Going to the mountain top to seek wisdom isn’t exactly a new idea.  Heck, Moses must have worn a path with his frequent up and down visits.  I particularly like the notion that there is a wise man or wise woman ensconced in a cave at the top of a mountain.  Just think about it.  You merely have to make your way up the mountain, ask the right question of the guy or gal on top, and the scales will fall from your eyes.  Wow.  I’m all for it.

So, my wife and I headed up the mountain.

Well, not immediately.  You should know it is harvest time in the south of France.  It’s running about three weeks late.  We discovered this when a miniature tractor appeared in a small village we were visiting.  I was a little disappointed when the driver failed to throw candy and wasn’t wearing a Shriner’s hat, but then I saw the trailer.

Yup, that would be grapes.  A cart full of grapes.  And it’s heading to France’s variation of the Iowa corn elevator, the winery, where the grapes will get weighed and sucked into vats.  So, of course we had to visit several wineries to see if they were making wine correctly.  It turns out they were.

In this pursuit, we came across the small, sun-dazzled village of Seguret, found in the foothills around Mont Ventoux — yes, the same Mont Ventoux of Tour de France fame.

Lucky for me, my wife had done some reading and knew of a winery tucked behind this village.  Somewhere up the mountain.

As a starter, you should know that I have a minor problem with driving up the side of a mountain.  Sure, I know you love the wooden roller coaster at Arnolds Park.  And, yes, you have a season pass to Adventureland.  Great.   But a cliff on one side of the road and a rock wall on the other is not my idea of a good time.   Just think about it.   All it takes is the driver to give a polite cough, correctly turning her face into the crook of her elbow for proper hygiene, and suddenly you’ve veered off the road, plummeted down the cliff, and turned into liver pate at the bottom of the mountain.  Not a good thing.  Certainly a compelling and reasonable argument for any sane person to NOT go up the mountain.

So my wife drove us up the mountain.

A good decision, we both agreed.  The mile we traveled in reverse gear because of a rogue grape combine coming down the single-lane mountain road could have happened to anyone.  And, yes, I got a little vertigo from the winding back and forth, but it might have been from the excitement of being up so high without any guard rails.  And the continuous narrowing of the narrow road as we drove higher?  A wondrous increase in anticipation.

At the top, when I looked up from kissing the ground, there was Walter McKinlay.  He was working the grapes just unloaded onto the conveyor belt by the tractor.

McKinlay is an Englishman, who lived in Scotland, and now is the proud owner of Domain de Mourchon.  He’s literally at the top of the mountain.  No kidding.  He harvests, produces, and sells “grands vins des Cotes du Rhone” in the south of France.

“I am 80 years old.  Born in 1933.  You don’t believe me?  Here, look at my passport.  What does it say?  Yes, 1933.”  He smiles and works the wine counter like a pro.  Pouring us glasses to taste, he tells his story.

“We needed to leave Scotland, you see.  We needed to live in warmer climate.” This after a highly successful career in IT support for North Sea oil companies.  “So we said: ‘Why don’t we buy a vineyard in the south of France?'”  He laughs and dances around the counter pouring wine.

“When we decided to do all this it was a bit tough in the beginning.  We bought it when it was 17 hectares, 40 acres, just the vines.  Not a weed to be seen.  A lot of chemicals had been used.  We don’t use chemicals.  We are moving towards totally organic.  We are year four of six to be organic.  There was no winery here.  The house was in ruins.  And we didn’t really know what our wine was going to be.”

Now, his business is a grand success.  Written up in multiple publications, and a must-see stop on the Rick Steves’ tours.  Pretty amazing.

“My dad, a Scotsman, married an English gal.  I was called, you never heard of this word, a Sassenach.  A Sassenac is a half-breed.  And here I am in the south of France.  My wife and I on one side of the valley, my daughter and son-in-law on the other.”  He smiles.  A successful smile.  This is a man who has reached all his dreams.  He appears truly happy.

And his marriage?  “My wife, I must tell you about my wife, we’ve been married 54 years.”

Ah, at last we get to THE question.  That question that will make all this worth it.  “And what is the secret to such a long marriage?”

He pauses.  Looks down.  Harrumphs a little to himself.  Then says with a twinkle: “She puts up with me.”

He pours us another taste of another great wine.

Okay, that’s it?  “She puts up with me.”  These are the words of wisdom from out of the cave at the top of the mountain?  A 54-year marriage and “she puts up with me”?  Really?  You put up with the flu, right?  Or sometimes you might put up with a bad back.  Or maybe you put up with a rock in your shoe.  But put up with your husband?

My wife gently guided me back to the car, adjusted my seat belt, and drove us down the mountain.

Joe

“South of France.”  I never thought I’d see those words in anything but a trashy romance novel.  You know, that same old story where Blake, the Chicago fireman, says to Rose, a kindergarten teacher: “Darling, how can you leave me now after I’ve devoted my life to saving widows and small dogs?”  And Rose coyly responds: “Oh, I have no choice but to go with Henri to drink flutes of wine while his pilot flies us to the south of France.”  See, there it is.  “South of France.”  But no one really goes to the south of France.  South of Des Moines?  Sure, people go there.   Heck, even I have been to Graziano’s Grocery on the south side.  Multiple times.  Without a pilot.  But south of France?  I don’t think so.

So, here we are in the south of France.  In the small village town of Vaison-la-Romaine.  For me, it is vacation from my vacation in Holland.  It is an exhausting life.  When I’m not eating pastry and drinking wine, we are walking the cobblestone paths in the medieval city up on the mountain looking for places to eat pastry and drink wine.  I’ve tried to convince my wife that eating pastry and drinking wine must be what they mean by the  Mediterranean Diet.  She seems unkindly skeptical.

