from where i sit SPRING YEARNINGS March 22, 2014

Tulips, daffodils and crocus...where are you?  I want to smell sweet breezes drifting over the lake and across a freshly mown lawn; I NEED sunshine and warmth.  I’ve had it with  winter’s cold temps and icy, potholed streets!  I’ve been dreaming of Florida’s sandy beaches, and how I long to eat fresh fish on an outdoor patio.

As I write my weekly column, I’m listening to a classical music station.  It just interrupted my thoughts with more alarming news: twenty degree temps are forecasted for tomorrow!  ENOUGH!  It’s almost time for Easter dresses and straw bonnets.  LIttle girls will freeze in their finery if this obnoxious weather continues...

What’s a girl to do?  

Walking Buddy, my Beagle, around the neighborhood yesterday, a neighbor stopped to chat.  Max noted, “Have you noticed our recent alpine landscape?  Have we been time-traveled on a magic carpet to Austria’s snowcapped mountains?” 

The snowbanks must look like mountains to Buddy too.  Bravely, he climbs the treacherous inclines, often sinking into the melting pile, then struggles to regain his ascent to see what’s over the top, on the other side of the mountain.  He’s oblivious to the fact that he could sink deeper and have to push and shove snowbanks to get through the piled snow.   He doesn’t seem to mind slippery, icy spots nor the swarming mud on the street from all the trucks hauling lumber into our neighborhood.  Obstacles are a challenge to my dog.  He mounts the biggest, dirtiest, plowed chunks on the roadside to see what’s on the other side.  

Gardening catalogues are arriving in the mail, plastered with blooming iris, clematis, peonies and ferns.  I’m not a gardener; instead, I’m thinking about plowing down any remaining plants and returning the ground to grass.  Summer’s heat and humidity ruins any gardening wishes I harbor in the spring.  And weeding...who enjoys that?  Some invasive plant has taken over one garden; the other garden doesn’t get enough sunshine.  

April arrives this week.  I can almost sniff SPRING in the air...some days.  It’s an intoxicating time for Buddy.  He gets literally drunk on spring scents, tossed Dairy Queen cones and fast food wrappings abandoned by the crews building new homes on the Point.  Anything with a scent of food gets his immediate attention.

It’s time to clean the garage.  I’m eager to unveil my tiny MIata, with the red racing stripe, which has been sleeping all winter in the garage.  It might need to have a jolt from Dave’s battery charger.  I’ll have to wade through the stacked wood chunks, croquet balls and mallets, swim rafts and old tennis racquests that line the walls and rafters of our garage to get to the Miata.  Our garage is a menagerie of coffee cans with nails and screws, rusty staples and assorted boxes of scrapbooks and old toys the kids have outgrown.  They need to come and get their teenage letter jackets, graduation and sports uniforms still stored in their closets.  Andy’s snowboard, his baseball cards and electronic games might be worth something on Craigs’ list.  Kate will want her treasured books and numerous framed photographs of friends lining the bookcases in her room.

In the rafters are wooden cross country skiis, the old ones that needed waxing, as well as Andy’s baby crib, the red wagon Grandma Esther gave the kids, discarded rugs, probably stained with various dog markings.  Bikes are hanging on the walls of the garage along with assorted pieces of lumber, which Dave says he’s certain to use some year in the distant future.  

It’s spring break time at the schools.  No kids are playing in the park or riding bikes around the neighborhood.  Everyone has abandoned the neighborhood to fly to warmer temperatures in the South.  I’m still waiting for sidewalk puddles, a sure sign of spring.  Soon I have to find my tall water boots to walk Buddy on his daily constitutional.  Pot holes dug by thundering snowplows and construction trucks have plowed dirty banks and smashed ice chunks, destroying the surface of our roads around Casco Point.  Spring brings new construction and potholes every year.

