a walk with my wife
in the freshness of morning --
stepping on cold ants.
妻と散歩
朝の鮮度で-
冷たいアリを踏む。
a walk with my wifeto the rec center --did you bring a towel?妻と散歩
レックセンターへ-
タオルを持ってきましたか？
a walk with my wifein her yellow coat and scarf --I feel like strutting.妻と散歩
彼女の黄色いコートとスカーフで-
気が遠くなるような気がします。
Part 1
The old funeral home in Tioga seemed windswept in the winter. The same way Wuthering Heights was windswept in the novel. Located at the bottom of a hill,it was topped by the nursing home and hospital. It seemed to me that some kind of Stephen King cold dark horror flowed down from those buildings in the winter. Because it got gosh almighty cold, and the winds that howled about the old funeral home took on a desperate character. Often malignant.
But that is the curse and blessing of a poetical mind like mine; like the weather, it tends to go to extremes. So as this piece is written on a balmy March morning — a sunny 72 degrees – I am shuddering with imaginary chilblains at the remembrance of those cold, cold Tioga winters that I and my beloved spent in North Dakota.
According to the National Weather Service, the coldest place in North Dakota ever recorded was in Parshall on Feb 16, 1936 when it dropped to 60 below. And I can tell you from personal experience that Tioga was not very far behind. (I never thought to complain about the cold. In our family we just dealt with it. If it was cold, you just bundled up good. If it wasn’t cold you were glad to get out in nice weather. I think it was a lot of bragging about the cold instead of complaining. I often heard many people say things like “cold ‘nuf for ya?” and “the cold keeps out the riff-raff!” When the oil boom was in full swing we had many people come to North Dakota who had never experienced extreme cold. The weather reporters on all the radio and TV stations began to publish education about weather things. Things I grew up with because my parents and other family and friends all knew how to deal with the cold. Newcomers were “stupid” – uneducated – about it. Wind chill was important to know about. If it’s -20 and the wind is blowing at a simple breeze of 20 mph the wind chill is -40. So it feels like -40 and you want to be prepared for -40. That means cover your face, cover your head, zip up your jacket and wear either long johns under your clothes or show pants over your clothes if you plan to be out in the weather longer than a couple minutes. Always have extra gear in your trunk when traveling because your car can act up any time in that kind of cold weather. Stranded on the side of the road with the temperature so extreme has claimed the life of more than one unprepared poor sucker. And then you have the born and raised North Dakotan who is still having outdoor BBQ’s when it’s 32 degrees Fahrenheit. People from California are ice blocks. North Dakotans get out their winter jackets at -20 and when the wind starts blowing more than 40 mph. By this time everywhere else knows that hell has frozen over and the Vikings will win the Superbowl!)
I went to work at KGCX in Williston. One of my early morning duties before signing on at 6AM had me calling surrounding towns for their temperatures and rainfall. In the summer the amount of rainfall was of crucial importance to farmers, because an inch or two less than normal meant a famine crop. I added one town to the list. Tioga. Even though they had no official weather station I called my Beloved at the old funeral home for the temperature. To this day I do not know if she referred to a thermometer or just made it up. (I used the thermometer outside my parent’s kitchen window which was next to the house phone. I had to get a flashlight and shine it just so or the reflected light would obscure the numbers. Sometimes Dad was still home when Tim called and he would scowl at me for the phone call. Dad worked in the oil field industry. He was usually dispatched to work by 3:30 or 4 AM. If he wasn’t gone then he was up at 5 waiting for dispatch to call. Work was very important to Dad. He wasn’t a tyrant about his duty to work. There was a quiet respect we all learned to appreciate. As Tim mentioned this was in the days before cell phones so the house phone was the life line for the family. Dad worked 10 days on and 2 days off for three rotations and then 10 and 3. That is unless the job he was doing was held over his days off and then he worked his days off. He didn’t care about that. He worked to provide a good place for our family.) But we got to chat each morning when I called on the station’s dime.
Back in the Stone Age, before there were any cell phones, whenever you called outside your own town or city Ma Bell would charge an arm and a leg for these “long distance” calls. I remember with a cheapskates shudder the phone bill I received for August in the year I was courting my Beloved. It was over $100 dollars. After we were married, when people would ask why we got married, I would sometimes say “well, it’s cheaper than talking to her long distance.” That was 9/10ths joking!!
Now I grew up in Minneapolis Minnesota, where it can get plenty cold. But it seemed like a more optimistic chill; the brutal cold of North Dakota is a brooding futile environment. But I will say this much, it breeds strong men and women. My Beloved’s mother was as sturdy as a cedar fence post. She never faltered, nor gave up on an idea once it had been planted in her deeply enough.
And my Beloved’s father was the sturdiest and strongest man I ever knew. Give him a thermos of hot black coffee and he could endure working 48 hours straight out in the oilfield in the middle of January. He could charm the birds out of the trees, but most of the time he wore the stoical mask of a Norwegian farmer.