But in the course of climbing to the high castle in the medieval village, I was a little perplexed.  My confusion began as the small path became steeper and steeper, and as the cobblestones became more and more eroded and dangerous to walk upon.   I was gasping a bit for air as we slipped and slid on the ancient stones, when around the bend came a woman in three-inch heels and dressed in her Sunday best, clutching her purse.  And, by the way, not a young woman.  In deep discussion with the man at her side, she might have been strolling at Jordan Creek Mall as she tip-tapped across the cobblestones.  Instead of the Apple Computer store below her on the first level of the Mall, there was a 300-foot cliff with no guard rail.  Otherwise, it was a Sunday stroll.

Fine.  It must be some local eccentric out for a walk.  Right?  Then, coming down from the mountain top, we passed another woman, perhaps in her early eighties.   She was wearing  high-heeled, scarlet suede shoes and a dress.  You heard me correctly — scarlet suede heels.  When I offered her an arm at a particularly steep section, she broke into a wide, big smile.  “Non, merci, ca va,” and strolled on.   I couldn’t make this up if I wanted.

Finally, on a steep portion in the middle of the climb, there was an elderly man navigating the treacherous cracks in the cobblestone.  To my eye, he was perilously close to tumbling down the mountain path as he wobbled precariously.  As I passed, thinking I’d rather not witness his imminent fall to death, I saw he was walking with a thin wooden cane.  On cobblestones.  Successfully.  Okay, that’s enough of this.

What is going on with these people?  Are they some kind of mutant race of super French Methuselahs?

I found the answer on the other side of the mountain stream, which is home to the original village.  As in . . .  the original Roman village.  This Roman village is remarkable in that the ancient streets, house foundations, statutes, and a 6000-seat amphitheater are preserved.   All from around the 1st century B.C. to the 3rd century A.D.  Older even than the Polk County Courthouse.

Pretty amazing.  But that’s not the key to the mystery of this super race of humans.  Check out this close up of one of the ruins.

Yup.  All you who have ever visited a two or three-hole Iowa outhouse will immediately recognize the camaraderie of this six-hole set up.   The mystery is solved.  The French of Vaison-la-Romaine descended in part from the Romans.  And those Romans were the kings of flowing water.   Flowing water worked perfectly as an automatic flush while the Romans sat on these cold stone toilets.  Cold stone toilets created a hardier stock of inhabitants.  Thus, French octogenarians are climbing up the cobblestone paths of mountains because of cold stone toilets.

See, travel does broaden your mind.

But what of Henri and Rose in our romance novel?  Ah, good question.  All I could find was a white slip hanging in a darkened window late on a chilly night.  With both shutters flung wide to catch the light of the moon, I’m sure her own pair of high-heeled, scarlet suede shoes were carelessly discarded in the center of the room.   Such is romance in the south of France.

Joe

Safe houses are good things to have in your survival bag.  Lord, life is complicated enough what with recent droughts, floods, tornadoes, and man-made craziness.  You need a place to go that makes you breathe more slowly and smile just a little.  And maybe where you can ask your mom, who is holding a cool wash rag to your brow, to rub your neck at that one sore spot.  Ahhhh, that’s it.  A safe house.

That is the small difficulty with travel.  Where are your safe houses when you’re 4338 miles from the nearest Hy Vee?  And it’s particularly a problem when you’re just a tad bit anxious before you ever leave town and are going to live in, say, the Netherlands.  I mean, really, I’m about to get into a 650,000 pound hunk of metal and fly across water?  Lots of water?  I was fortunate that my doctor prescribed medication so I could walk onto the plane without embarrassing my wife by crying and screaming and diving into the pond in front of the Des Moines International Airport.  Unfortunately, I was so nervous when I took the medication to make me not nervous, that the little not-nervous pill refused to go down my throat, and instead took a strange detour up my nasal passage.  This made me a little more nervous.  See, this is why we need safe houses.

This small plane is NOT a safe house.  This is the baby plane you take to get to the big momma plane to fly over the bottomless ocean.  The baby plane was not made for sturdy types like myself.  Perhaps when I was ten, I could have comfortably flown in this plane.  Okay, maybe when I was eight.  While trying to get into this Lilliputian plane carrying my 300-pound backpack, I cracked my head on the top of the door, stumbled into the flight attendant, and was politely told, with uncanny hindsight, to duck.   Thank you, ma’am.  Next time I climb into a sewer pipe, I’ll remember to keep my head down.  But for now, I’m going to wedge myself into the seat, grip tightly the hand of my wife, and fly to the momma plane.

Unfortunately, this is also NOT a safe house.  This is the airport at Amsterdam.  None of these travelers have slept for forty days and forty nights.  People may be speaking Dutch or they may be speaking sleep-deprived gibberish.  You pay your money and make your choice.  But what is certainly happening is that the elusive purchase of a train ticket is about to begin for those poor folks forming lines to the left.  This may be a good time to take some more of that special not-nervous medication.  You cannot purchase a train ticket at this airport with a normal credit or debit card.  Instead, you must have a credit or debit card with a secret chip hidden inside.  In America, most of us don’t yet have this secret chip.  And if you are one of the select few who have an American credit card with the secret chip, you will soon find that you can only use a Dutch debit card with the secret chip.  Sorry.  This goes a long way in explaining why Leo Tolstoy had Anna Karenina throw herself onto the train tracks.  I wanted to throw myself onto the train tracks.  But I didn’t have the right Dutch chip card to get to the tracks.

