The transformation of a Democrat to a Republican

This confession will shock a few of my loyal readers, but when I got married in 1985, I was a Democrat. I married a Republican so we used to kid each other on election day that our votes merely cancelled each other out. However, it was during the Clinton Administration that I switched parties. This makes it a little lonely at times when I discuss politics with my family, most of whom have remained loyal to the Democratic party.

I, however, made a clean split and there is very little of the Democratic Party's platform that I would feel comfortable supporting anymore.

So the questions arise, "Who changed? Was it me or the party?"

Probably both to some extent, but certainly I changed more than the party. I felt like I could be an FDR New Deal Democrat, but I couldn't be a Clintonite Democrat.

During Clinton's years in office, I was really turned off by his seemingly endless succession of sex scandals with women other than Hillary. Bill's affair with an intern in the Oval Office was the last straw. But you can't blame the party for something that is Bill Clinton's fault.

However, I did feel that the "Progressive" agenda being pushed for by the rank and file Democrats in the 1990s no longer squared with my way of thinking. So, after pondering it for a while, I decided that I liked Republicans and conservative thought better. Now I've got to admit, I couldn't stand Rush Limbaugh when I first heard him 20 years ago. And I don't like him today. I also don't like his MSNBC counterpart Ed Schultz. To me they are both blowhards who try to talk louder than their opponents. Still I find comfort in the conservative agenda of lower taxes and government getting out of the way of companies trying to do business.

This is not to say that I liked everything President Bush did during his eight years, but I was really glad that he was in the White House on and after September 11 and not Bill Clinton. Did we really need to send troops into harm's way in Iraq? Probably not, but I remember when both Democrats and Republicans thought that Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction. That feeling is similar to today when both parties feel that Iran is close to building atomic weapons, if they don't have them already.

In the 2008 Presidential election, I felt I had no real choice between moderate Republican John McCain and liberal Barack Obama. That was the election where I felt like staying home; however, I voted for McCain, whom I felt was the lesser of two evils.

Since that time, the presidency of Barack Obama has galvanized my position in favor of Republicans. I especially felt betrayed when the Senate under the leadership of Harry Reid and the House of Representatives led by Nancy Pelosi were radically changing my country, and not for the better, in my opinion.

So I was happy when the House tilted in favor of the Republicans after the 2010 election and John Boehner became Speaker. I'm not at all disappointed in the gridlock that is Washington, D.C. However, I am looking forward to the 2012 election when hopefully Mitch McConnell becomes Senate Majority leader and a conservative Republican takes the White House.

I would like to see a return to less government and more emphasis on family values. Call me old fashioned, but I still believe that a paycheck is something to be earned and not something to be shared.

I've been proud of my country since I was born, not just since 2008 when Barack Obama was elected President. I would like to see a little more common horse sense played out in Washington, D.C., such as "living within our means" and making government "accountable to the people" and not vice versa.

Yeah, I know that the United States is still a great country, but I would like it to be a greater, stronger country with low unemployment and well thought out domestic energy program.

My mantra comes from a Merle Haggard song popular in the 1970s, "If you don't love it, leave it." But I'm reminded of an old line from 1930s humorist Will Rogers, "We live in the greatest country on earth. Heck, even the people who hate it don't want to leave."

That rose bush used to be second base

When the late Harmon Killebrew was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he recounted the story of his mom complaining to his dad that their lawn was dug up by Harmon and his siblings playing sports. Harmon recalled his dad saying, "Mom, we're raising boys, not lawn."

That thought has come to me many times over the years. Now our back yard has strawberries where the backstop against the fence used to be and a rose bush grows where second base used to be. The pitcher's mound is hardly perceptible any more.

One of the tell-tale signs that the backyard used to be a baseball diamond is the chalk markings on the inside of the garage. To this day, the score board still stands out on the east wall. The concrete blocks are covered with names and numbers representing the players and runs scored.

We had some wild games...back in the day. Scott would strike a pose at the plate like Chuck Knoblauch, the former rookie of the year for the Minnesota Twins. Derek swung for the fences like Twins Hall of Fame centerfielder Kirby Puckett. I was the perennial pitcher.

