Rambling Josh

Month two, the new year is old news. The “New You”, that you resolved to bring to fruition last month, quarreled and scuffled with Old You. The tussle was brief and decisive, New You never stood a chance against the wily veteran of many such battles. So it goes.

The swift and gleeful rain of noogies and wedgies brought down (and up) upon New You were not out of malice, nor intended to permanently maim or to kill, but rather to test New Yous resolve, resourcefulness, and motivation to change. Old You doesn’t have time for another “one-bunned” attempt at whatever it is New You is proposing. There’s no room in the garage for another hobby.

It’s sort of like when a new employee comes on board with a sack full of grand ideas. They stroll in, shirt-pressed, whimsical socks, shiny shoes, an encouraging laminated note in their pocket from their mommy reminding them that they are “special”, only to have the mates that have been dutifully swabbing the deck day-in and day-out for more years than “Shiny Shoes” has been alive, watch with feigned interest as the contents of the sack of grand ideas are revealed.

As Shiny Shoes reverentially brings forth an idea, one or more of the old mates will kindly and thoughtfully nod as they glance around to the other mates in mock ponderance. Shiny Shoes, clutching the laminated note, is encouraged by the response, and lays out several more ideas for the old mates to behold.

Then, one-by-one, the contents that once filled the sack of grand ideas, are picked up by an old mate, tersely examined, and unceremoniously dropped overboard into the sea of grand ideas gone by. Turning to the dismayed Shiny Shoes, the old mate sighs, smiles a kindly consolatory smile, and says, “We tried that a few years back…didn’t work.”

It’s difficult not to do so, but Shiny Shoes and New You shouldn’t take these defeats and setbacks personal. Rather, they should try and view them as an opportunity to dig a bit deeper, try a bit harder, think thoughts they’ve yet thought. A challenge to rise up and lead Old You and a few curious mates on a voyage beyond the stagnant sea of grand ideas gone by, beyond the comfortable and the familiar.

Beyond to where? Good question. Perhaps the destination isn’t what’s important, maybe it’s good enough that steps were taken, stuff was seen, heard, tasted, smelled, touched, and our body and mind were stretched a bit? Just a bit. Just enough so that when we return to the comfortable and familiar, it’s still comfortable and familiar.

Question and challenge New You and Shiny Shoes to determine and varify their depth of resolve and their motivation for change. If the intensions are deemed honorable, authentic, and worthwhile why not hop on and see where they take you?

Our just bump them overboard. Accidents happen. There’s always next year…until there isn’t.

My wife informed me that the Mega Millions Lottery had climbed pretty high the other day, and that if I was feeling lucky, I should buy a ticket or two. I’m lucky enough to “feel lucky” most every day, not the winning the lottery sort of lucky, but the sort of lucky that feels like contentment. Content with life, yet curious enough to tinker with it a bit while tinkering remains an ability within my possession.

I don’t pay much attention to the lottery. It’s not that I feel as though I’m above such things, I just have a very large blind spot for numbers (arithmophobia), so I was oblivious to the dollar amount “pretty high” was in reference to. Also, since my wife only requests me to buy a lottery ticket once every decade or so, I don’t know the socially agreed upon lottery ticket purchasing lingo or procedure, so I feel like an idiot when I go up to the counter to purchase the ticket.

“Ahhh…I’m supposed to buy a lottery ticket. Can I do that here?” I feel like an idiot, because the person behind the counter looks at me the same way I look at people when the words “what an idiot” go traipsing through my consciousness. “There’s no such thing as a dumb question.” What an idiotic thing to say. I’ve been teaching for over 20-years, there is most definitely such a thing as a dumb question. Mostly in faculty meetings. So it goes.

“Yeah, you can buy lottery tickets here. Which one do you want?” Which one do I want? That’s a dumb question, I want the winning one. “Ahhh…the one that my wife said was pretty high.” There’s that look again. “That would be the Mega Million. Do you want a quick pick?” As I ponder what a “quick pick” might be (we had quick pick plays in baseball), I see that look again on the attendance face, and on the faces of those accumulating in the line behind me.

“Do you want a megaplier?” I think my grandpa had a megaplier for fencing, or was that Hacksaw Jim Duggans signature move?

