My mom, born in rural Iowa during the depression, has certain rules that allow you to magically control the uncontrollable. I love it. For example, because the weather is fickle, always garden based on the moon. See, you can control nature just by paying attention to heavenly bodies. How wonderful. Or, if you’re sick, tying an old rag around your ointment-slathered neck will pretty much cure anything. Voila, I can control illness. Or, my favorite, deaths come in threes, which of course means there’s a beginning and an end to folks dying. So, if you are number four on the death list, too bad, you didn’t make the cut. Yup, even death can be controlled. 

ONE 

“May she rest in the house of the Lord,” the priest intones, following a liturgy that was written in cold stone by Church fathers long before my time. The mourners slowly flow from the church, sad, hugging, and laughing in reminiscence.

I look towards the attached hall wondering if the church ladies are ready for the mob. 

And a mob it is. In this small-town Nebraska, there are few who the 94-year-old clown and puppeteer and storyteller and performer and matriarch did not touch in a significant way. Including her niece, my wife. For example, this woman, who saw most of the 20th century, claimed that her mother told her on her wedding day:

“Never plant a cherry tree and never learn to milk a cow.” 

Sage words indeed for those hated chores of cherry pitting and milking. And my wife’s aunt never did plant a cherry tree or learn to milk a cow. Staunch feminism or just aversion to cherry pie with ice cream? Your call. 

But this small-town farm wife was tirelessly curious. Curious about the world and curious about you. 

“What do you believe if you don’t believe in God?” she would ask. And then she patiently listened, gave her thoughts, and . . . invited everyone to a game of Scrabble. She was all about inclusion. And her gazillion grandchildren knew this as they’d tromp in and out of her house to talk to her about school and sports and whatever was on their mind. They’d leave with a snack and the unspoken assurance that they always had a place. And if any of her many guests had a story or wanted to play a game? Even better. 

Ursula, the large puppet, turned and looked at me and then back to the puppeteer.

“Joe has no hair,” Ursula says in her high-pitched voice.

“No, he doesn’t, but I think he is very handsome,” says the puppeteer, frowning at Ursula’s rudeness.

“Well, it’s a matter of opinion,” says Ursula with a twist of her puppet lips. 

The puppeteer and her puppets — she will be missed. 

TWO 

One month after that funeral, it’s raining in California. Roads washed out. Trees hanging on the thread of their shallow roots. And not a blue sky in sight. 

A good time for another aunt’s funeral.

Nearly 45 years ago, this aunt provided a home for my wife during part of her college years in Santa Cruz. I knew they were close, but did not expect the aunt to call me before the marriage. Although looking back, I should have known there would be a few raised eyebrows when we agreed to get married after just two weeks of dating. 

The aunt called.

“Do you know what you’re getting into?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“My niece is hard to live with.”

“What?”

“Your future wife is great and I love her but you should know that she is opinionated and strong-willed and moody . . . she is not an easy person.”

“What?”

I was oblivious. My wife’s aunt just wanted to make sure I was up for the challenge. I wasn’t, of course. But this aunt was all about staring truth in the face and waiting to see who blinked. She never did. She spent a life telling the truth to family, friends, and her community ranging from how to properly treat vertigo to the craziness of real estate development on earthquake fault lines. Yup, nothing was off limits. 

Of course this gadfly suffered the fate of all truth-tellers — she was not very popular with those who didn’t want to hear the truth. Too bad. She was a gift to her family and to her community. She was a bright flower under a cloudy California sky. 

THREE 

“If they would rather die, they’d better do it, and decrease the surplus population.” Scrooge from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Wandering around Ireland while visiting my daughter, I stumble across people who seem to be folks you’d like to get to know and maybe even join for a pint of Guinness or a cup of coffee. Characters. And don’t get me wrong, characters exist back home, but when you travel your antennas are out a little further and everything is fresh and new and dewy.

This applies even to mundane sights. Yesterday I cleverly observed to my wife: “Wow, look how big and yellow the dandelions are in Ireland.” And, although my wife was not impressed — “You sound like a doddering old man who comments on how tall the corn is” — I was at least doddering along with my eyes partially open. Before I tripped on the cobblestones.

But you have to be quick. Characters you meet while traveling, or even in life, usually appear in brief glimpses. They may even be on the edge of your vision or out of focus, and then they are gone forever. Like the proverbial leprechaun.

HOWTH, IRELAND

For example, yesterday I am on the train from Howth to Dublin. The train is jammed because it is a bank holiday. A man with leather pants sits down in the seat across the aisle. As I glance out of the sides of my eyes, I see he is also wearing a leather top, has long black sideburns, and long black, styled hair with a bit of a pompadour. OMG, he’s Elvis. By the time I get my camera out of my bag he’s gone. There you go … I saw Elvis. That’s what happens when your eyes are open. Elvis lives. 

And there is more.

DUBLIN, IRELAND

Here’s a chef in Dublin coming outside for a moment to get some air. Who is he gesturing at? Is he angry? Upset? Has the soufflé dropped? Isn’t all that white impossible to keep clean? How DOES that skyscraper of a hat stay on?

GALWAY, IRELAND

And here’s a woman in Galway just walking along the bay with her dog. Where does she find the time to dress both herself and her dog? Did she pick those yellow pants to match the yellow houses of Galway? And is pink her natural hair color?

DUBLIN, IRELAND

And here are some “Vikings” on a tour in Dublin. Do they normally wear horns at home? That young man shaking his fist in joyful exuberance, has he had just a wee too many pints? And how does one return to life at Wells Fargo or Nationwide or Cityview after wearing a hat with horns?

