Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

Matt, Mark, Chris, Harry, and Jack Munger.

Ashley, North Dakota. My old man, Harry, who is scheduled to enter his 87th year on this earth in a few days, and his buddy Bruce, have been coming to the Dakotas to duck and pheasant hunt for at least twenty-five years. Over time, they made the tiny hamlet of Ashley, the county seat of McIntosh County, their home base. A few years’ back, Dad asked if my eldest son Matt and I would like to go. We went, had a great time, and the next year, Chris, my third son, came along. We’ve been coming back to Ashley, renting small houses in town and hunting the wide open prairie landscape, ever since. This year, Jack, my sixteen year old son, came with. It was his first bird hunt of any significance beyond poking around the woods surrounding our home on the Cloquet River in hopes of surprising a grouse.

Saturday and Sunday of the non-resident opener were dismal. We saw few birds. I took four shots at big roosters that flushed forty yards out and that was the only shooting I experienced during the first two days of hunting. The sky spit rain and snow. The wind howled. Sandhill cranes, their cranky voices audible even though they were flying a thousand feet above the land, formed and reformed above us like buzzing bees, their dance constituting the beginning act in the month-long play of cranes, swans, geese, and ducks from the potholes of Saskatchewan and Manitoba seeking warmer climes. The lack of rooster pheasants for us to shoot didn’t deter our little group from scouring the sparse, flat landscape for birds. We knew, before making the seven hour drive west from Duluth, that the pheasant population on the Plains had taken a big hit during the wet, cold, snowy spring. But we were optimistic that diligence and hard work, along with the noses of Windsor, a borrowed spaniel, Lexi, Matt’s Labrador, and Kena, Jack’s four month old Labrador pup, would produce some shooting. We were wrong.

Jack Munger and Reid Amborn with Lexi.

It must be said here that the Munger clan, particularly the males of the family, are loud, opinionated, politically correct (in our own minds), and somewhat disagreeable. These traits require anyone who accompanies us on a fishing or hunting trip to be of thick skin and sound debating skills. Matt’s friend, Reid Amborn, fit that bill. He drove out with Matt and Chris in Matt’s Suburban and the banter, bickering, teasing, and derisive humor that is the hallmark of a Munger gathering didn’t bother him in the least. He gave as good as he got. In a word, he fit right in. Even when we buried Harry’s Tahoe, the bald tires of the rig unable to follow Matt’s Suburban through a muddy mess, Reid took our grousing and complaining in stride.

After trying to rock the rig onto wooden timbers, I sent Matt to town in search of a tow strap. We were in a treeless field, mired to the doors in muck, and our efforts to move the Tahoe had been completely unsuccessful. All Dad and I could do was sit in the idling Tahoe and wait for the boys to return. Far sooner than expected, the Suburban was back, plowing down the muddy two lane track followed by another Tahoe. Turns out, the owner of the other Tahoe was prepared. He had a tow strap along just in case. Using the borrowed strap, Matt’s Suburban pulled Harry’s Tahoe sideways until it was on firm ground. We thanked the boys from Indiana. What could have been several hours or more of an ordeal was remedied in short order. More importantly, we heard a similar tale of woe from our new Hoosier pals: They’d seen three birds in two days of hunting. The news didn’t put roosters in our game pouches but made us feel less inept.

In the field.

Monday, the weather cleared a bit. The sun came out. The dogs, including Kena, who had very little understanding of her role but who began working patterns in the grasses and cut corn and soybeans and sunflowers in mimicry of the older dogs, her nose snuffling, her tail wagging, didn’t stop their efforts to flush pheasants. But despite the hard work of men and dogs, we’d only had two or three quality shots at fleeing birds and we’d missed them all. My old man spent Monday back at the little house in Ashley, preparing turkey dinner; the feast we’d consume watching the hapless Vikings on Monday Night Football.

The house.

“Look at the ducks,” Matt said as we worked the edges of one of our favorite spots.

The water of the adjacent lake was dotted with the black forms of mallards and teal and other migrating ducks bobbing on the wind rippled surface of the prairie pothole.

Time and time again, as we stalked roosters along the margins of the high grass and brush surrounding the lake, corn fed pot roasts on wings would slash across the open sky, offering themselves as easy targets against the stillness of a bright Dakota sun. But we weren’t duck hunting and the birds passed our gauntlet safely, put on the brakes, and landed with slight splashes out in open water.

“Great, Matt,” Chris replied. “But we’re not here to shoot ducks.”