Ah, and this is also NOT a safe house.  This is the tram of death.  No one riding the tram has ever eaten a dozen donuts at one time.  I have.  The tram silently pulls up to your stop, the doors open, and you have 1.2 seconds to haul your wife’s four large suitcases, your 300-pound backpack, and your sorry rear end that ate all those donuts, onto that thin little tram.  Don’t get your hopes up.  Lolo Jones couldn’t do it.  Just accept that you will suffer humiliation when the door closes on your last suitcase.  Relax, the door will open again, releasing your luggage, and you will fall into the aisle of the tram with the recalcitrant bag on your tummy.  At this point, I personally resisted the urge to wave to my fellow passengers as I lay beached on my back holding my bag.  I’m trying to blend into the culture.

Mmmmm.  Now this looks like it might be a safe house.  I’m going to check it out and get back to you.

Joe

Holland for seven months.  Can you believe it?  My wife is volunteering to go over to The Hague for seven months to assist in the prosecution of war criminals.  Not your run-of-the-mill bad guys, by the way.  One of the defendants she is working on has a murder scene involving over 8000 bodies.  Get your head around that.  I can’t.  Regardless, I’m along for the ride.  I’m going to be a kept husband while my wife heads out each day to save the world.  And, let’s face it, there are some advantages to that arrangement — do I drink coffee in the morning and wine in the afternoon or first wine and then coffee?  Or do I just stay in bed reading trashy romance novels?  Perhaps all three, you say?

Being an accessory to my wife’s career, however, does require some planning.  And although Rick Steves is certainly the second coming, I felt the need for a bit more edge.  Lo and behold, I had a vision while driving down Ingersoll.

“Stam–Fine European Chocolates Since 1913 — Amsterdam – Des Moines.”  

Well, look at that.  Amsterdam is just right up the road from The Hague.  Since eating Dutch Letters is my present Dutch immersion strategy, maybe Stam’s can give me a better feel for Dutch culture.  In I go.

Stam’s is celebrating 100 years of being a chocolate-making family.  Trust me, they have this down.  When you step inside, the muted gold colors, reflected light, smell of chocolate, and classical music playing in the background, makes you a little faint.  Don’t worry, head for those soft chairs.  I did.

Ton Stam is the mastermind behind Stam’s in the United States.  A financial planner in Holland, he was recruited to come to America to continue in finance.  While in Wisconsin, he met his future husband, David.  David was asked by Bill Knapp to come work in Des Moines.

“We said we’re not moving to Iowa.  That’s just too scary for a couple of guys living in Wisconsin.  That turned out to not be the case. It was just the opposite.  And Des Moines is where we want to live.  Listen, I thoroughly believe the places you live become what you want them to be.  In fact, I turned down a job in San Francisco.  A half-hour sitting in non-moving traffic did that.”

Eventually, Stam and David decided there was no chocolate in Des Moines like the family chocolate made back in Amsterdam, so they opened up their first shop in Valley West Mall.  Stam built the kiosk, David decorated the little shop, and they imported chocolate from his dad’s chocolaterie in Amsterdam.  Before long, they recruited Stam’s nephew, a master chocolatier, to move to Des Moines.  With the chocolate made here, Stam’s business flourished.  And why shouldn’t it?  Eating their chocolate is certainly a venial sin — you’re not quite going to go to hell, but you’re flirting with it.  Today there are nine different stores with the Stam logo.  A wonderful chocolate success.

Ah, but of course there is another truffle in this box.

Stam is one of those big men who exude sincerity.  He shakes your hand and you’re certain everything is going to be all right.  He talks of his family with that same warmth.  You soon learn that his husband, mother, six brothers, in-laws, nieces and nephews, and even friends, are all considered family.  And he speaks of them through stories.  So he began.

“My father came to Iowa when he was 75 years old to help with the opening of the new store.  My father worked like a dog.  He was putting windows together and putting displays together to make it look right.  After questions by reporters at the opening, he started telling me stuff.”

“In the fall of  ’44 the Germans rounded up more and more kids to work in German factories.  So he and his bosom buddy were picked up and transported to Germany.  They escaped.  They were walking back to Amsterdam.  They were caught near the Dutch/German border by the Waffen–SS.  My Dad was 22 and his buddy was 22.  They’d known each other since they were six.  They made them dig a grave and they flipped a coin.  ‘One of you is going to be punished for this and one of you is going to have to live with that.’  And they shot my father’s best friend in front of him.”

“He was 75 years old and it was the first time I ever heard about it.  Ever.”

Stam sighed and sat quietly.

But Stam was warmed up and eventually the stories began to tumble out, one upon the other.  The theme was death.

“When my father died, he had it all planned out.  I had my dad on the phone on Wednesday.  He said, ‘Come home on Saturday. On Sunday we’ll do Last Rites.  I’ll pass away the next week, and you’ll do the funeral.’  But he passed on Thursday.  A little early.”

“Ever since my Dad died, every time we would do something wonderful with my mother, her comment will be, ‘Isn’t this great, another bonus, another extra.’  She thinks that everything she got after turning 80 was extra.”

“When I had my mother on the phone a couple of days ago she said, ‘You know what, Ton, I’m feeling great, but I hope the end comes soon.'”

“Her brother died a while ago.   When he turned 80 — he was a single guy — he called his godchildren together to talk about how to do the funeral.  But he didn’t die.  When he was 81, “Well, I’m still here, so I’ll just have another dinner with the godchildren.’  At 84, his best friend, a priest, said to him, ‘Oscar this dying thing is getting to be an awful lot of fun.'”

“It’s comforting to grow up in a family where people just say, ‘Yeah, and then you eventually die.'”

Stam smiled with sad eyes.  He pointed to the picture of his him and his father on the wall.  “He’s “Frits” with a “s.”

