You Are Where You Are

My Dad made obvious statements impossible to refute. He brought these universal truths out often, enjoying them immensely. They were simple and pure, defying follow up questions or responses of any kind really. One of his favorite lines was;

“Everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

It’s very hard to argue with that statement. Mom might be at the kitchen table reading the Bloomington Pantagraph about someone from Danvers who was picked up for DUI, for example, and be surprised at where the arrest was made.

“What do you suppose he was doing there on the South Side of Bloomington?” she would say, nosily. To which Dad might reply;

“Well you know, everybody’s got to be somewhere.”

He never named EGBS, this concept in the acronym. It could have been Dean’s law of random physical presence, the requirement that our bodies occupy space somewhere on the planet. For him I think it expressed something deeply existential. We heard that line and others so much we tended to dismiss them because they were so obvious. I think he thought they were funny, often smiling as he delivered the lines.

Its corollary, which is even better I think, is that sage bit of wisdom;

“You are where you are.”

That’s certainly true, in every case, whenever said, but it implies something else. YAWYA, which might be Dean’s law of unavoidable current habitation, carries with it the necessity of accepting your place but at the same time assessing your situation. We don’t like to do that, as Americans. We like to ignore our reality and live instead in the world of the possible, as if we were at some place we are not. A poor medical student without two dimes to rub together behaving as if he were already a rich doctor, living in a hovel drinking cheap beer but buying expensive crystal for the day he can enjoy fine wine. Dad liked to call things as he saw them, encouraged his family and others to do the same, but at the same time offering hope. He lived through a lot of bad stuff, my Dad. I like to think he learned these things, YAWYA and EGTBS, the hard way and tried in his gentle way to pass them on to us.

But then again Dad may have learned these lessons as a lifelong Cub fan.

Born in 1909, the year after the Cubs won their last World Series, Dad never saw them as champions during his lifetime. During his 77 years on the planet he loved to listen to the Cubs play on the radio, and after he sold the cows he insisted on getting a giant TV dish, which we mounted in concrete by the garden, so he and Mom could pull in WGN from outer space and watch the Cubs on Channel 9. He loved to follow them but never do I remember him joining in the chorus of boos that has followed them all these years for being arguably the worst team in baseball during the last century. I think he was comforted and helped as a Cub fan by those two principles he embraced. “Everybody has to be somewhere” and “You are where you are.”

The Cubs finished an entire season of Major League Baseball last night by winning their final game and taking two out of three from the Milwaukee Brewers, as they did from the St. Louis Cardinals earlier in the week. At the beginning of the season my friend Chuck Maney point out that the Cubs looked good, if they had been playing in the Pacific Coast League. Sadly they were not. They were a major league ball club with little resemblance to one. Did Cub fans have high hopes for their team in spring training? No. We expected them to have a losing season. It was called a rebuilding year from the start, which is a misnomer. For the Cubs it was simply a building year. They had nothing to rebuild from. Rebuilding implies you once had a solid structure to restore. The Cubs have been in shambles, as far as their won-loss record, since their last winning season in 2008. They lost 101 games in 2012. Winning seasons have been few and far between since 1908. It’s a very sad history to own. But such is the history of the Chicago Cubs. They are where they are.

The Cubs finished in the cellar, last place of the National League’s Central Division with a record of 73 wins and 89 losses, for the fifth year in a row. Thirty teams make up Major League Baseball in America, fifteen teams in both the American and National League. The best team in baseball, Numero Uno during the regular season, was the Los Angeles Angels with a record of 98 wins and 64 losses. The Cubs, looking purely at wins and losses now and not beer sales at home games, tied with the Philadelphia Phillies as 23rd best team in baseball with a winning percentage of .451. But then, everybody has to be somewhere.

For a time I had this crazy hope that the Cubs might claw their way past the fading Cincinnati Reds and finish fourth in the division. Sadly, that did not come to pass. They missed that milestone by three games. The Cubs could be worse. Several teams are. The lowly Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West own the title of worst team in baseball and are firmly established there with a winning percentage of .395, 63 wins and 96 losses. If the Cubs were playing in the West rather than the Central there would be two teams below them. They would finish not in the cellar but ahead of both Colorado and Arizona. But, they aren’t in the West. They are where they are.

My own personal goal after trading off Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hamel to Oakland, was for the Cubs to be the best of the worst, cellar dwelling team in Major League Baseball with the best record. Though few recognize it there is each year a king of the cellar dwellers, the team that happens to find themselves last in their division but with the best record of the worst losers. It happens this year that the Cubs tied the Phillies as being “Best of the Worst.” You won’t find this kind of analysis on ESPN folks. It’s a shame to allow the title of “Best of the Worst” to end as a tie. I personally believe it should be decided by a one game playoff.

The Cubs almost made won that crown. In fact, legions of Chicagoans got a push I’m sure in their bets with friends that one Chicago team would win more than the other. Both were equally bad. The Chicago White Sox also finished the year at 73 wins and 89 losses. It was predicted at the beginning of the season that the Cubs had a shot at another dreaded negative achievement, the ultimate disgrace, losing 100 games. HA! Not even close. Not even 90. I know some teams have not lost 90 games in modern history, but we’re talking about the Chicago Cubs here folks. Since 1945 they have lost 90 in a single season 21 times. They lost 100 games or more three times since 1945, the last time in 2012 when they lost 101. This year they traded practically every pitcher with any value, played kids the second half of the season, and still won 73 games while losing only 89. If you’re a Cub fan you hang your hat on that 89. The Cubs have lost 90 games or more the last three seasons. Not this year.

I know it’s easy to read this as a Cardinal fan, or a Yankee enthusiast, who adopt as their own smoothly oiled organizations with storied histories and a roomful of pennants and trophies, and scoff. Laugh even; loudly, boisterously, derisively.

“Those poor Cub fans,” they say, wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. “Why would you stay loyal to a team with such a miserable history, an organization that traded Lou Brock for Ernie Broglio, actually believed that Adolfo Phillips would one day become a hitter, and has not had a team in the World Series for 106 years?” More laughter. They can hardly stand it’s so funny. ROTFLTAO.

Well to them I say everybody has to be somewhere, and that’s exactly where the Cubs are. Yes, they have a losing record (though not within the friendly confines of Wrigley field, where they won 41 and lost 40.) Yes they traded away their best pitchers, anyone with actual with proven value except for Jake Arrieta. And yes they still have problems with their old ball park. But where are the Cubs exactly?

The Cubs are poised for success. They have long term contracts with two young players who had solid seasons and are beginning to produce-Anthony Rizzo and Starlin Castro. Rizzo finished second in the National League in homers with 32. Castro was tenth best among National League batters in batting average with .292 and kept his head in the game all season. They brought up four promising rookies, Jorge Solero, Javier Baez, Arismendy Alacantara, and Kyle Hendricks, a rookie who pitched himself into the starting rotation. Who did they get for Samardzija and Hamel? Addison Russell, yet another shortstop who in 2012 was baseball’s first round draft pick, Billy McKinney the 2013 number one pick, pitcher Dan Strahly and that perennial favorite PTBNL (Player to Be Named Later.) The Cubs traded known talent for vast potential. Samardzija and Hamel helped Oakland get to the playoffs this year. Russell and McKinney may carry the Cubs there often in future years.

Even critics of the Cubs covet the young players now in the Cubs organization including Kris Bryant, Albert Almora, and C.J. Edwards. They can be developed or traded. Have you heard of these guys? They haven’t played an inning of Major League Baseball. Watch for them. And miracle of miracles, the Cubs may have actually found an effective closer in Hector Rondon. God help me if I’ve jinxed these young players.

So yes it is true, as my Dad was so fond of saying, that everyone has to be somewhere. Where are the Cubs? They finished in the cellar of the Central division with a losing record. They did not have a good season in 2014. But fortunately, you are where you are. The Cubs are loaded with talented young players. I like where they are. I can hardly wait till next year. But then, I’m a Cub fan. What did you expect?

Dogs in the Bible, truth from fiction, raising kids

Never let it be said that I am not wrong from time to time. My wife reminds me of my wrongness by pointing out and remembering, I truly believe, every error in thought or action I have committed (of which she is aware) from the moment I met her till just this morning actually. And now that I’m blogging to the public, you point out my errors as well. So be it. I stand corrected.

One of my blog gaffes was exposed by smart guy and friend Don Baker. I’m not being sarcastic here. He really is a smart guy, having founded and then retired as director from a very good organization youth organization in Evanston. In a post about talking to my dog I boldly asserted, or rather my dog Ally (may she rest in peace) boldly asserted, that dogs were not mentioned in the Bible. Don liked the article, as did many. However he gently but firmly told me in no uncertain terms, with references to back it up, that dogs indeed did make it into the holy scriptures.

Don has this search program that allows you to type in anything you please and see if it is mentioned in the Bible. I find it is difficult if not impossible in this age of Google to invent or distort facts. It can be done, but it’s certainly not as easy as it used to be, especially about such widely studied things as the Bible. So Don used this virtual digital gizmo as it were and discovered no less than twenty seven (27) references to dogs in the Bible. Not one of them complimentary. I’m glad Ally didn’t know. Ally was right, and that was her point in the story. Sometimes it’s better to be ignored completely than noted and remembered in a negative light. Sadly, dogs do not enjoy Biblical anonymity. I’m glad Ally died before learning how awful it really is. She never was one much for Google.

