I Have a New Gig

 If you read Dave in the Shack by getting this email, you’ve not heard from me since September.  Here’s what is going on.  I have a new gig.  I’ve been writing for the local paper in a program called the Write Team.  My article appears every two weeks and is read by people in the Illinois Valley in their local Shaw Media publications; The News Tribune in LaSalle-Peru and the Times of Ottawa and Streator.  It has brought me new readers, and I post pictures of their articles on my FaceBook page (to get around Shaw Media’s paywall) but I’ve neglected to post them in Dave in the Shack and distribute them through my email list.

You may already have read these articles.  But I slowly realized my error for email-only folks.  I’m trying to correct that today. 

One note about these articles is that I am limited by the newspaper to 550 words (or so) per piece.  That’s been a real challenge.  My blog posts may average nearly 2,000 words, and for years I have written whatever has popped into my mind.  The paper’s requirements have forced me to choose my words much more carefully. Oh, and no pictures.

My journalism friends say that less is more, but I’m not sure I agree.  However, it may be good for me.  I think about us as readers and what is trending these days.  Do we read just as much but in smaller bites?  My kids urge me to shorten my blog pieces.  My daughter would like to listen to my stuff on a podcast while she works.  I’m game to try new formats.  But a podcast?  I have to think about that.

Today I’ve picked some of the short pieces from the newspaper.  See what you think.  If you want to comment, just reply to this email and it comes straight to my inbox.  Try these. 

 

Working the Mid-Term Election  (sneak preview.  Scheduled to be published November 22.)

I arrived at the polls at 5:30 a.m. with snacks, a thermos of coffee, the Tribune, and my kindle reader which I never found time to read.   

The polls open at 6:00.  We were set up the day before, a row of tables for each precinct, polling booths against the wall, tabulator stand in place-but there was more to do.  That morning we hooked up the closed-circuit Wi-Fi, installed and plugged in the tabulator (simply an optical scanner over a locked steel box), connected the tablet computer to the label printer and we were ready to go.  We ran the zero tapes from the tabulator and signed them, signed various other forms, took the oath, and before we knew it the polls were open. 

We had five people waiting to vote before 6:00.  It stayed like that most of the day.  Unusual for a mid-term.  Usually, it takes the draw of a presidential race, like 2020, to bring out the number of voters we saw in 2022.  It was hard to eat lunch, tenderloins cooked and delivered from Ottawa’s American Legion, because of the crush of voters.

We had four election judges at our precinct, as did the other precinct that shared our voting site.  I was glad to see that.  It was slim during the pandemic.  Judges are balanced as to party affiliation, and no judge has more power than another in making decisions. Keeping order, confirming the identity of people requesting ballots, determining they are registered to vote in the precinct, and matching the number of ballots with the number of persons voting at the end of the day are the duties of election judges.

We had few if any problems during a very busy election.  When questions arose, we agreed on the answers as a group.  People who had to cast provisional ballots, produce previously mailed ballots to be spoiled before voting in the booth, or who registered on-site before voting all accepted our decisions calmly.  Our training prepared us to make those calls.  We have good written manuals for reference, and the county clerk’s office is available to help if needed.  Improved technology, especially tablet computers, has helped us very much. 

I became an election judge after I retired in 2013 and have worked at every election since.  I marvel at accusations of voting fraud in America. From my experience, the system works because it is so localized.  I work in the precinct in which I live.  I know many of the voters and am familiar with their addresses because they are my neighbors.  I know my fellow election judges as well.  The checks and balances are baked in.

I don’t doubt for a second the accuracy and validity of the vote totals for my precinct.  I was there from start to finish.  I held the ballots in my hands and counted them with my fellow judges after the polls closed.  The number of ballots scanned by the tabulator and the number of ballots we counted as a group matched. I signed the tapes detailing votes per candidate because I knew they were accurate.

Voter participation was the clear winner in this mid-term election.  It’s the most encouraging trend yet.  We truly have free and fair elections.  Be glad.  Accept the outcomes.  They’re real. 

 

How Do You Like Your Eggs?

I cook breakfast with Steve Malinsky and Nelson Nussbaum at the Ottawa PADS shelter once a month.  It’s not your normal operation.  At restaurants like the Hi-Way and the New Chalet, short-order cooks come and go, but the patrons return to their favorite table for years.  Decades if they’re old-timers in town.  But at PADS the cooks stay the same, at least for our breakfast, while the clientele constantly changes. 

The three of us volunteered at PADS before it had a kitchen.  When it started in the ’90s there were actual pads-portable mattresses that moved from location to location each night of the week. You had to be an organized homeless person to keep track of where to sleep each night.  PADS has come a long way.

Our church, Open Table, provides a monthly dinner Sunday evening and breakfast Monday morning.  The dinner volunteers tell us how many are at the shelter and what food is available.  They look for eggs and orange juice, cheese, sliced bread, potatoes and onions, and breakfast meat.  The breakfast crew arrives at about 6:00 a.m. with whatever is missing. 

