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

“Life expectancy at birth for women in the United States dropped 0.8 years from 79.9 years in 2020 to 79.1 in 2021, while life expectancy for men dropped one full year, from 74.2 years in 2020 to 73.2 in 2021.” CDC, August 23, 2022 (https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/20220831.htm)

73.2 years???! Really? I might as well eat that big bowl of whip cream and lie belly up in the blue plastic wadding pool for the afternoon. So much for 30 Days to Better Spelling. Why make the effort? 73.2 years! Lord, I hear the clock ticking over my right shoulder like some type of Disney-created crocodile and I’m Captain Hook. I don’t have 10 years. I don’t even have five. Oh me oh my.

Okay, I tell myself, numbers don’t have to be scary. In fact, I’ve always loved numbers. In college, I majored briefly in Mathematics because of a strange attachment to high-waisted pants and practical shoes. And even when I switched to a major in Religion, math courses were an escape from struggling with questions like why is there suffering, and what happens after death, and why don’t I have a girlfriend.

On the other hand, these recent numbers ARE scary. And it’s even worse for a male American Indian or a male Alaska Native — you only get a life expectancy of 61.5 from birth. And if you are male and Black, your life expectancy from birth is 66.7. These numbers are HORRIBLE! 

Don’t get me wrong, there are serious problems in the world and serious people are needed to keep us from killing ourselves and killing each other and to make sure we add baking powder to the cake batter. That tablespoon of baking powder is the difference between a cake that is light and fluffy and a cake that looks like a hubcap. I know. So bring on the serious folks to save the planet and our cakes. 

But is there a role for whimsy in all this? Do we need things that are nothing but fanciful with a dash of humor? You know, things that when you see them your pursed lips involuntarily turn up and your eyes uncharacteristically crinkle. I’m not asking for outright guffaws, heaven help us, but maybe something where you nudge the person next to you and say with a grin, “Look at that!”

But where to find this whimsical fantasy?

I’m with my wife in Cologne, Germany, mildly lost as we generally are in our travels — and in life, for that matter. We walk up from the river and away from the famous cathedral toward a less touristy area. The buildings are grittier and the people we pass are clearly workers either coming or going. 

My wife and I are having our traditional travel conflict. This is a fun fight where my wife bemoans the inability to use our smart phones for directions because I have failed as a husband. This failure can arise in various technical ways dealing primarily with SIM cards, whatever they are, but suffice it to say that I am truly guilty, and if my wife’s phone did work, she’d certainly be contacting her college sweetheart, Chuck, the true love of her life, and get the heck out of Dodge. Or Cologne. 

As we both simmer, we see in the distance an office building. Nothing special, . . . but is that an ice cream cone on the roof? Whaaaat? A DRIPPING ICE CREAM CONE TURNED UPSIDE DOWN IS ON THE ROOF!!! 

Not only did this sight save our marriage, but it made us smile. It brought us outside of ourselves. It brought us into a land of curiosity and wonder. It was whimsical. 

“Look at that,” I say with a grin.

Claes Oldenburg created this ice cream cone in 2001 along with his wife Coosje van Bruggen, who died of breast cancer in 2009. 

Of course, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s work was not foreign to me. When we arrived in Des Moines in 1981, we would bike from the Attorney General’s Office up near the capitol to our apartment in the Drake neighborhood. This meant going through downtown. 

“What in the heck is that?” I said to my wife, as we pedaled through the heart of the city with our backpacks full of our work clothes and lunch pails and anything else a young lawyer was supposed to carry. 

There in the middle of Des Moines was a gigantic umbrella. No kidding. An umbrella. It appeared to have no purpose, no hidden meaning, no artistic subtext. It was just a giant umbrella. 

We got off our bikes and smiled. Of course we didn’t laugh out loud, not in the land of Grant Wood’s grim-faced, pitch-forked farmer and his scary sister, but our eyes did crinkle and our lips went up. 

“Will you look at that.”

Yup, Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s Crusoe Umbrella, commissioned by the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines in 1978.

Then there is the giant trowel created in 2001 and purchased by Meredith Corporation. It’s hard to take yourself too seriously in the presence of a garden trowel bigger than your car. 

