30 years of neighborhood memories

I was 26 years old when we purchased our first -- and only home -- in Mandan. Now, 30 years later, we are the only family in the neighborhood who also lived here in 1985. I'm going to confine my comments to only our immediate neighbors but I could venture out to everyone on several blocks.

To our north was the Meidinger family, who also went to the same church as us. Their daughter, Jill, was our first babysitter. The boys loved her. If they knew Jill was coming, they would spread a quilt on the livingroom floor and when she came in the door they would greet her, take her by the hand and lead her to the quilt. Then they would say, "What are we going to play?"

Our home in Mandan.

Unfortunately, Jill's dad transferred to Minnesota and we lost our wonderful babysitter and her brothers. They have been missed.

The family who replaced them had kids the same age as ours so the relationship was different. Unfortunately, they also had a teenage boy who shot himself. So there has been a sadness in the neighborhood that has really never lifted.

To our south were a couple in their 80s when we moved in and their single daughter. The man and woman died within a week of each other, which left their daughter to fend for herself. She died a couple of years ago and her home sat idle. This winter the house caught fire and it still sits in a state of disrepair.

Belinda's cousin Andy lived to our west and remodeled the home. However, no history of the neighborhood would be complete without tales of the wild parties Andy threw when he was single. In the morning, his lawn would have bodies strewn over it exactly where they passed out the night before. But alas, Andy got married and moved away. Since then the house has had three or four different owners. Right now it's occupied by a single man who is also a county commissioner.

The home closest to us is the one on the east. Originally, it was inhabited by a single mother and her two daughters. The mom was also an Avon lady, so I wasn't disappointed when she left.

Except that the young lady who moved in after that was mentally handicapped and entertained  unseemly men who liked to play outside with knives and arrows. Worried about our little boys, I called the sisters who owned the home and told them about their niece and how I worried about our boys. I told them that either the niece left or I was selling our house and moving elsewhere.

Soon the niece was gone and the sisters sold the home to their brother who fixed up the house. First he rented it to a nice couple who wanted to buy it, but they found the price too high, so they bought a home a few blocks away. Next, a married couple with a tumultuous relationship lived there. Every weekend -- in the summer -- brought family parties, loud music, cussing like sailors and general mayhem. Eventually, they divorced and the woman sold the home to a young single guy who, in spite of playing a trumpet, is way more quieter than the husband and wife.

Yes, the neighborhood holds many memories, but the dearest surround my family and how the neighbors pitched in to help us raise our children. Once when Derek was a little toddler, he wandered off into the road and Mrs. Bauer, who lived three doors to the east, saw him and went out and brought him home.

Mrs. Bauer and her neighbor Mrs. Renner fought like cats and dogs. They disagreed on every matter. Now they are both gone. Our neighborhood seems so much more peaceful.

Belinda and I get along with all of our neighbors and we got along with all the old neighbors. We live next to a city park, and every once in a while one of the grown children from the neighborhood will come with their own children. We will then sneak over to the park and visit with them.

Yes, how fast the time has flown by. Once we were the new kids on the block. Now we are the geezers.

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. 

The Christmas letter

The Christmas letter is often disparaged because it's not particularly personal. What you write to a family member is the same stuff that's read by your college roommate whom you haven't seen in 30 years. However, I look forward to reading the letters that accompany the Christmas cards. In fact, I would rather read the letters than the cards...although I do like looking at the pretty pictures on the cards.

We've been exchanging letters and cards with friends and family for years. I write one for my dad and also one for Belinda every year.

When my parents lived in Roundup, MT, my mom would ask me to write their letter. To help me out, she would hand me their calendar that had various notations written on specific days. Some would say, "Dr. appt. - Billings". Others would say, "Susan visited". Or "hair appt."

Needless to say, the calendar notations didn't give me much to go one. But since I talked to my parents at least once a week, I generally knew what they had been up to and could draft up a letter and then let mom look at it and add or change some specific details so that it sounded more like her writing the letter and less like me.

I tried to do this with dad also after he moved to Mandan, ND, in 2006, but this year I just wrote a letter for him and included it in his cards. He no longer can sign his name, so I didn't see any reason in pretending that he's better than he really is. I didn't think it came out too bad. I'm pretty sure that most people knew I was writing the letter for him anyway, so no use pretending.

Dad's mailing list has changed over the years also. Eight years ago, the people who received his cards were more his age -- relatives and friends in their 80s. So there was Florence Schwab, a cousin of mom's, and Sylvia Burch, the widow of a former pastor. They both are dead now along with several others. So they've been replaced on dad's Christmas letter list by more of his grandchildren. Once a grandchild leaves their parent's home, I try to add them to the list. This year I had more empty spaces to fill, so I added Krystal, my brother Gene's youngest daughter, and also Derek, our oldest son.

I keep Grandpa's list at exactly 30 people, which is as many labels as there are one page. So there's nothing magic about the number. This year, Grandpa's card consisted of a photo of him and a holiday greeting. I never know what it will be from year to year. Sometimes I send cards.

Now Belinda's Christmas card list has more than doubled over the nearly 30 years of marriage. In 1986, she sent about 40 cards. This year, it was about 90 cards...and she still dropped a couple of her friends who had stopped sending cards.

Writing Belinda's letter was easy this year. First of all, this was a really great year. I think as you get older, the years go by faster and they seem to be a lot more enjoyable.

