An Age-old Story

It’s an age thing, I guess.
The other day, I was in the checkout line at a local “big box” retailer and I swiped my debit card in the reader. I’ve since replaced it, but the card I was using was pretty worn out from a lot of use and the stress of being jammed into the file cabinet I call a wallet.
The card didn’t want to work, and I swiped it repeatedly, muttering to myself as I envisioned having to walk away from my cartload of purchases.
“Are you sure you’re doing it right, hon?” asked the young lady manning the register.
“Hon?”
I’m almost sure she didn’t call me that because she was overwhelmed by a sudden crush on me.
Instead, I fear the “hon” part was, apparently, a gentle form of address directed towards someone no longer possessing the mental capacity to operate everyday electronic gadgets..
I thought about informing her her that I had been directly involved in the introduction of one of the very first ATM systems in the central midwest back in the day and certainly knew how to use a simple debit card. But I realized that advertising launch probably occurred before she was born. To tell her that I had written volumes of advertising copy and produced TV and radio commercials for what, at that time, was a revolutionary concept, would be like telling her I had been around for the invention of air.
Luckily, the card finally worked and I escaped without further embarrassment.
I guess it’s just another example of how age kind of sneaks up on you.
Now, bear in mind that I am not yet a full-fledged dinosaur walking the earth. I admit, though, that I have steadily readjusted my definition of middle age. Remember, I’m part of the “never trust anyone over 30” set, so that seemed like a likely milestone...until I reached it. 40 followed suit, as did 50. Now, as I look at the short end of the next decade, I’ve decided 100 is about right for middle age.
Which means I’ll live to be 200.
At which point, you can call me “hon.”
+++++++
Speaking of birthdays, I was noodling around on a new (to me) website called Wolfram/Alpha the other day. It is, according the blurb on its front page, “the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone.”
Apparently, though, plain, understandable English is not part of the ambitious, long-term project.
It’s almost impossible to make this sound simple, but basically, Wolfram/Alpha is what happens when you foolishly give math guys access to the rest of the world. You enter a search term, and the site quickly spits back a pile of mathematic data surrounding that term. For instance, punching in your hometown elicits population, elevation, geographic coordinates, weather data and distance from nearby cities, which, I admit, is all interesting, and even potentially useful, information. But I was even more fascinated when I submitted the month, day and year of my birthday. Wolfram/Alpha quickly told me how many years, weeks and days I’ve been alive, though it failed to offer minutes or seconds, or even the proposed date and time of my demise, which would have been interesting, indeed. It also clued me in on sunrise and sunset times for that day, though it didn’t provide me with any information on what the weather was like or what was on TV. An interesting addition was a short list of others born on September 27th, complete with our age differences. It’s not hard to find such “born on this day” lists, but this one noted a pretty mixed and fancy roster, so I liked it.
Included were Rush Hudson Limbaugh (not the right-wing radio guy, but his dad) who was born 59 years earlier than me; Samuel Adams of revolutionary war and beer fame (228 years older); singer Meat Loaf, who’s a mere three years my senior; and Gene Autry, who was born 43 years before me. I confess, none of these birthday-sharing celebs especially tripped my trigger, except for one: Autry, who made his name as a popular singing cowboy on TV, radio and the movies, in addition to being the owner of the MLB Los Angeles Angels for many years.
While his signature song was "Back in the Saddle Again," he was best known for some great pop Christmas music, like "Here Comes Santa Claus" (which he wrote), "Frosty the Snowman," and his biggest hit, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," which are all songs I’ve played and sung at various holiday events in my so-called career as a musician.
So, here’s the thing:
While I could give a hoot about the exact moment I took my first breath or conservative politics or fancy beer or, even, the amazing Mr. Loaf, who wouldn’t want to share a birthday with a singing cowboy?

