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.

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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.