By this time, I expect to hear the sound of trickling water.  I can’t wait for spring to wash away our gray skies and frozen lakes.  Like broken eggshells, ice chunks will soon push up and over each other onto the shore.  Slowly, the ice will crack and settle among dirty deposits of stringy sod, random stones, grass clippings, tree branches, dead bugs and frozen rodent carcass.  AHhhh, spring’s a rejuvenating, but messy time of year...I can’t wait!  Warmer weather would do a lot for my physical as well as mental health.  Perhaps the flower show downtown at Macy’s will inspire me and lift my spirits.   798 words

Neighborhood Influences

FROM WHERE I SIT      Neighborhood Influences             March 17, 2014  P.D. Spilseth

BUDDY, my friendly Beagle, and I have been taking walks most days around our neighborhood.  It’s noisy and crowded with lumber and cement trucks; vans and pickups are roaring down the road and parked along our narrow street.    There’s constant hammering and sawing at the three new houses rapidly rising, like Jack’s beanstalk.

My neighborhood is changing.  When we moved here in 1980, there was a wide assortment of cabins, large older homes in need of restoration, lake houses and a few modern homes.  Neighbors welcomed us with smiles, freshly baked pies and invitated us to their homes.  Early on we got to know most everyone in the neighborhood.  Dogs and little kids are always magnets to meet neighbors.

New residents say that they’ve found it too expensive to restore the older homes; it’s cheaper and more efficient to build new structures with updated electrical wiring, efficient windows, furnaces and air conditionning.  The latest look on the Point is large homes with fat pillars adorning expansive entrances.  I haven’t seen any screened in porches on these newer homes...just wait until the mosquitos arrive and buzz their open porches! 

Former cabins and grand, historic homes that gave Casco Point such character have been demolished.  One of the few remaining boat houses has been removed.  We still have the Grand Hotel, a former fisherman’s lodge with room numbers above the door and a lovely Victorian lake house, with a wide, screened in porch, next door to our home.  Further down the Point, three lake homes, built in the late 1800’s, are set high on a hill with sprawling lawns leading to the water.  They’re built like farm houses, tall, narrow and painted a pristine white.  As bigger, new homes are built, property values will rise, but taxes will also climb.  It’s not cheap to live on the water, but we lake lovers would have a hard time moving elsewhere.

Growing up in the jail, when Dad was Pope County sheriff, I knew almost everyone in every house in my neighborhood.   They knew me too, and kept an eye on me and my sister.   In Glenwood, we had older homes with wooden staircases and bannisters, a rooming house, stately two story homes with green shutters, stores with apartments above and small bungelows.  Many houses had front porches that were screened in, perfect for visiting with neighbors walking by.  Everyone was friendly: we knew where we could borrow a cup of sugar or a pound of butter.

Mama and Papa Stevens lived across the street from the jail, on Green Street, a convenient refuge for my little sister Barbie when she felt slighted and decided to run away from home.  She’d pack a little suitcase with her underwear and PJ’s , stick her comforting thumb in her mouth, grab Daisy Mae (the jail watch dog) and run to the Stevens’ house.  Regina and Earl would comfort her with cookies and milk at their kitchen table and telephone Mom to say Barbie was fine.  Daisy and Ike, Earl’s English bulldog, would sit at their feet hoping for crumbs from the table.

Next door to the Stevens house was Mrs. Peterson’s quiet home with the entrance porch where she usually sat.  She’d survey the passing parade of people coming to the library down the street, to the red brick Lutheran church to the North, or to the courthouse and jail across the street.  Mom taught her daughters that it was important to visit the elderly, like the widowed, sickly Mrs. Peterson who was lonely for company.  After school several times a week, Mom sent me over to the Peterson home to “visit” with her on the porch and suck on lemon drops, my reward in the glass candy jar.  We must have been at least 70 years apart with little in common, but we sat across from one another, me in a rocker, she resting on a lounge.  I gave her the latest school news and jail gossip.

From our kitchen window, we could see Earl and LaVanche Solvie’s garden with the tall tomato plants, onions, carrots and raseberry bushes.  Mr. Solvie was an avid gardener;  La Vanche worked at the Courthouse in Social Services.  They were often at Mom’s kitchen table, along with the Courthouse gang, for coffee and sweets at 10AM and 3PM.  Next door to the Solvie’s was Pearl, a widow, and her daughter. Next door was another Solvie family.  Vera and her daughter were my source of play clothes, full-skirted tulle bridesmaids’ dresses, veils and hats.  

