Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

Today after a traditional Catholic Mass at Holy Family Catholic Church in Duluth’s West End (my mother-in-law was born, raised and lived in the shadow of the ore docks and would never, I repeat never, call the West End “the Lincoln Park District”), my four sons and four of their male cousins will carry Grandma to her place of repose. There will be tears. There will be hugs. There will be the perpetual mist of a June day in Duluth. There will be some holy words of comfort from the priest. And then, slowly, inexorably, we will move on with our lives. Family gatherings, events, weddings, baptisms, confirmations, birthdays: All those times when Grandma would usually be present will roll on without her. Or, at least her physical presence.But she’ll be there. Mercedes Ann Privette, a woman I’ve known as my mother-in-law for nearly thirty-three years, will be there in spirit. I know this why? Because Merc never missed the chance to have a good time.

My favorite picture of Merc and me is otherwise occupied today. If it wasn’t pasted up on the picture board at the church, awaiting the continuation of the wake we began last night, I’d share it with all of you. It’s a photograph taken of Merc at the reception, on the day I married Merc and Don’s third child, Rene’ Kathleen Privette. We had a big wedding at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Duluth. That was back in the days when the Catholic and Episcopal Churches, at least locally, got along well enough to allow joint weddings. We had a Catholic priest and an Episcopal priest do the service. It was pretty cool. And it made Merc smile. She would, I’m sure, have preferred that her daughter stayed within the Catholic Faith, within the soft, comforting familiarity of Catholicism rather than join me in Protestantism. But she never vocalized any such thing. Not a once. Not at a baptism or a confirmation or any other event she attended at our church. Anyway, back to the picture. There’s a much-younger-looking me in my white tux pants, and white ruffled shirt (sans jacket, tie and vest) holding Merc by the hand as the two of us jitterbug to the Mike Myers’ Band. Merc’s concentration is not on her new son-in-law. It’s not on the crowd watching us shake it. It’s on the floor, watching her feet, making sure every move is just right. Her long salmon colored gown is shifting with her hips. Her perpetually white hair, piled high on her head (not unlike the ever-present blue headdress of Marge Simpson) is perfectly straight and regal: totally and wholly unaffected by our gyrations. Despite the pressures and the anxieties attendant with putting together a big wedding, that photograph, more than any other in our wedding album, reminds me of why I married Rene’: She, like her mother, loves a good time.

These past few weeks, during which an ear infection went from being an annoyance to plunging my mother-in-law into a coma (from which she never revived) have been anything but fun. The body that lay in St. Luke’s Hospital hospice, the body the chart said was Mercedes Ann Privette was, in some fashion, that of an imposter.  For me, when Merc stopped being able to laugh at my stupid jokes, when she stopped being able to flash anger at me if I tread too close to her beloved Catholic church in our discourse, when she no longer could amaze me with her encyclopedic knowledge of dead movie stars, she simply stopped being. Her heart kept at it for another week. But the woman I knew as the mother of my wife wasn’t there as her four daughters and son gathered to say the rosary at her side.

What I will remember, rather than the sadness of the last days, is Merc’s final trip out to our place in Fredenberg, the site of many, many family gatherings over the years (including Merc’s 80th birthday party). Rene’ picked her mom up and brought her out to relieve some of Merc’s anxiety about having moved (separate and apart from her husband, who was placed in the Benedictine Nursing Home due to his health) out of the family home into Heritage Haven Assisted Living. The idea was to take my mother-in-law’s mind off her new circumstances. We ordered food from the Eagle’s Nest Resort. Merc predictably chose baked chicken. I popped the cap on a bottle of Miller High Life for her (she always loved a beer or two with dinner). Then, after finishing our food, the three of us settled in on our front room couch to watch “Giant”, a great old movie starring Rock Hudson, James Dean, and Elizabeth Taylor. Merc couldn’t really see the screen all that well: Her eyes had been failing for years. But she followed the dialogue and added bits and pieces of movie trivia throughout the flick. She was supposed to be back at the assisted living by ten. Ten o’clock came and went but the movie wasn’t over. Merc and Rene’ conspired and Merc stayed until the credits were rolling. She was late. She’d missed curfew. But, what the hell? She was 86 years old and entitled to a little mischief. I gave the little woman with the high white hair a hug, feeling for the last time that slight, slender girl who once danced and roller skated with abandon during her single years.  And then, she was gone.

