Road Trip-Getting Started

I didn’t need the road atlas when I headed  south out my driveway onto Caton Road in Ottawa.  It was 5:57 a.m., still dark, and the glowing green light from the odometer told me the Buick had 118,213 miles on it.  It was Tuesday the 27^th of February and I was leaving home with a full tank of gas. 

Like most,  I travel the same streets and roads over and over.  I left the radio off on purpose and put the windows down.   The air was cold and clean.  I rolled past my neighbor’s houses.  Few had lights on.  It felt like  just me out there.

Caton Road begins on the bluff near Interstate 80 and winds down the hill onto the Illinois River valley.  If you slow down to 20 mph or so and let off the gas when you enter the first curve at the top of the hill you can take your feet off the pedals and coast till you bottom out past Norris Drive and climb up to the second set of tracks past the Shell station.  It's steep at the top so you go  fast at the start, have to tuck into the second curve pretty tightly, and exceed the speed limit for a while.  It’s best done when there are few cars on the street.  It alarms passengers so I’ve learned to only do it solo.  I did it that morning.  Gravity can be fun.  I felt good.

Route 23 South took me through downtown Ottawa, across the Illinois River, and out of town.  I turned right past Grand Ridge onto Richards Road, left on a blacktop that took me through Kangley, skirting around Streator, and crossed Route 18.  I stayed on that blacktop, more or less, until I got to Towanda.

The sun rose yellow in a flat orange sky over empty fields as I crossed those bad curved tracks on the uphill grade past Ancona.   

That blacktop, more or less, is the way I used to go from Ottawa south to Danvers, Bloomington, and Springfield in the old days, when Route 39 was unfinished and Route 51 was a crowded mess.  I say more or less because it is not a single road.  There are jogs you have to make, usually right then left, picking up a different road.  I know the turns so well it feels like a single road to me.  In Gridley you have to think a little, go south past Route 24, turn right, stay on the east/west blacktop for two sections, then turn south.  I was a little unsure, but as I drove I knew by the buildings, the barns and such, where to turn.  It’s familiar territory.  I love it out there.

I jogged right over Money Creek then turned left toward Towanda.   I used to pick up Route 55 there and stay on it when I was going to Springfield, or take it to Veterans Parkway when I was going somewhere in Bloomington Normal.

This time I crossed over 55 and took the frontage road.  There’s an short section of old Route 66 alongside it.  Small stretches of the mother road are sprinkled here and there, and people try to follow the route.   I’m not that much of a purist, but I was trying to avoid interstate highways.  Too fast, too bland, not for me on this trip.  Being near Bloomington Normal was nostalgic.  I was getting close to home.  

 I ended up on Ft. Jesse road, took Towanda Avenue south, and went west on Washington Street.  As I got close to Bloomington’s downtown I knew I was somewhere near the place Hubbard’s Cupboard used to be, could feel Lucca Grill and the Grand Cafe, still in business I hope, a few blocks away.  I saw the old State Farm headquarters up ahead near the McLean County courthouse, where  a college kid I had an interesting meeting with a judge and a state’s attorney. 

I passed the Castle Theater.  It’s a music venue now but I used to watch movies there.  I remember disappointing my first high school girlfriend by not making out during "Bonnie and Clyde", preferring to watch the movie instead.  While a freshman at ISU I saw "Easy Rider" there, and later "Woodstock."  Washington Street took me by the Pantagraph, the newspaper where I worked part time during college.  I kept going west on Washington, turned north on Morris Avenue, then west on Market Street which is Route 9.  Past I-55 and Farm and Fleet Bloomington thinned out and disappeared.  I was driving on the road that would take me past my family’s old dairy farm. 

I began to pass farms where I knew the men and women, virtually all dead now, who worked them in the 50’s and 60’s.  I knew where the blacktops off Route 9 would take me.  I saw places where cribs once stood, buildings where I scooped, sometimes freezing sometimes sweating, ear corn into conveyors that took it to an old sheller.  I passed fields where once I baled hay.  At the T intersection, which used to be the 3 mile Y, I turned north.  Huge silver corn bins, topped with a web of augers high in the air, now surround the Ernst place.

At the top of the hill I followed the curve west past the Y tap.  The Buick was now on the stretch of Route 9 I once thought I would never escape.  I used to think if you drew a line with a pencil, even faintly, on a paper map each time I made a trip on that little three mile stretch of road, between our farm and Danvers, it would be black and shiny.  Worn through the paper most likely.  I was driven by Mom in a car to and from Sunday School and church, on a tractor driving corn and oats to the elevator, on a school bus, on a bicycle, then finally driving myself.  It seemed I would never get off that piece of road, the shortest distance between the farm and our little town. 

I knew every farm along that road, who farmed them, tenants  or owners, their kids’ names, what kind of tractors they used, their dogs, what the wives cooked best, how their haymow was configured, their corn cribs laid out, everything. 

Those barns, like the cribs, are doomed without purpose.  I dreaded seeing the barn on our former farm.  It was erected in 1941 as a state of the art 24 stanchion dairy barn anticipating Grade A milking standards.  It featured a separate milk house, an electric vacuum system for milking machines, lots of natural lighting, insulation and good ventilation, a self supporting roof and obstruction free hay mow.  It was built with pride and maintained with great care.  My father, even after he sold the cows, had a new roof put on to preserve the building for its next users.  There were none.

I passed the Biddle house, the Shifflet place, two Lemons farmsteads, Duane Smith’s farm, the place Bait Correll farmed, Paul Mehl’s place, and the dirt road to the timber.  I slowed the Buick down as it climbed the hill toward the farm I grew up in, then turned in the driveway.

New owners, now the second since us, painted our big white house brown. New pine trees form a windbreak in the north end of the big yard.  They choke off he space where my Dad used to hit me flies and grounders till it got to dark too see the ball.  I sat there for a moment.  I wanted to go to the hydrant by the deep well and get a drink of that good hard water.  I stayed in the car instead, letting it idle. 

