A sticky business

 Mini-bus Bucharest to Chisinau, Moldova takes about 8 hours. Countryside rolls by. Nap. Talked a little to the only English speakers on the bus—a Moldovan Mormon educator who supervises English teachers in 29 countries  (my dream job…well except for the religious part) and a young American couch-surfer, a perfect way to travel IF one is young and extremely flexible (Taylor was on his way to live on the couch of a young family with two small children—which makes even a bad hotel sound good).

The new old world

Chisinau could be Albuquerque. Well not quite, because in Albuquerque we are not all white Christians. It seems Chisinau was once almost half Jewish but they drove out or murdered all of them—which was surely the city’s downfall as a culturally interesting place. The gypsies/Roma are still being driven out of town I hear. No identifiable Muslims, Africans or Asians were on the streets while I was there either. Michelle Bachman would love it there. There was a prevalence of oldish or really old women in Lutheran Ladies Aid outfits so, except for my jeans, I really quite fit in.

Well maybe…

Chisinau is the same size city as Albuquerque with equally few attractive buildings; they do have a lot of tree-lined streets though…but we have the Bosque.

On the good side the Hotel Stela de lux was pretty and stylish.

The Boucherie around the corner offered my new favorite food–meat solyanka “…with ingredients like beef, ham, sausages, chicken breast, and cabbage, together with salted mushrooms, cucumber pickles, tomatoes, onions, olives, capers, allspice, parsley, and dill are all cut fine and mixed with cream in a pot. The broth is added, and heated for a short time on the stove, without boiling”—with a big slice of lemon.Thank you Wikipedia).

My second favorite new food, polenta with sheep cheese and sour cream is a regional specialty, all nicely tart and creamy, although sheep cheese did give me pause.

Ended my visit at an okay museum/gallery. 

What to say?

Hotel Trianon–Highly recommended

I visit countries the way we visit towns on a typical U.S. road trip or the way we investigate the neighborhoods of our own cities. I am walking and then walking some more with many stops to ask directions and much poring over my map. (No, I do not want to use the GPS of my Droid…I want to puzzle out the best way forward all on my own!)

The grand old world

It was a perfect get-acquainted day. The 7pm train to Chisinau was not running so I rebooked my Trianon Hotel room for another night and roamed and napped all day. I LOVE Bucharest. Grand old buildings, many still a little shabby from the bad years, and the interesting Old World is interspersed with the dank dictator-gray ugliness of soviet-inspired architecture. On this benevolently-sunny early fall day though it all looks historic and gracious.

Cismigiu Gardens

In the cool of the morning…slowly through Cismigiu Gardens. A mom out early with the baby, people cutting through on their way to work but not so hurriedly, old guy reads on a bench. It offers that green connection that can make almost any day go a little better.

Although I could not book my train ticket, the way there took me to a most beautiful old church (for which I now cannot find the name) and gave me a look at what is Bucharest’s most famous and infamous landmark, the Palace of Parliament.

Mine’s bigger than yours

In the mid 1990s, Romania’s very own craftily crazy dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, had a substantial chunk of central Bucharest bulldozed to build a monument to … himself, of course. He wanted it to be the biggest building in the world but, according to Lonely Planet, it is only the second biggest. The Pentagon, built to honor our very own dictatorship of the military-industrial complex, is the biggest!

When you need a break from the desert southwest…

Expensive milkshake and coffee in the leafy loveliness of the Gardens and back for a read and a nap. THEN my five-hour stroll up and down Calea Victoriei, the grand avenue of Bucharest. Hard to find restaurants oddly enough. Along the walk the choice was luxury hotel dining or McDonald’s. Finally found the French Bakery for a sweet little meal of quiche heavy with bacon, salad light with oil and vinegar, orange juice sweet with red wine.

You can almost never go wrong if the word French is in the title

An ever-so-pleasant sanctuary for the tired walker with a friendly talkative young man who gave me a real voice to hear—it seems all the words and history that accompany me come from books because I’m almost anti-social when actually on the road. I hear voices form history, from memoir, travel writers, all talking about the blood and guts and fear and deprivation of Balkan history. But here is an ordinary Romanian guy trying to figure out how his life relates to all that.