And the very first public Oldenburg in Des Moines can be found at the Des Moines Art Center, commissioned in 1971, way early in his career — talk about an art center out in front of the crowd. And, yup, it’s a ginormous three-way plug. Whimsy anyone?

Photo used with permission of the Des Moines Art Center, Photo Credit: Rich Sanders

As Laura Burkhalter, the friendly and helpful Curatorial Manager at the Des Moines Art Center, told me about the three-way plug:

“Our philosophy at the Art Center has been that when we go after an artist, we go after THE work — the one that shows that artist. This is an Oldenburg. It’s big. It’s blue. It’s soft. It’s humanistic. It is a quintessential Oldenburg.”

Amen to that. 

Listen, I am not an artist and my knowledge of art could fit on the tip of a paint brush, but what is a bit of whimsy worth? What is the value of an unbidden smile that exists for no reason but fun? How often do you see something that gives you a heartwarming surprise after your friend has elbowed you in the ribs and said, “Will you look at that.”

Claes Oldenburg died the other day. I didn’t know him. I don’t know how to label his art. I know nothing of his vision. But I do know this, thanks to the Des Moines Art Center and Meredith and the Civic Center, Oldenburg gave Des Moines a great public gift. He gave us the gift of whimsy.

May he rest in peace.

Joe

Here are a few other pictures of Oldenburg’s work we have come across in our travels:

Museum Bowmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Embarcadero, San Fransisco, California.

Minneapolis Sculpture Gardens, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.

Lee King is loud and fierce and sassy. Her braided hair sits long on her shoulders. Her smile wide and open. Her eyes clearly say she’s up to no good and, if you’re lucky, you might be invited along.

Lee laughs heartily as she steers the car through the construction on Fleur Drive.

“I’ve been driving a cab for eight months. I was just looking for a side job, but then I started meeting good people. I want people to laugh, to have fun while they’re in a cab. That’s my goal.”

Are you kidding? What about all the angry people out there? They don’t seem up for a fun conversation. 

“Hah! Listen, I was driving this guy who was handicapped to the homeless shelter. We talked the whole way. When we got to the shelter his cab fare was $30. He tipped me $50. I was shocked. You’re at a homeless shelter? Why would a person do that?”

Lee pauses and laughs to herself.

“He said I made his day by just talking to him.”

I believe it. Lee could charm a rock. But enough of that, what about cinnamon rolls?

“Well, over two years ago, Cinnabon in Jordan Creek, where we used to go, closed down. So, Ty, my wife, decided to make cinnamon rolls one night with my daughter. Later, she woke me up and said I had to try one.”

And?

“I said, ‘Whoa, that is good!'”

And that was it?

“Well, we tested them on various folks, they loved them. So we just started going around to local barbershops and selling them. And again people loved them.” 

Local barbershops? What about bald people? As I wiped the shine off my bald head. 

What happened next?

“We called ourselves ‘LeeTy Delights,’ and my cousin came up with the slogan, ‘Love At First Bite.’ Can you believe it? We stumbled upon a business and it blew up. It just blew up. And we’ve been rolling ever since.”

Lee sits back and shakes her head. 

“Then Ty decided to try different flavors. Our first different roll was pecan. Everybody loves those. We then went wild with flavors.”

What do you mean?

“Well, the banana one. We started doing a crust on the bottom. It is almost like a pie. It’s a banana pudding in our dough with a crust. It is our most popular flavor. We invented the cinnamon roll with a crust.” 

My lord. Do you ever have doubts about a flavor?

“Okay, I was concerned about the white chocolate raspberry. That flavor is just weird. Who will eat this? Ty told me people will love it. And people LOVE IT! Ty is a mastermind. She is a weird genius flavor person. Man, it’s crazy.”

Crazy enough for people to buy them?

“We’ve been to the Downtown Farmer’s Market twice and sold out both times. And we sell at Friedrichs Coffee and at the Slow Down Coffee Company.”

How do you do all this?