When I looked at the barn it was nearly more gray than white.  The paint was flaked off and the boards below it weathered.  Louvers in the vents in the big gable end to the north were missing.  Trash trees grew up by the foundation.  I couldn’t get a good look at the roof, so I backed out of the drive, headed west, and turned north on the road that ended at John Twenty’s old place.  I stopped short of it, turning around where there was a culvert for a driveway that used to take you over the ditch to Roy Miller’s.   

Roy Miller lived in a little house there set back from the road and began collecting old vehicles.  Over time his house was dwarfed by a sea of cars.  Amazingly, those cars, at least some of them, are still there.  A fence, and brush, surrounds them now and a big Keep Out warning is on a faded gate with a phone number for those inquiring about storage.  What’s more lonely than an abandoned junkyard?

I headed slowly back towards our farm, and saw the hole in the barn roof.  I’d been told about it but didn’t want to admit it was there.  The shingles were gone and the wooden boards under them rotted through on the south end of the west side.  I imagined rain getting in and ruining the floor, that huge wooden mow floor polished slick with bales of alfalfa hay and oat straw over the years.   I sped up and turned down the blacktop going south.  The asparagus patch is gone.  On the opposite side of the barn roof another patch of shingles is missing.  The sub roof won’t hold up much longer.  Once the roof goes, if not quickly repaired, the barn will be done.  I don’t think I want to go by when it begins to lean, or when it sags and falls in. 

I get it.  You can’t make money milking 24 cows anymore even if you wanted to.  They don’t use the kind of bales we stacked in the tall hay mow above the stanchions.  It’s not a working farm, but merely a residence   Only the house has real value, and the new owners need the barn for nothing but perhaps storage.  As an asset the barn doesn’t warrant investment, not even apparently the cost of tearing it down.   But all those realities didn’t help the disgust (or was it hurt?) I felt as I drove south, keeping my eyes off the rear view mirror.  Everything changes but you don’t have to like it.  It’s so hard not to look back.

I was lost in thought as I took the blacktops to McLean.  I still had the radio off.  I didn’t need to think about where I was going because I knew all those turns by heart too.  Past the Stringtown road, jog left then right to Stanford (a jog right takes you to Minier). At some point when we lived on the farm the county numbered the blacktops and gravel roads, and put up markers.  We stubbornly ignored them.  Soon I was in the parking lot of the Dixie Truck Stop.  It’s now a Road Ranger.  It has changed constantly over the years.

The McDonald’s across the road has no doubt taken away a lot of the Dixie's business.  It’s now almost exclusively truckers.  I took a stroll.  Of course they’ve taken out the pay phones, which I used before cell phones to call the office for messages.  The Dixie is  halfway to Springfield for me. They've replaced the Route 66 museum with expanded retail space,and put in more showers.   The men’s room is a little iffy.  But all in all the Dixie still has character.  I bought a decal for the Buick.

I had breakfast at the counter and brought  the Atlas in to peruse.  By the looks of it all the other diners were having the buffet.  I knew what I wanted before I sat down.  Fried mush and eggs.

It’s hard to find a place that serves mush.  Mom used to make it, almost sheepishly, calling it depression food.  We’d have a bowl of mush for supper, the three of us, and she’d put the leftovers in a loaf pan in the icebox and slice it in the morning, frying it in butter in a skillet.  We ate it with syrup like pancakes, always with a side of eggs.  Something about those old time meals seemed to delight Mom and Dad.  They acted the same when Mom cooked brains with toast.  Almost giddy.

When the waitress walked up I knew my order without looking at the menu.

“Will you be havin’ the buffet sir?”

 She was young.  But then, you know, everybody looks young these days.

“No.  I’ll have the fried mush, 2 eggs over easy, glass of milk, whole milk if you got it, and black coffee.”

Those were the first words I’d spoken all day.

“You seem pretty sure about that order sir.  Anything else?”

“Nope.  That’ll do it.”

As I waited for my order to come up I opened the road atlas to Illinois and looked at where I might go next.  The Dixie was as far as I’d figured it out.

Prelude to a Road Trip

In the winter of 1974, between jobs, I hung out for days at the public library.  I took first to a globe of the earth, planning my next trip, which I intended to start in spring.  I was in Aberdeen Scotland, with India as my ultimate destination. With direction determined, it was simply a matter of route, the only real variable after that.  Direction is predetermined by geography and is rigidly set unless of course you want go the other way to end up in the same spot, circumnavigating the globe, which is a whole different trip, and crazy.  

For route I needed more detail, which I found in a World Atlas.  There are lots of ways to get to  India, but all of them in one way or another are south and east of Aberdeen.

I had dipped onto the African continent from Europe earlier that year, visiting Morocco for a short time, and wanted to go back.  I was also drawn to Cairo and the pyramids in Giza.  So south through Gibraltar to Morocco and east to Egypt.  From there it looked good to go south down the Nile to Sudan, make my way to Kenya, and go east and a bit north from there by boat to India from the Kenyan port of Mombasa.  With any luck I could get cheap passage on what used to be known as a “tramp steamer” there.  I was all about cheap in those days.  Traveling cheaply meant longer trips when you had resources as limited as mine were in 1974.

I kept  to the first part of that route though I never made it to India.  I knew I would have to work along the way somewhere, and as I travelled along the Mediterranean coast in Africa nowhere looked promising for a guy like me to earn money.  The prospect of getting stranded without currency was sobering.  That coupled with trouble getting a visa to Sudan once I arrived in Egypt caused me to change direction and go instead from Cairo to Greece.   Different trip, but also good.   I have yet to make it to India, but you know, we’re both still on the planet and it’s not over yet.

And that’s how I learned all you really need to know to get from one place to another is the direction to go.