All these characters remind me of an English economic philosophy in the 1800’s that advocated allowing the poor to either figure out how to survive on their own or to die and thereby “decrease the surplus population.” 

This philosophy was given religious overtones and was adopted by the British in response to the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840’s:

“The greatest evil we have to face is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the [Irish] people.” Charles Trevelyan, British government official in charge of the “relief effort” during the Irish potato famine.

Yikes! Clearly the problem is to figure out who is a member of the surplus population and who isn’t. It can’t be Elvis, or the white-hat chef, or the colorful woman and her dog, or the Vikings with their hats — none of them seemed especially turbulent of character. And it can’t be the Irish because my wife is an Irish citizen. Duh. 

But here’s a clue:

“As in most famines, the elderly . . .  were most likely to succumb [in the Potato Famine].” Ireland’s Great Famine, Cormac Ó Gráda, University College Dublin (irelands-great-famine).

Can it be that old people are the surplus population? Certainly the present pandemic indicates they are falling behind in the survival-of-the-fittest philosophy of the British Empire of the 1840’s.

“Today, nearly 9 in 10 covid deaths are in people 65 or older — the highest rate ever, according to a Washington Post analysis of CDC data.” The Washington Post, Nov. 28, 2022 (covid-who-is-dying).

DES MOINES, IOWA

The white-haired, 88-year-old woman, wearing a jogging suit and tennis shoes, sips her coffee in our kitchen while sitting on an iron-framed bench that is less than comfortable. 

It is before 7 a.m. and she is done with her morning run.

“Grandma, how did you get those scratches on your ankles?” I ask. 

Grandma, no relation of ours, says, “Hah, yesterday back in Oregon I was pruning  blackberries in a housedress and scratched up my legs.” She laughs at herself and promptly pulls up her jogging pants and shows us the lines of scratches criss-crossing her legs.

See, a crazy older person. We can certainly do without her. 

Well, of course, it turns out this old woman is Grandma Holt, born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1904, and a graduate of Des Moines East High School and of the University of Iowa. She founded with her husband Holt ICS. They helped place thousands of kids in adopted homes, and today, Holt ICS primarily provides kids who are living in poverty the ability to stay in their homes. And Grandma Holt stayed for a brief overnight at our home in 1993. And I fell for her. 

And even though Grandma Holt is long dead, the facts of her life, like all the old people I know, make it hard to place her as morally evil. 

So, dear reader, we are left with this conundrum: who is the surplus population? Who should we marginalize? Who should we legislate against to make their lives harder? As my dear friend used to say to his college students on nearly every issue for which he already had the answer, “pay your money and take your choice.” 

In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled for characters. They will make your day. I promise you.   

Joe

So … what about the potato in Ireland?

“You call them fries, we call them chips. What you call potato chips, we call crisps.”

Emmett Maher, the restaurant manager at Beshoffs Seagrill in Howth, Ireland, is gregarious, engaging, and simply charming. He’s the guy you want to be seated next to at the pub. And he is very Irish.

I know, I know. A stereotype of someone as “Irish” is absolutely wrong and lazy, the forerunner to tribalism and the soon-to-follow labeling of a minority group as less than human — opening the door to genocide, crimes against humanity, and other unnamed war crimes — as I’m constantly told by my war-crimes prosecutor wife, who also happens to be Irish-American and an Irish citizen.

Trust me, I’ve learned my lesson.

But Emmett is “Irish” — he is openly friendly, he leans in a little closer than my Dutch-American soul is used to, he has an entertaining story to tell on nearly any topic, and, like any good story told by an Irish person, especially including my wife, the story has multiple branches that might start out with potatoes and seamlessly go to President Biden’s visit to Ireland and end with American football. All of it making sense.

And let’s not forget the brogue.

“You can’t have the meal without crushed new potatoes with tarragon butter, you know?”

Emmett says this simple phrase with a mesmerizing lilt that dances up and down the musical scale and ends, as most Irish sentences end, with a question, which is really not a question but an opportunity for the speaker to take a breath before moving on.

But back to the potato:

“… you know? With your pan-seared hake with lemon garlic butter served with samphire on the side, food has really really improved in the past thirty-forty years because all the young Irish people have traveled globally and worked in the best destinations,the Irish know their food. I mean there are 34 million Irish Americans, that’s why Joe Biden was over, Joe is a very proud Irish American. Getting back to your potato, you know the famine, we were only allowed 20 acres of land to feed your own family and when the type of the potato we grew failed the English took everything else …”

Like Emmett, I do love a potato. My 96-year-old mom, raised on a farm near Stratford, Iowa, does not believe a meal really counts unless there is served some form of potato — mashed, baked, fried — no matter. And I agree. But maybe that is because so many Iowans are rooted in the land of Ireland.

“In Iowa, the Irish were the second largest immigrant group, topped only by the Germans. They settled in large numbers in the Mississippi River towns like Dubuque and Davenport.” Iowa Dep’t of Cultural Affairs (https://iowaculture.gov/history/education/educator-resources/primary-source-sets/irish-immigration-beyond-potato-famine).

And the potato, or the lack thereof, brought many of the Irish to the United States and then ultimately to Iowa. The Potato Famine of the 1840’s was a nightmare. James Mahoney was there in 1847 and wrote of his observations:

“I started from Cork, by the mail (says our informant), for Skibbereen and saw little until we came to Clonakilty, where the coach stopped for breakfast; and here, for the first time, the horrors of the poverty became visible, in the vast number of tamished poor, who flocked around the coach to beg alms: amongst them was a woman carrying in her arms the corpse of a fine child, and making the most distressing appeal to the passengers for aid to enable her to purchase a coffin and bury her dear little baby. This horrible spectacle induced me to make some inquiry about her, when I learned from the people of the hotel that each day brings dozens of such applicants into the town.” The Illustrated London News, February 13, 1847.