Most days in the field, Dad drove his Tahoe with Jack and I riding shotgun. As we looked for huntable land, I spent a lot of time thinking about my old man, mostly because Dad’s buddy Bruce didn’t make the trip. Harry without Bruce in the field is sort of like Abbot without Costello, Bogart without Bacall, Batman without Robin. It’s unsettling. But there’s not much one can do about the progression of time and the changes that life brings other than to accept the end result with grace and supplication. Still, every time I cast a casual glance in Harry’s direction while he was driving, I knew his heart. I knew that he’d trade one more day on young legs scanning the land through clarion eyes with his beloved Labrador Cleo by his side for a year of earthly existence.

Grandpa Harry driving to the field.

The less that’s said about the Vikings game, the better. Suffice it to say, the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, and biscuits were superb and that, after cleaning the kitchen, doing the dishes, and having the turkey kick in,  I was asleep by nine.

During our Monday hunt, Chris likely had the one and only truly easy shot, a rooster rising from a slough that took wing just in front of him. Normally our most reliable gun, Chris fired three times, nicking the tail of the rooster, loosening a feather or two, but didn’t drop the bird. I knocked one down during the same drive but, because I was using steel and the shot was about thirty-five yards out, the bird was able to run and the dogs weren’t able to find it. By Tuesday, our last day, we were five pheasant hunters who’d bagged no game. In fact, Reid and Jack hadn’t even fired their shotguns. Matt had taken a single shot. I’d thrown up five or six “Hail Marys” at long distance birds, including the one I’d hit. Chris had about the same success. To say we were collectively despondent isn’t quite accurate. But there were rumblings, mostly from Matt, that maybe South Dakota was a better option for next year. Seeing as how Ashley is but a mile or two north of the North Dakota/South Dakota border and that the birds we were chasing didn’t likely know the difference, I wasn’t convinced that a change in jurisdictions (to use a legal term) would bring success.

Jack. Kena, and Harry at the South Dakota border. Note the lack of pheasants in the photo!

Tuesday blew in cold. There was snow on the ground when we tromped across a cut soybean field towards a marsh surrounded by empty land. The dogs worked the thick swamp and sedge grass, snuffling here and there, finding old roosts left by departed birds.

“Jack, move to the outside. You’ll likely have a better shot there.”

My youngest son shifted to the extreme right wing of our line as we moved. To the east, on gravel road, Harry drove the Tahoe back and forth, impatience, a trait my father has gifted me, apparent in his actions.

“Watch Windsor,” Chris yelled out as the spaniel stopped on a dead point.

“Get the bird,” I said.

Windsor moved forward. A bird erupted from a clump of weeds between Jack and me.

“Hen,” I yelled.

We watched the bird set its wings and fly off.

“There’s likely more in here,” I said.

Less than five minutes later, Windsor was again locked on a bird. This time, there was no need to coax the dog into action. A brilliantly hued rooster, resplendent in red and green and all manner of color, exploded from bulrushes at Jack’s feet.

I watched Jack hesitate. The bird flew low and to the east, with the wind.

“That’s your bird, Jack. Take him.”

The borrowed twelve gauge rose. The gun barked. Once. The rooster fell, hit but not dead.

“Get the bird, ” I yelled.

Windsor sprinted through the marsh and caught the rooster on open ground. In less than a minute, Jack had a nice young male pheasant snug and secure in the game pouch of his hunting vest.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

“I can’t believe it,” Chris said. “His first trip. His first shot. His first bird.”

“And I didn’t really aim,” Jack replied.

“Don’t tell me that,” Chris admonished. “I don’t want to hear that again.”

It was a beautiful shot. Thirty-five to forty yards out. A great beginning to a long pheasant hunting career.

In the end, we ran into a few areas that were holding birds. But our shooting didn’t improve much, though Chris did manage to take two roosters, one of which I missed, one of which Jack missed, in a single drive.

Near sundown, in an open grassy field that rolled out like a golden, waving ocean for thousands of acres, as the wind was settling and the sun disappearing on our last day of hunting, we ran into more pheasants than we’d seen all week. Roosters and hens started popping up and flying away from us, the dogs madly chasing the scent trails of dozens and dozens of birds in a confused frenzy of smells. Reid finally fired and winged a rooster but it ran and couldn’t be found. Matt fired and missed. In fact, Matt ran out of shells and had to retrieve more ammunition for Grandpa’s Tahoe. In the end, Reid finally hit a big rooster and dropped it in the tawny prairie grass. That bird was dead. It didn’t get away. Windsor brought it to Reid and our hunt was over.

Jack’s first rooster.

Many thanks to my son, Matthew Leonedes Munger, for planning and organizing the trip! You rock, son!

Peace.

Mark

Munger Farm, Autumn 2013.