Across the street was another elderly widow Mrs. Nyhammer, who rented rooms to young teachers in Glenwood.   Barb Kranch, sister Barbie’s second grade teacher, and teacher-roommate Maureen lived in rooms upstairs.  Walking home from school, Mom would yell to Miss Kranch, “Yahoo, got time for a cup of coffee?”   They would visit, drink coffee from china cups and munch on Mom’s latest batch of cookies, still warm from the oven.  Next door to Mrs. Nyhammer, was the Moens’ two-story home, which was sold to the Leafs, whose two little kids I babysat.  Mr. Leaf was my English teacher at the high school.

Up the street and down the block were lots of kids to play with. The Kvale girls, JoRae, red-headeds Rosalie and Muriel lived across the street from the Zimma house where we gathered to play dolls in Jeannie’s playhouse.  Across the alley lived the Graves girls, Wallace Ogdahl and her brother Bill.  The Ogdahls had a candy drawer in their kitchen filled with treats for kids in the neighborhood.  Across the street and up the block lived the Femrites with Mary, Sophie, Margaret, Sylvia, Joann and their two tall, handsome, older brothers Eddie and Arnie.  Also on Green Street were three more girls, whose folks owned Dick’s Recreation downtown, where I learned to play pool.  On the corner lived my best pal Luania Lewis, her little brother Johnny, and older sisters who taught us all we knew about the “facts of life.”

LIfe is different today: not better or worse, just different.  When I was growing up, mothers stayed at home to raise their kids, bake cookies, sew clothes, and do household chores.  Neighbors knew if kids were misbehaving or not.  KIds could walk or bike to their neighborhood friends and feel safe.  Unsupervised, we played in the woods by the ski chalet, built tree houses, rode our bicycles to the beach, the tennis courts and ball diamonds.  When the whistle blew at noon, six and ten, we knew to dash home for meals and bed at 10. 

Today, especially in a larger city, often people don’t know who lives next door or down the block.  It seems that people are more concerned with privacy, or they simply don’t have time to interact with neighbors.  Parents are more concerned about their kids’ safety, kidnappings and child molesters.  Many mothers work outside their homes, and stay at home dads are becoming more common.  Kids are closely supervised in day cares and are driven to lessons for music, sports, language, art... 

Neighborhoods are changing, but they’re still the best place for adults and kids to meet friends.  I love to see neighbors gathering together to enjoy a summer afternoon or families sledding on a winter day.  What could be better than kids sprawling on the lawn    picking dandelions, braiding into golden crowns and searching for four leaf clovers?    Remember how we knew they would bring good luck?  1259 words

A Post-Book World

FROM WHERE I SIT      A POST-BOOK WORLD?    FEB. 19, 2014     PAT SPILSETH

A lit-up NOOK appeared at our book club last evening!  Several club members sheepishly admitted ordering books on their Nooks and Kindles.  They justified their behavior by claiming it’s easier to travel with the lightweight digital marvels.  Another insisted that she could read in bed with her Kindle’s tiny light and not disturb her husband.  

Amazed and aghast, I wondered what was happening to my group of diehard book lovers, who usually read 3 or 4 books at the same time.  At my house, books are on my nightstand, on a table by my reading chair, even in the bathroom.  I seriously began to wonder, is technology taking over my friends’ lives?  What’s happenned to these previously devoted fans of hard-bound books in local libraries and book stores?  I dread to think of what’s happennng to our little bookstores.  Will they disappear like so many individually owed shops?  Is technology taking over bookstores and libraries, like texting and emails have replaced good grammar and complete sentences with subjects and verbs?  

It’s a bit embarassing, but I haven’t read a book on the Kindle I received a year ago.  I love real books, feeling their weight in my hands as I read.  Turning the pages, I move from my world of freezing Minnesota winter temperatures into imagined worlds of romantic Paris or exotic St. Petersberg or Carnival time in Rio.  I can be dining on the Champs Elysee, riding a polo pony across the pampas of Argentina or perhaps I’ll become a brilliant Swedish journalist solving some gruesome crime in the hinterlands.   Oh, the worlds I can inhabit!  Magic enters my world because of books and my vivid imagination.  

I know the same magical possilities are in my little, light-empowered Kindle, but I haven’t adjusted to its technology at this point.  I’m still a dinosaur when it comes to changing my reading habits, hanging clothes on a clothesline outdoors and baking calorie-laden chocolate treats..., but I’ m fhappy and content.