“Our schedules are crazy. I don’t know what rest is. We are running our kids to soccer and Isiserettes, baking cinnamon rolls, and driving a cab. I’m exhausted. And I love it.”

Of course you do. Listen, it’s just the two of us here. And I won’t tell anyone. Promise. What’s the secret to your cinnamon rolls?

Lee gives her wide open smile, and in a deep voice says: “Butter and love, baby. Don’t forget that butter. If you don’t have that butter it just isn’t going to be the same.”

Amen to that.

Joe 

The farmhouse sat on one side of the gravel road, surrounded by a large yard with a pump, a vegetable garden, and scattered peony bushes. Chickens worked the ground in a hard-packed section at the back, while cattle lowed with mild dissatisfaction from the barns across the road.

It was another time.

We kids, all cousins, ruled this land and the adjacent back forty with a pirate’s joyful abandon and recklessness. It was our Treasure Island and our Haunted Forest and our Safe House — all in one. 

My grandpa farmed this land until he retired. Then my uncle took over the farm until he moved on. Then his son, Steve Smith, took over the farm for many years, until he retired. And now Steve’s son has taken over the farm.

Steve is my age. We grew up together. I was a city kid, and as a teenager came to the farm to cultivate with an old tractor in late spring, walk beans in mid-summer, and bust open the frozen water trough in the heart of winter.

I did this on holiday — Steve did this everyday.

And in my earlier years, the old farmhouse was not exactly a delightful spa. Water was pumped by hand in the kitchen sink. The bathroom was about twenty feet from the house with a creaky door and two holes opening into my greatest nightmare. And in the winter the heat upstairs was more imagined than felt.

For many years, Steve shoveled corncobs down the coal chute into the boiler room in the basement. From there he would shove the corncobs into the furnace, adding wood once there was a good burn. Then he would head out to the water tank across the road and get the heater going with more corncobs to thaw the frozen tank. 

This was just the start of his work day.

Steve would work all spring, summer, and fall at farming. A more than full-time job. But before long he added other businesses — running concessions and carnivals around the Midwest during the summer months. Why not? Two, maybe three, full-time jobs. It’s what he did.

The last few years if you came to the Iowa State Fair early, you would see him marking the lines where all the rides were to be placed on the midway.

And then he and his wife would make sure it all ran smoothly while the rest of us ate corn dogs and ice cream.

And in winter, he would repair tractors and combines and carnival rides and . . . fill in the blank. If he was sitting in his easy chair, it meant it was dark and nearly bedtime. Such was his life.

Steve Smith thrived in this world. No matter the task, and there was always a task, he was up to it. We would joke about Steve’s father, who would bring his family for a visit and send Steve and his brother out to chop nonexistent ice in the driveway. Everyone needed to keep busy, according to Steve’s father. A lesson learned well by Steve. 

Steve grew into the most responsible person in the room. Seamlessly and without a discussion or vote, he took care of his family and his siblings and his children and his grandchildren and his friends and his customers and on and on. That’s just what he did. 

So it is no surprise that it was while working in his shop repairing a vehicle, he fell off a ladder and injured himself. This led to the discovery of cancer. Treatments and doctors and hospitals and months go by. Eventually, he is back in his shop. Working. Farming. Setting up the midway at the Iowa State Fair. It’s what he does.

But life is never a straight line. “Don’t get too comfortable” may be the appropriate sign above the door.

Steve fell again. In the shop. Just fell.

Back to the hospital.  

“Joe, a wind turbine is going in on one of the farms,” Steve’s wife, Vicki, says while sitting next to Steve in the hospital the other day. 

Wow. It is a new world for sure. Corncobs generating heat to wind turbines generating electricity. Go figure.

The end of a time.

Last night the phone rang.  

“Joe, Steve has passed,” said Vicki, who has lovingly and exhaustively taken care of him during this difficult time.

Death is a punch in the gut no matter how much expected. 

So here we are. The responsible guy has left the room. The ice is un-chopped in the driveway. The corncobs will no longer be tossed down the coal chute. Tasks large and small shall go unfinished.

Meanwhile the big turbines slowly turn in the Iowa wind. 

May Steve rest in peace.

Joe