I just finished the Franklin biography. Listening to it that is. If you’re bothered by doubts about the value of your contribution to society avoid this. Ben ran away at seventeen, made his fortune as a printer and publisher, retired at forty one to dabble in the sciences and went on to play a pivotal role in our independence and the forming of the republic. He invented the lightning rod and bifocals as well as a myriad other inventions, none of whch he patented, because he felt it was his duty to improve society. He pretty much created the US Postal Service as well. I was kind of disappointed to learn that all that stuff about his sexual exploits isn’t true. Or at least there was no hard evidence of it.

You may remember me lamenting not having my camera when we saw the turfmobile. Well:

The old farts went rockin’ and rollin’ last night. Yup, we went out for dinner with two other couples and hit a local bar where Mick Sterling and the Stud Brothers were playing. A great R&B outfit with horns and a terrific rythem section. Mick sounds like the guy from Blood Sweat and Tears. It’s been a long time since I’ve gotten out on the dance floor, but I can still do a mean funky chicken. They were way too loud though….now Beck and I are going to be evern more deaf. Eh? What’s that?

Somewhere in the course of the night I lost my car keys. Fortunately Beck had hers. Last week I locked the keys in the car. I left my jacket at tennis on Thursday, with my camera in the pocket. Tomorrow I go in for an ADD evaluation. How do you think I’ll do?

At this very moment a bluebird is checking out my bluebird house! It’s never been occupied. He actually went in. Could it be? I’m so excited. Usually they check it out, turn up their beaks at the run down property and leave.

I also saw a goldfinch this morning.

thenarrator’s account of a trip to a dysfunctional dairy farm and barefoot_czarina’s touching account of faded friendship brought this story to mind.

In the early seventies my girlfriend was a Southwestern Minnesota farm girl. She had been a University of Minnesota student and we’d met at a camp for inner city youth. She was a counsellor and I was in charge of “Arts and Crafts.” Her ancestory was German and Belgian, but her complexion was such that in the summer she was often mistaken for African. Except for her Delph blue eyes. She had beautiful hair, thick black, wavy hair. I’m not going to get into our relationship, it was painful. We drove each other insane. In so many different ways.

She had three sisters and a brother. Her mother had died giving birth to her brother and then an early childhood disease left him deaf. D, the third daughter was, I think the designated farm hand. She had amazing strength. It was interesting dating a woman who could kick my ass.

Her father did a reasonable job of holding things together at his little dairy farm out on the plains. But, I think he must have had ADD.

Once I was visiting during one of those crucial times, planting or harvest, when farmers are in the field constantly, working like maniacs to beat the weather. Early one the afternoon he came tearing back from the field with one of his tractor tires spraying liquid. Those huge tractor tires are filled with liquid not air. I can’t remember if it’s water or what. He’d sprung a leak and it had to be fixed as soon as possible, because there was no time. The tractor tire repair guy, who was probably on call 24-7 during the season was out almost immediately and they set to work fixing the problem. I stood by, a helpless city slicker, watching curiously. Her dad, Joe, was getting frantic. At some point the tire guy said, “Joe, can you get something to put under this Jack to shim it up?”

Joe starts out across the yard to a shed. He never got there. Instead, half way across the yard, he noticed that there was an uneven spot. He stopped, got on his other, smaller tractor and started dragging the ground to level it off. He never returned with the shim. I just stood there. I’m sure my mouth was hanging open.

Maybe I missread the situation. Maybe the tire guy was just trying to get rid of this agitated, hot tempered lunatic and Joe knew it. Maybe D took him aside and said, “Daddy, go do something and let the tire guy work in peace.” I don’t know. But at the time it looked like a case of raging distractability to me.

ToOldForThis, as she so often does, inspired me to do a random photo blog. And her Sammy’s monkey painting inspired me to dig this out of the archives.

I did the drawing with one of those whippy ball point pens and then colored it with marker colored pencil and gouache. The intention was to do the alphabet, but I’m an ENTP so I lost interest after Hippo and Monkey.

lionne has a picture of herself in ’71, that’s me in ’70. I’m the one with the moustache.

