Panimatzalan, Guatemala 2025

 I Care - Panimatzalan, Guatemala 2025

The hour-long van ride to Panimatzalam, the first of I Care International’s two clinic sites in Guatemala this year, told us a lot about the village we had never before served.  From our hotel in San Lucas Toliman, on the shore of Lake Atitlan, it was way up the mountain in the neighboring Solola district.  

As we made the steep and winding climb in a caravan of three vans, we passed through smaller and smaller villages: Aguas Escondido, Godinez, Las Conoas.  Along the way, we drove by the very full local landfill.  In contrast, the views below of Lake Atitlan were spectacular.  

But most striking to us were the steep fields of corn, fava beans, mangoes, and avocado trees.  Those fields could not be farmed with tractors and conventional farm implements.  As evidence, field workers with heavy hoes walked along the road to begin their day of manual labor tending those fields with hand tools.  

Word has it that in some fields the campesinos tie themselves to trees with rope to cultivate and harvest the most dangerous inclines.  We didn’t see that, but most of the corn had been harvested, the stalks left standing, indicating the ears were shucked by hand.  

When we turned off the main road into Panimatzalam, we climbed even higher.  It felt as if we were on the very top of the volcano.  The town was small.  I can’t find a population count, but a tour guide with a commercial website estimates 150 to 200 families live in the village.  It is described as a Kaqchikel community that few outsiders visit.  Kaqchikel refers to their shared pre-Columbian language spoken in Panimatzalan, one of 21 pre-Columbian languages spoken in Guatemala before the conquistadors introduced Spanish in the 1500’s.

I Care International gained entry to this community as we always must, by establishing rapport and trust with community leaders and receiving an invitation to serve.  We can’t do our work without such contacts.  We have partnered with national, state, and local government, health departments, Rotary clubs, hospitals, and clinics.  I may have left some partners out.  

But our community partner in Panimatzalan was new; a committee representing the Ancient Mayan Authority of the Solola region, pictured here, with their leader Tata Domingo Quino. 

 

They’re trying to keep their community alive by attracting tourism, practicing sustainable farming practices, and preserving their Mayan customs.  Tata, along with his wife and members of the committee served our 30+ volunteers lunch at noon down the street at their home.   

They let us use their community center, a simple concrete block building with a basketball court, a stage, and good bathrooms.  It was a perfect place to work, with lots of space and the added benefit of having our whole clinic operate in one big room.  

We set up our six stations: Intake, Nurses (checking blood sugar and blood pressure), Acuity (eye charts), Autorefractors (machines which measure the eye), Eye Exams by our optometrists and optometry students, and finally, the Dispensary where pickers choose an appropriate pair of glasses from our inventory of used glasses and fitters give them to our patients. 

Watching each other work together in an open setting like that not only reminds us how important every volunteer is to the process, it also fosters good communication between us.

Late on the second day, when presented with a 24-year-old woman with a serious case of astigmatism and a very strong prescription to correct it, I asked her this.

“Tienes lentes antes?”  Have you had glasses before?

“De nina, tenge lentes.  Pero ahora son muy pequenos, y roto también.”   

“De niña” is a convenient Spanish phrase I just learned.  It means, “as a girl.”  She was telling me that “as a girl she had glasses, but they are now too small and also broken.

“Cuantos años sin lentes?”  I asked.  How many years without glasses?

“Diez, mas or menos.”  Ten, more or less.  

I put my hand on my heart.

“Hace diez años, que no ves bien?”  For ten years, you haven’t seen well?

I have similar eyes.  Without my glasses, I’m lost.  With her condition, her field of vision would be extremely limited.

I pulled out my stock phrase for such moments.

“Sin lentes, el mundo está muy pequeña para ti.”  Without glasses, the world is very small for you.

She understood too well.  I showed her the glasses the pickers selected for her. Thankfully, the prescription was extremely close to the one the optometrist had prescribed.  

“Pruebe estos.” Try these. 

I carefully put them on her face.

“Mira el arbol afuera.”  Look at the tree outside. 

I pointed through the open exit door where a tree stood some 25 feet away.

When I put glasses on a person in the clinic I look closely at their face for their reaction.  She smiled.

“Como es la vista?”  How is the view?

“Muy claro.  Tan claro.”  Very clear.  So clear. 

She spoke to the four-year-old who had been so quiet through the process.

“Mama tienes lentes nuevos!”  Mama has new glasses!

“Con tu permiso, un juguete para tu hijo?  With your permission, a toy for your son?

“Si.”

I went to my stash of Pez and fished one out, with a couple of sleeves of extra candy.  I held it in front of him.

“Mira aqui.  Es un juguete, y también tienes dulces.  Look here.  It’s a toy, and it also has candy.

I bent the head back and the little sugar tablet poked out.  I got a smile from him too. 

Next, I fit her sister, age 20, with an infant on her back.  She had almost identical eyes.  Yes, these conditions do run in families.  We had glasses that met her needs very well also.  Her story was similar.  Glasses when young.  No means to replace them when she outgrew them.  I was so glad they came to our clinic.

About the time I was finishing with the sisters, my friend Mark Bindner, a fluent Spanish speaker who does intakes, came over to see what was going on in dispensing.  It was slow at his station.  I was impressing upon the sisters the importance of eye exams for their kids when they were older.  Maybe we would be back in the area in a few years.  

When Mark walked up to me, the second sister looked at us standing together, about the same age, both with white hair and beards, and asked me,

“Tu hermano?”  Your brother?

We looked at each other and laughed.  Mark put his hand on my shoulder. 

“No. Pero viejos amigos.  Muy viejos.”  No.  But old friends.  Very old.

As we talked, the four-year-old was getting quite good at getting the candy out of his Pez.  Mark was talking to the sisters in Spanish when he felt a little tap on his leg and looked down.  

The boy was holding a Pez up to him.  Big eyes.  Big smile.  Not so common for a four-year-old to share so freely.

“Oh my god, he’s giving me his candy.”

