Romney Report - June 2015

Romney Report - June 2015

(The Great Alaska Land Sale)

President Obama's secretary of commerce Myth Romney’s office reported today that the Chinese consulate has filed a formal complaint, indicating that that there is US government support for former Alaska governor Sarah Pizzazz guerrilla troops, slowing the Chinese efforts to harvest timber, oil and fish in the SE Alaska wasteland. This was not expected when the land was sold to China to reduce the government debt.

The great land sale, which was conceived and formulated by America's best and brightest, a group of young Wall Street land traders headed up by the great American land developer Donald Rump was presented to the imperial government as a simple land transaction after the government deadlock of 2013. The consulate stated that the land was totally paid for, and the monies put into Wall Street accounts, which were to accrue interest for the American public at a faster rate then its debt ratio. It is not the responsibility of the Chinese republic that this money can no longer be found in the American economy. We have the deed, a deal is a deal. The American Democratic Party is assumed to be the guilty party in these subversive attacks on Chinese free enterprise. No one ever thought they would have Sarah Pizzazz as an ecology advocate in her repulsive behavior. She seems to have somehow aligned herself with the American Indian nations who used to own 10 percent of Alaska's finest properties. These same locations, long known by indigenous peoples to be the best of Alaska land mass, seem to be the source of the most guerrilla activity. Clearing of the forest and deep drilling for the oil has been a top priority of the imperial government as well as harvesting of the abundant protein supplies to to improve the food supply of the under served Chinese people. This progress cannot be hindered, and stepped up military action will be started immediately, not withstanding Canadian protests of collateral damage.

Remember it was generally agreed in the land sale negotiations that a strong Chinese presence in SE Alaska would meld right in with the large Chinese emigration to western Canada since 1985. It seemed to be a perfect fit to the land brokers in there New York offices. These people should be able to get along, as the great American Rodney King once declared. After all, they all look alike. Even the natives seem to have strong Asian characteristics. There should have been few disturbances, although difficulties were expected in the relocation of certain Alaskans.

The relocation process as labeled “160 for all” hearkened back to the past when the Government gave 160 acres of land free to those early American patriots the Tea Party advocates so much admired as rugged self-made individuals. The same railroad family descendants have been awarded the contracts for transportation in the southern Wyoming hill country, since their families still control the best construction equipment for the job. Retired Wyoming Senator Simpson fought successfully for the land relocation here, as you will remember his famous statement regarding mail carriers getting a hernia in Sun City whenever he proposed reforms to the social security system. His shrewd proposal to give all public employees in Alaska a home in Sun City and full early pension with health benefits beyond Obamacare, won over any Democratic opposition to the great Alaska land sale.

Besides the resistance fighters headed up by gun toting Sarah as she fondly called, there have been complaints among some long time Alaskans who have been relocated, some saying they feel like they are being treated unfairly, even though government precedent was established in the 1940s Japanese relocation project. Republican scientific studies suggest that there should be no complaints among these dissidents in that the temperature in this region is on average 10 degrees warmer then they had in Alaska. Complaints about water depletion in the great Nebraska aquifer are benign lodged by the southern California swimming pool association. There suggestion that deep drilling water wells in the settlement area has depleted the water supply have been dismissed by republican scientific studies, as unproven. This matter will be taken up in some future congressional study.

Some Democratic strategists are now beginning to question President Obama's hands-off policy on this project, when he appointed Myth Romney as Commerce Secretary, since the president stated neither he, nor anyone he has ever known, had been to Alaska, it seemed best to leave the matter to the Job Creation experts. Non-interference has been the hallmark of his second administration. The president will be attending the Asian conference next month and is expected to comment on Japan and Indonesian governments complaints regarding fishery depletion in the region. They contend this problem is directly related to the 100-year lease by the American government of the Mariana Islands to China for processing Alaskan fish and refining oil, as well as treating Alaskan timber with fire resistant chemicals before distributing to the Chinese heartland. These matters are of growing concern to the Democratic administration and will be reported on in future Romney Reports.

It may be best to delete this report after reading, to prevent future possible FBI investigations.

