The Baboon Congress

A Tangled Family Tree

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Today’s guest post comes from Ben.

My Dad admired his brother Carl. Carl was a big man with a broad chest and a round face. He had a buzz cut and red cheeks and a voice full of gravel. He was quick to grin and rub your head or grab your shoulders. An impressionable kid would naturally want to be like Carl, so when Carl said he had a broad chest was because he slept without a pillow– I immediately threw out my pillow and slept without one for several years. Maybe it helped.

But there was a confusing detail about Uncle Carl. He married his aunt. Here’s how it happened:

Uncle Carl’s best friend was his uncle Maurice (Morrie). Morrie and his wife Helen had two kids; Maurice Jr. and Maureen.

Morrie Sr. told Carl that if anything happen to him, Carl should take care of Helen. This was in the late 1940’s and people did that sort of thing. And then Morrie Sr. was killed in a freak accident. He worked in the city bus garage in Rochester, MN and when the brakes failed on a bus and rolled down a hill into the garage it pinned him against the wall and killed him.

So Carl took care of Helen and eventually they married.

Adding to the confusion – Carl’s mother (my grandmother), was also named Helen.

Carl Jr. and Helen the widow were married about ten years before Helen died. Then Carl Jr. married a woman named Mic and they had two girls, Kelly (Kathleen) and Theresa.

(When I married my wife Kelly this made two ‘Kelly Hain’s and no end of confusion including one phone call from some guy who wanted Kelly to know he was back in town and maybe they could get together. Kelly and I were married at this point and listed together in the phonebook. Dunce cap for that guy. And then later, a woman who had done daycare for our kids for years randomly says out of the blue “You know, I have a cousin named Kelly Hain…” WHAT?? And of course she’s talking about the other Kelly Hain.)

Anyway, Mic had been married before and had one child, Sue. So now Carl and Mic have three step kids between them from two different Dads and two different Moms. What I remember most is how my Uncle Carl took all these kids into the family. The first two; Maurice Jr. and Maureen were cousins in the first place and they’re still at the family reunions. Mic’s Sue is around but not quite as much. And I remember Uncle Carl taking me fishing with Sue’s two boys when we were all teenagers.

A while back we’re at a funeral for one of my Dad’s other brothers, Richard. Richard’s first wife was Ann, who died back in the ‘80’s. My brother works with someone who told him Ann Hain was her Grandmother. Was it our Ann Hain, or a different one? We’re still not sure. My mom tries to explain who was married to whom, but then she has to correct herself and she says ‘No, it wasn’t them it was ____ …’ and at that point we’re all lost.

Which of your relatives is the most ‘interesting’?

The Baboon Congress

Food To Die For

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Today’s guest post comes from Barb in Blackhoof.

OK, it’s never going to happen.

I am not going to research and write the book for which I’ve had the title since at least 1990. I wanted to visit all those little ethnic churches and record the foods served for funerals (with the recipes). The book would be titled “Food to Die For” and it would have been about funeral food in the Midwest. But it’s too late to do it now. Most church basement ladies have ascended to the great jello-kitchen in the sky. At a funeral in Minneapolis a couple years back, there was a veggie tray with dip, some cookies and sandwiches – all plainly bought at Cub Foods.

Gosh.

My Mother was part of the Ladies’ Aide Society in her Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church (mostly German heritage) in Arlington, MN for probably close to 50 years. The geriatric LAS disbanded last year – they sent Mom a corsage and some pictures of the history. (“oh, oh – I thought – what now? Who will make the egg salad sandwiches that Mom ordered???” “Gosh, I hope I don’t have to spend the night in the church kitchen – boiling and peeling eggs and buttering the bread, because the bread MUST be buttered, even for salads that have mayonna— ooops, I almost said mayonnaise. I mean Miracle Whip”).

You're in our thoughts, and we're here for the food.

Well, the Mission Club (women) of the church has taken over that duty. For her funeral Mom had ordered egg salad sandwiches (on buttered white bread), ham sandwiches (on buttered rye), but she never specified what kind of salads or desserts. I wondered why? I communicated her wishes to the Mission Club Ladies and they didn’t ask about desserts either… hmmmm.