The dog references in the Bible, beginning in Exodus and ending in Revelations, are universally bad. Here’s a few favorites, holy dog highlights as it were, to give you a flavor for the low regard in which dogs were held in ancient times.

Psalms 59:6- They return at evening, they howl like a dog, and go around the city.

Psalms 22:16- For dogs have surrounded me; a band of evildoers has encompassed me…

1 Samuel 17:43- The Philistine said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come to me with sticks?"

Philippians 3:2- Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision. (editor’s note: Would not circumcision be extremely hard to fake?)

Revelation 22:15- Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the immoral persons and the murderers and the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices lying.

Matthew 7:6- Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.

(And my personal favorite)

Proverbs 26:11- Like a dog that returns to its vomit is a fool who repeats his folly.

There you have it. According to the Bible, dogs will lie, turn on you, howl, eat their puke, and do evil things. The verses speak for themselves, which may give you a hint as to why Christianity and the Bible are such a hard sell these days. We think a lot more of our dogs now. We love them to the point of believing them good animals with noble hearts even. We love dogs because we think dogs teach us about life itself.

My personal favorite, the dog vomit fool verse, reminds me of a short exchange between my seven year old daughter and I a long time ago. She ran into the house with a horrified look on her face.

“Dad, Sandy just threw up and now he’s eating it! What’s wrong with him? ”

“Honey, it’s just him being a dog. They’re not people. Dogs do that.”

And as we now know from the Bible, dogs have done that same thing for thousands of years.

Moving on to less graphic and earthy topics, I think it’s good to remind you occasionally, as if you didn’t already know, that I make stuff up in these blog posts. Are they are based on things that really happen or have happened to me? Yes. Are the events actually as l experienced them? Only loosely. Are the conversations verbatim? No. This is not journalism. These are stories. Journalists, good ones that is, are constrained by an obligation to write the truth as closely as they can to what they see and understand to be true. I, on the other hand, exercise my prerogative to make stuff up for story purposes.

Did I get lost in a boat in Northern Ontario with a guy who was not pleased at being lost as I wrote about the last two weeks? Yes I did. Did he say those exact words to me, and I to him, which I enclosed with quotation marks as dialogue? Not entirely. For example, in recollecting the incident around a table in a warm kitchen laden down with Walleye fillets, hash browns and cold beer did he describe my directional device as a “candy ass compass?” No he did not. I made that up. I thought it the perfect adjective for that cheap compass that got us home, and to communicate the gentle ribbing he gave me in front of the other guys, as guys will do.

Does that detract from your enjoyment of the story? I hope not. I strive to make these posts better in the future by making up more and better stuff, describing life in ways that are not necessarily factual but damn good. I count on you to suspend your disbelief and go with it. Perhaps laughing, maybe crying at times, but certainly getting emotionally involved with the writing and enjoying it. That’s what I’m going for. I hope to make up a whole book that way. Will it be based on things that really happened in my life? I don’t know how it couldn’t. Will it be non-fiction? A memoir? Not on your life. Too difficult, too painful, and maybe too boring. I’m going, each time I write, for a good story. Just thought you should know.

And as long as I’m talking about various things this week let me close with something from my past life as a formally working person. Child abuse. Contrary to recent news on parenting stemming from all places the NFL, child abuse is fairly easy to recognize. Government, through state agencies, often in partnership with community organizations, now identify, treat, and as a last resort raise abused and neglected children. We use the courts to prosecute, rehabilitate, and in some cases terminate the parental rights of abusive and neglectful parents. Preventing and responding to child abuse and neglect is serious business. Attending to it is in our country’s best interest. Why? Because child abuse and neglect destroys families and creates damaged adults.

State agencies, which is Illinois is DCFS, have codified child abuse and its deadly sister, child neglect. Child abuse in Illinois begins with cuts, welts and bruises and ends with broken bones, skull fractures, and death. Is the use of physical punishment to discipline your child, considered abuse? No. But striking your child in a way that creates cults, welts, and bruises certainly is. What’s the difference? You can see cuts, welts, and bruises. They are evidence of abuse, of physical punishment taken too far. As a society we officially draw the line right there.

Which speaks not at all to the argument as to whether physical or corporal punishment is necessary to effectively parent children. Parenting children is one of our most important roles as human beings. And it is hard work. It requires us grown-ups to be confident, decisive, fair, consistent, diligent and yet loving. How many of us are up to that task day in and day out? To be an effective parent you must set limits and boundaries and provide consequences when your children exceed them. As a parent you have an obligation to teach your children right from wrong, appropriate from inappropriate, kind from mean. You can’t simply be their friend. You must be their guide to both living well and being good, and at times that will require you to deliver hard lessons.

However, we do not have to hit our kids to deliver those lessons. I believe hitting children only reinforces the belief that interpersonal violence, administered by the strong over the weak, the big over the little, is ultimate power. You are required as a parent to clearly express disapproval of bad behavior, create consequences for it that matter, and risk causing your children temporary pain, which is contrary to the loving care you typically display to them. But it does not have to be physical pain. There are a host of effective alternatives to whipping children.

All that said, there are parents who will continue to use physical punishment to discipline their children. It’s not the end of the world nor is it against the law. What is against the law begins with cuts welts and bruises. If you choose to punish your children physically spank them with your open hand. Do not take their pants down. Don’t hit them with objects. If you do so, cuts welts and bruises will not be an issue. Should a four year old boy child be hit with a narrow branch of a tree until welts are raised on his bare skin and he bleeds? That is an easy question to answer. Most of us, Michael Vick notwithstanding, wouldn’t treat a dog that way. And if Charles Barkley is correct and 90% of Southern black parents “whoop” their children in that fashion they should stop. It’s too much. They are traumatizing their children and perpetuating needless violence against other humans. Child abuse is defined and easily recognized. There is no national debate of which I’m aware on this topic. End of story.

Going North Part 2

I held the hood of my rain jacket out over my face, shielding my eyes from the hard rain. I couldn’t see the far shore. My biggest fear was rocks. If we hit a rock which damaged the motor or the boat, or worse yet threw one or both of us into the water, we’d be in real trouble. I looked at my old partner. He’d managed to get the hood up on his rain jacket. He had his life jacket on upside down. He was depending on me to keep him safe. I was still lost. Sometimes we have little to go on but hope and faith.

Time distorts when we’re in trouble. I don’t know how long we travelled north in that little boat, searching for the shoreline. It seemed like an hour, but it was probably no more than twenty minutes. The wind blew hard, and the rain continued to pelt us. Gusts of wind blew rain and lake water onto us. We hunkered down.

Finally the shore appeared. We’d gone straight North by the compass. Trees and a rock line loomed before us, but no camp. I pulled the boat within twenty feet of shore and stopped. My boat partner and I hadn’t talked in some time.

“We’re still lost!” he yelled.

“No we’re not, we’re on the North shore of Roderick Lake. Which way do you think camp is? Right or Left? East or West?”

He looked carefully both ways. “I don’t know!”

“I think West. I’m going to turn right.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” he yelled.

“OK. If we don’t find camp we’ll come back. But we’re staying on this shore!”

I turned the boat. Because the wind was at our shoulder the boat handled differently, wallowing some. Slowing down didn’t help.

“Hold on! “I yelled. My partner looked back at me and nodded. His face looked grim.

We came to a spit of land going south from shore. I turned into the wind and the bow of the boat began to bounce. Cutting the waves with the V of the little boat was better. I sped up. At the end of the land was an island. A narrow channel separated it from land. Those channels were often shallow, and I feared the rocks.

“I’m going around this island, then we’ll turn back North!”

As we neared the end of the island my partner grew animated.

“Look!” He was pointing ahead of us.

Sticking up from a line of rocks was a thin steel rod, rebar. Wired on top of it was a green plastic jug. It was meant to warn boaters of underwater rocks.

“We’re close!” he said. We’d both seen that jug before. Giving the jug ample berth I turned back North. He pointed again, and turned with a big grin. Amid the white caps we saw two white buoys, markers for the float planes.

“Look on shore for the cabin!” I yelled.

Rain still hampered our vision. But I thought I saw something out of the ordinary, something too smooth, too even. It was the hulls of unused fishing boats stacked on the shore by our camp.

“There it is!”

“Where?”

“Off to the right!”

“I don’t see it!”

“It’s there.”

We were in open water. I twisted the motor handle open full and made a line straight for the hulls. As we got closer we saw the roof of the cabin. Then smoke coming from the chimney. Relief washed over me. I pictured our friends sitting around the kitchen table, warmed by the stove, not far away. We were having steaks that night. I’d seen them in the fridge. We would dock the boat, leave the gear, get into the cabin, and be in for the night. Safe. Dry clothes, hot meal, warm bed.

As we neared the dock our trip leader was standing on the dock. The rain was letting up. He held up his arms and smiled.