SAYINGS I REMEMBER PEOPLE FOR

Be glad in the gladness of others - Shakespearean quote often used by by friend

The difference between a good job and a perfect job is a waste of time - a friend

I think I am going to scream - a friend

Oh well - a friend

For a price - a friend

NEEW! [NO!] - a friend

The difference between a professional and a amateur is that a professional spends the correct amount of time on each part of a project. - a friend

Never sell something you don’t have - a employer

Bodder you - father in law

Consider the source - growing up in Minnesota

The scrubs - 3rd and 4th high school football team members

A tip from the top - high school friend

Really! - 2011

Quality time - 1970s feminist expression for mothers who don’t have much time for their children

Bottle stone - last stone installed on a job

You betcha - growing up in Minnesota

Enabler - an expression used by people who dont want to be bothered by helping others in need

The burden -an expression used by employer to describe government regulations and taxes on his business.

Opportunity cost - a expression used by employer describing time spent with me.

Lucky to get it - a friend describing customers' stone projects after completion of each job.

Whata you have - downtown Freddy Brown asking if you want light or dark turkey sandwich.

Preferred customer - a friend describing attractive female customers.

Remembering Rita

Rita the second wife, because she was Catholic, in a Hindu world,

visited Portland one summer to be near her two sisters ,

all Indian born and raised.

Dark skin, dark eyes, soft to the hand everywhere, with beautiful lips ,

unique to her culture, uttered perfect English.

We spent one summer, walking and talking art,

she showing me newspaper photos and articles throughout the world,

describing her Rocco, were she employed a whole village,

baking hand-formed pottery under the soil.

I said Rita, You're in America,we have turntables and electricity.

She answered me that she sold her historic forms in

Monterey California

Las Vegas, Nevada and

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania because she heard,

it was the city of brotherly love.

On our last day together at Mt. Hood she held up the ride on a slide,

because she didn’t want to go too fast.

She then told me on the drive home,

YOU AMERICANS HAVE SO MUCH ,

BUT HAVE CREATED NOTHING, YOU

HAVE JUST TAKEN FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD.

I was shocked into silence, and later asked her sister why.

She answered, it's not you Joe, she always leaves angry,

it never changes.

Commercial Work

One of the first projects my 18-year-old son worked on with me was a conference table, for a commercial real estate sales office in downtown Portland. This was done when cutting and finishing was done with handheld skill saws and grinders. Shaping and detailing an unforgiving and reluctant stone like granite was a real challenge back then. It was a slow and difficult process to turn two raw slabs of granite into a matched three-dimensional stone table.

We were both quite proud of our hard work when we delivered it to the tenth floor of the commercial real state office and installed it on a custom wooden base ready for us. It all came together very well we thought.

Before we left the office, three architects walked in, one stating, “What a handsome piece of stone,” congratulating the other on his stone selection.

Then a group of young commercial salesmen came in, not noticing us, “HOW MANY APES DID IT TAKE TO CARRY THAT UP HERE?” and laughed.

This was my son's introduction to commercial stone fabrication. It's no wonder we all prefer to work for private home owners who respect and appreciate good craftsmanship.

Custom Fabrication

After being turned down by two neighborhood machine shops, I searched the large S.E. District for a metal fab shop.

I found two of the three steel fabrication shops recently closed their business. The third was a large building with four lumbering overhead bridge cranes. There is a sadness about such a cavernous tomb, that must have housed an industrial powerhouse in a different world. I counted six bodies in this dimly lit non-heated block-long building .

The girls at the office welcomed me with smiles and interest as I described my need for four U-shaped metal forms, three inches long, made from ¼ stock.

After much excitement and duplication of words they summoned the plant manager, whom I assumed was the owner, who as he walked in smiled at me, looked at my drawing, and said:

“Yes, we can do this for you. It should cost 40 dollars, however, by the time we process the order, track its process in the shop, receive and answer your phone calls discussing its progress, and schedule you for pick up, it will cost me 240 dollars. Incidentally we can make 20 of these for the same price.”

“Pay 240 dollars now, and we will call you when they are ready,” all virtually said in a minute or less, and he walked back into the shop.

I said thank you and pulled out my Visa card and the girls started to process the order.

I now have 16 extra pieces of metal taking up room in my shop which I have no use for.

Teen Years

I remember the awkward years when as a parent, you try so hard, because you are so proud of your child, having reached sufficient size to appear like a adult.

However there response to your interest in there lives is cold and passive.

Development experts say this is normal and even a required part of breaking away to become their own person.

But it seems to me to be a cruel and ugly response to years of nurturing.

However

If you are lucky and live long enough it all comes back with much more then you gave.

[sitting in Starbucks and watching a mother dote over her disinterested teen ]

By Chance

By chance,

only a telephone call away from canceling the trip,

Elizabeth called, from the village,

requesting me to come, despite my fear of intruding.