And Iowa benefited from the millions of Irish who fled their homeland. They came to Iowa to work the land, to dig in the mines, to build the railroads.

And to foster a love of the potato.

But Ireland has moved on, according to Emmett:

“That day and age of potatoes three times a day is gone in Ireland, it is more of an evening staple and is dependent on the season, white potatoes, kerrs, pinks, maris pipers, then you have the organic ones as well, it depends on the time of the year and how dry the land is, you know what I mean, because the vast majority of the potato is made up of water and starch, so that is why we season them and add a lot of herbs and spices as well, there’s lots of ways of prepping that particular vegetable.”

Dead silence. But for just a wee moment. Then Emmett adds:

“What do you think about that Kansas City quarterback? You see, I love American football.”

And there you have everything there is to know about the Irish Potato.

Joe

I know it’s not a competition, but still . . .

The dark blue Irish Sea, streaked with light on the cresting waves, moves far below my winding cliff path. Listen, I get that people love the ocean. Of course it’s not the Des Moines River or even the Raccoon, but the ocean does aggressively measure the smallness of your life. And not favorably. Some people like that. Not me.

And then there’s the seagulls. They nest on the cliff walls incessantly crying that they are just slightly annoyed. At what? The coffee is too bitter? The coffee is not bitter enough? Why are they so angry? They would do well in the United States today. 

The splat of their poop paints the faces of the cliffs with bright whites against the cold stone. Apparently they are the graffiti artists of the bird world. Although these seagulls seem to be related to Iowa turkey buzzards. I’m fairly certain they are waiting for me to drop from exhaustion so they can treat me as they do a plastic bag of garbage on the side of the road — torn to shreds. Just saying, keep your eyes open.

And in front of me, with a spring and a hop, is my living-in-Ireland daughter, her Scotsman partner, and my wife. They laugh and talk and jump from stone to dirt to bright green grass, as they hike on the edge of the cliffs outside of the small fishing village of Howth, just north of Dublin. I trail behind, breathing hard, praying to not be dashed to my death, slipping on a wet stone while I stumble forward in a graceful lurching manner. They constantly check on the old man at the back, but I’m a poor conversationalist in the face of imminent death. 

I know it’s not a competition, but still . . .

To walk seems the most basic of endeavors. Right? It is supposedly THE THING TO DO based on all the old-people publications I get. Rarely do you see fitness experts advocating motocross or cliff diving for the seniors in your life. Fine. But I’ve never liked walking even during my marathoning and biking days. Walking is that slow-dripping faucet you can hear from your bed, monotonous and never-ending and mildly irritating. I’m not sure that anyone walking has actually ever arrived. Which may be the source of those t-shirt proclamations like — “it’s not the destination, it’s the journey” — something you might say to your kid when they’ve lost for the tenth time in a row. Yup, walking is not for winners. 

I know it’s not a competition, but still . . .

But as far as I can tell the Irish are great walkers. It’s not an image I treasure. I like the stereotype of the drunken Irishman. They arrive at the pub early and leave late. Well, now I know why they sit with a pint of Guinness and stay until thrown out at dawn — they have just spent the day walking. 

And like my wife and daughter and the Scotsman, the Irish are not just walkers, they are fast walkers. Every morning I wake in my lovely fishing village, drink three tons of coffee, and go on a walk. So does everyone. If you saw me walking, you might hesitate for a moment to figure out if I’m actually moving forward. “Glacial” would not inappropriately describe my walking style. Or perhaps you’ve been to a zoo and seen the Slow Loris. That’s me.

So on my hike next to the ocean, high on the cliffs, everyone passes me. I constantly veer off the path so the elderly, the infirm, and the very young can pass without plummeting to their deaths. Everyone is so very friendly. “G’day.” “How are ya?” “Thanks so much.” Or if it’s raining, as it usually is, “Welcome to Ireland,” they say with a laugh and a shrug and a twinkle. Indeed.

What would happen if I gave them just a little nudge?

I know it’s not a competition, but still . . .

I can’t put it off any longer. It is time for me to go out and walk. Wool and rain gear are the fashion. Although I must admit the clothes feel cosy today. The steep hill up to the cliffs is slightly easier. Mmmm. My step seems to be getting a little lighter. Wow. I even smile at the too-brief taunting sun. Perhaps my Irish luck is changing? Yahoo.

Then the first elderly man with his grandchild pass me. “G’morning,” they shout cheerily.

ARGGH!

I know it’s not a competition, but still . . .

Joe

The students are cautiously lining up. They are dressed in pinks and blues and reds and purples and whites . . . and, look, there’s someone in a sparkling glitter affair good for both skiing and and going to the club. Helmets are of all different shades, but it’s hard to ignore the one with giant eyes above the visor and three horns. Sure, this could be the Grand Concourse in August at the Iowa State Fair, but, no, this is spring vacation time on the slopes in Loveland, Colorado.   

The students slide their skis forward, crouching low so as to be just that much closer to their inevitable destiny. Meanwhile, each instructor is trying to shepherd the group into the correct spot. Oops . . . one woman falls before getting to her class to learn how not to fall. The rest slowly gather around the teacher. There’s my wife, all strapped in her helmet, goggles on, gloves pulled tight, skies on the ground, and just mildly terrified. 