“We were worried about you!”

“No more worried than us!” my partner said.

Our leader grabbed the rope on the bow and pulled us up the inclined dock, our boat filling the last empty slot. First he helped my partner step out of the boat and onto the dock. Then he came to where I was sitting at the rear of the boat.

“How was it out there?” he asked.

“It was a son of a bitch.”

“We were giving you twenty more minutes and if you weren’t back we were coming out looking for you.”

“Did you see that storm coming?” I asked.

“Yeah, we were in open water and saw the storm across the lake. We got in before the rain started.”

“I didn’t see it at all. It was my fault.”

“I thought maybe you’d gone to shore to wait it out.”

“No. I felt like I had to get him back.”

“Well, I’m glad you did.”

I started dinner with a couple of fingers of Bushmill’s Irish whiskey. I was still a little jumpy after coming off the lake. My partner in the adventure sat next to me with a tumbler of vodka. Our friends were sympathetic. Well, sympathetic to a point. Several of them remarked that while they were worried, of course they were worried, they realized if we didn’t happen to make it back there would be two more sirloins for them. They wanted details of our time in the storm. I ate while my partner talked. Steak and hash browns never tasted so good.

“Well, it’s raining like hell, we don’t know where we are, and Dave pulls out this candy ass little compass and tells me we’re going clear across the lake. So I have little choice but to go with him. I thought we were going to be blown right into the lake a couple of times, and I don’t swim very well. But by God we got here, all because I saw that green jug.“

He held his glass up, I raised mine, and we clicked them together.

“You were a good captain,” he said.

“You were a great first mate.” We drank. I believe we had a few more after that as well. Before I turned in that night I had a cigar.

This trip has a twenty year plus history. Our leader and at least one other of the eight have been on every one. Another of the crew was on the original trip, missed a few, and is back. It was my first time. They know what they’re doing; what it costs down to the penny, equipment needed, groceries required, how it works crossing the border. I felt I was in good hands. The leader filleted all the fish, made the major decisions, handled the money, told us when to start releasing fish, and generally kept everything running smoothly and on schedule. He did it very well and very quietly.

Why do guys go on these trips? I can’t speak for them. I went for the beauty, and to recapture something I found up there years before. I wasn’t sure I would ever make it back. I hadn’t fished in fifteen years. When I was young, still acting director of YSB and working way too hard, I went with a bunch of guys to the Canadian border on a similar trip. Rustic cabin, little motorboats, cases of beer. I slept in the back of a van the whole way up, twelve hours plus. The fellas thought there was something wrong with me, roused me in Northern Minnesota at a donut shop and told me to go to the bathroom. A few days into the trip, after I was rested, I woke to the beauty of the sky and the lakes around me. It cleared my head. I got married soon after that, and started my family.

Years later I took my son to the boundary waters three summers in a row, beginning when he was in 7th grade. I wanted him to find what I had found years before. We cooked freeze dried food and fish, humped our canoe and gear over portages, set up camp, hiked, fished, and lazed around. When it rained we stayed in the tent and read short stories to each other. We had fun. It was a special time for me, and for him I think.

Why do guys go on these trips? They go to experience the fresh air and sunshine of all day on the lake and remember the feel of a fish on the line. To walk through the woods on a path you’ve never travelled. To carve a week out of your life that is simple. To tell old jokes to people that haven’t heard them, enjoy old friendships, and make new ones. One thing for sure, they don’t go for the big pots in the poker games.

When I woke in the middle of the night I would sometimes walk out on the dock and look at the sky. There is no light pollution in the wilderness of Northern Ontario. You forget how beautiful the night sky can be. We saw a hint of Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights, dancing on the night horizon, shimmery and white, like sheer curtains. Early one morning I went outside and saw the sky over the lake lit by the sun rising behind the cabin.

Later that morning four of us travelled to a corner of the lake, into the river that feeds Lake Roderick, got out of our boats and pulled them by ropes from shore through a narrow rock gorge with rapids to navigate once again on a wider section of the river, finally tying them up at the head of a portage trail. We gathered our fishing gear, extra boat gas, and a lunch we had packed to follow a narrow rocky portage trail up and over the hill that separates Roderick from a smaller lake simply named Walleye. There we found two old boats with 8 HP motors tied to a small dock and gas cans under a crude wooden box near them. As we fished and explored Walleye Lake I felt doubly removed, absolutely cut off, floating quietly in the Canadian wilderness under a bright sun. Walleye Lake is aptly named by the way. We filleted them in the boat, on an oar, to avoid the weight of so many whole fish on the trip back.

That night I saw the moon rising over the lake that was lit red by the sun that morning.

Later in the week we made another portage on the south end of the lake, this time bypassing a loud cascade of water in the stream that is the outlet for Roderick. This was an easier walk. We saw signs of moose on the trail. It was good to get off the lake and walk deep into the woods. It’s quiet and beautiful in there as well.

These guys have moved their trip around, from one Canadian outfitter to another, flying in from various departure points, fishing on lots of different lakes. Apparently, a number of other groups have gone to Roderick Lake, stayed in that particular cabin over and over, year after year. Each visit they leave home made plaques on the walls, some nicely done with wood burners, which list their names, note the year, and comment on their stay. One group noted that in July of 1997 “All We Caught Was a Buzz.”

On the back of one nicely done peeled log, hung carefully from a support beam over the kitchen table on brass eyelets in 2012, The Snore Crew shared this thought

“Trips like these remind men they can be boys forever.”

They might be on to something there.

Going North

There is a town in north Ontario,

With dream comfort memory to spare.
And in my mind I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.

Blue, blue windows behind the stars,
Yellow moon on the rise,
Big birds flying across the sky,
Throwing shadows on our eyes.

from the song “Helpless” by Neil Young, 1969

After a quick trip across the lake, a 9.9 horsepower motor pushing our 14’ fishing boat as fast as possible, we neared a vertical rock face and slowed down. Our wake raced past us and broke on the rocks on shore, bouncing back at our boat. We bobbed on the water.
“What’s our depth?” I asked.

He read the screen of the gizmo by the motor that indicated how deep the water and displayed digital Lego like figures purported to be fish from time to time.

“22 feet.” We’d been catching fish in water 26 to 32 feet deep all week. “We’ll drift to deeper water. When we get to thirty three feet or so we’ll go back and make another pass. There’s a trough down there that runs along the cliff. Let’s fish.”

He shut off the motor. I opened the bail on my reel and dropped my line into the water. A quarter ounce neon green lead head jig was tied directly to the end of wispy, nearly invisible six pound test line. On the jig's hook half a worm was threaded, just to cover the tip. I’d pinched the worm in two, and put the remaining half between my yellow cotton gloves on the bench beside me. Both halves, the one on my hook and the one in the boat, wriggled. We’d brought the worms all the way from Illinois. Still they wriggled. You have to hand it to worms, they are very resilient.

How that puny looking line could hold such heavy fish without breaking was a mystery to me. Line spooled off the reel and then stopped. I knew my jig was on the bottom. I reeled it up two turns. It hung with no slack, straight down, not moving. I curled the forefinger of my right hand under the line and held it lightly, staring at the end of my pole.

I looked up from the water. Cotton ball clouds hung in a brilliant blue sky. Across the lake I watched a patch of shade, chased by the sun, sweep across spiky pines on the far shore. A crow cawed three times. Then there was silence.

It gets quiet in the shack. There is the click of the keyboard as I type, birds, crickets at times, locusts in the trees at night. But constantly in the background is the persistent noise of civilization. A siren, the hum of truck tires on Route 80, the sound of a train on the tracks down the hill, a car passing across the ravine on Fields Place or on Caton Road at the other side of the house.

But on that far northern lake? Nothing, broken only by the smallest of sounds. The quiet lap of a single wave against the boat. Wind. A metal stringer scraping the gunwale of the boat. Small sounds were amplified. For long stretches of time nothing was heard at all. The silence was magnificent, and deeply peaceful.

No roads lead to Lake Roderick in Northern Ontario. I suppose with a canoe or kayak and a series of long and tortured portages you could reach it by land, but for all practical purposes it is accessible only by sea plane. To get there eight men in two vehicles, one towing a trailer, started in Ottawa, drove to International Falls, crossed the border into Canada, drove to Red Lake, Ontario, and managed to get ourselves and all our gear; groceries, bait, tackle, equipment, and bags, into two planes. They flew us north and west over lakes and forest, landed on the waters of Lake Roderick, and taxied to a dock. In front of us was a rustic cabin, which became our home for seven nights. With our stuff unloaded and on the dock, the plane taxied off. Its two long silver pontoons left the surface of the lake, grew smaller, then disappeared over the ridge. We traveled over a thousand miles to put ourselves in this place.