I saw tears in Mark’s eyes.  The boy handed me a sugary tablet as well.  All we could manage to say was gracias and put the candy in our mouths.

 

After Panimatzalan, we served the larger more urban town of San Lucas Toliman for two days at a hospital there.  San Lucas Toliman is a different place, a popular lake town with gringo visitors, now developing tourism and the businesses that go with it quite well.  It’s a very different place from the Kaqchikel village of Panimatzalam on top of the volcano. 

In our four days of clinic, we served 1100 patients, each getting a thorough eye exam and glasses if needed.  It was a joy to work with I Care volunteers again bringing quality eye care to people outside our borders.

Each year I seem to forget how much I love that work.  And then the people we serve remind me why.

Santa Gave Me Advice for Christmas

I've been writing for the local paper these past six months.  When I do that I write shorter pieces to keep within their word limit and tend not to put them on my blog.  I'll start the year off their team and hope to communicate with you more through regular postings.  Hope you like this one.  Merry Christmas.

Life changes in subtle ways. After swimming laps at the old YMCA, I would spend time in the park the city created in the “flats” near the end of the Fox River.  At the new Y, I loop down to the Illinois River on my way home. The Illinois River is bigger.  I see barges sometimes, heading south toward Alton.  Some go all the way to the Gulf of Mexico, and the cargo they carry goes all over the world. 

Last week I was on the riverbank between the 23 bridge and the railroad trestle when I heard a familiar voice.

“So, McClure, you decided to come back after all.”

My wife and I recently returned from Bolivia where we visited my son.  I turned around to find Santa Claus walking towards me out of uniform, sporting not a bit of red.  Bib overalls, a thick grey sweater, and a black stocking hat. 

“You left and didn’t come back once before, right?”

“That was fifty years ago, Santa, in Europe.  I was twenty-three.  The Vietnam War had just ended.  Watergate forced Nixon from office.  Tumultuous times.”

“But you thought about staying away this time too, right?”

“Yeah.  We spent most of our time in Cochabamba, a city at 8,500 feet in an Andes mountain valley just 17 degrees south of the equator.  Beautiful weather, technically the start of their summer though the weather changes little. We relaxed and stopped reading American news.  We shopped at outdoor markets and cooked fresh food.  It’s a small country of around 12 million.  Calm and peaceful.”

“Why didn't you stay?”

“I’m not 23 anymore.  I feel like I belong here.  My family, my church, June, the shack, these rivers.  It’s where I live, good or bad.”

“But you’re not happy with where your country is headed?  Or do I have that wrong?’

“No, you’re right.  I’m fed up with division, violence, hatred, and greed.  I fear for our future.”

“But here you are.  Now 73.”

“Yeah.”

Awkward silence.

“How about you Santa?”

“Well, unlike you I’m still working.  Been doing Christmas one way or another since the 4^th century.  That century began in 300 A.D. you know.  Can’t forget those first years before they add to a hundred.  But we’re on different paths. My future is unlimited, while yours, you know…”

 He paused, looked away, then went on.

“Life changes hardly at all for me, but your life changes quickly.  Mortals speed through their lives and disappear.  It’s hard for me to comprehend because I have such a long view of the world, but I it happens all the time.  I think of you McClure, living within your thin slice of history, and I want you to end it well.”

“That’s big of you, Santa.  Tell me, what do you think after pondering my brief life almost over?”

“You spend too much time worrying.  You know your life is finite, right?  Worry is taking you away from the thing you do best and satisfies you the most.”

“And what’s that, Santa?”

“Writing.”

“But I’m writing right now.”

“You’re not telling people the whole story.  Finish it.  Polish it up.  Put it out there.  Let the people you love know the real you.  Contribute to their future.  You won’t regret it.  Consider that you were made to do just that.  I’m doing what I’m supposed to do.  How about you do the same?  Stop worrying, keep your fingers on that keyboard in the Shack, and get to work, for Christ’s sake.”

“Christ?  Have you been talking to him about me?”

“Jesus?  NO.  I mean, we chat occasionally.  Everybody needs to check in with peers from time to time, but we don’t talk about individuals.  If he wants to say something to you he will.  I’m just handing out friendly Santa advice.  Consider it your Christmas present.”

“Well, thanks.  I wish I could give you something in return.”

“You can.  Remember what I told you and write a story about me.”

“Consider it done.   Thanks, Santa.  Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, McClure.  Hope I see you again next year.”

My Heroes are Crashing Down

 This story will only repeat.  A voice on early morning radio informs us of another musician’s death.  A musician whose life paralleled ours, whose music lives in your heart along with lyrics that name your fears and hopes, joy and sadness.  Gone. 

That morning, I pictured the cover of an album in a wooden crate in the shack.  On it is a picture of the long-haired singer/songwriter as a young man.  There is a shadow image beside him.  His thumbs are tucked behind his belt buckle, and between his fingers is a lit cigarette.  In my mind, he walked a path I also traveled.  Perhaps creating that feeling of familiarity was his gift.  I walk into our bedroom as my wife is waking up.

“Kris Kristofferson died.”

“I’m sorry.  I know how much you liked him.  Which of his songs was your favorite?”

“Want me to sing it for you?”

“Sure.”

I struck up an acapella version of “The Silver Tongued Devil and I” while putting on my socks.  It had been running through my mind since I heard the news.

              I took myself down to the Tally Ho tavern

              To buy me a bottle of beer.

              I sat me down by a tender young maiden

              With eyes just as dark as her hair.

              And as I was searching from bottle to bottle

              For something unfoolish to say.

              That silver tongued devil, just slipped from the shadows

              And smiling, stole her away.

              Chorus

              I said ‘Hey, little girl, don’t you know he’s a devil?

              He’s everything that I ain’t.

              Hiding intentions of evil, under the guise of a saint.

All he’s good for is gettin’ in trouble,

And shifting his share of the blame.

Some people swear he’s my double,

And some even say we’re the same.

But the silver-tongued devil’s got nothing on me

I’ll only live till I die.

We take our own chances, and pay our own dues,

The silver-tongued devil and I.

