Rambling Josh

January is gone, the new year is old news, and reversion to the status quo is now in full effect. Step off the treadmill, it’ll still be there next January. Dawn and I ended the month with a Salsa dancing lesson. These things happen when you watch documentaries on the making of the movie Dirty Dancing. I know what you’re thinking, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

Ourselves, and about 40 other promising Baby and Johnny’s, were put through the paces, for about two-hours of very beginner Salsa dance lessons by a very good dance instructor.

She was a kindly lady, and the skillful manner in which she deftly conveyed her 30-years of experience and took full command of a room full of left feet, was most impressive. Do not judge her ability as an instructor based upon the ability of the student. Some Salsa students get left behind. The world needs tomato paste too. So it goes.

I think a lot of things, most of which probably don’t very accurately represent reality, but

I would like to think that my Salsa dancing wasn’t too bad. Not Johnny Castle spicy by any means, maybe closer to sugar-free ketchup. Have you tried that stuff? Not good…needs sugar.

On the few brief occasions that I managed to stop staring at my feet and telling them what to do, I glanced up, and I noticed there were many better and a few worse, but most everyone was smiling. Except that one guy. There’s always that one guy. Don’t be that guy.

It appeared that some of the people in the class had done this before, and had just came to show off their Salsa skills. While most of us looked as though we were simultaneously chopping down a Russian Olive tree with a butter knife and stomping out a brush fire, their bodies effortlessly moved in a manner that made me suspect that their bones had become disjointed and their muscles had spontaneously liquefied.

All that Salsa spice seemed well beyond the safety rating of my bodily capabilities. My hips are under enough duress trying to keep my pants up, I can’t ask them for anything more.

Dawn has endured my “free-lance” style of dance interpretation for many years, and often questions the legitimacy of the “A” I received in the Social Dance class I took in college. Her skepticism is not without merit, the same teacher gave me an “A” in Beginning Swimming as well, and I spent most of the semester lying on the bottom of the pool thrashing about wildly.

Woody Allen once said, “Eighty percent of life is showing up.” An 80% is a “B”, I showed up in class every day, the other 10% must have been pity. Show up, show some effort and appreciation, and people just might cut you a little slack when you accidently step on their toes.

It was an enjoyable experience being in and of a crowd, yet alone with the dance partner that has managed my odd and unpredictable steps so well for so many years.

Salsa? Mildly.

Many moons ago, when the kids were kids, and so were my wife and I, I began writing a Christmas letter to send out to friends and family each year. I’m sure many of you do the same. I suppose this form of communication is what we relied upon before social media wormed its way into our lives. So it goes. Anyway…what follows is this year’s Ellis Family Christmas letter. Have a lovely 2020…we can all see clearly now.

This year it seems that I have been particularly hesitant to disrupt the serene wintery landscape a blank sheet of white paper so graciously and effortlessly provides, with the dashes, lines, curves, and dots, that we who can read and comprehend the English language, rely upon to move that which is in our heads to the heads of others. If your head is not particularly interested in that which is in mine, avert your eyes from the dashes, lines, curves, and dots that I am about to commission in an attempt to paint a picture of the past year in the lives of this particular Ellis family. If you are curious, and not a cat, carry on.

In October, Dawn and I escorted Sierra to Brooklyn, the quaint one in New York, to help her get settled into her apartment, and get ourselves settled into the reality of it all. There is a lot of “all” in that neck of the woods, but after spending about a week roaming around, and getting to know her 8.5 million neighbors (nice folks), some of the nausea and mild terror of leaving her behind subsided…some. The city suits her, and we are quite thankful for the familiar faces of her fellow Montana State film school alumni that make up the wonderful network of roommates and friends she has so far away from home. Within a few weeks of beating the streets, she became gainfully employed with an actual job, in her actual field, as a production assistant with SHOWTIME’s Billions. So yeah…she’s doing it…she’s gaining on that person she set out to be, and managing to bring that sweet, caring person she’s always been along for the ride.