That’s me on a fishing trip in Colorado. The town is Hotchkiss. Mountain Man refers to it as Crotchkiss. That’s his sister’s house. Does it look like I’m having a good time?

Finally, some of my tennis buds. Folks from drills last night. The guy in the back is the pro, he’s a great teacher, I think I’m going to have him work with Q. The other three and I hung out after drills and played a set, boys against girls. We won but it wasn’t easy. The woman with the cap and the bearded guy are a couple and I think maybe the pro and the dark haired woman are as well. Just getting to know them.

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I was going to say that I have a soft spot in my heart for dry salami and really stinky cheese, but I suppose I should say that I have a hard spot in my heart.

I played old school no sissy tie breaker tennis last night. My partner and I won 11-9. Grueling. I’m going to be in severe pain today.

The T-wolves kicked some nugget ass last night. I watched on the Mountain Man’s big screen HDTV. He makes real popcorn on the stove with real butter. MMMMMMM.

Q leaves for Chicago and Wisconsin Dells tomorrow, they’re taking their musical on the road. My daughter’s a chorus girl.

I need to start figuring out the mystery of college loans. Or saying to L, here you go, you figure it out.

Peace, ass nuggets.

Wife from next room: “Aaaaackkk!”
I ran in to see what the problem is.
“Don’t ever put my picture up without asking!”

Earlier in the day:
Wife: “Don’t forget the garbage.”
Meaning roll the bin out to the curb, Tuesday’s pickup day.
Me: “Yes dear.”
I forgot.

I guess that I am in pretty good shape for an old fart, my digestive problems keep me skinny and I don’t have that bad a gut. But one of the things that comes with aging is sagging pectorals. I suppose if I really hit the wieghts i could get a chiseled upper body, but that sounds like work to me. Of course it may not be an age thing. Once when L was about three she said, “Someday I’m going to have big boobs just like Daddy.”

It seems some strange disease has infected my garden!

Mother Pucker

The first flowers in my garden. They’re called Star of Holland and are supposed to naturalize and spread for ground cover. Well at least the first ones that I planted. I’m getting pretty charged up about the garden, I’m completely disorganized about it, and I’ve got that 50 something memory going for me, so whatever comes up is big surprise. I did find my crumpled coffee stained map of what I put in last year, so I kind of have an idea. No clue about colors though I tried planting some crocuses right under the lawn last fall, it looks like the ones in front are going to come up, but a bushy tailed tree rat got the ones in the backyard. I’m thinking air rifle. It will give me good practice for when the revolution comes. But you don’t have to worry about me, I won’t eat any squirrel brains, I’ve read the articles about them spreading something like mad cow. My wife grew up poor, most of the meat they ate came from what her brothers shot. Squirrels, rabbits, gamebirds….I wonder if they ate the squirrel brains. That could explain a lot. Anyway, I hate squirrels and rabbits and I like flowers.

These crocuses come up every year under my gas meter. I’ve lived in this house for twelve years and I didn’t plant them. They’re on the southeast corner of the house and the sun reflecting off the block foundation must warm the soil up early. They’ve already come and gone. My house faces south so the backyard doesn’t get much good sun, everything is about two or three weeks behind back there.

We had our first spring thunderstorm last night. It was a good one! It almost got to 90° this afternoon. Humid and very windy. “She’s blowin’ up a storm maties.” I picture Jack Aubrey checking the glass to see the barometric pressure dropping. “Reef the mains boys, it’s going to blow!”
Anyway I digress. At about five o’clock the front came in from the west, it got dark, rained a few drops and then cut loose. The rain was coming down in horizontal sheets and it sounded like there was a war going on. I can still hear the thunder, but the worst is past us now. Those kids next door I photographed in the tree a couple of weekends ago? They were up in the same tree in a lightning storm. I was afraid God and Darwin were going to get together to cull the stupid from the species. I’m not sure I could have handled boy children. They’re such kamakazis. I never did dumb stuff like that. No siree, I didn’t. Well maybe a few times. Maybe in cars. And a couple times in boats. But I think I can handle screaming matches and extreme sarcasm and PMS better than frequent trips to the orthopedic surgeon. (I’ve just totally jinxed Quinn’s upcoming soccer season….I see a compound fracture in the future) Yeah great now I have an albatross around my neck. It’s hell to be a reincarnate sea dog in the absolute middle of the country. At least I’m close to the Mississippi and I can slap down a weeks pay and buy a used 14 foot aluminum fishing boat with a 15 horse Evinrude and cruise all the way to the Gulf if I wanted to. I could.