Another American Story

14 days and 3,284 miles.
Not much of a journey for a world traveler wannabe, but it was a bit of a jaunt, as we drove from Galva to North Carolina to help my younger son and family move further down the coast as he starts a new high school teaching/coaching job. Once we had “completed” that task (has anybody ever really completed a move from one house to another in less than eight or nine years?), we headed from the beautiful beaches of coastal Carolina to another favorite spot, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where my sister and her family live.
While I was happy to spend the last couple of days of summer vacation with them, there was another reason for the trip. One of my great-nieces was going to be in a play.
Right now, you might be thinking, “I know these guys like to travel, but a thousand-mile detour just to see a kids’ play?”
Well, it wasn’t just any play.
It was “The Orphan Train.”
The Orphan Train was a social experiment that transported children from crowded eastern cities to the midwest for adoption. The orphan trains ran between 1854 and 1929, relocating an estimated 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children. At the time the orphan train movement began, it was estimated that 30,000 vagrant children were living on the streets of New York City.
It’s an interesting part of American lore. And for us, it’s more.
You see, my wife’s grandmother was one of those orphans who rode the train..
Born in 1891 in New York City’s Sloane Maternity Hospital, Megan’s paternal grandmother, Agnes, was, soon after, left with the Sisters of Charity at the New York Foundling Hospital by her mother, who said she would come back for her baby in a few weeks.
She never returned.
When Agnes was just under three years old, the Sisters placed her on an orphan train in hopes that she would find a new life and family.
Sent west, the children arrived in towns where local community leaders had assembled interested townspeople. They would inspect the children and after brief interviews with the ones they wanted, take them home. After a trial period, some children became no more than indentured servants to their host families, while others were adopted, formally or informally, as family members.
Agnes was one of the fortunate ones, taken in by a childless couple from Bancroft, Iowa, who lovingly raised her as their daughter.
“They adopted and raised her as their own,” said Megan’s Aunt Mary, who shared her mother’s story with me. “”How fortunate my mother was.”
The play featured vignettes taken from actual experiences recorded by orphans who rode the train. Our great-niece did a wonderful job portraying “Mary,” a young girl who underwent some cruel treatment before being adopted by a loving family.
Agnes died before my wife was born, but Megan has long known of her grandmother’s story. But it was poignant, indeed, seeing it told by those modern-day children and imagining what it was like.
“I kept thinking about her on that train,” said Megan afterwards. “What would have happened to her if she hadn’t been sent?”
And it is amazing to think of a not-quite-three-year-old child sent off on a train ride to places and people unknown.
But we do know what happened, as she grew up, married, and had two children. One was Megan’s father.
The Sisters of Charity and their organization, now known simply as The New York Foundling, still exist today. The Sisters recently celebrated the 200th anniversary of their founding by Saint Elizabeth Seton.
“Abandon No One” remains their calling and their mission.
The orphan train is now a part of American history. It’s a part of our family history, too.
And another American story.

Tales of Babies and Beaches

I don’t want you to think I’ve spent the past week simply basking on the beautiful beaches of North Carolina. This trip to paradise has been tempered by the process of helping to pack, move and unpack our younger son and family as they decamped to a new Carolina city and job. Part of the deal, though, was a chance to feed a sand-and-saltwater jones so intense that we sometimes spontaneously burst into Beach Boys tunes at the sight of a largish mud puddle.
Some of those daily dips were more like medical emergencies, resulting from a killer combination of ultra-hot, super-humid weather and an impressive collection of boxes, couches, mattresses and more. And more.
But back to the beach.
Really.
Please.
My love affair with the Atlantic Ocean harkens back to a long-ago family vacation to Washington D.C., that included a day at Ocean City, Maryland. It was on that trip that I discovered that some swimming water--unlike the muddy creek-fed lakes of my experience--could be kind of clear. And that waves could be produced by something other than my older brother. And that sand and shells and driftwood and all the other finds a real beach can offer are true treasures to be collected, saved and remembered.
We raised our children to love the water and, especially, the broad, beautiful beaches of the Eastern Seaboard and mighty Lake Superior. It is, therefore, more than amazing to bring grandchildren to the same experience. One morning this past week sticks in my mind as a perfect time to have spent with them. We got up early that morning, shoveled some cereal down 3-year-old Cyrus and year-and-a-half-old John, and hit the road towards a favorite beach of ours, located at the northern tip of a series of barrier islands and beach towns that feature wonderful names like Atlantic, Topsail, Emerald Isle, Salter Path and Surf City.
It was just a year ago that our daughter-in-law told us, “You’ll be chasing him up and down this beach next year at this time.”
And she’s right, as the tiny babe in arms has turned into an unstoppable tow-haired boy-baby in just one year.
But here’s the thing.
We’ve discovered over the years that there’s a certain rhythm that occurs between beaches and babies.
Keep them safe and keep them close, but stand back, too, and marvel at nature’s own heartbeat. The crashes and splashes of the waves contrast with gentle offshore breezes and warm tidal pools to create sights, sounds and sensations that just don’t occur anywhere else.
It’s all very exciting. But calming, too, as the never-ending rocking of the waves and the vast expanse of the beach and ocean remind us all of things bigger and more powerful than ourselves.
A good lesson for a baby.
Not a bad lesson for a grandfather, either.