Stories about chocolate and death.

As for me?  I’m on my third chocolate and heading to Amsterdam.

Joe

“1971 sucked.  My mom died a month before I turned six, my granny died in June, and my grandpa died in November.  It was a sucking year.  But look, all those things make you who you are.  People are, ‘that’s so terrible.’  If that wouldn’t have happened to me, I wouldn’t be who I am right this second.”  Carla Dawson hushes me with a finger, daring me to challenge her assertion.  She’s already lumped me into the “that’s so terrible” group of misguided folks.

Before I can lie and claim innocence, Jackie Robinson, Dawson’s sister, one year older, echoes her sentiments.  “We wouldn’t be the women we are if things didn’t happen in our life the way they did.”  Robinson talks patiently to me on my left.  I’ve just been tag-teamed by professionals.

Thrown together at a young age by birth and then by death, the two sisters speak with one voice.  Sentences are completed by each other.   Ideas are batted back and forth so rapidly I am unsure whom to quote.  Affirmations are given continuously by repetition of phrases.  Their conversational relationship is the classic call-and-response of a preacher and congregation.

Robinson: “We didn’t like our brother-in-law.”

Dawson:  “We didn’t like him.”

Robinson: “He was always hitting our sister. We’d hear them in the middle of the night.  Fighting.”

Dawson: “Fighting.  Bam!  Bam!”

Robinson: “He’d be punching her.”

Dawson: “Choking her.  Black eyes.”

Robinson: “The whole nine yards.”

Dawson: “The whole nine yards.”

The motherless Dawson and Robinson were shuffled among family members for a short time until they were taken in by their older sister, who already had two young babies and a husband “who was always beating her up.”  The older sister would disappear for long periods, and Dawson and Robinson, still children, were left raising “two littles.”  It was a complicated time.

“It got worse and worse.  A group of girls at school threatened to beat us up.  They didn’t like us.  We would ignore them, they’d be calling us names.  Our brother-in-law saw those girls calling us names: ‘If you let those girls chase you home one more day, if you don’t turn around and stand up for yourself and fight them, you’re going to have to fight me.’  So we were like, ‘oh great.’  He was always fighting our sister, we don’t want to fight with him.  We stop the group of girls the next day and said: ‘We are either going to have to fight or you’re going to have to leave us alone; because if we don’t fight you and we go home, it’s not going to be good for us.’ So we fought them.  We’d never been in a fight.  We were all dusted up.  We didn’t know how to fight.  Next day same old thing.  We had to fight them.  Meanwhile our older sister was gone more and more and more.  It left us with more responsibility.  The youngest ‘little’ thought Jackie was the mom.”

Dawson and Robinson pause to look at each other, catching their breath.  Their heated telling is visceral.  Sweat has broken out on Dawson’s brow.

Any child would be affected by this life Dawson and Robinson were leading.  But the violence and lack of supervision was compounded by the older sister and brother-in-law moving them from neighborhood to neighborhood in Des Moines, causing constant disruption of schools and friends.  Disaster seemed to loom.

“While we were in middle school our brother-in-law was fighting our sister just too much.  Punching her in the face.  Kicking her.  Fighting.  We decided one time after she had a black eye, looking all crazy, and he was upstairs in the bathroom.  Me and Carla were done.  We had had it.  You know when you’ve had it.  I squeezed in behind him.  Carla was in the hallway.  We both stepped up.  We bum-rushed his ass into the shower.  We beat the shit out of him.  I mean kicking him and everything.  We were really really fightning  We were done.  We’d had enough.”  Robinson preaches.

And Dawson answers for the congregation:   “We beat the dog shit out of him.  We said get the rest of your shit and get out.  He never came back again.  Never.”

The End.

It’s a quiet fall day in Des Moines.  The air is crisp.  The sun is shining.  School is in session.  The waiting room at Drake University Student Health Clinic has a smattering of students.  A kind-faced woman behind the counter, multitasking with computer and phone, smiles broadly.  “I’ll be with you in a moment, hon?”  Ah, you know you’re in safe hands.

A few miles away is another woman teaching at North High School.  She’s bent over quietly talking to a student.  “You have to stop this.  You have to handle you.  It’s not about  your friend.  It’s about you handling you.”  The student looks at her with worship.  The student leaves and the teacher fixes me with the same look she gave the student.  I’m thinking I might need to shape up.

And at the end of the work day, after countless scenes of helping young people, the two women return home.  Their home.  A home they share together.  A safe home.  The home of two sisters.

Joe

“Two books of tickets, please.”  You shout over the music and through the small hole in the glass.  Money passes one direction, tickets slide out the other direction.  Vicki Smith looks out at you with a weariness.  It’s late and the season is almost over.  You are another one of the thousands of faces she sees every summer.  An unending lineup.  If she was asked to do a police sketch of you, your nose might appear on the customer’s face immediately before you with the hair color of the man’s hair behind you and the ears of some guy last week.  So it goes.  And that smell of popcorn and cotton candy that makes your eyes almost water with desire?  There’s not enough soap to get it out of her clothes.   But it’s all winding down for the night, and for the year, and for the time.  The end is in sight.

When Vicki Smith pulls the trailer into the homeplace near Stratford at three in the morning, and doesn’t need to drive on to Fort Dodge, or Boone, or Des Moines, or Marshalltown, the carnival season is over.  Thank goodness.  Another season done.  But tonight it’s the Beaverdale Fall Fest and there’s a large crowd in the perfect weather.  Tickets need to be sold.

Smith sold her first ticket many years ago when she fell into the carny life just by chance.  This was certainly not her dream.  Marriage was the snare.  And even that was a bit off script.