Then, about a week before Mom’s service, my crazy cousin “Ruby” sent me an email with the following message:

“Was wondering for Saturday if you need people to make jello or bars? This is a Lutheran service, I think it’s an 11th commandment or something like that. There will be jello. What does this mean? This means that when a Lutheran dies, jello will be brought by friends and relatives, but not immediate family. If someone is truly ambitious, and they have a good recipe, potato salad may be brought and set on the head table. Those that don’t bring jello will make a cake or bars, and have them cut. An overnight cake is to be admired and then set on the trays with the other bars. The church ladies will supply the name of the person who made the overnight cake to any who ask. This is most certainly true.”

If I had only known the 11th commandment (in perfect form, with the “What does this mean?” and the “This is most certainly true.”) I would not have worried. After Mom’s service, we all went downstairs to the basement where a huge table was laden with the sandwiches as well as about 15 jello salads, at least 10 kinds of “bars” and THREE overnight cakes. All cut and on platters.

After the luncheon and socializing was over, the church ladies brought out a huge box of bars and cakes (including some of the three overnight cakes) for the four of us to take home (enough for about 20) with a list of everyone who brought something: Person #1 – bars, Person #2 – cake, Person #3 – Overnight Cake, Person #4 – jello, Person #5 – etc.
In Superior, WI a friend says they have “Calico Beans” at funerals. My friend Sue said the “Range” funeral food used to be rye bread spread with Miracle Whip and layered with crushed potato chips.

For my non-funeral food, I want that oval shaped rye bread spread with Cheese Whiz and pimiento olives sliced and arranged carefully over the cheese.
Oh, and lots of EPA.

What do you want served at your funeral luncheon??

The Baboon Congress

Handing Down a Decent Car

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Today’s guest post comes from Ben.

I saw one of those plastic tips from the old ‘Tiparillo’ cigars lying on the ground the other day. It reminded me of my Dad as he smoked those for a time when I was a kid. He always said he spent more time chewing on those tips than actually smoking which is just as well.

My folks were a pretty good example of how to be married. I would hear them lying in bed at night talking and laughing. My wife had good examples of relationships too and we’re lucky that way. My Parents Joe and June grew up together. The story goes when they were infants both their Moms belonged to the same social group known as ‘The Mothers and Daughters Club’. At the monthly meetings Joe and June’s bassinettes would be put together behind the furnace at the town hall. Dad said he didn’t expect to date anyone but Mom and Mom grew up on a farm so she didn’t intend to be a farm wife. She says he had to work at it and in the end his twinkling eyes and Irish charm won her over.

Skip ahead about 60 years after they got married.

My Dad decided it was time to give up his job and therefore Mom said they only needed one car. Dad informed Mom he was NOT getting rid of his car. She was rather indignant about that “He didn’t even give me a chance! Who made HIM ruler of the roost!?” she said. My parents ‘fight’ in a rather humorous way… I asked if we should leave so they could work this out? Mom informed me it was already worked out because HE decided!
I was at their apartment with my son to pick up their now extra car because my son wanted a car with actual heat in the passenger compartment. (As compared to his old car that didn’t have heat. I told him having a car with no heat builds character. My first car didn’t have heat either and look how I turned out. Son thinks he has enough character for the moment.)

It was Moms car we drove home.

Mom has always had some spunk in her. When they were farming together Mom wasn’t afraid to inform Dad that his Universal Hand Signals left something to be desired and he could bale his own Damn hay. Among other things…

I only knew my paternal Grandpa and maternal Grandma. This was Grandpa’s farm before ours so he still had a garden out here when he was able. Built himself a little garden shed, cut his own hair – and boy did that freak me out when I saw it—and at the local mall played Santa Clause for a number of years and in 1976 played Uncle Sam.
It was his father that came to our current farm location in 1896. People ask how we got so far off the road and down in a valley but that’s where the water was. They settled next to the natural springs. Grandpa hauled sand from the creek banks to his garden plot so he could grow peanuts and watermelons.

My dad says his Dad didn’t like change and didn’t like to make improvements to the farm. Whenever my dad made a change his dad criticized it. And when they decided to tear down the old farmhouse they didn’t exactly tell Grandpa about it. He drove in about the time the old house was pulled down and I’m told he simply turned around, drove away and didn’t come back until he was invited for Thanksgiving dinner in the new house. Which he did admit was a nice house.