I applaud on the sidelines. I know of her early childhood history of three broken arms at various times from ice skating and roller skating. Sliding down a snow-packed hill on narrow sticks seems a little crazy. But here she is, 65 years old, absolutely not fearless, but ready to go for her ski lesson because “it looks fun.” 

And go she does. 

While I watch the little kids ski. 

These ski instructors are saints. They have the kids “walk like a penguin” to learn stops and turns, they shake their arms and legs in large exaggerated movements to keep everyone warm and loose, they laugh and smile and cajole and praise, and then they guide these little tykes down the hill. On skies. Amazing.

How is this done?

Cody Ingram is lining all the kids up and making sure they get to the right instructor.

“I’ve been in the industry since 1997. It’s very rewarding to teach kids. It’s physically demanding, but when you take a kid that thinks he can’t do it and turn it around, it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done.”

A true believer.

“There’s a lot of difficult challenges that come with teaching kids. But mostly we focus on, first, safety; second, having fun; and third, we hopefully learn how to ski.”

Yup, I’m thinking the instructors must all be medicated. 

“We are certified as instructors, and we have child specialist certifications, level one and level two, so we learn about different learning styles for different age groups and different techniques to connect with kids on different levels. We even have instructors  trained to work with neurodivergent kids.” 

Sure, but what about the inevitable kid disasters?

“Kids get scared. We do a lot of emotional counseling, and we have a beautiful new children’s center, opened this year. If someone is struggling, we can take them inside and have some Goldfish crackers and hot chocolate and maybe color a picture. They calm down and come back out to ski.”

See? Saints. Although, as a student, I would have just bypassed the slopes and gone immediately to Goldfish and hot chocolate and coloring a picture. Who needs to walk like a penguin?

I go over to the bigger hill. My goodness, there’s a kid on his hands and knees following his dad, with his older sister acting like every older sister the world over — equally embarrassed and resigned. Obviously she is thinking, “why am I cursed with a brother wearing a three-horned helmet and crawling on his knees, who will certainly never get a date and will probably spend his life living in my basement when he’s not wearing horned costumes at renaissance fairs?” Well, sis, I love renaissance fairs. So there. 

And then I see Roger and his dad, Jonathon Jonse.

“We are done for the day. We only get a few runs. Roger’s two and a half.”

I shake my head in disbelief.

“This is our first season together and this is our sixth time coming. It’s getting easier every time. This is going to be something we do together for a lifetime, I hope.” 

Really? Why not watch TV sports and drink beer together? 

“You know, right now it is just really hard. There’s a lot of carrying. In the beginning it is a lot of cajoling and a lot of hot cocoa breaks. But that’s also good too. What I really enjoy is when we are on a run and I let go for a second, he’s going solo, and he’s laughing. That’s the best.” 

Obviously, these people are all crazy Coloradans. Duh. We Iowans know to keep our feet on flat ground and our heads focused on chores. 

“Joe! Theresa! Is that you?”

Yup, among the 500 or so people in the warming house is Dr. Joel Westrum and his family from Des Moines. Our family optometrist. Go figure. 

“It’s our youngest’s first day — she’s four. And this is another daughter, Rose.”

I think I must be having hallucinations from too much white snow glare. Do you mean even non-Coloradans torture their children?

“I kind of like it,” says Rose, who was in ski school all morning. 

Dr. Westrum explains:

“I started skiing when I was 4 or 5. My parents took us out in 1980 in a Winnebago with chains on it, from Stratford, Iowa, and we stayed at Winter Park. And after that we would come whenever we could.” 

I just shake my head and go try to find our car parked somewhere out in the foothills.

“And Theresa? How did your day go?”

“Well, I fell about 40% of the time just getting off the chair lift.”

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to laugh or cry. 

“But I survived and didn’t hurt myself. And it was great! Let’s go back later this week.”

Wow. 

Learning to ski when your over 65 and under 5 — a mystery to me.

Now, where are the Goldfish and hot chocolate and coloring books? 

Joe

“Could I help you, hon?”

I don’t know. As an old man, the bright florescent world of Target presents several unique challenges — like where in this giant warehouse is the darn thing I’m looking for, particularly when I can’t exactly remember what that darn thing is that I am looking for, and I can’t call my wife to ask her what that darn thing is that I’m looking for because I left my phone at home against her strict orders to have my phone on my person at all times so as to be able to receive other strict orders from her, and, by the way, is that the smell of hot pretzels, whose very existence proves that there is a loving God.

“I’m fine,” I say. 

“You just let me know, hon, whatever you need.” And Cathy Howard goes back to work.

As many of you know, there is a mystery to the Merle Hay Mall Target. Let’s go back in time a bit.

In the 1930’s, Iowa was deep in the Great Depression. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set up the WPA — Works Progress Administration — to pay unemployed people to work. One of these programs under the WPA was the Federal Writers’ Project. Their goal  was to put together a guidebook for every state and territory — including Iowa. So in 1938, Iowa writers and editors and journalists and historians and librarians wrote a guidebook called The WPA Guide to Iowa. 

This book is chock full of wonderful tidbits like, “Today no point in the State is more than twelve miles from a railroad.” Wow, imagine that instead of Interstate 80. Or “Hotels are available in most towns and in all cities. Rates usually vary from $1.00 to $3.50 per day.” Heck, I’d be willing to go as high as $4.00. Or “Beds of coal underlie approximately 20,000 square miles in 20 counties. It has been estimated that, according to present needs and rate of consumption, there is enough coal to supply the State for more than 4,000 years.” I mean, who knew we were all coal barons?