(In my head a spare dobro and a tinkling piano back his voice)

Like all the fair maidens who’ve laid down beside him

She knew in her heart that he lied

But nothing that I could have said

Could’ve have saved her

No matter how hard that she tried

Cause she’ll offer her soul to darkness and danger

Of something that she’s never known,

And open her arms at the smile of a stranger

Who’ll love her and leave her alone.

Repeat Chorus

@1971 Combine Music Corp.  Used without permission. Apologies to the Kristofferson estate.

 

“I’m amazed you still know the words.”

“I think I knew all the songs on that album at one time. “

“Which others?”

“When I Loved Her.  Jody and the Kid.  Black and Blue.  Loving Her Was Easier Than Anything I’ll Ever Do Again.”

The Silver Tongued Devil and I was also the name of Kristofferson’s second album, recorded in 1971.  It was a bigger success than his first, both coming before he became Grammy winner, a movie star, and a legendary Nashville songwriter. 

But it was his life as much as his songs that drew me to Kristofferson.

He grew up in a military family, his father an Air Force pilot who retired as a major general.  His son followed in his footsteps though unlike his dad Kris first went to school as an English major at Pomona College, California.  At Pomona he studied creative writing and was named a Rhodes scholar, enabling him to complete his studies at Oxford University in England.  It was 1960.

In Europe, Kristofferson’s life expanded.  At Oxford, he continued to write and studied in detail the works of William Blake, a visionary English poet and visual artist of the late 1700’s and early 1800’s.  Kristofferson also used his time in Europe to travel.

In an interview with David Letterman, Kristofferson described a trip he made following the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway.  Kristofferson said “I figured if I wanted to become a writer I had to go out and live.  One of the ways I did that was trying to be as much like Hemingway as I could, doing all the wrong things he did except, you know, blowing my brains out.”

Kristofferson became an aficionado of bullfighting, running with the bulls in Pamplona, and attending bullfights throughout northern Spain.  As he recounted the trip to Letterman, he was young and “thought of myself as immortal, impossible to kill.”

In the Spanish town of Burgos, he and several friends gathered outside a hospital where matador Luis Miguel Dominguin was taken after a near fatal goring in the bull ring.  As they waited to receive word on his status, a car pulled up and from it emerged Ernest Hemingway.  He described their encounter to Letterman this way. 

“All of a sudden, Hemingway was standing beside me.  I looked him right in the face.  It was ravaged.  I had no idea of the awful shape he appeared to be in.  I don’t know if he reacted to the look on my face or what but without a word, he wheeled around, got back in his car and sped away.  He died within months of that day.”  Hemingway was 61.  The year was 1961.

After Oxford, Kristofferson enlisted in the United States Army.  Stationed in Germany, he completed Ranger School and went on to fly helicopters.  He volunteered to go to Vietnam as a pilot, but instead the Army ordered him to report to West Point to serve as an English Literature professor. 

When Kristofferson found out he would be required to turn in lesson plans as a West Point faculty member, he is reported to have said that the job “sounded like hell to me.”  He resigned his commission in the Army and moved to Nashville to pursue his interest in songwriting. The year was 1965.

That decision was not without consequences.  Upon learning their son gave up a promising military career, his parents, both veterans, disowned him.  Kristofferson claimed he had no regrets, believing William Blake was correct in asserting these words; “anyone divinely ordered for spiritual communion that buries his talent will be pursued by sorrow and desperation through life and by shame and confusion for eternity.”

Heavy stuff, even for an English major.  Kristofferson reframed Blake’s 200-year-old advice this way. “Blake is telling you you’ll be miserable if you don’t do what you’re supposed to do.”

Not that it was easy.  Kristofferson worked as a janitor at Columbia Studios in Nashville for years, writing songs that went unheard, hoping to make connections.  Unsuccessful, he began piloting commercial helicopters to make a living.  That led to his boldest move.

Kristofferson flew one of those helicopters to Johnny Cash’s home near Nashville, landed on his lawn, and personally delivered his idol a demo tape.  Cash listened to the tape and liked it so much he recorded it.  That song was “Sunday Morning Coming Down.”  And the rest, as they say, is history.  The year was 1969.  I was graduating from high school.

Johnny Cash believed Kris Kristofferson fundamentally changed songwriting and with it country music.  Kristofferson argues it was Bob Dylan, whose country album “Nashville Skyline” was recorded there.  He’s quoted as saying “the direction Bob Dylan was pointing made it (songwriting) a respectable thing to do.”  I credit them both.

When this happens, I sit in the shack and listen to the songs of my departed hero.  Unlike Hemingway, Kris Kristofferson was old when he died.  During his career, Kristofferson was generous to those around him.  In 1992, he risked and received criticism while publicly defending Sinead O’Connor.  The troubled artist had protested sexual abuse and its coverup within the Catholic Church by ripping up a photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live.  In 2009 he wrote a song “Sister Sinead” about her.

But Kristofferson’s most memorable good deed happened on a snowy night in Chicago.  He was performing in Chicago with Steve Goodman.  The conversation may have gone like this.

“Kris, I know you want to get out of town, but there’s this mailman you gotta hear.”

“Because?”

“He’s special.”

“Does he write like you?”

“Sort of.  More clever maybe.”

“Tell me a song of yours that compares to his.”

“Oh hell, I don’t know.”

“Come on Steve, give me something.”

“OK.  The Dutchman.”

“Really?  All right.  Let’s hear what he’s got to say.”

Soon they were knocking on the door of the Fifth Peg, a short-lived folk club in Lincoln Park on Armitage.  It was closed.  Prine was having a vodka and ginger ale at the bar when they let in Goodman and Kristofferson. He unpacked his guitar and played his songs to an empty house save for them.  Within months John Prine signed a record deal with the help of Kris Kristofferson.  The year was 1970.