Today will be hard on my wife and her sisters and her brother. It will be hard on the eight grandsons who carry Mercedes to her place of repose. It will be hard on the granddaughters. It will be hard on Donald, her husband of 59 years who is left behind. It will be hard on me. My dancing partner is now cutting a rug in another venue.

Peace.

Mark

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

Eight paddlers. Four canoes. Eighteen miles of mostly gentle river. What could go wrong? My wife and I are not avid wilderness buffs but, over the course of our relationship (going on 35 years this summer; married for 33) we’ve enjoyed the occasional foray into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness with friends or family. Last year (see “Low Water” in the Blog Archives of this site), our eldest son Matt, his wife Lisa (who had never been in a canoe), Rene’, our youngest son Jack, and I paddled Hog Creek into Perent Lake for a fairly uneventful and bucolic stay. This year, looking at looming book selling events, grad parties, baseball and soccer games, it didn’t look plausible to do another BWCA trip over Memorial Day weekend.

Why not take the canoes from our place down to Independence? That’s only a six hour paddle on very easy water.

When I broached the topic with my wife, she was all for it. When I emailed our three oldest sons, the response was negligible. It took some doing to corral their agreement. We set Sunday of Memorial Day weekend as the day for the big trip. Rene’ and  I would supply the pop, beer, chips, candy bars, canoes, paddles, life jackets and such. The boys and their significant others (Dylan’s girlfriend Shelly and Matt’s wife Lisa) would supply the memories. As the weekend approached, I kept a close eye on the weather. Saturday night, it still looked “iffy” to launch the canoes on Sunday. But Weather Underground predicted partly sunny skies and no rain until late in the evening.

It’s only a six hour trip, I thought to myself. If we get started by ten, we’ll be off the river long before the storm.

Logistics were completed by driving three cars, including my Pacifica towing a snowmobile trailer, to the parking lot at Independence. Matt drove his Outlander. Dylan drove Rene’s Matrix. We left the Pacifica and Matrix at the take out point to haul eight canoeists, four canoes, and all our gear back up river.

“Dylan, did you take the keys to Mom’s car?

“Right here in my pocket, Dad,” my second son said, patting his jeans.

The canoes hit water around noon. Trying to round up eight people and get them motivated to spend six hours in canoes on a day where the sky, though not raining, threatened to do so, wasn’t as easy as I’d thought. Still, once we were all seated and on the water, paddles dipping silver and the poetry of flowing water beneath us, I, at least was in heaven.

This is what I live for.

Chris, my third son (who had nearly backed out of the trip) fishes the river every week. He was hard at it as our canoes moved slowly to the west, a pewter gray sky, an ominous sky, overhead. He cast and cast and cast from our place to the first stopping point, Hunter Lake, where two loons dove beneath our canoes, appearing as black and white torpedoes in shallow water.

“I’ve never seen them up close like that,” Lisa said. snapping photos. “They’re beautiful.”

Earlier, as if on cue, a mature bald eagle had alighted at the very top of a white pine and taken notice of our presence. The newcomers to the river, Shelly and Lisa, were suitably impressed. The majestic bird led us down river for a bit until it found something else of interest and soared off.

Sometime later, we pulled up on the river bank and ate sandwiches. Dylan yanked wood ticks off him like fleas off an old dog. Speaking of old dogs, Shelly and Dylan had a duffer in their canoe: Layla, a black lab/shepherd mix who spent most of the journey patiently observing the antics of the humans around her from a bed in the bottom of a canoe. About the only excitement the dog was able to conjure up for herself was playing with the rotting carcass of a dead snapping turtle that Dylan took away from the dog and tossed into deep water.

At Bowman Lake, Chris caught a walleye, which prompted Jack and Chris to lag behind. Chris caught another walleye but a fool with a high powered outboard (better suited for Lake Vermilion than the tiny ox bow off the Cloquet River) kept roaring and revving the big motor, disturbing the tranquility and the fish.

Just past Bowman, we ran into some old friends, Mary and Pete Bauman, whose sons had played sports with Chris and Dylan. The couple was enjoying the river in two small kayaks, fishing occasionally and paddling easily. Mary snapped the picture for this article sometime during our drift down to a new boat launch below Bowman Lake.