I’ve been accused by many friends, family, and colleagues of being entrenched in the present, or worse yet, riveted in the past. There’s a grain of truth to the notion that I’m not the most adaptable person in the human herd. And my avocation, looking back at events and history, real or imagined, to create fiction, well, that doesn’t lend itself to dreaming about rocket cars and robot prostitutes, now does it? There was a time in my young adulthood when I was a future thinker and reader. I inhaled science fiction and fantasy, being partial to the works of Ursula LeGuin and Frank Herbert, and dreamed of where my life might be headed, on what distant shore my boat might land. Well, here I am, approaching sixty, living within a half-hour of the neighborhood that formed my persona. The wind has died. My boat is languishing in the doldrums. I have stepped onto familiar shores, set my anchor, put the LeGuin and Herbert books on the shelf, rolled up my sleeves, and organized a pretty simple life around a few acres of trees and pastures just outside of town. Did I dream of such a rooted existence? Was the path I stumbled onto and steadfastly followed my own or one that society, life, and/or God chose for me? I often wonder how it is I came to be to where I am. Not that I’m disappointed, you understand. I have a wonderful wife, four handsome, intelligent, good-natured sons. Notice I used the present tense in that sentence. See, I’m not tied solely to the past. At least, I don’t think I am.

These sorts of maudlin thoughts are not unique to me as I watch the advance of colors across the landscape of northeastern Minnesota. The gradual sweep of orange, yellow, red and deep brown begins low to the ground where clinging vines and youthful maples flash early scarlet. The inevitable progression touches the sculpted tops of ruler-straight tamaracks, transforming green to shimmering gold, and afflicting Northland residents with a sense that the march of seasons in our neck of the woods is unstoppably upon us. Of course, there’s a scientific basis behind why foliage turns color, why leaves drift to the ground, why we are left to consider a landscape of gray and brown splattered with dashes of evergreen. But I don’t care to learn the science behind the art. I have no desire to understand the perpetual change of the advancing seasons. I only want to stop and think about the bigger picture and how God, family, death, love, and unfinished books and stories fit into the equation of my life.

Front yard, Autumn, 2013.

Despite my noted stubborn opposition to change, I realize, as I sit listening to West Coast Live on KUMD via live streaming on my iMac, typing this piece, momentarily distracted by the antics of a four-month-old black Labrador who as imperiously claimed the cushioned chair next to my writing desk, that there’s not a hell of a lot I can do to stop the colors from changing, dogs from aging, or a myriad of other alterations that time has and will foist upon me.

Three shots ring out from the river below the house as I type. A duck hunter has likely brought down a wayward wood duck, perhaps a male resplendent in color, from concealment. Hunting too, as I understand it, is undergoing change. Few young people are following the traditions of their ancestors and taking up arms to harvest game.

What does the future hold for hunters, for hunting?

Another question with no answer, at least, not from me. A mandolin sings. Fingers fly. Kena chews a rope toy, her Labrador brain content in the present, regaling in the fact that I haven’t booted her off the chair. As a young father and dog owner, I would have made her leave the furniture.

Dogs don’t belong on furniture, is what I would have told my sons.

Now I consider such admonitions a waste of time. There’s no future in worrying about whether a young Labrador wet from an autumnal swim in the Cloquet River will harm an old chair. She’s family. I let her be and smile as she tosses her toy in the air and catches it with her mouth, completely unaware that I am writing about her.

Driveway, Autumn 2013.

My future, my wife’s future, will be unexpected. Oh, some things about where we’re headed are predictable. There’s the same destination, the same village at the end of the road for all of us. But the journey from here to there, a journey of color and light and story and song and dogs and canoes and fishing trips and grapes and deer and Russian berries and gleaming jars of tomato sauce fresh from the garden and grandchildren and great-grandchildren is not yet charted. The details are not yet known. There will be some things that remain constant and, assuredly, there will be change. There already is.

Years back, my father and I purchased tracts of land abutting the Cloquet River in Fredenberg Township. Rene’ and I built a new home on the smallest parcel, a fifteen acre pasture that’s now the center of our small, present-sense universe. The other wooded parcels we own are sliced by trails that our family, our friends, and neighbors enjoy throughout the changing seasons. For the better part of fourteen years, we’ve been insulated and isolated from the world at large, tucked into the woods on our private little parkland. But that’s changing.

Matt and Lisa’s house gets a basement.