My most recent trip was quite different from those days 44 years ago.  My resources have increased but my life has changed considerably.  In 1974 I had no end date looming in any fashion.  I could still be out there I suppose had I persevered.  But as you might guess, my life in 2018 is significantly more constrained.

I had created for myself an opportunity for a much smaller trip.  I had to get from Ottawa, Illinois to Pensacola, Florida in four days.  In Pensacola I would join a group of friends for a string of daily rounds of golf in warmth and sunshine.  Until I arrived I had four days of complete and solitary freedom.  When I was younger four days, which now seems a luxury, would have been a drop in the bucket.

I could go anywhere I wanted, as long as I traveled once again in a southerly and easterly direction, and got to a place called Perdido Key in four days.  Out of stubbornness I avoided planning a route.  I did buy a new Rand McNally road atlas.  It was beside me on the passenger seat of the Buick.  I’d work the route out on the fly. 

Running for Office

My church helped the local food pantry in their primary food drive and fund raising activity “Freezin for a Reason” held in early December.  It’s always a cold day it seems.  We were lucky enough to be tasked with work inside, making some sense of the huge flow of food in cans, boxes, and jars streaming into their small facility.  Boxes of food were collected, put in big cardboard containers, then placed on wooden pallets, moved to the outside of the pantry by forklifts, waiting until they were slid into an open area inside the pantry.  Our crew of a dozen or so church members segregated it loosely by type of food and got it to shelves and areas around the perimeter, making room for the next wave.  It was classic “make hay while the sun shines.”  The community was providing its pantry food and we were helping them absorb it. 

Handling food is hard work.  Boxes of cans and jars get heavy quickly.  As we emptied those big containers the reach to the bottom became harder and harder.  I was just about to bend in once again, my head nearing my knees, when I felt a hand on my shoulder.  It was Beth Osmund.

“Don’t do that Dave, you’ll hurt your back.  Let me.”

Beth had just come in from outside to see how we were doing.  She swung one leg over the side of the cardboard wall, then the other, disappeared and came up hefting a big box of canned green beans to me.  She continued that way until the floor of the container was cleared, then went on to another task.  

That’s the kind of worker I expect Beth Vercolio Osmund will be if we can get her through the Democratic primary next Tuesday and elected to Congress in November in the mid term elections.

Beth has a degree in Special Education and in addition to teaching, has put it to use in creative ways.  She worked as an educational consultant with a software company training teachers and as a professional skills trainer at Arthur Anderson, the accounting firm, teaching accountants how to work more effectively with their clients.  She is now the director of Ottawa’s local food pantry and a partner with her husband Jody in Cedar Valley Sustainable farm.  I know her as a friend, a mother of three boys, and as a supporter of local organizations.  The Osmunds were early donors to our church’s monthly free community lunch program.  They pitch in when they see real need and they support local causes of critical importance.

It’s funny, but when someone you know well runs for office it matters little to which party they belong.  Rather, you imagine them representing you with the values you see firsthand in them through the way they talk and the way they behave in the community.  The truth is no candidate can have a firm grasp of all the many issues to which members of congress must react.  In the end we need to elect legislators who are smart, analytical, good listeners, and comfortable with compromise.  Kindness and compassion sweeten the package.  I think Beth has all those qualities.

Beth is certainly not the only person in our community to display those characteristics, but the amazing thing about Beth is she is willing to run.  I think anyone who spends time trying to affect policy, getting to know legislators, and working issues with a political body during its legislative session considers how they might better do the job of those we elect.  But for many, including me, it’s a fleeting thought.  I don’t want to work that hard for starters, nor spend time away from home, raise funds, talk constantly to those trying to influence your vote, and withstand the attacks of those who oppose you.  Run for office in this political climate?  Are you kidding?

I talked later to Beth at a more quiet time at the food pantry, early in the morning before it buzzed with activity, about that very thing.  Why do you want to do this?  Here’s more or less what she said.

“First, I think I know the district well.  It’s a rural and very grounded part of Illinois, rooted in large part to the farming community and small town life.    All the issues which confront us in 2018 affect us all.  For example, when we talk about “environmental issues” that triggers thoughts of a set of actions attributed to the left.  But I farm.  And I have yet to meet a fellow farmer who is not deeply concerned with caring for the land.  Farmers have to make a living, and yet we know our way of life can only be sustained if we are smart about managing our land and water.”

“I get that Beth but why run?  I know you understand the demands of the job.  It looks to me like a huge task, and a huge commitment.   Why put yourself and your family through that challenge?”

“That’s not a a simple answer.”

“It’s OK.  I’ve got time, and I really want to know.”

“Well, in 2012 I attended a seminar, training really, called Vote, Run, Lead.  It was designed to encourage women to be more active in politics.  I’ve always voted, have been in plenty of leadership positions, but had no intention of running for anything at that time.  I wanted to know more about affecting the process.  How I could become a better advocate, and help create forward thinking policy.

And I did.  I joined a national organization of women in agriculture.  I became a USDA grant reader.  I attended a national sustainability summit.  All through this my husband was very supportive, and I knew I was making an impact.”

She paused. 

“And then I got this food pantry job.  Not the biggest or the best job I’ve ever had, but so important.  You always learn new things.  I learned this.  There’s this thing with food pantries.  You can be judgmental and try to force nutritional choices on people, like refusing to distribute some foods with empty calories or questionable value, or you can ‘give what you get’.   The classic example of not following that motto is highly principled pantries or co-ops that give out only brown rice because it is more nutritious.  That’s fine, but most people prefer white rice.  Here we accept what food the community gives us, we buy wisely with the dollars donated to us, but in the end we offer needy people the kind of food they are used to eating, and we keep them fed.  We give what we get.  It hit home to me, that saying.