Our backyard isn't very big so we had to make some rules to go along with the game. One of the rules was that if you hit a foul ball into the garage, it was an out. If you hit a ball into the fence, that was like hitting the ball to the shortstop because the fence and a good shortstop can both stop a ball.

We also used furry, yellow tennis balls instead of hard baseballs. That was because the back of our house and two windows were only about 15 and 20 feet away from home plate. Line drives would come screaming off the wooden bats of the boys and smack the windows. However, we never suffered a broken glass pane.

The trick, of course, was to hit the ball over the fence between our yard and the city park. First, there was no one in the park to catch the ball. Secondly, the park is built on a hill so a well struck ball can travel a long ways down the hill side, especially if it makes it to the street.

The worst thing that ever happened in a backyard baseball game occurred on a foul ball that went straight back of home plate. Most of the time when the boys were little, the house next door was deserted, but the house beside that one was inhabited by an old, unfriendly lady who seemed to despise children and especially ours.

Anyway, I came home from work and was met by the boys who told me that a foul ball had landed in the lady's backyard. The lady grabbed the ball and took it into her home.

So, I marched over to her house and knocked on the back door...the one the lady used. Her daughter was visiting her so I told the daughter what had transpired. The daughter heard my story and then went back into the house. In a couple of minutes she came back with a furry, yellow tennis ball and handed it to me. She apologized for her mother and I was on my way.

Back in our yard, I'm sure the boys were delighted to get the ball back and might even have been surprised to see me go get it. After all, it wasn't as if it was the only tennis ball we had. Our garage was full of tennis balls. However, I wanted to make a point with the lady that she could no longer get away with being rude to the boys.

As the years passed, the boys got bigger and somehow our backyard kept getting smaller. For a while, the boys would go to the nearby elementary school playground to play baseball. Then they got interested in other things...girls, among them. And it seemed as though baseball was nothing but a memory.

So when I look out and see the rose bush where second base used to be, forgive me if I smile. We now grow grass in the backyard, but once upon a time we were raising little baseball players.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

Most of us heard that question a number of times during our youth. My answer was that I wanted to be a sports reporter that covered the New York Yankees. Actually, I wanted to be the center fielder for the New York Yankees. At the time, Mickey Rivers was the center fielder and I figured that I was at least as good as him. But, alas, no baseball scouts ever came to see the Roundup Miners play baseball, so I was left for the next best thing...sports reporter.

That's why I wrote sports for our hometown newspaper when I was in high school. That's why I went to the University of Montana to study journalism. I even studied Russian as a foreign language when I was in college so that I could cover the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. You remember that Olympics don't you? That's the one that the United States didn't participate in because President Carter boycotted it to protest the USSR invasion of Afghanistan.

So what's a young grad with a journalism degree to do? Well, the Yankees hadn't come calling so my first job out of college was as a reporter in Beach, North Dakota. I was a general assignment reporter and covered everything from writing wedding announcements to covering an oil field explosion. After six months, I had had enough of Beach and I think Beach had had enough of me. We agreed to part amicably.

However, I stayed with newspapers for another couple of years until I made the swap to public relations in 1983, moving from the newspaper in Baker, Montana, to Mid-Rivers Telephone Cooperative in Glendive, Montana. From there, I moved to Mandan in 1985 with my new bride and a new job with MDU. I had another job transition in 2001, and actually worked for six months as the education reporter for the Bismarck Tribune before going to work for my present employer, the Lignite Energy Council.

So for 27 or so years, I've been in public relations. I never did get to write sports or cover the New York Yankees as I had wanted to...but my point of this blog and my question remains..."What did you want to do when you were growing up?"

Bittersweet at 91

Tomorrow is my dad's ninety-first birthday. He was born in Musselshell, Montana, the third oldest child of William and Clara Van Dyke. His older brother John and older sister Mattie are both dead now. Dad's parents died a long time ago. His father died in 1949, the year my oldest sister Janet was born. Dad's mom died in 1986, a year after I got married.