Circulation of books is falling at libraries throughout the country.  My local library has shortened its hours.  Sadly, they decided to close on Sunday, the lonelinest day of the week for many.  I think Sunday might be the most important day for libraries to be open.  Folks gravitate to local libraries to be among others reading the newspaper and magazines, checking out a good read, typing on a computer, or seeking a quiet spot to meditate away from the chaos of everyday life.  People look to libraries for inspiration, research, instruction and new ideas.  Those without a computer or the internet can use the library’s machines with no charge except a small printing charge.  

It’s been difficult for many people to get out of their homes this winter with the endless snowfalls, icy roads, and freezing temperatures.  The available technology of Nooks and Kindles, computers and iPads have helped readers find books, magazines and newspapers to read without going outside their homes.  Electronic downloads have more than doubled since 2011.  Minnesota is filled with historic Carneige libaries, vital to every community for many years; however, fewer people are visiting these buildings to check out books.  

With visitor numbers plumeting, libraries are exploding with new programs seeking creative ways to get people in their doors.  Musical performances, talks by local authors, computer classes and more are available to library users.  One of the more important programs is computer training aimed at adults needing computers for job hunts and other research.  Some libraries provide 3-D printers for resume printing; some see their role as a communal gathering place.  In per capita e-books, Minnesota ranks in the top five.  E-book availability is expanding.  Digital downloads could bring in a whole new group of people, those who hate carrying heavy books and those who prefer to purchase their books.

Libraries have an identity crisis as they try to be all things to all consumers and figure out a niche.  We’ve done away with card catalogues and bespeckled librarians forbidding kids to check out books, which she didn’t think are acceptable for that age and maturity level.  Today’s libraries have added playlands and interactive activities for kids, drive-up windows and eye-catching programming such as lectures on beer, with samples at a nearby pub, and classes on writing your memoirs, mysteries or romances.  Modern day librarians don’t shush patrons anymore, but the area for lIttle kids can be noisy with all their activities.  Usually one can find quiet and soft chairs in a reading area among walls of books.  Libraries of today provide a cornecopia of activities.

Whether you’re a heavy book devotee or a KIndle, iPad or Nook reader, enjoy the magic that reading books can bring to our everyday lives.  810 words

ARCHIE & VERONICA…AGAIN?

FROM WHERE I SIT  ARCHIE & VERONICA...AGAIN?  FEB. 20, 2014  PAT SPILSETH

Did you read comic books when you were growing up?  Among old photos and saved papers, I found comic books from 1972 with curling pages, slightly brown and tattered, of ARCHIE, WENDY WITCH WORLD, JOSIE and RICHIE RICH.  They’re probably collector items worth some cash!  Who knows?  The memories are priceless.

Today’s morning newspaper had an article about Archie Comics, known for its rather conservative views.  “Now it’s gaining a reputation for being the most experiemental comics publisher in America,” according to McClatchy News writer Andrew A.Smith. 

Archie Comics has entered the digital comics market with its own app, seeking projects for its characters in TV and movies.  This comic company made national headlines in 2009 exploring what would happen if Riverdale’s redhead Archie married.   Readers would probably say that this perpeturally grinning guy would marry either Betty or Vernonica, his two girlfriends.  They’d be happy forever after...that’s the way their lives always turned out way back then...everything had to have a happy ending. 

The comics tried out some modern attitudes when Principal Mr Weatherbee was charged with having a Male Chauvinist Attitude.   He had banned boys, namely Archie, from being in the girls’ only cooking class: Archie was a distraction for the girls.  The teacher, in her apron and earrings, reminded me of my Home Economics instructor Mrs. LaMasters.  She charmed the principal, calling him a gourmet whose opinion on the cooking class would be valued.  When Archie was introduced as the most outstanding student, Weatherbee rescinded his orders.  Archie broke the ice: jocks, nerds and greasers all wanted to join the class, leaving little class room for girls.

