Woodhouse Bingo

The location is nearly perfect – halfway between the hospitals and the Interstate. The Woodhouse is one of the classic family hamburger joints. You come in, seat yourself in a booth and then you pick up a phone and call the kitchen to order your meal.

My family loves the place. The owner and his family also own their own butcher shop so the ground beef is made fresh daily. The only spices on their hamburgers are salt and pepper – you don’t get much more American than that.

Other menu favorites are a jumbo platter of onion rings – best in town. A bowl of ham and bacon soup is also a must. If you are tired of burgers, order some broasted chicken. For dessert, they sell all kinds of pies. And if you don’t want to drink water or a soda, they serve thick milk shakes.

Yeah, a meal at the Woodhouse is like stepping back into time…certainly the 1960s, maybe even the 1950s.

People who live in Mandan and Bismarck like to eat there at lunch because it’s about a stone’s throw away from the North Dakota capitol, which is circled by numerous association buildings, including the one I work in.

But the real customer base of the Woodhouse is the elderly who come to Bismarck for their medical, dental and optical needs. In the fall, you will see people from all the small towns. On their jackets are the names of cattle ranches, volunteer fire departments, bars, businesses, etc. And under all of those logos are the names of the towns where these people live.

From the north and west of Bismarck are Washburn, Center, Hazen and Beulah. To the west and south are New Salem, Glen Ullin, Carson and Elgin. To the east and south are Wing, Sterling, Menoken, Hazelton and Linton.

Actually, this is only a small list of the towns, but they are a good representation of the names you will see on the various jackets as the elderly couples come into the Woodhouse. They have seen their doctors, got their teeth cleaned at the dentists and have had their annual eye exam, so before they leave town, they might as well have the best burger, onion rings and milk shake in Bismarck before they head home.

So, my idea is simple. When you walk into the Woodhouse, you could pick up a bingo card. But instead of numbers, there would be five rows of randomly chosen towns listed in each row. Then you’d sit down in your booth, order your food, enjoy it and watch for the out-of-towners. When you saw someone wearing a jacket with “Cannonball” on it, you would look on your card for the town of Cannonball. If you had it, you would circle it. This would continue until someone had five correct towns either vertically or horizontally on your card.

If you win, you would holler “Bingo” and you’d get a free bacon cheeseburger. I think Woodhouse Bingo would add to the allure of this well-known restaurant.

A tale of a tight squeeze on I-94

The plan was to move Taylor into the apartment in north Bismarck on Sunday, June 1. By the end of the month, Scott and Taylor would be married and then he would move in.

Derek and Mark are on opposite ends of this photo. 

Scott was working that weekend so he asked Derek to help me and Taylor’s dad Mark move the furniture, most of which was in her parent’s garage.

There was one item in my garage. A new gas grill that Scott’s Godparents had purchased as a wedding gift. As luck would have it, it was the same model that Derek and Camila had purchased earlier in the spring. The grill was still in the box, but Derek said that he could assemble it in quick fashion because he had just put his together a couple of weeks before.

So we backed both of the cars out of the garage, took out the grill, legs, wheels, grates and a hundred little nuts and bolts. Derek was true to his word, in about a half hour the grill was assembled. We put the canvas cover on the grill and it waited to be picked up and transported to Bismarck

On Sunday afternoon, we loaded the Fischer’s horse trailer with all the heavy stuff in Mandan. Then we stopped at our house and we loaded the grill into the back of the Fischer’s club cab pickup. Mark handed me the rope and told me to make sure it was tight.

Well, I wanted to show him just how tight I could get the ropes and what an expert I am at tying nautical knots. The rope was so taught that you could pluck it and get a middle “C .”

So we took off from our house in Mandan to the interstate and then on to Bismarck about five miles away. Derek and Mark were in the front seat of the pickup and I was in the back.

Just a little after entering the interstate, Mark saw that the canvas cover on the BBQ grill was about to fly off, so he told me that he would roll the little window down in the middle of the larger back window and perhaps I could reach back and grab the canvas before it flew away completely.

I did as he said and soon half my body was hanging out of the window and into the pickup box, but I had grabbed the canvas just as it was about to come completely airborne. With the cover safely in hand, I tried to get back into the cab, but alas, my girth was stuck in middle of the little window.

Here’s a white pickup followed by a horse trailer sailing down the interstate and a chubby man in his mid-50s is stuck in the window. It must have been quite a sight.

My ribcage was through the window but not my waist. I couldn’t move in and I could move out. I was stuck like a pig.

So Mark started to slow the pickup down and pull off the side of the road, when I gave it one last shot to wiggle my body through the back window. Okay, one rib was through and then another. Finally, I got my shoulder, neck and head in the window plus the canvas cover.