I don’t know if I got his “quick pick” or “megaplier” stuff, but his questions mercifully ceased, and I left with two tickets. Two tickets that prompted the question, “If I won the lottery, what would I do?” It also prompted the question, “How do I know if I won the lottery?”

I’d ask the guy behind the counter, but the lady with purple bouffant hair behind me in line clutching the can of Easy Cheese and a bouquet of licorice whips, looks menacingly at me as I approach the counter, so I retreat. I’ll just Google it.

Speaking for myself, I think the best use of such a pile of money would be the ability to buy time by not being obligated to have to do the tasks that take time day after day, but don’t replace the time taken with much.  Such things like cooking, sock darning, shopping, cleaning, laundry, bikini waxing, oil changes, and other general errands, could be outsourced to a well-paid personal assistant. Perhaps Alice, from The Brady Bunch, or Alfred from Batman?

What would I do with the time Alice, Alfred, and the pile of money helped us acquire? My wife probably has a more sensible plan, but I would read, write, and play guitar more, roam around the world untethered from the chores of domestication, and make it my personal mission to take “farting around” to an unprecedented level. Basically, a megaplier of my current preferred existence.

I’d also like to help others buy the time they desire. No strings attached. No questions asked. Instant life megaplier. I’ve heard that many people that win a pile of money end up wishing they hadn’t, so it might be kind of fun to see how each of these “experiments” turns out?

I’m sure piles of money can knock things sideways in life if you’re not vigilant and sensible, but I’m quite positive that the massive sums of money I would disperse to a vast network of eccentric musical type folks to go out among the masses and lead singalongs would be a sensible use of a large portion of the pile of money. Singalongs make people happy. Booze helps too.

Perhaps I’ll entrust my wife with the “vigilant and sensible” portion of our new megaplied life?

Travel, music, reading, writing and time, that is what I’m going to buy when we win the lottery. The guy behind the counter should arrive with our pile of money any day now.

Maybe you won? What would you do with a megaplied life?

Another year come-and-gone. They seem to be picking up speed? The years, not me. Thank you for spending a few minutes with me the first and third Monday of each month. Before we fall completely into the new year, here’s what my family, my muses, were up to in 2022.

Our daughter, Sierra, is still chewing on The Big Apple. She lives in Brooklyn, a quaint little village east of NYC, and is making a go of it in various behind the scenes arenas of the film industry. We swung by her neighborhood for a visit in October, and had an enjoyable week doing what folks do in The City. Central Park was looking lovely draped in its fall foliage, Dawn and Sierra took in “Wicked” on Broadway, while I took in a few pints at McSorley’s Old Ale House. To each their own.

Our son, Jackson, had to stay in SD to work, so the three of us ventured to the Bronx for a playoff game in honor of The Boy. Although Mr. Judge went 0-for-5, and the home team lost, playoff baseball in Yankee Stadium was rowdy and raucous. Like Iris, in The Natural, as Judge struggled at the plate, I rose from my seat, silhouetted by the sun, but alas, the bum grounded weakly to third.

As if that wasn’t horrifying enough, we went to the movie Smile, a horror flick Sierra worked on as the Assistant to the Director. Horror is far from my genre of choice, but as parents, we often do things for our children that are not of our choosing. Sierra still holds it against me that I chose to never ever take them to Disneyland…ever, so I owed her one. There’s something special about seeing your child’s name roll by in the credits on the big screen…while you discretely check to ensure you didn’t soil yourself to a noticeable extent during the movie.

Speaking of brown, as I said, “Jackson had to work.” For several months, The Boy paid his dues, loading boxes, large and small, filled with the various wants and needs (mostly wants) of the consumers that dwell in and around Rapid City, into UPS trucks during the wee hours. Then one day, he emerged from the warehouse clad in an assortment of brown attire, and stepped off the loading docks and into the driver’s seat. Honk…honk…what can Brown do for you?

It can provide you with a fairly solid reason to decline an offer from your parents to go hiking. “I walk 10-miles a day at work, why would I want to stroll around the woods on my day off?” Fair enough, but old people fall down a lot. Who’s going to take you and your sister to Disneyland if I break a hip?