Our eldest son Matt, his wife Lisa, and their son (our first grandson) A.J. recently bought 20 acres from us to build a new house. Matt grew up in the country and wants the same experience for his children. (Note that I wrote “children”, not “child”. That much about the future I am reasonably certain of!) Due to weeks of dismal weather, other than punching through a new driveway, not much progress (another future word) has been made towards erecting  Matt and Lisa’s house. As days passed, as an idle bulldozer sat next to the rough gravel drive, I began to ponder the change that was taking place. I love my kids. Love my eldest son. But the property my father and I share has been a refuge from others, a place of quiet contemplation and consideration. I realized, as I drove by the newly dozed earth, that things weren’t going to be the same. I knew this before Rene’ and I said “yes” to Matt and Lisa’s suggestion that they buy land from us. But the yellow dozer sitting next to the newly carved driveway brought the reality of their plans, their future, our collective future, into focus. I wasn’t troubled by that reality. It didn’t rise to that level of concern. But there was an aspect of uneasiness that afflicted me every time I drove by the bulldozer and wondered how it would all work out.

Yesterday, the leaves still holding color, a gray sky hanging low over the land, a collection of trucks and heavy equipment caught my eye as I drove home. A cement truck, it’s backup beeper sounding an alarm, was trying to exit Matt and Lisa’s driveway. I stopped beyond the entrance to the building site, waited for the truck to leave, and then drove in. I parked my Pacficia, opened the door, a slight drizzle falling from close clouds, and approached a guy sending concrete from a big rotating hopper onto a conveyor and into a gigantic hole in the ground where a handful of men worked like ants guiding slushy cement into wooden forms; forms that will hold and sustain a house in the woods for our grandchildren.

Pouring the forms.

That’s a change, a future, that even an old historical novelist can accept.

Peace.

Mark

Tomatoes ripening on the kitchen counter.

Rene’ and I have lived in the country for nearly thirty years. We’re city kids by heritage, folks who never raised a carrot or a pea or a potato until we wandered out to Fredenberg Township in 1984 on the off-chance that the Sears house described in a “for sale by owner” ad in the local paper might be big enough to hold our growing family. We were living in a neat and trim little bungalow on St. Marie Street a stone’s throw from UMD and had been looking for a bigger place for the better part of a year. We toured dozens of homes, made an offer on one or two, but providence must have been on our side because the offers we made, offers which would have kept us in town, were all rejected. That first visit to the Drew place (a country home retains the name of the last family who lived there) I brought Matt, our eldest son, who was four years old at the time, along. Gerry and Ruby Drew gave us a tour of the house, old dairy barn, garage, chicken coop, and the seven acres that made up the farm. A neighbor, Charlie Davidson, happened by while Matt and I were there. Charlie stopped in to deliver a load of mulch for the farm’s impressive raspberry plot. I think it was the black water of the river flowing by the house, more than the home’s history of having arrived in crates from Sears and Roebuck, or the well-worn interior of the house itself, or the vegetable garden that led me to conclude This is the place. The next day, I dragged my very pregnant wife out to see the farm and within a week, our offer to buy the place was accepted.

It took a while to get the details of hobby farming down. Failed attempts to raise strawberries. Dusting potatoes for potato bugs. Figuring out how just how many beans and peas we really wanted to eat in a year. Deciding that blanched corn-on-the-cob in February doesn’t hold up all that well; that corn-on-the-cob is best enjoyed fresh, right out of the garden and that the only way to eat it in February is after removing it from the cob and smothering it in butter. These are things we learned as we went along. But, unlike most of our neighbors, whose attempts to fence out marauding deer generally met with disaster, our vegetable garden remained, until very recently, untouched by antlered foe. Our black Lab mix, Daisey (and before her, a litany of other Labradors) have kept hoofed invaders at bay. But age has crept into Daisey’s bones and she no longer has the gumption to challenge deer. More about that later

After we bought the Drew place and moved in, I approached Gerry about buying a 15 acre pasture he owned down river from the Sears house. We came to an understanding and the land was added to our hobby farm. For the fifteen years we had horses, the pasture provided hay to feed the animals through winter. But every time something would go wrong with the aging Sears house or whenever Rene’ sat in repose looking across Knudsen Creek at the vacant hay field, I knew we were getting closer and closer to building a home. It happened. We sold the Drew place, which became the Munger place as soon as we left, and moved down river. The weird thing is that, even before the first spade of sandy loam was turned for the foundation of our new house, we tilled and planted a vegetable garden at the new site. And it didn’t take long for the deer to discover the plot. So, when we moved in, I built a fence around the vegetable garden, which, along with our Labradors’ patrols, seemed to do the trick. Then, two years ago, crows discovered our corn as the ears ripened in the July heat. The birds made short work of the golden kernels and, for good measure, pulled up all the newly germinated seeds of the other garden plants, eating the seeds and leaving leafy evidence of their foul deed behind. Jack, our youngest son, tried to reproach the flying pests with pellets and BBs to little effect. Netting tossed over critical plants didn’t seem to help.