Jackson flew the coop too. He didn’t ditch us to the extreme that his sister did, but he ditched us just the same. So it goes. I suppose as Dawn and I “approach” middle-age we have started to take on a wee dusting of that “old person” smell, and since neither of the kids inherited my anosmia, one can’t blame the youngins for putting a little distance between themselves and dear old mom and dad. Jackson tried his hand at the restaurant business this summer as a busser and a host, but found that mounting a fake smile upon his face, and being hospitable to tourists on a regular basis, was not his cup of spilled pop. He’s a kind and caring young man, but I suppose everyone has boundaries to the extent of cordial niceties they can lay at the feet of “hangry” strangers. He’s found a new gig where a smile is optional, and interactions with two- and four-wheeled objects outweighs the interactions with bipedal Homo sapiens. Meaning can be elusive, but he’s searching for it, and thinks it may possibly reside among the ranks of the Air Force.

As for the “dusty” ones, Dawn and I are just dandy. No kids interrupting our Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy cocktail hour with all their needy demands…“I’m hungry…my appendix hurts…blah…blah…blah…” We still have Pre, yeah the kids abandoned their dog too…sad…sad…sad. Doeth their wretchedness know no bounds? So other than a pokey old Lab that spends his days sleeping and farting, not necessarily in that order, it’s just the two of us again, just how it started. Life has brought a fair amount of growing and going this way and that our way over the years, but we’ve managed to keep ahold of one another throughout. We have much to be thankful for. Thankful our children are searching for their “thing”, and thankful we have gratifying vocations that allow us to do our “thing”. Dawn is in her 11th year at Promotion Physical Therapy, helping people move along with a few less hitches in their giddy up. I’m in my 6th year at Chadron State College, where I am quite grateful for all that my colleagues and students bring to my life.

Life has been kind to us, and we hope kindness finds you and yours as well. All the best.

The Ellis Family

Josh, Dawn, Sierra, Jackson & Pre

It is with anticipation and gratitude that we prep for our journey to upstate North Dakota to join family in the celebration of several rounds of celebratory events. Ding-ding…hope you haven’t been slacking in your quick witted sarcasm training.

On the 18th, mom and dad’s marriage odometer rolls over to 48-years, the 20th Grandma Helen, and perhaps the fire department, will extinguish an impressive bonfire of 90 birthday candles, the 24th my brother Jarvis, and my sister-in-law Janice, celebrate 17-years of marriage, and we’ll top it all off with a Chrest family Christmas gathering.

That should sufficiently shake the snow globe of holiday cheer. As we know, it can get a little brisk up north this time of year, so to prevent freezing and cracking, it is suggested that snow globes be fill with solutions that are no less than 80-proof. Exercise caution, as this does substantially increase the risk for explosion if exposure to sparks or open flames occurs.

Public Service Message: If you can’t be careful at least be cautious, make your holiday gatherings OSHA compliant, FR clothing for young and old alike. Results may vary.

Elizabeth Helen Ellis, yeah that’s her “real” name, although I’ve never heard her called Elizabeth. You try it first, and let me know how it goes. Grandma Helen was born in Selz, North Dakota, the second of ten children born to John Kraft and Anastasia Mattern. I’m sure, as the second of ten children, the development of her cooking and cleaning skills was not an option, but rather a necessity.

As the mother of nine herself, and her years of work in Johnson’s Cafe, managing the Lignite Lanes, a school cook and custodian at Burke Central, and her helping my dad keep the meat room spiffy when my parents ran the grocery store in Lignite, she has cleaned up a lot of messes.

Grandma’s parents, John and Anastasia, were joined in marriage January 3rd, 1927 in Selz. I was only about 5-years old when Anastasia passed, so I have no recollection of her. Great Grandpa Kraft died in 1993, and I have memories of him playing his accordion and spitting streams of chewing tobacco into the large brass spittoon next to his easy chair while he flipped channels between various baseball games.

I have a very vivid memory of one of my younger cousins as a toddler tipping that spittoon up to his mouth for a swig. Before any of the adult types glanced away from their hand of cards to intervene, he had streaks of brown tobacco juice streaking across his cheeks. Card games were serious business, not to be interrupted by the throngs of children that were always underfoot.

We can trace Grandma Helens ancestors on her father’s side back as far as her Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, Georg Kraft, who was born in western Germany in 1776. Around 1808 several families took a 3-month journey east to establish settlements in southern Russia. These Black Sea Germans settled several villages in the Odessa, Russia region, and those village names, Strasburg and Selz, moved with them when they packed up and headed for America in the late 1800s.