My Beloved’s parents were truly “Giants in the Earth”, as written about by O. E. Rolvag.
the weird cry of quail
wakes me up in my wife's arms;
we missed church again.
ウズラの奇妙な叫び
妻の腕の中で私を目覚めさせます。
the weird cry of quail in the morning reminds meto make sweet cornbread.ウズラの奇妙な叫び
朝は私に思い出させます
甘いコーンブレッドを作るために。
the weird cry of quail
再び行方不明の教会
the weird cry of quailin the black asphalt alley --scratching at wet hulls.ウズラの奇妙な叫び
黒いアスファルトの路地で-
濡れた船体を引っ掻く。
In Egypt Moses turned the streams to blood for Pharaoh's sake/But that stubborn autocrat no thought would undertake/to free the Hebrew slaves and let them go away in peace/and so a raft of plagues began without the least surcease/Bloody waters still exist around the world today/as people after people freedom's price still have to pay!
Biden went to Poland to put Putin in his place.
He wants that bum to beat it and to get the coop dee grace.
Nobody told Biden that his powers don't extend
to autocratic Russians and their longed-for final end.
Maybe it is hubris and then maybe it is not.
But presidents do not fare well against a juggernaut.
It takes a lot of money to shake a tyrant's grasp;
taxpayers who foot this bill are gonna give a gasp.
But in the Oval Office cooler heads may find a way
to keep our brave Joe Biden from producing a doomsday.
Let Putin gather all the rope he needs to hang himself;
we'll keep our prissy meddling upon a dusty shelf!
The false heat of March
promises little more than
a thick grey snowstorm.
3月の偽りの暑さ
少しだけ約束します
濃い灰色の吹雪。
The false heat of Marchtricks worms out of the brown earth --fat happy robins!3月の偽りの暑さ
褐色森林土からワームをだまします-
太ったハッピーロビン！
The false heat of Marchstarts me making red chili --foolish hope of spring!3月の偽りの暑さ
赤唐辛子を作り始めます-
春の愚かな希望！
( I feel a certain pull to interject and say that he does make me laugh. He did make me laugh when we were courting. I laughed till I cried! – That is a title to a book written by the wife of Jerry Lewis, the comedian. She refers to the things that he did that were aimed at her to make her feel badly and actually hurt her and they were not funny any more. – There was a little of that going on with Tim and me. It feels like telling those things would not help anyone yet so it will be another time we might talk about some of those things.
He certainly did make me laugh. And he does make me laugh. Clouds of sadness did overtake me when we were married the first time so it happened like his selective hearing about the sweet/ sour berries. I learned from a study about human behavior that it takes ten times of doing goodness about a memory to overcome one bad memory. It holds true for me. I watched that formula work for my children in many instances too.
So the times I laughed at things he did as a professional clown… let me see. )
(Shock and awe are the things that usually get a laugh. The first time I heard his story about Mishu, the smallest man in the world, I laughed. The first time I saw his “sleepy man at church” routine, I laughed. When I hear him tell a new “did I ever tell you about the time. . .” , I laugh. He is always thinking of ways to make things new. And so we both laugh at bungles, foibles and mishaps. I think I really love to laugh. I smile at almost everyone as an automatic response to seeing a person. Keeping my smile – or keeping their smile – is dependent upon how receptive people are to me over time.)
"And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant."
Exodus 6:5
God remembers covenants while man forgetful stays/The Lord redeems his promises in all these latter days/The arm of flesh is nothing when compared to Heaven's might/And God will be a-coming down to win the final fight!
And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs . . .
Exodus 8:3
There's a frog in the oven/a frog in the stew/there's one in the bedding/and in the car, too/Are we holding anyone in bondage raw/with our deceit and unwise martial law?
As the (my)Beloved fries me some hamburger, onions, and potatoes this afternoon I'm reminded that the memory can be a good servant or pleasant entertainer, but is a cruel master.
So as I remember the old funeral home in Tioga I determine to think of that time and place as happy, bright, clean, and full of opportunity and fun.
Because, you see, I have developed a default setting over the tumbling years for my memory -- which is not happy or carefree, but rather brooding and blame-seeking. When I allow my mind to wander where it will it automatically goes to unhappy places. And since my remarriage to the (my) Beloved I have found that such memory mucking is counter-productive and not in the spirit of harmony that we need in order to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous marriage snafus. Of which there are plenty. And which are all my fault. All the time, Without exception. One-hundred percent. No excuses offered.
[I'm hoping the Beloved will interject something ameliorating here . . but you never know . . . ]
(He is hoping for an interjection and I have a few things. I see this “memory time” a little differently. I understand the blaming mentality to which he falls prey. Taking blame when it is squarely on one's shoulders is an important thing for responsibility sake. It takes a person of good character to own mistakes and do something about them. It’s a small person indeed, who takes the blame for things and does nothing but wallow in self-pity. Or worse, seeks to blame someone else for things.