And then I thought of the converse saying,  we get what we give.  And I realized it applies to politics.  While it may be fine for a food pantry to go along with the flow, the status quo of food norms, if you ascribe to that in politics, and government, we don’t advance as people, or change happens so slowly you end up frustrated and disillusioned.  I want politics to change, as I sense many people do, and I can’t just sit back any longer accepting the kind of candidates and the kind of politics the parties now offer us, with someone else defining the issues and the proper responses to them.

So what do you do when you reach that point?  For me the answer became clear.  You run for office.  I realized if you aren’t willing to involve yourself more you will continue to get the same old thing.  So here I am.”

“And you know what you’re getting into?”

“Of course I do.  I know it will be demanding, create big change in my life, present me with challenges I can’t anticipate, but I’ve done all that before.   I know exactly what I’m doing Dave.  And I’m willing to do it.”

So there you go.  If Beth Vercolio Osmund is willing to run, I’m certainly willing to vote for her.  I hope you are too.

I know many Dave in the Shack readers live outside the 16^th Congressional district.  If you do, I urge you to find fresh, young, reasonable, pragmatic candidates like Beth and sending them to Washington, or Springfield, or more local government with your votes.  We need fresh reasoned voices speaking for us.  Thankfully they are beginning to emerge.  Please support them.

Real Mexico

My Pez were determined a security risk at O’Hare airport.  At 6:30 a.m. I watched as my backpack rolled along a conveyor belt only to stop, shift mechanically behind a Plexiglass divider, and stay there until a real human being brought it to a table where I, putting my belt on, stuffing things in my pockets, was told to stand.  I tried to be nice.

“You have a number of items with a hollow cavity that look to be stuffed with another material.”

I wondered what I had that fit that description.  Whatever it was sounded sinister.  I felt guilty right away.

“I know I have a tube of Blistex in there.  Maybe some lens cleaning solution.  But I think it’s under the amount of fluid allowed.”

The TSA guy opened the straps to my carry on, a small black Duluth pack.

“It’s these,” he said, holding up a big zip lock bag stuffed with plastic heads on stand up plastic shafts.  I’d packed about 50 to give to kids in the eye clinic.

“They’re Pez,” I said.

He unzipped the bag and pulled out a yellow Minion with one eye, turning it over as if it were some kind of radioactive substance.

“It’s Pez.  A toy. ”

Who doesn’t know Pez?

“What’s inside it?”

“May I?”

I reached for the Pez.  He hesitated but handed it to me.  I slid open the interlocking plastic deal, revealing a row of a dozen lemon flavored sugar tablets.

“Candy.  They’re filled with candy, because they’re Pez.”

Another TSA staffer, looser, more candid, walked over and picked up the bag.

“Wow man, you got them all.  You got the Disney characters, Star Wars, Power Rangers.  Nice job.”

His co-worker, the unsmiling Pez illiterate, looked at him blankly, then back at me.  The hip TSA agent reassured his fellow staff member.

“They’re Pez man.  It’s cool.  He’s good.”

I handed him back the one eyed Minion.  He put it carefully into the zip lock, closed it, placed the bag into my back pack, looked at me with more than a tinge of doubt, and waved me on without words.

“Just get me out of here,” I thought.

The “here” I was referring to in “get me out of here” was my country.  I was ready to leave.   The political news was driving me out.  Over the past year I had had it with the rancor, the accusations, the lying, and rude discourse let alone the damage being done to my county’s image around the world.  I needed a break.

The plane landed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico in the early afternoon and by evening we, 20 some volunteers  paying their own way to staff an eye clinic and dispense used eye glasses, arrived in a town of 16,000 towards the middle of the Mexican state of Nayarit.  Compostela, up in the hills and away from the coast , has little or no tourism, is not widely known, and because of that is unlike the country most who visit Mexico experience.  They are not intent on selling you espresso coffee, jewelry, vegetarian food, tattoos, or trinkets like they do on Mexico’s beaches.  In Compostela they’re busy growing sorghum and mangos, tobacco and corn, beans, and raising horses and cows, along with children.

We checked into an old hotel on the square and were taken to our clinic site, a building normally used as a community health center for diabetics on the edge of town.  It was small but clean.  We had to quickly figure out how to set up.  We decided registration needed to be done outside.  Not ideal, but necessary.  Even with that space would be tight.  There would still be little room for patients waiting at different points in the clinic once they entered.  The next day our hosts would move a canopy near the entrance to provide shade to those forced to wait outside.

We set up our stations: registration, nurse, visual acuity, auto refractor, eye doctors (4), and finally dispensing where people receive glasses if needed.  We unpacked and spread out our catalogue of 7,000 pairs of used eye glasses from Lion’s Club warehouses in California and Illinois, and kind people we know who save them for us.  By 8:00 p.m. we were more or less ready for Sunday, the first day of a four day clinic.  Super Bowl Sunday by the way. 

That first day of travel and set up is always a long one.

My wife and I were on the third floor of the small hotel.  Our room was directly across from the town’s central plaza and bell tower of its largest Catholic Church, San Santiago Apostal, known locally as the Temple of the Lord of Mercy.  Church bells went off in a big way at 5:30 a.m. the next morning.  It was still dark.  I jumped out of bed thinking something was about to happen.  It was.  Sunday in Mexico had begun.

I looked out the window and dimly saw the source of the calamity, it was that old church.  To say its old is understatement.  It was designed by the Spanish in 1540 and built by the hands of local Mexicans.  It remains a vital working parish 478 years later.  People of all ages cross themselves when they pass by.

We arrived at the clinic about 7:30, hoping to open the doors by 8:00.  We’re always hopeful.  Truth is it took us longer to get going, and then we waited for the mayor to come and cut a ribbon.  The mayor of Compostela is a young woman, rare in Mexican politics, but a very good sign.  She was late.  People were there when we arrived, holding little squares of paper, their pre-enrollment ticket for glasses on Sunday.  Our hosts, the local Rotary club, were very well organized.

