Language Development

A geezer poem

When Oom Pa Pa from the North

Met Cha Cha Cha from the South

A new word, Ooh La La, was formed.

You Sure Are Wobbly Grandpa

My brother Tom and I awoke early that Christmas morning. I was 10, he was 9, but taller then me.

We raced down the stairs to the balsam fir Christmas that my dad always perched at Wenner's Hardware store in town. He would drill holes and refit nature's work to my mom's specifications by putting branches in gaps with his brace and bit, down in the basement before setting it up in the dining room.

We found under the tree that early Christmas morning for each of us a pair of tan and black hockey skates, probably purchased at Jim's summertime bike repair, winter time new and used skate sales and sharpening shop, located in St Cloud, Minnesota, boyhood home of my dad, he long gone now, me sixty-seven.

Five AM we laced them up right under the tree, walked out the back door, then walked and slid three blocks to the back side of our grade school.

We sat on our haunches, knees outstretched, using our skates as rudders, slid down the embankment to the volunteer fire department water flooded ice rink, kept clear of snow by Clarence Schmidt, the town maintenance man.

It was dark and cold that long ago Christmas morning, but Tom and I didn’t notice.

We skated away many Minnesota winter evenings on that lighted pond. Great fun, going to the warming house, a concrete block building with a wooden floor, benches all around the perimeter with a pot belly wood stove in the middle, all the walls filled with happy young skaters.

I got fairly good at racing through the tag line, and playing a rudimentary form of hockey, for the next four winters before moving on from the skating rink to 14-year-old interests, a job spotting pins at the bowling alley.

At age 60 I took my grand baby to the heated indoor ice pavilion in Portland, were a carousel of wooden ponies danced overhead and the ice was maintained by a Zamboni.

She soon skated off leaving me clinging to the railing, until I finally got my stride, arms and legs synchro-meshed bending low in case of a fall, and feeling good about myself as I skated around at good speed.

Grand baby skated over to me and said

YOU SURE ARE WOBBLY GRANDPA

Aunty, Grandma and Jewell

Sister Joan

Sweet Joan, always a smile, never a mean word, never learned or was interested in driving a car, even though she and her husband Herb raised three children while living in many parts of the country.

Didn’t need to, she filled her life with her children, cooking, sewing, crafts, and people.

Died too young of the family scourge, heart problems.

Although those last ten years, living at the lake, one quarter-mile from Herb's family farm amongst the red oak and birch, must have been heavenly.

A Chat with Pam

At sixty, you should have no debt, an extra bedroom and bath. A new sports car, and a fine study built to your specifications.

How did you go so wrong, Joseph? Or as a bankers ex-wife asked me at dinner, Where have you been?

My answer, not always understood by today's consumer-driven, daycare-loving society was:

I have

A FINE SON AND HIS WIFE WHO CARE FOR ME

A KIND DAUGHTER ,THE LOVE OF MY LIFE

AND

A MOTHER-RAISED GRANDBABY, JEWELL MONTANA, THE ROCKET GIRL

That's what I got.

Pam answered, You got a lot, Joseph.

My family

My Dad the Stonecutter

Today, few people know what a stonecutter is, even though until recently it was a common trade that was often a preparation to architectural training. Stone was, and in some ways still is, the fundamental building material for construction.

My dad the stonecutter practices trade between 1920 and 1970 an era when architects were still allowed to put art into architecture.

My dad practiced his trade in a large steal and glass building along with 50 or so others in a building we called the stone sheds in St Earns County, Minnesota, where the glaciers did all the heavy work eleven thousand years earlier.

The stonecutters and carvers and many related trades walked to work from their homes in khakis or blue denim often with aprons on, lunch buckets in hand, not unlike there predecessors 500 years before them in constructing cathedrals of Europe.

In his lifetime the stonecutter moved from job site to quarry site, primarily due to improvements in transportation and sawing technology, and for the most part disappeared from public view.

They were unassuming men whose children probably never knew what their fathers did in the stone sheds.

They including my father and his three brothers, Ted, Richard, and Larry. All were stonecutters and carvers, a dicey trade at best in those times of pneumatic tools. Some lived, some died.