“Darn,” I said, trying to distract everyone’s attention from me being stuck. “I thought I tied those ropes nice and tight.”

Once we got to the apartment complex, I jumped out and tested the ropes. Yep, still as tight as I had tied them. In fact, the middle C might now have become a C sharp from all the movement.

“Well, I guess the wind just caught the cover and away it was going,” I said, to no one who gave a darn.

Worrying about the canvas cover had become a thing of the past as everyone wondered what would have happened if I hadn't been able to pull myself back into the pickup cab.

When the moving was done, we went McKenzie River pizza and dined on some delicious Italian food. Everyone was relaxed and the incident in the rear window was nearly forgotten by everyone but me. I thought about an important question, “had I eaten this pizza before the move, would I still be stuck.”

Grandpa rules

Whenever we have someone watch Grandpa, I have to write down a series of instructions so that the caregiver understands – and adheres – to Grandpa’s rules, which makes it easier on Grandpa and the caregiver. So here are the main ones.

1. The most important rule is this, don’t mess with his cat. He loves his cat more than life itself, so you might just get backhanded if you try to even pet his cat.
2. He doesn't remember the cat's name or even that Picasso is a cat, so don't laugh when Grandpa calls him a dog, a pig, a fish or mumbles something under his breath. The cat knows what he said, and that's who Grandpa was talking to. 
3. If he resists getting into the barber chair at Mike’s barber shop, tell him that some pretty girls are going to come visit him later today. He’ll do almost anything if he thinks he needs to impress some pretty girls.
4. Dad takes several pills with breakfast, lunch and dinner. If he forgets what his pills are for, simply grab a couple of aspirin from the medicine chest and swallow them. He’ll copy what you do. Also, don’t lay his pills on a white napkin as he won’t spot them. Lay them on top of the wooden table.
5.  Dad likes to eat when he wakes up…about 7 a.m., at noon and at 6 p.m. If you don’t feed him at those appointed times, he will find cookies and candy to eat instead.
6. For breakfast, he wants a big bowl of corn flakes with a banana cut up along with a glass of juice. He’ll eat anything you put in front of him but he won’t get full and then will start heading back to the kitchen for snacks.
7. If you take him to a restaurant, make sure that they serve him as quickly as the order is taken. Don’t take him to Red Lobster where there’s a 15 minute pause between the soup and the main course or he will want to leave. Instead, take him to a Chinese place that will serve a cup of hot soup and then bring the rest of his meal before the soup is gone.
8. Never, ever, eat in front of him if he’s not already eating. He will ask you where his is and you’ll feel sorry and split your meal with him.
9. If you have no other choice and take him to Red Lobster and you are still eating and he is done…buy him a bowl of ice cream and then finish your meal before he has engulfed the ice cream.
10. Don’t make him sleep in any bed but his own. He’s a nervous fellow and before he falls asleep, he will make several trips to the bathroom, so it’s best if he knows where it’s at.
11. When he wakes up in the morning, he will also head straight to the bathroom so make sure you are out. If you are not out, he’s not above using a trash can as a porta-potty.
12. His clothes are always the same: black shoes, black sox, blue denim jeans and a plaid shirt. In the summer – for about three months – he won’t wear his long johns and he will wear a short-sleeved polo shirt.
13. When a meal is done, he wants to clear the table and wash the dishes. Let him do so, and then when he leaves the kitchen, you can put the dishes in the dishwasher.
14. If you want to take a nap, make sure it’s when he’s already lying down. If you think you are going to initiate this activity (or non-activity) you are so wrong. He will stand outside your bedroom and whistle and sing until you get up and realize the error of your ways.
15.  Dad goes to bed in the winter when the sun goes down. So if you want to keep him awake say until 7 p.m., you have to have every light in your house on.
16. In the summer, he’ll stay awake until at least 8 p.m…but that’s as late as he’ll stay up, unless -- of course -- there are pretty girls visiting. Then he’ll stay up until midnight if he thinks that will impress them.
17. Dad’s favorite place to sit is the chair or couch that you just got out of.
18. He will check the mail box 20 times a day whether he’s already picked up the mail or not, so don’t fret if he keeps opening and closing the front door…no matter how cold it is.
19. He’ll break your heart when he asks you where his wife is. Just tell him that she died in June 2006, point at one of the photos of her in his bedroom and move on.
20. He doesn’t know the difference between brother, son or sister, so you are likely to be called anything on any given day. The only people who have names are “Scott” and “that woman in the kitchen.”
21. With him, every day is a fresh beginning and also could be his last…so make it count.