Blog Posts

Cy-Hawk rivalry? Not in my house

9/6/2018

Charles City Press, 9-6-18

I’m in a mixed marriage.

I’m an Iowa Hawkeye alumnus. My wife is an Iowa State Cyclone alumnus.

Wait, there’s more. I’m in an Iowa Hawkeye family, she’s in an Iowa State Cyclone family. It’s the second marriage for both of us, and both of her kids are Iowa State grads while both of my kids are Iowa grads. My sister and brother-in-law are also Hawkeyes, and many members of my wife’s family are Cyclones.

It goes down the line like that. With a few exceptions, there are bunches of Hawkeyes on my side of the aisle and bunches of Cyclones on hers — and the numbers in both bunches continue to multiply.

And yet, we still somehow get along, usually quite well, mostly because my wife doesn’t care all that much about sports.

It’s not that she hates sports. She watches an occasional game, and sometimes she even enjoys it. But when the game is over and done with, she immediately moves on with her life. She doesn’t get overly excited about a win or a loss.

I’m not like that, I’m sorry to say. I let ball games get to me.

I grew up learning about sports rivalries, that had started on the field or the court and had grown to encompass entire communities, long before I was born. I grew up in Oelwein, you see, and back then, if you grew up in Oelwein, you hated Waverly. They were our biggest Northeast Iowa Conference foe, and they usually beat the heck out of us, so we hated everything associated with them. A lot of this was just fun and healthy rivalry stuff, but deep down, there was a grain of truth. If you could beat Waverly at something, whether it’s football or basketball or band or speech or debate, you’d accomplished something important.

I thought that this was just an Oelwein thing, but since moving to Charles City a year ago, I’ve discovered that it was not exclusive to Oelwein. Charles City hates Waverly, too, I’ve found out. So does New Hampton. So do Waukon and Cresco. Waverly people, bless their hearts, don’t even realize how much they are despised by the rest of the conference, because they’re too focused on hating Decorah.

That kind of competitiveness becomes a part of your identity when you grow up with it.

Back in 1998, I was sure my beloved Minnesota Vikings were going to win the Super Bowl. They were the best team in football, why wouldn’t they? I was young and naive. When they lost the NFC Championship in dramatic, heartbreaking fashion, I curled up into the fetal position on the couch and remained catatonic for five days. Friends encouraged me to seek professional help.

This is an extreme example, and I’d like to believe I’ve matured since then, but I probably haven’t. When my team wins, I’m high as a kite for days. When my team loses, I’m a grumbling, ill-tempered ogre.

When my wife’s team wins, she says, “Wow, that was great. Now help me clean the house?”

When my wife’s team loses, she says, “Aw, that’s too bad. Now help me clean the house?”

It always mystifies me, how anyone can even think about cleaning the house, or anything else, at such an emotional, life-changing moment. After a game, I need at least a couple hours, maybe more, to either celebrate or mourn. I need to replay the events in my mind, and decide which players need to be benched, which coaches need to be fired and which referees need to be imprisoned for life. I need to find some fans of the opposing team, and either taunt them, or take the taunting I so richly deserve for cheering for a losing team.

Sometimes my wife finds this cute and silly, sometimes she finds it childish, and sometimes she finds it profoundly annoying. But the thing is, we get along, usually quite well, because we are so different. If she cared about sports as much as I did, there’s no way we could be in the same house on game day when the Cyclones are playing against the Hawkeyes.

The smack talk for the big Iowa State vs. Iowa football game this weekend has been going on for a few days now, but it hasn’t been mentioned in our house. We’ve managed to find other things to talk about, other reasons to get along. For all I know, my wife doesn’t even know there’s a game this weekend. That’s how we live.

We might, once in a while, get into an argument or heated discussion about something — but it won’t be about a football game. It might be about whether or not I’m going to help clean the house after that game, but it won’t be about the Hawkeyes, or the Cyclones, or a ball game.

She respects my passion for sports, even when she finds it annoying. And I respect that she has no passion for sports, even though I can’t understand it.
And although there’s nothing perfect about it, it works. Even though our college affiliations are big parts of our identities, a Hawkeye and a Cyclone can get along in the same house.

I don’t know if that’s a lesson, or an example, or anything like that. It just seems to me, as I look around, there are a lot of people in the world not getting along, for reasons that don’t make a lot of sense. It seems like, whatever happens out there, there’s pressure to take a side. Whether it’s politics, or race, or religion, or something else, we’re told that we have to be on one team or the other. We can’t be on both, we can’t be on neither. There is no compromise.

And sure, each person has to have some ideals in life that are too important to compromise. But to never compromise on anything? For all the good that does you, you might as well curl up in the fetal position and remain catatonic forever.

I bleed Hawkeye black and gold. I’ll never agree to wear an Iowa State shirt.

But I can love someone who does.

And that’s a start, I think.

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Back to school, with my biker gang

8/23/2018

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Charles City Press, 8-23-18

With school starting this week, please drive carefully and be on the lookout for biker gangs.

They’re bold and stupid, just like you were once.

I know this first hand. I was in a pretty wild biker gang in the 70s.

We didn’t have a cool intimidating biker-gang name, like the “Hell’s Angels”, the “Sons of Silence” or the “Highwaymen.”

We didn’t really have a name at all, and that’s too bad. But give us a break, we were only about eight years old.

If we had a name, maybe it would have been something dumb and non-intimidating like “The Elm Street/Oak Street Connection.”

Yes, we were kids in small town Iowa in the 1970s— a place and time where they would tear down all the trees and name the streets after them.

I lived on Elm Street, on the corner, where Oak Street curled up and into East Line Drive. East Line Drive was a trucker’s bypass, and people drove really fast there, so we couldn’t take our bikes that direction.

That was fine — you had to go uphill to get there anyway. Uphill was a lot of work.