The rock face where we fished that day was forty feet tall. Where the rock was exposed, not covered by small pines clinging impossibly to the granite, their roots yards wide and a few inches deep, a collapse was evident. The front of the rock face had sheared off. Chunks of granite, lying near the lake’s edge, showed sharp angles. On the cliff above were gaping holes where the rocks once were, deep fissures in the rock wall mirroring the shape of the rock below. You could see how the rock could be fit back together, rejoined after all these years, like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle. It looked like a Picasso cubist painting. A big nest of sticks was built on a flat ledge, home to birds we never saw. As we fished the giant rocks loomed above us, next to us, the water twenty five feet deep within yards of shore. I imagined more slabs and chunks of rock on the lake floor below our boat, with fish seeking shelter between them. I jigged my line, pulling it up and letting it fall. The end of the rod bent slightly. I felt a slight tug on my line.

“Please come back,” I said softly to the fish, deep below me, as if it could hear.

I felt another tug. I let my rod tip go close to the water before jerking the line up hard. Nothing.

“You missed him,” my fishing partner said. “They hit light. You might have pulled it out of his mouth.”

I reeled my line up, pulling the jig out of the water. I could see the shiny curve of the hook, the barb showing.

“He took my worm.”

“I’ll go up and make another pass.” My partner started the motor and slowly took the boat back to the start of the rock face, turned the boat sideways to the wind, then killed the engine, letting us drift, pushed by the wind, through the same water again. I put the worm’s other half on my jig. We cast our lines on the wind side, positioning our bait near the bottom, and continued to jig.

Near the spot where I had the bite previously, my rod tip again bent and I felt again the familiar tug. ‘Let him take it a little more’ I said to myself. When the tug became stronger I pulled up hard. This time the weight stayed on the line.

“Fish on.”

I kept the tip of my rod up and high and reeled in line. As I did the weight became heavier and my drag, the control on the reel that gives when tension on the line hits a predetermined level, sang. The fish was running straight down, taking my jig and the line it was attached to with him. I could feel the fish move through my rod, watch him move as the line pulled right, then left, through the water.

The fight with Walleyed pike is mostly vertical. They flee downward and we work to bring them up to the boat. They rarely run away from the boat. Northern pike, especially when they see the boat, run hard in all directions, sometimes jumping out of the water in an attempt to spit the hook. When they do they sometimes use their teeth to cut a set up with no wire leader such as the one I was fishing. This was a Walleye.

“Do you need the net?”

“I don’t think so.”

He fought nicely but was beginning to come up. I didn’t think he was big. As he neared the surface I could see him, green sides flecked with yellow, big translucent eyes, his brownish top fin spread open and spiny on his back, the hook firmly in his mouth. I drew him up to the boat, grasped the head of the jig between my thumb and finger, and pulled him up and in. He flopped on the bottom of the boat.

We ate the fish we caught and when we had our limit released the rest. Eight guys can keep sixteen Walleye. That’s 32 fillets max, more than enough for a meal. Those were my favorite days, when we had plenty of fish for supper cleaned and ready in the fridge at camp and could fish just for the pleasure of catching them. We released the small ones, and many of the bigger ones, preferring to clean and eat the medium size Walleye. I quickly laid the fish I had caught on the seat of the boat in front of me, on a ruler decal, and saw that he was eighteen inches. That would be a perfect eating size, but we had no need for him. I carefully took the hook from his mouth, held him in the water and let him slide out of my hand.

“Go back and grow. See you next year.” He swam away, down to the bottom, unharmed.

The camp supplied us with a cast iron cook pot over a propane burner on a frame outside the cabin. One of our group was the fry master. He did a wonderful job. He used a light batter and cooked the fish golden brown. Some nights we made rice to go with the fish, spiked with onions and peppers. Other nights we sliced raw potatoes into slivers and fried them in the fish oil after the fillets were cooked. Until we ran out of lettuce we made a big salad to go with. Someone was smart enough to bring a bucket of Illinois garden tomatoes. A little hot sauce sprinkled on the plate. All washed down with cold beer. Is there anything better than eating fish caught that day from clean cold water served hot with freshly prepared sides? Of course there is. But as I bit into those Walleye fillets around the cabin table with my friends I couldn’t think of anything.

We stayed in a summer cabin set on stones, the log floor beams suspended a foot from the ground, rubber hoses running under the cabin for plumbing. When you looked at the construction inside the cabin, all exposed peeled log rafters and beams with flat wooden panel siding, you could almost see the trees from which it was made. Recently the camp owner converted to a solar panel system for electricity, which worked well. Despite their summer only use there was a steel wood stove in the kitchen which, when compared to the Sardine stove in the shack, was gigantic. It was like building a campfire in a steamer trunk. But it took the chill off. We made a fire every morning, and often at night. Visiting Canada at the 51st parallel in early September is like travelling through time. Through the green pine boughs we saw the yellows and reds of the deciduous trees turning. We were the last fishing party on the lake. After we left they were shutting it down for the season. A giant V of geese flew over us heading south on one of our last days on the lake. Fall is coming. We saw it up there.

Not every day was idyllic. We brought rain suits for a reason. The weather turned quickly. I learned that the hard way. After lunch and an afternoon nap we headed out in the boats to fish again. As sometimes happened a few of our group decided to stay in camp. I was without a partner. The oldest among us, a man near eighty who kept up amazingly well, saw I needed a boat mate.

“I’ll go with you Dave.”

He quickly got his gear together and we set out, some five minutes after the others, and went our own way.

“How about we go to shallow coves and throw spoons at Northerns?” I asked. Although we all brought tackle for the bigger, harder fighting Northern Pike we had exclusively fished for Walleye.

“Sounds good to me. Lead the way.” I took off in a new direction to a part of the lake that appeared to contain shallower water, looking for reed beds and cabbage grass, a type of water weed believed to hold Northerns.

It was windy in the middle of the lake and overcast, so we went from cove to cove, going carefully around points of land that often indicated shallow rocks below the surface. We’d fished for perhaps an hour with little luck. It grew overcast and the wind increased. I paid little attention to the sky nor did my partner. It began to sprinkle rain.

“I’m not interested in fishing in the rain are you? Let’s head back.”

As I said that and started the motor, the sky opened up and hard cold rain pelted us. We were shocked it could rain that hard, that fast. I had been wearing my rain jacket as a hedge against the wind but not my rain pants. I watched as my jeans were spotted with rain, then completely soaked. I felt a chill. The wind increased.

“Put your rain coat on!” I said to my partner. He struggled to find the arms. In the end he wrapped it around him and held it close to him.

“And your life vest!” I felt the burden of getting him back safely.

As we left that cove and entered the larger lake the water was choppy and covered in whitecaps. I’d been on large lakes like this before, with my son, in the boundary waters. We traveled by canoe. I would never have attempted to cross a lake that size in such weather in a canoe. I would have opted to get on shore and wait it out. But we were camping on those trips. We had a tent, a tarp, a propane stove. Here we had none of that. I figured we didn’t have a match between us. Instead were in a good aluminum boat, a deep V bottom Lund, with a dependable Yamaha motor and plenty of gas. My goal immediately was to get us back to camp as soon as possible.

The wind was mostly behind us, and the boat handled reasonably well. My partner was alarmed however, at the boat rocking through the waves.

“Slow down, we’ll tip!”

“No we won’t. I’m going to get us back to camp.”

As soon as pulled out of the cove I was disoriented. I couldn’t see well enough to tell island from shore. The sky gave me no clue as to where the sun was and thus what direction we were heading. We yelled to be heard above the noise of the wind and rain.

“Do you know where we are?”

I paused. “No!”

He paused. “Neither do I!”

“I have a compass!”

I had a cheap compass in my tackle bag. I got it out, opened the case, and let the needle spin. I have better compasses that this I thought. Why didn’t I bring one of them? Rain spotted the compass face. I wiped it off with my thumb. I turned the boat around.

“I’m heading North!”

“A compass doesn’t do you any good when you don’t know where you are to start with!” He had no faith.

“Our camp is on the North end of the lake. I’m going North. You going with me?”

”I guess I am.”

I held the hood of my rain jacket out over my face, shielding my eyes from the hard slanting rain, and held tight to the tiller. I couldn’t see the far shore. My biggest fear was rocks. If we hit a rock which damaged the motor or the boat, or worse yet threw one or both of us into the water, we’d be in real trouble. I looked at my old partner. He’d managed to get the hood up on his rain jacket. He had his life jacket on upside down. He was depending on me to keep him safe. I was still lost.

Sometimes we have little to go on but hope and faith.

Pain

I’m learning more about pain. Without going into detail I nursed a pain in my side that began in the fall, got worse in the winter, and became chronic this spring. I am just now coming out of it.

Nursed may not be the right word. Avoided, denied, ignored, feared the worst about, suffered might apply equally well. I did it fairly privately, sharing details mainly with my wife. She chided me for not acting in some way to address it, fix it, do something to actively change things around. Instead I did less and less.

Friends sometimes make good observations I don’t acknowledge. My friend Bill, who knew something of what I was going through, made this astute observation.

“The trouble with pain like that is the nagging fear that this might be the one that never goes away.”

That my pain was physical this winter is inconsequential. It just as well could have been emotional pain. The two are hardly distinguishable. Every conversation about one applies to the other.

I tried hard to ignore it, but that proved impossible. Had I known where it came from it may have been easier to deal with but there were any number of things that could have caused it and kept it alive. It was there, consistently, like one of those age spots that appear on your skin or a scar. A thing that became part of me, that was what this pain became. It was my constant companion.