Here’s a good one. I tended bar at Black Forest Inn from 1974 through 1978. The Black, as we called it, was situated on 26th and Nicollet in South Minneapolis. That corner was kind of the “downtown” of the nieghborhood and we drew an amazingly divers clientel. It was near the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, The Chidren’s Theater, Honeywell’s corporate headquarters were near by and on the other side some fifteen blocks away was Kenwood. Plus there was a row of run down mansions close by, some of which were halfway houses. It was a neighborhood that was full of apartment buildings, some low rent and subsidized. I think by Minneapolis standards you’d call it a rough neighborhood, but by say, Brooklyn standards, not so much. So we had fat cats from Kenwood and Honeywell office workers, mumbling coffee drinkers from the halfway houses, art student, artists, theater people and a thriving criminal element. It also drew people from all over the state because at that time there were very few authentic German restaurants in the Twin Cities, and in spite of it’s reputation for Scandanavians, there’s probably more Germans in Minnesota. It was the place to be in South Minneapolis in those days.
When I started working there they only served beer, but then they upgraded their license to beer and wine and then soon after they obtained a full liquor license, each of these milestones was accompanied by an expansion of the bar and restaurant. I have the “honor” of having served the first hard liquor at the Black.
In 1970 Richard Avedon the photographer had a show of his work at the Art Institute, which was near by. At that time, Erich (pronounced Airish in the Bavarian way) the owner of the Black would hang out after closing and drink with some of his buddies, artists and kenwood fat cats. Somehow Avedon ended up in this after hours crowd while he was preparing the show and had such a good time that he gave Erich a huge autographed print of one of his famous pictures. It was about 5′ X 5′ and was a candid shot he’d taken while preparing a formal sitting of some elderly DAR members in evening gowns. It’s a fabulous photo and with the autograph and it’s size must be worth thousands of dollars. I currently hangs to the right of the bar if your on the drinking side, right between the two rest rooms in the little corridor that leads out to the beer garden. Since the early eighties it’s had three bullet holes in it. From a .357 magnum.
The morning after the gun play, Beck and I were reading the article about it in the paper. The shooter was only identified as a “forty year old regular.” I looked at Beck and said, “Has to be Ellis.” Later in the day we ran into Bear, who was bartending at the time. He confirmed that it had indeed been Ellis. Ellis was what I considered a harmless but annoying wierdo, the kind you often find in bars. He would sit at the bar and ramble on and on about his military experience, his duty in Nam (turns out he was never there) and other crap. He bothered the customers, and occasionally got into fights in which he invariably got his ass kicked. It turns out that the night before he had been in fine form and had been thrown out by Erich himself, told to never come back. He’d been told this countless times before, a couple of times by me. So he walks in during the lunch rush, when the place is full of business people, sits down at the bar, pulls out the cannon and blast three shots into the Daughters of the American Revolution. The area by the bar is very enclosed, by a wall on one side and a massive wooden canopy above the bar. I can’t imagine how loud it must have been. I’m sure everyone present had major hearing damage. Thank god no one in the bathroom was hit. Can you imagine sitting there squeezing out a fat one and seeing three slugs rip through the wall and lodge in the plaster on the far side? He did shoot at an upward trajectory, he was harmless, but really craved attention. Needless to say he got it. So, to this day, you can see the Avedon print with the three bullet holes on 26th and Nicollet in South Minneapolis. Don’t miss it if you’re ever in town. The Wienerschnitzel’s pretty damn good too.

More later, but for now, check out frensix’s vacation in Ireland.