It is interesting to contemplate the lives of those who came before us, and the various forces that moved them about as they searched for a better life. A life that was theirs, a life of opportunity, challenges, love, and loss. So it goes…and goes…and goes…

Come join us at the Lignite Senior Building for cake and coffee on December 20th from 4-6pm, and help us celebrate Grandma Helen’s 90th birthday. If there’s a BINGO game somewhere in North Dakota that day, we may be celebrating without her presence, but celebrate we shall.

For the past few years I’ve made Robert Pirsig’s book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values, required reading for the capstone course I teach. Required “possession” may be more accurate, you can lead a student to a book but you can’t make them read it. Some will, some won’t, and I’m fine with that.

If I took major issue with students not doing what I’ve suggested they do, all I would get done is taking major issue with students that don’t do what I’ve suggested they do. As Pirsig says, “until they have a real felt need they are just going to resent help.”

I cater to those that feel a need or a want to pick up what’s been put in front of them, and hope curiosity gets the best of others as the semester progresses. Sometimes hope is rewarded, and sometimes, curiously enough, some aren’t that curious about much.

So as we move through the semester and explore this-or-that, some willingly choose to come along for the entire ride, some may hop on and hop off dependent upon their interests, motivation, or lingering blood alcohol content.

Some miss the boat entirely, choosing to sit and gaze at the seagulls while the rest of the class disappears in fits-and-starts over the horizon. Gaze at seagulls long enough, and you’re sure to get crapped on. So it goes.

The reason I chose this book as “required” reading for this course, is that this course is a capstone, which means it is taken by seniors and is supposed to help them “cap off” their experience at college. Hopefully help them to make a little sense of the totality of all the courses they’ve left in their wake as they’ve moved from their first semester to their last (some a more direct route than others). There’s that word again, “hope”…there’s always hope.

Isn’t that what most of us want out of much of life? To try and make a little sense of what we’ve just spent time, money, effort, and whatnot on? Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as the subtitle states, is “an inquiry into values”. My hope (hope…hope…hope), is to give the students an opportunity to inquire, to think, to ponder, and in some cases, to fret and complain about the “value” of their college experience.

Was it worth it? Would they have been better off gazing at seagulls (mouth closed), or foregoing higher education all together, and getting a job? Maybe, “yes” to all three? Who knows what happens on paths we leave untrodden.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a true story about real life, real choices, and a quest to answer the question, “What is Quality?”

Good question. If you’re interested in such things, take the book for a spin and see what answers you arrive at, or more likely, what other questions it begs to be answered.

I hope (last one) you had a lovely Thanksgiving. Perhaps some quality time with those you value and a fist full of turkey (I hear seagull is gamey).

Just as I’m sure it has for you a time or two, occasionally an odd thought occurs to me, possibly leaning more towards frequently than occasionally. But then who’s to say where the line delineating frequent from occasional lies, and who decides how frequent is too frequent? If such a thought is occasional, is it less odd than if it were frequent, or is odd just odd regardless of frequency?

Come to think of it, who decides if a thought is odd? I guess until it is expressed a thought will simply stay a thought and nobody but the thinker of that thought may think, “Well now, that’s an odd thought.” Is it better for odd thoughts to stay thoughts, or for them to be expressed, so family and friends can make informed decisions regarding their list of people to invite to Tupperware parties, camping trips, or axe throwing competitions?

Everyone has odd thoughts, of which the degree and frequency of such thoughts varies dependent upon genetics and age of first exposure to satellite television. I don’t have any data to back that up, but I have met my family, and when I was about 11 my grandparents got one of the first satellite dishes I had ever seen. I saw some odd stuff that I have unsuccessfully unseen. So it goes.

Have you ever been in a place with a lot of other people, perhaps a family gathering, a concert, a sporting event, a classroom, a restaurant? Not very odd is it? Happens all the time.

Have you ever glanced around at all those people and wondered who is going to be the last person here in this very place right now to die? Who is going to be the final keeper of the memory of what is happening right here, right now? The final keeper that heard the sounds, saw the faces, and felt the feeling of the moment.

I’ve never thought that either. “What an odd thing to think” I thought when I heard someone think such a thing.

The final keeper. There has to be one. There can only be one. Even on a bicycle built for two there has to be one. Chances are it’ll be the one in the back, as they will have the one in the front trying to steer and send a selfie to use as an airbag when they run headlong into an electric car they never heard coming.

Of course there has to be a first to go as well, and a second, a third, and so on and so forth until that final keeper taps out. Have you ever thought that it would be interesting to look around at a crowd and see the number of when each will go hovering over them? From one to the final keeper. Would you want to glance up and see which number was hovering over you? Odd…perhaps even.