But they were all wonderful artists and craftsmen who left their footprint on every city in America.

When my father the stonecutter learned I was following him in the trade, he gave me some practical advice that would serve many of us well:

“KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT AND BREATHE THROUGH YOU NOSE AND YOU WILL GET ALONG JUST FINE.”

Medical Care

I wonder way I am so often light headed

lying in bed

as I rise

when I exercise

when I am still

when I move.

I ask the doctors the medical minds

is the brain short of oxygen

or

is the brain sending too much water to the ear

Their answer is,

you look fine

blood pressure not bad

stay the course

But I know they're only waiting for

a medical crisis

to clarify the problem

then maybe they can

rescue me again.

I hope it's my brain

giving bad information

to my ear.

And not my heart

shorting my brain of oxygen

This seems like a terrible risk

I am forced to take

not by choice.

And sometimes it makes me

angry inside

What Would Jimi Sing?

What would Jimi sing

if he came back

and found the revolution was over

and all the warriors removed their bandanas

joined the union

and arranged a peace treaty

for themselves,

behind closed doors

in legislative bodies.

What would Jimi sing

if he came back

and found all the warriors

retired in sun city

and all the soldiers

working hard to pay the bills.

What would Jimi sing

if he came back

and found all the soldiers

tired and ill with little help

and all the warriors fully insured and vested

popping Viagra to enhance the high.

What would Jimi sing

if he came back

and found all the soldiers

with bended back

and found all warriors

dancing and playing in splendid form.

What would Jimi sing then.

Tom and Joe

My earliest Minnesota memories are of my brother Tom and I being allowed to row Dad's 14-foot Vic Pagansky cedar strip fishing boat along the shoreline, each of us on a varnished oar.

Years later I remember hooking Tom through his eye lid while casting for pan fish, and driving to town to Doc Koop's to remove the hook. Still don’t understand how I didn’t blind him.

We grew up on the lake 5 miles from Dads home in a small Stearns County village. As town boys we always thought ourselves superior in our 14 footer with a Johnson 5 horsepower motor, to those low riding green flat-bottoms all the local farm families seemed to use.

We with our moon hubcaps, smoking cigarettes, hanging at Betty’s cafe, separated ourselves from the farm kids in coveralls, and mud flaps, and endless chores.

30 years later, when I returned home, Tom took me to the lake with his pickup pulling his 17 foot Lund aluminum complete with a fish finder.

We were drifting off Johns Point hoping for a walleye, but getting only northers, when a large fiberglass inboard came up on us maybe 75 feet away. Seemed like a awesome craft for these waters. A bikini-clad woman walked to the rear and set down 2 mixed drinks on the free board, as a suntanned man called over to us, “Getting anything?”

“Not much,” Tom replied.

“Who are you?” he called out.

“We are the Conrad boys, Dad used to have a cottage right across the lake there.”

“Oh yes, I remember you. We are the Shrumels, our farm is over there. Don't farm much any more, we put the land in the soil bank, spend winters in Florida, but we still come up here to fish in the summer.”

Brother Don

When I was a boy, I would sneak into the low ceiling attic of the small bedroom were brother Don slept, before going off to WWII as an army private. He was shipped of to India with a load of mules, possibly with the intent of packing supplies over the Himalayas to China if the air lift faltered, I don’t know .

The attic was filled with model airplanes (stick and paper, covered with model dope), all sizes and shapes so light and delicate. Balsa gliders, that were said to fly for blocks when properly balanced and flung. And stacks of magazines, showing every type of Allied and Axis aircraft along with model airplane books, all in perfect order. It was a wonderful place for a boy.

Brother Don, the meticulous mathematician, wanted to fly I am sure, was designated  a master sargent Postmaster by the army, while his older brother Wally was assigned too be a radio man, flying PBYs out of Whidbey Island, in the San Juans.

I lifted and touched all the models even though my mother would not allow anyone into that attic while she waited for her boys to come home.

Later when Don did came home and took up residence in the small bedroom while working and attending St Johns university, he would take me to St Cloud to visit the model shop. A narrow building with balsa pieces of all sizes and shapes and box upon box of red and blue containers, full of all sizes and types of stick and paper airplane kits.