By chance

we meet in a most unlikely place.

Me a pale Yankee, with no language skills,

in unfamiliar surroundings.

You a beautiful Latina, with social graces,

at home in the largest city in Mexico.

Stopped your busy world to show me

another way of life.

Mexico, three cultures, layered and combined

Producing

happy people, where living and enjoying life every day is paramount

By chance

meeting a juke box queen, living deep in Mexico City,

has changed my life in a direction that pulls me south,

with greater understanding.

A Drive to the Country

Setting out, myself at the wheel, unschooled and illiterate of the sign posts, or Mexico City driving patterns.

Elizabeth and Bob, the man who understands computers, sitting in the rear.

Terry, sitting in a semi-reclined position, the primary navigator.

Elizabeth, Terry’s life-long friend, provided second opinions and hand signals from the rear seat.

Advice came from all directions, including Bob, but primarily from Terry and Elizabeth, with their Mexican habit for late and excited hand, foot, and vocal expressions, as we navigated the city westward toward Morelia, the second city established by Spain, 500 years earlier. The route was somewhat uncertain due to road repairs and confusing signage.

As we traveled the Mexican landscape laterally, with dramatic changes in altitude, there was no discussion or observations concerning vegetation, topography, culture, or local history included in the ride.

Stopping for fuel, I stayed with the Honda, while the passengers streamed to the refreshment stand.

Four and one half hours later, arriving at the lakeside village home, my request for tequila was questioned, however I prevailed drinking until I was calmed to my surroundings and joined my fellow travelers in the kitchen, for strawberries.

Driving back to the city the next day with Terry, my eyes blurred from the night traffic dropping into the Valley of Mexico, incoming freeways loaded with weekend traffic.

By accident we landed on a surface street whose name I could not properly pronounce in Spanish, but whose English meaning I fully understand. Insurgenta splits Mexico City, East and West. I was chided for my pronunciation and challenged regarding its meaning, however, it led me to south Mexico City, Tapan, home of my navigator .

As I unloaded the car, Terry told me she never drove back to the city at night, it was to hard, and went on to explain to me that it seemed shellfish that I did all the driving this weekend.

Needless to say, I said to myself that I would never go near the wheel again, lest I should make her spill the bucket of whole milk, she held with her feet to make special candy with, or spill the strawberry basket we purchased in the fields along the way, or scuff the trunk with some rocks I may have stopped for, alongside the road.

The next day I was told that Bob, the man who called me kind of handy to have around, was made sick by the chicken soup I had prepared for breakfast the morning we traveled west to the lake village. I thought it might have been to many of those unwashed strawberries he was eating in the back seat, I don’t know.

Anyway, I started packing my suitcase to head north, to where my children were waiting to pick me up at the airport.

Flying the Friendly Skies

In 2001 a friend asked me to attend her wedding on an island in Croatia . It was just off Split on the Adriatic, the location were the first Christian Roman emperor Diocletian fled to avoid his death. The remits of his headquarters are still at the heart of Split, home of the sculptor Mestrovic. Lucky for me I had a friend Peter Andrusko, who spent his high school and and college living in then Yugoslavia, sent me to his Slavic travel agent. Split is often reached by ferry from Italy, however I wanted to spend some time in Vienna, and Budapest since I would be so close to my heritage. The travel agent arranged my whole trip and lodging except lodging in Dubrovnik, site of war bombing 10 years earlier, an international heritage city. Our host, the bride's father, had arranged for the wedding attendees to hydroplane down there for a few days, stopping at special historic islands on the way. Not having hotel reservations in Dubrovnik slightly concerned me but I hoped for the best. The itinerary was Portland to Washington DC, Washington DC to Vienna, Vienna to Split; a flight that only happened three times a week then. Later from Dubrovnik to Vienna, ferry or train to Budapest, and final flight to New York and Portland.

My friend Mary Ann agreed to take me to the airport at 600 am for my flight to DC I gave her my itinerary given to me buy my travel agent. She accompanied me to United airlines check-in counter. The clerk informed me that my flight to DC would be two hours late. I told her that that would miss my connection to Vienna. She replied: THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM. She then reached for her phone to answer a call and asked me to move aside for the next customer. I reached over the counter and put my hand on her phone, and asked for an alternative route, she said that’s not possible. I demanded to see her supervisor and held my ground, stopping the line. A women came out and told me again ITS NOT OUR PROBLEM and looked at her computer and told me a United flight was loading right now for Chicago and maybe I could get a flight from Chicago to DC, no promises. I started running!