I’ve asked a few people if they’ve ever contemplated this final keeper thought, and oddly enough, those very same people seem to have stopped hosting Tupperware parties, going camping, or entering axe throwing competitions.

Maybe odd thoughts should stay thoughts. But why shouldn’t others have the opportunity to engage in an odd thought too? How many people have to think a thought for it to stop being an odd thought?

For instance, forgetting your perfectly good fish soaking in lye until it becomes a gelatinous blob, and then thinking, “I wonder what that taste like?” “That’s an odd thought” said Njörd, the Norse god of the sea, as Njörd can hear all sea-like thoughts. “What do you think?” Njörd said to Audumla, to which the sacred cow replied, “Better the fish than me, but needs butter…lots and lots of butter.”

The final keeper…just a thought.

Well, she’s a New Yorker now, or perhaps an aspiring Brooklynite trying to overcome a distinctively nondescript Midwestern accent. Either way, she’s a long way from home, but the city suits her. Home suits her too, but in a different way, in a way that’s familiar and comfortable.

When a person has aspirations to transcend themselves, to be a bit more than they are, they may find themselves standing on a stoop in front of their Brooklyn apartment with tears in their eyes as they wave and wave until familiarity and comfort are completely out of sight.

A new chapter can be difficult to start, a blank page of uncertainty a daunting canvas to turn ones attention towards, but through courage and determination a story will begin to take shape. A story you can look back on with pride, because you wrote it.

Our daughter is courageous and determined, and of course she’s young, youth can be blindly emboldening. Age, and the knowledge and experience that generally accompanies it, opens our eyes wider sometimes too wide. So wide that all we see are the roots one could trip on, and forgetting to look up and take in the beauty of the trees as they reach towards the sky.

Yes, there are plenty of “roots” to trip you up in the city, and as a parent you see them all, but there is a lot of beauty as well, if one allows themselves to notice it.

Thankfully, my wife and I were able to accompany our daughter on her move, and got to spend almost a week getting her settled and exploring the area. Probably more accurately, getting ourselves settled with the idea of leaving her there. Two round-trip tickets and a one-way takes a bit of getting used to.

As the days progressed both my wife and I became more and more comfortable with leaving our eldest child in a city of over 8.5 million people. We visited with most of them and they seemed like good people.

Unexpectedly, I found that spending a few days mingling and moving with and among the masses had a profound and positive effect on my faith in humanity, and bolstered the pride I have for our country.

I witnessed people from all over the world, speaking many different languages, with the freedom to move towards a life they aspire to live. Yes, I also witnessed those that obviously were not living a life anyone would aspire to live. Some, perhaps by no fault of their own, and some, perhaps completely at fault for the circumstances they find themselves in. So it goes.

This country, and the people from far and near that formed it, and continue to form it, is a good place. Not that place we hear about from the far right, or that place we hear about from the far left, but that place in the middle. That place where real people live real lives, day in and day out. A good place.

Sierra is in a good place for her. A support system of good roommates and friends, in a neighborhood and a city teaming with young people much like her. Weird hair…weird clothes…that cover we often judge without taking the time to try and open the book. Maybe that’s the point, maybe they’re not ready for their story to be read by the likes of us.

The city suits her. I suppose Dawn and I will have to get accustomed to the eastern drift our thoughts take from the comfort and familiarity of home between our visits to our daughter in the city. To paraphrase Billy Joel, “we’re in a New York state of mind”.

In July of 1909 my Great-Grandfather, Josef Gins, at the ripe old age of 15, left his home in Durningen Germany, made a 12 mile trip to Strasbourg where he boarded a train for the 400 mile trip to Hamburg. In Hamburg, he boarded the steam ship Cleveland for a two-week, 3800 mile voyage across the North Atlantic to America, where, at Ellis Island, he was given the stamp of approval to enter “The Home of the Free”.

Josef’s parents, Michel and Marie, who were about 59 and 50 years of age at this time, did not make the trip. They stayed behind in Durningen, they never saw their son again. Both of them died in 1912, Marie in April and Michel in June.

I’ve often wondered what Marie and Michel were thinking about during the days leading up to their only son’s departure? What was Josef thinking? We have a few postcards that have survived the years that I had translated a few years back. One was sent to Josef from a train station attendant in Stausbourg, a stranger sending his regards, and hoping that Josef had arrived safely in America and managed to get over his “loneliness”.