They had been with us every step of the way.  They were at their airport ready to run interference to get our glasses and equipment through customs, at the coach bus which they hired offering beer, soda and homemade tacos on the ride up into the mountains, at the hotel helping us register and get to our rooms, at the clinic with sandwiches helping us set up that evening.

When I asked how many volunteers would be available to help us the first day of clinic my rotary contact rattled off names, counting on his fingers, and said “Eleven.”  More showed up.  They nearly equaled us I Care volunteers from the states.  It was impressive.

Clinic always starts slowly.  We find out where the slow spots are, where we need more help, where those we’re helping get out of sequence.  But soon the people of Compostela, who had signed up for the free eye clinic weeks ago, made it to the final step and we were giving them glasses. The planning and preparation, the travel, the set up, all come down to that.  People who lack eye care get a good exam and glasses if they need them.  Volunteers pick a pair of glasses for them, sometimes more, from the stock we assembled, wrap them in their intake form, and pass them to the fitters, of which I am one, to call their name.

I make sure to do a few things first each time a new patient sits down in front of me.  I repeat their first name, look them in the eye, say Buenos dias (good day), Buenos tardes (good afternoon), or sometime Buenos noches (good evening) if we run late.  I shake their hand.  I say como esta (how are you) again using their first name.  They usually smile and ask me how I’m doing back. Then we go.

People who hear me speak Spanish in the clinic think I know the language well.  I don’t.  Truth is I’ve been speaking Spanish about eyes and glasses for four days at least in 25 of the last 30 years.  I’ve  lost count.  My first mission was in 1988.  I missed some years when the kids were little, but not many.

As a result, I have a pretty polished rap about bifocals.  I show them the line, explain that under the line is the portion of the lens for viewing things close up, and over the line for distance.  I put their glasses on them and ask them first to look away in the distance.  I give them a newspaper to look at close up.  If they don’t work we try something else.

If they can see adequately, and you can almost tell by the look on their face, I ask them if the glasses are comfortable, loose or tight, then adjust them to fit.  I caution them about the vulnerability of plastic lenses and tell them to clean them with soap and water and dry them with a soft cloth so as to prevent scratches.  If they have an eye injury or one eye that doesn’t function I tell them

“Esta es la razon por la cual Dios  le dio a la gente dos ojos.  (This is why God gave people two eyes.)”

I joke around, try to make the experience pleasant for them, and in the end shake their hand again, telling them “Listo!”  (we’re done or you’re ready) and wishing them good luck with the glasses.  Get me away from an eye clinic, and the vocabulary contained in that short exchange, and my Spanish goes downhill quickly.  I learned Spanish in the streets while traveling, hitchhiking mostly, through Mexico, Central America, and part of South America in the 70’s.  They say you learn what you need to get by that way.  And that amount of Spanish allows me to get by in the eye clinic fairly well.

The real story of these clinics is the people we serve and the local people who help us provide that service.  Let’s start with the latter.  They were Rotary Club members, business owners, Mexicans with means.  Who else has the capacity to fund and carry out a community project like this?  One of the main organizers was a local family practice doctor, a dynamic young woman who took charge of the front door, got us whatever we needed, and stayed from the time the first patient came through the door till the last one left.

Another was a local businessman who owned gas stations and several other businesses.  His whole family worked with us, including his daughter who spoke excellent English and interpreted for those who needed language help.  So much help from the citizens of Compostela.  They worked with us Sunday and Monday, which was a holiday, and turned us over to the local staff of DIF, the Mexican national social service agency, when they had to go back to their jobs Tuesday and Wednesday.  I’ve found it rare for two such different organizations to cooperate so well.  Despite the Rotary club members saying they would not be able to help the last two days many were there much of the time.  All the organizers were especially kind to the people served by the clinic.  It appeared to be a real labor of love for them.

As it was for us from the US.  That’s why we do this, our motivation for going in the first place.  For me it’s the joy of meeting those people.  I probably called the name, shook the hand, and said “good luck with your glasses” to 500+ people.  Here’s a few of them.

An 80 year old painter who came straight from work.  He was tanned and wrinkled but his forearms and his handshake were just as strong as mine.  He had paint on his hands.  He was wiry and fit and had bright eyes.  Not bad vision.  Just a little deficit seeing far away but seriously hindered for near vision.  I asked him one of the standards questions.

“Tiene lentes antes?”  (Had glasses before?)

“Nunca.”  (Never.)

I gave him a pair of sturdy bifocals.  When I asked him to look far away, he looked out the window and nodded.  When I put a newspaper in front of him he broke into a big smile.

“Muy claro.”  (Very clear.)

He gave me the three part handshake that is so popular with Mexicans and hipsters alike.  The standard handshake, the thumb grab, followed again by the standard handshake.  I gave him some sunglasses that went over the bifocals to keep “both the sun and the paint out of his eyes.”  He laughed. 

I quietly gave a 50 year old deaf woman her first pair of glasses, silently translating my glasses rap to crude hand signals.  She needed a lot of correction for distance.  Her mouth silently formed an O and she smiled as she looked out the window, then smiled at me.  She asked for her daughter to come over and speak to me, signing to her.  The daughter told me that her mother wished me blessings from God and safe travels home.

I fitted a saddle maker, an electrician, lots of taxi drivers and truck drivers (thank god), farmers, cooks, housewives, lots of kids (the Pez only lasted two days), in short a small slice of the entire community.  One woman who had a taco cart in the square, when I told her how much I liked Compostela, told me “Compostela es el capital del mundo. “ (Compostela is the capital of the world.)

A night later while walking through the square I heard that same sentence yelled across the way.  Here came that same woman, proudly wearing her glasses, smiling and thanking me again.  So genuine. 

I gave a nine year old girl her first pair of glasses, (along with a Pez) for serious myopia or near sightedness, and an almost equal prescription to her mother.  I explained to them that they would both most likely need to wear glasses the rest of their lives, and to have regular eye exams if possible.  And then I gave them one of my good lines. 