In an October issue of 1972, Archie encountered Costrophobia, the fear of high prices. Archie and his adoring bathing beauties at the beach are aghast with the prices on the restaurant’s  menu.  In another episode, Reggie tried to get a rise out of Archie by calling him “Carrot-Top”, the same name that Bob Savage, my junior high math teacher, called Jimmy Gilman, another redhead.  Savage could have added stories to the Archie comics.  He began singing “The FIrst Noel” when Noel Anderson entered his classroom.  I thought Mr. Savage was a stitch, but I bet he embarassed several other classmates.  

Remember ads for building an Atlas Body in 7 days?  The “American Physique Chest Developer” was guaranteed to increase chest measurements 2-4 inches in 14 days or your money back.  Did any of you buy those self-defense kits promising “you’ll never be afraid again”?  These Home Courses promised to teach fighting secrets in less than 15 minutes a day.  One ad promised “Your hands will have the power of an axe and you can use your elbows, knees and feet as death-dealing clubs.”  The ads featuring how to build muscles were inserted throughout the comic pages and repeated on the backcover.  I remember one ad showing some big muscled, bully kicking sand into the face of a skinny guy with no muscles, a weakling in need of muscle building.  Another ad, from BLAIR company in Lynchburg, VA., asked readers to send in 25 cents in coin for a spray perfume, a $4 value.  Extra money could be earned by introducing Blair beauty and home products to friends and neighbors.  A 40% commission could be earned on each order.  Union Sales Club of American of Springfield, Mass., offered prizes for orders of All Occasion Greeting Cards costing $2.00 for 12 boxes of 21 greeting cards.  That’s less than 10 cents a card.  Salespeople could keep 70 cents for each box sold.  What a deal!  Guess who bought into that offer as well as the “fast selling American Vegetable and Flower Seeds” where I had to sell one 50 pack order, at 30 cents a pack.   Mom ended up buying numerous packages of seeds, even though she had no time to garden as she was cooking for the jail prisoners 3 meals a day plus forenoon, afternoon and evening snacks 3 times a day.  That busy job didn’t earn her a cent in pay.

Movie producer Michael Uslan wrote the stories for the comics, but they’re being continued in “Life With Archie” written and drawn by veterans of superhero books.  The magazines of “Life With Archie” are aimed at adults as well as kids.

In 2010, this modern-day gang of Archie’s introduced Kevin Keller, Riverdale’s first openly gay character.  When some companies threatened to stop selling Archie comics, the publisher continued to produce the comics, and the furor died down.  Now Keller is one of the most popular members of Archie’s gang, the star of his own book.

Another shocker for Archie Comics is the release of a paperback whose story is an interracial romance between Archie and Valerie, a black guitarist in “Josie & the Pussycats”.  Currently, the gang is struggling to survive in a new genre, the zombie apocalypse.

“Afterlife With Archie” came out recently with Jughead’s canine pal Hot Dog being run over by a car.  Juggie turns to Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, who tries to help, but the results are not good.  Hot Dog returns to life as a zombie, bites Jughead and zombie fans know what comes next.

In the past Archie Comics featured characters and events that never changed much. Nothing spectacular happened to the kids. Today Archie Comics Company has gone from romance to superhero to horror...and it’s successful.   Has anyone seen these comics and know a store where the comics are sold?  931 words

Country Club at the Jail

FROM WHERE I SIT    COUNTRY CLUB AT THE JAIL      FEB. 25, 2014  

PAT DeKok SPILSETH

Winter months in Minnesota can be mighty gray, icy and frigid.  Today the windchill is a chilling-12 and snow is predicted.  More shoveling and achey bodies are forecast.  Hardy residents have to cope with power failures, freezing pipes and dark afternoons leading us to eat more carbs and calorie-laden sweets, which put on added pounds.  It’s not an easy life to live through a MInnesota winter!

Those things weren’t a problem for me when I was growing up.   Kids loved snow days, vacations from school that gave us time to build snowmen, build and crawl through snow forts and flop backwards into soft snow piles, fanning our arms to make snow angels.  I loved trudging through drifts to the ice skating rink at the old football field near my home at the jail.  Toasty warmth at the rink’s warming hut welcomed red-cheeked skaters and dried our dripping, icicled mittens on the wood stove as we pulled each other’s skates to prevent foot cramping.  Trees were coved with white hoarfrost; fluffy flakes floated in the gray skies.  Though power lines might be down, a wood stove or fireplace would keep us toasty warm. 