Russian berry harvest, 2013.

This summer, the corn never germinated and, cognizant of the crows, I didn’t replant. Instead, I filled the vacant rows with extra tomato and potato plants. True to the season, though a full two weeks’ behind schedule, the first crop we harvested this year was the Russian berries, a sweet, full flavored berry that grows on bushes. Next, the red and black raspberries, normally harvested in early June, but full on the cane this summer until mid-July, turned glorious red and deep black under the sweltering sun. I picked raspberries for weeks.

Red raspberry harvest, 2013.

In August, Rene’ took in the potatoes and carrots. Not an over abundant cornucopia of root crops but enough for some good meals. She cleaned the potatoes and stored them in bins and blanched and froze the carrots. I should have suspected something was amiss when she brought in the carrots. There were no tops to the tubers. The deer had hopped the four-foot-high fence and nipped the tender green caps off every single plant. But the carrots themselves were unharmed and made for an impressive display on the counter once they were all sealed in plastic and ready for the freezer. My ever diligent wife then took the berries we’d harvested, along with blueberries she and I picked at a commercial farm, and canned over 60 pints of blueberry, Russian berry, black raspberry, and red raspberry jam. She also hung onions from the garden in our basement for use in making her famous spaghetti sauce and salsa.

Onions and canned jams, 2013.

Black raspberry preserves, 2013.

I was gone on a Boy Scout outing to Canada when Rene’ did all this work. By the time Jack and I came back from Ontario, all that remained in the garden were some football-sized orange and green zuccini, assorted peppers, a few isolated tomatoes, and the pride of my green thumb: clusters of ripening grapes. That’s right, grapes. I know, I know. We’re a bit far north to get serious about becoming vintners. Where it normally takes three years to get a grape vine to produce fruit, up here in the great white north, it’s taken ten years to see success. That’s right: the grapes we grew this year began as shoots a full decade ago. When I returned home last weekend from another out-of-town trip, the first thing I did was to amble over to the vegetable garden and check out my grapes. I bit into the darkest blue grape I could find.

Still not quite ripe.

My plan was to let the grapes ripen on the vine and then harvest bunches of beautiful dark blue fruit for use in jelly and maybe, just maybe, a bottle or two of wine. Rene’s been into wine making for a few years but has always gone to the local wine crafting store and used kits to start her wine. It looked to this neophyte vintner that we’d have enough grapes for a few bottles of home brew and the two of us were giddy with excitement to try and ferment our own grapes into soft, delicate red wine.

You know what? Turns out that deer really like grapes. Those bastards are very good at nibbling clutches of purple grapes right off the vine. While Daisey nursed her hips, and the sun ripened the clutches of blue into deep velvet, those damned cloven hoofed devils were planning and scheming to rob us. Yesterday when I came home from work intent on harvesting (excuse the cliche’) the fruits of my labor, I found only a quarter of the grapes remained on the vine. Nearly every big, lush, beautiful bunch had been eaten. I nearly cried. I picked what I could, a paltry, dismal harvest, and lugged the basket of grapes and some random, ripening peppers back to house.

I need to raise the height of the fence so this never happens again.

The best laid plans…

Peace.

Mark

Grapes boiling on the stove, 2013.

Peppers, 2013.

Munger reading Miller

It’s been exhausting. Work has been demanding. School recently started up again and I’m spending Tuesday nights teaching Environmental Law to students at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Monday night, Jack and I had our first Boy Scout meeting of the year. Sunday night was Confirmation Orientation at Grace Lutheran, the church we now call home. So when my wife told me our neighbors and close friends Ron and Nancy McVean wanted us to come up to Bear Head State Park between Tower and Ely and spend the night in their  new motor home, well, it seemed like just another item added to a very long check list. But as the week wore on and work became more and more difficult, the idea of spending a night, even in a very decked out and expensive contraption, in the woods of Northeastern Minnesota, loomed attractive.

We were supposed to be on the road by 4:30 and at the campground by 6. Didn’t happen. Work ran late and by the time I pulled into our house, dashed up the stairs to pack a ditty bag for the night, and throw some fresh deodorant under my arms, Rene’ was pretty much willing to simply hang out at home. But Chris, our third son, had signed up to keep an eye on our fifteen-year old and the dogs. So my wife and I tossed our meager belongings in the Pacifica, the car loaded with dry cleaning hanging from hooks over the rear seats, no time to carry the clean clothing into the house, pull it from the plastic bags protecting it, and hang it in my closet, and we roared down the driveway intent on making Bear Head before dark. We made it and had a wonderful evening trading stories with the Kaneskis, the Kuntzs, the Chesneys, and the McVeans; four couples who make a late-season trek to Bear Head every year, I guess, for the same reason I was willing to rush up Highway 4 to get there: They all crave the down time, the hiatus from the hustle and bustle of their daily lives. Dinner was lasanga and salad and hard rolls (we were supposed to bring the garlic bread but forgot!). I opened a bottle of Rene’s homemade wine and, before the night was over, the fire had faded to coals, and the couples had left to find their beds in their own respective campers, I’d pretty much killed the bottle with only scant help from my wife. With no clouds above the white and red pines surrounding the motor home, stars poked through the black cloth of evening above us. Soon it was time to claim the pull-out couch in the camper and crash. Which is exactly what I did.