The school, on the other hand, was a few blocks away, and it was mostly downhill. Smooth biking, toward the school.

There were a couple of obstacles. First, the bottom of Elm Street ran into 12th Avenue — which had heavy traffic in the mornings on school days. That could easily be avoided by driving our bikes through the neighborhood yards — much to the displeasure of the nice neighborhood ladies and gentlemen who tended to those yards all summer long and didn’t like a bike path slicing through their well-manicured grass.

We knew this, but we drove our bikes through their yards anyway. They couldn’t stop us. Not only were we a biker gang, but we were way too fast for them. By the time we got to the bottom of Elm Street, we were a multi-wheeled living entity in a jet-powered vacuum surrounded by a whooshing sound.

None of us wore helmets. What were helmets? We’d never heard of them. Some of us took a baseball card, or maybe a playing card, and stuck it into our spokes, so our bikes sounded like they had little engines. Our bikes whirred. And the faster we rode, the higher-pitched the whir.

We were all good kids, as individuals. There was Brian, my best chum in those days -- he and his 97 brothers and sisters lived a couple houses up from me on Oak Street. There was Todd, who lived a couple houses further up. There was Doug, who lived at the top of Oak street on Todd’s side.

There was Tom, who lived across the street from Doug and Todd. There was Mike, who lived just down from me on Elm Street. And there was Jimmy, who actually lived one street over on First Street — and was actually one grade younger than the rest of us. But Jimmy was adaptable and seemed to fit right in with his Oak and Elm Street partners.

That was the main group, but our numbers varied from day to day. Occasionally a brother or sister would join us on a temporary tour — or some others who lived on the fringes of the neighborhood. Everyone was welcome — but not everyone had the heart for it.

After turning right on 12th Avenue, we were just one block away from our biggest obstacle — Highway 3.

There was no avoiding it, unfortunately. It was impossible to get to Wings Park Elementary School without crossing busy and hazardous Highway 3.

Instructions came from all those who cared about our safety and well-being.
When you get to the STOP sign at Highway 3, you stop. You get off your bikes. You wait for a break in the traffic, then you carefully walk your bikes across the highway. Once across, you can get back on your bikes, then ride them the rest of the way to the school.

This was excellent advice, which we all memorized — then ignored.

Stop at the STOP sign? Get off our bikes and walk them?

That may have been the safest way to do things, but it seemed unnecessarily inefficient to us. Besides, there could very easily be some angry, yard-tending neighborhood ladies and gentlemen chasing us for driving through their yards. If we stopped, they might catch us.

Rarely did we stop. Rarely did we get off our bikes and walk them. We knew it was the right thing to do and the safest thing to do — but when you’re in a biker gang with a bunch of 8-year-old buddies, you’re kind of in a whirlwind. You go where the whirlwind takes you.

I’m not advocating this behavior — it was stupid. But when you’re eight years old, mass stupidity is often mistaken for boldness. And we were nothing if not bold.

We did have time to judge the traffic as we approached the highway, and so we would adjust our speed accordingly and find our spot — the break in the traffic big enough for all of us to scoot across the highway, veer over to Elwood Parkway and bolt toward the school, which was now in plain sight.

We were supposed to come around to the front of the school, but usually we sped through some more back yards and onto the school playground in the back.

We’d coast up the sidewalks to the parking racks, pull out our bike locks, secure our bikes and laugh together as we strolled up to the school doors, telling exaggerated stories about our latest ride.

I often kept unofficial time on my Mickey Mouse watch. Most days, Mickey’s pointing fingers told me we’d made the trip to school in under five minutes. I’d share the time with my biker gang friends, and I kept a journal in my notebook at my desk, documenting our fastest and slowest days.

Of course, autumn would turn to winter after about a month of school, and our bikes would be in the garage for most of the school year. When the weather got colder, we’d walk. When it got really cold, we’d carpool. Neither of those was nearly as cool as being in a biker gang for five minutes every morning.

A few years later, most of us got mopeds. A couple years after that, we all got cars.

And yes, as young Americans, there’s a lot of fun involved with obtaining a driver’s license and sitting behind the wheel of a car. It’s a rite of passage, it’s a step toward becoming a full adult. It’s a symbol of personal freedom.

But it will never compare to the joy of being eight years old, bold, stupid, and in your own biker gang.

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Some essential lessons with the nephews, about shooting and life

8/16/2018

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Charles City Press, 8-16-18

“Don’t pull the trigger, just gently squeeze the trigger. When you pull the trigger too hard, it jostles the gun a little and changes your shot.”

That was me, Uncle James, teaching his young nephews how to shoot at the Grob Getaway vacation last week.

It was one of the many family fun festivities we all participated in.

The vacation included roasting marshmallows while singing songs around a campfire, among many other things. The nephews took Uncle James to school on the ping-pong table, but their Uncle James and their mother teamed up and dominated on the bean-bag field.

There were rides in a horse-drawn cart and some interaction with nature — as well as a few trips to town to explore shops and a brewery. Time had been set aside to do some fishing, but unfortunately, that time was dampened by a sudden thunderstorm, so their Uncle James and their grandpa, Papa Butch, did some fishing on our own later in the week.

And of course, there were the aforementioned shooting lessons.

It was just a B-B gun, because the nephews are still a little young to be handling a real gun. Maybe in a couple of years it will be a 22 rifle or even a small shotgun. The B-B gun had been a Christmas present for both nephews from me eight months ago. It was of the Red Ryder variety, similar to the one in that Christmas movie where the goofy kid with the glasses constantly gets told that he’s probably going to shoot his eye out.

There weren’t going to be any eyes shot out with Uncle James around, that was clear. I insisted that, even though it was just a B-B gun, it would at all times be handled safely and correctly, as if it were a real gun. The nephews heard this and wondered if Uncle James had lost his mind, but then looked to their own dad, who nodded seriously and agreed that Uncle James was right. The message was clear — real gun or toy gun, it doesn’t matter — if it isn’t handled safely and correctly, there will be no gun, because it will be taken away.