But the book also mentions Merle Hay Mall, or, more correctly, the earlier incarnation of Merle Hay Mall:

“ST. GABRIEL’S MONASTERY, NW. corner Merle Hay Rd. and Douglas Ave., belongs to the Passionist Order. The priests of this order, founded by St. Paul of the Cross in Italy in 1720, live a life of rigid discipline. Their major duty is to conduct missions in the Catholic churches in their area. The monastery, built of brick and cement in 1922, is Gothic in design, with a cruciform plan.” 

This means the present day Target at Merle Hay Mall sits on the grave of a former monastery.

Which gets us back to the beginning . . .

“My Target is extremely friendly. Everyone helps out from the store director on down.”

Cathy Howard later joins me for coffee to talk about the store.

“There are a lot of young employees at my Target. I see the younger employees as my kids and they take care of me. They are very patient and don’t treat me like I’m stupid for being older.”

Cathy smiles and pulls out a card she saves given to her from another employee at Target that reads: “Don’t tell anyone but you’re my favorite person to work with.” 

Cathy wipes her eyes. 

“What about the customers?” I ask.

“I’m an older person, and if I see some older people struggling, I think that’s me. I want to help them.”

“And what about Target being a former monastery?”

“I did know something like that and, by the way, there are ghosts at work. My girlfriend and I were working one day and this little red ball went rolling past us. And it was just the two of us. Pretty soon the red ball came around in a circle and went around again. Three or four times. And since then my girlfriend will see a little red ball just sitting somewhere in the store.”

And there you have it.

See, the typical day for a Passionist monk, according to the Passionist Historical Archives (a-day-in-the-life-of-a-passionist), began at 2:00 a.m. with prayer (matins) and prayer (lauds), more prayer (prime) and prayer (tierce), reading prayers, walking alone, prayer (sext) and prayer (none), then eating. Did I mention praying?

And now you understand the red ball. Duh. It’s just the ghost of a monk finally able to let loose, mess around, and be himself. 

As for Cathy . . .

“My future? Someday I’ll be the Target greeter with my little walker. I had cancer in 2006. Lost all my hair. I never had hair that I liked. I had my first treatment and my hair fell out. That bothered me.”

Cathy pauses and looks off.

“At John Stoddard Cancer Center, Peggy, I don’t know if she still works there, helped me pick out a wig. Back then I worked at Bakers Square with the old revolving oven. I’m pulling pies off and then go to the office to cool down. My boss notices my hair is on fire. My boss starts cutting it off. And I tell her to stop — my wig won’t grow back.”

And Cathy laughs uproariously at the ridiculousness of it all. 

“I am what I am. I’m not embarrassed to be myself.” 

Apparently, this is true of both Cathy and the monk who is finally feeling his oats.

As for me, I’m still wandering around forgetful in aisle 14 — wondering if I dare return home shamefaced and empty handed, although I do have this large pretzel in my right hand. 

And look . . . is that a red ball?

Joe 

Rich Krumme died the other day. Most of you don’t know him. He farmed outside of
Des Moines, Iowa, near the small town of St. Marys, far from stoplights and Starbucks. His farm was just off a curving gravel road, on the other side of a pond, up on a small rise. Livestock and hay were all I ever saw him work. Whenever I showed up he could be found standing near his barn, silver hair trimmed and combed, collared shirt tucked into jeans, and his eyes bright behind the frames of his glasses. A handsome man for sure, but any such observation would merit no consideration from him and perhaps a mild distrust. A good man? Now that is something to talk about.

Oh yeah, he was also the long-time, Editor-in-Chief of Successful Farming magazine . . . and there was that Sixth Degree blackbelt in Tae Kwon Do too. 

“Kihap,” Rich yelled as he smashed his bloodied knuckles down toward the three stacked bricks. This was not his first attempt at breaking through the blocks, and there are few things worse than bringing all your power and energy up through your feet, then whipsawing that power from your hips and waist, and finally spiraling that tornado down your arm and out your first two knuckles with a resounding ….. thud???! And the failed attempt sends all that power back up your arm and straight to your brain that starts gonging like a church bell on Sunday morning. Ouch! Your first recognizable thought is that you won’t be doing that again. Ever.

But Rich does it again. Of course. His bloody knuckles smash through the three blocks. Then, with no dance of joy and barely a smile, he looks at me and says: “I think I’m ready.”

One of the tenets of Tae Kwon Do is that a person should strive for an indomitable spirit. Indomitable spirit sounds like something a comic character possesses along with X-ray vision or the ability to leap high buildings. General Choi Hong Hi, in his book Taikwon-do, describes indomitable spirit as “shown when a courageous person and his principles are pitted against overwhelming odds.” Mmmm. I don’t know if that is helpful. How about a more Brené Brown type of approach? Like, a person has indomitable spirit when he or she is willing to accept a difficult challenge, persevere when it is darn hard, risk people’s negative opinion, gamble on love. Rich Krumme had that kind of indomitable spirit tattooed on his soul. 

I didn’t know this about Rich until I did.

Rich and I were practicing Tae Kwon Do back in the late 1980’s. We were sparring — fighting without hurting each other, not counting the bruises. Suddenly Rich said that he didn’t feel so hot. 

“Really?” I said.

“I think I might be having a heart attack.”

I didn’t quite believe it. 

We headed out to my car. Rich was in more pain. I drove him to the hospital. Rich’s only words to me: “Could you drive a little faster?”

Yup, a massive heart attack.

The next day I was with Rich at the hospital.