My smart new friends

We talk of Dracula and éclairs and history reconsidered on this September evening and my legs ache as I walk back but I’m happy.

No rest for the wicked…or obsessed.

 Now for the bus to Chisinau.

At the Trianon Hotel, Bucharest, Romania and it is just as claimed. If you can get through that first exhausted collapse after 24 hours from home to hotel in a cheap, clean and comfortable room it bodes well for every move to come. The Trianon is an oddly pretty heap of a building, friendly staff and plain but good room for $63—my goal of $100 a day for everything could work.

Lonely Planet has a section for every country called “Getting There.”  Here is my version.

Transportation: Flights to DC, Frankfurt, Bucharest—all United or Lufthansa—all uneventful. Bus from airport into city center, taxi to hotel.

Food: There’s a restaurant at the Frankfurt Airport that is a perfect spot to write, i.e. BLOG! My Sunday morning Muesli and yogurt was only $14 and included two tiny exquisite branches of lingonberries, three apples slices, four raspberries and five blueberries. Almost compensated for the fact that, on Saturday morning, in a weak and sleepy moment, I had succumbed and ordered breakfast at an Albuquerque airport restaurant (the one at the end of the B gates) which consisted of a puffy tasteless omelet covered in barely melted Kraft cheese, hash browns all sad and limp and desperate for catsup and watery orange juice—for $14. But then it is not all about food is it?

Nice People: I did a very bad thing (only second time ever) and left my billfold on the counter when I bought my bus ticket AND THE WONDERFUL TICKET SELLER CAME AND FOUND ME WITH IT! Otherwise some among you would have received a collect call…please tell me you would have accepted the charges! It is confirmed in my mind that honesty exists in at least two places in the world: Romania and Cote d’Ivoire.

Toys in orange

TOYS: There are Mattel toys and sex toys and motorized boy toys that go vroom vroom. My toys are better but will take awhile to get under control. This computer is my old travel buddy;  my camera is quite familiar—I even brought along the CD of instructions on the off chance that after a year I would actually listen to them and the Kindle is fine, not so exciting but lighter than 10 books. BUT THEN there’s the Droid. We have not totally bonded yet although I do get goose bumps when my gravely-voiced little travel companion speaks to me. I AM TRYING. YES I AM. In fact I have conquered phoning and texting.

Droid and friend

 A man at the Albuquerque airport asked me where I was going, “Bucharest.”  “To see family? he asked.” “No, I’m a WRITER,” I said!

 Scholars, intellectuals, thinkers— I used to believe that if only I tried hard enough I could become one of them. But, alas, I only made it as far as reader and here’s how we failed scholars but obsessive readers prepare for travel.

WORK WORK WORK, EVEN ON VISITS UP TO THE NORTH WOODS.

Readers have the best of intentions but they never make it into serious research. They buy a lot of books—more travel literature and fiction than scholarly treatises on politics, religion or history. They sit near the many books for many months and take them to read on the treadmill and at the doctor’s office and to bed every night, and eventually they read all of some of them and some of all of them. They google and print too many pages of miscellaneous information—all of which they vow to read but don’t always. Sometimes they stop reading for awhile and just watch…the fortuitous release of a new film about the environs through which they will travel (The Whistleblower, post-war Bosnia) for instance. They order the odd map or two from National Geographic and maybe a Masterpiece Theatre DVD that will substitute nicely for a heavy and somewhat dated volume of The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning. We do try hard. Well, medium hard anyway…

This Balkans journey is one more step toward my every-country-in-the-world goal. Here is this whole turbulent jumble of little and not-so-little countries and almost-countries—a place called the Balkans of which I previously knew almost nothing. Except that WWI started on a bridge in Bosnia and the first European genocides since WWII are very recent history in the region, and Richard Holbrooke spent a lot of time there. I knew about Transylvanian werewolves and the bloody Christmas Day end of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. What else? Alexander the Great was part Macedonian and part-Greek, our western civilization—such as it is—at least partially originated in Greece, and everyone says “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” is a very funny movie. Time to learn more.

 The Balkans: Political Boundaries(Kosovo isn’t included because it’s not widely recognized as a country but it is. At the southern end of Serbia.)