When I got on the United flight to Chicago I asked the flight attendant if she could place me near the front so I could get right out to make a possible connection to DC. She said ITS NOT MY PROBLEM, and I was given a middle seat in the rear part of plane. I was somewhat beside myself wondering if I would get to DC in time from Chicago. I was then informed that the flight would be one hour late arriving in Chicago. I then knew I didn't have a chance to be in Vienna on time for the flight to Split. I used the phone provided on the seat back to ask Mary Ann to contact the travel agent even though it was early in the morning in Portland still. Her first reaction was “why not do it yourself?” I explained it would be hard to spend much time contacting him from the plane. She said she would try. We were on our glide path twenty minutes out of Chicago when she called me back and said, get to the international terminal, in Chicago, Lufthansa Air will be waiting for you. What a treat, the best airline in the world, to Vienna with time to spare. Never would I fly United with their ITS NOT MY PROBLEM again. Nor would I advise anyone else to.

The bride arranging for me to have a room in Dubrovnik

Croatian women selling fish at the market

The wedding party on the island of Brock

Stone building in Croatia

St. Stephen's in Vienna

Fountain in Budapest

I arrived safely after that harrowing trip!

Flying Mexicana from Mexico City to Portland

What a treat

The nicest thing that happened in airline travel occurred on my last flight home from Mexico in spring of 2009. I was living in a colonial village in south central Mexico for four months, recovering from an accident that had me bedridden for four months. I rented a home for twelve months thinking I would spend six to eight months carving stone there in retirement. The home cost three hundred a month. I bought little Nissan pickup to get supplies in. The cost of living seemed right, the weather divine. The only thing lacking was telephone service, television, radio, the internet, and friends. I did not speak the language, but did have one friend living 40 miles away who was busy with his family life, and Miguel, a multiple PHD, who kept a lake cabin in the village I lived in. My doctor in Morelia noticed a dramatic weight loss and and suggested that he thought I lived too far from medical help with my heart condition. He advised me to leave the village I lived in. I eventually dropped from 170 to 143 and was very weak more or less bedridden for 10 days. I asked Miguel to make arrangements for me to fly home, which he advised me to do. He visited me twice a day the last week I was there arranging for a cab to take me to Morelia airport approximately 60 miles away from there Mexicali to Mexico City, Mexico city direct to Portland.

As you know Mexico City is a large city with a huge airport. It took me at least 45 minutes of walking from my local terminal to the international terminal for the Portland flight. When I finally got there I was saddened to see the terminal was packed with little place to sit even. I was so damn weak, but I asked for an aisle seat in case I needed to move about or use the toilet. I was told the plane was full and I had a center seat. I knew then the flight home was going to be hard for me. My daughter would be waiting for me at the Portland International terminal and I had an appointment with my doctor the next day both to look forward to.

As I passed the loading desk to board the plane the clerk reached over and gave me a ticket and said I got you an aisle seat. When I got on the plane I was astonished to be seated first class aisle seat. There was a young girl I thought she was about 15 but she told me she was a 20-year-old college student and she was going to Portland with her mother the stewardess on her last flight before retiring to do some shopping and sightseeing. We had a nice chat and her mother invited me up to the front of the cabin for some cake and ice cream with the crew on the flight. I left some places to see in Portland and my phone home phone number with her mother. It was such a wonderful time that I started to feel better on the way home. I was to sick to get around for the next few days and sadly did not answer the phone when they called me to thank me for the advice I gave them and missed my chance once again to thank a woman who helped me so much in travel. I think I still have the message.

Its a huge stretch of the imagination, but I later thought about a beautiful young woman I met and spent an evening with dancing and dinner, 35 years before who was an airline stewardess out of Guadalajara . Later a friend of hers from Portland told me that she asked about me at her wedding in Guadalajara. Could it have been her? I wish there was a way to contact her, to thank her, either way

Lake Zirahuen, Mexico

Children in Zirahuen celebrating the Catholic feast of music makers

My friends Bob and Miguel

Things Are different in Mexico at http://stonecutter.blogspot.com

My Friend Pete

                                                              PETE

My mentor was Italian whom I worked for when I was a college student. His name was Pete Rigutto, we call his nephew “Repete”.

Pete is long gone now.