“The doctors say I have at most 10 years to live,” Rich told me as if explaining that he had to pick up some milk at Hy Vee. Rich’s own father had died very young of a heart attack. What does a hospital visitor say to the news of mortality? “Bummer”?

Hah. The doctor’s didn’t know Rich. Rich immediately signed up for the Dean Ornish program, followed the diet, the exercises, the meditation, the spiritual component . . . and voila, this man showed that his indomitable spirit was still intact. He was ferocious in the face of death.

But that was nothing.

A son needed help. So he and his wife, Marge, helped. They signed on to raise a grandchild — with all that entails. Parents again. And not so young. But I never heard Rich mention anything but love. Listen, Rich loved all his grandchildren (and great-grandchildren). And he and Marge devoted the rest of their lives to them. And when Marge died in 2015, Rich continued to carry the water through good times and bad. 

Rich told me this summer that he was having difficulty with his breathing. But what he wanted to talk about was his kids. Of course he did. What did I think? What about this?  What was best? In other words, he worried about those he loved and wanted to make their lives better. And then Rich said, “How are you, Joe?”

And now Rich has died. Over 30 years after our drive to the hospital, and 20 years after the doc’s prediction. There is no longer a handsome, silver-haired man waiting at the end of the curving gravel road, on the other side of the pond, up on a small rise. But I like to think that his indomitable spirit is still here, in the air, free to anyone who wants to reach out and grab a handful. 

May Rich rest in peace.

Joe

“Ah, the good old days.”

Did I really just say that?

Knocking on the door of nostalgia seems a bit of a trick bag. One person’s treasured memory is usually another person’s therapy-inducing nightmare. Take high school, for example. J.J. Watt, star defensive end for the Arizona Cardinals, says: “What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends.” Really? What I remember most about high school was a guy named Bill. He was a tackle on the football team, poor student, shaved daily, and was very angry. 

See, nostalgia can be complicated. But I’m still pretty darn nostalgic for the old law library at the Iowa State Capital.

So I go for a visit. 

I open the massive doors, walk into a large room, stop, slowly look around, and . . . it could be any library anywhere, from the one-room library in rural Mingo, Iowa, all the way to the jaw-dropping Library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. They are ghosts summoned by smell alone and they carry a reminder that libraries are a sacred space and I’d better pull myself together. So I do. My droopy shoulders straighten, my breathing becomes quiet, and my non-believing soul almost genuflects in reverence. No doubt, the smell of a library short circuits our ornery selves and powers up our better angels. 

In an article called Why Do Books Smell So Good, at ScienceABC.com, they say:

“Old books have a sweet smell with notes of vanilla flowers and almonds, which is caused by the breakdown of chemical compounds in the paper, while new books smell like they do because of the carious chemicals used when they are manufactured.”

Vanilla flowers and almonds? Who knew this about dusty old law books.

So here I am at the Iowa State Law Library, an old man, appreciating the smell and the quiet. How the heck did I get from the past to the present?

The law was an acquired taste for me. Quitting after the first year of law school to sell footlong hotdogs for a traveling carnival sort of says it all. The law and I were not an obvious match. But return I did, graduated, passed the bar, tricked a woman into marrying me, and started a career as a lawyer.

My job sent me to this library to research legal issues that any sane person would have found boring. Not me. I would commandeer a desk and work my way through book after book, mining for hidden treasure. Sometimes it would be days, just to find one small nugget of gold: one small answer to one small legal question. I loved it and I loved the library.

Times changed. The computer allowed me to sit in my office and do in a couple of hours what used to take me a couple of days. That had its own thrill. But what of the library? 

Today in the library, a photographer is taking pictures of a young woman all decked out in her quinceañera dress — a beautiful ball gown with floor length tulle and taffeta and bright colors. She looks at me with her eyebrow-raised, fifteen-year-old’s smile — “Can you believe this?” Well, actually, I can. 

The young woman and her entourage leave and I look around the room. Five stories high, books crammed in every corner, spiral staircases, polished and shining tile floor, and a central, stained-glass ceiling skylight. My oh my.

But today, this beautiful library is only visited by a few people including one old man and a young quinceañera girl with her entourage. 

So why should we keep these old law libraries? Is it a place to show young lawyers how old lawyers once walked to school barefoot across the cornfields after feeding the chickens and milking the cows — the general foolishness of a generation with one foot in the grave? Maybe. 

But when you crack open one of these books, they are full of people’s lives, from the great to the small. And the stories they tell. My goodness. Divorces, adoptions, troubled teenagers, infidelity, land grabs, assaults, murders, petty thefts. Story after story of the courts trying to protect people’s rights — right to be free from illegal searches, right to freedom of speech, right to freedom of religion, rights recognizing the equality of women, and right to marry whomever you want. In other words, the library is a depository of what makes our nation us — a nation of laws. 

And if there was any confusion about this, William Pitt is quoted just before you enter the Iowa State Law Library: “Where law ends, tyranny begins.” Amen to that.  

So, today only, right in the heart of Des Moines, Iowa, for absolutely no entrance fee and, yes, free parking, you can visit both a monument to reason and a great place to stage your quinceañera photo. Now that’s a recipe for creating nostalgia. 

Joe

“It’s not opening,” my wife says with just a tinge of panic, as the glass doors allowing us to leave the Paris train station stay firmly closed.

That’s not the advertised deal. You are supposed to put your train ticket in the slot just like you did ten miles earlier when the glass doors slid open and you got on the train. Now you are supposed to put that same ticket in an identical slot so the doors open to let you leave. 

I try my ticket in the slot, the machine grabs it, and shoots it back out. Nothing opens. 