And so it goes.  Steve Goodman left us way too early in 1994 at the age of 36.  Johnny Cash died in 2003 at age 71.  In 2020 the pandemic delivered a cruel blow when COVID took John Prine from us at age 73.  84-year-old Gordon Lightfoot left the stage last year.  And now 88-year-old Kris Kristofferson.  Like old trees in a forest, they come crashing down. 

Bob Dylan is 83.

Hamburger Mary Comes to Ottawa

 I now know how to respond when people ask me this;

“Are you from Ottawa?”

That question is usually asked by longtime Ottawa people, and I know what they mean.  For a while, I didn’t understand, but now I do.  They’re asking if my family, like theirs, lived here when I was born.  Or did I grow up somewhere else?

So, I answer by saying “No, I grew up on a farm in McLean County, between Bloomington and Pekin.  I came to Ottawa in 1973.”

And that’s how you can live somewhere for fifty-one years and still not be from there.  I get it.  And I really don’t mind the question.

But I want to point out that those of us from somewhere else add to our community.  Take my friend Sam for example.

Sam goes to my church, Open Table United Church of Ottawa, downtown on the corner of Columbus and Jackson.  Now that I’m retired, Open Table and the YMCA are where I interact most with other people. You can get isolated during retirement if you’re not careful. I value my association with both organizations very much.

Like me, Sam isn’t from Ottawa.  He grew up in Cleveland, went to university in California, lived for a while in Chicago, and now teaches at the college level.  Sam is married and raising his family in Ottawa.  And like many in our church, he’s a lot younger than me. 

Open Table UCC is an Open and Affirming church, meaning that we opted as a congregation to be intentionally welcoming to members of the LGBTQ community.  “Intentionally welcoming” is church code meaning we do more than put words on the website and go about business as usual on Sunday.  We live that welcome seven days a week all year long.  Not only talking the talk but walking the walk.  We’ve found offering a genuine and meaningful welcome helps us reach younger people who as a group are more comfortable with our stance. 

Open Table sponsors and provides space for another organization, Youth Outlook, to operate a weekly support group for LGBTQ young people.  The Ottawa Chapter of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) also meets at Open Table on the third Sunday of every month.  And of course, there is worship, with open communion, at 10:00 a.m. every Sunday.    We’re a diverse and active congregation, young and old, gay and straight, attended by people of all types and persuasions.  I feel good being part of it. 

One of our most successful programs is Second Sunday Lunch.  We followed the lead of our neighbors, the Episcopalians who began providing a free lunch to the community years ago.  After us, other churches signed on: First Presbyterian, First United Methodist, Christ Community Church, and Trinity Lutheran.  Now, each Sunday of the year anyone in the community who needs or wants food, fellowship, or both can enjoy a community meal in Ottawa.  Your local churches do more than you realize.

Back to Sam.  He has a lot of talents.  In a past life, he was a line cook at Hamburger Mary’s in Chicago.  There are eleven Hamburger Mary’s restaurants in cities across the country.  As a company, they support LGBTQ organizations and causes in the communities where they operate. 

As you know, there is a Pride Festival in Ottawa this weekend. It begins with a Night of Remembrance for victims of violence against the LGBTQ community on Friday the 7^th in Washington Park at 7:00 p.m..  It is sponsored by Open Table Church.  Saturday opens with a parade, followed by a day full of events in both Washington Park and the Jordan Block.  Look for Open Table’s booth there.  Ottawa’s Pride celebration includes a performance by the Ottawa Community Gay Pride choir, led by Open Table’s choir director Donna Martin.  Ottawa Pride activities end officially on Saturday. 

However, on Sunday, in honor of both Pride weekend and Hamburger Mary’s, Sam and his family are cooking Mary’s famous burger with their distinctive fixin’s, hand-cut steak fries, side salads, and like every Second Sunday Lunch meal, great desserts made by members of our congregation.

 

 Hamburger Mary’s is famous for distinctive “mocktails”, or non-alcoholic drinks.  So, added to the food menu on Sunday are Virgin Marys, Wonky Donkeys (a local takeoff on an NA Moscow Mule), and Orange Creamsicles – all with fabulous toppings.  A Wonky Donkey is made of ginger beer and lime.  I have a sneaking suspicion one of Sam’s kids may have gotten in on naming that drink. 

Sam is preparing lunch for a large crowd.  So, if you would like to cap off Ottawa’s Pride Event with a hamburger only Mary (and Sam) can make, or just have a mocktail, please join us.  We serve from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. June 9th.  You’ll meet a nice group of people.  As always, everyone is welcome.  Really.

Gone Fishing

 The shack is a pretty good getaway, especially when the trees in the ravine leaf out, but I find I need even more separation at times from the world outside.  I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with the news.  I think it’s a duty to stay informed of and involved in world and national events. But sometimes when I do, I get emotional.

The emotions range from anger to despair, and even panic.  When I saw police and students facing off on college campuses across our country, I was immediately taken back to May of 1970 and the shooting and killing of four students at Kent State University by Ohio’s National Guard. 

I was then an 18-year-old freshman at Illinois State University protesting U.S. foreign policy in Vietnam.  Nixon blamed “outside agitators” for the protests then too, but when we looked around at those gathered, and speaking out, we knew it was us.  We went to class with each other.  

The conflict that our government funded and supported in 1970 was in Asia rather than the Mideast, but the death and destruction, and collateral damage, were the same.  Call it a flashback if you will, but I never thought I’d witness such generational polarization again at age 72.

When I encounter those emotions now, I look for ways out.  Often, I escape by recalling images and recollections from better places and better times.

I always anticipate May 8^th but more so this year.  That date didn’t mean much for most of my life but when I retired it became significant.  It’s when the ice goes out (give or take, as good as any) on the lakes I now fish in Northern Ontario.  I’ve never seen the ice go out.  I only go there in summer. 

Winter is long and days are short up there.  On December 21, the winter solstice, there are only 4 hours and 8 minutes of daylight in the town of Red Lake Ontario, population 4,407 at the end of Canada Highway 105.  It is the town we fly out of to reach remote fishing lakes in the area. 