Of course, I had to test the thing out first. I nailed the bulls-eye on the first shot, then had to show off and nail it several times in a row, just to impress the nephews and convince them that their uncle knew what he was doing. It worked, they seemed impressed, and they listened better.

Later, I missed a few shots. I’d like to say that I missed on purpose to show my nephews that even good shots sometimes miss, but the truth is, I just missed.

“Get your elbow up, parallel with the ground,” I said to a nephew as he lined up his shot, and as I said it, I remembered my dad — their Papa Butch — telling me the same thing when I was their age.

Guns have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, and I have cherished that. My family bonded through hunting and shooting, and I sometimes wonder if I’d even know my cousins or my own uncles had we not gotten together throughout my adolescence and young adulthood every weekend, every fall, every year, to pursue ducks on the Mississippi Flyway; pheasants, quail and partridges in sloughs and picked cornfields; and deer on the wooded edges.

Though the ultimate goal was eventually killing something and eating it, there was so much more to it than that. Stories were told, life lessons were learned, recipes were exchanged. Puppies were born, raised and trained into hunting dogs. Those hunting dogs were also family dogs, and those family dogs were beloved as they aged — and mourned when they died.

We learned how to talk with farmers and convince them we could be trusted on their property, carrying guns among their cows. And those cows — well, let’s just say that we learned that sometimes cows are mean.

We also learned that guns are dangerous things, to be respected and handled correctly, never to be intentionally or inadvertently pointed at another human being. If you did that at one of our hunting outings, you lost your gun — and the respect of your hunting party.

Guns have been always used to commit crimes, obviously, but it pains me to see the trend that’s developed over the last 20 years — guns being used by young people to kill other young people in schools. I am from a family of teachers — and am married to a teacher — and everyone I know, at one time in his or her life, has been a student. It makes me angry, with the school year about to begin, that I have to worry about people I love getting shot at a school.

Say what you want about the next generation, complain away about how entitled and naive and coddled they are, but keep in mind that these young people are among the first to ever have to legitimately worry about getting shot and killed just for going to school.

This says much more about our generation than it does about theirs. Collectively, we’ve failed at our most important job — teaching our young people respect for others, respect for life and respect for themselves.

I won’t go into the whole gun control debate, because there are far too many people on both sides of the issue shouting obscenities at each other and accomplishing nothing, and it gives me a rage headache.

And the thing is, both sides of the debate are wrong — sometimes they’re just a little wrong, sometimes they’re stubbornly, stupidly wrong — but they’re all wrong.

There are a whole lot of things we can do about gun violence and school shootings, but they never get done, because everyone who isn’t dying is busy screaming.

That’s a bad example, and that’s what’s wrong. The solution starts with a good example.

My nephews are young, and they’re impressionable. They watch their mom and dad closely — and their Uncle James, their Papa Butch, their Nana Lois, their Aunt Michelle — and they don’t know it, but they’re looking for lessons. What they see in us is what they learn.

By the end of the vacation last week, my youngest nephew had hit the target nine times out of 10 shots.

He kept his elbow even, he gently squeezed the trigger, and most importantly, he handled his B-B gun safely and correctly, as if it was a real gun. He never intentionally or inadvertently pointed it toward another human being. If he’s like his Uncle James, he’ll remember that shooting lesson for the rest of his life.

Thanks to his mom and his dad and his Papa Butch and his Uncle James and all the others, my nephew respects guns, and more importantly, he respects other human beings.

I know that it’s just a start, but I’ve done my job here.

Now you do yours.

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Camping isn’t what it used to be, and that’s good

8/2/2018

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Charles City Press, 8-2-18

I’m taking a few days off next week.

It’s a family vacation, at a cabin in the woods in Minnesota. My parents, my wife, my sister, brother-in-law and nephews are all going to be there.

My daughters won’t be able to make it this year, distance and job requirements are keeping them away. I’ll miss them, but the Grob Trip into the wilderness will still be fun. We try to do something like that every other year.

We won’t be roughing it. The cabin is essentially a modern home, with all the modern conveniences. Satellite television, wi-fi, a full kitchen with all appliances, air-conditioning, a rec room with a ping-pong table and a movie room with a projection screen. Heck, it’s better than home. There will be all kinds of fun things to do, inside and out.

There will be fishing and playing outdoors, hikes through the woods, scenery, grilling meat, a campfire, horse-and-buggy rides, maybe some tubing, and tours of area wineries and breweries.

Camping has changed since the old days.

When I was a kid, back in the Dark Ages, my parents once got it into their heads that our family would enjoy becoming campers. They bought a little pop-up camper, I assume with some rare extra money that could have gone to a color television and video game console for their son who loved them, and dragged my little sister and me to campsites in godforsaken places all over the Midwest, almost every summer weekend.

I have mixed emotions about our family camping quests, and I’m certain one of the reasons for that was that it rained quite often.

And when I say “quite often,” I mean “always.”

It is not an exaggeration when I tell you that, the first summer we had the little pop-up camper, it rained every single time we went camping. It didn’t matter what the forecast was, it didn’t matter what the weather trend had been in the days leading up to the weekend — the minute we found a spot to camp, backed in, popped the camper up and started to build the campfire, the skies would rumble open and release torrents upon our heads.

This is the truth — once I overheard my parents discussing a “get-rich-quick” scheme. They were honestly considering scanning through newspapers — there was no internet to search then — to find stories of areas in North America that were suffering from drought, and offer up our services to those locales. For a reasonable fee, we would pull our camper to the drought-stricken spot, open it up, and within a few minutes the drought would end with a downpour.

That’s how certain rain was whenever we camped out.

