Premeditation Malorum

A cousin of mine was looking for some home video footage of our Grandpa, Fritz Ellis, for a project he is working on. The footage in question is from the Ellis family Christmas in 1986, Grandpa’s last Christmas, as a heart attack took him June 1, 1987 at the age of 58.

I was 14-years old when Grandpa died, and I thought 58 seemed old, now, at 51, I realize that what a 14-year-old thinks is fairly limited in scope and accuracy. One doesn’t know, what one doesn’t know, and at 14, I knew very little beyond playing baseball, pushing a lawn mower, and ogling at girls. Not necessarily in that order.

Watching the shaky home video footage of their little yellow flat-roofed house in Lignite stuffed with clatter and chatter under a wafting and waning cloud of cigarette smoke, I became aware that that wasn’t only Grandpa Fritz’s last Christmas, but it was also the last Fritz and Helen Ellis family Christmas.

One is rarely aware of such finitude in the moment, endings that come and go without a hint in the moment of never coming again. So it goes. Can one become better aware of the end of such moments? Or, probably more accurately, aware of the possibility of the end of such moments?

The ancient Stoic philosophers believed so, and they practiced what they called “premeditation malorum”, or, “premeditation of evils” for us non-Greek speakers. It is also, a bit less ominously, referred to as “negative visualization”, and, as the name implies, it is the practice of visualizing the worst-case scenario that could occur in a moment, prior to engaging in that moment.

Some see this practice as a bit morbid and depressing, but others find that it helps them be more present in the moment, to savor moments more fully, and, in the end, experience a greater degree of gratitude and a much more vivid memory of the moment and those they shared the moment with.

Would I have approached that Christmas differently if I had engaged in negative visualization before loading into our 1977 Ford Econoline and making the half-block journey to Grandpa and Grandma Ellis’s? I’d like to think so, but again, I was a knucklehead 14-year-old, so who knows if there was space amongst my limited cognitive bandwidth for such contemplation?

Side note…back in the 80’s, although Grandpa and Grandma Ellis’s house was roughly two rock throws away from ours (two rock throws at 14-years old…12 rock throws and a doctor’s visit away now), it seems we never considered walking?

Perhaps premeditation malorum is a tool you may find useful in fostering a greater degree of gratitude for moments that may, or may not be, the last of such moments? It’s kind of like dragging your feet on the merry-go-round at recess when the big kids got it spinning a bit too fast.

Premeditation malorum seems to slow the whirling world a bit and bring the faces and moments blurrily flitting by back into some semblance of focus.

Alice

Those that are concerned about robots taking over the world and subjecting us human types to lives of servitude to their robot needs, wants, and whims, obviously do not have an iRobot Roomba in their household.

Our son gave us a Roomba for Christmas last year, a labor-saving gift of the sort that one seemingly gives to parents who are seemingly deemed “aging” and thusly in need of labor saving. I took no offense. If you are offended by aging, you have a long uphill climb downhill.

The Roomba, like everything else nowadays, comes with an app. Not an ape. An ape would be useful. Cleaning gutters, grooming the dog, filling birdfeeders, peeling pesky bananas, breaking in cowboy hats…an app can’t do any of those useful things, but it can make you feel like an ape. An ape in a cage that you willingly bought and built yourself into. So it goes.

The Roomba app, the one that can’t break in cowboy hats or groom the dog, requires you to name your Roomba, so after a bit of thoughtful deliberation, I named ours Alice. Alice did such a bang-up job keeping the Brady Bunch household ship shape, I thought I’d see if her robot cousin (twice removed) was cut from a similar cloth. They are not, and 9 out of 10 Sam The Butchers prefer Alice Nelson to Alice Roomba. There always has to be at least one weirdo in every bunch.

Alice Roomba and her hoard of robots are not going to take over the world any time soon. A well-placed garden-variety kitchen chair will occupy their time long enough for you to make a sandwich (tuna on sourdough with gouda cheese…toasted) and do a load of laundry (extra spin cycle) before the superior artificial intelligence is able to free itself from that four-legged labyrinth and hunt you down.