Although Pete probably never went beyond high school, I believe he was the most intelligent man I have ever been around, in so many ways.

Pete began his training as a marble mason early, walking over the Dolomites to central Europe with his dad, slacking their own lime to use for mortar after World War One.

During the Depression, living with his mother he raised pheasants, trapped salmon, and grew vegetables around their Portland home. He told me they would catch pheasants in a net trap they set up, I don’t know exactly how this worked. Salmon were plentiful in those days in S. E. creeks, later going to the Oregon coast salmon was abundant, as was deer meat, although many flat tires had to be repaired on every trip. He told me a little bar by my present home was the first stop on the way to the coast, it being a long way out of town, it now part of Portland city limits. The Tillicum.

Later as a young man, he made ends meet by having three jobs at once. Professional wrestler, cello player, and marble mason for his dad. When he asked his dad why he always had to do bathroom work on commercial jobs, his father told him that’s where people sit and have time to look closely at the work, and it has to be good.

As a college student working for Pete I asked him why he always knew more about the subject matter than me, he told me it was due to the fact that Italian was is first language, which gave him insight into technical terms and “I never got along with my wife so I spent a lot of time reading at my beach shack by myself.''

Italian marble masons in those days didn’t bother much with what we call customer relations, so although he was a gentleman, he always put on a gruff face, to keep homeowners away and not peer over our shoulders as we did their marble work. A policy not practiced in todays' world, but still perfectly logical to me. Pete would tell you when he was finished with the job and didn’t invite silly questions by the customer. He was old school.

Pete had many expressions that solved most problems, if the customer questioned his work. His favorite being, “Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. As a helper who mixed the cement I hated to hear ''Never got enough until you got too much.''

But Pete was at his best ad libbing uncomfortable situations. Once after working several weeks on a complex slate floor in a bank remodel all the ladies seemed to enjoy talking to Pete even though they seemed to get under his skin as they walked in and out every day. The bank president thought Pete layed the door entry at too steep an angle to the sidewalk, actully I did too but one never second guessed Pete. While we were redoing this entry ramp the women giggled and said you just got through doing that, Pete snarled back, “Women aren't the only ones who can change their mind.”

However I will never forget Pete's retort to a woman in Eastern Oregon who walked over the floor we worked on the previous day with a broom handle tapping the floor thinking she was checking for a good job. “WE JUST LAY THEM, MA'AM, WE DONT TUNE THEM.”

When Pete's younger brother Fred and I get together – Fred no slouch himself – we never talk about Pete, its just to hard for both of us.  

Trouble in Budapest

I only got to Budapest, birthplace of my grandmother, Dad's mom, because of the kindness of a school teacher who was traveling from Vienna on the same train as I. When I told her I was going to Budapest, she rescued me by telling me I was on the wrong train, and going in the wrong direction.

She took me off the train and accompanied me to a bus, which took us to the correct train, most of the time reading a book.

I believe I was so traumatized by the situation that I do not remember our conversation that September day in the year 2000.

Upon arriving in Budapest she took me to a cab station at the central Budapest train terminal, where I could get a ride to my downtown hotel.

She then held my hands,

looked me in the eyes

and said

“IN THE CURRENT SITUTATION, BUDAPEST CAN BE A VERY DANGEROUS PLACE. DON'T SHOW YOUR MONEY AND BE CAREFUL.”

She then left to continue her trip.

When I got to the old hotel in downtown Pest, near the Danube, the clerk informed me that due to International Cart Races going on that week, my room was given to someone else. However, they had made arrangements for me to stay the first day, across the river in Buda.

It was a modern structure with a tree-filled park across the street, where I enjoyed a fine evening of European big band pop music in a outdoor amphitheater. It was wonderful evening.

On the fourth day of visiting Pest, I went to a Sunday evening church service to look at the cathedral, then slowly walked down one of the large avenues near the Danube. There were not many people around Sunday at twilight.

Suddenly, ten feet in front of me two very tall young women probably in their twenties appeared. One had lost her shoe, and they were laughing about it. In very good English they greeted me and we talked a bit. Looking at these Budapest girls I wondered how any man would leave there. They then suggested to me it was time for dinner and asked if I would like to join them. I DID.

The restaurant I remember was on a side street 90 degrees from the Danube, with a glass elevator going up to its entrance.

Not many customers – the cart races were over. We had dinner and some special drinks the girls introduced me to. After dinner and some dancing, one of the girls left to get her car, and the other asked me to meet her the following morning at a subway entrance at nine a.m. for some sightseeing.