Between the lake and the landing, we were blessed to see a pair of osprey guarding their gigantic nest of sticks and twigs set high atop a power pole. The birds circled us, chirping alarm, as we floated on by and marveled at their wing span and their grace.

“A porta potty”, someone in our group said excitedly as we followed the Bauman’s to the new launch. Those of us who needed to use the facilities did so. The rest of our group exited canoes and stretched weary limbs.

The shoulders don’t move quite the way they used to.

“How far you going?” Pete asked us as we clambered back into our canoes.

“Independence.”

Pete paused for a moment and then said, somewhat mysteriously:

“Good luck with the rapids.”

I had done this trip before. Maybe fifteen years ago. I recalled one set of rapids, a fairly modest riffle, that we waded through in low water. Pete’s admonition didn’t seem to square with my memory.

“We’ll be fine,” I expressed with confidence.

The little rapids below where the Cloquet River Inn used to sit  (a quaint old burger and beer joint that was once a primary destination for canoeists but has since closed) didn’t cause any of the three canoes in our reduced group problems.

“I wonder if Chris and Jack will just go over to Dave’s and call us for a ride?” I thought aloud, knowing that the lure of walleyes at the junction of Bowman Lake  (where my friend Dave lives) and the river likely held sway over my third son.

Matt tried to reach Chris via his cell phone as we left the landing.

“Why do you have a cell phone with you on a canoe trip?”

“Never know when you’ll need it.”

“Electronic devices are forbidden on Munger canoe trips,” I said, pointing to the portable radio he had stowed in the bottom of his canoe so he could keep tabs on the Minnesota Twins.

There was no response from Matt.

Below the Highway 48 bridge, we started catching smallmouth bass. Chris, who had caught up to his lolly gagging parents and siblings,  was the first to pull one in. Then Matt landed a nice fish. Finally, Rene’ (who essentially duffed the entire trip so she could fish) landed one.

“How far to the cars?” Matt asked.

“About an hour,” I said.

Chris chuckled.

“Try about two.”

“No way. We’ll be there by six.”

“Try seven thirty.”

The sky doused us with modest rain.

We ran the first sets of rapids near Lost Lake without incident.

“I’m not running the rapids by the highway,” my wife announced after we cleared the last of the boulders.

“Oh yes you are.”

“Oh no I’m not.”

She returned to fishing. She caught a half dozen more bass and two nice walleye which we released. The day was about over when I finally got the message: The trip is not a six hour trip when everyone is fishing. It’s more like an eight hour trip. We’d be lucky to make the cars by dark.

“How far to the landing again?” Matt asked.

I didn’t respond. Chris chuckled.

As we entered the third set of rapids above the highway, Dylan and Shelly found their 18′ Grumman square stern  (a beast of a canoe for running white water) caught sideways. Layla, sensing a lost cause, lept from the canoe, flipping the vessel and sending the two young folks into the froth. Luckily, the water was only waist deep and wasn’t cold. The kids were fine but their gear and the canoe were another matter. Absent the weight of the paddlers, the canoe broke free of the rocks and sped downstream. Matt and Lisa caught the Grumman and brought it to shore. Rene’ and I retrieved gear further downstream and waited for everyone to catch up. Then we plunged through another set of rapids as a group without incident.

“I lost my cell phone,” Matt lamented.

“In the water?”

“No, I left it in the woods when I was going potty.”

Hence the prohibition against electronic devices.

Rene’, true to her word, exited the canoe at the next big riffle and made me pilot the craft solo through the rocks. I was nearly free of the turbulence when, to answer a question about the route from Dylan (who was a few yards upstream from the rapids waiting to descend) I turned in my seat and promptly found myself waist deep in the Cloquet. The canoe was fine: I maintained a grip on the stern and eased myself back in. But my pride was mortally wounded. I picked Rene’ up on the bank and proceeded downstream. Matt and Lisa were on shore, emptying water from their canoe. They had flipped their canoe in the rapids and had managed to fill the thing to the gunwales. It was a slow process emptying the Old Town by using a cooler as a bailing bucket.