My maternal Grandpa died before I was born. Grandma called every night at 7:00 to talk to my mother and if I answered the phone there was a pause and a little laugh and then ‘Ben?’ Yes, Grandma, it’s me… she also told me not to eat candy cause I was gonna get fat and, in the 70’s when I was trying the ‘gold chain necklace look’, she saved me from myself by informing me that only girls wore necklaces.

One of my favorite memories of Grandma is riding in her car when I was a kid, stopping at an intersection and a couple boys about 10 yrs old on bikes had to stop as we blocked their path and one kid said ‘Aw ya dumb old lady….’ And Grandma laughed and waved and drove off. I think about that a lot; I think how well she handled that (we never talked about it so I’m not sure what she thought of it), but I think there was probably a good lesson in there for me as a 10 yr old. And as a future grandparent.

Grandma’s house was where we watched the fireworks on the fourth of July. All my cousins were there with watermelon and squirt guns in her back yard.
And her 1967 Plymouth Valiant was my first car.

Yep, driven by a little old lady.

What comes to mind when you think of your grandparents?

The Baboon Congress

News of the World

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Today’s guest post comes from Renee Boomgaarden.

Rupert Murdoch’s recent spot of bother made me think about a newpaper I read for the first time on my trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation – The Lakota Country Times. I found it to be a welcome change from our local paper and the online news services I usually read. Our local paper is published six days a week and contains day-old news and lots of typos and bad grammar. The articles are dull. We occasionally buy a Sunday New York Times in Bismarck, a real treat for our daughter who loves to read to wedding write ups.

I grew up with a weekly paper, The Rock County Star Herald, a paper mentioned quite often, along with its publisher Al McIntosh, in Ken Burns’ documentary “The War”. Al still published the paper and wrote a weekly column when I was a kid. He lived at the end of our street in a grey brick house. Wednesday was always an exciting day, since that was when the paper came out and we could see what had happened in town over the past week. It was a finely written paper and, well, personal in its tone.

The Lakota Country Times is also a weekly paper and seems to be a true community publication that prints news, goings on, and cultural information important for its readers. It describes itself as “The official legal newspaper for the Pine Ridge and Rosebud Reservation”. Its motto is “Truth, Integrity, and Lakota Spirit”.

My initial impression of the paper was that it was colorful and thick. All the pictures were in color, and there were lots of them. It had many op/ed pieces, health and public service announcements, government notices, regular and guest columnists who were all local people, ads for Indian businesses, book reviews, and pages of letters to the editor.

Some were from tribal members who were incarcerated in the SD State Penitentiary asking for prayers. Some were from Europeans who had visited the reservation in the past and were asking for the addresses of long lost friends. Others were from tribal members living in other parts of the US. One of these was from California alerting the tribe to the public sale of personal possession and artifacts of Chief Red Cloud, a very important figure for the tribe. The letter outlined how the objects had been stolen by army and government officials in the late 1800’s. I was amazed at the details that had been handed down to the letter writer from ancestors about the people who had been involved in the removal of those objects from the reservation and how the artifacts had ended up in California.

The paper dripped with wry and sarcastic humor and had a whole page of Indian cartoons I had never seen before. Any positive happening was reported with photos and extensive copy, such as the graduation of three people from an alternative high school. Obituaries were plentiful and published at no cost in a section called “The Holy Road”. There were far too many death notices for young people, a sad fact of life on the Rez. I doubt that the reporters were so disrespectful and insensitive as to hack into the phone messages of the deceased.

I think Mr. Murdock has lost touch with his readers and what is important to them. Perhaps he needs a refresher course at Pine Ridge and Rosebud to figure out what a good paper can do for a community. The Lakota Country Times has a website that gives a nice sense of what the printed edition is like. Check it out.

What newspapers have you liked and disliked over the years?

The Baboon Congress

Pretend

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Today’s guest post is by Barbara in Robbinsdale.

Welcome to a place where pine cones are medicine, a stick can be a baby bottle, a lily-of-the-valley is a fairy lamp with lots of little tiny lights.