Our trip to Brazil was definitely an unforgettable highlight, but we had several others as well. While we were in Mandan and Scott was in Colorado over the Memorial Day weekend, he proposed to Taylor. We felt like we were right there with them. First, we knew what was going to happen because we were in on the planning. I had even mailed the package to Scott's cousin Mary in Aurora that contained the T-shirts that were central to the marriage proposal.

And thanks to Facebook, we saw the photos of the proposal about as quickly as the event happened.

There were lots of other great things that happened as well. We were excited to go back to Roundup in August for a family reunion. To make it even more fun, we rented an airplane, which allowed Scott, Taylor and Derek to join Grandpa, Belinda and me on the trip. This was our first family reunion in Roundup in four years and it's fun to see how the little kids have changed. What's not so fun is when you see (or don't see) your older relatives because they are too sick to attend or perhaps they died in between reunions.

So, this year, read the Christmas letters. Soak up every last bit of them, whether you consider it bragging or just a bland, impersonal letter. There's so much that each of us can be proud of...and for some of us, we like to share the experience in a letter to our family and friends at Christmas.

Here's to a new year, and blessings to each of you.

How patient are you?

When I drive to work in the morning, I see a line of cars...sometimes six or more...waiting in line to go through the drive-up at a popular, Seattle-based coffee hut. Whenever I see that many cars, I wonder who would have the patience or be that addicted to caffeine to wait a half an hour in line for a $4 to $5 latte or some other coffee-based concoction?

Certainly not me. To this day, I have all the patience I was born with, because I certainly have never used any. 

A month ago I went to a chain bank in Mandan where Grandpa does his banking. Grandpa had a certificate of deposit due so we came to the bank to renew it. The interest rate is so low -- nearly non-existent -- that it really wouldn't matter if the money was in a simple savings account or a CD.

Anyway, I walked into the bank with Grandpa and we were greeted by a teller. I told the teller what we needed to do and the teller informed me that we would need to wait for the next available "personal banker." So we went and sat down, only to find an old woman and a young couple also waiting.

I asked the woman how long she had been waiting. She told me a half hour. She also said the young couple had been waiting longer than her. So I asked them how long they had been waiting. The answer was "nearly an hour."

I couldn't believe it. Since I inherited my patience from my dad, there was no way we were going to sit in the bank for an hour to see a  "personal banker" to renew a CD. So we got up and walked out.

The friendly teller noticed this activity and asked me if there was anything she could do. Since she was friendly, I was friendly. I told her that I thought the bank needed to do a better job at providing service to its customers and that there was no way that I would wait an hour for such a simple task.

She took our names and phone number and told me that a  "personal banker" would be calling me to set up an appointment for next week. I did get a call and I did show up and finished our banking activities...a week later than I had initially planned.

So then I got to thinking...what would I wait for the longest? Well, I've waited a long time to see a doctor. They have a little trick at the doctor's office. They call you out of the waiting room and take you to a little  room in the back somewhere. A nurse takes your temperature and checks your vital signs. And then you wait and wait and wait to see a doctor.

When dad lived in Roundup, he actually got up and walked out of the little room at the doctor's office because he got tired of waiting. I haven't done that yet, but I'm tempted.

I also hate waiting to get a haircut. However, I always have to wait because I take dad with me and he always gets his hair cut first. Luckily, though, I generally don't have to wait too long. But if I walked into the barber shop and saw six guys ahead of me, I would turn tail and run.

Do my stories sound familiar or are you a more patient person than me? How long would you wait for a cappuccino?

Some thoughts about our living Lord

Generally, the only time I discuss my faith is when I'm in our Sunday School class or I've been asked to fill in for the preacher. I'm a guy who believes that the best "testimony" we can give is by how we lead our lives as individuals.

But this past week, the Lord has been speaking to me and I wanted to share some thoughts.

Sarah Fredricks preaching 

First, last Sunday, I went to the Bismarck Nazarene Church to hear the message from Sarah Fredricks, a young lady from Mandan who is attending college in Kansas with the hope of becoming a Christian missionary.

Her message was a simple one, "God can use anyone to advance the good news." For Biblical text, she referred to Moses who was trying to wiggle out of God's request for his life. "Pick my brother, Aaron," Moses said. "He speaks better than me." But God picked Moses...and the rest is history.

Her message spoke to me on so many levels. She talked about how we are not the ones who provide the living water. That is Christ, but our lives are to be conduits of the living water to others. Yet, we manage to clog up our pipes with all kinds of messy things that don't allow the love that God has for us to flow through us. For me, a couple of the clogs are "busyness" and "lazyness." There is probably also self-centeredness...but who wants to talk about that...we might go from preaching to meddling.

Then last week I saw the following on Facebook, " If we don't teach our children to follow Christ, the world will teach them not to."

That statement struck me because our church was in the midst of Vacation Bible School when little children attending our church or little children in the neighborhood or community come to our church to learn about Christ's love for them.

Lots of young children participate in VBS

Today in our worship service we saw those little children sing, dance and clap their hands as they celebrated not only Vacation Bible School, but also that they are the Lord's children.

I'm only guessing, but there may have been some adults sitting in the pews today who thought, "Why are these little kids taking up our church service...where's our sermon?"

My answer would be, "those kids are your sermon." That's how we should feel in the presence of the Lord, like those uninhibited children whom the Holy Spirit has filled with love for God.

And then I was reminded that "God can use anybody." Even the little children.

On my drive home from church, I was thinking about the two wonderful young ladies that our sons have picked for their wives. Both of them are God-centered. Then I thought about my wife and my own mom and Belinda's mom. All led faith-centered lives. God can use all of us to further his kingdom.

God is good. And God is alive. Amen.