This means we missed out on all the best parts of camping. There was no hiking in the woods, no swimming at the beach, no fishing in the stream. No telling stories or singing songs around the fire, or roasting hot dogs or marshmallows and turning them into s’mores. There wasn’t even charred meat cooked on a grill.

There were lots of card games, on the little table in the camper, me —about age 10 or 11 — versus my little sister — about age 6 or 7. While it’s true that a simple deck of playing cards was the original multi-purpose entertainment center, you can only push that premise so far before it gets annoying and tedious. I’d let her win until I got tired of it, then I’d beat her and make her mad. When I made her mad, the games came to an end. All the while, raindrops echoed above our heads. The flat roof of the camper made light rain sound like hard rain — and hard rain sound like the alarm that let Noah know it was time to build the ark.

It wasn’t all bad. There were occasional breaks in the rainfall, when we could get outside and enjoy the wet wide world. I learned that trout like to bite just after a rainstorm, and I managed to occasionally catch some big ones with my dad. Sometimes we’d head to the nearest little town and find something we could do indoors, like bowling or a movie. Because my parents felt bad for taking us out in a monsoon, they were quite generous when the time came to buy us some treats, snacks or gifts. When it was too rainy for Dad to grill meat, Mom could improvise and create some pretty tasty stuff on the little mini-kitchen stove in the camper.

Surrounded by the great outdoors, but sentenced to our little camper, we learned how to make our own fun. We learned how to make each other laugh.

That little camper is long-gone now. I don’t know what happened to it, but hopefully it was burned to ashes. Thinking of my experiences with that camper, I’m reminded that my wife often talks about “love languages.” People have all different ways of expressing their love for others, she tells me. It’s from some books and articles she’s read.

For example, sometimes one’s preferred love language is giving and receiving gifts. Someone else’s love language might be work and service — you labor or create something for the people you love, or simply perform tasks like mowing the lawn, cleaning the house or cooking them food.

My wife tells me that she believes my love language is primarily verbal — I tend to prefer to give and receive kind words — spoken or written.

And sometimes it’s not words — sometimes it’s laughter. I often like to express my love by making others laugh, and I like people who can make me laugh.

For what it’s worth, I think I might have developed that love language in that awful pop-up, all those years ago. We were a family of four, cramped in a camper, trapped in the amber of the moment, and we had nothing to do but try to entertain ourselves and each other.

There was only a deck of cards and our wit, our words and our laughter. That’s it. That’s the only love language we had available.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not being sentimental. If I could magically go back to that place and time for a while, I most certainly would not. I also wouldn’t wish those experiences on my most despised adversary. I still wish we’d have gotten a new color TV and video game console instead of a camper. Trust me, those trips were horrid.

But then again, I’m choosing to take a few days off next week, and choosing to get into a cabin with the rest of my family.

Granted, the cabin I’m headed to is much bigger and has far more modern luxuries than that old pop-up camper did.

But my family is a lot bigger now, too. I know full well it’s still going to be a little cramped in there when we’re all together.

So maybe there’s a part of me that wants to go back to those wet and wretched camping trips, when my family and I desperately found ways to laugh through the misery.

Because, you know, there’s always a chance of rain.

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Let’s do lunch — on a stick

7/26/2018

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Charles City Press, 7-26-18

Last week, they announced the finalists for best new food items available at the Iowa State Fair.

I believe the trend toward creative food innovation has come to a standstill in our great nation, and the new Iowa State Fair food is evidence. It seems to me many of these foods were initially created by college students who had the munchies and were too stoned to drive to the nearest restaurant.

The Iowa State Fair is most famous for giving us foods on a stick. That makes sense. You’re at the fair, you’re hungry, it’s hot and crowded and there’s no place to sit down and eat. It’s high time for mobile dining. Put your lunch on a stick, brother.

There have been hundreds of food-on-a-stick creations throughout the fair’s culinary history, and some of the most notable have included chocolate-covered deep-fried cheesecake on a stick, a deep-fried Twinkie on a stick, fried fruit kabobs on a stick and a golden-fried peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich on a stick.

My favorite has always been deep-fried butter on a stick. It’s just a stick of butter, on a stick, battered and deep fried. It is, all at once, equally infantile and ingenious.

This year, the top three best new food finalists for 2018 are the Brown Sugar Pork Belly on a Stick ($7), the All-Iowa Belly-Up Burger ($10) and the Apple Eggrolls ($5).

The Brown Sugar Pork Belly is described as a quarter-pound strip of honey-cured pork belly “rubbed with brown sugar and cooked to crispy perfection.”
Folks, it’s a slice of bacon, rolled in sugar and burned on a griddle. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

The All-Iowa Belly-Up Burger is described as a “half-pound patty of fresh ground pork belly seasoned with a signature rub and grilled, topped with pulled pork and a signature sauce, followed by thick-cut candied bacon and ‘Rib Shack Slaw’ and served on a brioche bun.”

So it’s pork, topped with pork, on top of more pork, then a bunch of cole slaw, squeezed into a bun. It's a massive heart attack on bread. Better buy two.

The Apple Eggroll? “A crispy egg roll wrapped around apple filling and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and served with caramel sauce for dipping.”
My guess is this insane dessert was added to the list in the interest of cultural diversity. I’m in favor of that.

I’m actually in favor of any new food creation. My first instinct is to take a photo and put it on Facebook, and tell all my Facebook friends that they should like and share this picture, because if they don't, it means they hate America, the flag and our troops.

As a society, we take a lot more pictures than we used to, and a lot of them end up on Facebook, because it's so easy. There was a time, in my younger years, when it seemed like a lot of work to take a photo, so you only took photos of very important occasions — such as weddings, graduations, family reunions — or if someone caught a really big fish.

These days, people take pictures of lunch. And dinner. And dessert. And they put them up on Facebook. And Instagram. And Twitter.