A Song of Summer

What time is it?
Almost a quarter past August.
Almost time for summer’s last hurrah.
Time for lawn mower mornings and iced tea afternoon.
Time for lakes and pools and back yard sprinklers.
Time for lawn chairs, picnic baskets and swimming suits left to dry.
For bike rides at sunset and ice cream after dark.
And for lightning bug roundups, spotlight tag and backyard camp outs, as mothers call children in from the dark.
A time for gazing at moon-lit skies, waiting and hoping for one falling star.
For stories and songs and other-day memories.
It’s time, too, for roadmaps and routes, detours and late-night arrivals.
Time for postcards and pictures of dreams and remembrance.
Time for sticky grandchild kisses and naps after noon.
For baths and books, bedtimes and prayers.
For cool, shady groves and hot breezy beaches.
For pine cones and seashells and other summertime treasures.
Time for secret backroad places, found and forgotten and remembered again.
Time for the roadside glory of brown-eyed Susans, cornflowers and Queen Anne’s Lace.
Time for corn growing tall. And for farmers wondering and worrying and waiting for the miracle of life once again.
Time for the first teasing hints of fall, with light turned flat and golden over rolling fields of home and harvest.
And the last green days of summer.
Because time passes. Moving fast. Moving slow. But moving all the same.

A Drive through Time

Faithful readers of this column might remember that last week marked phase one of our “gotta see the kids” late-summer tour, with a trip to the Moorhead, MN/Fargo, ND region to visit our older son, Colin, and his family. We were anxious to see how they’d fared in the northern plains, with our daughter-in-law experiencing her first year as a full-fledged college professor and Colin working as a chef in a region seldom featured on the Food Network except on programs about lutefisk. meatballs and lefsa. We also wanted to hear about life in a region where 30 below is considered kinda balmy and what it’s like to stack sandbags in a blizzard (Fargo/Moorhead is the home of the now-famed Red River of the North.)
And, for me, there was the constant, irresistible lure of backroads travel. And believe me, there are a lot of options in a region where secondary roads often trail quickly into dirt tracks through deserted miles of hidden lakes and virgin forests.
We saw a lot of lakes. We saw a lot of trees. But, most interesting to me was the sight of an America that I thought no longer existed except in the memories of those of us who slogged through the upper midwest in search of that perfect family vacation of the ’50’s.
We took Geri, our daughter-in-law, plus a willing granddaughter, on one of those forays one sunny day, as we headed east to search out a perfect swimming hole for their family to enjoy for the rest of the summer. There are, of course, lakes o’ plenty in the land of 10,000 lakes, but what really caught my eye was the steady stream of signs proclaiming “resort” at nearly every turn. After a few false starts and dead ends, we finally caught sight of some of the places those signs were advertising, and I was immediately swept back into a time long before the advent of the mega-developments, casinos and fun parks that now seem to dominate every pretty lake in America. Instead, these resorts were the good old mom and pop places that I remembered from the long drives my family used to take in search of an ideal spot for my dad to fish, while my mom got a chance to sit in the sun and read a book and my siblings and I experienced the joys of fresh, clear water and sandy lake bottoms. The places we saw had names like Whispering Pines, Bear Paw, Sleeping Fawn and Sunny Point. They were the kind of quiet little resorts, featuring shorelines dotted with fishing piers and tiny cottages, that generations of families visited year after year until someone finally decided WiFi, water parks and fast food were more important than sunsets, rowboats and great fishing. They’re still there, existing, somehow. And I’m glad they are.
The drive home was planned as a two-day wander in search of a little nirvana of our own. We found it that first evening in a Minnesota State Park with a familiar name--Father Hennepin--on beautiful Mille Lacs (Thousand Lakes) east of Brainerd. We discovered, to our delight, that we remembered how to set up our tent and that our air mattress still doesn’t leak. After a shoreline hike, the evening was spent gazing into a campfire, accompanied by the cry of loons and the occasional chug-chug of fishermen trolling the lake. Even a late-night thunderstorm failed to dampen our spirits, as we found, to our relief, that our tent still doesn’t leak, either.
The next morning started dangerously, as our navigator (that’s me) carelessly directed us on a winding, “where the heck are we, anyway” route that inexplicably took us across the river marking the upper Minnesota-Wisconsin border a total of four times before we settled on a straighter path that would take us down through east central Wisconsin. I say “dangerously,” because, despite all our intentions to “let the road take us,” four aimless border crossings with no progress towards home are apt to turn any second honeymoon into something more akin to the second world war.