As has been the case since he was a lad, Jackson spent the summer swinging bats and throwing balls, but this summer he did it without dear old dad. Retirement from baseball finally stuck. The Yankee’s dilly-dallied too long, the tattered old jockstrap was hung up for good…talk about brown.

Jackson enjoys his new gig, the workday rolls by quickly, and the job provides funds for all things young people want or need (mostly want)…haircare products, libation, and overdue library book fines. He’s making a go of this thing they call adulthood, and finding out a little more about himself day-by-day. So it goes.

Us elders are getting along as well as can be expected for people with both feet east of 50. The first 50 were a joy, but I have a suspicion that the next 50 could get ugly. For me anyway, Dawn’s purebred Polish bloodline will keep her in tip-top form much longer than the cholesterol riddled system I’ve been saddled with.

Dawn is still helping bent and busted folks mend and move through the magic of physical therapy and her sunny disposition, and I’m still at Chadron State College, waiting for the president of the college to knock on my office door one day, and say, “The gig is up. There’s been a mistake, you don’t belong here. Time to go get a real job.” Until then, I can’t imagine doing anything else, or, that I’d be much good at anything else.

We lost a few loved ones this year, and our thoughts are often with them, and the ones they left behind to carry on. Our days are not guaranteed, enjoy the company of family and friends, the sun on your face, the wind through the trees, the cool grass or crunch of snow underfoot, or whatever it is that might nudge a little joy your way. Happy New Year…Carry on.

“Every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings.” That’s fine and dandy little miss Zuzu Bailey, but in our house, every time a bell rings the dog wants to go out, and he ain’t no angel. We have a Christmas bell that was hung on the door handle of our backdoor several years of decorating ago, that for one reason or another, was never undecorated.

Who needs The Ring Home Security System? Ours rings, it’s low-cost, low-tech, and in the event of a home invasion, its “dingalingringaling” gives me ample enough warning to limber up a bit before grabbing my baseball bat and bum rushing the burglar in my birthday suit. In my experience, baseball bat or not, most people run away from, rather than towards, a naked man.

I have my dads old 30-30 lever-action rifle next to the bed as well, but I’d hate to wake up the dog. Besides, the click-clack of the lever-action, snap of the hammer, and the hot shell casings flying about, could potentially leave one in a state of undress in duress. There’s a reason that a shirt was optional, but pants were standard issue for John Rambo. Once bitten, twice shy.

As I explained a few columns ago, in a state of confusion, delusion, and general dimwittedness, we got a dog. We trained that dog to ring the jingle bell on the door knob with his nose when he wants or needs to go outside. Yeah…cute.

In hindsight, it seems more likely that he has trained us to stop relaxing on the couch and get up to open the door at the simple ring of a bell. It’s kind of like when your child first begins to speak, it’s cute, and then they start lodging complaints and demands. The bell may be part of the undecorating this holiday season?

I am a very patient person, a patients that Wilson has taken upon himself to test regularly. To date, I’d say I have a tenuous C-minus on his tests. Not failing, not passing with flying colors, just a fair bit below middling. Room to rise, room to fall. We shall see which way the tail wags.

Wilson’s predecessor, Pre, was an obedient Black Lab ruled by his stomach, that was perfectly content to roam and laze about in his ample area of confinement in our fenced backyard. Wilson is not content with the ample area of confinement in our fenced backyard. His hobby, climbing the previously mentioned fence to chase deer around the neighborhood, has pitted man against beast.

The man has spent several lovely days, days that wanted to be viewed from the seat of his mountain bike, installing an extension to the existing fence to thwart the beast’s hobby. The beast is content to laze about and watch the man, and borrow one of the man’s favorite leather gloves to chew on while the man is concerning himself with fence construction and muttering words that sound vaguely like “sit” to the beast.

Smugly satisfied with his efforts to outsmart the beast with his superior human intellect, the man heads out to enjoy what’s left of a lovely day from the seat of his mountain bike. While the man and his mountain bike drive to a trail to ride, a text from a kindly neighbor finds its way to the man’s phone, “Wilson’s chasing deer through the neighborhood.”

The man grits his teeth, changes course, and heads to the hardware store. Buys more fencing, a fresh pair of leather gloves, and a bag of jerky to mash mirthlessly between his gritted teeth and pacify his bruised superior human intellect.