Be advised, if you happen to be an active or retired milker of cows, and only possess and squat upon three-legged stools, I am not able to confidently deduce and declare the level of threat Alice Roomba imposes upon you and your herd.

Alternatively, if you are fresh out of chairs, a well-placed sweat sock or a shoe with dangling shoelaces will suffice in halting the menacing overthrow of your human world by Alice Roomba. In a pinch you can always just sit on the couch and lift your feet up. The same way you did when your mom was rudely interrupting the two-hours of kids programming television stations offered per week.

I say… I say…Now you’ll never know what pearl of wisdom Foghorn Leghorn imparted upon Henery the Chicken Hawk.

Fellow human types, we shall overcome the tyranny of robots and apps, and age and rage against the forces of labor-saving devices bent on making our hands and minds soft. Aging, laboring for life, love, and the pursuit of happiness, are privileges, rights, and responsibilities that some choose not to shoulder and some, by no choice of their own, are not granted.

Alice Roomba, I know what you are up to, and you are not going to get away with it.

Fittingly Gritty

I hope you Upstate North Dakota folks are happy, you ordered so much bitterly cold weather that the state couldn’t hold it all and some spilled over into South Dakota. Yes, I know, only -10 degrees rolled across the border, compared to the -30 you kept for your own enjoyment, but at a certain point cold is just cold.

Yes, I also know that as soon as you read that you blurted out, “-30…without the wind.” Without the wind…yeah right. As a former paperboy, making my way north along King Street from the Stevens’s to our house, my scrawny frame seemed to always be leaned into a north wind.

A wind that was often enough to make an alter boy cuss like his mother. Obscenities screamed into the cold abyss, stifled and muffled by the snot-crusted facemask and pummeled by the wind, would flutter helplessly upon the toes of my shuffling moon boots. Confession for such obscenities was never deemed necessary, they and the purveyor had suffered enough. So it goes.

Once the papers had been delivered, and I had unsaddled myself from that odd and torturous front-back Minot Daily newspaper delivery bag, I would happily head out into that same bitter cold and wind to dig snow forts with my friends for as long as the bread sacks in our moon boots managed to keep our feet warm.

A body and mind at play is much more willing to endure the elements than the same body and mind at work. What one considers “play” and “work” is somewhat subjective, and dependent upon the interests and motivations of the individual. Play can be work, work can be play, it’s all relative to the quality of the match between the activity and the individual.

David Epstein, the author of Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World and The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, recently spoke about this match quality and how it relates to what we often refer to as “grit” in individuals. Epstein stated that, “Often what we see as grit, is actually fit.”

That is, if what the person is doing, either at work or at play, is a good fit for them it’s not grit that keeps them doing it, it’s the fact that they enjoy it. Whatever “it” is, is a good fit for them for whatever reason. Epstein explains that “grit is a state, not a trait”, which I find encouraging, as an individual’s state is much more malleable than an individual’s traits.

We’ve all tried to force square pegs into round holes, literally and figuratively, at various times in our lives. Of course, if the round hole is big enough a square peg will fit, but never without gaps of varying degrees leaving a bit of space unfilled or a bit of life unfulfilled.

Dedication, hard work, sacrifice, willpower, stick-to-it-iveness…grit…appear much more readily and in greater supply when our efforts are directed at something that is a good fit for us. They still appear when our efforts are leaned into a cold north wind, but the spurs (and language) we employ to move forward in such circumstances are a bit more pointed.

Contentment

Happy New Year to you and anyone else wanting and/or needing such a year. Happy, that is, not so much new, that ship has sailed. One can obviously get new shoes, new socks, new cars, new houses, new friends, go to new places, see new faces, but within all that “new” lingers our same old sweaty feet. “Wherever you go, there you are.”