When the waiter brought me the check, I couldn’t tell for sure the amount due to money exchange rates, but it looked like six hundred and twenty dollars American. I said no way and told him I only had one hundred and fifty dollars with me.

I soon had a man on each arm taking me down the glass elevator to the street, and dragged me to a ATM machine were they told me to take out six hundred and twenty dollars. It was a lot of bills I remember.

They left.

I walked back to my hotel quickly, to plead my case . The desk attendants were very calm and polite as they explained to me, there is nothing that can be done, DUE TO THE CURRENT SITUTATION.

I thought about that

THE AUSTRIAN HAPSBERGS

THE PRUSSIAN KAISERS

THE GERMAN NAZIS

THE COMMUNIST RUSSIANS

AND NOW THE CURRENT SITUTATION

It makes sense.

Footnote: I don’t know who was in power there, but it made me glad to live in a place where at least you can ask for help from the police. It also makes me think about the young women who went so far out of her way to help me and I lost her mail address which she gave me, and I NEVER HAD A CHANCE TO THANK HER.

The Soo Line

Sometimes things come back to me that are so distant, I don’t trust my mind. This is one of those distant, somewhat foggy, yet crystalline memories lodged deep within.

My parents Martha and Walter Conrad's home sat on a hill three blocks above the Soo railroad line cutting diagonally across Stearns County Minnesota. Seems I read someplace it was built to facilitate hauling grain from western Minnesota to the mills in St Paul, probably General Mills.

My sister Marion told me the conductor would stop the train one half-mile east of Rockville, five miles from our home in Cold Spring, to let us children off at my brother Wally's apartment when we went to visit him and his wife Irene. Of this I have no memory.

I do clearly remember going to the depot to pick up the big crate containing my balloon tire Columbia bicycle, red and white, complete with electric horn and headlight, sent for by my brother Tom and I, with money we earned delivering to St Paul Pioneer Press on Sunday mornings.

The Soo Line was vital to our small town life in the 40s and 50s.

But what I remember dimly and at the same time most clearly at the same time, deep within my mind, in bed on the second floor, snug and warm, covered with blankets, on a cold and crystalline Minnesota morning,

WAS THE DEEP POWERFUL RUMBLE, the sound was overwhelming.

The Soo Line went from coal and steam to oil-powered diesel.

The power still lingers in the furthest depth on my memory.

Cold Spring Depot

4 Point

I remember still,

The Catholic priest Father Vernon, assistant superintendent of St Boniface, telling me that he would give me a credit for religion class so I could graduate, and that it would be best if I went to work at the granite sheds as a hook man because I wasn’t very smart.

A navy test result ,

dimly suggested to me I might be all right later, but I didn’t it take very seriously.

I labored under this vail of self-doubt for the next ten years.

Then at 29, by chance, out of work, with family, no place to turn, I drove by a Portland Community College, and thought to myself: I am a Vet, maybe I can be trained for something, a welder or something.

A veterans counselor made himself available to me. He said, Joe, why don’t you take a introductory program, same as all college students.

I remember still,

taking my 1^st grade point 15 credit report card 4.00 to Mr. Macy, the man I worked for part time, for he was the only one I knew that would care.

I was so proud I NEVER LOOKED BACK.

Arriving in Portland

I remember still:

Fred’s 1962 pickup, loaded with two suitcases and four extra tires.

Two twenty-seven-year-old fathers driving up Interstate 5, leaving behind a community of four hundred in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Heading north to the big city in 1968, hoping to get on in a paper mill or aluminum factory.

Fred the father of five, dirt floors in his home,

Me father of two, Stearns County Minnesota boy, long way from home.

When we entered the edge of the city

     THE TRAFFIC

        THE BUILDINGS

           THE SIGNAGE

We froze and kept right on the freeway, across the Columbia river bridge, eyes straight ahead watching the road and traffic.

Ending up in Camas, Washington, in a small motel outside town, to calm down and absorb the experience.

This little motel still sits on a hill there, probably harboring other new immigrants to the big city, across the river.

Travel

As I age I find I want to back home

     However

It is said you can never go home

     Because

Travel continually alters one until they are no longer themselves.

Meriwether Lewis was so changed by travel he lost his identity, never completed his book, and slept on the ground in buckskins upon returning home.

     However

It's only by taking chances and exploring the unknown that one can expand consciousness.