The beast, happy to see the man return, greets him playfully, eagerly “sits” and “shakes” for a piece of jerky, sniffs the new gloves, and contently lazes about while the man attempts to engage the fence in conversation. So it goes.

Don’t tell the beast, but the man secretly admires his intrinsic motivation, ingenuity, and problem-solving skills in overcoming any and all societally generated and arbitrarily constructed obstacles specifically designed to stifle the expression of who the beast truly is.

Who are you…truly? Happy Holidays.

As humans, we are aware of our precarious finitude within the infinite expanses of time. We know that there is a day, somewhere down the road, that will be marked as our last. No two roads are the same in length, their ease and joy of travel, nor the scenery they afford the traveler.

Although our road can merge and intersect other roads for varying lengths of time, resulting in varying degrees of construction and/or destruction of one or both roads involved, our road is largely our own. It is partly what we make of it, and partly a cobbled patchwork of circumstance, happenstance, black ice, and rouge critters of all shapes and sizes. So it goes.

The end of the road for one, inevitably leaves us to contemplate the end of the road for us, especially, when they were taken too soon, taken when they had so much more to give.

Tim Schmelz was taken too soon, and although he had given so much of himself in the time he had, he undoubtedly had much more to give. My condolences to Tim’s family, a good man gone to soon.

I knew Tim from our time together at Burke Central High School. He, a member of the class of 1992, and myself, the class of 1991. As was the case in our small high school, mostly the same people participated in mostly all the sports, so Tim and I were often teammates.

Sports reveals a lot about an individual’s character, and in sharing the backfield with him on the 1990 Panther football team, I learned that he was someone to be counted on. Someone that was selfless and kind, someone that was always where he was needed, when he was needed…with a smile.

Our paths didn’t cross much after high school, but Facebook allowed for many of us that shared time and space in our youth to maintain some semblance of contact. Through pictures, messages, and various emoticons, we are able to remain connected, to remain a part of one another’s lives.

Through this connection, I could see that Tim was still selfless and kind, still someone to be counted on, still someone that was always where he was needed, when he was needed…with a smile. A person that gave so much of their life to help others, that it made me question whether I could or should give more of my time? I could, and should, many of us can, but Tim did.

I would like to share Tim’s words from his final post on Facebook.

To all of my Facebook friends:

If this is being posted that means I am no longer of this world. You are my Facebook friends for many different reasons; some of you are my relatives, some are lifelong friends, some are friends from childhood, some are new friends from adulthood & I’m sure I have a few friends I’ve just met once, but we shared enough to become FB friends! For whatever reason, I am happy to have been your friend in the real world and also the virtual world. I only ask three things on this day: 1. Have a warm thought for my family at this time. 2. Do a random act of kindness on this day as a final memory to me. 3. Donate any memorials to any non-profit that is involved with sick children, a few of my favorites are Give Kids The World, Kissimmee, FL; Make-A-Wish North Dakota; Ronald McDonald Houses; Mercy Kids, Springfield, MO; St Jude, Memphis. It has been a pleasure my friends. I wish you all a long life filled with happiness and overflowing with friends. When you wake up in the morning and your only goal for the day is to make a child smile, then it can’t be a bad day.

Tim

Like many of you, the day I was born, I had four grandparents to welcome me into this world. Four individuals, that many years prior to my arrival, had become two couples. Two couples that started as couples do…they fell in love. Love…the beginning of many stories and many lives. So it goes.

My Grandma Helen, the last of those four grandparents that welcomed me into this world, was nearing the end of her time in this world, so I ventured home to say goodbye. With morphine easing the pain of 92-years of living, she silently peered up at me from her hospital bed, as I held her hand and told her that I loved her. About six hours later word came that she had died peacefully. Dying, just as she had lived…on her terms.

The youngest of her children, Lonny, was at her side while she took her final breath around 3:00am on November 10th. Her children always took good care of their mother, something she often expressed appreciation for. They also liked to rile her up, but she appreciated that too.

Helen Elizabeth Kraft was born December 20th, 1929 in Selz North Dakota. On July 23rd 1949 she married Fritz Ellis, in Parshall North Dakota, and of this union, nine children, five boys and four girls, were born.