My husband and I still create things together. We created children and meals and mistakes in our relationship the first time around. Now we create meals and written word combinations and we foster good in our relationship, in spite of mistakes. Our marriage this time is different because I am different and He is different. My actions gave me cause to make decisions, both those in my memory and those yet to be. Indeed, he has cause for the same types of decisions. It would be wonderful to teach something about those decisions so people can benefit from this writing. Benefit is a wish and a prayer I have for all readers. Though you, dear readers, are the ones to choose your benefit.
Somehow launching into my “soap box” seems pretentious. I will wait.)
Homes have their own personalities. Just ask James Whitcomb Riley. My parent's home was a brooding iceberg with four walls, right out of an Ingmar Bergman movie. The(My) Beloved's home, on the other hand, the old funeral home, impressed me from the get go as a happy busy hive of confused activity and unpretentious but filling meals at all hours of the day. You were as likely to find a pair of muddy gumboots on the sofa as a warm basket of home-made scones -- made from winter red wheat ground by the (my) Beloved's own mother -- in the sewing room. With chokecherry syrup or wild plums on the side, bottled by the mother. Who we have decided to call Alberta. The mother, not the scones. (Chokecherry picking is about the best way to get chokecherries with flavor. You can buy chokecherry jelly or chokecherry syrup but unless you experience the hunt for the berries it’s just not the same. Chokecherry trees don’t lend themselves to transplanting. They grow wild in North Dakota and parts of the rest of the plains states. I have heard of people trying to grow the bush/tree in the city, but unless it is there in the first place it won’t grow. I was lucky and found a house in town with one chokecherry bush that had grown to a considerable size so it was nearly as tall as the trees in the yard. The yield from the bush was enough for about a pint of syrup. That’s pure gold to my family! The coulies on Grandpa’s farm had some chokecherry ‘trees’. Also on Grandma Pete’s, my dad's mom's farm. I could tell a little about Dad’s dad here. Grandpa Manley died when my dad was 4 years old. Dad is the middle child of 5 boys. So Grandma Pete raised their boys with the help of the farming community at Beaver Creek. She was a strong woman! I didn’t find out about Grandpa Manley’s business skills until very late in my life but I have several brothers who are showing the inherited skill. Grandpa Manley had lots of land by the time he died and Grandma Pete was able to survive with the money from the land for about 5 years. By that time the three oldest boys were able to be hired hands for farmers in the area and help with their own meager existence. One of the things they did was pick chokecherries every fall. We got to carry on the tradition because the trees are still there. I remember many hot August days filling several ice cream pails full. You think of berries and automatically you think there is some pilfering, right? Well, unless you get a bunch of chokecherries and coat your mouth with the natural pectin from them you don’t do much pilfering. I watched my little brother do it every year though.
Then you wash them and clear out the leaves and sticks and spiders and ticks. Once there is enough in the biggest pot you have then you cover them in water and boil them. You pour the water in another pot through a colander. The experts have a berry sieve. It’s a cone shape with a fitted mashing stick. That you can use to mash the berries till all that’s left are the seeds. We used a cotton flour-sack cloth. Mashing the berries gets the natural pectin into the juice and makes the best syrup and jelly without using the added pectin you can get in the store. And THAT’S good jelly!)
And to top the chokecherries or the wild plums, (wild plums are similar in finding them but they are a very different flavor. And you can actually preserve the plums) there was always thick unpasteurized and unhomogenized cream from the Hartsock farm (10 miles) down the road from the old funeral home. Collected each week in plastic one gallon mayonnaise jars by Alberta. (You have to skim the cream off the top of the milk if you want to have the thick stuff. Otherwise it gets stirred in with the drinking milk and you have to wait for the next batch of milk or go to the store.)That cream was as thick as library paste. The fact is, I have been daydreaming about those luscious preserves covered in cream so much that I let my lunch scorch on the Stove while the(my) Beloved was working on something in the bedroom. So it'll be Cajun food, that's all. Blackened for flavor.
There's much more to write, but I'm going to stop and eat my lunch while it's still hot [before it carbonizes completely.]
I believe that my Beloved will be interjecting quite a few things here abouts, to pad out this first part of Chapter Three.
But then again, you never know . . .
(Everyone comes to this earth with a story. The one they get from the family that made them. Several facets make up that story. Then the story is added upon by yourself. Some people call the story baggage. It can be baggage unless you learn what to do with it. Some people are able to teach their children what they have inherited and what to do with it. Others, most of us, just muddle through. We get by. Still others observe what the taught people have learned and they pick up some skills of what to do and life is better. I love the people who have learned to share their learning. My life is better because I decided to listen to some of them.
If a person has learned to like the feeling of self-pity there is room for thought, reflection and action. Pity parties are nasty things to attend. “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to…” is a cliche we all know. The counsel is to learn to mourn the loss of the thing and decide to do something better. This is a trait of the people who observe. I wish to speak freely of the important things. I will mention here that the most important thing is Jesus Christ. He taught us what to do with our bag and baggage. He gave us the chance to make mistakes and learn from them.)