Okay, I get it. Being a criminal prosecutor of over 30 years with a wealth of training and experience in complicated situations, I say, profoundly: ”Yikes.”

My wife and I look at each other as the few remaining passengers who got off the train put their tickets in the slot, the glass doors open, and they walk through to freedom. Not us. We are trapped. Trapped on the train tracks of Paris, France. Backpacks on our backs, heads heavy with jet lag, and feeling just a wee bit old.

I should say I’m feeling old. Not so much my spry wife. I frequently try to pretend I’m not old, but then I attempt to pull on my pants in the morning. Yup, that’s me dancing around the room with one leg in my pants and one leg doing the Macarena. But what the heck. Life is short.

So my wife and I fly to Paris . . .

. . . and of course I can’t successfully stand and take off my shoes at airport security without first doing a 30-minute stretching routine with a warm-up and cool-down and a special protein smoothy. So I sit with the other old men and fumble with my laces. It could be worse. I could fall asleep while sitting there with the other old men fumbling with their laces.

I don’t believe I did.

Twelve hours later, the bright lights of Paris shine under the wings of the plane in the early morning dark. We unpretzel our too-big bodies from our too-little economy seats and flip our backpacks over our shoulders. Time to jump head first into traveling.

And that’s really the issue. Why in the world would a person ever do this?  Why go through the aggravation? Why not stay in Des Moines, Iowa, where a retired prosecutor’s life is easy, the coffee shop is minutes away, and my dog is wagging his tail waiting for me to toss the frisbee? And there is also that small problem of being trapped on platform 2 at some godforsacken train station in Paris. 

Well . . . 

THE CHECKLIST TRAVELER

Some people travel so as to fill in their bingo card. Ah, there’s the Picasso Museum. Check, B35. And over there is a Rodin statute. N22. Two butter crepes from a street vendor. G12. Yahoo, we’ve almost won. Look, there’s a Parisian woman tap, tap, tapping with high heels on a cobblestone street while wearing a wide-brimmed, red hat. BINGO!

This is not a silly way to spend your life. Sometimes, not always, you’re lying in the dark on the grass with your sweetie, a glass of wine perched next to you, bread still hot in the paper from the boulangerie, and soft cheese tasting like dairy butter on a warm July day in Iowa. Suddenly, the Eiffel Tower lights flash and blink and dazzle . . . and you are transported. Bingo indeed.

But back to our present problem. Charles de Gaulle Airport is not Des Moines International. We bend our heads back to take in the large space. Now how the heck do we get out of this airport? So we walk and walk and walk to find the metro into Paris.

Of course, we can’t figure out how to buy the tickets once we find the metro. Of course, it’s all changed since we were last here. But look, a kind French lady who is employed to help the hopelessly befuddled comes to our rescue. And we are off on the metro to Gare du Nord, a train station on the other side of town. We hope.

We sit on the metro as it rumbles to Paris. The stops are a blur of motion and whooshing brakes and stale air. It’s early morning rush hour. Our metro car fills quickly. The aisle compresses tighter and tighter with the bodies of young and old, all wearing fashionable dark clothing, no one talking in voices louder than a whisper, and, just like when my professor in law school raised a question about class actions, zero eye contact.

Is this really worth it?

THE TRAVEL JUNKIE

Travel beckons some because it upsets the predictability of the apple cart. Sure, at seven a.m. you can get up in Des Moines, Iowa, wash your face, let the dog out, and make coffee; or, at seven a.m. you can be on the fast train to Paris where you don’t understand a lick of French, have never eaten pâté, and aren’t really sure whether you can fit in the tiny elevator at the hotel. It’s an adrenaline high because you are alive and awake. And you no longer have to be Old Man Joe buying toilet paper at the local grocery, but you can be the dashing Monsieur Joseph buying lingerie for his wife at a Paris boutique.

“Old Man Joe, why are you wearing a scarf jauntily looped around your neck, and, my goodness, why aren’t you wearing a feed cap on your head?”

“Ah, mon cherie, zis is une belle question, but it is not la question for le dashing Monsieur Joseph. Perhaps ze better question is why isn’t the Pope French?” 

You get the idea. 

Back on the metro, we are pushed towards the door with the surge of people getting out at Gare du Nord. But before we make the door, we are pushed back by the tide of people getting on the metro at Gare du Nord. Stalemate. Fortunately, I am a big Iowa boy who has pushed my way into Target on Black Friday, so out the door we go. Now, where the heck is the metro to Gare de Lyon, our next Paris train station? Do we go up out of this labyrinth of train tracks and escalators and people, or do we go deeper underground? Your guess is as good as mine. 

THE STUDENT TRAVELER

Some people travel to learn. About a culture, about a language, about a work of art. It can be anything.

We are on a walking food tour in Paris. In the group is a young French couple, Vogue cover-worthy, they are so chic. They are a bit hesitant to speak English, but they eventually are willing to answer our pesky questions about the French people. I ask if it is considered bad manners to eat while walking on the street in Paris. They assure me that it is not bad manners, it’s just not done. Why?

“Because eating is about ‘un moment,’” the young man says as if it is obvious.

Really?

In other words, you cannot be in the moment if you are not focused on the bread or the wine or whatever is going on right then and right there. You aren’t focused if you are walking and eating at the same time. Ask yourself how many times today you have not been in “un moment.” Yup, me too. 

So why travel? You might learn a better way to be you.

. . . Back in the bowels of Paris, my wife and I give up. There are no train attendants. No one around to give directions or take any bribe money. The only language heard is not ours and we can barely hear the French above the sound of trains coming and going. We haven’t slept for 24 hours and now I have to pee. 