I was born the same year as the Big Mac. At the time, there were no photos of either me or the Big Mac shared on Facebook. McDonald's, obviously, has been the most successful innovator of fast food in my lifetime. These days, the menu has a variety of salads and ice cream desserts, gourmet burgers, a full breakfast menu and several chicken options, among other things. When I was a kid, it was just burgers, fries, Big Macs, a Filet-O-Fish and shakes. Chicken McNuggets didn't arrive until the early 1980s.

I do recall a few other products they had then that they do not have now. For a while, they had a thing called Onion Nuggets, basically the same as the chicken nuggets, only it was an onion on the inside instead of chicken. Also, back in those days, McDonald's fried their hot apple and cherry pies. I feel sorry for the current generation, which has never experienced a fried apple pie from McDonald's. The filling felt like molten lava as it burned the living hell out of your mouth, but the taste buds that survived the scorching were in for an amazing treat.

I can also rattle off a list of fast food items that did not exist when I was a child.

There was no such thing as popcorn chicken at KFC — which, by the way, we either called "Kentucky Fried Chicken" or "Colonel Sanders." I had never heard of a stuffed-crust pizza at Pizza Hut, or sweet potato fries anywhere. I was 18 before I tasted my first Blizzard from Dairy Queen.

I was the same age the first time I crunched into a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Speaking of cool ranch, what is the deal with ranch dressing? When I was a kid, it was the salad dressing that no one asked for, because it was awful. Now it's the most popular condiment in the supermarket, people put it on anything. Don't people know it tastes like sour milk?

These days, I’m also perpetually confused about gluten. I don’t know what gluten is, so if you tell me something is gluten-free, I do not know whether to be pleased or disappointed.

Mexican restaurants? These days there are a half-dozen in every town, but there were no such things as Mexican restaurants when I was growing up, at least not in my immediate area. A couple of my good friends were of Mexican lineage, and so I experienced Mexican food as prepared by their mothers — and that was still better than any meal I've ever had in a Mexican restaurant.

I was 40-something before I ever heard of a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Actually, I was probably in my 40s before I ever heard of any kind of latte, or frappe, or any other kind of fancy coffee drink. I’ll probably be in my 90s before I ever try one.

Gatorade was about the only sports drink you could get when I was a kid, and there was no such thing as an “energy drink.” Gatorade came in just one flavor — I think it was actually gator flavored, but I could be wrong. Anyway, we rarely could afford it, so our sports/energy drink of choice was water. It didn't come in a bottle, it came out of the sink, or maybe the hose in the backyard. Backyard hose water on a hot day is still the best drink of anything I have ever drank.

There was no such thing as diet soda, although Tab had just one calorie. And Pepsi-Free had a twist of lemon.

And while we're on the subject of beverages, did you know that the only country in the world that doesn't have any Coke or Pepsi products is North Korea?

I'm guessing that's one of the reasons that the crazy little guy over there wants to blow everyone up.

Better not tell him about the Brown Sugar Pork Belly on a Stick. Global thermo-nuclear war would be inevitable.

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Old friends and new battles

7/18/2018

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Charles City Press, 7-19-18

“Gangster pass right,” the coach said.

It was the fall of 1985, at Husky Stadium in Oelwein, where my home team was playing varsity football against your tough and pesky visiting Charles City Comets.

We didn’t know it at the time, but the winner of the game was going to end up with a share of the Northeast Iowa Conference championship, while the loser was going to miss out, just barely.

The coach sent the play in with a senior wide receiver, who had worked his behind off in the offseason to earn a starting position. I know this, because I had worked with him all summer, for the same reason. We even quit drinking beer for a while, for football season, we were that dedicated.

“Gangster pass right,” the receiver repeated in the huddle. “On two.”

He knew he was calling his own number. The play was a quick slant pass to him.

The ball was snapped and the receiver found himself wide open. It was the right play at the right time. Our quarterback stepped and delivered the pass — a little high, a little hard. The wide receiver reached, and although he was able to get both hands on the ball, it was a tough one to hang on to. It dropped incomplete.

Incidentally, the wide receiver was my best friend and the coach was my dad. Neither of those things are of vital importance to the story, but I believe in full disclosure.

He hung his head and walked back to the sideline, mentally kicking himself for failing to execute what would have been a big play.

One play later, my friend the wide receiver sidled up to Coach again, a little sheepishly, because he knew he’d screwed up the play before.

“Gangster pass right,” Coach said. “And catch the (expletive) ball.”

Yes, there was a curse word in there. I won’t print it in a family newspaper, but you can imagine what it was. Back in the day, it was not unusual for a coach to occasionally use a curse word. That’s the way we talked in Oelwein then, and that’s the way we listened. Somehow, the world did not implode.

I’m not advocating using that kind of language, anywhere, I’m just acknowledging that it wasn’t uncommon then, everywhere, even on a high school football field. And honestly, if you think that language is uncommon now, I’ve got some property in Michigan to sell you.

In this case, the language was used to accentuate the message. What was the message?

Catch the ball.

Coach didn’t browbeat my friend, or try to humiliate him for screwing up the play before. He knew my friend was already disappointed in himself.

Instead, he gave him another chance.

A lot of good coaches might have said nothing. A few lousy coaches might have said, “don’t drop the ball,” which is always the wrong thing to say. It puts additional negative pressure on a kid who is already feeling negative about himself.

When you tell a football player not to fumble, you can be sure that sooner or later, he’s going to fumble. And you’re the one who reminded him that fumbling was one possible option.

So the message wasn’t “don’t drop the ball again.” The message was “catch the ball.” The curse word ensured that the message would be heard.

It worked. My friend did catch the (expletive) ball, cleanly, and rambled down the field for a first down and a huge gain. My friend had some speed.