Blizzards invigorated us.  Big snows meant sledding, freezing at fishing holes on the lake and rolling giant balls of snow into chunky snowmen with carrot noses and eyes of stones.  On thin, wooden skiis, we attacked the steep, ungroomed hills at the Chalet.  Some fearsome, daring souls scaled hundreds of tiny steps that led up to the top of two treacherous ski jumps, flew down the icy slides ( some daredevils even somersaulted), and land at the finish line with a wave.  What a thrill!

Some might think that being without power for endless hours is similar to being in jail.  But that wasn’t the scene at our jail when Dad was sheriff of Pope County.  Jail was a retreat for some folks who didn’t have much family or friends or a place to call home.  Our jail was “family together time” especially in the snowy winter when we lived at the red brick jail on a hill with the Court House downtown.

The men behind bars at the jail seemed content to be warm.   Mom made homemade soups, sidepork and roast beef dinners with mashed potatoes and treated them to coffee and sweets three times a day.   She spoiled them; they loved it and sent Christmas cards to her for years after their sentences were fulfilled.  Blackie and Paul never complained; they read, slept and enjoyed Mom’s cooking.  Life was pretty sweet at the jail.

Drinking a second cup of coffee, I look outdoors at the floating flakes drifting across my windows.  I remember Paul and his gifts of charm, his dance lessons and the laughter my family enjoyed that winter he spent with us.  

Paul was a unique guy, different from anyone I’d met.  Compliments were rare at my home.  After all, we were Norwegians and Dutch.  Neither nationality favored flowery words, especially compliments that every teenage girl needs so desperately.  When Paul came into our lives, he took care of that void. He made the women in our house feel beautiful.  My little sister Barbie followed Paul around the house like a lap dog.  He had charmed Mom into letting him out of the Bullpen to redecorate the kitchen with green leaves and pink flower stencils above the maple cupboards.  It was more difficult to charm the self-conscious, acne-faced teenager with curly hair.  I’d lower my eyes and blush whenever Paul addressed me.  

Paul celebrated life even while he was our incarcerated guest at the jail.  He made a hand-lettered sign, “Paul’s Country Club, Admission 30 days” and hung it on his cell wall.  He had thrity days left of Judge Dietz’s sentence to sit in his cell with a thin mattress and stacks of paperback Western tales.   Paul thought of oodles of ideas to get out of his cell.  He was a very busy, inventive guy who knew how to charm most anyone.  He managed to con Mom into redecorating her kitchen and faithfully attended Saturday night church services in Dad’s office, courtesy of Pastor Kramer and his accordian playing wife from the Assembly of God church in town.  

He told us that when he was a dance instructor with the Arthur Murray Dance Studio in downtown Minneapolis, his schedule was completely full of patrons wanting him to instruct them in dance moves.  His smoldering, brown eyes, trim body and fawning charm were a ticket to romance with each woman who paid for his muscular arms to encircle them as they danced.  He whirled them around the dance flook, dipping them low to conclude each dance...his moves left women breathless.

I totally believed his stories, loving his tales of romance, especially when he twirled me around the waxed linoleum floor of our kitchen.  What girl wouldn’t have been thrilled?  He was sooooo smooth.   However, unfortunately, his many charms got Paul into trouble.  When he danced his way in and out of women’s lives, he forgot about legalizing his numerous marriages and divorces.  Endless dancing was Paul’s life and his downfall.  The law caught up to his bad checks and marriages to several women at the same time.   What a charmer he was!

Those days at the jail in the late Fifties and early Sixties had some of the worst ice storms in history.  Roads were snow covered and icy with several inches packing the highways.   Only bundled snowplow drivers squinting against the flying snow were able to bypass the roads.  Numbing winds howled; blizzard conditions blew us back into our houses to warm up by steaming radiators, drink hot coffee and feast on cinnamon rolls just out of the oven.  

Mom reveled in her kitchen, beautifully decorated by our inmate friend Paul.  Frosty days produced yeasty sweet rolls, chocolate chip cookies and her famous Devils’ Food cake with fudge frosting.  We coped with winter’s chill just fine back then.  Kids enjoyed a day or two off from school, and adults had some idle time to sit and sip coffee in Mom’s china cups.  1042 words