Research on happiness indicates that roughly 50 percent of our average day-to-day disposition (good, bad, or ugly) is genetic, 10 percent our environment or circumstances, and 40 percent our choices, habits, and decisions. As the saying goes, “Genetics loads the gun, but our environment pulls the trigger.”

I would add our circumstances, our choices, our habits, and our decisions to the itchy trigger finger as well. An itch that we can choose if and how we scratch, regardless of the 50 percent we were blessed or cursed with in the bowl of genetic soup we were handed.

Speaking of soup, when I was in Ireland, I made it my personal mission to test as many bowls of seafood chowder as possible. To date, Kitty O Se’s, in Kinsale, County Cork, has my Golden Shillelagh blessing for the grandest seafood chowder I have thus far burned my greedy gob on.

When Dawn was planning our family’s menu for the holidays, I declared that I was going to make Irish seafood chowder for our Christmas Eve meal. I wasn’t just going to make any old seafood chowder, I was going to attempt to match, and perhaps surpass, the bowl of goodness I feasted on at Kitty O Se’s. That being said, I suppose it would be a bit silly to set out to match the worst bowl of slop you’ve ever grazed upon.

Dawn added steak as a “side dish”, just in case the South Dakota seafood performed like a fish out of water. Also, our son doesn’t eat fish, or any other underwater dwelling creatures, and it was too late to uninvite him to dinner. So it goes.

We were fortunate enough to have both our children home for the holidays this year and enjoyed some quality time together. Time that seems so difficult to come by as the years go by. Standing in the late-night quiet of our house, light spilling from the Christmas tree, I felt a special kind of contentment that, over the years, I’ve found only comes from having our family under one roof.

And the seafood chowder? Mmmmmm…Golden Shillelagh worthy. I looked up “Mmmm” and found that it is something called a “onomatopoeia” and is defined as “an emotional expression of contentment.”

Contentment. It seems to be abound in my little world this holiday season, and for that, I am quite grateful. I am also grateful for the new socks to stuff my old feet in, the bottle of bourbon and fistful of cigars to wrap my old piehole around, and a Tushy Classic 3.0 Bidet to…well you know the aim of that south of the border spritzer.

The trigger has been pulled for a running start to “happy” in the New Year. I wish the same for you and yours in 2024.

Fermenting

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats-

Dawn asked me a few days ago, “How’s the Christmas letter coming along?” I responded, “It’s fermenting.” Hopefully fermenting like the palate pleasing, mood lifting effervescence of one of my Uncle Tim’s finely crafted beers, and quite unlike the resulting rumblings, south of the border, that said beer sometimes provokes. But(t)…one can rarely have lightening without a bit of thunder. So it goes.

It seems that there is a tipping point somewhere in life where one ceases to desire the type of presents that can be enclosed in boxes and wrapped in paper. A point where all one desires is time. Time with family, time with friends, time…Where does it go?

They say that how we spend our time is how we spend our lives, and just as high-quality items we spend our money on last longer, quality time spent with others does the same. Longer in the moment, longer in memory. Like a one-year prescription to the jelly of the month club, “…the gift that keeps on giving on the whole year.” “That is Edward…that it is indeed.”

Dawn continues to give her prescriptions, knowledge, and skills of physical therapy to those that hobble, limp, and shuffle her way, so that they may hop, skip, and jump back to their lives and the things they enjoy spending their allotted time on.

I’m in my 10th year at Chadron State College, where each and every day of those 10-years, I have stepped on campus and whispered a grateful, “thank you” for the meaning the work I get to do brings to my life.

Sierra is still bumping around New York, making a go of it in the many fits and starts of the film industry. The recent screenwriters and actors strike gave her some time to start a photography business and focus her lens and talents on capturing a bit of her clienteles life and times. With a creative eye, like her Grandma Joann, and the gumption of her Mom, she has built an impressive portfolio of images. Snippets of time.