At times it made me nauseous, stopped me from walking, from talking, drove all other thoughts from my mind. It was at its worst in the morning, when I was most likely to be alone. Maybe it was best I was alone. When pain takes over it is impossible to be a good friend even to those you love. Pain demands attention, and robs us of the ability to focus on anything else. Pain is a bully. It makes you do things you don’t want to do.

I have a new perspective on cranky old people, curmudgeons, and young people as well who appear stuck in an awful view of the world, all those who look around them and perceive the world at its worst. I think they are in pain and I think pain overwhelms them. I think they can feel little else, maybe nothing else.

After refusing to see a doctor for way too long I had a shitload of tests, costing thousands of dollars, which in the end were inconclusive. Rather than identifying the source of my pain they confirmed what was not causing it. That’s a futile exercise I think, ruling out what is not causing pain. How large is that universe, that set of things which do not cause us problems? What I wanted was a simple answer. I was especially hopeful when they suspected my gall bladder. I could imagine the conversation. It would no doubt have taken place over the phone, if not via e mail or text.

“Mr. McClure, your test results are in and they show a large number of stones in your gall bladder. It is enlarged and inflamed. The best course of action, we believe, is to remove it.”

“That’s great,” I would have replied. “What’s the earliest we can schedule the surgery?” Gall bladder removal these days is a breeze. Three small holes, probes like tiny blenders (I think of milk shake machines) which mush up the tissue, tubes that suck it out, and it’s over.

“How about Wednesday?”

“Wednesday is great.”

It would have been so sweet. The culprit, source of the pain, identified, the offending organ (not vital in any way) removed. Pain gone. Life returns to normal. Episode forgotten. It didn’t happen. The pain persisted and no one could explain why. I was starting to think they didn’t believe me.
One of the tests, by one of the additional doctors I sought out, did reveal a problem in my back. That was no surprise. My back has caused me pain off and on for years but nothing like this. A trip to a good chiropractor usually fixed me up for months, years even. The doctor in charge of this aspect of pouring over my body theorized that the pain in my side was being caused by this problem in my back, somehow connected, and if he numbed that area in my back it would go away.

“Have you done a good deal of physical labor in your life?”

“I baled hay and shelled corn for years when I was young.”

“Any incidents involving heavy lifting that you can remember which caused you particular back pain?”

“I picked up the front of my riding mower and put it on a concrete block to change a tire. Not my smartest move. I hitchhiked a lot in my mid-twenties. When cars or trucks stopped to pick me up I would run after them wearing a fifty pound backpack. I always thought that was harder on my knees than my back.” I have a bad right knee, an ankle messed up by a skiing accident, one leg shorter than the other, a build up on one shoe. All those things paled in comparison to the pain in my side. Funny how one concern drives away others.

“Well you are over sixty. It’s not unusual for men your age to experience spinal compression and accompanying problems.”

I had injections, something like a woman giving birth receives, an epidural. The pain in my back persisted. Theory dashed, he referred me to physical therapy. It was ironic I think, that the least expensive and most natural service came last.

At physical therapy I was lucky to meet Becky, a young physical therapist, extremely fit, who sized me up in a simple way; by what I could do. Lying on my back, she told me keep my knee straight, pick each leg up until I felt pain in my hamstring, and hold it. I did that, and my leg didn’t go up very far.

“Bend over and touch your toes.”

My fingertips went somewhere between my knees and my ankles, closer to my knees I’d say.

“Without bending forward or backward reach sideways down your leg as far as you can with your fingertips extended.”

That didn’t go very well. I could bend sideways farther on my right side than my left. The pain in my side lit up like a flare.

“Let’s try something simple. Stand up by the bar here. I’m going to put this band around your ankles. With your back straight and your knee locked I want you to pull the band forward, then to the side, then back. Keep your back straight.”

I could barely pull the band back at all without pain. Either leg.

“How am I doing?”

“You’re pretty tight and you’re not moving very well. Your hamstrings, your hip flexors especially. We’re going to have to do a lot of work on your core. Any idea how you got this way?”

“You mean how this happened? I retired, golfed more than usual, had some back pain. I’m not sure my chiropractor didn’t aggravate it some way.”

“No, I don’t mean that specifically. The particular event doesn’t really matter much now. I mean how did you get so tight? I bet at one time you had better muscle tone helping you support that back and rib cage. What have you been doing for exercise?”

“Nothing. It hurts to exercise. I’ve been writing all winter. I sit most all the time. It hurts when I stand. Hell, it hurts most when I lay flat.”

“Well, you’ve got to change that. We’ll help you.”

I went twice a week to therapy. Each time they started with a heat treatment, then massage, then various stretching and strengthening exercises. The staff were all very positive. Though simple and on the surface easy, each session wore me out. The first two weeks I would go home and immediately sleep. They increased the exercises, put me on a stationary bike and an arm bike. My therapist kept talking to me. I learned something at every session.

“Let’s talk about what else you’re doing, or have stopped doing.”

“I used to swim laps, but the rolling to one side, doing the crawl, extending my right arm and pulling against the water hurt my side. I got out of the habit.”

“Swimming could be major. Please try it again. Anything else you’ve stopped doing?”

“I haven’t played golf since last September. I can’t imagine putting that twist on my back.”

“It’s July. You’ve lost half the season. I think you could golf. You’ve got to suck that gut in. Your muscles, your abdominals, protect your bones and ligaments. Try a small bucket of balls, swing easy, see what happens. Who knows? Swinging easy could help your game. What else?”

“Well, in another life I used to do yoga. I’ve thought it could help. My wife swears by it and insists it would help me.”

”I think she’s right. You could do yoga too. Just don’t try to be a hero. Bail out of a pose when it hurts. You may not be ready for ‘plank’ for example. But there’s no reason you couldn’t do yoga. The truth is, you need to do more, move more, get more exercise. And as you age, you need to establish and keep those habits. I’m going to give you elastic bands to use at home for the exercises you do here. You’d be smart to get an exercise ball. In fact, you might sit on a ball when you write. Maybe not all day, but part of it.”

“I used to sit on a ball at work.”

“Sounds like you’ve changed your daily habits quite a bit. You may have to work through this pain. I think your pain may be totally or at least in large part a result of you being out of shape. Whatever eventually happens, you will only be helped by strengthening your body and getting in better physical condition.”

Why is it that when people with special knowledge and standing tell you things it means more than when those close to you say the same thing? I’d even told myself that. And who is closer to us than ourselves?

And so I began to confront my pain. I went back to the YMCA pool where the lifeguard said “Where you been? We missed you.”

I also signed up for gentle yoga at the Y. They offer it twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, opposite my physical therapy sessions on Monday and Wednesday. Soon after I happened to be at a dinner table opposite my oldest brother and brother in law, telling them I was taking yoga. They both, as if they’d practiced it, yet one looking out the corner of his eye at the other, like young kids in dance routine checking to see if they’re making the right move, closed their eyes, gazed upward, put their forefingers on their thumbs, and hummed. No one can tease you like family.

“Yeah, you guys think it’s funny,” I said, “but I’d like to see either of you do an hour of yoga with me. Yoga, even this gentle yoga I’m doing, would kick your butts.”

We talked about it some. Like many they don’t recognize yoga as true exercise because they equate workouts with being out of breath, only valid if they are aerobic. In yoga you move slowly and hold poses and stretches for prolonged periods of time. The idea is to breathe. If you can’t breathe during a Yoga pose you should stop. Yoga works out muscles, some you don’t know are there, and is ultimately very relaxing. It can be addicting. It has helped me a lot.

So here’s the concept that ended up working for me. You escape pain by getting help, confronting it, getting close to it, working on the edges of it, understanding it rather than fearing it. By admitting and confronting pain you have a chance at overcoming it. It’s starting to happen for me. Pain takes over my thoughts, displacing the good ones, much less, and much less often, than before. I’m able to do more. I’ve golfed twice without causing calamity in my body. I’m back to 5/8ths of a mile in the pool twice a week. And I’m doing both the exercises prescribed by my physical therapist and yoga. I’m getting better, starting to return to normal, or as close to normal as my 63 year old life worn body allows.

I got there with help. My wife primarily, but also the doctors, the physical therapist who was key, the YMCA, my patient yoga instructor. I think that’s how most people escape pain, with help from others. Emotional pain is much the same. We typically recognize emotional pain, addictions, or mental illness only when they result in big events-hospitalization, senseless crime, death, or suicide. Mental health, like our physical health, is rarely accomplished by us alone. I think there are times when each of us needs outside help achieve mental health. I can easily write 2,000 words on physical pain, where it is, what might be causing it, possible remedies, eventual cures. But emotional pain? Still fairly unacceptable to discuss. We suffer emotional pain, addiction, and mental illness privately and silently, fearing exposure of ourselves as weak. As you read this column did you blame me for my bad back and sore ribs? No. It was something that happened. So too with mental illness, but we have miles to go to make such parity a reality.