“I married Steve Smith in 1976.  At that time I didn’t think a thing about working on a carnival.   Well, first off, I said I’d never marry a Catholic, I would never marry a smoker, and I would never marry a farmer.  And I married a smoking Catholic farmer.”  Smith shakes her head, laughing softly to herself.

“I was just a kid.  I was 19.  I had no money.  I was in college.  I met Steve.  And back then you just got married.  That’s what you did.  Listen, I’ve always been overweight.  I had no dates in high school.  When Steve showed me attention and affection, it was like, who else is going to want me, I’d better marry this guy because he’s got money.”  Smith gives a throaty laugh.  Again, at herself.

Steve Smith farmed with his brother Mike.  To make ends meet, they bought a foot-long hot dog stand and went on the road.  They would run to some fair in Iowa or Missouri or Wisconsin, then rush home to walk beans.  A complicated life, but doable.

“When I married Steve I thought I could handle being a farmwife.  And it did work for awhile.” Then the farm crisis hit.  Farming was a dead end.  Bankruptcy loomed.  Smith and her husband climbed slowly out of that hole of debt by buying carnival rides.  Patiently.  Carefully.   And now they have fourteen rides parked in Beaverdale with food stands.  An entire carnival.

“I thought I’d be a farmwife.  But here I am.”  She says this as if she just popped out of a cake, hands raised in the air, and landed on the midway.  To her surprise.

Smith’s daughter teaches at DMAAC in Boone, but drove down to help at the Beaverdale fair.  Smith’s son is at the Clay County Fair where he has multiple food stands.  Smith’s brother-in-law, wife, and adult children are also at the Beaverdale fair because they own and run all the games.  It’s a traveling family reunion that goes on all summer.

But there’s a hard-scrabble feeling about the whole enterprise.   They work doggedly at this summer “fun,” always aware that the cold months of winter are coming.  And, Smith is ironic about her chosen life.

“Do you know why we own a carnival today?  So we have a place to put a popcorn wagon.  Isn’t that crazy?  But, it’s where the money is.”  Smith pauses chewing on that thought.  “We haul fourteen rides around just so we can sell cotton candy.”  She shakes her head.

And retirement?  “A carny doesn’t retire, they die walking down the midway.”  She says as if I should know this.   “We’re still healthy.  But still, this is not a normal life.  But we really don’t know what the next step will be.  It’s the end of the season.  I’m tired of living out of a trailer.  I’m just ready to go to my home.”

Iowa is full of endings these days.  Corn is harvested because it’s dry in the fields.  School buses clank to a stop up at the corner because summer vacation is over.  The sound of marching bands carry from across football fields to sports bars because baseball is winding down.  And the last tickets to the carnival are passed out the window at the Beaverdale Fall Festival.  Without a doubt, it’s the end of the season and time to head home.

Joe

The counter must be the problem.  The lilting music in the background and the four-foot tall goddess perched next to the napkins certainly add to the problem.   But I’m thinking it’s the counter that prevents you from seeing the waiter clearly.

Paramjeet Singh is on the other side of the counter at India Star restaurant.  Placidly he stands.   Stolidly.   With the hint of a Sumo wrestler.  You need to narrow your eyes to take him in without distraction.  But you’re soon distracted.  Sag paneer.  Bengan barth.  Chicken Makhany.   Self-consciously I place my carryout order.  Singh listens patiently.  Does he understand English?  Can he hear my low voice?  Is he writing down that the  customer has unusually large ears?  He smiles at me.  Singh’s smile radiates to his eyes and cheek bones, but doesn’t quite makes it to his lips.

Raised in Ludhiana, a city of a million and a half in the Indian state of Punjab, Singh was brought up just like any kid in America.  Although, his life did take an unusual turn as a young adult.  “I was around 19 or 20 when I began bodybuilding,” Singh says.  “It was my father’s dream that I be a bodybuilder.”

Singh’s father worked in a factory to support his wife and three children.  A coworker was a bodybuilder.   Singh’s father wanted this for his son.  “Indian men are really small.  I was very small.  Very skinny.  So my father sent me to a gym,” Singh explains softly.

And then, like every story of father and son, both are not on the same page at the same time.  Or, as Singh simply states, “I wasn’t interested in bodybuilding.”

Back at India Star, Singh is folding napkins, taking orders on the phone, and seating customers.  Behind him on the shelf is his personal supply of protein powders and supplements.  “Combat Protein Powder” is tucked next to porcelain statutes of Indian gods.  Singh has covered all the bases.

As I sip my Taj Mahal, a beer that comes in a bottle the size of the Ruan Center, I ask Singh to join me.   “I don’t drink.  I have 10 eggs a day.  Chicken.  Good food.  In India, I used to eat 30 eggs.  I was so big in India.  Sweet potatoes.  Fruits.”

So, Singh ignored his father’s request to become a bodybuilder, ignored the coach his father had arranged for him at the gym, and started doing “bad things.”

“Bad things”?

Singh came to America with no English.  His sister is married to the talented chef Parvinder (“Baba”) Singh, who owns India Star.  For the last six years, he has worked for Baba.  “Baba helped me a lot,” Singh says with real gratitude.  Working six days a week at the restaurant, Singh has taught himself English.  An amazing feat.

“Bad things”?  Singh briefly struggled for words and then settled on “fighting with guys.”  That works.  I get it.  It was a troubled time for Singh back in India.

The coach at the gym saw Singh heading down this wrong path.   “My coach called me and I started talking to him.  He made me understand so many things.”  To this day, Singh talks frequently to his old coach.   “We talk about old days, bodybuilding, and old bodybuilders.”  But, ten years ago, it was this coach who got Singh off the street and devoted to the gym.