I'm not sure just how soon, but after he was born, dad's family moved to Wisconsin before moving back to Montana to settle on a farm south of Roundup where dad and his nine sisters and brothers were raised. The farm was called Strawberry Acres. Across the highway from the Van Dyke's farm was another one owned by the Crosmer family. That's where my dad met my mother. She was the granddaughter of Frank and Nancy Crosmer.

I think the grade school they attended was on Horse Thief Creek. The teacher was a Lindstrand, who lived on a neighboring farm. Anyway, the story goes that dad was in fourth grade and my mom was in first grade when an important incident occurred. Dad was teasing mom so to get back at him, she picked up a cow pie and threw it at him. As one of my favorite comedians, Don Knotts, used to say, "Mom had spunk."

The story must be true because I heard it lots of times when I was growing up and I never heard anyone contradict it.

The only good story I know about them courting was told to me by my mom's sister Millie. She said that dad liked to sing to my mother. This isn't hard to believe because dad still sings to this day, if the mood strikes him. Millie told me that one of his favorite songs was "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain." Yes, it was popular long before Willie Nelson recorded it in the 1970s.

I remember driving to Billings when I was a teenager with my dad to see my Grandma Van Dyke, who was in one of the Billings hospitals. It was on the return trip home to Roundup when I first heard Willie Nelson sing that song. I was amazed that dad knew the words. Generally us kids would learn a song long before dad did, but since the song was a classic, dad had known the words for a long time.

When I was a little boy some of my dad's favorite songs were: "Jimmy Brown, the newsboy"; and "Skylark, won't you tell me where my love can be"; and the Sam Cooke hit, "She was only sixteen." He also had one that he sang when he got a hair cut: "Hey, Mister Zip, Zip, Zip, with your hair cut just like mine."

When I was born, dad was 39. As a young boy, I hated cold weather but my dad seemed to live in it without much suffering. He would walk outside on the coldest day of the year and chop wood wearing nothing but a white T-shirt.

At 91, his thermometer has changed some. Now he likes to wear long johns from September through May. He also prefers wearing a long sleeve flannel shirt to wandering around in a T-shirt.

But some things haven't changed. He still likes music, and if it's a song he knows, he'll sing right along with it. And dad is one of the most helpful men that God ever put on this earth. He helps Belinda with the laundry by folding clothes. He also likes to empty the garbage cans in every room and take a sack of garbage out to the alley at least once a day. Also, our birds will never go hungry nor will his cat ever have to worry about a dirty cat box. Dad also likes to vacuum the carpets and wash the dishes. If anything, he's as busy as he wants to be. He walks several times a day from our house to the highway and back. It's only a two block hike, but if you do it enough times, it must be a mile he's walking during the day.

No, he's not 21 anymore, or even 71, but he's doing pretty well for being ninety-one.

Dad's oldest brother John was born in 1917 and died in 1967 when he was 50 years old. Dad's sister Mattie was born in 1919 and died in 2006. That means that John was the oldest in the family for 50 years and Mattie was the oldest for 39 years. Dad has only been the oldest five years.

My guess is that he might like to be the oldest for a few more years. My Grandma Van Dyke lived well into her 90s and dad's father lived to be well into his 80s. So it's hard to tell how much longer dad will sing, walk and do our household chores. Maybe he's destined to be the oldest surviving World War II vet.

Anyway, happy birthday dad. You've been a part of my life for 51 years, and for that, I'm deeply blessed.

September 11th memories

Ten years ago, I was the manager of corporate communications for MDU Resources and working in the Schuchart Building north of the North Dakota capitol. I was in my office when I got a call from George McDonald, a videographer with MDU, who was in the TV studio watching the first World Trade Center Tower burning.

He called me to the basement and we were watching a replay on a TV monitor when a second jet hit the second tower and another ball of fire erupted from the explosion. I had been to the World Trade Center in 1976 and had eaten in one of the large ballrooms near the top floor….about where the jet hit.

As the fire and smoke rolled out of the buildings, the announcers were speculating about the start of World War III, the whereabouts of President Bush and any number of things. It would be later that the towers would fall and the huge clouds of dust would mushroom up from lower Manhattan. The fire trucks and the police cars were rushing to the scene; however, most of the video was being shot blocks away from the Twin Towers. You couldn’t see people jumping from the buildings like we did later on.