“Para ti, con lentes el mundo es mas grande.” (For you, the world is much bigger with glasses.)

Old people, some confused, were always it seemed accompanied by caring family members and treated kindly.  Families waited for each other, children were well behaved, and parents were tolerant.  The U.S. volunteers were probably more stressed than the Mexicans, although some of them spent over two hours in the clinic and travelled hours to get there from their villages.

They gave out 500 tickets a day, each of the four days.  We haven’t served 2,000 people in an I Care clinic since the old days.  We didn’t even know we could anymore.  And yes our feet hurt, and our backs, and our brains were worn out from thinking of prescriptions and translating English to Spanish in our heads, but when it was over we felt good.  We accomplished something.  We got close as a group, and the group was international.

The doctor’s sister cooked us a huge pot of posole for dinner Tuesday night.  They brought it to the clinic after the last patient was served.  Posole is hominy soup.  Hominy is corn kernels with the shell removed and boiled till it puffs up.  This posole had vegetables, mushrooms, and just a little bit of chicken.  They served it with thick handmade tortillas and two homemade hot sauces, a mild green one and a red one they made a point of warning us about, a thick oily paste made with chile de arbol.   I had two teaspoons of the red in both bowls of soup.  Best hot sauce I’ve had in a long time.  We all ate together on plastic banquet tables, Mexican and American volunteers elbow to elbow, dog tired, and talked about how we could do better in the clinic the next day.

This being Mexico, they threw us a big party at the end of the last day, a dress up deal with certificates of appreciation, bottles of tequila, multiple speeches, more tequila, much talk of hearts and love and home, and hugs.  Lots of hugs and tearful goodbyes.  It was heartfelt.  

As my wife and I were getting ready for the party I had a whiskey and thought of a speech I would give if the opportunity arose.  All of us were careful to avoid talking politics.  I imagined it as the elephant in the room, and searched for a way to broach the subject tactfully.  At the party I decided not to talk, because the evening went long and everyone was tired.  Besides that I write better than I talk.  This is what I wanted to say. 

“In the United States we have problems.  Political problems.  We don’t know where we are headed as a country.  Many of us are alarmed, even ashamed.  As a country we are as divided as we have ever been.  The future is uncertain.  Many of us are working hard to keep our country on the side of justice and fairness.  But we are struggling.  

Whatever the outcome of that political struggle, in our upcoming elections, in our path going forward, I want to assure you of something.  No politician, no political party, no policy, no law, and certainly no wall will ever separate the people of the United States from its neighbors.  Both you and I are more than our governments.  The people of the United States of America and Mexico share values and ideals that cannot be taken away.  You are in our hearts, and nothing can take you from us.”

Mexicans love the stuff about hearts.  When you hear the word “corazon” look for tears to follow.  That speech might have resonated.  We’ll never know.  I think it would have had punch because it is true.  The people of the United States and Mexico share so much as people: a sense of community, a belief in family, and helping others.  You can’t make that make that stuff up, and you certainly can’t take it away.

February Sucks

Good thing February is short.  It’s my least favorite month.  There is the brief respite of Valentine’s Day, if you have a valentine.  If you don’t, February is even worse.  Winter, which can be a welcome break even here in the Midwest, has been experienced.  Christmas and New Year’s are over.  Snow has come and gone.  We’ve put up lights and trees and taken them down.  The parties are over.  We’re ready to move on to spring, which begins in March.  But there is February to live through, and February sucks.

I rode the Rock Island line to and from Joliet to LaSalle Street station, going into the city one day and returning the next. The days were carbon copies of each other.  Gray.  Cloudy.  Drab.  The snow had melted and revealed dead grass and trash under it.  No sign of life.  We’re ready for something to happen.  Anything actually.  We need a new view.  Reset the picture please.

My Christmas tree is lying in the yard, green but dead all the same.  It serves as a roosting place for birds waiting for the feeder.  I’ve fed more seed this winter than I ever remember.  The finches are killing the thistle seed and the Cardinals drain the black oil sunflower seeds.  Woodpeckers eat a cake of suet a week.  Maybe I’ve paid more attention this winter, and refilled the feeders more faithfully.  Where would they be without me?  In somebody else’s yard I’m sure.

There is art that appears in my head which I can’t shake.  When recurring tunes stick in our minds we call them ear worms.  What do we call images we keep seeing?  If we’re lucky the images are beautiful. 

Not all the art that visits my head is famous.  I think often of Claude Monet’s haystacks.  I’ve seen them in the Chicago Art Institute many times, making a point of visiting them each time I go through the doors.  Claude Monet made the ordinary gorgeous and these haystacks are no different.  Being an old haymaker myself I can relate.  A field, the sky, a haystack.  Sometimes two.  How can that be special you ask?  Claude has a talent for capturing beauty.  He paints them at different times of the day, through all the seasons.  Six of Monet’s many haystack paintings, held in museums around the world, are in Chicago.  They are displayed across their own wall in the Impressionists gallery.  Frame after frame of the same haystacks.

What changes you ask?  The light mostly.  The color of the sky.  The clouds.  The shadows they cast.  The winter haystack is softened with a coat of snow.  The spring haystack is spiked with green.  Once I stood across the room, when I can’t remember, to pick a favorite.   I scan them all and go closer to find the title of the winner.  Its Sunset, Snow Effect.  Soft with smooth lines, the sun glows orange off the clouds and the snow.  It’s pleasing and calm.

My least favorite?  I go back to look from across the room.  One stands out. Darker than the rest, less reflective light.  Solemn somehow.  I walk up once again to read the title.  Thaw, Sunset. 

I wish old Claude was alive, or I had the time and energy to research when those painting were done.  I’d bet my best animal skull (I have several in the shack) he painted that in February.  It’s what February looks like.  Not even a master like Claude Monet can make it better.

