Category Archives: Stories

Family, History, holidays, Stories, Uncategorized

Helmer and Leroy

49 Comments

November 11 was a red letter day in Luverne this year. Helmer and Leroy, the two remaining members of the Last Man Club opened the bottle of Bourbon, took a swig, and named  and honored their deceased friends in a last ceremony.

Helmer Haakenson is 98,  and Leroy Luitjens was 93, I believe. Helmer is the thinner man. Leroy died a couple of weeks later in November.  The club was started in 2010, comprised of Second World War veterans who met every day at the grocery store for coffee and mutual support.  My dad was a member. Every guy had a coffee cup with his name on it. Glen, the grocery store owner, provided free doughnuts. When you died, they turned your cup upside down and placed it in the cup rack on the wall.  The rack also contained a huge bottle of expensive bourbon. The bottle was to be opened by the last man, who then was to name his fallen comrades and drink a toast to their memory.

After the founder of the club died earlier this year, Helmer and Leroy decided to open the bottle at the town Veteran’s Day Ceremony. Former Governor Pawlenty’s wife was a special friend to the group, and she participated in the ceremony. Ken Burns, who featured Luverne in his documentary The War, wrote a congratulatory letter, which was read aloud.  Then they opened the bottle, drank a toast, and the name of every member was read and a passing bell was rung.

Helmer insisted that the remaining members in 2014 be honorary pall bearers at my dad’s funeral. He is a hero to me, along with Leroy. I have known them both since my childhood.  I need to write to Helmer.

Who are your heroes?

 

Family, holidays, Kids, Stories, Uncategorized

Christmas Fun

36 Comments

Today’s post comes from  Crystalbay.

I always look for inexpensive gifts for all my grand kids, then buy 12 of them. Last year, I found little attachments for iPhones to enhance the quality of pix. Only $10 each. This year, I found something called, “Flashing Disco Ball”. This amazed me on video tape. It’s a golf ball sized ball with LED lights inside it and has two sets of helicopter-like rotor blades. It senses any object within six inches, so just putting your hand or your foot within this distance, the ball rises over and over and over.

I thought I’d try using it to make sure that it even worked as advertised, then turned it on. Boy, did it ever work. The damn thing flew all over the room every time my palm approached it!! YEAH!! A great gift!! Then, things turned ugly as I decided to bring it in for a landing. I moved all over the room trying to retrieve it but each effort just sent it off in a different direction. It’d gone up and wouldn’t come down. I tried sneaking up on it with the intention of grabbing it. I did this with reservations, thinking either I’d break the rotors, or the rotors would slice my fingers. Again, it darted away.

By this time, I was desperate to bring it home, so I grabbed a broom to just whack it. It sensed the broom and made a beeline to the other corner of the room. Eventually, it just disappeared on the floor. I’ve yet to find it. It later occurred to me that if I’d just refrained from trying to catch it and it had no more resistance to something 6″ away from it, it would’ve come down on its own!

Now then, I plan to charge up all 12 (minus the one I can’t find) so that all of them can fill Steve’s living room at one time. Just try to imagine that!

What are some of your more memorable holiday gifts?

Family, History, holidays, Stories

A Simple Misunderstanding

18 Comments

I have a dear friend at work who has the most delightfully quirky elderly relatives.  They are, by and large, aunts and uncles in their 80’s and 90’s, all who speak in thick, German-Hungarian accents with very local idioms.  My friend, I will call her Donna, can relate their conversations with great accuracy, even down to the accent. She recently had two priceless conversations.

The first was with an uncle who told her “Sweetie, I have to tell you, I’m not doing so good”.  He apparently had some sort of “spell” and totaled his car after running into three others after going into reverse when he meant to go forward.  He didn’t go to the doctor since he had just been there two weeks before.  He then told Donna “Don’t be surprised if you get a call one of these days to tell you that I woke up dead”.  ” Waking up dead” happens a lot out here.  It is a one of my favorite phrases.

The other conversation was equally serious. Donna sent out a short, humorous Christmas letter this year letting people know that her oldest son and his wife had another child. Donna put photos of the two grandchildren on the page, and ended her letter with “I never thought I would be sleeping with a grandpa!” referring, of course to her husband.

Donna got a phone call from a very elderly aunt and uncle, both in their 90’s, after she sent out the letter.

Her aunt told her “We got that Christmas letter, then. That was pretty dirty. You shouldn’t talk like that. We prayed for you.”

