Smith
610 West Skyline Pkwy
Duluth, MN 55806
MONDAY 12/10/07
Anyway a Christmas Letter is more a place for boasting and not for whining. Even though listening to someone’s worthy whining is more entertaining than listening to them brag - which isn’t saying much – still, this year I’ve decided to keep it short.
Listen, people, I ask each of you to tell at least 15 friends that Charter Communications is a lousy company.
In this season, it might be the greatest gift you could give them.
If you have enemies, don’t tell them at all or, do like I do and sign them up surreptitiously. I intend, later today, to enroll some more of my enemies like, for example, President Ahmadinejad, Rush Windbag (again) and Barry Manilow, maybe.
All you have to do is call 800-GET CHARTER. Sign them up for the entire “Bundle,” (Pile would’ve been more apt) and you’ll increase their displeasure immensely.
Incidentally, by calling that same number and requesting “Service,” I have found I could take a trip and never leave my armchair, the back of my T.V., or my tortured squat there by the computer modem. Within agonizing minutes I would be whisked to Lahore, Islamabad, Montgomery, Mobile and maybe, Mumbai. And once there I was treated to English that even a human can’t understand.
So, returning to a Holiday theme, this is the time of year to be Thankful, especially if you don’t have Charter, or have recently fired them.
Also, may your heart be filled with Joy if you don’t have Charter, or recently fired them.
And the New Year will be bright and promising if Charter is not a part of your life.
My hope is that the above dreams will, at the very least, come true for you and yours.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS,
The Smiths
Also, interestingly, if you stare up at the blade long enough you’ll behold that deal where it looks like the blade is going kind of backwards slowly too…like the stagecoach spokes on Gunsmoke used to do, when they drove them really fast. I can’t explain why that is.
Our other big news would be the passing of our Cat Callie. (Age 0, again, I guess.) She was very old, really just a kind of jerky fur covered cat skeleton with a scratchy meow.
We never did see eye to eye, me and that cat. And it wasn’t because of her crosseyes either.
We had started out on the wrong foot, or paw, way back in 1986 when she materialized one day at our back door. Unfortunately the kids, and my lovely wife Kristine (Age 23), got to the door before I did.
I think there was enmity between me and that animal because she somehow resented my repeated and enthusiastic invitations for her to leave back then. But, over the years we had settled into an uneasy coexistence and it worked.
It was a long gradual decline that brought her to the veterinarian’s door on that last day.
It slowly dawned on me that cats never just keel over. I have never come upon one that had succumbed to natural causes. I’ve seen cats along the road, struck down by cars. (I can’t say I’ve seen one lately, so much have the deer stolen that spotlight.) I’ve also known a good cat who was a victim of drinking antifreeze, but not ever one that just had a heart attack or a bad apoplexy or something like that.
In the summertime we sometimes eat dinner on the front porch. Since there are few mosquitoes in Duluth we leave the door open. The cat once came snooping out. I got up quickly to fetch her back in, but Kristi said, “Leave her be….sometimes they go out like that, they just wander off when they are ready to die.”
I looked at her, astonished. She is a farm girl after all, and knows many secrets. So great was my hope and joy that I am sure I embraced her with grateful abandon.
So, I remember thinking, this explains it. Cats must have a kind of secret graveyard they congregate to, kind of like the elephants do in Africa.
But how would a cat get all the way over there? I could see from Duluth a cat could stowaway on one of these big ships and get to Africa that way, but how about a cat in Lindstrom, or Milaca for that matter?
I didn’t have to worry over it for long because, unfortunately, Kristi’s Kat Hospice Koncept did not work. Every time we tried it we’d find ourselves on our bellies, back in the alley, in the dark, alongside the landladies’ RV, trying to coax Callie out from under it.
You know, a cat will never do anything to help you out.
If Lassie had been a cat, Timmy would still be down in the old well and, whenever Timmy’ s dad would get trapped under the tipped over tractor, Lassie the Cat would just have sat there licking her paw, tantalizingly just out of Pa’s reach.
In the end I must say Callie met her fate with dignity and grace. She rests now beneath the sands of Carlos Avery, her old hunting grounds. (I got to buy a new shovel at Stacy Hardware, too, and it’s a dandy!) And she was a mouser of legendary prowess. Nearly every day, in that era when we resided in the picturesque Chisago Lakes countryside, we’d see her returning with a new “mousestache.”
Did I ever tell you about the time I went out the front door barefoot one night and stepped on a dead mouse in my underwear? (I was in my underwear, the mouse was barenaked. At least it felt like the mouse was naked as it extruded between my toes.) That mouse was one of Callie’s. I bet she was out there in the dark, tantalizingly just out of reach, licking her paw, smugly satisfied.