I monitor the temperature in Red Lake on my phone.  It’s balmy in August when we visit, but damn cold for most of the year.  Red Lake’s average daily low temperatures in December, January, and February are consistently below zero degrees Fahrenheit.  Spring comes late, and fall arrives early.

I’ve traveled with a good group of friends to several fly-in lakes near the town of Red Lake; Roderick, Marvin, Job, and Keeper.  We thought we had found a forever fishing home on Job Lake, but the cabin and the management of the operation on that lake deteriorated to the point where decided we had to move on.  It certainly wasn’t the fishing.  But then the fishing is good everywhere.  Any problems we encounter are manmade.

Float planes require a long and straight stretch of open water to land and take off.  The luckiest walleye and northern pike live on lakes not suited for floatplanes and without access by road.  Their lives are uncluttered by discarded fishing line, lost lures, beer cans, and rods and reels dropped intact to the bottom of the lake that is their home.  The many small inaccessible lakes are also free from the noise and exhaust of gas-powered outboard motors and the roar of small planes with their pontoons skidding across the surface of the water.  The fish in those lakes live without any direct interference from humans. 

The self-contained world of a remote lake too small for planes with no road access is true wilderness.  Threats to fish there are limited to natural predators-larger fish, bald eagles, loons, otters, and bears.  I picture those lakes as pristine, with no human-built structures of any kind-cabins, boat houses, docks, walkways, signs on trees, a floating plastic jug marking a submerged rock.  Nothing but trees, stones, plants, along with animals and their homes like beaver dams and eagles' nests. 

There is however a small in-between category of lakes up north known as portage lakes adjacent to lakes that support fishing camps for people.  The only way to access those lakes is by walking overland,  Rarely if ever is it an easy walk.  Hills, swamps, mud, boulders, mosquitoes, fallen logs, and losing the path are common.  Each portage is its own adventure.

Making a portage to an otherwise inaccessible lake does not guarantee better fishing than the one you came from, but it is often the case.  One golden year while fishing on Job Lake four of us made the portage to Century Lake, a legendary walleye lake that is catch and release only.  It was an all-day journey. 

We went by boat from Job Lake into the Musclow River, traveling slowly hoping to catch sight of a moose.  The river took us to the south end of Robert Lake.  At the north end, we encountered a long narrow waterfall flowing through steep rocky banks.  We tied our boats to shore and carried all our gear a hundred yards around the waterfall.  On the narrowest part of the passage, an elevated wooden walkway had been built.  We saw no other way to pass.

When the drop in elevation and the waterfall ended, we found two more boats tied to trees on shore.  We loaded our gear into them and entered Moose Lake.  Soon we found the headway of the portage trail to Century Lake. 

There we once again tied up and left the boats, packing up for what we’d been told was an hour’s trek.  Carrying our fishing gear, a cooler, lunch for four, and two full gas cans, we struck out by climbing over a large boulder.  From the other side, the path descended into thick woods.  Calling it a path may have been an overstatement. 

There is more rock than soil in the boreal forest of Northern Ontario.  A ribbon of worn dirt such as we know a path in Illinois is rarely seen.  Between the rocks were lichens, moss, and pine needles all making a spongy carpet.  Trailblazers who made the trip before us had tied bright plastic tape and cloth on brush and branches marking the way.

Jack pines, white and black spruce, and an occasional birch or balsam blocked the sky while seedlings and saplings crowded beneath them.  Soon the trail took us to a low bog of standing water and muck.  Trees had been felled with chain saws and their trunks laid end to end in the soft muck to walk on.  Falling was a real possibility. Dead saplings in the bog broken off by high winds left sharp stumps pointing skyward on both sides of the improvised walkway.

Falling on one of those pointed stumps could result in serious injury.  When I began to lose balance on the logs, I simply stepped in the muck to make sure I stayed upright.  When I did, I was in muck up to my calves.  I nearly had a shoe sucked off my foot in one of the deeper mires.  When I finally got out, I stopped and tied my shoes as tightly as possible.  I could not imagine getting back to the cabin without shoes. 

The bog ended and we found better footing.  We went up a rise, descended again, turned a corner, and there was a surreal sight.  Over another watery bog that looked even worse was a wooden sidewalk of new lumber, three feet wide, thirty-five feet long, and flat as a pancake.  It was built on stringers set on concrete pads.  How they got the material back there to build it was anyone’s guess.  But thank God they did. 

Soon after that the path angled down, we saw a clear blue sky in front of us, and we were at the shore of Century Lake.  Two old boats lay upside down by the water.  Under each was an ancient but operable outboard motor.  We made it. 

Century Lake was small but deep with a rock island rising from its center.  The weather that day was sunny and clear.  Soon my partner Gary Robinson and I had our lines in the water and between us caught and let go 90 fish in less than two hours.  Beautiful walleyes with golden bellies, all about the same size-16-18 inches.  We caught them all over the lake.  It was the best fishing I have ever experienced.

The trip back to camp was just as long but easier because we knew what to expect.  We got back to the cabin at sunset, and our friends had dinner on the table.  We slept well that night.  You don’t forget those days.

We went back to Job Lake many years after that but there was always a barrier of some kind reported by the outfitter which prevented us from making the portage to Century Lake:  low water levels in Robert, the wooden walkway around the falls washed out, motors stolen from the boats on Century but not replaced.  And then came the pandemic. 

Given the general decline of accommodations on Job Lake, I can’t imagine the portage trail to Century Lake has been maintained.  But still, when I think of the ice going off the lakes in the Red Lake region of Ontario I think of the beauty and simplicity of Century Lake. 

Sunlight, rather than reflecting off the ice, will warm the water directly.  The days lengthen quickly up there.  As the water temperature rises the walleye will become more active, ravenous after a long sluggish winter.  Insects will hatch out and fall into the lake.  Fish will spawn and their minnows will become food for the bigger fish.  If you and I could manage to make the trip to Century Lake next week we would catch more fish faster than we’ve ever caught in our lives. 