For me, I had some immediate concerns. The president of MDU Resources and a number of other company employees were in New York City at the time meeting with credit agencies and financial houses. There were a series of meetings that had been scheduled – some months in advance – and our department had worked on writing speeches, preparing powerpoints and printing complementary materials for the meetings.

I didn’t know exactly where the MDU officials were staying but my guess was that they weren’t staying next to the World Trade Center but more in the center of Manhattan. It wasn’t long before I got called to a meeting where I found that the company officials in New York City were safe, but they had been close to the World Trade Center earlier in the morning.

Then there was a new wrinkle that we had to deal with. My boss, the vice president of corporate communications, was in Washington, D.C., and staying near the Pentagon building where another jet had rammed into it.

It was a strange day because while I felt safe in Bismarck, I had lots of people I knew in places that weren’t very safe. I could feel for them because I was sure they were doing things that weren’t part of any travel plans. For instance, with these two cities being attacked, would there be any public transportation running or restaurants open? It’s one thing to be home and eating out of a crowded refrigerator, but it’s quite another to be on the road and find yourself isolated from the rest of the world because everyone is hunkered down waiting for the next plane to hit. Just think of living out of a suitcase in New York City with no running water, no toilet, no electricity and no food.

Eventually, all the people from MDU returned back to Bismarck. The group that was in New York City had to wait a couple of days before taking a taxi cab from New York to Cleveland, Ohio, before the company plane could fly out and get them. I can’t remember how my boss got home, but I remember, there was a no fly moratorium in place right after September 11, 2001.

I also remember the markets were tanking after September 11^th and that our local churches were never so full as they were on the next Sunday. A little more than a month later, I was about to be jarred even harder when I found out my position at MDU had been eliminated. It was a strange time, but now 10 years later, we can see with 20/20 hindsight. Still, at the time, it was difficult to navigate because everything had changed.

If there is a lesson from September 11^th, it might be this….above all, persevere. Life goes on.  

How we got kicked out of the Mall of America

The last time Derek, Scott and I got to travel together without female supervision was 12 years ago. The boys wanted to go to a summer Bible camp at Lake Poinsett, near Watertown, SD, and I agreed to accompany them. We stopped in Aberdeen overnight where we ate Chinese food and then went north of town to explore the Wizard of Oz figurines in a park. At the camp, we were introduced to Monty Furball, not his real name but the hairiest man we'd ever seen, and a couple of little rugrats that we would never forget. One was a hyperactive one-man destruction crew named Austin. The other was Ross, a "sad sack" ne'er do well who had a huge man for a daddy. At dinner, the little boy ate every minuscule piece of meat off a chicken back. When the boy was asked if he wanted another piece, the dad replied. "my son doesn't like chicken." Very odd.

So with that as a common background, the three of us set out toward Minneapolis on the morning of August 19 to see three major league baseball games in the Twins' new ballpark, Target Field. We had seen the Twins play before but it was always indoors...in the Metrodome. This was our first chance to experience outdoor baseball in the Twin Cities. Plus we would get to see the Yankees, who were in first place, play the Twins, who were struggling because of injuries to key players and inconsistent pitching.

We stayed at a Days Inn a few miles from Target Field because Derek had a free night's stay at that particular hotel chain. The distance from the ballpark wasn't a problem, we thought, because we would take the light rail (think subway) to and from the ball park. However, the light rail is not near the Day's Inn, so we took their shuttle, which dropped us off at the corner of 6th Street and Hennepin Avenue. From there, we walked around downtown, ate a leisurely supper under the old Dayton's store and then walked to the ball park.

The Yankees beat the Twins on Friday night and the weather couldn't have been any better for outdoor baseball. However, just as the game ended, the clouds began to sprinkle a light rain on us. We walked to where the shuttle was to pick us up and even called the hotel to let us know we were waiting. But alas, there was no white van. So we waited, and called the hotel again, still no shuttle. So we waited, and called, and waited and called again. About 45 minutes passed while we were rained on and talked to by hookers, drug addicts, pimps, pushers, partyers and other forms of humanity that we normally don't pal around with.