I (age 50) know I haven’t mentioned our son Bill (age 24). He continues his studies at UMD. He’s the sort of guy, well, the world just kind of comes to him. The Dude abides.
Happy Holidays!
The Smiths.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Orr MN
Although my exciting life yields daily wonders, even I had an exceptionally harrowing incident the other day. As you are probably aware, last week’s snow was very heavy. We were hit particularly hard up here in the charming Chisago Lakes Area. The snow was extraordinarily contrary to shovel and blower.
Well, last Tuesday morning I was about finished snowblowing, just tidying up the back walk when I noticed a curious eruption in the snow alongside of me. It appeared as if a crevice was tearing through the snow’s surface at a spectacular rate of speed. At about this time I also noted that the steel ring on the clothesline, the one that is attached to the dog lead, had begun to accelerate in my direction, zipping along the clothesline. (This ring is attached to a long length of cord that has a snaphook on the other end. We simply snap it through the dog’s collar and he can run back and forth over a wide expanse of barren earth, pulling the ring to and fro along the clothesline. Although often as not we return at the end of the day finding him wound tightly around the clothesline pole.)
It was about then that I realized I must’ve trod over that dog line with the snowblower and that the ripping effect on the snow was the slack of that line being taken up by the blower’s furiously rotating devices. My assumption was correct for at that instant the line became vibratingly taut as the ring rather violently achieved the end of its travel. It shuddered there for a trifle until the traction being applied it became too great. The protesting clothesline surrendered and was rent, thus liberating the ring, which then proceeded to hurtle through the air and to strike me smartly upon my left eye.
Startled, I staggered backwards as I simultaneously realized something had drawn a very tight constriction about my left lower leg. I inadvertently had somehow stepped into an errant loop of that line. Crazily fast I was snatched from my footing, landing heavily upon my back. At once, the machine began to tow me through the slush towards it.
Forthwith I grasped the clothesline pole, arresting my inexorable progress towards that ravenous maw. However this did my situation little good as the snowblower then began to dumbly rotate slowly in my direction, commencing then to spool itself along the line towards me.
I was furious with the stupid contraption. Here it was turning on ME, the same one who just that morning had baler wired that bothersome safety lever to the “Always On” position, thus sparing all the inefficient wear and tear of repeated stoppings and startings upon it’s own ungrateful mechanism. This also kept my fingers warmer in the bargain.
Luckily I had wisely chosen not to tie my boots that morning and, at about this time, my boot came flying off, freeing me from the cruel bondage of that stubborn line. But unfortunately, this also relieved me of an encircling band of skin from just above my ankle down nearly to my toes…denuding it as cleanly as if a belt sander had been applied to the region. Exquisitely sensitive.
As I watched my Sorrel dance towards the machine, I became aware of another peculiar phenomena under the snow on the opposite side of the snowblower. A bulge was approaching the machine at approximately the same rate of speed as my boot, both bearing down upon the witless juggernaut.
It was then that I realized a bad thing. The night before, at the height of the storm, I came home from work and decided it would be interesting to see what Mesa’s new little cat, Loudog, thought about the snow. After all, he was just a kitten in the summer when Mesa found him and, in a scientific manner, I was curious to see how he responded to something so new and foreign. So I threw him out back under the lights and delighted in his silly antics for awhile. His comical discomforts were entertaining to say the least. He would try to lift all his paws at once and shake them spastically. He genuinely looked miserable under all that pelting wet snow. He staggered about, kind of like he did after that time I favored him with a ride in the dryer with the towels.
I must’ve got distracted because I had obviously forgotten the little chap outside, overnight, on the snaphook, on that lead. So this explained that mound speeding towards the indifferent blades of the amok machinery. It was a race between boot and kitty.
The cat won by the merest fraction. A small cat can be ejected from a snow blower at an astonishing velocity. Almost as quickly as a boot can choke that same machine.
Panting, I slogged up to the snowblower and with considerable effort wrested my boot free from the auger. Then I commenced to worry at all that line which had managed to entangle itself into a nearly impenetrable configuration. After a gargantuan effort I finally reached into the chute to free the last piece of stubborn debris from the impeller. It was shiny. I then realized it was the remnants of that cheap little collar Macie had bought for Lou. The buckle had snagged on the grease zirk and busted, most likely sparing the cat the prospect of wildly rotating about in the mechanisms and further, being bonked by a boot….to boot.
Just then I remembered: THE CAT! After insuring my machine was unscathed, I gingerly advanced to the spot where the cat had come to earth. Along the way I had quietly rehearsed the sad news I would have to deliver to Mesa: “Your dumb cat really did it this time!”