Our good humor revived, we proceeded through a unique Wisconsin landscape featuring wooded hills and bluffs, more lakes and postcard-pretty dairy farms that are seldom seen unless you get off the well-beaten tourist-track of the interstate highways and other busy roads.
And there were the towns. There aren’t many of them. Just enough, I think, to provide schools and churches and commerce for the surrounding countryside. Some of them feature small cheese factories that turn the fruits of their neighbors’ labor into a rich, creamy product with little or no resemblance to the over-processed stuff found on supermarket shelves. They are, universally, neat-as-a-pin, prosperous-looking places that, it might seem, continue to thrive through hard work and the relative absence of any nearby big cities that might draw away retail trade and tax dollars.
My favorite was a town called Plain.
Perched on a steep hillside, it’s an appealing little village, with an active downtown, nice homes, a nifty nine-hole golf course and a huge church and shrine on top of the hill. But it was the name that caught my attention from the moment we hit town. Some research after I got home showed a couple of historical options. One states that the name was “widely rumored to have been selected as an homage to the Shrine of the Virgin Mary at Maria Plain in Salzburg, Austria.” Another, though, said that it was “called Plain because the inhabitants were plain people." A letter to the local newspaper in 1915 from an anonymous reader made this offer:
“ I for my part would suggest a name not yet found in Wisconsin, and in order to avoid unnecessary criticisms and hallucinations, I reserve three in petto, [secretly] promising at the same time that they all will be delighted at its beautiful sound and easy spelling."
Apparently, those three ideas never flew, and the name stayed plain, but to a small-town boy like me, Plain was beautiful, all the same.

Another Report from the Road

I’m on vacation. Sort of.
It’s kind of hard to tell sometimes, I know. Ever since I “retired,” so to speak, from my career as an advertising agency creative director due to a bout with cancer, my schedule has been pretty easy going. Like fruit picking, life guarding and ice fishing, my Star Courier gig is rather seasonal, with the busiest times occurring during fall and winter high school sports and the slowest time happening during summer. On the other hand, I’m always kind of on hiatus, with no regularly scheduled office hours or business trips, no neckties or high pressure client meetings, and a lot of flexibility that allows me to slow down when I need to.
So, you’d think summertime would be just the ticket, especially since my partner in crime has her break from school going on now, too.
But, after a June dominated by home projects, like gardening, cleaning the catacomb we call a basement and otherwise preparing for a festive Galva fourth, we realized something startling: School starts in less than a month.
But it’s just July!
The fourth was just a couple of days ago, wasn’t it?
Long gone are the days when school started after Labor Day and football was strictly a fall sport. Instead, kids and teachers swelter in hot classrooms, while coaches and players pray for the cooler weather yet to come.
In any case, the threat of a waning summer has us energized, as we fill late July and early August with trips to see our kids. As I write this, we’re visiting older son, Colin, and his family, who live in Moorhead, Minnesota, just across the (formerly) raging Red River from Fargo, North Dakota. Next, we’ll head to the coastal plains of North Carolina to see son Patrick and his family.
It figures, then, that we’d leave town just as my previously slow summer schedule has begun to--like summertime weather--heat up. Between a pair of pretty big volunteer projects, a couple of freelance writing jobs and some fast-approaching Star Courier events like Hog Days and pre-season football, I find myself needing to work and report on the road, which, thanks to technology, is an easy enough thing to do.
Late July-early August travel is a familiar thing to us. When our kids were younger, we always waited for the end of swimming lessons, camps and baseball season to go on our actual out-of-town vacations. As a result, we found ourselves visiting places like Disney World and various Florida beaches and other attractions during a time of year when those venues are just slightly cooler than the surface of the sun.
It’s a little different here in Fargo/Moorhead, where the natives start to complain and perspire when the temperature crests 70. And later on, when we visit North Carolina, we’ll probably manage to capture enough sea breezes to make the mid-Carolina summer tolerable.
But the whole point of these trips is, of course, not so much the weather as the company. We miss our kids and grandkids when we’re not around them, and look forward to a chance to be involved in a little part of their lives.
So, we’ll pour over maps, plan routes and hit the road again and again.
Summer will be over soon.
There’s no time to lose.