Standing by my Grandma’s bed, holding her soft warm hand, as she breathed softly in a quiet calm state of irreversible bodily decline, after so many years of perpetual motion, I pondered her life.

Her life. Her husband died June 1st, 1987, at the age of 59, leaving her over 35-years of life to live on her own. She, of course, wasn’t ever entirely alone. Her loving children, and an ever-expanding gaggle of grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren were appreciatively present more often than not.

When I ponder her life, I of course, am pondering it from my point of view. The point of view of one who came along third of 20 grandchildren. One who came along when she was in her early 40s, tirelessly working a variety of jobs to make ends meet. One who was 4-years old when she lost her 18-year old daughter, Julie, to a drunk driver in May of 1977. A loss, I imagine, that weighed on Grandma every day in the many days since.

One such limited point of view is woefully inadequate to effectively and accurately paint a worthy portrait of her 92 years of life. One can only tell you what they know.

I can tell you that I know that I loved my Grandma, and I can tell you that I know that she loved me. This love was not the kind of love one would describe as the “doting” grandmother type of love. Everyone loves differently, but love is love. Grandma Helen was a strong-willed, solitary woman, who mostly did as she wished, when she wished. To the very end, she was her own woman. I respect that.

Patients, is a virtue, it was, however, not one of Grandma Helens virtues, but she was kind, thoughtful, appreciative, and never one to leave work that needed to be done, undone. She was not all that interested in reminiscing about days gone by, or wishfully anticipating the possible life and times to come. Rather, she very much lived in the moment, and was especially fond of any moment that found pinochle cards in her hands or BINGO cards spread a dozen deep in front of her.

Although it was concerning to find that she had let my children drive her back to Lignite from BINGO in Minot when they were about 12-years old, I am thankful that they wanted to, and got to, experience BINGO with their Great-Grandma, just as I did when I was child.

One of my fondest memories of my Grandma Helen occurred in 1990, during my senior season of high school football, at a game in Sherwood. I had broken into the open on a kickoff return, and as I sprinted down the sidelines, with an eye on the two remaining defenders I needed to outrun for a touchdown, I heard a very distinct voice scream, in very close proximity to me, “GO JOSH!” I glanced to my left to see my Grandma Helen, running and yelling, not much out of arm’s length from me.

Go Grandma…you had quite a run.

Our daughter asked me, “What about being a child do I miss the most?” Good question. I was fortunate enough to have a tremendously fulfilling childhood, full of love, support, kindness, surrounded by family, and the freedom to roam and ramble with friends from sunup to sundown. With friends, or solo. Sometimes a kid needs a good solo expedition.

I am also fortunate enough to have all those things in adulthood, but the childhood version of roaming and rambling with friends in and around Lignite is probably what I miss most. I enjoy roaming and rambling with friends in adulthood as well, but there’s a few more tethers attached to the adult version. Mostly physical tethers. You may walk into a roam and a ramble, but you’re going to limp home. So it goes.

Riding bike, playing ball, arguing, laughing, roughhousing, exploring, just doing whatever…whenever, with no thought of what to do next. That’s what I miss. “What to do next” just happened in its own time, and never took anything away from whatever was occupying us at the time. In the moment, present with friends, very little thought…just responding to one another’s whims. Us knuckleheads had no shortage of whims.

Reminds me of a passage from An Introduction to Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki, “No amount of reading, no amount of teaching, no amount of contemplation will ever make one a Zen master.  Life itself must be grasped in the midst of its flow; to stop it for examination and analysis is to kill it, leaving a cold corpse to be embraced.”

Roaming and rambling fueled by the whimsy of a pack of feral knuckleheads in Toughskins jeans. Zen masters. Glorious.

All of us Zen masters forced out of our flow of life simultaneously, three times a day, when the siren by the fire hall sounded at noon, six, and nine. Begrudgingly, but dutifully, responding, like a pack of dogs to our mothers' command of, “Come home when the siren blows.” Scattering for lunch, supper, or worst of all, bedtime, and reconvening wherever…whenever. Until one day we didn’t.

I often wonder what day that was? The final time the siren scattered us? If I had known, I would have had my mom take a picture of us. The pack of feral knuckleheads in Toughskin jeans…Zen masters on the verge of being washed out of their childhood flow of life. If I had known, but none of us ever do.