Jackson has completed an accident-free year of bumping around Rapid City and the Black Hills area in his brown truck, delivering a variety of necessities to the masses (personalized socks, mullet wigs, and things people are too embarrassed to purchase in person). In his free-time, which drivers for UPS are not in large supply of, he can be found “spoiling a good walk” on the golf course.

Wilson, our 2-year-old Shepsky (the apple of Dawn’s eye), is a whimsical turd who continues to test, and to thwart, any and all of my seemingly foolproof attempts at canine containment. The fool appears to be I…he being the proof. He’s a good dog (don’t tell him I said that), and a willing hiking companion with a penchant for chasing deer hither and yon, over hill and many a dale.

So…that’s a bit of how the Ellis Family has spent their time since you threw our Christmas card and letter in the burn barrel last holiday season. I hope it offered a flicker of warmth and perhaps singed an eyebrow.

If we don’t see you between this letter and the next, we wish you a very Merry Christmas, a staggeringly good New Year, and an overflowing cornucopia of time well spent.

The Ellis Family

Josh, Dawn, Sierra, Jackson, and Wilson

Friends and Children

Jackson, our son, has been driving for UPS for a little over a year now. Keeping the fine folks of the Black Hills area supplied with all the wants and needs (mostly wants) that their consumer fingers can click upon from the comfort of their padded toilet seat.

He puts in about 10-miles a day, schlepping about hither and yon, hopping in and out of his brown truck, dodging the advances of angry dogs, and lonely housewives. What can Brown do for you?

Last month, Jackson had a week of vacation time that he had to use or lose, so he was pondering what to do and where to go with his allotted time. Dawn and I thought he had settled on New York City for a bit of exploration, an NBA and/or NFL game, and to hangout with his big sister.

That decision was arrived at on a Saturday, with an expected departure day of Monday. He’s never been one to plan very far in advance.

On Sunday morning, around 8:00am I received a text message from Jackson, “Tickets to Dublin are $600 out of Rapid City. Do you think you can get away?” Dublin, Alabama…Dublin, California…Dublin, Florida…Dublin, Georgia…? No, Dublin Ireland. Across the pond. Ireland? Tomorrow?

On Sunday morning, around 10:00am, Jackson and I were booked to depart the next day for the Emerald Isle. You do what you must for your children.

Around noon, that same Sunday that we booked the flights, Dawn and I FaceTimed with Sierra to wish her a happy birthday. Dawn said, “Guess where your Dad and your brother are going tomorrow?” Sierra, who was between gigs, decided to meet us in Dublin.

I suggested that Dawn fake COVID and join us, but as an “essential worker”, contracting actual COVID, during the actual pandemic, wasn’t enough for her employer to grant her a leave of absence, so she begrudgingly stayed behind to keep the dog company and be essential. So it goes.

As I’ve blabbed about many times to many people misfortunate enough to be conscious in my presence, Ireland has been very near and dear to me since Dawn and I first visited several years ago, and I was excited to share all it has to offer with our children.

In short, it didn’t disappoint.

Jackson got to golf, Sierra got to expand her photography portfolio, and I got to experience our children experiencing the places, people, and music that so often fill my thoughts.

When Abraham Verghese was quoted as saying, “Travel expands the mind and loosens the bowels”, I believe he was speaking of Ireland…and Guinness.

We were in a pub one night (as many a story has begun), listening to a couple of elderly gentlemen sing the songs I’ve subjected my children to for many years, when one of them asked, “How old are your children?” I said, “28 and 24” and he replied, with a knowing smile and a lovely Irish brogue, “Ahh lovely…that’s when they become more like friends than your children. Enjoy your travels.”

My intent when we departed for our trip was to show our children what I love about Ireland, but somewhere along the journey there was a tipping point, a point where I found myself stepping back and I letting them show me what they love about Ireland.

They were tremendous navigators and guides on our journey. Thoughtful, kind, and curious…good travel companions…good tourists…good people.

