Summer observations

A couple of weeks ago, Scott and I were traveling by car and he made an interesting observation, that I'll paraphrase as such, "This person is one of the top 10 reasons why sometimes it would be better to be blind."

It's quite a mouthful and generally we don't think that we would ever want to be blind, crippled, deaf or have any other particular ailment or malfunction, so when he said it, I took notice.

And I guess it comes down to that same issue....is it better to look stylish or be cool in the summer heat.

Now, I'm probably as guilty as anybody as summertime often finds me in a pair of shorts even though my legs are far from being outstanding specimens of manly physique.

However, they could be worse. One person golfing in a tournament in July gained the nickname "Keg on Legs" for his portly physique as he pushed around his golf clubs in brutal heat and humidity while wearing a dashing pair of green shorts and bright yellow shirt.

But enough about outward beauty, lest someone thinks that I'm shallow. Let me go now in a different direction, which, of course, leads me back to Scott's list of 10 things. I got to wondering what other lists could I compile during the summer.

Here are a few:

• 10 worst persons to be caught in a conversation with at family picnic, renunion, etc.
• 10 dishes that you wish were never brought to another potluck.
• 10 drivers that you hope get their drivers licenses taken away for being idiots on the highways.
• 10 boaters that should hit an underwater tree stump because they are scaring the fish away while you are angling for walleyes on the Missouri.

I suppose I better quit now before one of my two faithful readers comes out with their own top 10 list and it's "10 bloggers who I'm getting very tired of hearing whine."

Don't take the little things for granted....

Today, I gave Ken Miller a ride to church from his home at the MedCenter One Care Center. Ken will turn 90 in a couple more weeks. He used to live alone and drive himself to church, but with failing health, he had to relocate to a nursing home and gave up his pickup. Since learning that he wanted to attend church, I have brought him the first Sunday in May, June, July and now August.

Ken generally gets around either by wheelchair or with a walker. I'm not a doctor, but I would say the arthritis in his legs makes it very difficult for him to walk. So far when he goes to church, he chooses the walker over the wheelchair.

On the way home after church, he told me that while he has appreciated me bringing him to church, this is the last time that he will accept a ride because it's just too hard for him to get around.

I let the words sink in and then I told him that I would come back in about a month and see if he changed his mind. He laughed and said, "That's probably a good idea...maybe I'll be able to get around a little better in a month."

His comments made me think of some specific words that I heard my mom say within the two or three-month time frame before her death.

She said, "I never thought about getting old. I guess I thought I would stay young forever."

On the surface, those words simply sound foolish. After all, we all celebrate a birthday every year so we know we are getting older...or do we?

A couple of weeks ago, the doctor who gave me my physical also gave me some words of advice. He said, "Steve, your body is nearly 50 but your mind thinks you are 18. So before you do physically strenuous work, such as lifting heavy boxes, be sure to stretch your muscles, or you are likely to tear something."

Fifty - why I don't feel 50 - I play tennis with my teenage sons. I walk four miles a day with my wife. However, the doctor is right, my body is getting older but my brain says that I'm 18. I feel young. I don't have aches or pains...generally.

I think that's the way my mom felt most of her life. She felt young - like she could do everything she could when she was young. But then something happens. Maybe it is arthritis for Ken, or congestive heart failure for mom...but one day we can't do the things we once did and our brain finally catches up and tells us so.

We are getting old, whether we want to admit it or not, so for today and the next 30 or 40 years, let's be young and do the things we want to do. Grow a garden, ride a bike, go for that walk at sunset hand-in-hand with the one we love. Go fishing, explore an old building...and go to church. Because someday, we just might not be able to.

Today, we're young...let's enjoy it.

Memories of Solberg Cabins

My first trip to the cabins, nestled along the north fork of the Musslshell River in a pine-covered valley near Martinsdale, Montana, occurred when I was about five years old. That was probably our family's second vacation. The first was a year earlier when we borrowed a neighbor's tent and camped out on Smith River -- not far from the cabins. Anyway, in the ensuing year, somebody must have told the folks about renting a cabin instead of pitching a tent.

In those days, lunch consisted of either a baloney or salami sandwich, a bag of Goodies potato chips and a can of Shasta pop -- all bought on the way out of town at Ray's grocery where Gene worked. By the way, you needed a church key to open the pop -- the poptop was still to be invented. The cans were also steel, not aluminum.