Finally, we saw a white van from the Day's Inn, but it stopped kitty corner from us. By the time we tried to run and catch it, the shuttle left. So Derek called the hotel again. Only this time, he didn't use his nice voice. The clerk at the hotel said the shuttle would circle the block and come get us. The shuttle did no such thing. So Derek called again. This time we heard that the shuttle would be back to pick us up after it made a stop at the light rail. So we waited...while a diesel bus pummeled us with stinky exhaust and the passengers stared at us like we were crazy for standing on a street corner on Hennepin Avenue at this time on a Friday night.

Finally, we hailed a taxi, which took us to our hotel. Upon arriving, we were reimbursed for the taxi cab by the hotel clerk who apologized for the lack of shuttle service.

Thus ended our first day in the city. The second day would be no less dramatic. We started the morning at Belinda's cousin Lisa's home south of Minneapolis. She made a wonderful breakfast and we got to soak our feet in her warm outdoor pool. From there we made it to Hopkins, MN, where Derek and Scott each bought some soda, candy and cookies from a Brazilian restaurant. After that, we went to the Mall of America to shop and eat at Bubba Gump's. After a tasty meal and a few miles around the mall, we decided that for "old time sake" we should take the log ride at the amusement park in the center of the mall.

I climbed in the front of the log at the request of my sons so that my clothes could absorb most of the splashing water. Behind me were Derek and Scott. The log ride is a lot of fun. It's kind of a combination roller coaster and boat ride. Plus you get a little tour of Minnesota folklore as you see Paul Bunyan and his blue ox Babe as you go through the mountainous terrain. Toward the end of the ride, you get your picture taken at the same time your log heads straight down a hillside. It was at this moment that I heard Scott say, "Is that a nipple I see?"

I didn't think much of it until we were out of our log and walking to where they sell the pictures. People were standing there and laughing at us. One old guy said, "I guess you don't know what was going on behind you?"

I did not, until I saw the picture of Derek holding up his shirt to expose his left nipple on the photo. I took a picture of the electronic preview because I certainly didn't want to buy the photo...until the boys talked me into it. Derek went up to the lady and asked to buy the photo for $10. When it popped up on her computer screen, her face turned ashen. She collected her thoughts and then turned toward us and started berating us about behavior, family values and a few other well chosen phrases and sentences meant to demean us. In the end, she wouldn't sell us the photo. No skin off my nose, I thought. I didn't want to buy it in the first place, and with her mad at us, we decided to leave the amusement park and the mall. So, no we weren't escorted to the door by the mall police, but we knew we were no longer welcome...especially on the log ride.

The photo of the log ride

In the evening, we saw the Twins beat the Yankees and after the game, we grabbed a cab and skipped waiting for the shuttle to arrive at the corner of Sixth and Hennepin.

The next day we were invited to church in Roseville by a young lady who had once or twice been the babysitter for our boys in Mandan. After church, she treated us to a delicious buffet brunch that was second to none. When we left her, we thought we would head to the ball park for the afternoon game but first we needed some gasoline. It was at the gas station near the stadium that I asked the boys if either one of them had grabbed today's tickets off the TV set back at the hotel. Both said they didn't see the tickets so no they hadn't grabbed them.

It was at that moment that my heart started pounding. Derek threw the car into gear and we raced back to our hotel. Derek told me to calm down as the cleaning crew had probably not been to our room yet.

When he reached the parking lot, I jumped out of the car and went straight to the desk. A clerk there made a key to our room and asked me to check it out myself. While I was racing to the room, I heard him ask a lady who was head of the cleaning service if our room had been cleaned. I didn't hear her answer because of the hum of the elevator.

Running down the hall to our room, it looked like nothing had been cleaned, but once inside our room, I could see that the beds were made and the tickets were missing from the top of the TV where I had left them. So I ran back to the elevator and eventually back to the front desk. There the clerk stood by himself. But he told me that often the cleaning service will keep things like tickets on their carts and that the lady had left to see if she could find the person who cleaned our room. In that instant, my heart sunk. We were in Minneapolis with no tickets. It was my fault. There was no one to blame it on and the boys were going to be very disappointed.