I believe routine and familiarity closes minds and stifles creativity so they are more dangerous than fear of the unknown, which stops most exploration.

     But

I do not believe travel is the only path, nor that it expands everyone. It also requires an open mind able to make observations and a curiosity to see about.

Some people would argue only through the heart can one expand the mind. I do know from my personal experiences I have found well-traveled people the most interesting.  

Paul's Words

Paul surprised me at our evening fire pit discussion.

Paul being the kindest soft spoken art professor, a most respected fixture at our stone sculpture retreat, for many years donating his time to help us be better artists.

We, all mature men and women stone sculptors, listening to Paul in the dark as he spoke.

He started, “When I first became a professor at the university there were 23 men and 1 woman on the staff. Later the women left. When I retired there were 18 women and 4 men on the art staff.”

He raised his voice slightly, “Hang on and be true to your stone sculpture, you are working in something that is real. It's something you can touch and get a hold on.”

"Today's students and teachers will someday come around. All this pretentious fluff, this attitude that art needs to look like it dropped from the sky, with no human connection."

“So many years of nonsense still taught at a university level.”

“What is art, if not a human effort to create beauty and stimulate emotions and the imagination.”

“So you see change is slow, hang on, these teachers too in time will have enough confidence in their new role, and feel secure enough, to be honest.”

I held baited breath thinking this provocative statement wound stir the emotions of some of the sculptors. Nothing came forth from the darkness around the camp fire.

I was proud that Paul spoke words he felt, and remembered what Steiner told me after speaking my mind at a gathering in Mexico were many people left the dinner party in disagreement: "YOU CAN GET ALONG ANY PLACE IN THE WORLD, JOSEPH, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T SAY WHAT YOU THINK.”  

My Mom the Rose Gardener

I live in Portland, Oregon, the Rose City. I find it hard to kill rose bushes in Portland. I am not a rose bush person, seems it took me several years to kill off a couple climbing roses in my yard. Roses grow like wild blackberries in this temperate climate.

My mom grew roses where it was a challenge and probably shouldn’t bother, that was Minnesota, land of devastating winter kill, good for lilacs and many species that like a good long dormancy, but that didn’t deter my mom, the rose gardener.

Each February, she would start paging thru the Jackson and Perkins rose catalog to select new roses, and to vote as member of the selection panel for best new rose of the year, probably dreaming of spring.

When the ice broke up, a sure sign of early spring, we would all head to the lake five miles north of town, on the gravel road in dads Lafayette four-door sedan. My mom the rose Gardener would help dad build a fire in the great wood oven from wood brought in from a pile next to the outhouse.

Then a wonderful thing happened, she would put loves of bread dough in those different size buttered tins she used once a week all her life, and the smell of her home made bread filled the still chilled cabin air.

Then she headed to her asparagus patch next to the wood pile and picked the first and best of the year, and had them boiling on top of the stove, she then snapped the red-and-white checked table cloth over the heavy oak table, and we sat down to a treat never forgotten by me, her homemade bread, and asparagus buttered to perfection and served in a now heated knotty pine cabin, built by my dad.

Next she would head to the garden, a sandy patch of ground, surrounded the her tall lilac bushes, where strange looking burlap and soil totems stood shoulder to shoulder guarding spindly branches within, where she slowly unwrapped each one, looking for survivors of the Minnesota winter.

My mom, the spindly red headed rose Gardner, never gave up trying to do the impossible, grow roses in Minnesota. I think that’s where I got my perseverance to continue being a stone fabricator all those years when there was no stone fabrication work to do in Portland, Oregon. Thank you Mom.

Times Are Changing

                                                   TIMES ARE CHANGING

My Navy friend Marcelo and I had ample time to talk, logging 100,000 miles, crossing the Pacific 12 times as lowly seamen on a troop transport USS MITCHELL TAP 114. I sometime still call my military ID when asked for my social security number. The troops we transported that wore strange green berets, were let of in the Philippine Islands for some sort of training, we didn’t much understand back in 1961 and 62. He took me to his favorite bar in Yokohama, and when in Okinawa he treated me to pork fried rice and a sailors' paradise, Nomanue.

Marcelo made a great companion for a shy Stearns County boy, for he knew his way around the Pacific.

He would take me to St Judes hall, where Native Americans gathered to dance, and to his two sisters' apartments to eat and rest when we docked in our home port of San Francisco.