Morning. The night had been cold in the camper with no heat. Rene’ and I snuggled on the pull-out but the night still touched the top of my head. When sunlight tickled my face, I scrambled out of bed, pulled on a fleece, picked up my overnight bag, and trundled off to the shower building a few hundred feet across the campground. Though it was after eight, a time when I am normally walking into the courthouse, the campground was quiet. I met one lady on the way to the facilities. Everyone else seemed to have the same idea: sleep in, we’re on vacation, maybe the last one before the snow flies. After a hot shower and a shave, I slipped into clean clothes and made my way back to the motor home. Everyone was up. Nancy whipped up egg pancakes (some call them Finnish or Swedish pancakes or crepes) and sausages. We sipped hot coffee and talked some more about kids, life, retirement (both the McVeans are retired and Rene’ and I grow more envious of their station in life with each passing day) and then, while Ron cleaned dishes, the girls went for a walk. Nature called and, when I headed down the road after doing my business, I couldn’t find the girls. So I took a walk of my own along the shoreline of Bear Head. There was only one boat out fishing on a cool, sunny Saturday morning. A ruffed grouse peeked out from the brush at the base of the majestic pines and scurried across the trail. I walked by its hiding place, fully expecting an explosion of wings and feathers. But the bird had apparently got the message as well and ambled off into the woods without too much excitement.

Ron was still cleaning dishes when I returned to the campsite. He didn’t need my help so I located my Kindle, a device I am still coming to terms with as a book lover, and claimed an empty lawn chair. In the relative quiet of beauty, with a chipmunk and a pine squirrel flitting about on the dusty ground, I found my page in Tropic of Capricorn and began to read.

Peace.

Mark

Scoutmaster Arne Erickson

I missed a funeral this week. I didn’t want to miss it but I didn’t have much choice.

The only thing you have to do is die and pay taxes…

That’s an over-used phrase that isn’t really true, at least with respect to the taxes part. You can choose not to pay taxes. The consequence is a meeting with the IRS and maybe some time in prison.

But on Tuesday morning, when they laid my former Boy Scout leader Arne Erickson to rest, I was thirty miles away from the Piedmont neighborhood in Duluth where I grew up and where Arne volunteered his time in scouting and raised his three kids. I had a calendar in the Lake County Courthouse in Two Harbors involving dozens of complicated criminal and juvenile delinquency matters, all of which are assigned to me. Most times, when there’s a funeral or other emergency that pops up during the work week, I can get a brother or sister judge to cover a calendar. But not on Tuesday. Because the cases were individually assigned, it meant I had to be there, which meant I missed Arne’s final send off.

But this blog isn’t about Arne Erickson per se. It’s about a topic I’ve danced around the edges in blogs, speeches, and casual conversation over the later portions of my life. This essay is about mentors: folks that make a difference in the lives of children by living and acting in exemplar fashion. Arne Erickson was one of my mentors. There have been many others, some of which I’ve spoken of before, some of which I have never mentioned in public. I take this public billboard to remember Arne and the other adults over the course of my growing up who made a difference, who helped form the fiber of my being. I’ll forget mentioning some folks but not by intention: I am simply an old man with an old memory.

Mentors come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, genders, ages, religions, and political leanings. Often times, children know very little about the person providing them with instruction and guidance. We only know that someone is spending time away from their own home, their own family, trying to help raise us. Hillary Clinton’s phrase “It takes a village to raise a child” applies in spades to adults who coach, teach, supervise Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, lead confirmation and Sunday school, and the like. I experienced great role models, for that is essentially what a good mentor is,  in all those facets of my young life.