Funded

Each year around this time the college foundation and alumni office organizes a Fall Fund Drive to raise money for student scholarships and such. A few faculty and staff are asked to volunteer to be team leaders, and those team leaders are then asked to assemble a team of six or so of their colleagues to go forth and shake down faculty and staff that are not a part of a Fall Fund Drive team for cash.

Several of these teams have been together for many years and enjoy the friendly competition to be named top fundraiser. This is my tenth year at the college, and early on in my career, before I felt that I had earned the right to say, “no”, I reluctantly agreed to be a team leader for the Fall Fund Drive.

I very much dislike fundraising and lack whatever motivates one to engage in friendly competition to be named top fundraiser, so I organized a team of like-minded colleagues to make the process as painless as possible. Not so surprisingly, for several years, my team aptly avoided the bragging rights, accolades, and general hubbub enjoyed by the top fundraisers.

I’m not real sure where we ever finished in the mix, as we also successfully avoided the Fall Fund Drive Kick-Off Diner and the Fall Fund Drive Award Ceremony. Whatever slacker depth of fundraising ineptitude we accomplished, it was never enough to not get asked to do it again…and again…and again. Perhaps we didn’t try not to try hard enough? Slackers are like that.

This fall, my tenth fall, I said, “no” when asked to be a team leader for the Fall Fund Drive. I said “no” for a couple reasons, firstly, as stated, I don’t like fundraising, and secondly, I know the funds help a lot of students that may have otherwise not been able to afford college, so I thought maybe someone else could do a better job of shaking people down for a good cause.

I thought I’d made a clean break from the Fall Fund Drive, but…a colleague, a nice guy, someone I respect, someone that selflessly and positively contributes to the campus community, asked me to be on his Fall Fund Drive team. He gave me my list of victims and I headed out to track them each down, corner them in their offices, and ask them for money.

My first stop was the campus maintenance office managers office. Despite my lackluster sales pitch, she agreed to donate. Donors get to choose where their funds go, and when I asked her if she had a specific scholarship or fund she’d like to donate to, she said, “The Sgt. Cory Mreck Scholarship.”

Without thinking, I said, “How do you spell that?” Have you ever said something, and while your mouth is saying it your brain attempts, but fails, to put a stop to the stream of words coming out? As I said, “How do you spell that?” I realized it was spelled the same as her last name, and as I realized that, I saw a picture of a young man in a military uniform on her desk.

I said, “Is that your son?” She said, “Yes. He was killed in Iraq in 2004. He’d only been their 8-days.” I said, “I’m sorry for your loss.” She smiled, nodded and said, “Thank you.”

On the walk to her office, I was whining to myself about fundraising and having to take part in the Fall Fund Drive. When I left her office, my mood had changed, things I had taken for granted on the walk across campus from my office to hers suddenly occupied every part of my being. The vividness of the sky, the breeze moving lightly across my face and rustling the autumn leaves. I closed my eyes for a moment, grateful for the day.

That day, I realized that for many it’s not about the funds raised, it’s about keeping the name of a loved one alive for a little while longer. It’s about paying forward opportunities. It’s about gratitude. It’s about being a good human. It’s about time I get over myself and be a useful member of the Fall Fund Drive. Oftentimes, moving towards resistance is the right move. So it goes.

Skin Deep

I recently paid a visit to my dermatologist, not a social visit, rather my annual visit to pay the piper for years of joyous exposure to life under the sun. Many of such years when “sunblock” was not slathered but sought. Sought by the shade of a tree, or anything or anyone, casting a shadow wide enough for a brief respite.

As a kid, during all the time I spent at the Bowbells pool, playing baseball, hanging out at Mouse River or Van Hook, I can vividly remember one kid being slathered with sunblock by his mom.

