Hackensack, MN Art and Book Fair 2016
Before we left home, the shit literally hit the fan. Rene’ and I were due to leave the house early on Friday morning. I had plans to load the car, tuck away the dogs (our son Matt had agreed to feed, water, and exercise our Lab and Dachshund), and hear the hum of rubber on asphalt before 8:00am. Didn’t happen that way. Here’s why.
First, I woke up sicker than a dog. Headache. Upset stomach. Body aching all over and unable to decide whether it should puke or let loose from the other end.
“Maybe we should stay home,” my wife of 38 years thoughtfully suggested.
“Can’t do it,” I replied, dragging my way out of bed and towards the shower. “Gotta set up early tomorrow. Besides, we’re supposed to be at Halvorsons’ tonight for dinner.”
Bob and Dode Halvorson are friends from law school. Bob was a year behind me at William Mitchell, someone I played intramural softball and football with and shared cheap beer in the Irish bars of St. Paul. Dodie is his wife. They invited us to meet up with three other couples with ties to the Dorsey Law Firm, the place I spent two of my four years working my way through night law school. The Floms, good friends from Moorhead, and the Liesches and the Buckvolds, who hail from the Twin Cities, were to meet up and spend some time together at the Halvorson cottage on Fish Hook Lake near Park Rapids. The other folks have gathered annually since our days together at Dorsey. We were late invitees, the result of another of the couples we spent considerable time with, Mark and Debbie Ginder, passing away in the past year. I didn’t want to miss the chance to reconnect with people who helped define me as a person and a lawyer, whose support was essential to completing four years of night school while juggling a full time job, marriage, fatherhood, and working as a caretaker at a Wilder Foundation high rise.
The warmth of the shower did little to curb my aches and pains. I dressed, ate some half-toasted wheat bread slathered with peanut butter, woke Jack (our 18 year old son), let the dogs out to do their business, packed a suitcase with clothing for two days and nights away from home, and started lugging boxes of books out to Rene’s Nissan Rogue.
“Damn kids,” I muttered as I passed Jack on his way upstairs to get a towel.
“What?”
“Not you. Matt’s boys. Daycare bug. It got me…”
“Oh.”
Rene’ repeated that I should get back into bed and call off the trip.
I need to get out and get Boomtown moving, I thought, highlighting that the Northwoods Art and Book Festival, a neat little gathering in a tiny tourist hamlet a half hour south of Park Rapids, has always been a great place to sell my books. Plus we need to make our commitment to the Halvorsons and the others. Who knows. We miss this invite and, well, we just might not get invited again.
“No, I need to do this.”
“Fine.”
“Can you drive?” I asked as I watched Jack drive away in his blue Matrix.
Then, I heard water running in the basement. I tumbled down the stairs towards Jack’s bathroom. What I found wasn’t pretty.
The lower level of our home has a bathroom that sits slightly up slope from our septic system. Whenever the baffle in the solids tank is clogged (usually with toilet paper), the sewage and gray water reverses course. The noise coming from the basement bath? It was the toilet overflowing with foul water and bits of toilet paper. But that wasn’t all. The tub was half-filled with the same disgusting mess. The words that came out of my mouth, uttered like the wail of a father over a fallen child, can’t be printed here in a family-friendly blog.
I’ll spare you the details. But I did learn something new. We’ve been in our house for 16 years. By the time the septic guy arrived, I’d managed to get the sewage flowing again. The alarm in the house was blaring but the poop water was diminishing.
“Here’s another thing,” the kid said, pulling on a white handle fitted between the solid and the liquid tanks in our front yard. “Your filter’s clogged.”
“Didn’t even know there was a filter between the tanks,” I said, my head pounding, my legs shaking from the bug.
“Well, now you do. Needs to be cleaned at least once a year.”
I slept the entire four hour drive to the Super 8 in Park Rapids. By the time we arrived, though I wasn’t fit as a fiddle, my headache had ebbed and my guts had calmed to the point where we could register at the motel and head out to the Halvorsons’ for dinner. Despite the anxiety of the shit storm and the resulting cleanup (I did as much as I could but knew that a more concentrated, more thorough scrubbing of the bathroom, tub, and sump room awaited) the dinner of salad and steak, prepared by Bob and Rita Buckvold and their daughter, was wonderful. The company? With old friends, the stories get retold, the love is rekindled, and the years seem to melt away.