Then he would take me across the Mississippi and buy me some fresh made caramel corn at a little shop at the foot of the bridge

I spent much of my youth constructing these planes. However if I wanted to see the great and ever growing airplane collection, I would have to travel to St Cloud in Stearns county Minnesota to the basement of Brother Don's home, probably purchased on the GI bill.

Brother Don in his 80s assembled and built models most every day, but told me on our last visit together:

THEY JUST DONT FLY LIKE THEY THE ONES I USED TO BUILD, I DONT KNOW WHY?

New Joseph Conrad Sampler

See more at http://stonecutter.blogspot.com

In Mexico We Kiss

Doctor Smith walked by my room softly announcing that Terry had arrived at the lake home from her home in Mexico City.

As I continued to arrange things in my room I could here a soft lilting angelic English spoken in the kitchen where Elizabeth was welcoming her friend with cheese and bread.

The tender voice reminded me of hearing children talking to their parents at a country bed and breakfast in Tuscany, years before. All sentences ending on a lingering high.

As I approached the kitchen, I was intimated by the round faced,large dark eyes, and beautiful form in designer jeans, smiling at me.

I stuck out my shy Stearns County Minnesota hand to greet her.

She said in lilting English,

IN MEXICO WE KISS.

I Once Knew A Woman

I once knew a woman who was a citizen of Cyprus, but lived in Sudan.

She knew about Swahili, Oil painting, Hungarian men, and cosmetics.

She could dive and swim in the Mediterranean with the best of men.

However she couldn’t figure out how to get in my pickup truck.

She banged her head each time, then glared at me, even though I acted as if I didn’t notice.

She could dance all night in Madrid, but couldn’t decide whether to put her foot to the floor and swing her bottom over, or step on the rail, and drop it down in Portland town.

I thought she had a wonderful bottom to counter balance her entry, but lifting her leg seemed awkward to her even though, she claimed good form in her Honda car.

Since it seemed so hard for her to decide where to place her foot entering my pickup truck, I decided to end the dilemma before damage was done to my head, if I could not conceal my delight at her predicament.

The 70s

I remember still

The tall slim shape,

Miss Oregon runner up,

Farm raised. City living,

Staring at me,

out of touch

living alone,

with my two children.

She sent by a friend,

to get me out of my life,

and into the world.

Arrived, to take me to

a disco dancing contest,

she entered, weekly.

Directly looking at me,

as she entered my home,

saying

IS THIS AS GOOD AS YOU GET.

Aunty, Would You Be Proud?

Aunty

When Red left

you with the bills and restaurant

he with the waitress

You carried on, in the trenches, sewing Jean Lang designs for sophisticated ladies by day. Cooking chicken and dumplings and drinking beer to numb the lonesomeness by night.

Organizing with the union, in the trenches with Humphrey, and Stevenson, humbly asking for a living wage for 40 years.

Then buying a Greyhound pass to visit nephews and nieces across the country, before dying.

Aunty, would you be proud of sophisticated grand nieces living in Jean Lang style,

scolding grand nephews about semantics as they philosophize about globalization in splendid homes.

The State of the Arts

He was a beautiful man

Hungarian cab driver in Vienna,

locally referred to as Wien.

Throwing his great 60 year old arms up

declared in a rich baritone voice

Wien, a city filled with art,

over two hundred museums,

Franz Joseph the Hapsburgs were collectors.

Western, Eastern, Asian, African, Persian, Polonaise, Egyptian, Turkish, Greek, Roman,

Ancient, Renaissance, Baroque, Modern

all the masters kept

here in Wien

A city of musical genius

Haydn, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann, Strauss

all kept

here in Wien.

Sculpture along the Danube

and at every turn, beauty,

here in Wren

Architecture, and Gardens equal to any in the world kept,

here in Wien.

BUT

someday I hope to go to your country

to see your great art,

in MEMPHIS

home of

JERRY LEE LEWIS AND ELVIS PRESLEY

My Dad

After my dad retired he changed so much.

Me being born after his 40 th birthday I witnessed two sides of this man.

He always stern,would not tolerate idle talk or gossip,and was mostly quite before retirement.