But in a way, I hope we can’t get there.  The North American walleye is believed to have become its own species, evolving as most did from the sturgeon, 15.4 million years ago.  Want to see that numerically?  15,400,000 years.  Homo Sapiens, the species that includes you and I, evolved from Neanderthals (maybe) a mere 180 thousand years ago. 180,000 years.  Century Lake and its walleye need us humans for nothing. 

My hope is that the ecosystem of Northern Ontario and its inhabitants survive human beings and the climate change we’ve caused to evolve and thrive far into the future.  They did fine without us for a very long time.  It brings me peace to imagine the sun shining on the open water of Century Lake.  When nations and governments explode into chaos and destruction that’s the place I go in my mind.  And when the pain of our political reality closes in on me that trip to Century Lake is the day I recall.

 

Hey, how about the clock?

 I was asked to speak to a local service club by a friend. 

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“Well, since all we’re giving you is breakfast and a complimentary ink pen, I suppose you could talk about anything you want.  But what I’d really like you to tell us is where you get ideas for your stories.”

I thought it over for about five seconds.  I know who’s in that club and like them all.

“OK, I’ll come talk to your club.  You still meeting terribly early at that church?”

“Yeah.  Be there at 7:00 if you want breakfast.  We try to get the speaker on by 7:30.”

“OK.  I’ll see what I can work up about my stories.”

My friend’s question is a cousin to another that comes up at times from people who hear about my blog.

“What’s your blog about?”

“Anything I want.”

They look puzzled.  Most blogs are written around a topic of some kind.  I’m expected to say that my blog is about the outdoors, cooking, music, travel, politics – some subject they might care about.

Instead, I write in the first person about things that happen in my life.  The only constant is that I write my blog in a shack in my backyard.  Thus, the blog’s name, Dave in the Shack.  But that offers readers no clue as to where ideas for my stories come from.  I would need to talk about something else.

These local clubs have changed considerably.  Breakfast is the same as forty years ago, but nearly half the members that morning were women.  They didn’t sing together from a club songbook and they skipped the prayer (said it was the club president’s prerogative).  Still said the pledge though, facing a tiny American flag. Here’s what I told the club members after a very early breakfast (ham, scrambled eggs, and tater tots).

 

“At the end of my career as the director of a not-for-profit agency, I developed some health problems that got me thinking about early retirement.  At that time, I was writing a weekly blog about the agency and its work that had a widespread and varied audience.  It was my favorite task as director.  That’s not true.  It was all I wanted to do. 

Before leaving the job, I took a weekly writing course at UIC Chicago called Creative Nonfiction. There I met a talented professor and writer, Brooke Bergan, and students like me who loved to write.  Sometimes you get lucky.  I found out creative nonfiction was what I’d been writing since I was a kid.

What is creative nonfiction?  It’s writing that uses creative ways to retell a true story.  Creative nonfiction writers don't just share accounts of life’s events, they use craft and technique to bring readers into their personal lives.  When it works readers hear the writer’s voice, imagine the settings they describe, and feel what the writer experiences.  Aside from opinion essays, my blog posts are rooted in things that really happen.  But I don’t limit myself only to what happens. 

For example, I write a lot of dialogue.  We can’t remember everything we say to others word for word or what others say to us.  So, I make the dialogue more interesting by writing what I think I had said, might have said, or wished I had said.  I also put words into the mouths of the real people in my stories.

We don’t talk like we write.  And we don’t always say interesting things in conversation that later read well.  So, I jazz it up to make the dialogue reveal more.

To explain where I get ideas for my stories, here’s a new story I got from a memory, sometimes shared orally with family but never written, until a few days ago.  It’s a farm story based on something that really happened within my family. 

I grew up on a small dairy farm between Bloomington and Pekin.  All around us were families living on small farms.  The men who worked those farms worked alone, or with family, except for jobs like shelling corn and baling hay when they traded labor with neighbors.  It was a pretty solitary life and perhaps because of that those farmers were often quiet guys.  Unlike their wives.  But that’s another story.

Farm families around Danvers in the 50’s and 60’s were conservative and church-going.  Where I lived they were mainly protestant.  Few of them drank alcohol, and if they did, they kept it to themselves.  Or in the barn.  There were farmwives in Danvers who bragged about never having beer in their refrigerators or whiskey in their cupboards.  Our neighbors hardly even swore.  I think of that life as the definition of clean living.  Hypocritical at times, polite to a fault, but clean all the same.

This story involves me playing basketball for Danvers High School, a small school attended by just over 100 kids.  We were playing at Armington, which had even less students than us.  At those little schools, if you had even one kid with a decent jump shot you had a chance to win.  I was not that kid.  My role was getting rebounds and giving the ball to my teammates who could score. 

Mom and Dad saw all my home games and some out of town when they weren’t so far away that they couldn’t milk the cows and still get to the game on time.  Armington was close, just past Waynesville, and my parents were there. 

Mom and Dad sat in the bleachers a few rows behind the scorer’s table.  There weren’t many rows of bleachers to begin with.  Those towns had tiny loud gyms and Armington’s was packed.

Each team had its own scorer.  With them at the table was the timekeeper who ran the game clock.  Timekeepers were usually hometown volunteers or a hometeam schoolteacher.  The score was close, time was running out in the fourth quarter, and Armington was just a few points behind.

Armington’s coach took a time out and when the referee put the ball back into play, the timekeeper forgot to start the game clock.  Or he did it on purpose to give Armington more time to score.  My Dad yelled at the timekeeper. 

“Hey, how about starting the clock?”

The timekeeper did start the clock, but then turned around and said this to my Dad.  

“Hey, how about kissing my ass?”

Dad didn’t respond.  I’m sure he was shocked anyone would say that, in public or otherwise, especially to a stranger.  And Dad was not good with witty comebacks.  He was deliberate and thoughtful.  I always figured that came with the job.  All those hours alone in the field on a tractor, back and forth, going over things in your mind, thinking everything through. 