“I started regularly at the gym.  My mother helped me alot.  She woke up at 5 or 6 and cook food all the time.  And then I did my study.”  The hard work and devotion paid off.  Singh won the Beginner Mr. Ludhiana Bodybuilding Competition.   Remember, Ludhiana is a city of over a million and a half people.

“I stood first in that competition.  I saw tears in my father’s eyes.”

Singh became even more dedicated to bodybuilding.  Unfortunately, tragedy struck in 2005.  His father died from a heart attack.  This caused Singh to buckle down even more.  In 2006, it all paid off.   Singh won the Mr. Punjab Bodybuilding Competition.  Yes, that’s him with number 94.

Big deal?  Well, the State of Punjab is over 25 million people.  This win was serious stuff, but also filled with sadness.  “My father’s death made me cry on the stage when they announced.”

After the competition, Singh settled down to coach other bodybuilders.  Unfortunately, there was little money to be made in either coaching or selling supplements or any aspect of bodybuilding.  So, he followed his sister to Des Moines.  And this is where he has been for the last six years.

But now he’s training again.  He started four months ago.  Six days a week, up to two hours a day.  Working at the restaurant and training is all he does.  He does not go out.  He does not party.  He has no romantic interests.  Instead, he’s starting to consider competitions.  “Maybe October, I will compete.”  And now his smile makes it to his lips.  Barely.

And his dream?  “I will stay here the rest of my life.  In two and a half years, I will get my citizenship.  Bodybuilding is for my life.  As for money, I need just enough.  Just enough for my family and me.”  Every month, Singh sends part of his earnings home to his mother.  But the mention of his mother causes Singh to look away and then look back up giving me that enigmatic smile.

“I am homesick sometimes.  Old days, old friends.”

A bell rings.  My food is ready.  I collect my carryout from my side of the counter.  And the champion of Punjab?  He is on to the next customer.

Joe

“This is Midday with Mary Brubaker and Dolph Pulliam . . . .”  “The Mary Brubaker Show weekdays at 9:00 a.m. on KCCI TV 8.”  “The Muscular Dystrophy Telethon, hosted by Mary Brubaker.”  “‘Time Capsule’ with John Pascuzzi, Connie McBurney, Rick Swalwell, and Mary Brubaker.”  “Mary Brubaker interviews Jimmy Carter. . . Ted Kennedy . . .  Jane Fonda . . . Ann Landers . . .  Margaret Mead . . . Sean Connery . . .  Anthony Hopkins . . . Arnold Schwarzenegger.  And on and on and on.  Thirty years worth.

Brubaker’s show ended years ago, gracefully, quietly, and gently, as celebrity shows rarely do.  Come on, don’t be upset.  We all go out to pasture.  But what a run Brubaker had.  From her early beginnings on TV as an “exercise girl” (think a local Jane Fonda), to becoming enough of a celebrity in her own right to get a reference by Jay Leno.  Not bad for a Roosevelt High School girl.

So time passed.

Sweltering heat pushes hard against the downtown cement sidewalks.  Dashing into the cool at the north end of the Polk County Administration Building is like a dunk into a cold metal water bucket.  Relief.   Just inside the door of the Heritage Gallery, a woman sits behind the counter.  Almost hidden.  She’s dressed in purple with a colorful scarf tied loosely around her neck.  Her grey-white hair is cut tight and close with stylish flips and upswings.  Then you notice her dark, wide eyes and deep smile lines from her mouth up to her cheekbones.   This gal is a character.   So much so that now she seems to be appraising you just like you were appraising her, and you just might not be up to her standards.

“Hello, welcome.  If you have any questions, please ask.”  The older woman speaks with an inviting lilt to all who enter.

A young woman walks into the gallery.

“Is that a Fringe Festival t-shirt?” the older woman asks.  And then she is off and running as if her life depended on her relationship with this stranger.  “Were you involved with the Fringe Festival?”  “You’re a playwright?  Your name?  Are you still writing?  Are you involved in theater also?”

The older woman hears discouragement in the young woman’s answers.  There’s no work.  There’s no audience.

“Listen, you keep writing, lady.  You have to do it.  They need playwrights.  Nobody is doing plays, they’re doing revivals, and that’s not good.  I have a web site that could help you.”  Names are mentioned.  Contacts written down.  Then the young woman speaks of another friend out of work.  “Your friend does graphic design?  What’s her name?  It’s a shame that good graphic designers can’t find a job.  She needs to come down here to visit me.”

It’s amazing.  In a few short sentences, the older woman has wheedled out the visitor’s name, occupation, and the struggles the visitor is having with her career.   With all the facts gathered, the older woman provides contacts.  And if that wasn’t enough, she then provides a dollop of encouragement.  Okay, fine, but how about when she begins to connect-up the friend of the visitor, who is also out of work?  My Lord, give me a break.

An older man enters.  In the course of conversation, it is discovered that he has a collection of pictures from a local artist moldering in his basement.  Not any more.  He now has a contact who will auction those pictures for charity.  Unbelievable.

“I’m a Gemini,” is Brubaker’s explanation for all this caretaking.  Really?  That’s the reason?

“I really believe in being friendly and helpful.  If everybody just made some effort to be more giving, more generous . . . .  I like people.  I like talking to people.  I like making connections for people.  I’ve met so many interesting people.”

Heritage Art Gallery, Gay Men’s Chorus, 1000 Friends of Iowa are her recent volunteer efforts.   What about a rest?  What about just retiring?  What about not helping folks for a bit?

“I just can’t not be doing something.  My contacts I’ve made over the years can help people.  I believe in volunteering.  Without volunteers, you really wouldn’t have a vibrant culture.  I’m not a couch sitter.”  No kidding.