San Francisco was probably a good place to get to if you were a Tlingit, raised in Juneau, Alaska, in the 50s, where the signs on business said no dogs or Indians allowed.

Marcelo confided in me, while we were on those long ocean trips, that his mother would not allow him or his three sisters and two brothers to give up, even though 23 out of 25 of his first grade classmates in their Catholic grade school quit school by the 8^th grade.

At our annual breakfast together in Portland, my home, Marcelo joyfully announced to me that he was now the elder in his family, and that his nephews and nieces consulted with him regarding all major decisions in there lives.

While his sister Rita, a nationally famous Anthropologist, and his sister Renee, who has her art in the Smithsonian, looked at me, his sister Ramona, the Oakland A's baseball fan smiled and announced, “Only because we will not admit our age”.

Nevertheless, even though my friend Marcelo is elder by default, I told him I would brew the coffee and prepare the sandwiches if he wanted me to accompany him on the ocean voyage from Seattle to Juneau, if he decided to buy his new sport fishing boat on the mainland because, even though Marcelo may be elder by default, I KNOW THIS TLINGIT IS ONE VERY GOOD SEAMAN.

Postscript

Even though I often times complain that my stone sculpture is not much accepted in this land where totem poles and masks is the accepted high art form, I was shocked when Marcelo's two nieces told me several years ago, that they would never travel south of Eugene, Oregon, because they felt unsafe there, in still redneck country.

Grandpa

My memory of Grandpa Conrad is short and intense.

I have heard stories about this German carpenter.

Father of eight

Intense drinker he must have been, sending his children

to the tavern for buckets of beer.

Probably in part, due to Grandma, found dead in the house by Dad's sister Anita much before child rearing was complete.

Five boys and three girls. Grace took the youngest Earl east, to New York. Connie also went east.

Anita, Walter, my dad, Ted, Richard, and Larry stayed in Stearns County, my birthplace, for the most part.

The one time I saw my Grandpa Jacob Conrad happened when dad took me to St Cloud,18 miles east, his birthplace, in our family car, for shopping.

We walked to a hotel building on St Germain street and stepped into a dark cavernous room and slowly walked along the long bar counter, lined with the backs of its Saturday afternoon patrons.

Dad patted the back of a small man hunched over his beer at the end of the bar.

As an eight-year-old boy standing in a dark bar room filled with shadowy forms,

I became terrified as Grandpa Jacob slowly turned, his one glass eye pointing outward, asked my dad

WHO ARE YOU?

Dad replied, I am your son Walt, and put a silver dollar on the bar as we turned and left.

This was my one and only meeting with my Grandpa, however I assume I viewed him in his casket at the Daniel funeral home, for I do remember my uncles, dark complected men with jet black hair in dark suits, talking together. I know little about them as well.

I want my grand baby to have different memories.

Postscript

There may well be more information about Dad and Grandpa for I know my sister Marion has a collection of letters Dad wrote around 1920 which I have never seen.

Dearest Mona

My sister Ramona, what a beautiful name,

she was thin and beautiful to match.

Married so young, desperate probably to get away from home,

to Dave, a neighbor, a good and honest man.

Six children came fast in those years, living in a basement house Dave built, including an underground garage, where Dave repaired everything, from cars to TV Sets.

Laundry hung on on outstretched lines strung all about the house, so many diapers,

BUT WOW, how good the northeastern corner of the basement smelled, with table loads of homemade bread, and her famous sticky buns which my brother Tom and I loved.

Later walls arose as Dave built above, Ramona went to work evenings. I don’t know why, no one does, at the Main Street Cafe leaving six children at home with Dave.

I almost cried, coming home from the Navy, seeing Mona peeling potatoes and chopping fries, the old fashioned way in the back kitchen of the cafe, serving schooners of beer at the counter, and cooking the greatest hamburger and fries in history most every evening, until at 40 years old,

she had a stroke and was left paralyzed for the rest of her life.

SO QUICK TO CRY, SO FAST TO LAUGH , SO SAD FOR ME TO SEE

BEAUTIFUL RAMONA CUT DOWN BY HEREDITY SO SOON.

I was in a Montana snow storm when I got the news: Mona gone, final heart failure took this big-hearted woman.

My son and his wife have a quilt she made in the nursing home with her one good arm.

I was glad to see the stone her children put on her grave labeled

ROMANA LUND

MOTHER OF

JOSEPH DEBRA ROBERT PAUL NANCY AND JOHN SCHMITT

in Stearns County Minnesota when I go home.