I was in the game when all this happened and didn’t hear it. Mom and Dad told me all about it when I got home.  In small towns incidents like that became stories later told and retold in the barber shop and the beauty parlor.  Dad was either embarrassed, amused, or ashamed by the whole thing.  I couldn’t tell.  He didn’t let on.  But, a couple nights later, I heard him talking to himself. 

We had a big two-story farmhouse with an upstairs bathroom.  Mom and Dad slept downstairs, and the kids’ rooms were all on the second floor.  My room was right across from the bathroom with the head of my bed parallel to an open doorway. 

I was the baby of a blended family of seven kids.  By the time I was in fourth grade, all my siblings were out of the house.  It was just me up there. 

When Dad came upstairs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, he was either smoking an unfiltered Camel cigarette as he climbed the steps or lit one while he sat on the toilet.  Sometimes the smell of the smoke woke me up.  Sometimes I heard his Zippo lighter click open, followed by the sound of the thumb wheel scraping the flint, and ending with a snap when the shiny case shut.    

I didn’t let him know I was awake.  He never turned on the light or shut the door.  If there was any moonlight at all and I opened one eye I could see the outline of his head above the vanity, sitting there on the stool, the sky behind him in the bathroom window.  If not, I saw only the tip of his cigarette glowing orange in the dark.  Either way, he thought he was alone.

That night I smelled cigarette smoke, then heard his voice.  He spoke softly, half whispering. 

“Hey, how about starting the clock?”

He was replaying the words he said to the timekeeper in Armington.  He didn’t repeat the timekeeper’s response, but this time, unlike that night at the game, he had a comeback to that startling request he couldn’t forget.

“Hey, how about doing your job and keeping your mouth shut?”

He paused. I saw the end of his Camel glow as he took a draw and then heard him exhale.  He thought of another response and tried it out in the dark. 

“Hey, how about you kiss MY ass buddy?”

My Dad would never say either of those things to a stranger in real life.  I wished he could have, but he was not that kind of man.  Alone though, in the middle of the night, he boldly imagined it. 

If he had been a writer of creative nonfiction he could have, if he wanted, gone beyond the actual dialogue to make it a whole exchange between him and the timekeeper.  It was a real event, it happened, and he remembered it vividly.  That night in the Armington bleachers there were things Dad might have said, things he wished he’d said, and things he could have written later that would have made his story more compelling.

But he didn’t.  And that is not going to happen now, because Dad was born in 1909 and would be 115 in December.  He lives on now only in his family’s memories and some of my stories.

So, the answer to where I get my stories is that I get them from real life and jazz them up, like I did this one.  My hope and my reward are that my readers enjoy them.  Thanks to my friend for asking.”  

Come Back Barbara Lewis

Do words, sounds and images enter your brain mysteriously and stay there?  Do you wonder where they come from?  And are you amazed at how long they stay?  I do.  It borders on creepy.   Here’s what happened Friday morning.

I was home minding my own business, doing the Chicago Tribune crossword puzzle at the kitchen counter and drinking coffee.  My smart speaker was off, my wife was sleeping, and it was a dead quiet morning when the notes of a John Prine tune popped into my head.  I had neither heard the song recently, read about it or John Prine, nor run across the lyrics or the theme they represent.

I had read the whole Tribune, cut out some articles, talked to my son on the phone, made myself breakfast, and settled into the crossword puzzle.  Nothing about that song was any part of my morning. 

And then out of nowhere I started whistling the tune, both verse and chorus.   It was Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis, Hare Krishna, Beauregard.   As I whistled, I could hear John Prine’s voice inside my head, and the lyrics line by line, word for word.  Not only that, I pictured the album cover the song was on, Common Sense.  I have it in the shack.

I tried to keep my mind on the puzzle.  It was an annoyingly difficult crossword. The puzzles get increasingly harder each day.  Monday’s is the easiest and Saturday’s can take most of the day if you let it.  As I pondered clues like “with diffidence” (answer: shyly) and “divination” (augury) John Prine’s 1975 song pushed the April 5, 2024 puzzle right out of my head.

A song, mind you, that played only in my head in a kitchen perfectly quiet except for my whistling.  The reasons for it invading my thoughts are unknown.  The song starts with Prine painting a portrait of a troubled woman, Barbara Lewis, in the first verse.  I could see her clearly.  Strung out perhaps.  Or mentally ill. Maybe both. 

The last time that I saw her
She was standing in the rain
With her overcoat under her arm
Leaning on a horsehead cane

She said, "Carl, take all the money"
She called everybody Carl
My spirit's broke, my mind's a joke
And getting up's real hard

 

I was traveling in Europe, then North Africa, and Europe again in 1975.  I probably encountered more new and different people that year, some call them strangers, than any other year of my life.  The 60’s weren’t far behind us.  Characters like Barbara Lewis, both men and women, crossed my path often.

 I call these persons characters as if they are on a stage or depicted in a novel.  Trouble is, they are real people living their lives, however difficult or jumbled that life might be.  When face to face with those living on the edge I was fascinated, a little fearful, and at the time worried for them.  They may not have wanted my concern, but it was there all the same.  Prine was concerned too.  The chorus he wrote tells us that. 

 

Don't you know her when you see her?
She grew up in your backyard
Come back to us
Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard

 

The confused and disheveled woman you see now?  With the horsehead cane that calls everyone Carl?  She was a girl you knew when you were a kid.  Maybe your friend.  Prine wanted that girl back, as she used to be.  Maybe you know a girl like that too.

 I had reserved a lap lane at the Ottawa YMCA for early afternoon.  While swimming a nonstop half mile the lyrics and music surrounding Barbara Lewis kept going through my head.  Lap swimmers can be antisocial.  In fairness, swimmers can’t talk when inhaling through their mouth and exhaling underwater through their nose.  It is a great time to think, though.  John Prine and Barbara Lewis soaked up my entire forty-minute swim and five-minute cool down. 

Remember the 1977 Spielberg movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind?  Richard Dreyfus plays electrician Roy Neary, an ordinary guy investigating unusual power outages at night for the power company near his home near Muncie, Indiana.  While pulled over on a blacktop road checking power lines three brightly lit aircraft fly over his pickup truck.  He becomes convinced the pilots are extra-terrestrials in UFO’s.  After that, Roy Neary appears very distracted to those who know him best.