Donna realized that her aunt and uncle missed entirely the news that she and her husband were grandparents, and thought she was bragging about sexual exploits. She patiently told them about the new grandchildren and that she was referring to her husband in the last sentence.  She told them, “You know,  I’m not one of them runaround girls “,  another lovely local phrase.  Her uncle then said:

“That is pretty funny!  Oh!! You!!” accompanied by a quick, sharp, wave of the hand to emphasize the silliness and loving exasperation he felt.   As Donna always says, you can’t make this stuff up.

When have you been misunderstood?

 

 

 

pets, Stories, Uncategorized

Compassion

13 Comments

Today’s post comes from tim.

i have been raising fish for about 20 years.

i don’t know a lot but i know what i know. cichlids are my favorite because they are colorful and tend to be more on the active side rather than the docile and the tank thus has movement

people complain about koy being dirty fish but i really like them my koi tank has only two koy left in it along with 3 tetra’s. it is a boring tank. it at its peak this go round had 5 koy and 6 tetras and the action was pretty good

when you have cichlids you need to have have male only and they need to be one per species or the alpha hormones kick in and fighting to the death is guaranteed.

last week i had a koi acting odd and then he went and lid down on his side in the back of the tank and breathed with great difficulty and couldn’t get his balance to swim. the other big koy (the sick one was the biggest and the leader ) went down and offered comfort and never left the sick ones side. instead of dying the next day as i expected the others brought him food and hovered right above his head for the week and the healthy fish even went so far as to rub its own scales off in a nervous reaction to losing his friend.

my dogs are unbelievable companions. they follow me around and offer nothing but love. never anger or frustration. on occasion they let me know they need a little more but usually they are appreciative and loving in the best ways they know how.

people do have natures like cichlids koi or mutts, is it genetic or environmental? a little of both. i believe some breeds of dogs are good natured and some aggressive to a fault. fish the same way, no one has a problem making broad generalizations about animal breeds.but with people it is stereotyping. bob newhardt when asked by johnny carson what was his nationality said he was a german irish…. he said i am a meticulous drunk.

got any good generalizations that can be expressed in light bulb joke form?

how many irshmen di=oes it take to change a lightbulb? none they just lay down and let the room spin

Family, Food, holidays, Stories

Cookie Exchange

34 Comments

My mother wasn’t a big cook and except for the holidays, she wasn’t much of a baker either. On the holidays however she pulled out all the stops. We made many kinds of cookies and then they were used as gifts for our teachers, the minister, the postman and relatives. This is a tradition that I’ve continued in my life. I do nice trays for my milkman, my hardware store and my library in addition to having cookies all through the season.  If you invite me over during December, I show up with a plate of assorted goodies.

About 10 years ago my boss asked me if I knew anything about cookie exchanges as she thought it would be a nice “morale booster” at the office. I didn’t know a thing but thanks to the magic of the internet I because knowledgeable over night! Despite having 15 kinds of cookies on my front porch (it’s cold out there) I now organize the office cookie exchange every year.

Then this year a good friend of mine decided to do a cookie exchange and asked if I were interested. I enjoy her parties and know a lot of the same people she knows so I said “Sure.”  So now I have two cookies exchanges on the calendar despite a porchful of holiday treats.

There were quite a few of us today. We drew numbers, went around the room and told the “story” of our cookies and then split into groups and took 2 dozen cookies in each of three rounds.  A little different protocol than the classical exchange but pretty good for the big number of folks who were there.   We also had beverages and other appetizers to keep us going.  The stories were hilarious and the company fabulous.

Guess I’m taking cookies to the office tomorrow.

What holiday cookie would you take to a cookie exchange?

Family, holidays, Stories, The Baboon Congress, work

Bah…..

44 Comments

This is hard to write, but I’m thinking my troop of baboon friends can help me out.

I am not a Christian, but I love Christmas. I can massage almost every Christmas tradition into something meaningful for my Yuletide/Solstice beliefs.  I love the feeling of hope and redemption that comes with the season.  I love having a tree filled with lights and ornaments, I love making gifts for my friends and loved ones.  I love baking holiday cookies, I love cookie exchanges.  I love getting cards and reading people’s newsletters.  I love holiday movies (although I will admit I like older stuff better than current films) and I love holiday music.

For decades I have listened to my holiday CDs at the office during December. For many years I played them using my computer but these days I have a little teeny radio/CD player.  I tend to the more traditional music; Mommy Kissing Santa Clause and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer aren’t in my collection.

This past week I began to bring in my CDs and (as always) I said to all the folks who sit around me that if the music bothered them to let me know. In fact, just this morning, two of the folks who sit on either side of me chimed in on what to play next.  So it was shocking to me when my boss emailed me in the early afternoon that someone had come to her and complained about the music.