My parents of course, were my first and most thoroughly engaged mentors. My mom undertook reading to me at a very young age, instilled a sense of responsibility and order in me by assigning chores, and made sure I was grounded in faith by teaching Sunday school and leading the youth group of our tiny Episcopal congregation. When I was twelve and on the verge of puberty, Mom also made sure that our church participated in a Christian-based sex education class (which included Arne Erickson’s Baptist future son-in-law in the mix).  My dad took me fishing and hunting, taught me about politics and law, and, at least until he realized I stunk as an athlete, coached me in Little League. My mom’s cousin Lizette took over the church youth group when I was in high school. Despite the small number of teens in our congregation, she spent considerable time and energy making each monthly gathering, whether at a cabin on a distant lake for a weekend retreat or in the basement of the church, a spiritually fulfilling event. My mom’s sister, Susanne, put in her time with me as well, encouraging my fascination with the written word (turns out, she’s a writer too!) when I would stay with her during the summer at her home in tiny Benson, Minnesota. Susanne’s second husband, Paul, a former WWII aviator, a dead ringer for Clark Gable, and a staunch Republican, provided a counterpoint to my father’s Liberal view of the world. I sat in awe many nights at Paul and Susanne’s rambling house in Benson or at their tiny lakeside cabin listening to Dad and Paul go hammer and tongs about politics. My uncle Willard of course, both as a family member and as my boss when I worked for him at his West Duluth motel, gave me not only additional political mentoring; he was a man so handy with tools, his example filled a void in my practical education because Dad has no interest, and utterly no talent, when it comes to home maintenance or repair. Then there were my grandparents, all of whom, however briefly, I was blessed to know and learn from. Some of those lessons, like Grandma Munger’s loitering around the restaurant of the Willard Motel (she lived in an apartment next to the office) when I was a senior at Denfeld High School and my girlfriend at the time, a cute, smart kid named Karen, was hanging around while I watched the motel at night, were a bit over-the-top. But now I understand Grandma’s insistence in playing cards with us until, as the clock neared ten, Karen decided it was time to go. Grandma just wanted to make sure her grandson knew she was watching and that she knew what two teenagers were thinking.

Teachers and coaches. From Miss Ness, my kindergarten teacher at Piedmont Elementary who made the wise decision to put me and three of my hooligan cohorts in separate corners of her classroom nearly every day, to Marv Heikkenen, my high school football coach and one of my favorite teachers at Denfeld, who recognized in my scrawny determination something of value that he called to the attention of my teammates, to Dave Griffin and Jean Endrizzi and Miss Cohen and Judy Infelise and Gary Ames and Mr. Childs and Miss Hollingsworth and Mr. Merry and Mr. Nyquist, all of whom spent considerable time redirecting my enthusiasm to more productive pursuits; they all were instrumental in the formation of my character, as imperfect and flawed as it may be. There are many more I could name but one person in particular came to mind as I thought about Arne Erickson who has now joined my other departed Scoutmaster and mentor, Ed Salveson, in that great campground in the sky.

His name was Coach Nelson. That’s it. No first name. Honest. I even checked my Lincoln Junior High yearbooks to find his first name. It’s not listed. The caption under a group photo of teachers simply reads “Mr. Nelson”. Why am I mentioning a guy whose first name I don’t even know as an important impact on my growing up, especially when I’ve left out many, many fine folks, relatives and teachers and adult friends and religious leaders who had a hand in my formation? Here’s why.

1970 Lincoln Vikings 9th Grade Basketball Team

See the guy in the glasses and white shirt? No, that’s not me. That’s Roger Wedin, team manager. I’m the little guy to his right, the shortest guy in the photograph. If I was five feet tall the day this picture was taken, well, I must have been standing on a brick! Anyway, back to mentoring. I started playing ball in fourth grade because Eddie, that would be Ed Salveson’s son Dave, my best friend, wanted to play. We weren’t very good. Eddie couldn’t dribble but he could shoot. I couldn’t shoot but, with my head down and the ball in my hand, I could dribble like a whirling dervish. Not productively, you understand. Mostly in circles. Whatever. Anyway, we played together through Piedmont Elementary and into Lincoln Junior High. I’m not sure why Eddie’s missing from the 9th grade team photo. Maybe he was sick the day the picture was taken. Or maybe he didn’t play that year. I’ll ask him about that the next time we’re together. But here’s the point of the photograph: By the time 9th grade rolled around, and basketball tryouts were taking place, my meager abilities on the court hadn’t progressed, hadn’t kept pace with my contemporaries. When the dreaded day  for posting the team roster came and I walked into the locker room, found the listing, and saw I had been cut, I cried a river. Don’t know why. I knew then, as I know now that I wasn’t a ballplayer. But being cut still hurt. Damn it, it hurt. I managed to wipe away the tears, pull my gear out of my locker, and take the bus home to Piedmont without a major melt down in front of my classmates. My basketball days were over. It was time to move on.

But then an idea came to me.

Despite his Marine drill sergeant hair cut, deep voice, and scary demeanor, Coach Nelson is really a pretty fair guy. Maybe if I asked to simply practice with the team, he’ll let me.