And so I’m leaving the country.  I’m going to see what February looks like further south.  I won’t be gone the whole month, but I won’t stay till the end either.  At the end of February I take off again.  Retirement offers opportunity, and I’m taking it.  I’ll talk to you again when I get back.

Look on the bright side.

The Elevator Speech

I need to do some serious work on my elevator speech for Dave in the Shack, namely writing one.  The realization that I have no coherent description of what I’m doing here came about this way.

I was at a fundraiser for a local candidate and was introduced to one of the women that urged the candidate to run.  My friend introduced me as “a writer.  Dave writes a blog.  He’s going to write about (the aspiring and emerging politician.)”

“Oh really?  What’s the name of your blog?”

Apparently sometimes the name of the blog gives one a clue as to what it’s about.  Food blogs, political blogs, travel blogs, all descriptively and discreetly named.

“Dave in the Shack.”

“So what do you write about?”

Pause.

“Whatever I want.”

She looked puzzled.

“Fiction or non-fiction?”

Pause.

“Well it’s typically based on things that happen. But I take license.  And sometimes I write straight fiction.  Creative non-fiction might describe it.”

Not a single spark of understanding appeared on her face.

“Do you write about politics?”

“From time to time.  I spent some time in Springfield directly working to increase funding for kids and families.  So I’ve been involved in the process.  But I write about a lot of other things.”

She looked at me blankly.

“Yeah.  Well I’ll have to check it out.”

My guess is she hasn’t.  Nothing I said would have made her want to.  My elevator speech, a succinct one minute summary, never materialized.

So what is Dave in the Shack about?  Good question.

It’s written in the first person and that person is me.  The opinions expressed in Dave in the Shack are mine.  I think you all know that.  A friend once asked if I have a long list of things I want to write about and check them off one by one.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.  I generally write about moments I recently live which seem meaningful.  I try to explain them to you, hoping they may also be meaningful to you. I admit that once in a while I do things deliberately so I can write about the experience.  I describe people I meet, conversations that happen, things I end up thinking about.  Still pretty non specific isn’t it?  Let me try again.

I started this blog while I was the director of a youth service/child welfare agency.  At that time it was named YSB update.  I had a pretty clear purpose then.  I wanted to write in a way that would create empathy and understanding, perhaps support, for the children we served and their parents.  Along the way I wanted to illustrate how hard my staff worked, what good members of my volunteer board did to help our cause, how much public policy on the state and federal level affected people in the communities we served.  I tried not to swerve too far out of that lane, although I admit I got personal at times.

When I retired I began writing Dave in the Shack.  It was liberating.  I was not longer the spokesperson for an organization, I was a guy writing from a shack about anything he wanted.  On the blog page I say “writing from a small place in a changing world.”  I suppose I try to note change, convey the struggles of working to keep up with a flood of news and information, in a world which we know so much more about but understand less.  But there’s more to it than that.

Although I’m retired and work, for money that is, barely at all (as an election judge I am paid each time there is a local election.)  I’m still doing things.  I volunteer, directly and as a board member, attend church, live in a community.  I have time now to think about what’s going on around me and observe life and its interactions in, sometimes in detail.  It’s a good thing to do.  I recommend it.

And as I live that life I encounter people, events, experiences, that are so touching, or important, I think they should be recorded and shared.  Not forgotten.  Things that can be used to inform others, you, my readers.

And so that is mostly what I write about.  Noteworthy aspects of everyday life.

I remember overhearing staff in the kitchen at YSB in the 90’s talking about TV shows.  I rarely watched TV then, or since.  They were talking about “Seinfeld” which I had heard of but never seen.  Naively I asked a question

“What’s that show about?”

They all started laughing.  Apparently, there had been an episode that revolved around just  that.  One of them managed to say

“Nothing!”

and then they laughed again.  “Seinfeld” was a comedy that centered around  the everyday lives of a group of people living in New York apartments.  The episodes could be and were, about seemingly everything and in turn nothing in particular. 

I hesitate to say Dave in the Shack is about nothing.  But then again, it can be about anything.  “Seinfeld” was at least always funny.  This blog has been about music, food, social work, making peanut brittle, road trips, politics, farm life, animals, whiskey, you name it.  Sometimes it makes readers laugh and sometimes cry.

Sometimes I write a blog and from your comments, I find my readers react to something else.  Last week I wrote about a tender moment between siblings.  I was cooking eggs to order in the local homeless shelter and in the course of interacting with two kids, who could well have woken up to their first morning in a public shelter, one of those moments happened.  As I talked to them, coaxing an egg order from them, the younger, a little girl with shy eyes, pulled on her brother’s sleeve, cupped her small hand around his ear, whispered into it, and settling back to watch me.  Her brother reluctantly but dutifully did her talking for her, asking me if his little sister could have orange juice. 

It reminded me of the orphan in Oliver Twist who asked for more porridge.  It was the look in her eyes, her quiet but determined way of getting what she wanted under tough circumstances., that touched me.  I wanted to capture that moment and share it with you, with as many people as possible.

Instead, you thought I was the hero.  The comments praised me for being there in the first place and helping  the homeless people.  I was just the cook.  It wasn’t supposed to be about me, but them,  homeless people and their humanity.  But you can’t win them all. 

On the other hand, I asked for egg and orange juice donations and a guy reported that earlier this week he donated a gross of eggs (a dozen dozen) and a case of frozen OJ.  So in that sense, it worked just fine.

In conclusion I don’t know what Dave in the Shack is about.  Ernest Hemingway among others, and I find no one gives more advice to writers than writers, said this:

“Write hard and clear about what hurts.”

I try to do that in a way.  I would change it though to read

“Write hard and clear about what’s true.”

It’s therapeutic to write about what hurts, but readers don’t always share that pain.  However, I think you have a great appreciation for what’s true.  Some things, written well, hit home and resonate.  That’s what I try to write.  Maybe you know what I’m doing better than me.  Let me know if you can.  Thanks for reading all the way to the end.