When I close my eyes, I can sort of see us, but it’s like looking through a dusty windowpane. The figures are there, I can see them moving, I can hear them laughing and arguing, but I’m not sure who they are, and I’m afraid that wiping the windowpane will make the siren blow.

I’ll leave the knuckleheads be. I’ll let them be Zen masters for a little while longer. Let them wear out, rather than grow out, of their Toughskins.

What about being a child do you miss most?

Well for those of you without access to a calendar, smartphone, or contact with anyone other than your cat, it is a good spell into the month of October. I’m not saying that cats aren’t intelligent enough to know what month it is, it’s just that they would most likely choose not to mention it if they were capable of such. Aloof they are.

Fun word, “aloof”, defined as “not friendly or forthcoming, cool and distant.” I’ve been accused of being aloof from time to time by those that are unaware that I’m actually a cat, or those that are unaware that I actually don’t like them.

“Don’t like” may be a bit harsh, “don’t prefer” would probably be more accurate. Either way, my wife claims I’m not very convincing at feigning an interest in anything or anyone that falls into either of those categories. My wife’s claims are generally pretty accurate when it comes to her husband and his occasional aloofness, and unfettered fondness for a loaf of soft sourdough bread and firm Granny Smith apples. We all got our things.

There are many reasons for being aloof, for being “cool and distant”. Perhaps, I’m of the impression that you would prefer to stay a bit cool and distant from me, so I am preemptively cool and distant from you to save you the trouble of being cool and distant from me. Consider it a gift. I act like I don’t see you in the grocery store, your ice cream doesn’t melt, my sourdough bread stays soft, Granny Smith’s stay firm…a win for all involved. You are welcome.

On a side note, as of late, I have consumed an alarming amount of Granny Smith apple slices, topped with Italian dry salami and a shmear of goat cheese. The texture, and possibly the taste, is delectable to those of us dwelling in the world of congenital or COVID induced anosmia.

My anosmia is congenital, and as I’ve explained in past columns in this very paper, most likely was precipitated by my overexposure to the fumes emitted by a 1969 Plymouth Road Runner fueled with leaded gasoline while I was a delicate, fragile, blooming fetus.

Delicate, fragile, blooming fetus…weren’t we all. Now look at us. Haggard, callused, and wilting. So it goes.

We grow, get evicted from the womb, face fluorescent lighting and a bushy eyebrowed doctor, are whisked away by kindly nurses that held it all together with Aqua-Net and Virginia Slims. Thus begins life. A glorious miracle.

Aqua-Net and Virginia Slims aren’t welcomed in hospitals anymore, so it is unlikely that we will exit in the same reverential manner in which we entered. Out with the old, in with the new I suppose. Ahh to be new again. To look up and see the faces that smiled down and doted upon our simple existence. Those faces that expressed so much joy in return for so little. Those faces were beautiful.

When’s the last time someone was happy you burped? Was excited when you picked up a Cheerio and almost put it in your mouth? Cheered when you went to the bathroom in a toilet? I suppose, given time, this low bar of expectations will return, and I suppose, those faces will be beautiful too.

As many of you are aware, due to my endless lamenting and carrying on, we had to lay our 13-year old black lab, Pre, to rest this past December. He was a good dog, our families first, and as I stated many…many…many times since his passing, our last. “No, we don’t want another dog.”, I had confidently expressed to anyone that asked about the prospect of any future canine folk calling our house a home.

Apparently, the “we” was more “me”, and occasionally over the past few months, Dawn would show me a picture of some dog the humane society was peddling in the newspaper as the “Pet of the Week”. I would look at the picture and silently nod. Silently nod, week after week, month after month. Confident and firm in my resolve that “we don’t want another dog”.

Then one day, not long ago, I found myself showing Dawn a picture of some dog the humane society was peddling in the newspaper as the “Pet of the Week”. I not only found myself showing it to her, I heard myself say, “What do you think of this one?” Dawn didn’t silently nod, she excitedly blurted out, “Are we getting a dog!”

Then I heard myself say the same thing I said 13 years ago, “We can go look.” Myself was out of control, doing and saying things it had vowed not to do or say, while I stood by helplessly. So it goes. So it went. So, Wilson, is his name.