I rember him still, going through a thick stack of yellow order resets from Peters home delivery groceries monthly, adding the numbers up by hand, to check for accuracy before paying the bill, and my mother calling Elderd Peters if an error was found.

But I also remember, after driving my first car late night coming home,and finding Dad, standing in the front entry waiting for me. He said: Don't you realize I worry for you. This was the first kind expression I rember my dad saying to me.

After retirement he became the playful, joyful and talkative man my children rember.

I rember often, his thrill and delight at my showing him a simple thing I discovered after coming home from the Navy. Kinser Creek, a small maybe 2 mile long water drainage 4 miles south of town on the gravel road where it drains into the Sauk River. It pools in several places, from limbs falling from the red oak ,willow, and cottonwood. These small pools are mostly concealed by brush.

Here in the land were Dad fished for the almighty Walleye in his Vic Pagansky 14 ft cedar built round bottom powered be the trusty 5 horse powered Johnson in deep clear Stearns County lakes, he found such joy, and I was so proud to show him a place were he could catch chubs, 4 to 6 inches long with tiny hook and line, rather than buy them from Minnow Mike, at the local bait shop. He giggled and laughed so much doing this.

35 Years Later

I was wondering if it was hard to sit in the back of my crew cab, not fully understanding English as her 3^rd language, rarely used, while my boyhood friend Chuck Schmitt and I reminisced our youth in Stearns County, Minnesota, while we drove around the sights near his home in Monterey Bay, California.

Me visiting from Portland, Oregon, Chuck and I apart for 35 years.

My friend visiting from Mexico City said, O NO, It was wonderful to be around such happiness and laughter all day.

The Inspection

Traveling by jet plane to southeastAlaska,a ferry to the island,crossing it in a international travelall, to Craig, a fishing village.

Finally, sea bag down on a 38 foot trawler,shown to me by the Harbor Master Jim's boat, our home and transportation to the back country.

Jim at six feet six inches, a Portuguese-Norwegian recluse, was educated as a biologist, but had a different dream, headed out at top speed , six knots.

Jim lived on cigarettes, instant office, and Polish sausages, slightly heated, and slept, due to his long frame, in front of the oil stove kept on low temperature 24 hours a day, close to his maps, electronic gear, and books, for guidance.

Provisions including drinking water for cooking and coffee were kept in plastic jugs. Toilet facilities were dispensed with in order to provide extra space for maritime gear.

.

Jim navigated the waters as only a local fisherman can, understanding the tides, reading the shoreline, the weather, and the surface tension of the water, beyond my imagination, for the last 25 years.

There was no bay, shelter, or passage that he was not familiar with, nor tide or current that he did not work with. He must, for when the tide can run at 8 knots in narrow channels and you can only move at 6 knots, the Marble below can be a serious problem.

Me a stranger to these waters, but with 30 years in the marble business, along to advise him about his dream, marble quarries in southeast Alaska's great limestone deposits.

Me, a small town town boy, raised on the edge of the Prairie in Stearns County, Minnesota, could only observe the rain forest and vast waterways around me.

Three days out, anchored in a cove 20 feet from from a solid white marble island ,its edges shaped by ocean water but its interior rainforest covered with 4 inches of moss under the canopy. The horizon,totally flat, perfectly level, all vegetation in every direction trimmed to perfection by the tide.

Salt water, dead flat, as can only happen in the inland passage, at dawn, I climbed on deck of the old wooden fishing boat with my instant coffee.

The silence

The stillness

The solitude

At Dawn

Was deafening

I sensed the slow upwelling of water steering to my left not violently, just an oval upwelling in the dead calm water.

I can feel it yet, with a deep powerful “sh sh”, no spout, only air movement, a dark form emerged, looked at me, a small town boy, raised on the edge of the Prairie.

Passed inspection, I believe, by nature's most beautiful animal, on the edge of the rainforest, in WHALE COVE, Alaska, that summer morning.

You're Safe, Joseph

When Elizabeth asked me to come to visit her second home in Mexico in order to make an offering on the DAY OF THE DEAD, she stated in her letter that she could only promise a hot shower and good cup of coffee in the morning.