I get to see my 8-year-old neighbor Lola each week for a couple of hours. She always has an idea for what we should do, and although we’ve done a couple of artsy projects (yes, she’s made a placemat from old greeting cards), the most fun has been pretend. And the best place for pretend seems to be out of doors.

I had almost forgotten about pretend. I did plenty of it both as a child, and when my child was young in the 80s. But that was long ago, so clearly I was a bit rusty. I found it’s a bit like riding a bike – you never really forget how. One person says something like “This stone can be the fairies’ doorstep”, and suddenly you find yourself saying “I know some seashells that can be more steps – I’ll go get them!”

When one of those last snowstorms surprised us, Lola and I converted the woodpile-snowdrift into a Fairytown, where the overturned shells became stepping stones, and later (not overturned) for fairy dishes. A hollow log was a safe haven for squirrels and chipmunks and other critters. Once it got warmer, Husband helped us build a Fairy House from some scrap wood pieces and an old squirrel feeder.

Our favorite game to date has been Ambulance. Lola created a doll hospital in a pine tree’s low branches, with hammock style beds she fashioned from tablecloths. She had brought three dolls with her that day, and the wheel barrow was enlisted as The Ambulance.

With the use of both my cordless and cell phones, I was able to call Lola the Ambulance Driver and tell her what street to zip over to (streets were named by what they were near: Garden Lane, Brick Lane, Shovel Lane…). She whisked an injured baby to The Hospital, where there were five available rooms named by the type of injury they housed: Broken Left Leg, Broken Right Leg, Broken Left Arm, Broken Right Arm, and Anything Else!

There was even a waiting room for me, the anxious mother – the garden bench out front over by Brick Lane. All babies/toddlers were successfully treated and given pinecone medicines, and returned by the Ambulance to their homes.

Do you have anyone in your current life with whom you can pretend?
If not, try it here: What would be the prominent features of your imaginary town?

Poems

Doom, Despair, Disappointment

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So it looks like the government shutdown / standoff / slapdown is over – for now. Each year our leaders seem to find a way to assure us that we will have another horrible confrontation two years down the road. Start stockpiling. 2014 is coming!

I was struck by the tone that was set in the afternoon press conference announcing the agreement – universal dissatisfaction.

Finally, Minnesota’s poltical warlords can emerge from their bunkers to agree on something – everyone thinks the settlement, the handiwork for which they sacrificed thousands of disagreeable hours, is universally appalling.

Which is a situation that just begs for an insipid little poem.

We closed down parks across the state
to strike a deal we all can hate.

We braced ourselves and wouldn’t move
for terms of which we don’t approve.

Stopped paying daycare costs for tykes
to get a budget no one likes.

Refused to let the horses race
to set the stage for this disgrace.

Let all the aid to towns subside
to force this pact we can’t abide

We didn’t budge. We pitched our tent
to make this legal excrement.

And did I mention anywhere
we’ll vote for what we cannot bear?

We hate the outcome. Hate it bad.
But that’s the only choice we had!

Can you recall a story with a more disappointing ending?

Uncategorized

Lighter Than Air

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Suddenly everything is puffy and floating.

The world’s largest airship arrived in Minnesota yesterday. The zeppelin Eureka, owned by a company called Airship Ventures in California and bearing the Farmers Insurance logo as a convenient bill-paying strategy, is parked, fittingly, at Flying Cloud Airport.

It will float around our area through the weekend, selling insurance and slow rides to paying customers at $375 a pop.

Sorry. Probably shouldn’t say “pop” around an airship.

Not to worry. This zeppelin’s skin is made from the same high tech fabric we use in space suits, and it gets its lift from non-flammable helium, so there should be no “Oh the humanity” moment for this dirigible.

At the same time the Eureka was slputtering towards its mooring mast, the air-supported roof of the Metrodome was rising back into position, buoyed by positive air pressure from inside and returning that familiar spongy pincushion profile to the south side of Minneapolis’ downtown. Fans raised the roof in about 45 minutes yesterday, so that fans will be able to raise the roof when the Vikings return in August.

And well above the Metrodome roof and the Farmers’ Zeppelin in the airless confines of near Earth orbit, spacewalker Mike Fossum of the shuttle Atlantis spent some time yesterday moving what looks to be your grandma’s old kitchen range out to the space station’s equivalent of the garage, using only his fingertips and the power of the name “Canada”. Too bad Farmers’ didn’t get in on that sponsorship action.