Loneliness, at Strausbourg, 12 miles from home, with over 4,000 more miles yet to be put between home and himself.

110 years later, my wife and I are moving our daughter to New York. She has a few film school classmates from college that are in Brooklyn giving it a go, and Sierra is going to join them and give it a go herself. So it goes.

I realize that this move doesn’t compare to the physical and emotional magnitude of that of my ancestors, but I think the trepidation a parent feels when their child makes a move towards the unknown, far from home, has probably been universal across the ages.

There isn’t an ocean between us, there isn’t a two-week journey, but there is distance and there is time. Time and space that can be traversed much more quickly and easily than 110 years ago, but time and space just the same. This time and this space doesn’t seem to concern our daughter as we grow ever closer to departure from South Dakota. She has always been an adventurous one, and has always managed to seemingly, go with the flow, yet simultaneously, blaze her own path.

As J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost”. I agree, not all, but some that are wandering are lost, and it seems to the parent of one who does wander, and occasionally get lost, that wandering lost in New York City may be a bit less desirable than wandering lost in the hills and prairies of South Dakota.

These are the worries that arise when parents make the mistake of Googling crime rates. Sometimes ignorance is bliss, sometimes we have little choice but to let our children go forth into the unknown. Go forth and wander, go forth and get a little lost…just a little.

I suspect she will find a bit more of herself and bit more of who she wants to be with this move, and it is within that suspicion I choose to take solace.

1909 was a long time ago, and someday, so too will 2019. If only our ancestors could see what they started.

“The ground was littered with folks that had fallen from the tree.” What tree? I have no idea. Family tree? Possibly, those branches can get a little slim from time-to-time. Tree of life? We’re all going to fall from that one at some point and time.

I’m not sure what tree, or what folks, I was thinking about when that first sentence came out of my mouth a few nights back while my wife and I were out celebrating our 25th dating anniversary. Words come out in odd arrangements sometimes, that’s what they do, and my wife has endured 25-years of such. Dawn’s a lovely lady, and a quarter of a century in her company has been a good start to the next quarter.

In my defense, there was wine involved, and a charcuterie board that contained some ham that may have been a bit gamey. Gamey duck…expected. Gamey ham…expect a quick exit of all that’s had the misfortune of mingling with it. Until about two years ago I thought “charcuterie” was something that a philandering briquette salesman might contract at a seedy county fair BBQ cook-off where aprons were optional.

Maybe it was a tree from my youth that crossed my mind? The tree I watched my brother Jarvis fall from when we were wee lads living in Palermo, North Dakota, sometime around 1978. That would have made me about 6 and Jarvis about 5. We seem much older in my memories of that time, but memories seem to be fluid and fluttering, and when I think back I suppose I’m thinking back from the vantage point of whatever age I am at the point and time that particular memory works its way back to me.

To be totally honest, I didn’t just “watch” him fall. That would imply that I was an innocent bystander, someone that just happened to be in the vicinity of a tree that happened to contain my brother, who happened to fall out at that very moment. “Innocent bystander” was something I rarely could have rightly been accused of as young boy…young adult…not-so-young adult…

Also, since we’re being honest here, he didn’t “fall”. That would imply that he accidently exited the friendly confines of a tree branch, plummeted quickly to the ground, and landed fairly close to the sneaker clad feet of his not so innocent older brother. To be clear, he wasn’t physically pushed, but may have been verbally prodded.

Books can be dangerous. They can put ideas into people’s heads. Ideas that some heads are not prepared to logically and reasonably examine.

My brother and I had a book that depicted elves fluttering about on leaves. Small elves, big leaves. As fate would have it, we had a tree in our backyard that had big leaves, and I had a small brother. Perfect conditions to run a few tests to verify the legitimacy of “leaf flight”.

I’m sure Orville and Wilbur had similar beginnings. Then Orville decided the popcorn business was less risky, and Wilbur ran off with a talking horse. So it goes.

My doubts concerning elf aeronautics were confirmed shortly after Jarvis firmly held a large leaf under his little backside, and upon my suggestion, leapt from the tree. Twice.

Fall is in the air, and on the ground, catch a leaf while you can.