It's Just Baseball

There’s something going on in the park across the street from my house. It’s not like a little action in and around the tree-filled, grassy square that was once supposed to be home to a college campus is unusual.  Quite the contrary, it is a veritable hub of activity, with a great playground, basketball courts, a pavilion and gazebo and a lot of green space for kids, adults and families. The roads that surround and enter the park are favorites for walkers, bicyclists, dog owners and runners, and there’s even an ice skating rink in wintertime.
But recently, there’s been something else going on. Something downright American.
Baseball.
The little grass diamond on the east side of the park has been filled with a bunch of kids of varying ages playing the great American pastime. It’s not little league or farm league or pony league or, in fact, any league at all. There are no set teams, uniforms or even equipment, aside from gloves, a couple of bats and a ball.  
But here’s the truly remarkable part:  THERE ARE ABSOLUTELY NO PARENTS OR OTHER INTERESTED ADULTS COACHING, SUPERVISING OR OTHERWISE WATCHING THE GAMES.
Except me, of course.  And I’m minding my own business.
Now, I’ve got nothing against “organized” baseball.  I played and coached it myself for years. But for the most part, my younger days were filled with the kind of pickup games I’m now seeing in action. We played during every school recess and, when summer hit, managed what must have been a full 164-game season between diversions and chores like swimming, bike riding, paper routes and lawn mowing.  We played in empty lots, backyards, streets and the same Wiley Park ball field I’ve been watching from my front porch.
But things change.  Over the years, a lot of parents (including us) started getting more directly involved with each and every aspect of their children’s lives. I can remember, as a little league coach, watching a crowd of parents got way over-involved in the game we were playing.  They were yelling at the players and screaming at the umpire when I called for time out.
I walked over to the bleachers and said this: “Hey folks, it’s just baseball.”
Because, in truth, that’s all it is.
A game.  A kid’s game to be played and loved and remembered for all the fun it was.
The kids I’ve been watching are playing without the benefit of coaches or equipment or even much in the way of rules, except those that seem to get made up on the spot.  They strike out, miss fly balls, let grounders roll between their legs and argue each and every call.  The other day, in fact, things got pretty heated over a close play at first. For a minute, I thought that maybe I should amble over and help them out a little. Heck, I’ve got an old catcher’s mitt and mask in our basement I could let them borrow. And maybe they could even use an umpire (he was safe, by the way.)
But then I thought better of it,  I thought about kids with bleary eyes and carpal tunnel syndrome from too much TV and too many video games. I thought about living in a time and place where everybody but me seems to have an iPod, and nine-year-olds with their own cell phones put their friends on hold to take another call. I thought about
kids who think they’re playing a game because they play it on Wii, and about kids who only play a game outdoors if their parents organize it, schedule it, deliver them to it and supervise every last moment of it.
Then I sat back down to watch the game across the park.  A loud, disorganized game, played just for fun.
They looked like they were having the time of their lives.
They looked like they were doing just fine without me.
Play ball!