Sadly, we will now live out our lives below ground in a sort of shadow existence, one step ahead of despair. “C’est la vie,” as the French say with a shrug of the shoulders and a mournful look. Lordy, “c’est la vie” it is.

And then a French man comes through the glass doors using his ticket, sees our dilemma, and without a word uses his ticket to pay for my wife and then for me. He smiles at us, turns, and rushes to his train.

Thank youuuuuuuuuu . . . . . . .

Mmmm, why else to travel? To be reminded that the world can be kind.

Joe

“It’s somewhere in here,” says my friend as she turns her car into the small cemetery, “but I’m not sure where.”

No one is around. The smell of aspen trees is tangy and sharp. The surrounding mountains deceptively invite an easy afternoon walk. The clouds roll in and roll out. All is quiet but for the squawk of a black-billed magpie jumping from branch to tombstone and back again.

Ketchum, Idaho is a million miles from Des Moines, Iowa. 

My friend and I circle a little further back through the headstones looking for Ernest Hemingway’s last resting place. I am expecting some kind of larger-than-life human statue or a giant bull of granite or at least a gargantuan fish in concrete. Hemingway, on all accounts, was a larger-than-life man. He should have a larger-than-life grave. I mean, really, he wrote of war and romance and bull fighting and Paris and hunting and an old man catching a giant fish. Hemingway, in my mind’s eye, is a man weathered by life and drink, not necessarily good company, but still shaking his fist at the heavens. And, by the way, not a bad writer. 

“Fish,” he said softly, aloud, “I’ll stay with you until I’m dead.”

Hemingway’s old man in Old Man and the Sea is not a wilting flower. He is a bruiser. And when I first read that story as a late teenager, I was empowered. If the old man could have honor and grace and courage in the face of certain defeat, darn it all, I could ask a girl to prom. And I did. Hemingway was my cheerleader. 

So where is that grave?

My friend leaves word up at the local bar that I’m interested in Hemingway. It’s the Pioneer Saloon in Ketchum, Idaho. The saloon displays a trove of Hemingway memorabilia. After we finish a beer, the owner, Duffy Witmer, appears at our table and tells us tales, tall or not, and “certainly not to be printed,” about Hemingway, his kids, his guns, his legacy, and “never before told facts.” Duffy, not a young man, is a winking leprechaun and we are charmed. Another beer please. 

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.” Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me. “Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

The Sun also Rises was Hemingway’s debut novel in 1926, portraying the “lost generation” that survived the horror of World War I. The story revolved around Brett and Jake who loved each other but could never consummate that love because of Jake’s war injury. The story hit a nerve later in college when I felt lonely and deformed by cystic acne and self-consciousness. “Me too, Jake, me too” was my conceit, as the car drove off with me squeezed in-between Jake and Brett. 

“I see something over there.” And we circle around to a flat grave between two aspen trees. 

Later in life I would travel to Paris with my wife and Hemingway’s posthumous book, A Moveable Feast — about Hemingway’s experiences with his first wife in Paris and with the painters and artists and writers that were working in Paris during that time. I traipsed around the west bank of the Seine pretending that I too was a young writer in the 1920’s. I ignored all of Hemingway’s catty criticisms of fellow writers and instead focused on the places he mentioned, the food he ate, and the wine he drank. I wanted to live in a garret. I was thrilled.

Hemingway committed suicide at his Ketchum home on July 2, 1961. He was 61 years old and was in physical and mental pain from a lifetime of injuries . . . shrapnel wounds driving an ambulance in Italy, broken bones from various car accidents, crushed vertebra and ruptured liver, spleen and kidney and first degree burns from two plane crashes, and at least nine concussions . . . and from life. 

In Lillian Ross’s  article in 1950 (how-do-you-like-it-now-gentlemen) in The New Yorker, 11 years before his death, Hemingway says to her:

“Only suckers worry about saving their souls. Who the hell should care about saving his soul when it is a man’s duty to lose it intelligently, the way you would sell a position you were defending, if you could not hold it, as expensively as possible, trying to make it the most expensive position that was ever sold. It isn’t hard to die.”

Without a doubt, the criticism of the man and his writing was there from the beginning. “Toxic masculinity” is the typical critique. More recently, in The Daily Beast in 2018, Allen Barra wrote “Why the Hell are we Still Reading Ernest Hemingway?“(why-the-hell-are-we-still-reading-ernest-hemingway). Barra reviews biographies and articles and Hemingway’s letters and concludes: “Long before a subdural hematoma suffered in a 1944 auto accident, after which his alcohol-fueled behavior became increasingly irrational, Hemingway was a bully, braggart, and myth-monger.” Ouch! Barra also finds that most of Hemingway’s writing is not very good — with the exception of his short stories.

Really?

George Plimpton interviewed Hemingway for the Paris Review in 1958 (the-art-of-fiction-no-21-ernest-hemingway). Hemingway talked about his writing and concluded:

“Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.”

And isn’t that the message? All the judgment of the man and his life is certainly interesting, but at the end of the day aren’t we left with the written word? And, like Barra, you can certainly find that lacking. But if his words change how you think about things, isn’t that marvelous?  

At last we find his grave. An unpretentious and dignified resting place. Bottles of liquor and pens and notes and pencils and coins litter the top of the flat tomb. Either an honor or a desecration. Hard to fathom. Like the man himself.

We are silent. The air is still. The sun comes out from the clouds. And the magpie jumps between branches and tombstones. My friend turns and suggests that we get a strawberry shake. So we do. 

Joe