P.S. - If you receive a link to Dave in the Shack via e mail you may be getting it from a new e mail address.  My only e mail contact is now daveintheshack@gmail.com.  You may want to put it in your address book.  And as always, to comment on a blog received via e mail, just go to the e mail message and hit reply.  I’ll get it every time.   

Eggs and Orange Juice

I cooked breakfast at the homeless shelter again this morning.  I’m happy to report there were a lot of eggs in the fridge.  33 people woke up in the shelter, but as you might guess, not everyone wakes up hungry.  Most all want coffee, but some aren’t ready for food.  Some just want to be left alone. 

I arrived at 6:30, got organized, and by 6:45 was ready to start feeding people.  My friend Steve, the night guy who volunteers from 3:00 -7:00, found pork chops in the fridge, cut them up, seared them then baked them, and had them warming in the oven along with some leftover ham and potatoes.  He found some pre made rolls of biscuits and had them on a baking sheet in the oven on a timer.  On the kitchen work table were two flats of eggs, one not quite full.  I counted them.  44. 

I had two skillets hot on the stove, a bottle of oil, salt and pepper, and a spatula.  On the counter next to the stove I set up a bowl for cracking eggs into, a big bowl for the shells, and a half a glass of milk.  I quietly interrupted the early morning reverie of a guy hunched over his coffee cup in the semi dark.  I had the kitchen lights on but no one had turned on the overheads in the dining room.

“You ready for breakfast?”

He looked up like I startled him, hesitated, then said

“Yeah.”

“I’m cooking eggs.  How do you like ‘em?”

“Sunny side up.”

I cracked two eggs into the bowl, one in each hand, and poured a little oil in the skillet.  When I emptied the bowl into the skillet, the whites puffed up and popped a little.  I turned the heat down and seasoned them with salt and black pepper.

“You want some porch chop with these eggs?”

“Sure.”

Sunny side eggs don’t take long.  I had a circle of egg whites with two yellow suns slid onto a square white plastic plate in short order.  I opened the oven door and spooned on three or four hunks of pork next to them.  The timer had just gone off for the biscuits so I took them out and slid them into a big bowl, covered it with a plate.  They looked a little flat.  I don’t think that tube dough is ever as good as the stuff you mix up yourself.

“Toast or biscuits?”

“Toast.”

I had put four slices of whole wheat in the toaster.  I pushed the lever down on two and rummaged around in the fridge for butter.  Nothing but margarine.  I brought it out with a jar of red raspberry jelly.

“Here you go.”

I slid him the plate. 

“Thanks.”

“Why don’t you turn the lights on out there?”

He did.  More people began to show up. 

The next guy wanted a plate just like the first guy had.  A woman came up to the counter and wanted her eggs scrambled.  I cracked them, two at a time, into the bowl.  As I added milk and began to beat them with a fork I looked at her, tall and thin, looked at all the eggs I had, and added one more.  She wanted the pork chop too.  When I asked her if she preferred biscuits or toast she said.

“Oh my.  You have hot biscuits here?”

She said that in up talk fashion, her voice ending on a high note.

“Yes I do ma’am.  Just like downtown.”

“Then yes.  Yes.  Yes.  Give me the biscuits please.”

Soon a line formed and that process repeated itself over and over.  For the record the most popular egg order is over easy.  But I heard a new one.  A young guy in a hockey jersey ordered his like this:

“Over.  Kill the yolks.”

I took that to mean over hard.  I messed up his yolks with my fork in the skillet.

Two kids came out before their Dad and got a bowl of cold cereal each.  They were quiet.  Could have been their first morning in the shelter.  I saw them alone, went out to where they were sitting. and asked them if they would also like some eggs.  The girl looked at her big brother, who nodded at her, and she responded quietly.

“Yes.”

I addressed the brother.

“How about you?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you like them?”

I pointed at the girl.  She looked at her brother.  They both looked at me dumbly.  Finally the brother answered tentatively.

“Regular?”

“Eggs don’t come regular.  All ways are equal.  You like them scrambled?”

They looked at each other again.  Again the brother answered.

“No.”

“So you want the whites around the yolks.”

“Yeah.”

“And how do you like those yolks?  Runny?  Sorta runny?  Not runny at all?”

The brother answered for himself.

“Sorta runny.”

I pointed to the girl.  She looked at her brother, then me.

“Sorta runny.”

“Sounds like you both want your eggs over easy.  Try to remember that next time someone asks you.  That is, if you like the eggs I bring you.  I have biscuits or toast.  Which will it be?”

The boy opted for biscuits.  His little sister asked for toast.  I was about to walk back to the kitchen when the girl began tugging on her brother’s shirt.  A little annoyed, he bent towards her.  She cupped her hand around his ear and whispered something.  He looked a little disgusted, then looked up at me with a bored face.  Embarrassed I think.

“Do you have any orange juice?”

“Sorry.  Not today.  Lemonade or milk.”

He looked at his sister.  She shook her head.

“OK.  Thanks anyway.”

Their Dad came out and after conferring with his kids ordered his eggs over easy too.  I fixed three plates, kept everything warm, and served them all at once.  Dad was reading the want ads in the local paper.  Later I looked out and the little girl had her toast all cut down the middle and carefully slathered with raspberry jelly.  They were all talking together, the three of them. 

The little girl came up with their plates when they were finished, putting them in the plastic bin under the counter. 

“How did you like those eggs?”

“Good.”

“OK. That means you, your brother, and your Dad all like your eggs over easy.  Remember that.”

“Over easy,” she said, as if she was practicing.

And thus I served 43 eggs to a bunch of people on Monday morning, January 15, 2018 in Ottawa, Illinois at the PADS shelter.  May they all have homes, and their own eggs, very soon.

For all of you who have brought eggs to the shelter, and it appears there are many, thank you.  Keep them coming.  They make for good mornings.  Don’t forget the orange juice