At 78 years old, Brubaker is in her prime.  Those thirty years of broadcasting appears to have been her first life.  All of her training, knowledge, and life experience are coming together right now in her second life.  One on one.  A person at a time.  She is at the top of this game.

“Some people don’t have a loud enough voice.  How could I live with myself if I didn’t help them make connections to whomever they needed to make connections with?  If I can improve anybody’s life because of something I know that I can share with them, or information I can give them, or an encouragement.  It is a mission.  My art?  It is the art of encouragement.”

Don’t be fooled.  None of this volunteerism and good deeds erases the pain that accompanies living 78 years.  Death of a mother.  Death of a father.  Serious family illnesses that need daily attention.  Personal struggles.  All of these problems are still there.   They sit like unwelcome guests in her living room.   And she knows those guests will get more cantankerous as time goes on.  Brubaker once did an interview with Dolly Parton: “I asked if she feared old age, and she said that she didn’t want to get old because she wouldn’t have all her friends there . . . said they would all be gone.”

Brubaker pauses quietly.

There’s a tape of an interview that Brubaker did with Tony Bennett sometime in the early ’80’s.  Towards the end of the interview, Brubaker asks Bennett a question that caught him off guard.  “What do your kids think of your fame and fortune?”  Bennett gave a nonresponse to her question — a question that really asked him to measure his worth beyond wealth and celebrity.  Clever.

A grandmother enters the gallery with her small granddaughter.  The grandmother has clearly been run ragged by her charge.  The grandmother is quickly seated.  The granddaughter is given something to drink.  And Brubaker gives the grandmother suggestions as to where to go to let her granddaughter run for the afternoon.  The grandmother sighs with relief and gratitude.

Enough of this.  Brubaker smiles at me with her smile that travels to the cheekbones:  “So, Joe, do you know who you should interview next . . . .”  And she gives me a contact.

Joe

Here’s a novel thought — people make mistakes.  Usually not big mistakes.  But mistakes, nonetheless.  Frankly, I’ve made one mistake already this morning (was I really just rude to a hard-working guy downtown trying to do a survey at the market?).  Heck, it’s not even 10 a.m. and I’m off and running.  When it’s a politician’s mistake, it’s great fun for all sorts of reasons, one being that we’re just happy that it’s not us.  But, even for politicians, the mistakes usually start out small and ordinary, then just get worse.  Why?  Because they adopt the strategies we all adopt.  “I didn’t do it.”  “He did it.”  “Let’s pretend nothing happened.”  Denial, blame, and silence.  Not good strategies.  And once you adopt these lame approaches, there’s no going back.  Suddenly you find yourself hiring a former Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice to defend your honor.  “I am really really really a good guy.  See, the judge said so.”  Are you kidding?  If that technique didn’t work on the playground, it won’t work in real life.  Trust me.

What to do instead?

In the criminal prosecution world, there is a strategy for dealing with a mistake made by a witness.  It’s called “removing the sting.”  It is amazingly simple.  You bring the mistake up with the witness on direct examination before the defense counsel even has a chance to point fingers.  Then you have the witness admit the error and take responsibility.  That’s it.  You remove the stinger before the defense counsel paints the witness as a bad guy who made a bad mistake.  Yes, it seems counterintuitive for a witness to admit he or she messed up as a method to get the jury to believe the witness.  But it works.   I’ve seen it dozens of times.  Just take out the stinger and the jury forgives.

Naturally, I’ve consulted an expert in this area.

Lawrence Soder is a fourth-generation bee keeper who has a stand in the Downtown Farmer’s Market.   Soder Apiaries out of Saint Charles.  He’s selling amazing honey for money and giving away advice for free.  Yup, that’s a bee outfit.

Soder is a strong, big-boned man.  Tough, weathered skin.  Slightly squinted eyes from working outside.  And a boxer’s hands.   A man you’d like in your corner.  Besides being an expert on bee keeping, he is also an expert on the deadpan delivery: “My ancestors were all carpenters.  Being Swedes, as cheap as they are, they took the extra wood from carpentry and they threw it into bee-keeping equipment.  That’s how we became bee keepers.”  Is he serious?  Should I laugh?  Not a muscle moves in his face to give me a clue.

Why is he a bee keeper?  “Guilt.  I’m trying to make up for my childhood.”  No smile.  This interview may be taking a turn in the wrong direction.

Are there health benefits from bee stings?  “My wrist sounds like a bag of peanuts.  I’m stung on the arm all the time.  Can you hear anything?”  He cranks his wrist up and down and looks at me expectantly.  Is that a grin?  Am I being filmed?

How does the beehive work?  “Every October, the worker bees gather up all the drones in the hive and drag them to the entrance to kick them out.  The drones’ slogan should be ‘I’m here all week except in October.'”  Finally, I see the squint in the eyes becomes tighter.  Is that his sign for uproarious laughter?

Let’s get to our point.  What about stings?  Does he ever get stung?

“If it’s a really mean hive, or one you bumped, when you open it up about fifteen bees will hit you smack in the face.  But, every time you open a hive you’re going to get stung.  When I was working yesterday, I got about ten stings.  Honey bees have a barbed stinger.  There’s a pulsing vein that puts the rest of the venom into you.  You have to scratch that out.  You’re a lot better off if you scratch that out as soon as you can.”

So, Soder takes me to his farm six miles out from Saint Charles.  Bees swarm and buzz in the hot sun.  White sheets on the clothesline snap in the wind.  Freshly bailed hay sits in his field.  And ripened peaches hang heavy from the trees in his small orchard.  Iowa Paradise.