We didn’t go to look at Wilson, he wasn’t the “Pet of the Week”, but as I was told when we got Pre, “You don’t find them, they find you.” Wilson was a 10-month old stray, and is a German Shepard-Siberian Husky mix, a Gerberian Shepsky, I’m told. Whatever he is, he’s a good dog.

The second day we had him, I took him out to roam around with me in the Black Hills. It was nice to have a four-legged roaming companion again, and as I hiked, and watched him dart about the woods, I thought about the magnitude of the transition that had occurred so quickly in Wilson’s life.

I thought about all the other dogs that he had “did time” with at the humane society, dogs that were still there, dogs that may never find their human, never get to run through the woods, never get to chew up a firepit cover, dig up plants, and whatever else has occurred since I sat down to write this column.

Sometimes you think you know exactly what you don’t want. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you don’t want. Sometimes, someone, or something, needs you to do that which you don’t want. I didn’t want a dog, we got Wilson. It seems we all needed what I didn’t want.

Perhaps, what I really didn’t want, was to have to say goodbye again? It’s not easy, but Pre trained us well. Welcome home Wilson.

When I was a kid I wanted to be many things. I wanted to be a cowboy like John Wayne, ride high in the saddle, walk with a swagger, outdraw, and out fight any hombre that had a hankerin' to test me.  Then one day I realized “The Duke”, Marion Morrison, wasn’t a real cowboy, swaggering everywhere you go is slow and silly, and I was too mild-mannered and even- keeled to get riled to the point of fisticuffs.

That slew of realizations, and Susie, the ill-tempered Shetland pony my brother and I bought for $200, laid my cowboy dreams to rest.  The horse and the cowboy clothes were traded for an official Evel Knievel bicycle and an Evel Knievel jumpsuit that my mom sewed me, and I set out to be a stuntman. 

Being a stuntman seemed heroic, but jumping burning piles of leaves by launching your bike off of a shoddily constructed ramps is not as glamorous as it sounds, so I shifted my ambitions to becoming the shortstop for the New York Yankees. They never called, but I did enjoy playing a couple of seasons with the Sherwood Yanks in the Saskatoon Men’s Baseball League. You can almost see the Bronx from Saskatoon…almost. 

Remnants of all the things I wanted to be when I was a kid are still a part of my life.  I occasionally semi-swagger about in quasi-cowboy clothes when called upon to provide sports medicine coverage for a rodeo. Put on snug Wranglers and second-hand cowboy boots and see how you walk.

The Yankees?  They had their chance, and they opted to go with some hack named Jeter. I hear his career turned out okay, but his dreams of playing in Saskatoon never materialized. So it goes.

Bicycles have remained a part of my life. I don’t jump burning leaf piles anymore (though it’s not out of the question), but coasting “no hands” down a hill with my arms out wide and my eyes shut still makes me smile. I have fond memories of many of the bikes that have been a part of my life.

The Evel Knievel motorcycle replica bike that I had when I was 6-years old that carried me over many glorious jumps and equally glorious crashes. The western themed banana bike with ape-hanger handle bars that my 8-year old legs spurred for 30 miles in the Stanley St. Jude’s Bike-a-Thon. The blue and gold Coast King BMX bike with mag wheels, from the Kenmare Hardware Store, that was gratefully outfitted with boyhood saving padding on the top bar.

A few weeks ago, “Rosie” was added to the fleet of smile inducing bicycles I’ve had the pleasure of perching upon over the years. I’m generally not one to name inanimate objects, but I could imagine my Grandma Rose looking at the rosewood color of this bike and saying, “My, that’s a pretty color. You be careful on that.”

This ride is a full-suspension mountain bike that has had me laughing out loud while rolling down tree-lined switchback trails much faster than a 50-year old with a history of concussions probably should, so I need the constant reminder of “You be careful” along for the ride.

Bicycles aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for me they’ve always represented freedom of sorts. Freedom to explore, freedom to challenge yourself, freedom to switch off your brain and simply peddle, or slowly coast with your thoughts. Freedom to just be.

Such freedoms can be found in many flavors and forms. Enjoy your tea time.