Sometimes we get help.  Gary Reardon asked last month if he could supply us with eggs.

“How does 48 sound?”

“60 would be better,” I said.

Monday morning there were two flats of 30 eggs in the fridge with my name on them.

I brought a gallon of orange juice and a loaf of bread.  Steve brought onions and Nelson brought sausage. He’s partial to breakfast links, maple-flavored. They’re a hit, and easy to cook.  The shelter had potatoes.

We serve two eggs to order with toast, fried potatoes and onions, and sausage.  Not everyone eats eggs or breakfast for that matter.  We always put out cold cereal and milk, donuts if they’re around, but eggs to order are not usually on the menu.

It surprises the residents when Steve asks, “How do you like your eggs?”

“What?  However you got them” is a common response.

“No.  We make them the way you want.”

Sometimes they’re puzzled.

“Scrambled I guess.” 

“You sure?  We can make eggs sunny side up, over easy, over hard, poached, cheese omelet.”

If you’re going to scramble eggs you can just as easily let them set up and fold them over some cheese.

Some don’t understand the terms for egg choices.  Scrambled has become the default egg order of America.  “Not runny” is trending. 

We serve them quickly.  Eggs from the stove, sausage from one crock pot, potatoes from another, and toast served hot and buttered.

Last time I found some strawberries in the fridge, stemmed and halved them, and put them in a bowl.

“Let’s give them some fruit,” I said.  “It’ll look good on the plate.”

A woman who ordered sunny side up and one scrambled for her baby came back with the toddler in her arms.  The baby’s face, next to hers, was smeared with red and smiling. 

“Thanks so much for breakfast.  Can I have more strawberries? They were a first for my daughter.  She loved them.”

After the rush, as we cleaned up, I messaged Gary.

“28 breakfasts, 55 eggs.  Thanks.”

PADS residents really appreciate a hot breakfast while temporarily sheltered.  But what they need, desperately, are homes. 

 

Thanking Milt Snow

Recently I was able to thank a former English teacher for helping me develop as a person.  That’s not always possible.  Take Milt Snow for example.  While swimming laps I see his name on a plaque when I take a break at the North end of the pool.

Milt was a major donor to Ottawa YMCA’s swimming pool, built in 1956 along with the rest of the current YMCA building.  If Milt was mature and successful, as most major donors to community projects are, and was say 50 years old at the time, he would be 116 this year.  Not likely alive.  I could only imagine expressing my personal thanks to Milt Snow.  So, I did.

Conversations like these are best done at a cozy diner.  There we are, Milt and I, at the Hi Way restaurant.

“You must be Milt Snow,” I say to the gentleman sitting alone in a booth.  I slide in across from him, introduce myself, and shake his hand.  “I could have sworn I was on time.”

“You are.  I came early.  What can I do for you, Mr. McClure?”

“Call me Dave.  I want to thank you for giving money to the YMCA to build their swimming pool.  It’s done a lot of good and brought a lot of joy to people in the Ottawa area.”

“Oh, for gosh sake.  No need to thank me.  I wasn’t the only one you know.”

“I don’t imagine so, but you’re the only one with their name on the wall.”

“Oh, that plaque.  I was going to donate anonymously, but my family thought I should get some credit.  They supported my idea, so I agreed to let them make my name public.” 

“I’m on the Y board now.  We’re breaking ground for a new YMCA building this week.  There will be a whole bunch of new donors to thank, but we don’t want to forget about the old ones.”

“Do you swim Dave?”

“Gosh yes.  I had a skiing accident when I was young that prevents me from running or walking for exercise.  Swimming laps gives me a good workout and doesn’t stress my joints.  I’ve been swimming laps in that pool since 1978.”

“Never thought of that.”

“How did your gift come about Mr. Snow?”

“A Y board member asked if I would help.  I had the money, and I knew it would do some good. Heck, when I was a kid, we swam in the river.  Every so often someone would drown.  Besides the Pirate Puddle at OHS, Ottawa didn’t have a public indoor pool.  I’ve always been glad I did it.”

“So am I Milt.  Besides swimming laps, I’d give my wife a break and take my kids to family swim one night a week then stop for dessert at Oogies.  Those were great times.  These days the Y gives free swim lessons to grade school kids in the area.  The Ottawa Dolphin Swim Team has developed hundreds of kids into great swimmers.  Seniors use it for water exercise classes.  It’s a busy place.  It’s helped so many people in these last 66 years.  Thanks again Milt, on behalf of everybody that’s benefitted.”

“You’re welcome.”

Naming rights for the new twenty-five-yard eight-lane pool scheduled to be built are still available.