This was the last scheduled spacewalk of the shuttle program. I guess it’ll be a while before we get to go outside again. The next time we decide to make a space suit, we can get all the fabric we need by cannibalizing the remains of the Farmers’ airship.

Time to come in, kids!

Tell us a story that involves something inflatable.

Uncategorized

What’s My Line?

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Today is Dave Garroway‘s birthday, in the year 1913. He was a TV star back when people dressed up to be on TV. But he was a radio man too, and for a time in the ’50’s he was everywhere. His conversational style of hosting was a departure for the more formal, announcer-y approach, and his work as the original host of the Today show helped bring some intimacy to the new, blurry, black-and-white frontier.

How’s this for a good morning greeting in November of 1957.

“And how are you about the world today? Let’s see what kind of shape it’s in; there is a glimmer of hope.”

And you have to love a guy who established as his trademark, in Eisenhower’s America, at the height of the Red Scare, a simple one-word sign off, accompanied by a raised hand with the palm forward – “Peace.”

Signing off with "Peace".

Though Garroway seemed so easygoing and cheerful on the air, he struggled off-camera, and depression eventually took its grim toll. He ended his own life with a shotgun. He was 69.

There were a lot of things wrong with the ’50’s and ’60’s. I wouldn’t want to go back there to watch good people endure semi-official racism and a host of corrosive things we just “didn’t talk about”, like mental illness. But I do like the thought of TV shows where the ladies wear diamonds, the gentlemen have bow ties, and there’s room for chalkboards and chimpanzees.

Here’s Garroway’s appearance as a surprise guest on a popular show – basically 20 questions, but televised.

How do you feel about guessing games?

The Baboon Congress

Road Worrier

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Kudos to everyone who responded to the pitch for guest posts yesterday. I’ve been hearing from people during the past few weeks with generous offers of surplus posts to give me some extra time to adjust to my new job and some extra projects that are chewing up the afternoon and evening hours. Bless you!

One offering that came in yesterday was so good, the moment I read it I knew I wanted to post it today! Many thanks to today’s substitute host, Steve.

The car of my youth was a 1947 Cadillac. It was a queer choice of automobile for my family, being both impractical and costly to maintain. But my dad got the Caddie at a low price because of a series of events that are complicated and ultimately tragic, so I won’t go into them now. And although Dad was no car snob, this car appealed to the child in him.

He was delighted to find, for example, that the Caddie didn’t have a hood release in front or a gasoline filler cap in the rear. Dad would pull into a gas station and just grin while the attendant walked around and around trying to figure out how to get the hood up or the gas in.
The trick for lifting the hood was to push up on the hood ornament, which was a stylized woman with wings. When the Caddie was new we had to whack the “Ladybird” ornament pretty hard, and in later years we had to give the Ladybird one hell of a clout on her chin. Dad found that funny, too. To put gas in, the gas station attendant (I know that dates me) had to lift the right taillight assembly to uncover the filler cap hidden underneath.

1947 must have been the first year Cadillac began experimenting with hydraulics. The transmission was a very early and buggy hydraulic system. Our windows were hydraulic, but finicky, so once you put the windows down they were going to stay there for months until the next mechanical overhaul. Worse, the convertible mechanism itself was hydraulic and unreliable. Putting the top down was foolish, for the chances were more than even that it wouldn’t go back up. And then there was that night we went to the Ranch Drive-In Theater and decided to put the top down. The top lurched into the night sky until it was pointed straight up, and then it refused to move an inch either way. The outraged honking of all the cars behind us is something I’ll never forget.

The ’47 Caddie became my car to drive on short hunting and fishing trips around Ames when I got my driver’s license. And by that time the Caddie had a new trick. The engine would shut down after 16 or 17 minutes of driving. Since my dad sometimes drove the Caddie 8 minutes to his office, he refused to believe my stories of engine trouble. I complained a whole year before he tried to drive it 16 minutes and learned I had been right.