It was probably somewhere around 1980? I was lying on the hot cement at the Bowbells pool, a blazing North Dakota July sun high in the sky, my scrawny 8-year-old body quivering uncontrollably. As I lay there, hoping a cloud didn’t drift between myself and salvation from hypothermia, I saw him. I don’t know who he was, but he looked miserable.

He was probably the same age as me, same scrawny body, same thick, yet quite short, polyester swim trunks. The ones with a draw string that was impossible to get undone when wet. I can remember frantically pawing at the drawstring with numbed and wrinkly fingers in the changing room at the pool so I could use the bathroom…sometimes. Other times? Well…“P” is the first letter in pool.

The one major difference between myself and this kid, was that his skin, that wasn’t covered by his little thick polyester swim trunks, was as white as my skin, that was covered by my little thick polyester swim trunks (with the knot in the drawstring). Throughout the pool break, his mom liberally applied a thick white paste, from his wispy strawberry-blonde hair down to his little blanched feet. He looked like a waxed candy bottle.

When he entered the pool, I curiously watched him, adrift in the middle of an ever-widening opaque film of surface water, and I pondered what that thick white paste might be? Maybe it provided a barrier of warmth between himself and the frigid water? No…he’s quivering too.

Now, as I sit in the waiting room of the dermatologist’s office, I know what it was, and I know that maybe I wouldn’t be sitting in the waiting room of the dermatologist’s office if I had applied a fistful now and then. So it goes.

Nowadays, I’m a bit more mindful about sunscreen. A bit. My dermatologist, whose skin is reminiscent of the slathered lad at the pool, doesn’t seem to agree with my position that gradual tanning of the skin from sun exposure is a natural, healthy form of sunblock.

She just frowns. She frowns at me a lot. I need to start scheduling my dermatology appointments for February to give my application of “natural sunblock” a chance to fade a few more shades before she lays her disapproving eyes upon my aging flesh.

I question the sanity of anyone that would willingly spend 12-years in college and medical school to examine people’s nasty skin conditions for a living? I don’t like to look at my own, but those little polyester swim trunks, only cover so much.

On the television, in the waiting room of the dermatologist’s, there was an infomercial, on repeat, for some new Botox injection to treat “mild to severe frown and laugh lines” complete with the obligatory before and after photos. I didn’t find it to be a very compelling sales pitch, as I preferred the “before” pictures. The “after” pictures looked like mannequins attempting human expressions.

A simple injection to blot out the evidence of a lifetime of mild to severe frowning and laughing? No thanks. There’s a lot of living I’d prefer not to forget stored in those lines, folds, and furrows.

Carry On

For those of you that are completely color blind, I thought I’d inform you that autumn is settling into the trees, and, in a blaze of glory, the leaves are preparing for their yearly departure. If you are her “friend” on Facebook, you likely saw the photos my Mom recently posted of the fall foliage that is spilling over the foothills south of Lignite. Some nice shootin'…as usual.

If you are not her “friend” on Facebook, or any other place, real or virtual, introduce yourself. Like her father, she can, and generally does, talk to most anyone, about most anything, at most any time. The Chrest girls all inherited this gift of gab to some degree, whereas their brother, my Uncle Tim, measures twice and talks once in a while. As any good carpenter should.

This past summer I happened to be home during my Aunt Susie’s birthday, and the Chrest gang decided to all converge in Minot for a birthday lunch. They are good at converging to celebrate one another, a very commendable quality that I have been quite fortunate to be a part of throughout my life.

My Mom asked me if I wanted to ride with Susie, Beth, and herself from Lignite to Minot, where we’d eventually meet with Mary, Tim, Holly, and Sally for lunch. Eventually. Eventually get to Minot…eventually meet for lunch…eventually meet for desert at DQ…eventually return to Lignite. So it goes.

We almost made it to Bowbells when we made a stop at the Twisted JZ, on the Durwood farm, for some smoothies and coffee. Photos were snapped, chit-chat was chatted, all hit the spot, and we eventually continued our journey to Minot.