He gives me an oozing honeycomb to eat, perhaps to make me more delicious to the bees, and then he opens up a hive.

Hold it!  Where’s our bee gear?  Where’s our protective masks?  Where’s our smoke machines?

Apparently I’m not sweet enough for even a nibble.  “And, heck, if you do get stung, you just scratch the stinger out and the pain goes away in 10 minutes or so.”  Good advice.

Joe

Thirty-three is an auspicious age.  Even if you’re not going to be kissed by Judas, it seems to carry its own baggage.   You know exactly what I mean, right?  Each of us takes out the yardstick to measure ourselves at different times of our lives.  “Where am I professionally?”  “What do I believe?”  “Did I really marry that guy?”  Thirty-three is just one of those yardstick times.  By thirty-three, you feel you have to decide on a direction.  And many times the only options seem to be fishing in your long johns  off the Grand Avenue bridge or working at a job you secretly hate.  Let’s consider a different picture.

Could I have your attention please?  Ladies and Gentlemen.   A local boy out of Grimes, Iowa.  With a bachelor’s degree from the famous Lawrence Conservatory of Music.  And a master’s degree from the even more famous New England Conservatory of Music.  Performing solo today but sometimes as a member of the duo “The Snacks”.  Playing for the lunch crowd at Lucca, but tomorrow at a wedding or at an art opening or at any function, right here in Des Moines.   Let’s give it up for Michael Pfaff.

Yup, that’s him at the far back.  No, he does not play some strange vegetable instrument.  That’s a grand piano under Lucca’s creation of produce art.  And, yes, Pfaff is not a big man and does seem to get lost amidst all the heirlooms.

“I was very small as a kid.  My friends in school one time locked me in a tuba case . . . .  I was the only one who got detention.”  Pfaff gives a small smile.

Pfaff is friendly, mellow, thankful for his gifts, and aware of the hard work he did to master those gifts.  He speaks with pride of his educational pedigree, but then in the next breath dismisses it all.  “I graduated from Lawrence and had nothing.  I didn’t know standards.  I didn’t know pop songs.  I didn’t know how to set up a PA.  How to collect receipts for traveling.  How to build a web site.  You’ve got to learn pop songs.  When I went to the New England Conservatory, I studied with a guy who spent his life studying two notes.  Really?  You’re not going to entertain anybody with this.  l have to be able to play Giant Steps.  I have to be able to play the Beatles.  Jazz for the sake of jazz is stupid.”

Pfaff was offered an internship at Lincoln Center in New York City.  “When I was a freshman in college, the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra came through to do a clinic.  They wanted four kids to do a transcription from a song, and they’d review you.  I was one of them.  The guy before me did some monster Coltrane transcription.  I was next.  Marcus Roberts was the pianist.  It was a slow blues that I played.  On the vibraphone.  It was awesome.  It’s like when you raise your hand, and you know they are going to call on you and you have the right answer.  The business manager called Wynton Marsalis and told him that he had to have this kid come to New York.  So I had an internship at Lincoln Center.”

And again, Pfaff dismisses this accomplishment.  “I had a couple lessons with Wynton.  He was cool, but I wasn’t there yet.  I was just trying to keep up.  I would have said to me.  ‘Don’t play those scales.  Don’t play with the metronome.  Let’s jam.  Just jam.’   I just did enough for him to show I didn’t suck.  I had it up here, but I didn’t have it out there.”

He speaks about his gig at Lucca.  “A teacher at Lawrence told me if someone paid me $200 to paint a painting, you don’t paint a $200 painting.  You paint a priceless painting.  You just happen to get $200 for it.  Like today, my only thought was I get to play the piano.  This is awesome.  I found enough change to plug the meter.  Here I am.  I’m thrilled.”

Words are beginning to tumble on words.  Pfaff on music: “Music is a way to expand our brains.  Yes, I know that sounds like I’m high.  But it’s true.”  And playing the piano: “You don’t just play a scale.  You play the root.  You hold down a note against a note.  It is a relationship to the other note that is important.”  And teaching: “I have one student now.  I want to teach more.  My young students learn by learning the Spongebob Squarepants Song.   Because it’s all notes.  Why not?”

With a wife and a young son of nine months, Pfaff struggles to make it all work.  His phone rings.  “It’s either my wife or a bill collector.  Usually, it’s a bill collector.”  He laughs at himself and his situation.  But the sense of real problems, real struggles, are not so casually turned off with the phone.  Did I tell you he’s thirty-three years old?  He’s most commonly asked, “When are you going to get a job?”

Then Pfaff has to excuse himself to play.  It’s time to go to work.  Time to do what he does.    He seems to bow his head in prayer over the keyboard.  Transfixed.  Focused.

The clink of flatware, china, and glasses resonates off the brick walls of Lucca.  It registers high and provides a lilting quality to the air.  The low murmur of diners’ voices provides the bottom — the backbone.  And the jazz piano?  It floats in the middle.  The bare bones of the Beatle’s “Yesterday” is laid out methodically by Pfaff.  “Did everyone get the structure?” he seems to say.  And then he takes the tiniest thread, some meandering small note, and is off and running.  Structure is gone.  “Yesterday” is left in the dust.  And the piano keys race.  The sound becomes lighter and quicker.  The concentration more intense.   Pfaff appears to lift up in his shirt and tie and pull our emotions veeringly higher.  Up and up.  There it is at last . . . !  Ah, we can breathe.  It’s descending.  A familiar musical phrase.  An echo at first.  The true notes come dancing in.  Slow.  Languorous.  At last, we are back with the Beatles.  All is resolved.

Wipe your brow with your napkin.  Did this thirty-three year old, with enough change to plug the meter, just give you a priceless painting?

Joe