I have no idea where the courage to knock on Coach’s office door came from but the very next day, I did just that. I stated my case. Coach Nelson, who had been a drill instructor in the Corps and maintained all the skills of intimidation that such a position requires, looked me up one side and down the other.

“Alright. You can practice. But you’re not on the roster and you don’t get a uniform.”

From the photograph it’s pretty obvious something changed. I showed up so determined to work my ass off, so dedicated to making an impression, that eventually Coach Nelson said “What the hell. You’re on the team. Here’s a uniform.” In fact, he actually put me in a crucial game against Stowe where I ended up guarding the team’s star, George Knezovich. In a packed Lincoln gymnasium, George knocked me down when I grabbed a rebound and tried for a layup. What the hell a four-foot-something guard was doing in the offensive paint, I have no idea. But somehow I got the ball and lobbed it towards the hoop just as George whalloped me. I got two free throws in front of the hysterical crowd. They all knew my story and were yelling my name, cheering me on. I missed both shots. But that’s not the point of this tale. Coach Nelson had no reason to let me practice with the team, less reason to put me on the roster, and absolutely no business having me guard the other team’s star. And yet, in a show of compassion to a scared little boy, Coach Nelson taught me the meaning of being a mentor.

It’s a lesson Arne and all the rest of his kind reinforced. And it’s a lesson and an example that I try to emulate every time I’m called upon to lend a hand on the playing field, in church, at home, or in Scouts.

Peace.

Mark

(That’s Coach, second from the left, second row.)

Yesterday. Rene’ scurried about the place cleaning bathrooms. I was busy manning our new Dyson Animal. With four dogs (only two of which frequent the inside of our home) and a wife who’s allergic to most everything, buying the Animal a few months’ back as a replacement for our tired Hoover was a good move. Anyway, it was clean the house day and my wife and I have divided that chore pretty much the same way ever since she returned to full time work about fifteen years ago. I do the vacuuming, the dusting, and mopping. She does the laundry and the bathrooms. Even the boys’ bathroom in the basement. Brave woman. I should have been out cutting the grass on my John Deere Sabre but the thing is on the fritz again (maybe time to invest in an up grade) so after push mowing the front lawn and trimming around the gardens and the house, I went back to cleaning.

As anyone who was awake yesterday knows, it was ungodly hot and humid as a rain forest; two conditions that make for considerable sweat when working. By the time I finished up my janitorial duties, Rene’ and Jack were gone, off to do some “back to school” clothes shopping with our grandson, AJ, at the Mall. I’d rather dust and vacuum and mop and sweat up a storm any day than shop at the Mall so I was perfectly fine with staying behind and finishing my chore list despite the heat.

When I was done with my work, I decided to wander out to the vegetable garden and score some raspberries. In normal summer, the raspberries and black raspberries we grow would be long gone. But this year, as I’ve written before, things are odd. Everything is about a month behind. The canes in the garden should be empty by now. They aren’t.

Cloquet River raspberries

See what I mean? Late August and I managed to gather two pints or more of fresh raspberries to douse in milk, spice up my corn flakes, or plop on a scoop of vanilla ice cream. When I was done berry picking, I cleaned the berries, put them in the fridge, and sidled up to our bedroom to change. Dressed in my swimming suit, towel jauntily tossed over a shoulder, I stepped onto the rear porch of our house to put on my water shoes. That’s where the title to this blog came from. When I stuck my right foot deep into my water shoe, I felt something very squishy blocking my toes.

“Kena,” I asked our new Lab puppy who was eagerly awaiting our walk to the river, “did you poop in my shoe?”

Undaunted by what I might find, I removed my foot from the rubber shoe, reached inside, and discovered the source of my surprise.

Eastern gray tree frog

We usually hear these little buggers as dusk settles in. Even out of mating season, they are loud callers. We often find them hiding amongst the logs stacked on our wood rack out on our covered front porch. This one apparently decided that my water shoe, moist and smelly, made a nice resting spot against the heat. Thankfully, it seemed unfazed by being nearly squished by my toes. I pulled the frog out of the shoe and placed it gently on the railing of our rear porch, noting the brilliant yellow splotches that run along its underside. I snapped a couple of photos and then, confident the frog would find another place to escape the unseasonable weather, descended the stairs with Kena in tow.

Peace.

Mark

You can learn more about this amphibian, and the rest of Minnesota’s frogs and toads, at http://www.herpnet.net/Minnesota-Herpetology/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61:eastern-gray-treefrog-hyla-versicolor&catid=41:minnesota-frogs-toads-and-treefrogs&Itemid=63.