My first trip to the cabins was spent snuggled between Mom and Dad in a double bed in the cabin made of logs. Janet and Susan had the trundle beds and Gene and Randy had the little red, tar-papered cabin to the west. On that trip, there was no volleyball, badmitten or other sport, except fishing. Dad and my older brothers went fishing and Mom and the girls and I walked up to the highway or dangled our feet in the cold stream waiting for the boys and the fish to arrive.

After that first trip, we made several more to the cabins as I was growing up, but there were always fewer of us going because brothers and sisters were getting married. In fact, Susan and Rich spent their honeymoon at the cabins -- which makes them honest to goodness Montanans! Camping on their honeymoon!

Eventually, it became my turn to get married. And along came two children. So following David and Cathy's wedding in 1993, someone had the glorious idea of leaving Roundup after the ceremony and heading up to the cabins. I think that first year might have been just the folks, Rich and Susan and their family and mine. I think Randy, Janice and Gary joined us because it seems Janice's Dad, Bernard, came that year, too.

It wasn't until the following year that David and Cathy came along, which led to the fire incident. And the fire incident led to the naming of the years as in -- that was the year of the fire. For those who weren't there, David and Cathy were staying in a pop-up camper which caught fire and burned. To my boys, I'm sure they compare it to the burning of Chicago. It was quite exciting as we formed a water line and handed buckets of water from the creek to the person throwing the wet stuff on the burning camper.

The next year -- 1995 -- was even more famous because it was the year that Scott and his Dad nearly drowned. Well, not really, it's hard to drown in a foot of water, but we did our best as we sunk an intertube after hitting a pointed rock. What made the incident famous was Scott's "man-on-the-street interview" with Uncle Rich, which was caught on videotape. There he told the world that the only thing that saved him from perishing was grabbing on to "my dad's icky shirt."

Other memorable "years" were when Rich spun Dylan's inflatable raft upside down in the corner of the stream. There was also the year of Spencer as he followed Missy and Lindsay around like their shadow, and the year Gary directed all the kids in an epic movie, "Where's Timmy," which we still have. And it was a great year when indoor toilets and running showers arrived. There was also the year Belinda drove the car off the bridge -- well not entirely, but close enough for me.

As the years passed, the talk of the fun we had begun to circulate and every year we seemed to get more and more people coming. However, the fun ended -- at least for my family -- in 2002. By that time, I had lost my job with MDU and had started with the Bismarck Tribune so lacked both time and money for a trip to the cabins. The year after, Mom's health began to fail and it didn't seem like anyone wanted to leave Roundup.

Like Jim Croce said, if we could "put time in a bottle", I think a lot of us would like to return to the cabins for another jaunt. However, the next time I might be the Grandpa, and it might be someone else who snuggles between their parents on a double bed. I hope all of you cherish your cabin memories, and feel free to share some by commenting on this blog.

High, wide and handsome...

Former Great Falls Tribune reporter Joseph Howard Kinsey wrote the classic history book, "Montana - High, Wide and Handsome." And after driving 1,300 miles this weekend, most of it in Montana, I'd have to agree with Kinsey. You forget how far towns are away from each other until you start driving from Winnett, to Jordan and on to Circle.

Oh, I miss the mountains, the streams, the evergreen trees, but in fairness to my adopted North Dakota, I've got to tell you that if I was a farmer, I would find it easier plowing the rich, tree-less plains of North Dakota as compared to a forested mountain side in Montana. Still, Montana's scenery is easy on the eyes -- even at 80 mph.

Here's a couple of observations from the weekend about the Treasure State:

1. I still enjoying buying things in Montana and not having to pay a sales tax. The price on the item is the price you pay -- not an extra six or seven cents on the dollar.
2. Two-lane highways are scary after you're accustomed to driving on Interstate highways. I about met my maker between Great Falls and Lewistown on Saturday afternoon trying to pass a semi-truck. A pickup surprised me -- even though there was a dotted center line -- as it came up really fast. However, I managed to pass the truck and duck back in ahead of a head-on collision. I was glad my car had lots of horsepower and could accelerate very fast. Still, I was looking at the ditch in case I was needing to head in that direction.
3. There's no better company than family. It didn't matter if it was my inlaws in Glendive, Aunt Ginny in Billings, Connie in Roundup or Nancy -- Rich's cousin -- in Great Falls, the welcome mat was certainly out.

I might devote another column to Shorty's funeral -- it was memorable and impactful -- but let me just say the phrase that stuck in my head was this one by the preacher: "There are two kinds of people. One kind enters a room and announces, "Here I am." The second comes into a room and says, "It's sure good to have you here with me." I agree with the preacher that Shorty was certainly of the second kind, and he's a good role model to follow.