Sunset on Fish Hook Lake, Park Rapids.
Saturday morning. Rene’ made arrangements with Joe and Marcia Liesch to get a ride from the motel out to the Halvorson place on Fish Hook Lake. She was fast asleep when I pulled away from the Super 8 in her Rogue, headed south on the backroads for Hackensack. I’d gulped down a cup of motel coffee, eaten a hardboiled egg and some yogurt, but still felt the affects of the bug as I meandered towards the art festival. By the time I pulled up to the Hackensack Community Center where my rented table was waiting for me, the illness had run its course.
You might be asking why, given I was nearly at death’s door (OK, that’s a huge exaggeration but damn it, I did feel like crap!), would I drag my sick body and my long-suffering wife all the way across
Another view of Fish Hook Lake.
Minnesota to sit in a hard metal chair behind a rented folding table selling books to strangers? Well, the simple answer is, of all the events I’ve done over the years, the Northwoods Art and Book event is on that I can always count on.
“Oh, I just loved _____ (fill in the blank). Do you have anything new?” is a common comment and question from readers. 20 or more authors set up shop in the UCC Church across the street from the community center. I choose to pay a little higher fee to be isolated from my brother and sister authors. Why? Less competition, pure and simple. If I’m one of only a few, rather than one of many, trying to foist my words on strangers, odds are, I’ll sell better. This year was no exception.
Art and Book Fesatival, 2016.
The rewarding thing about these events is that time and time again, kind folks who’ve purchased a book in the past stop by and buy another Munger read. In the 16 years I have been selling words to strangers, I’ve only heard a handful of negative comments. I accept them, as I accept praise, reminding myself of Hemingway’s admonition that, if you revel in the glory of the critics, you must accept their condemnation as well. Boomtown, my as-yet-to-be-launched murder mystery/legal thriller sold well. At the close of the festival, I said my goodbyes, packed up my boxes, and hit the road. Within an hour, I was back at the Halvorson cottage, a Bent Paddle Black in hand, floating on the calm waters of the prairie lake. The Floms joined us and, as we sat down for dinner with friends, joined by the Halvorson’s daughter Zoe and her boyfriend, the old stories flowed. I’m sure the twenty-something child who grew up with most of these folks had heard every tale from our law school days. And yet, she pretended to listen…
Sunday morning. We were back on the road, headed south. The last leg of our trip took us to Target Field to watch a Twins game with my friends, Judge John DeSanto, and former Chief Public Defender, Fred Friedman. We set up this event months ago. Originally our wives were to join us. A week ago, Fred stopped in at my office to reveal that Mrs. Friedman and Mrs. DeSanto would not be attending. I kept this bit of news to myself, disclosing it only as we drew closer to the Twin Cities. My wife wasn’t particularly pleased to learn the other ladies had bowed out. But she’s a good sport and after letting off a bit of steam, she quieted down and accepted that she was the only girl in the group.
It was a great day for a ballgame. I was hoping that the resurgent Twins would make a showing. When Dozier hit a bomb to left to tie the game, I thought, Damn, this is gonna be fun. But by the time we shuffled out of the ballpark later that afternoon, the Twinks had been on the receiving end of a 11-4 shellacking. The bumbling hometown favorites had nearly as many hits (6) as they had errors (4). But again, sitting with two mentors who I admire a great deal, trading stories, talking law and baseball and families, well, it really didn’t matter what the score was.
After a pit stop in Forest Lake at Famous Dave’s, we roared onto the freeway and were home slightly after eight Sunday night. It had been a grueling, tiring, exhausting yet delightful weekend. I wasn’t even pissed off or upset when I grabbed my scrub bucket, cleaning supplies, paper towels, and made my way into the basement bathroom to begin the process of scouring.
Peace.
Mark
Target Field
Three old guys at the game.
The only girl at the game…