 That wouldn’t have been so bad, but as strange things begin to happen in both Muncie and other communities on the national news, he develops an obsession with a particular shape.  One night at dinner with his family he used his fork to fashion his mashed potatoes and what was left in the bowl into a small model of a mountain.  Attempts to ask him what he was doing went unanswered.  His family was concerned.

 The next day he hauled a huge pile of dirt into the family room and constructed a giant model of the same mountain with even more detail.  By then he was ignoring his family, talking to himself, and acting truly crazy. His wife gathered the kids and fled their home. 

 Before you know it, Roy Neary is speeding northwest nonstop on the interstate.  He ends up outside Hulett, Wyoming where he skids his truck to a sudden stop. 

 Looming before him is Devils Tower National Monument where a majestic lava butte rises out of the western plain.  It’s famous. You’ve seen it.  Devil’s Tower matches the shape he first created with his mashed potatoes.  It was as if that mountain drew him to Wyoming against his will.  Roy Neary was totally controlled by a force outside himself that wouldn’t let him think of anything else.  You probably know what happened next and may even be hearing the five notes of the movie’s title song in your head right now.

 I continued thinking about John Prine and his song about Barbara Lewis as the day went on, but I wasn’t nearly as absorbed as Roy Neury was by Devil’s Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  I’m OK.  Don’t worry about me.  Retired people can do these things.

 After my swim at the Ottawa Y, I stopped at the Northside Kroger to pick up a few things off the shopping list.  As I was hunting for Thomas’ English Muffins a young woman stocking shelves atop a step stool spoke to me.

 “So, it was you doing the whistling!  What is that song?”

 I was embarrassed.  Sometimes I don’t realize I’m whistling.  And sometimes I’m loud.

 “It’s an old John Prine song, probably before your time.”

 “Try me.  What’s the name of it?”

 “Come Back to us, Barbara Lewis, Hare Krishna, Beauregard.”

 “Oh…yeah, I don’t know that one.”

 I spotted my English muffins and headed quietly to the next aisle.

 “Don’t stop whistling because of me,” she said.

 I did.  The lyrics that matched the tune going through my head, silently after being called out by the Kroger girl stocking shelves, were these two verses:

 

Selling Bibles at the airports
Buying Quaaludes on the phone
Hey, you talk about a paper route
She's a shut-in without a home

God save her, please, she's nailed her knees
To some drugstore parking lot
Hey, Mr. Brown, turn the volume down
I believe this evening's shot

 

Prine goes from describing Barbara’s appearance and demeanor to pointing out her behavior.  I never sold books in airports, nor bought Quaaludes, but I encountered people who did.  They were my age and younger, on the tail end of the hippie movement, possibly exploited, and appeared to be lost.  I could have been wrong, and they may not have welcomed my pity, but I felt sad when I saw people in those situations.  I wanted to help them find better ways to live their lives, but I didn’t know how. 

 I worked temp jobs through a government funded agency called Manpower in Bloomington-Normal during my senior year at ISU.  The day labor jobs they offered came mostly from moving company drivers needing last-minute help unloading the belongings of newly transferred families from a semi into their new homes.  I had to cut class to take those jobs and didn’t do it often.

 But when I did, I was often paired to work with alcoholics from the Home Sweet Home Mission.  Those able to work loved Manpower because it was close to the mission, and they always paid out at the end of each day.  I had a car.  When the job was over and I was leaving the Manpower office with my day’s wages, those guys I worked with would almost always ask me for a ride to the nearest liquor store.  I can see their faces still.

 It was that same earn and immediately spend economy that Prine described as selling Bibles for Quaaludes; bust your ass moving furniture into a newly built tri-level in the morning, buy a fifth of Old Thompson and a couple bottles of Thunderbird wine for the afternoon while living in a homeless shelter. 

 As for Barbara’s doings on her knees in that parking lot, I always shared John’s plea for a higher power, or anyone else, to rescue sex workers from their fate.  “God save her please” or him, or them.  Please.

 And in this verse, John Prine delivers one of his famous hooks, that line in each song that stands out to the listener because it rings so very true.  It’s italicized below.

 

Can’t you picture her next Thursday?  Can you picture her at all?

At the Hotel Boulderado, at the dark end of the hall

I gotta shake myself and wonder, why she even bothers me
For if heartaches were commercials, we'd all be on TV

The Hotel Boulderado, built in 1909, is still in business, no doubt updated since 1973.  Today on their website you can get a room with a king bed for somewhere around $350.  I hope they put some lighting in the dark end of that hall where John Prine caught a glimpse of Barbara Lewis.

 Prine claims not to know why Barbara Lewis bothers him, acknowledging his own troubles, but we all know why.  John Prine was able to feel and explain the pain of others in his songs.  That’s what made him great. 

 He applied that ability to so many songs and characters: Sam Stone, Donald and Lydia, the old couple in Hello in There, himself the jilted boyfriend in Far From Me, the beautiful and tragic song at the end of his career Summer’s End.  He made a career out of describing the compassion he felt for real life pain. His lyrics helped us see and feel that pain and be compassionate too.

 Unless you saw John Prine live and heard him introduce his songs, you didn’t get to know where they came from or how they came about.  We have the benefit of reading his thoughts about the song Come Back to Us, Barbara Lewis…in the liner notes of John Prine Live, released in 1988.  He explained that he began working on the song in the summer of ’73 during a tour of Colorado ski towns with Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.  “What I had in mind was this girl who left home, did drugs, did religion, did husbands, and ended up doing diddley.”

 John Prine was taken from us by Covid in April of 2020 during the pandemic.  We lost something when he died that I don’t think has been replaced, an American minstrel poet who sows understanding and concern for others in ways that we cannot help but acknowledge.  We need artists like him that help us find acceptance and understanding of one another.  If you hear of one, let me know.