Ultimately, it didn’t much matter. We still lost the game to those tough and pesky Charles City Comets. That play didn’t make a difference in the outcome.
But it did make a difference to my friend.

Ten, 20, 30 years later — my friend still told that story, of what Coach said to him, how it impacted him, and how he responded, in that one little moment.

He is now very successful in business, and he and his wife have raised a wonderful family, and he’s used that story during motivational-type speeches to his business peers as an example of the power of positive thinking.

It doesn’t matter if you screwed up before. Forget it. What matters is how you respond to it now. Here’s another chance to succeed.

Catch the ball. Just catch the (gosh-darn) ball.

He took that message to heart, and used it as an analogy as he forged through life.

My old friend lives many miles away now, and he’s having a tough time. He just found out yesterday that he has cancer.

I don’t know any details yet, don’t know what stage, don’t know what treatments he’s going to have to endure. I’ve gone through some of what he’s going through, and I’ve gone through some of what he’s about to go through. I’ve seen way too many of my friends go through it, too. We all have.

God, I hate cancer. Words cannot express how much I hate cancer — not even curse words.

I just had lunch with my old friend last week, where I met one of his amazingly lovely daughters. He was worried about the upcoming procedure, worried that there might be cancer. I assured him that I knew it wasn’t, it couldn’t be — because that’s what old friends say to old friends.

When I learned I was wrong this morning, I thought of this old football story. I thought of a lot of other stories, too, but this memory stuck in my mind. This memory put tears in my eyes.

There’s adversity. Then there’s how we handle that adversity.

I know my friend is going to handle it well. I’m going to pray and cheer for him, the way he prayed and cheered for me.

There’s going to be pain and triumph in the days ahead, good news and bad news. Tears and laughter, love and anger, and lots of love again.

Life will change in ways none of us can imagine, but change can also mean a another chance.

You’ll know it when you see it, and when you see it, take it.

And catch the ball, old friend. Catch that doggone ball.

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The Charles City Can Bandits strike again

7/12/2018

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Charles City Press, 7-13-18

There are three things you need to know.

First, the notorious Charles City Can Bandits are back, and more brazen than ever.

Second, I like cold Coca-Cola in small glass bottles.

Third — the first two things you just read are more directly related than they appear to be at first glance.

Let me explain.

Last week there was a bad smell in the kitchen. I don’t like it when there’s a bad smell in the kitchen, I strongly believe that kitchens should consist of good, appetizing, comforting smells, perpetually.

So I cleaned the kitchen. I took out the garbage, I cleaned the cupboards, the counters — even the refrigerator — getting rid of any and all foodstuff and biodegradable products that could be considered “less than fresh.” I wiped things down with lemon-scented cleansers, and even destroyed all stains and growths that seemed mold-like. The kitchen was clean.

And yet, the smell still lingered. I soon discovered why.

As I mentioned earlier, I like cold Coca-Cola in small glass bottles.

I used to drink a lot of soda-pop. All my doctors told me not to. My body needs water -- a lot of water — and drinking a lot of pop tricks my body into thinking it has enough water, when it doesn’t. Besides that, all that sugar and caffeine and carbonation just isn’t good for you, they told me, and I was ingesting a metric ton of it every day.

So, for reasons I won’t go into here, I finally respected my doctor’s wishes. I didn’t quit drinking pop, I just cut way down. I decided to make pop an occasional treat once or twice a week, rather than a regular staple of my everyday diet.

My favorite pop was always ice-cold Coke in a glass bottle, so that’s what I started buying. Very small glass bottles of Coke, to occasionally treat myself.
And so, those little empty bottles sit in a corner of the kitchen. And eventually, when there are enough of them, my wife or I will take them to be redeemed for a deposit, along with all the other redeemable cans we have in the house.
What had happened is, a little mouse had crawled into one of those little bottles some time ago to get a little leftover sweet soda for himself — and he couldn’t get out.

The mouse died in there. RIP. Then he started to smell bad.

Of course, since I’m no longer drinking large quantities of pop, it takes a long time before there’s enough redeemable containers built up to make it worthwhile to bring in for a deposit. So dead little Coca-Cola Mouse just sat there, decayed, and stunk up the joint. My wife finally discovered him. Well, she discovered his remains.

i won’t go into detail, but she cleaned up the situation, and then collected all the redeemable cans and bottles we had together, bagged them, and put them outside, on our deck.

Now, a few weeks ago, I told you in a column here about the Charles City Can Bandits. When my wife and I returned from Memorial Day weekend, two garbage bags of cans had been stolen. They were mostly recycled aluminum pop and beer cans. We had collected about three months’ worth of cans, my wife had neatly and efficiently bagged them up and placed them near our house. We usually give our can money to charity. The plan was to grab the two bags of cans one morning that week, toss them into the trunk of the car, and take them over to a fund-raising friend’s house on the way to work.

That plan came to a screeching halt, when we realized the cans were gone. We thought it would be reactionary to call the police over something that trivial, but the Great Can Theft, as I call it, did disturb me a little, and I wrote about it here. Then I forgot about it.

Tuesday, the Charles City Can Bandits struck again. They stole our redeemable stinky dead mouse containers. Just like last time, it wasn’t like the bags were obvious from the road. Whoever it was had to walk up, through our yard, to our house — and up on our deck — to look through things until he (or she) found something worth taking and easy to heist.

Once again, I don’t want the cans back, I don’t want the money that was redeemed, and I don’t want whoever did it to get into any legal trouble.

I just want people to not come up on my deck, uninvited, and look through my things.

Stop it, whoever you are. If you want my cans, just politely ask me, and they’re yours.

I’ll even remove the dead mice for you.

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My American Friends, On Independence Day

7/5/2018

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Charles City Press, July 5, 2018

Let me tell you about my American friends.

I wrote about them last year, and with Independence Day here, I thought it might be appropriate to write about them again. I’m guessing some of my American friends are a lot like some of your American friends.