Of all the many opinions voiced and written about Robin Williams and his death one stood out for me. A Face Book post, connected hazily to conservative Christianity some days later, sought to remind us that in the end Robin Williams made a choice. It asserted his death was willful. As if he needed only to have a stronger faith. As if he was morally flawed.

I would say that Robin William’s choice was something like the choice made by a person atop a burning skyscraper. We witnessed that phenomenon when the World Trade Center was on fire and near collapse. People threw themselves to certain death off the roof and out the windows of the twin towers rather than being consumed by fire. It’s a choice, if you wish to call it one, between two horrible alternatives. Robin Williams died from withering emotional pain. I would no sooner place blame for his death on him than I would suggest an ALS victim was personally responsible for their death. He had received help but needed more. He died alone. Had he surrounded himself with others he may have lived. But he couldn’t stand the pain.

There are lessons to be learned from pain, but it’s a harsh teacher. One of the lessons is this; don’t go through pain by yourself. Seek advice and take it. Get help.

Going Home

I lived on our farm three miles west of Danvers only eighteen years and some change, counting a college summer and a couple of emergency stays as an adult recovering from long trips. That eighteen year stretch began when I came home from the hospital as a baby and lasted until I moved into a dorm at ISU. And it was a very solid stretch. As a family we went on one three day trip to Ft. Leonard Wood to see my brother Denny graduate from basic training, and after graduating Danvers High School I went to Florida for a week with two classmates, Jeff Melick and Larry Rapp, for the first official trip on my own. Other than that and your occasional week of Boy Scout camp or stays at the 4-H fair I woke up every day and went to sleep every night in that big old farmhouse at the crossroads of a township road (first gravel then blacktop) and Route 9. I’ve lived in Ottawa since 1977, on this property that holds the shack since 1987, much longer than I lived in the Danvers community. But Danvers I guess will always be home. Despite the years it just feels that way.

I went to Danvers Days last weekend with my brother Denny, sister Deanelle, and our spouses. We need a better word than spouse. I don’t know what it is. Anyway one of the spouses, Deanelle’s husband Ron, grew up in Danvers also. I’m sure the weekend meant more to us Danvers kids than to Denny’s wife Sandy and my wife Colleen. Sandy is from Los Angeles. She especially wanted a picture of herself at the tractor pull to post on Face Book for her friends.

“They aren’t going to believe where I am,” she said.

My wife Colleen grew up in LaSalle, daughter of a farmer, but her family lived in town. She didn’t get out to the farm all that often, although she walked beans briefly and knew her Dad’s tractor was green. She thinks it was a John Deere but isn’t sure.

We started at the tractor pull, which was not the flat out power contest you might imagine. It was an antique, or at least old, tractor pull. No tractors made after 1964. Without knowing the year each tractor was made I know a lot were much older than that. There was a two cylinder John Deere A that looked even older than my Dad’s, which was a 1938. They displayed a surprising amount of pulling guts, those old two cylinder poppers.

I may have lost most of my urban readers by now but a tractor pull operates with each entrant pulling the same sled down a clay track. The sled uses varying amounts of weight for each class of tractors and increases it over the course of the pull by sliding the weight forward on the sled. There’s physics involved. I can’t explain it more. But the contest becomes how far the tractor can pull this heavy load. Most bogged down, lost traction, or just plain died around 250 feet. You wouldn’t think it would be entertaining but it was.

None of the old tractors had cabs you see. Old tractors being open and simple machines you could see what the driver was doing to extend the pull, increasing or pulling back on the throttle, braking one side then the other, patting the fender, leaning back in the seat as if doing so would put more weight on the rear tires. It’s nothing like the relationship between a farmer and a horse, but there’s something going on there. I love those old tractors, and I developed a feeling for the mostly old guys driving them.

At the tractor pull it rained, and we took shelter in the new township shed north of town. It’s nice and big. Their trucks look new too. Larry Hartzold was there, one of my Aunt Lou’s stepchildren, who we always regarded as cousins. I’ve always liked talking to Larry. He’s direct. I was just about to say farm people are more direct but come to think of it many of them are as roundabout in their thoughts and speech as the rest of us. But not Larry.

“So where you living these days Larry?”

“I’m trailer trash, living in a park on the South Side of Bloomington.”

“I believe they call them mobile homes these days Larry. You’re being kind of hard on yourself.”

“Not this place. When I moved in the park used to be decent but over the years it’s gone to hell. Trailer trash describes it perfectly. If I could find another lot somewhere I’d hook on and pull it out of there in a minute.”

Among various topics discussed were relatives and acquaintances from long ago, I would bring up a name and Larry would give me a short recap on each of them. Without naming names it went like this.

“So how about (so and so), didn’t she marry a guy that was kind of antisocial?”

“No, she married a guy who’s a dick.”

“I was kind of thinking that but didn’t want to say it.”

“Well I’ll say it for you. He’s a dick and still they stay together.” I learned a lot from Larry in the short time we talked.

Danvers Days is a series of events built into a single weekend, none of which are blockbuster, all of which put together are very nice. In addition to the tractor pull was a talent show filled with kids, little girls mostly, singing and dancing, shy in front of the small crowd. There was a Neon 5K race run after sunset with glow in the dark necklaces for the runners. They had at least one band each night, a community sale filled with hard to even describe let alone name items, a parade, food at the tractor pull put on by the Lion’s Club, a Saturday night pork chop dinner at the fire house, Italian beef sandwiches sold by the Industrial Youth 4-H club, home baked pie and cake by the Lutheran church, Carl’s Ice Cream, craft booths in the empty lot by the Presbyterian church. You get the picture. Small town community festival.

The boy scouts helped serve the meal at the fire station, built where the old community hall used to stand. The volunteer fire department is very proud that seventeen of their number are being certified as paramedics so they can continue to offer ambulance service to the town and surrounding area. That’s quite a commitment, with the ongoing training and all, for no pay.

Danvers is not as small as it used to be. I’ve been telling people for fifty years Danvers was a town of 800 and come to find out it’s up to 1180. Bob Yoder says a lot of people figure it’s over 1200 now. 1200. Woo. In a small town brag of sorts he says Danvers is doing well, while nearby towns like Stanford are dwindling. Danvers still has a tavern (there’s another just outside of town at the Y intersection) a gas station that sells a few groceries and will cook you one of their frozen pizzas, a bank and the library. Despite that new homes are being built. It’s a place to live, not shop. Being close to Bloomington Normal and the Mitsubishi plant, and lower home prices, is an advantage.

“I really wish we had a Casey’s,” Bob said.

We saw Bob Yoder at the pork chop dinner along with Patty Bergstrom. Patty Bergstrom became Patty Yoder fifty some years ago, but she’s still Patty Bergstrom to us. They live on the farm place at the curve north of town where Yoders have lived for as long as we know. While we were there I saw one of the Lemons boys, Bob and Marion Hartzold, and JoAnne Bratt. The faces were old but familiar. I found I knew the families but not the individuals. How does that happen? At the tractor pull my brother in law pointed to a man standing next to him and said

“I bet you don’t know who this is, do you David?” I peered into the man’s face trying to make something register and failed, but only partially.

“I’m not certain, but I think he’s a Bostic.” He was. He was Mike Bostic, who used to ride the bus with me. The Bostic boys if I remember were Steve, Mike, and Bobby.

I can’t name all the people I saw from the past. John Nafziger rode his motorcycle to the tractor pull and talked to me until it started raining. Jeff Melick and his wife Bonnie were cooking all weekend for various groups. Denny Grieder showed up, who I have see just once since we graduated together in 1969, in a class of twenty seven. Larry Rapp, my old battery mate who caught when I pitched in high school, was there looking and walking just the same as always. I found I could tell families, especially the Yoders, by their walks. I saw a kid in the park who both walked and looked exactly like Steve Yoder did in 1968. He gave me a start. I saw Bill and Claudine Deterding who are about to celebrate a 65 year anniversary. I saw Carolyn Kaufman, not Bob’s wife the younger Carolyn Kaufman, Bill’s wife, who used to live across the road from our farmhouse. Bill would take me with him to check his trap lines early on winter mornings when I was a kid. He was one of our boy scout leaders.

I saw Kurt Glaser, who brought his Mom Carol over to the fire station to see me. She lost her husband Bob not many years ago, but still lives on the place west of our farm on a blacktop off Route 9. While she and Bob were renting Grandma and Grandpa’s house across the road she gave birth to twins, one of whom had Down syndrome. That boy now lives semi independently in a group home in Bloomington and is doing just fine.

“Your Mom helped me so much through that. Nobody knew anything about Down syndrome back then. Your Mom talked with me every day, just giving me moral support. I was alone with those kids when Bob worked and it was so hard. I don’t know what I would have done without your Mom.”

The old names in Danvers are Yoder, Otto, Kaufman (with both one and two m’s), McClure, Hartzold, Detweiler, Weinzerl, Schieber. Some Irish but mostly German. Some Catholic but mostly Protestant. Still very white and not very diverse. I’m sure that will change soon. It must bother the new people though, who have moved to Danvers, to be among the group who is “not from here.”