I’m broken hearted. Not because I have to use headphones or ear buds to listen to my music.  I’m broken hearted because someone who sits nears me, someone who has worked besides me for YEARS (we haven’t changed seating arrangements in about 4 years) thought it was better to complain to our boss than to stop by my cube and say “Hey, I’m having a bunch of calls today, can you turn your Christmas stuff down?” or “I’m having a really stressful day and your music is distracting – do you have ear buds?”  It’s completely disheartening to think that anybody who knows me even remotely would be able to imagine me getting pissed off about something like that.

I feel like a balloon that’s been stuck with a sharp pin – deflated and completely spiritless. I know it’s just one person, but I’m having trouble shaking my doldrums.  Nonny is coming next week and I have a serious list but right now I don’t feel like doing anything but sitting here feeling sorry for myself. I’m not even in the mood to go downstairs and make hot chocolate.

How would you cheer up an unwilling Scrooge?

Baboon Blog Redux, Family, holidays, Nature, Stories

Black Friday / Tree Friday

61 Comments

While America now knows the Friday after Thanksgiving as Black Friday, for the last couple of decades at our house it’s been Tree Friday. For many years this was the day that Child and I headed out to chop down a tree for the holidays.  These days I head down to Bachmans (they have a 25% off fresh trees on Black Friday and they are really close by).

In fact, it was 7 years ago on Tree Friday that I got my nickname from Jacque. Dale had written that day a great bit about Black Friday and used some Shakespearean language to get us going.  My bit was:

But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the north and Hansen Tree Farm is the sun.

Open up, fair Tree Farm and await the crowds
Who, already stuffed and sleepy from yesterday
Swing saws and other implements of destruction.

Deeds, Good and Otherwise

Jacque came up with Verily Sherrilee that day.

So what about you? Taking part in Black Friday shopping?  Online purchasing?  Just taking it easy?

Stories, Uncategorized

The Best Laid Plans

35 Comments

I have written before about a friend of mine at work who is delightfully  goofy and funny. She loves to play practical jokes on people, and she recently told me about one that didn’t go quite the way she had planned.  She has a bit of guilt about this one.

Several year ago, my friend somehow obtained a  realtor’s sign advertising an open house.  In the dark of the night, she planted the sign in the front yard of a couple with whom she was friends. The next morning, the wife of the couple was awakened by people wanting to view the home for the open house.  She was, understandably, perplexed.  My friend was not aware that the couple was having serious marital problems. When the woman  saw the sign, she immediately jumped to the conclusion that her bastard of a husband was trying to sell the house out from underneath her.   No amount of denial on his part would satisfy her outrage.  When she vented to my friend about the incident, my friend confessed all, but the woman wouldn’t believe her.  The couple eventually divorced.

When have your plans not worked out?

 

Baboon Achievers, Baboon Blog Redux, Family, Fifty Words, History, Media, Music, Songs, Stories, The Baboon Congress

Down Memory Lane

50 Comments

We’ve just gone over the 6,000 followers mark.  Makes me think about the beginnings of the Trial Balloon, then the Trail Baboon, Dale, Jim Ed and TLGMS.

Do you have a favorite Balloon or  Baboon memory?

Family, Science, Stories

Twilight Time

52 Comments

Have you ever been waking up in the morning and hear the phone ring, then become fully awake and realize you just imagined it? If so, you may have experienced an auditory hypnagogic hallucination.

In August of 2015, Dr. Laurence Knott of the UK wrote:  “Hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations are visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory events, usually brief but occasionally prolonged, that occur at the transition from wakefulness to sleep (hypnagogic) or from sleep to wakefulness (hypnopompic). The phenomenon is thought to have been first described by the Dutch physician Isbrand Van Diemerbroeck in 1664.[1] The person may hear sounds that are not there and see visual hallucinations. These visual and auditory images are very vivid and may be bizarre or disturbing.”

And Wikipedia describe it this way:     “Hypnagogia is the experience of the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep in humans: the hypnagogic state of consciousness, during the onset of sleep. Mental phenomena that occur during this “threshold consciousness” phase include lucid thought, lucid dreaming, hallucinations, and sleep paralysis.” As you can see, there are several other “conditions” mentioned, that I don’t have the time to explore here.

I love what is sometimes called the “twilight time” as I drift off to sleep, and frequently have little vignettes play out before my eyes. Rather than thinking of it as a medical condition to be “treated”, I often wish they would last longer.

Do you experience any sort of hallucinations upon waking or falling asleep?