I grew up with them, in a little town in Iowa, and they grew up with me.

Each of us is now at or above the age of 50, and some of us have been friends since before we were two. We've lost a few along the way, and they're never far from our minds.

I just saw them all a year ago, these American friends of mine. I hadn't seen some of them in more than 20 years. We met at a little cabin nestled among the picturesque hills and valleys in northeast Iowa, not far from the mighty Mississippi River — a river right smack in the middle of the continent, a river so huge it divides America in half.

That is, it divides the continent in half, but it couldn't divide the people in half. It couldn't divide Americans, because when it comes down to brass tacks, Americans are indivisible, and a river — even a river as imposing and powerful as the majestic Mississippi — can only slow us down, it can't stop us from doing the essential things we want to do.

Americans see the biggest barriers not as the end of the trail, but as the start. A mighty river is a mere problem to be solved.

Americans build things. Boats. Bridges and barges. Canals and tunnels. Railroads that span from one coast to the other, with spurs to reach every little town, every village, every fort and factory.

Automobiles. Vehicles that can negotiate any terrain. Farm machinery. Airplanes. Devices that can put the entire world on your desk, or even in the palm of your hand.

Vast interstate highways, skyscrapers as tall as those mountain ranges, a mind-boggling communications web, entire industries devoted to surviving and thriving— and while we're surviving, while we're thriving, we'll create entire new industries, just to keep us entertained. Television, movies, music, sports, information. We want it all, and when we want it all, we get it all.

Because we're Americans, and Americans can make magic.

Don't believe me? How does a grandmother in northern Minnesota get bananas and coconuts from the tropics for her dessert recipe? American magic.

A grandpa in Arizona can sit in his study and watch his 16-year-old granddaughter in Virginia shoot what would have been the game-winning basket — had it not bounced off the back of the rim. He can watch it live, as it happens. And his heart can break a little as he hears her cry, and sees her kneel down by the free-throw line, covering her face.

And grandpa wipes his own tear away before he smiles at her, into his face-phone a minute later, and says, "You played well, sweetheart. I'm proud of you. You'll get 'em next time."

In America, we know we'll always get 'em next time.

But back to my old American friends, at that cabin last year.

We got together because of me. I had just finished a year of cancer, major surgery, recovery and chemotherapy — and at the time, I was at a point where none of us knew for sure if I had another year left — or even another month. I think some of my friends showed up because they feared it could be the last time they might see me.

Though we all came from the same little Iowa town, we're all very different people, and we ended up in all corners of America. A CEO of a tech company in Atlanta. A vice-president of a parts supply company in Houston, Texas. An electrician in Cedar Falls. An artist in Cedar Rapids. A federal immigration officer on the Canadian border. A communication infrastructure specialist in Des Moines. A writer in Charles City.

A couple of us returned to our home town, and made lives there. One is a physical therapist, the other is an advertising specialist and part-time politician.

We each have our own individual worlds, but we are also one entity. No, we are not a melting pot, nor are we an alliance or a confederacy.

We are a collective soul.

Two of us grew up on farms. The rest of us worked on farms at one time or another. We are German and Irish and Norwegian and Dutch and Welsh and Mexican and Austrian and probably a hundred other things, and all of us had ancestors who, at some time in the past, decided to take a shot and head to America.

Some of my American friends are Catholics, some are Lutherans, some are Methodists. Some of us are other things, or maybe nothing, because in America, we can worship God any way we want — or not at all.

Four of us served in the armed forces and defended our nation. All of us snap to attention when the color guard goes by, all of us put our hands on our hearts for the pledge of allegiance — and when we hear the national anthem, we all stand and sing.

Some of us hunt. Some of us ride Harleys. Some of us play in rock and roll bands. Some of us sing in choirs, or train dogs, or play rugby, or paint pictures, or perform in community theatre plays. We all love football and beer.
Some of us are Democrats, some of us are Republicans, some of us are none of the above. And yes, we've all fought among ourselves from time to time. But we're still one collective soul.

So when one of us catches a big smallmouth, or gets promoted, or runs in a 5K for charity, we all cheer.

When one of our sons gets married, or one of our daughters graduates from college, we're all happy, as if it were our own kid.

When one of us has a parent die, we all cry a little.

When cancer picks a fight with one of us, it picks a fight with all of us.

These are my American friends.

If you fall behind, they'll pull you back ahead. And if they can't do that, they'll wait for you to catch up.

And when you do, they'll give you a slap on the back.

Or maybe a big, American hug.

That's where the magic starts.

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The Wizard can remind us of life’s forgotten lessons

6/28/2018

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Charles City Press, 6-28-18

I’ll be in the play this weekend.

It’s my kind of role — short but memorable — but don’t blink, you might miss me.

I’m the title character in the Stony Point Players’ production of “The Wizard of Oz.”

Yes, that means I’m the Wizard himself.

Full disclosure: I’m pretty sure I got the role because I’m sleeping with the director. Nothing nefarious, mind you — she is my wife, after all.

If you remember the movie, the Wizard is the guy who everyone is so excited to meet. The main characters travel through Hades in a yellow brick bucket — and, among other hazards — they overcome fields of pretty poison, crabby talking apple trees, nasty flying monkeys and homicidal witches just to meet the Wizard.

Then, when they finally get there, the Wizard isn’t all he’s cracked up to be.
The characters discover that the Great Oz is not great at all, and he’s certainly no Wizard. He’s just a regular guy, hiding his true self behind a curtain. He’s a con-man. He has no magical powers. He doesn’t even really have a scary voice.

The Wizard is just a big, phony disappointment, who lets all the other characters down.

But that’s kind of the point. Life is about the journey, not the destination.

In their knight’s quest to meet the Wizard, the other characters are forced to overcome major obstacles. In doing so, they are able to find, inside themselves, all the things they thought they were going to get from the Wizard.