I saw dear women from my past. Marge Irwin, whose sons bought our farm and who went to our church, was a fixture in my childhood. She taught me Sunday School. I shelled corn for her husband, now gone many years. Marge is turning ninety and just had her second knee replaced. I was glad to see her, because I have wanted to tell her something I’ve thought often.

“Marge, you and Lyman didn’t know it, but I would have shelled corn at your place for free just to eat those hot pecan rolls you made.” That brought a big smile to her face. She’s a lovely woman.

I saw Audrey Yoder, now ninety four, who was glad to see me. Audrey has a wonderful smile. She was walking a block away to her car and carrying her lawn chair. I was able to tell her in person how sad I was to learn of her loss of her son Duane. She teared up, her eyes becoming even brighter.

“It’s so hard,” she said. “But I’m so glad you talked to me.”

Bob Hartzold shared a memory from when Henry Dunlap, a farmer like my Dad who lived less than a mile down the road, had to come to our house on the state highway to get his mail. He would stop in to the house, have coffee with my Dad, and stay half the day.

“Your Dad loved to talk,” Bob said. “He valued talk over work I think. Didn’t care if he was the last one to get his corn planted. He’d go on, telling stories, laughing, talking with Henry until your Mom would kick both of them out of her kitchen, telling them to ‘Go do something for Christ’s sake.’"

“I can hear her saying that.”

The old men and women I met in Danvers were active, sharp as tacks, kind, and engaging. They remind me of my parents. They inspire me to grow old well.

My brother Darwin makes sure he is in his camper on the Illinois River across from Kingston Mines when Danvers Days takes place. He doesn’t like the bustle, preferring Danvers when it’s quieter.

“Stay in my house,” he said. “The key is… (if I finished that sentence I would completely ruin Darwin’s simple but effective security system). So we did. Colleen and I made our way there after the pork chop dinner and did our best to imagine how it felt to be Darwin and Sheryl in the house they’ve owned and lived in since I was a kid. Despite it being Danvers Days, and the house being situated on the relatively busy Yuton blacktop, it was quiet and peaceful. Nice.

Danvers doesn’t make much news. The town folks and the people who live on farms and in the country around it change, like everything changes if you pay attention, but only to the careful observer. It’s a little town, overlooked. In it are wonderful people. We have to remember that about our country and it's small towns. They make up some of the best of us in America.

Why do we go home anyway? We go home to find ourselves as we used to be, to find the people who helped make us who we are. People told me I looked and sounded like my Dad. And here I’ve been feeling like my Mom. It’s the old guys on the tractors, the fields we walked and the roads we used to travel, the trees in the park, the bricks in the church, the sound of a voice you last heard so many years ago. It’s being present in your community. It’s finding your Dad.

Farm Dogs

If dogs run free, why not we?

Bob Dylan 1970
From the album “New Morning”

Farm dogs, at least those I knew and loved in the 1950’s and 60’s, led radically different lives than dogs today, their relationship to humans being then very different. Farm dogs were free. They led their own lives parallel to ours, and we controlled them little. Farm dogs took charge of their lives each day and chose their own path.

Take Henry Dunlap’s dog for example. Henry and Edna lived on the farm a mile south on the gravel road from us. They had a black, curly haired, short legged dog named Tiny. My parents bought our family a set of 1959 blue (cloth bound) World Book Encyclopedias and kept up religiously with the annual supplements. When things got slow on the farm, which they often did, I read those encyclopedias. From my favorite volume, “D” because of the full color pages illustrating breeds of dogs, I decided Tiny was most like a Cairn terrier. By the way the World Book at our house was the Google of its day. If we wondered out loud about something Mom or Dad would invariably say “look it up in the World Book. That’s why we got them.”

Tiny the Cairn like terrier mutt lived at our house. After they’d had Tiny for a year or so Henry and Edna added a pup they named Blackie to their household. They intended for the two dogs to be companions, to enjoy each other’s company. Blackie was born to the same mother, similar in size to Tiny but smooth haired (father unknown), a half brother to Tiny. When Blackie came to Henry and Edna’s place, Tiny came to our house and stayed. Henry came and got him a couple of times. Dad took him to their place once or twice. But each time he was brought home Tiny made that mile trip across the fields on his short legs to our house. In the end Henry said

“Looks like my dog Tiny wants to live at your place with your dogs, Dean. I don’t think he likes Blackie much.”

To which my Dad answered, “Yeah well let’s let him. He gets along fine here.” And that was that. Tiny chose his own home.

At our house at that time were two dogs in addition to Tiny; Tuffy and Ginger. Tuffy was non-descript. I made him out to be a mongrel collie, and while being a nice dog he didn’t strike you as terribly smart. Of that three dog pack that ran together then on the McClure farm Tuffy was a follower. He tagged along. Tuffy would later die under the wheels of a white Buick on the hard road.

Ginger was the leader. He had personality. By carefully studying the World Book plates of various breeds of dogs I put Ginger somewhere in the Whippet, Pointer, Boxer continuum. Very hard to tell. He was long legged and skinny, had a pretty reddish coat of short hair with a white blaze on his face, and one bum leg. Ginger just showed up at our farm one day. He’d been hurt and didn’t put weight on one back leg. He was a whiner with a low tolerance for pain. If there was a dog fight Ginger would be the first one to run away, yipping loudly. After his leg appeared to heal it looked OK but he still held the leg up, until he chased cars. Ginger was a ferocious car chaser and fast. He would get into a low crouch with both his front and back legs pumping in tandem and scoot, biting tires and staying with them halfway to Henry’s house. When he was chasing the car he used that supposedly lame back leg just fine. But when he gave up on the car and trotted back, he held it up again.

Ginger was also known to bring you presents. Sit down in the yard on the spring seat or a lawn chair and before you know it Ginger would be at your side with some kind of offering; a piece of corn stalk, a stick, the dried stiff skin of some long dead animal. He would put his gift on your leg, or drop it at your feet and look up at you with sad black eyes. If you ignored him Ginger would whimper. Sustained like a howl, but soft like a growl, he almost seemed to talk. He’d go up and down the scale. Wish I had recorded it and could play it for you. We would say to each other “Ginger’s talking again.” To get him to shut up we’d get him to come closer and put his head on our knee. There we’d pet him, check for ticks, pull out any burrs that he’d picked up in his travels.

We were good to our dogs, but respected their freedom. They never came in the house and we never put them on a leash. Until the county required rabies shots and registration, thus dog tags, we never put collars on them. Dad thought collars were a danger in that dogs could get hung up on a fence or in brush. But he paid the dog tax willingly. The dog tax in McLean County funded a program where farmers could be reimbursed if dogs killed their farm animals, typically sheep. We kept sheep. (Title of an early blog post.) There was always a chance we might need to collect from that fund.

Tiny the short legged terrier ran furiously to keep up with Ginger and Tuffy, but couldn’t, due to the length of his legs compared to theirs. If you called the dogs from where they were far down in the pasture, Ginger would arrive first, Tuffy next, and after some time Tiny pulled in, panting and worn out. Tiny’s fate was to always be behind. But his size gave him advantages. I once saw the three of them chase a rabbit into a culvert (steel tube placed in a ditch to form a flat place to drive over). Tuffy guarded one end of the culvert and Ginger the other. Both were too big to climb inside. But bringing up the rear was Tiny, who without hesitation ran straight into the culvert, chased the rabbit out Ginger’s end, who clamped it in his jaws. That was the end of the rabbit.

Dogs back then rarely went to the vet. The rule at our house was that you couldn’t call the vet until Dad decided, and we all knew you couldn’t call the vet for a pet. Farming was a business, vets were an expense, and you did not call the vet for an animal that didn’t make you money. Fluffo, a shiny black cat that I befriended and tamed, once got caught up into the belts and pulleys and tumbling rods of the speed jack that ran the corn elevator. Tore her up pretty good. Her legs were OK but she had a patch of fur and skin hanging off her belly and lost most of her tail. She immediately retreated into the safety of the narrow crawl space under the “old house” an ancient storage shed fashioned from what was the first family home on the farm. Like dogs and the culvert, that space was too small for us to climb into. We could see Fluffo under there, licking her wounds, but not reach her.

“Please Dad can’t take her to the vet?” I cried. “Fluffo could bleed to death.” We were sitting on the spring seat in the front yard.

Dad put his arm around me. “You know the saying that cats have nine lives? There’s a reason for that. Cats know how to take care of themselves. They hole up. Fluffo will either get better or she won’t. You make sure she has food and water under there and I’m betting she comes out OK.”

Dad was right. I pushed a saucer of milk with dog food in it (we never specifically fed the cats) under the old house with a stick every day and after a week or so Fluffo emerged. She was never quite the same mind you, the concept of OK being relative, but she survived.

Because pets never went to the vet few if any of them were spayed. As a result, the farm community was replete with puppies and kittens. Female dogs went into heat and when they did you could anticipate a crowd of male dogs hanging around for days and days competing for her affections. Apparently the scent of a bitch dog in heat is so powerful that it will draw male dogs from miles away. If you owned a male dog he might be gone for up to a week. The farmers we knew were good natured about it.

“Your dog’s been at our place for three days,” Mom would tell one of the farm wives at the store in Danvers.

“We wondered where he’d gotten to.”