You can't go home again

Thomas Wolfe wrote a novel titled, "You can't go home again" meaning that you can't recapture the past. This weekend, I'll be heading back to Montana -- my home state -- for the first time since July 2006 when I brought my father to live with us in North Dakota.

I asked Dad if he would like to come with me to Montana, but he didn't think he was up to the long drive. "I better stay here and take care of my cat," he decided. Oh, he also wanted to know if my wife was going to Montana with me. When he discoverd she wasn't, he said, "Well, if she'll stay home and cook for me, I guess I better stay home and eat it."

If I had my druthers, I would love to be driving to my hometown of Roundup to visit my parents in their big blue, ranch-style home on the edge of town. Maybe we'd be bringing some kites along to fly in open fields nearby or baseballs and gloves to play catch in the street in front of the house.

But the blue house is sold and my mom is buried in the cemetery near her brother's grave plot. So instead of going to their home to visit mom, I'll be going to the cemetery on the edge of town to put some flowers on her grave.

Certainly, there will be people to visit -- uncles and aunts and a hardworking cousin -- all who have meant so much to me and my family. But still it won't be the same. As Thomas Wolfe said, "You can't go home again."

The law of unintended consequences

Several years ago my father-in-law told me that his annual income from owning a body shop in Glendive dipped significantly when Montana passed tougher drunk driving laws. Certainly, none of the lawmakers who passed that law intended for owners of body shops to suffer. What they wanted was fewer drunks on the road, but the unintended consequence was less "fender-benders" and thus less work for body technicians.

This law of unintended consequences has been on my mind again with the rising price of gasoline. In Mandan, the price of regular is now $3.69 a gallon and expected to go higher.

So here are some things that I foresee as unintended consequences of higher gasoline and diesel prices:

• Higher prices of almost everything from food to merchandise because of the higher price of diesel. Since the trucking industry, which is an inefficient mode of transportation compared to railroads, brings most of the food and dry goods to American stores, we can expect to pay more for everything -- not just things that are petroleum-based.
  
• More people staying at home, eating at home, etc., to save money to buy gasoline means there will be more of market for durable things you can do at home, such as games, puzzles, books and DVDs. There might also be more people interested in visiting with their neighbors than their relatives or friends who simply live too far away to spend the money for gasoline to visit. People working in libraries may see a resurgence in the number of books being loaned because we won't have enough money to drive to Barnes and Noble for a caffe latte and BUY A BOOK.
  
• There will be a significant drop in the number of people living in small towns who want to travel to bigger towns to shop. We used to think that good roads spelled the end to small town commerce, however, it will be proven that it was good roads and low fuel costs. Once people start adding in higher fuel costs, paying a little more to shop locally will look like a better option that driving 60 miles to shop at Wal-Mart.
  
• There will be additional deaths and injuries suffered in car accidents because people will be driving smaller and lighter cars, which by their design provide less protection to occupants than larger cars.
  
• And one other potential consequence might be that people drive a little slower because driving slower will save fuel....no, that's probably not going to happen.
  
  If you have any other thoughts on the subject, please post a comment.

One of life's small pleasures....a haircut

(Sung to the tune of the Beach Boys' Barbara Ann) Bar-Bar-Bar, Bar-Barber Mike; Bar-Bar-Bar, Bar-Barber Mike; You got me shakin' and a quakin; yeah, my head is achin' Barber Mike.

The boys and I used to sing this song years ago, and actually Barber Mike wasn't our barber then...it was Barber Gene...but that's another story. As our barbers got older and retired, I wondered if there would be anyone to replace them. After all, being a barber isn't the glitziest job in the world.

Probably 10 years ago, Barber Mike came to Mandan and apprenticed under another barber, whose name I forget. We liked Barber Gene, but he died. Actually he hung himself when he found out he was full of cancer, which left this other old barber. Mike was young and just out of barber school. He wasn't much of a barber, but neither was the other guy, and Barber Mike was friendlier so I let him cut my hair. Now 10 years later, Mike is about as good as they come and he's still friendly.

Like the old "Kansas City Star" song, Mike will tell you jokes if you like them or he'll talk politics if you like that sort of thing. I'm sure he's a Democrat when he has a Democrat in the chair and a Republican when he's cutting my hair. He likes to garden, just like me. I suppose if I liked to hunt, Barber Mike would like to hunt.

Anyway, tomorrow is the day that Dad and I will go again to the barbershop to get our haircuts. I've had lots of memorable barbers, but I think I like Barber Mike best. He's probably 18 years younger than me and probably 58 years younger than Dad, and yet he seems like our best friends when we're getting a hair cut. That's a bargain for $11.