I discovered him lying there. Thinking it was pretty handy to have the garbage can so close by and all, I stooped over and gently picked him up with my choppers. I swiveled my head slightly to peer down at him, as my left eye was nearly swollen shut from the impact of that fool ring.
Suddenly, and without warning, the cat sprang up onto my face, roaring with a ferocity totally out of proportion for such a small creature. He latched onto my ears with his claws and bit mightily into my nose, twisting his head this way and that rapidly and repeatedly as he ground his jaws together for better purchase. I howled and sprang about, desperately trying to remove him from my face. These actions just seemed to intensify his resolve as he only dug his claws in deeper and readjust his bite to encompass my upper lip as well. The intense pain of this surreptitious and unprovoked attack was indescribable.
With my lightning quick reflexes I drew my forearm back and swung powerfully. But that diabolical creature seemed alive with malice. He darted over my jaw and dashed down the front of my vest and under my shirt, just a fraction of a second before my robust blow came crashing down upon my already beleaguered face. I was nearly blinded with the pain and the blood shot from my nose.
My ordeal was not yet over though. The cat rapidly snaked his way under my clothing and along my torso. He then bit my belly fiercely. His teeth, like 2 dozen hypodermics, impaled my tender and unprotected flesh while his back legs pistoned at a feverish rate, his talons like animated razors slicing my skin to ribbons. My layered clothing was not generous enough to allow me a firm grip on my writhing tormentor. Bellowing, I surged forward and executed an Olympian belly flop onto the snow bank. This greatly subdued him and I was then able tear open my shirts and begin the extraction of his varied weapons from my tortured trunk.
There is a bit of a happy ending though. Earlier I had deemed shoveling the roof too dangerous so I sent Billy up there to do it. Hearing my clamor, he came over to investigate and found the cat ravaging my face as I stumbled blindly about. By the time I got around to withdrawing the cat from my perforated abdomen he was nearly hysterical with laughter. However he did NOT get the last laugh, as you will see.
Amid his uproarious hilarity he lost his footing. He fell flat on his back and began to slide towards the eaves. He flailed but there was no grip on the frozen shingles. He plummeted over the edge dragging a gutter with him. However, I had insisted upon a safety feature of my own contemplation: A rope tied to his lower leg with the other end of this lifeline looped stoutly around the chimney. Thus his progress towards the ground was instantaneously arrested, in a blur his feet first trajectory was rotated 180 degrees to that of a headfirst position. There he swung, halfway between earth and sky.
Now was my time to laugh. Even the gravity of my own injuries could not spare me from savoring that sight. There was Bill, a strange, upended, flightless bird, flapping uselessly, an undulating pendulum…the face so recently animated with laughter now turning blue. Suddenly his own boot released him and he fell heavily, sustaining an ankle abrasion nearly identical to mine. The same leg too!
All’s well that ends well is what I say. Oh, he continues to complain bitterly of his neck hurting and his head does loll wryly to the side a bit. But young people get over these things. I know that.
This reminds me, his boot still hangs there. It is so tightly constricted on one end that it looks kind of like a gigantic Hershey’s Kiss swinging there. I will have to retrieve it one of these days.
After several days and many cans of tuna, Mesa has coaxed old Loudog back from the woods to the safety of our home. His hair is even, already, starting to come back in a crazy quilt, patchwork kind of way.
But his old devil may care esprit has not returned yet. He will whimper mournfully and sprint under the sofa if even a few snowflakes fall outside the window. I am curious as to what he will do the next time I fire up the snowblower. I can’t wait.
In the end though, I must admit that young Lou is quite a trooper. You have to respect his durability, not to mention his tenacity. Especially when you consider that long hot muggy spell last August and him being accidentally locked up in the trunk of Mesa’s Ford Fairmont or, even that incident with the fireworks. And to think some cruel, heartless, depraved miscreant just dumped him off. Mesa found him covered in mud by the end of the driveway and, despite my resentful protestations and persistent reservations, he has managed to nose his way into our happy family.
And yet you would think he would display more gratitude to us for rescuing him. The other day I awoke from a little snooze here and found him, teeth bared in a silent snarl, ears back, remaining tufts of fur on end and his pupils dilated, poised, as if to spring, just inches from my throat. But I understand that on a psychological level this display of misplaced aggression was really meant for his original master who rejected him. Cats get over these things. I know that.
Jeff, Kristi, Billy, Macie Smith.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Of course the downside of these amazing achievements would be the probable inevitable displacement of the sad creatures which in the past have long sought refuge upon our old drainfield. Those strange, flightless, winged frogs (You can’t even get them to jump!), the forlorn blind two-headed kittens, and even those crazy centimanders, will now have to find another place to congregate.