Of the canoe captains, only  Chris escaped a dunking. Rene’ and Jack stayed dry by leaving the rapids to others and walking. Despite her protests, Rene’ and I ran the final set of rapids without difficulty.

At the landing next to Highway 53, I emptied our red plastic Coleman, a perfect canoe for a rocky, shallow river like the Cloquet, and portaged it to the waiting trailer. By the time I got back to the landing, evening’s gloam falling, my teeth chattering, we had a new problem.

“I can’t find Mom’s keys,” Dylan said as he checked the pockets of his soggy jeans.

“Did you lose them in the river?” Rene’ asked.

Our son paused.

“I think I left them in Matt’s car. On the console. I spaced out that we needed them.”

I took a deep breath. I’d miscalculated the length and difficulty of the paddle. The DNR map said the rapids we encountered are Class I, doable if you’re a novice. Well, maybe in an empty canoe with good water. In modest flow, with dogs and coolers and fishing gear, not so much.

“I messed up too,” I admitted. “We’ll work it out.”

The ride back was agonizingly slow. With four canoes strapped to the trailer, the load wanted to buck and pitch as soon as we left Highway 53. I drove 20-30 miles an hour all the way home. During that long drive, the title for this piece came to me.

“You know what we did today, kids?” I asked the three women and Jack.

“Got wet?” Shelly offered.

“Caught fish?” Rene’ asked.

“No, we made memories.”

“You got that right,” Lisa chimed in.

“That’s what I’m all about; making memories.”

The keys to Rene’s car were right where Dylan left them. Sopping wet, I drove Matt’s Outlander back to Independence. My three oldest sons and I loaded soggy equipment and clothing into the vehicles. I drove the Matrix. Matt drove his Outlander. It was after ten and quite dark by the time our journey ended. But there was no doubt: We  had made some memories.

Peace.

Mark

Wake to the alarm at 6:00am. Make coffee. Exercise to “Body Electric” at 6:30am. Make the bed. Shower. Shave. Dress. Get Jack ready for school. Drive Jack to school. Get my ass to work. Deal with children in need of protection or services. Eat lunch at my desk. Set the alarm clock. Take a nap at my desk. Wake to the alarm. Deal with criminals. Drive home. Toss the baseball with Jack (still in my dress clothes, my tie flapping as I throw the ball). Change into casual clothes. Drive Jack to Boy Scouts. Take a trip to Office Max to pick up paper for the printer. Drive back to Boy Scouts. Chat with some other dads. Pick Jack up. Drive home. Try to get Jack to help carry the canoes down to the racks next to the river. Fail at that. Portage all three canoes (including the 18′ Grumman square stern) by myself. Feel my low back, where the fusion holds things together, cry out in protest.

And then the best part of my day happens.

The gloaming: that time of dusk or twilight when the sun settles below the ridges and trees along the river to the west, and the light begins to fade over the silver black water. I sit on steep wooden stairs leading to the Cloquet River. Mallards quack and fly against blue turning black. A pair of wood ducks races towards the Island Lake dam. A buck snorts across the hollow across the river. Daisey (our black lab mix) ambles down the stairs on arthritic hips and sits with me as the sun descends. The dog is needy. Her warm nose nuzzles my calloused hand for attention. I scratch her ears. She yawns, leaps an old dog’s leap from stairs onto the riverbank and slurps cold water with greedy delight. I hear no Canada geese bugling overhead. I hear no ruffed grouse drumming in the forest surrounding my place of contemplation. I hear only the occasional lament of a lone male mallard in search of love and the whine of tires against asphalt as cars and trucks speed over the bridge upstream from my sanctuary.

“Look,” I say to Jack, who’s now standing on the broad back lawn of our place.

Jack’s view of what I see to the east is blocked by trees. He moves. He still can’t see the miracle. He walks towards me.

“What is it?”

I simply point.

He walks a bit more. His eyes scan the treetops marking the edge of our field.

“Wow. I thought tomorrow was the full moon.”

Big, yellow and pockmarked, a nearly complete moon stands just above the crowns of a line of mature Norway pines.

Later, Jack and I take a hot tub under the yellow glow of Earth’s only natural satellite and talk about our day and what tomorrow will bring.

There is quiet in the valley as we close the cover to the spa and head into the house.

Peace.

Mark