I was dangerously close to approaching my daily word limits, and it wasn’t yet 9am, but, as I’ve known my entire life, I was in good hands, these women can carry a conversation. Carry it to places you have never imagined. Places that make you think, places that teach you something, and of course, places that make you laugh and smile. Good places.

A few stops had to be made prior to our eventual return trip, and at each of those stops my aunts and my Mom always ran into someone they knew and chatted for a bit. Sometimes they ran into people they didn’t know and chatted a bit. From Lignite to Minot and back, a master class in cordial conversation. I took notes, and I’ll try and be a better student. Maybe I’ll try to stop avoiding people I know when I’m at the store in Rapid City…maybe?

On our eventual return trip, we made a stop at St. Anthony’s Cemetery, just outside of Donnybrook. We stopped to pay our respects to Betty Schettler, Grandma Rose’s roommate during her time at the nursing home in Kenmare. Betty and Grandma became best of friends, making the most of their final years in their ever-contracting worlds of existence.

At our final stop, St. Joseph’s Cemetery, by Bowbells, we tidied up around the headstone of the ones that were responsible for all this.

Grandpa and Grandma would be happy to know that their family is carrying on as a family. Sharing in one another’s lives, celebrating all that is good, providing kindness, comfort, and care to those in need. Talking, as Grandpa talked, listening, as Grandma listened. Being good people through the many seasons of life.

Carry on.

Dead Mans Hat

We’ve lived in Rapid City for about 25-years, and every few months or so of each of those years, I’ve found myself strolling and perusing the odds, ends, and whatnots of The St. Joe Antique Mall. A hobby of sorts, or more so, a form of meditation that stirs up nostalgia for times past, gratitude for the present, and contemplation of the future.

I’ve never been much of the lotus position “ooohhhmmm” type of meditator, I prefer more of the various body-in-motion forms of meditation, such as walking, biking, and strumming the guitar. I guess my body and brain aren’t limber enough for the lotus position. So it goes.

Although I frequent the antique mall, I rarely buy anything, that’s not why I’m there. That’s obviously not why a lot people are there, as there are many items that have avoided purchase for as long as I’ve strolled the store.

The same guy has worked in the store all this time as well, and I often see him visiting with folks that frequent the store, but that’s not why I’m there. We always exchange the basic socially expected greetings in a pleasant and kindly manner. This seems to be enough for each of us? His son has joined him running the store in the past few years, he’s a bit chattier than his father, but he’s quite kind, so I politely give him a listen on occasion.

There are certain items that catch my eye and corral my attention more than others, for reasons unknown, wooden pulleys, wing-tips, phones, typewriters, suitcases, and hats always pull me in for a closer look. We generally can’t control that which we desire, but we can control whether or not we act on that desire, and most of the time I am able to resist the act of purchasing such items. Most of the time.

Often times I spot an old phone amongst the shelves, pick up the phone receiver and spin the rotary dial…933-2516…I see my Grandma Rose or Grandpa Ardell reaching for the phone at the farm, and hear the voices I hope I am always able to hear. I reluctantly hang up, spin the dial…933-2359…and see my Grandpa Fritz, standing in his woodshop, set down his hammer to answer the phone. Grandma Helen is occupied with Wheel of Fortune. I should’ve known not to call at that time.

A few years ago, I stopped in for a bit of meditative rambling amongst the antiques and came upon an old cowboy hat. I am well aware of the existence of head lice. Snagging a classmates stocking cap to clown around in the fourth grade got me out of week or so of school. That memory vividly floats through, but, as usual, I cannot overcome the desire to place the cowboy hat upon my head.

It settles into place like it was where it was always meant to be. If it contains head lice, they are coming home with me and the hat. Just an old cowboy hat, a dead man’s hat I suppose, well-worn and sweat stained.

I hope that many moons from now, when my time draws to an end, someone else picks up this dead man’s hat and moves it a little further along the trail. Lice and all.

Happy trails.