The fall semester is already half-way to half-way. Four-weeks in, and all is well thus far, good students, enjoyable courses, and a seemingly minimal amount of time wasted in soul-sapping meetings. The course that I am finding the most enjoyable so far this semester is one that I have not taught before, but volunteered to give a go because it seemed like an interesting topic to take for a 16-week spin.

I feel quite fortunate to be a part of a vocation that allows me to explore my curiosities and interests, and share that exploration with students that are willing to open themselves up to the experience. The degree to which this opening up occurs is of course highly variable from student-to-student and day-to-day.

We all have days that we would prefer to be left alone, to just be allowed to be in a space without having to be completely of that space, to be among people and not necessarily with people. Recognizing and allowing this in the present may lead to extended bouts of full engagement in the future…or not.

The reason for the disengagement of a student in your classroom can be for any number of reasons, some of which you have control over and most of which you do not. Maybe they find the revealing snugness of your khaki trousers to be troubling, or your misshapen head to be a distraction. The former can easily be addressed with the Zubaz in you Tickle Trunk, and the latter could possibly be camouflaged with the aid of a smartly tailored beret.

Maybe this new course is so enjoyable simply because it’s new, and the luster has yet to be dulled by the semester-after-semester film that can accumulate on a course you’ve rolled out with such frequency that its roll has regressed to more of a drag…like a body from a musty cellar…so I’ve been told.

Aging and Death is the name of my new course, well actually, it’s not a new course, it’s been around awhile, it’s just new to me. So it goes. So it will go until it doesn’t I suppose.

The portion of the course that students seem to be getting the most meaning from is the Senior Partner portion. Each student had to find someone 65-years old or older who would agree to provide their perspective on various questions every few weeks.

Since I was asking my students to do this I told them that I would as well, and I asked my mom to be my Senior Partner. After some thought, and bit of reluctance, she agreed to take part and lend her thoughts and experiences to the course. Like my students, I have enjoyed the experience immensely.

The book I chose for this course is “Being Mortal” by Atul Gawande, a wonderful book that offers tremendous insight into aging and death. For those that would like to play along a bit at home, here are a few of the questions students, and their Senior Partners, have wrestled with over the past few weeks:

• What do you find beautiful about our aging and death? What do you find troubling?

• How do you think your family would react if you told them, “I’m ready”?

As we prepare to head north to help Dad celebrate his birthday, I ponder firstly, that after 68 birthdays Dad probably doesn’t need any help celebrating, and most likely doesn’t care to celebrate in the first place. Who wants to be reminded that they’re pert near 70? Yes, it’s just a number, but it’s a really big number. Alas, north we head whether he likes it or not.

The second portion of the pondering has me thinking about all the trips we’ve made north. Those trips north started with “me” and progressed to an expanding “we” over the years since the day Mom and Dad moved me and my mullet to the deep south of Aberdeen, South Dakota, back in 1991 to give college life a go at Northern State University.

Like many of the freshman I see sitting in my classroom today, I’m not sure what reason I had to believe that I was “college material” those many yesterday’s ago, but a quilt isn’t made from whole cloth, and little by little a something began to take shape. Something that couldn’t have been planned for, something that just was, something that just is.

The first week or so of college I believe that I cried myself to sleep each night out of sheer homesickness. Actually, more of a silent whimper, quietly pushing tears toward my pillow so as not to make my heavy metal loving roommate think I was some sort of North Dakota momma’s boy. As far as momma’s go, I’ve got myself a pretty good one, so I believe I had every right to shed a tear or two and blubber a bit about being 364 miles away from all I’d ever known.

I headed north every three-day weekend, every mid-term break, every chance I had I pointed the big chrome grill of my 1958 Chevy Biscayne north and headed toward the comfort and certainty of home. Dad bought that Chevy from Harold Pasche in Columbus, and I loved driving that old car, but after seeing the car in front of me spin through the ditch one winter trip home from college, I got spooked about not having seat belts and it was sold. I suppose it would be un-American to be a man that had a car as a boy that he wished he still had. So it goes.

I headed north, because north was where my life was, but gradually my life took shape south of north, and the gaps between trips north began to widen. Not too wide, but wide enough to give me space to grow, to be a bit less of a North Dakota momma’s boy. Just a bit less. Like I said, I’ve got myself a pretty good one.

In that space I met friends I’ll most likely have for life, met a girl who would become my wife, and realized that I could do this, I could do this because of all of them. Those north, those south, those people that formed the quilt that I find so much comfort in.

Happy Birthday Dad. You’re a good one.