Just then, the lady came from around the corner and, lo and behold, she had our tickets. All three of them. I could have kissed her.

I ran outside to find my boys ravaging through my luggage, double checking to make sure that their father wasn't so stupid to take the tickets out and leave them on the TV. When they saw me and saw that I had the tickets, they began to smile again. And then started laughing as we piled into the car to head to the game.

Derek, Scott and I on Sunday

Then Scott let loose with the family cheer from the backseat of the car. "Steve Van Dyke...OY, OY, OY!" The cheer is held in reserve to highlight the most egregious of errors.

We went to the game, the Yankees won and we were back in the car driving home to Mandan. The only odd thing that happened on the trip home was the million of bugs we hit outside of Jamestown. We had stopped at a gas station, not only for gas, but also to clean our windshield in Jamestown, 100 miles east of Bismarck. Now, five miles out of town, our windshield was covered with bugs.

Splat, splat, splat..."that bug won't have the guts to do that again"...splat, splat, splat...."you know what the last thing was to go through that bug's mind? His feet".  Suddenly, splat, splat was replaced with swish, swish as we tried to get rid of the bug guts with blue washer fluid and our windshield wipers. By the time we reached home, our white Impala was the color of tar from all the dead bugs.

Still, it was an adventure...one that all three of us will never forget. We didn't have Monty, Ross or Austin, this time around, but we saw enough characters at the corner of Hennepin and Sixth to last us a lifetime.

Funny memories of the natural gas bill stuffer

Years ago when I worked for MDU Resources Group, Inc., I was in charge of the bill stuffers that went into the monthly bills of Montana-Dakota Utilities Co.'s energy customers. Once a year we had to put a "scratch and sniff" stuffer into the natural gas customers' bills so that they knew what natural gas smelled like in case there was ever a leak.

For those who don't know, natural gas is odor less in nature, and so the utility mixes it with an chemical called mercaptain, and it smells worse than rotten eggs.

You then can imagine what the mailroom of MDU smelled like every January when a quarter of a million customers in four states received the bill stuffer. The mailroom contained a very large metallic green monstrosity that held the bills, the return envelope, the mailing envelope and about four stacks of various bill stuffers. There was just enough friction caused by the envelope stuffing to release the mercaptain smell every time a bill was mailed. Over the course of eight hours, the room reeked, and after a month, the mailing room almost required a gas mask just to enter. So it wasn't a pleasant place to work in January.

The two people who worked in the mailroom were a couple of characters. It was an elderly man -- who liked to drink at the Paper Dollar bar in Bismarck on his way home from work -- and a nosy middle-aged lady, who was forever trying to win something off the radio. The lady was a shirt-tail relative of my father-in-law, but that's another story.

Anyway, I walked into the mail room one January day, and the old man is tooting right and left...almost in time with the mailing machine as it chugged along stuffing envelopes. He smiled at me, and I guess I smiled back at him...as a person does when they are sort of witnessing something that is a little "out in left field."

Anyway, the old man came up to me and said, "I love this month. I can pass gas and no one can tell because of the stink from the bill stuffers."

If only we had also been given ear plugs, I thought.

But the strangest thing was a letter I received from a distraught mother of a teenager in Dickinson. Her letter read: "Dear MDU, Recently I received a bill stuffer that smelled like natural gas. I'm wondering if you could send one out that smells like burnt marijuana. I'm suspicious that my son is smoking grass, but I don't know what it smells like."

My reply was that the company purchased the natural gas sniffer stuffers from an outside firm and that vendor only makes the ones that smell like natural gas because it's mandated by law. However, if she wanted to know what marijuana smelled like, she should either go to a rock concert or take a trip (no pun intended) to the Dickinson police department and ask an officer to burn some contraband for her.

I''m reminded of these stories every January when I open my MDU bill only to find the stinky natural gas sniffer stuffer. The old man has since died and the lady's retired....but the stories -- like the smell -- continue to linger.