“He’s not going to come home happy because we put Lady up in the haymow. We had a hard time giving away her pups the last time and that was less than a year ago.”

Lady was a prolific and beautiful long haired Irish setter looking dog who would go away to whelp her pups and in doing so hide them from us. Cows did the same thing in the summer when on pasture, go way into the timber to have their calves. We would follow them from a distance to discover the spot. I once did the same thing with Lady and found a little nest filled with puppies in the long grass among the willows, which grew in a swampy area south of the house before we built the waterway. I didn’t tell anyone for a while. I visited those puppies every day.

Lady died young, hit by a grain truck on the hard road. The truth was most farm dogs died in accidents rather than old age. Freedom presents great risk. I don’t remember a farm dog dying of old age ever.

Champ was a cow dog, sort of a long haired border collie mutt. He had the herding instinct built in. We got him as a pup from the Larson family North of Danvers. When I was a baby they tell me we once owned a good cow dog named Ace, who would help drive the cows. Ever since Ace died on the hard road our family had looked for another. Long after his death we would only have to loudly say “Sic ‘em Ace” for the cows to hurry along, looking behind them, fearing a dog at their heels.

Word would get out that pups were available and families would discuss their worth. It was a small community, so often you would know one of the parent dogs. Most often you knew the mother and no one was sure about the father. There was conjecture, based on the look of the pups, but no proof. Fatherhood was a guess, motherhood a fact. The Larson’s female dog was known to be good with cows, so Mom took me over to the Larson farm and we picked out a pup to be brought home after it was weaned. The farm dogs were all ours collectively but because I picked Champ out of the litter and he was on the farm when I was young I thought of him as mine. He was black with a shaggy white collar in the way of collies and four white paws, soon to be three.

Not long after we brought Champ home he had an accident. Safety for humans was lacking on farms then let alone for animals. The dogs had free reign and were always underfoot, no matter what was happening on the farm. My pup Champ found himself under the rear tire of a neighbor’s John Deere tractor which was pulling a load of corn from the field where it was just shucked. It crushed his back leg.

I was at school. Knowing my attachment to our new pup my Mom made sure in this instance that Dad consented to him being seen by the vet. The vet, whose office was in Tremont, assessed Champ’s injury this way in his report over the phone in the evening after chores were done.

“I’ll never be able to set that leg and have it heal normally. Somebody else might, but that would mean getting him to some university hospital or big city. Dogs are four legged but get along just fine on three, especially when they lose a back leg. My idea is to amputate that hind leg. I think he’ll grow up just fine.”

Mom relayed all this to us at the kitchen table, pausing from time to time with her hand over the mouthpiece, repeating the vet’s words. Mom was sort of the speakerphone of her day.

“Ask him how much it will cost and tell him we’ll call him back tomorrow after we decide,” Dad said.

Apparently either the price was right or Mom leaned hard on Dad to spend the money because the next day after chores but before breakfast Mom called the vet, again in our presence, and announced he could cut off Champ’s leg and return him to us as a three legged dog. The vet said he’d already done so.

“He’s been such a good dog around here that I decided if you had told me to destroy him I’d keep him for myself with three legs. I don’t think you’ll be sorry for doing this.”

We brought Champ home and kept him in the basement while he healed. The vet suggested feeding him fresh liver and gave us powdered vitamins to add to it. We gave him a pan of milk each evening. He came along fine. He did have to learn how to walk again. He would move his front feet forward, hop with his one back leg, and then stand there swiveling that stump. He finally learned to just keep hopping on his back leg, and when he did life got a lot easier. Over time he could run just as fast as ever, although he fell a lot learning. It was difficult for him to get up after lying down, and hard for him to crawl on his belly likes dogs do. While he was learning I would take him the long way through gates so he didn’t have to crawl under fences. But that one back leg grew very strong and he adapted.

Champ was a great cow dog. We drove our herd of jersey cows across Illinois Rte. 9 every spring and summer day to permanent pasture and the pond. That meant twenty five cows or so crossing a fairly busy state highway twice a day. We put two people on the road with red flags, usually Mom and Dad, but it was much safer if the cows hurried across that hard road. A good cow dog moved them along by nipping at their heels, get them all running. That what Champ did. He drove cows as naturally as he ate and slept. Seemed eager to do it. Didn’t need training or telling. You could leave a gate open and he would lie in the middle of it all on his own, guarding the opening by driving any cow or calf away that tried to pass through.

I would play with him in the yard to his herding instinct. I walked slowly towards him, trying to sneak past, and he would go into a crouch, his head close to the ground, eyes glued to me. I’d walk slow, a step at a time, and so would he, one paw rising up and going down slowly, then another, then a tiny hop of his back leg. After a time I would run past him, crossing an imaginary line Champ had set, and he would chase me, get in front of me, and establish another line I shouldn’t cross. He was never mean. I loved that dog so.

I was away at college when they told me Champ died. It was winter and there were ruts in the snow on the driveway. Champ was old and a lot slower than his younger days. Somehow Champ got in a rut behind the Schwann man who was delivering the monthly supply of Butter Brickle ice cream and frozen fish sticks. That day instead of going forward toward Rte. 9 the Schwann man backed up to get on the blacktop. This time Champ was run over proved to be his last. Dad said he was pressed flat there in the rut, probably not able to get up and out of the way in time. He reported that it didn’t look like Champ struggled at all. He told me this over the phone in my dorm room. I felt a little numb, and was glad I wasn’t there to see it. But I was grown up then.

The dog’s death that hit me hardest as a kid was Ginger’s. It was summer and I was home from school. I was in about fourth grade. Dad was mowing the alfalfa field, which meant we’d be making hay in three days. He was mowing with the John Deere, Bait Correll mowed with his Allis Chalmers, and Paul Mehl was using our Minneapolis Z to pull the crimper. Back then farmers used sickle bar mowers to cut hay, a long bar extending perpendicular to the tractor behind the big rear wheel. The mowers were ground driven by gears. Triangular knives moved back and forth behind pointed guards, skimming the ground, cutting the tall green hay stalks. The stalks fell backwards like tiny trees. Sickle bar mowers made a soft noise like the sinister hiss of a snake. They were mean and dangerous machines.

Dad cut the first swath, Bait the second, and Paul raced around with the crimper keeping up with both. They would cut twenty acres of hay in an afternoon, working their way around and around the rectangular field till it was done. I wanted Dad to let me run the crimper but he said I was too little.

Just before milking time Dad pulled into the barnyard with the John Deere. Instead of heading towards the gas tanks, where he usually parked the tractors, he stopped by the big front yard where I was playing.
“David, I need to tell you something.”

He came over and sat on the spring seat. I sat beside him, a little puzzled. Dad was usually not that direct.

“A bad thing happened in the hay field. I mowed into Ginger. He was hurt really bad and he couldn’t live.”

“Couldn’t live?”

“The mower cut his legs.”

“Couldn’t you stop?”

“No. I tried. He came around the front of the tractor real fast. He was chasing a rabbit. I was looking back at the mower and saw him out of the corner of my eye. I reached for the clutch and hit the brakes as fast as I could but before I could get it stopped he was into the sickle bar. He bled a lot.”

“Did he die right then?”

“No. But he was hurt too bad to live. No vet could have fixed what that mower did to him.”

“So you killed him?”

“No. Bait came up behind me, saw what happened, and offered to do it for me. It had to be done David. He’s a good guy Bait. He knew how much we liked that dog.” Dad’s voice cut short.

“I’m really sorry David. Ginger was special. I would have done anything to keep from hurting him but it just happened too fast.”

I had been looking at my Dad the whole time he was talking. My Dad had pale blue eyes and a tan face. A tear came out of the corner of his eye and ran down a crease in his face by his nose. He took a red handkerchief out of the back pocket of his bib overalls and blew his nose. I had never seen him cry before.

“How did Bait, you know… kill him?”

“He hit him in the head with a wrench.”

Bait was a strong guy who did things right. I didn’t think then, or since, killing Ginger that way was cruel. I’d seen my Dad, my brothers, and other farmers dispatch animals quickly and humanely before in the same way. They never knew what hit them. I imagined Ginger went the same way.

“Where is he now?”

“I left him in the field. After milking I’ll go down and bury him there"

“Can you take him to the willows? I know a good spot.”

“Sure. We can take him to the willows. You can go with me.”

After chores were over Dad and I rode down on the Z with a gunny sack and a long handled shovel. He dropped me off by the willows and brought Ginger back in the sack. All I could see was Ginger’s pretty head, that white blaze between his eyes. I showed Dad the spot in the willows where Lady had her pups and he dug the hole there.

Over fifty years later, my dog Ally would die old of an overdose of phenol barbitol in a vet’s office. That day, Ginger died relatively young of an overdose of 12 inch Crescent wrench in a hay field. The effect was the same, as was the emotion. I cried. Dad put his arm around my shoulders.

Farm dogs were free, their world was big, and life in the country was sweet. But it was dangerous and typically short. With freedom came risk. I don’t know which is better, life on a leash or a life lived large. But I think those farm dogs I knew and loved, given the choice, would have wanted to run free.