What they thought they lacked, they had inside themselves all along. It took the Wizard quest to bring it out.

In the end, even the Wizard himself comes out from his hiding place and faces the truth. He doesn’t have to hide behind the curtain anymore.

There are a lot of fun things along the way. Cute Munchkins, catchy songs, magic spells and a tornado, to name a few examples. And there are other lessons in the story — good stuff — about the importance of friendship, about maturity, about facing your fears, about kindness and about finding your own path in life.

These are the reasons this story has been a beloved tale for almost 80 years now.

Well, that and the fact that the show contains one of the greatest songs ever composed, “Over the Rainbow.”

I hope I do a good job. I only get about five minutes of stage time, and I’m just one of over 100 people involved in this production, so I can’t screw up too much all by myself.

But I also don’t want to be like the Wizard, and let all my comrades down.

There’s a little Wizard in all of us, I think. We all hide behind a curtain sometimes, and pray we won’t be exposed for the phonies we are. Come to think of it, like the characters in the play, at times we all behave as if we have no brains, no heart, no courage. We need to remember to not do that.

Sometimes, we go to great pains to find happiness elsewhere, when all along it was right there at home.

We learned all these things when we were kids, but a lot of us have forgotten them.

I’m proud to be the “humbug” wizard in this staged story this weekend. And I’m proud to be on the stage with a whole lot of people who have been working much harder than I have to put this thing on. They’re your friends and neighbors, and I think you’re going to like what they do.

And the Munchkins — I know you’re going to love the Munchkins.

So I hope you’ll come to the theatre this weekend and enjoy yourself. Laugh a little, cry a little, and sing along. Give these home town folks some cheers and applause for the journey they’ve been on.

You’ll have fun. You might even learn a lesson or two.

But don’t worry, that’s not required.

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No superpowers in Rockford, but they still behave as heroes

6/14/2018

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Charles City Press, 6-14-18

I have a buddy who’s an artist.

He draws, he paints, he carves, he sculpts — he does all the things you’d expect an artist to do. He’s been doing these things as long as I’ve known him, which is getting close to 40 years now. He’s very good — at least I believe he is.

You wouldn’t know he’s an artist at first glance. He’s a big guy — a northeast Iowa farm boy — and looks pretty tough. On the high school football field, he was a helluva linebacker, and he still looks like a linebacker, even though he’s in his 50s. I’m not saying artists aren’t typically tough, I’m just saying my buddy looks more like a typical linebacker than a typical artist.

He teaches some art classes, some of them for kids. One of those classes is called something like “How to Draw Superheroes.” He’s told me the kids love that class, because they get to create their own self-illustrated superhero narrative, with the superpowers they want them to have.

There’s a trick to it though. He’s told me that when you’re creating a superhero, you don’t just decide what superpowers he or she has because you think they’re cool powers. You can’t just say, “this guy can fly” or “this woman can see through walls” without cause. The superpowers have to be in response to a societal need.

So the kids have to think about it — what superpower would be helpful in solving a problem in the world?

The strength to lift two tons with one hand would be helpful, if there were a sudden rash of people trapped under cars. The ability to stop bullets would be helpful during a active shooter situation at a school.

If billions of people were starving, the power to instantly grow food would be an important one. The power to control fire with your mind would be valuable in squelching forest fires in Colorado — or in lighting my charcoal grill to cook some ribeye steaks.

The point is, heroes aren’t born heroic. Heroes emerge as a reaction to a situation.

This isn’t just true in comic books and on movie screens. This is true in the real world.

I met a couple young men on Tuesday who would never call themselves heroes, and I know they’d be upset with me if I called them that.

In fact, when I told Rockford volunteer firefighters Corey Johnson and Jim Moore that there are some people who are calling what they did heroic, they shook their heads.

“We were just at the right place at the right time,” they said. “We were just doing what we signed up to do.”

And they’re right, but not exactly.

No matter how much training they’ve gone through, no one signs up to drive into — and then run into — the whirling terror of a tornado.

And let’s speak plainly, what happened in Rockford late Saturday afternoon was a tornado, whether the National Weather Service can confirm it or not.

The wind picked a man’s truck up off the road, lifted it more than 25 feet off the ground, and slammed it down into a field, some 50 feet away. That’s just something you don’t see every day. It may not meet all the technical qualifications, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s a tornado.

Those two young men reacted to the situation, risked their own livelihoods, and got a third young man to safety.

And they don’t even have any superpowers — at least none that I’m aware of.

They both told me Tuesday that they thought any one of their comrades in the Rockford Volunteer Fire Department would have done the same thing they did.

I believe they’re probably right about that.

I was over in Rockford Sunday, and I saw the mess the storm had left behind. And I saw a lot of volunteers, cleaning up.

The progress of the cleanup from Sunday to Tuesday in Rockford was remarkable. When I met with Johnson and Moore, they were covered with dirt and sweat and sawdust. They’d just put in their third straight 12-hour day of cutting up and hauling out the more than 300 trees downed by the storm — among other things.

Twelve hours? Maybe it was 16. Some of those among them might have been putting in 18 hour days, for all I know.

These people reacted to a situation, and cleaned up Mother Nature’s mess. And that’s a lot of work.

It may not meet all the technical qualifications of a hero. And they may be upset, in Rockford, if I were to call them heroes.

So I won’t call them that.

I’ll just say they’ve behaved as heroes do.

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Cy-Hawk rivalry? Not in my house

Back to school, with my biker gang

Some essential lessons with the nephews, about shooting and life

Camping isn’t what it used to be, and that’s good

Let’s do lunch — on a stick

Old friends and new battles

The Charles City Can Bandits strike again

My American Friends, On Independence Day

The Wizard can remind us of life’s forgotten lessons

No superpowers in Rockford, but they still behave as heroes

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