 

JUNE LOVES CHEESE

The words are coming fast to my granddaughter June at twenty months of age.  Who knows how it happens?  Hearing the sound of a word over and over, finally connecting a word to a thing in the world, learning to move your mouth to make the sound you hear?  I’m sure there is tons of research.  But I prefer to simply listen to June talk. 

This weekend her parents are away from her for the first time.  Her grandmother and I are trying to fill in as best we can.  I won’t say it’s been easy.  The morning she woke to find her mother and father gone was a tough one, but we all made it through.  I tried to console her with food, usually a go to distraction, with little success at first.  She ignored a recent go to, peanut butter on toast, and wanted little to do with scrambled eggs.  Finally, June took matters into her own hands.

“Cheese?”  she was pointing to the refrigerator.

She said the word perfectly, the consonant blend in the beginning, the drawn out Z sound at the end, a big double E in the middle.

“Cheese?  You want cheese June?”

“Cheese.” She said, not as a question this time but an affirmation.  A polite request.

As I opened the fridge, found a block of Monterey Jack, and took out my pocketknife to give her a slice, I was newly grateful for language and simple communication.  

June reached toward the white slab of food as I offered it and popped it into her mouth.

She smiled broadly.  “Cheese.”

She said it as she chewed, savoring the flavor linked with this new word she mastered.  Another word under her belt.  June knew what cheese was, how it tasted, and more importantly, how to ask for it. 

It was her first smile of the morning.  I was so relieved.

“Yeah. Cheese.”

I smiled back as I had a slice myself.

“Want more?”

June nodded, still smiling.

“Cheese.”

This went on and on.  June and I both ate too much cheese.   She forgot about missing her Mom, at least for a short time, and I was glad to see her happy.  Would I have given her anything she asked for?  Probably.  But she simply asked for cheese.

I coaxed her into adding reheated eggs to her breakfast and the day was off to a good start.  We followed it up with book reading until her grandma came on the scene and relieved me. 

Things change so fast.  Now June is bringing us favorite books, handing them to us, turning around so we can lift her onto our laps, and paying attention from start to finish.  She points out favorite things on the pages, sometimes small details.  A frog.  A butterfly.

June anticipates and says words.  B is for Baby is a favorite book, a simple list of words that start with B.  Her favorite page?  B is for BANANA!  I’m afraid this fix on food runs in the family.

 

Where I’m From

Written in response to a prompt at an Ottawa writers’ group:

I’m from upstairs at our farmhouse where my older brothers knew all the stories and I just listened.

A gun cabinet, made by my brother Denny in high school wood shop, with standing racks inside and doors that fit tight, stood in an old room with nursery-themed wallpaper.  In it were the pump shotguns, a bolt action .410, a .22 rifle, and old guns that no longer fired.  Tucked away in built-in drawers were treasures nearly forgotten. One was a brown glass bottle filled with seawater and sealed with a rubber stopper.

My brother Darwin held the bottle carefully, took out the stopper, and held it under my nose.

“It’s all the way from the Gulf of Mexico brought back by Uncle Eldon who was too sickly to farm.”

The exotic smell of seawater filled my head.  A present no doubt to all of us who had never left Illinois, tethered as we were to Jersey cows who had to be milked twice a day rain or shine.  That included me, who until age twelve had never been farther from home than Springfield.

I’m from that spot on the wood plank fence where two six-penny nails stuck halfway out at the same height.

Dad taught me to pop the nail heads through the rabbit’s skin, between a leg bone and tendon and dress them out.  The nails were spaced apart to fit the hind legs of freshly shot cotton tail rabbits, hanging downwards, splayed apart, their exposed bellies white and fluffy.  After cutting a circle around each leg, and connecting the circles with a cut in between, you could loosen the skin at the edges of the cut until you had enough to grab onto.  When you pulled down with both hands the skin peeled away from the meat making a sheath like a fur-lined mitten.

Our mom cooked the game.  She fried the rabbits slowly in a covered pan with onions and roasted the pheasants and quail in the oven.  She told us the quail were a waste of time, not enough meat to bother with.  We didn’t bring her many.  They flew fast and were small, hard to hit.  More times than not they flew away unharmed.

The pump shotguns were .12 gauge and held just three shells.  A wooden plug, required by Illinois gaming law then, prevented loading more.

“Why just three shells, Dad?” 

“Well, you gotta remember David that hunting is a sport.  We want to give the birds a chance, don’t we?  I mean if we can’t hit a bird in flight with three shots, we don’t deserve to have them.”

We hunted together for pheasants, spread out in a line, flushing them into the air from fence rows and waterways.  Quail prefer shorter cover, like short-growth alfalfa or clover in winter hayfields.  We took most of the rabbits from the timber in a corner of our farm.  I’d go by myself after it snowed, looking for tracks, kicking them out from bushes and woodpiles.

I quit hunting after I left the farm.  I think we all did.  We ate every animal we killed.  And never did we ever imagine shooting a human being.