The Caddie engine shut down one lovely May day when I was out with buddies Nick and Mike. We couldn’t get it going again, and we were out in the country where I couldn’t call for help. But there was a farm house right up the hill, so we climbed that and knocked on the door.
I almost lost my voice when the door opened. There about five young men in that farm house, all looking like the most lethal biker gang on earth, with tattoos, naked chests, bizarre hair styles and black leather. These guys looked meaner than the mutant hillbillies of “Deliverance” on a bad hair day. I wanted to run away, but I had just knocked on their door. I quaked out my request for help, and this bunch of psychopaths agreed to give me a push.

You might be thinking: but you can’t push a car with an automatic transmission. Indeed, that is what everyone said. But I had just read an article in a paper that said if you got the distressed car above 47 miles an hour and dropped the tranny lever into D, she might fire up.
We got in the Caddy and the gang of escaped convicts got in some kind of hopped up truck and began pushing us. Has anyone driven country roads in Iowa? They are all covered with limestone gravel, which makes a good road unless you get up speed or try to turn left or right, at which point the gravel rolls under your tires like ball bearings. And we were on a serpentine road next to the Skunk River.

By the time we were up to 40 mph the bumpers of the two cars were sawing back and forth wildly and we were drifting from one road edge to the other, inches from disaster. When we got to 50 I dropped the transmission into gear, but nothing happened. Then I realized I hadn’t explained a “Plan B” to these leather-clad father rapers. They were still on Plan A, and their only thought was to keep pushing me faster and faster. Now the old Caddie was slewing madly from one curve to another, throwing gravel way out past the ditches. I was past thinking about starting the Caddie, for it was all I could handle to keep that old beast from drifting into a ditch. Somewhere near 60 mph the engine kicked in, and then I had to floor it to let my friendly sociopathic Good Samaritans understand that I was on my own power.

Did you ever drive a car with a quirky personality?

Uncategorized

Literature and Chickens

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Today is the birthday of the writer E.B. White in 1899. The E. stood for Elwyn, which White said he “never liked”.

“My mother just hung it on me because she’d run out of names. I was her sixth child.”

I guess it didn’t take long to get to “Elwyn” during the last summer of the 19th century. Just one of the ways in which things have changed.

White wrote for the New Yorker Magazine and celebrated the city in prose, but he and his wife Katherine were also drawn to the countryside. They bought a farmhouse in rural Maine and lived there in the company of animals from 1938 on.

Observing nature gave him inspiration for plenty of wonderful work, including “Charlotte’s Web”, a classic tale about a philosophical spider and a fabulous pig.

Here’s an E.B. White quote:

“I don’t know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens.”

There’s a lot of the human/animal struggle in White’s writing, including this letter to a friend.

My poultry operations have expanded considerably since you were here: I have a large laying house with a flock of would-be layers that turned and bit me in mid season. It was the most stinging defeat of my life, for I put a good deal of my energy into the project, raised the birds by hand from infancy, ranged them on green range, groomed them for the battle, designed and built the house, and saw them go into production in early September looking like a million dollars and shelling out in great shape. All of a sudden some little thing went wrong and they began to come apart, the way pullets do when the vitamins don’t add up right, or when a couple of them get going to the bathroom too often. From forty dozen eggs a week I slid off to about fourteen dozen, and cannibalism began taking its ugly toll. Ah welladay! A man learns a lot in a year, if he hangs around animals.

I have to wonder how E.B. White would feel about all the action these days around the issue of keeping chickens in the city.

He wrote about everything, from poultry to polling. Nothing is off-limits to a talented observer.

“The so-called science of poll-taking is not a science at all but mere necromancy. People are unpredictable by nature, and although you can take a nation’s pulse, you can’t be sure that the nation hasn’t just run up a flight of stairs, and although you can take a nation’s blood pressure, you can’t be sure that if you came back in twenty minutes you’d get the same reading. This is a damn fine thing.”

Chickens and people – he seemed to have an affinity for unmanageable things.

Though he died in 1985, E.B. White remains an inspiration to writers everywhere, thanks to his books, poems and a slim but powerful guide, “The Elements of Style.”

If E.B. White gives you a hankering to write, I’d be happy to put you on the list for a guest blog appearance! I’m hoping to take next week off, so drop a line to connelly.dale@gmail.com.

What are some of your feelings about chickens?