How could I say no.

The small colonial village located on a lake at 7200 feet could be reached by flying to Morelia, a city in Michoacan state, I had never heard off, not being a student of Mexico geography.

Ariving at a nearly empty air terminal after dark the cab driver told me it would be about a one-hour drive to my central city hotel.

The friendly young cab driver, happy to practice is english he learned while living in California, explained that the eerie shadows along buildings were people enjoying the evening as we drove to the city.

Suddenly we arrived:

The four-story atrium-style pink limestone hotel was built around 1650 about the same time the Jamestown settlers were warding of fstarvation. It was surrounded by a plaza of limestone buildings, with wide sidewalks, cafes and shops, across from two city blocks of trees, fountains and sculpture features, complete with lovers sitting on benches enjoying the full moon. Behind stood the second largest domed cathedral in the western hemisphere, with flood lights, defining its intricate sculpture elements.

For the first time in my life it dawned on me,

So this is Colonial Mexico.

I was helped up to my 4th story room and stood looking down at a man playing a piano in the lobby below, and up at stained glass ceiling covering the large open atrium with guest room s all around the perimeter on each , wondering were am I ?

Within minutes after entering my high ceiling room the phone rang.

The unmistakable voice of Elizabeth said,

Don't worry, Joseph. You are safe in Morelia, I will see you in the morning.

Later I walked down the wide ornate marble staircase to the lobby, had 2 tequilas, watched the World Series, then walked outside and around the park and cathedral, finally sitting down on a park bench and witnessed a full eclipse of the moon on my first night in colonial Mexico. This long and eventful day reminded me of a walk I took along the Danube, in the full moon with sculpture shows, beer gardens lighted basketball courts, all filled with people one late night some years before then calling a friend in Oregon and saying a full moon was coming.

Bells Wood and 8th Grade Engineering

Bells Wood, a small moraine left by glacial till, was covered with red oak. It remained uncultivated, due to its sloping terrain, just two miles west of town.

My best friend, and fellow model builder, Milton lived 5 homes down the alley connecting our block.

In the summer we would walk past his uncle Spy Jones' home, just outside of town, to roast wieners with buns in Bells Wood, our idea of camping.

In the fall we took our dads' shotguns and a pocket full of #8 shells and headed for the small willow covered pond, hoping for a stray duck, on our way to Bells Wood, to hunt fox squirrels, an 8^th grade idea of sport.

In the winter we pulled Milton's 8-foot toboggan to Bells Wood.

The run we built between the red oak became faster and faster as it packed in.

Eventually the wire fence at the bottom of the run became an obstacle.

However, as 8^th grade engineers we soon constructed a snow ramp up and over the fence, to extend the ride.

We reached the ramp at a good speed, Milton in front, myself in back. I remember going up, but nothing more.

My friend Milton loaded me on the toboggan and pulled me back to his kind mother's kitchen in town.

Apparently the bridge of my nose collided with of the front curve of Milton's 8 ft toboggan as we came down, not on the back side of our ramp.

8^th grade engineering.

However, Doc Koop the town doctor pronounced me well, so we finished the afternoon building model airplanes, with hot chocolate and cookies his mother always made for us.

The Sliding Door

At eighteen, my first day on the job, I was sent to the factory to retrieve some shop drawing.

The large plywood door was closed, it being winter.

I could not push it open.

I could not pull it open.

So I stepped back and hit it hard and low.

As it swung up I rolled under.

Lying on the concrete floor amid crates of finished stone,

I looked up, into the eyes of Ralph Stiel, the loading dock foreman.

He said who are you

I answered Joe Conrad

He replied, must be Walt's kid.

Then went back to his clipboard check list.

Minnesota English

When the ambassador called to tell my new friend that he and his wife would like to visit on the 15th of next month, she replied that they would be welcome to stay at her Mexico City home. However she replied that she was going to spend some time improving her English with a Minnesotan, because he told her that the English dialect spoken right in the middle of the United states would surely be understood in all parts of the USA most clearly. The ambassador thanked her for her welcome.

She replied,  “You betcha ,“ The first English expression she was taught by new friend from Minnesota.