Mom’s Hometown

The trains are relentless in Wadena. Every twenty minutes or so, another diesel-locomotive-pulled assembly of open hopper cars full of coal or tank cars  full of volatile chemicals or box cars full of goods rumbles through the center of town, whistle shrieking, wheels clacking. If there’s a customer at my table in the Author’s Tent of the Affaire de Arts in the little grassy park and a train is coming through, we stop conversation until the train has passed. There’s no point, as my mother would say, in shouting.

The drive over from Duluth was glorious. After days and days of mist and cold and fog and rain, the sun has broken through. Between McGregor and Aitkin, a solitary sharptail grouse set its wings and glides across Highway 210 in a wash of brilliant white light. It’s rare for me to see a sharptail: In my “neck of the woods” we have spruce and ruffed grouse but sharptails, inhabitants of grasslands, don’t live in the Cloquet River Valley. I’ve never been privy to the elegant dance the male birds do; puffing up their red cheek sacks and strutting and weaving like teenagers at their first school dance. I don’t get to see the dance today: Just one lone bird sails off to wherever it is sharptails sail.

There were no clouds at 6:30am when I began my drive west, my Pacifica loaded with books, a small exhibit table, and bin of promotional supplies. Traffic was sparse. Even the blue hairs at the Black Bear Casino in Carlton were in short supply. There were only a few tentative white tail deer standing alongside the road. None chose to commit suicide by car. I passed through Brainerd. Motley. Staples. And finally, Verndale before arriving in Wadena, county seat of Todd County.

I had emailed one of my sister judges, Judge Sally Robertson, about my coming to her town. Never received an email back so I figured she was on vacation. I know her a bit, from committees and gatherings and her singing along with my departed friend’s (Judge Jeff Rantala’s) sweet guitar licks. Woody Guthrie tunes. Beatles’ tunes. Steve Goodman tunes. Jim Croce tunes. You get the picture. Other than Sally, I don’t know anyone in Wadena. My mom was reportedly born here, back in 1928, when her father, my grandfather, was traveling through with his pregnant wife and nature decided my mom should make her debut. But Mom never, to my knowledge, actually lived here. So I don’t expect an adoring crowd of her long-lost friends to show up.

The park we’re in is right next to the old railroad depot. The depot’s no longer active as a passenger station. If you want to board the Empire Builder bound for Seattle you’ll need to do it a few miles to the southeast, in Staples. After setting up my table and books, I had wandered into the old depot to use the restroom. The place was spotless, as if, should Barack Obama’s vision of restored passenger train service ever come to fruition, tickets could be sold, loved ones could be hugged, and passengers could board trains pulling east and west from central Minnesota.

Not in my lifetime.

I have pleasant discussions with my fellow booksellers. The fellow next to me, a nice man who has written a couple of slender regional novels, talks optimistically about selling “50,000 copies” of his books. I don’t have the heart to tell him I’ve been at this self-publishing game for the better part of twelve years and that 5,000 copies of one novel still remains a vision, a distant jewel suspended just outside my grasp.

Maybe it will happen for him.

I’ve read enough in Poets and Writers, on the Internet, and in other writerly magazines about publishing and selling fiction to know that the man’s optimism, while charming, is fatally flawed. Still, you can’t blame a guy or a gal for believing in himself or herself.

All of us here, from the eighty year old lady selling history to the judge pawning his novels (and a thick biography of a politician few folks outside Duluth have ever heard of) are filled with hopes and dreams. And that’s not a bad thing for a writer, for any creative person, to hold on to.

Traffic in the park is sparse. What I thought would be a sweltering day turns out to be pleasantly cool, a wind blowing in from the northwest keeps the air fresh and the need for a fleece pullover omnipresent. I sell a few books. I meet up with Judge Robertson and we engage in small talk. I sell books to an attorny/city councilor and his wife. The judge promises to stop by with her husband to continue our discussion. A female potter, a fellow vendor at the show, leaves her booth and stops in front of my table.

“I read this one,” she says, pointing to Suomalaiset. “There was something about it I didn’t like.”

Oh oh.

“You’re not Finn, are you?” she asks.

“No.”

“That’s apparent from the book.”

I marshal my artistic defenses.

“But that’s a book that’s universally loved by the Finns…”

“It would be.”

I can’t tell from her comment whether she’s a Finn who disagrees with my portrayal of the Red Finns (socialists, communists involved in the workers’ movement) or she’s a non-Finn who isn’t impressed with the Finns. But before I can respond, she startles me.

“Oh, I guess I’ll take this one (Esther’s Race) and this one (The Legacy) and this one (Pigs),” she says blandly.

I’m stunned. I accept her money, sign the books, place them in a plastic bag, and watch in amazement as she wanders back to her booth.

“That’s a first,” I say to a female mystery author in the “Minnesota Crime Wave” booth next to me.

“How’s that?”

“I’ve never had someone complain about a book and then buy three more.”

The woman simply shakes her head.

Judge Robertson stops by with her husband and some friends. She buys a copy of Esther’s Race. Her husband, who I learn is the director of the New York Mills Cultural Center, asks if I’d consider giving him five copies of Suomalaiset to sell at the Center on consignment. I was at the Center a few years back. I’d driven from Duluth on a below zero February day to give a talk about the Finns and the book. A prairie wind was whipping that day; snow was blowing and the mercury was falling. But I knew, since my audience would be primarily tough Finns, that if I made the trip, I’d have an audience. I made it and had a wonderful discussion with a dozen folks.

“Sure, no problem.”

I package up the books. Jamie (the judge’s husband) and I shake hands and they depart. It’s not long until the crowd thins from sparse to nothing and I pack it all in and head for home.

Peace.

Mark