The Balkans

 I was in Croatia and Slovenia (a performing arts festival, a train ride, a t-shirt) for a few days in 2008 so I won’t return this time. Nothing stands out from those few days although as the photos below indicate it was not for lack of scenery. The reason—there was no pre-travel study so no context within which to place what I was seeing, smelling, hearing, tasting…a reader is expected to do better than that.

Wild Balkans–tamed

In the next few days and blogs I will talk more about what my earnest but rather desultory study methods in preparation for this coming trip have wrought. First, a geographical note.

In The Fracture Zone, Simon Winchester describes the crashing and smashing together of two mountain chains to create a geological fracture zone to be known as the Balkans in which ranges of hills continued to collide, creating ever more wildly distorted geographical features. The hills and mountains had “…unexpectedly steep faces and deep and curiously isolated valleys, rivers that twisted and turned in corkscrew patterns, defiles that became dangerous culs-de-sac, hidden and unexpected plains, eternally defensible hilltops and impossibly deep canyons, eccentricities of microclimates, and on the coastline…deep fjordlike harbors and wriggling estuaries that proved terrifyingly nightmarish to innocent navigators.” (pp. 60-61)  Winchester, Simon. (1999). The fracture zone: A return to the balkans. New York, NY: Perennial/HarperCollins.

 Slovenia and Croatia, 2008

Everything can’t be pretty

If only there had been a video camera present—I would have gone viral on YouTube. Imagine. I am exiting my car, heel catches, I plunge to the concrete—along with the gallon of milk, pint of Dulce de Leche and cell phone I’m holding—full weight on my left elbow. I lie there in a pond of milk sobbing in agony as I try desperately to stretch my functioning arm far enough to push my phone out of the milk (you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do when your contract isn’t up yet). Not a pretty picture…but funny…in retrospect.

 This clumsy episode, which required surgery and the insertion of a plate and some pins in my elbow, has unfortunately delayed my trip to the Balkans. But only by a couple of weeks—so now I am back to planning. HOWEVER I am discovering a sense of vulnerability never experienced before. Having only broken a toe in lo these many years who knew I was breakable in more profound ways.

I question the doc, ‘I will be able to lift my bag into the overhead in a month won’t I?’ ‘Oh, I think so’ he responds. I take that to mean for sure and move forward with changing my airline reservations. But there is just the smallest doubt in my mind…

Tripping through the streets of old Europe—I think tripping, as in stumbling forward, possibly all the way to the ground, instead of walking with a happy spring in my step. Dark and mysterious border crossings in the middle of the night—I think extra bag lifting and walking instead of ‘oh yeah, I need this experience in case I ever write a spy novel.’ Jostling crowds of weekend evening celebrants—I think, ouch, what if somebody hits my elbow too hard instead of ‘just look how all of these religiously diverse Bosnians are happily partying together in the streets….’

But mostly I am healthy and practically INvulnerable and will be fine over there:

• My stomach always feels good when I eat yogurt—which was invented by Bulgarians.
• Throughout the Balkans there is a plum liqueur called Slivovitz, part of a category of drinks called Rakia—which sounds like a better nightcap than the pain pills I’ve been on.
• And there is the strange but true fact that my stomach NEVER hurts when I eat a lot doughnuts and I am almost positive Chisinau has a Dunkin’ Donuts.
• I can go on 12-hour bus rides and never need the loo or le toilette or bathroom or whatever the facilities will be called in Macedonia.
• Sleeping in shabby hotel rooms is okay as long as they do not smell like they’re more than a few hundred years old AND I think I will have a Kindle (more about that later) so I can read even if there are no light bulbs!

Writing oneself out of vulnerability is a good thing—if not necessarily realistic. Actually experience has taught me that most people are—one on one—decent, welcoming and helpful. It is only when religion or politics enter the picture that the dark irrational scary cruel tendencies come into play—among us all. On with the show then!

After I spilled the milk I ate the ice cream–signed Pollyanna

Could be Bucharest in early September

The idea is…if I work very very hard at writing interesting blogs and take many strange and wonderful photos for your viewing pleasure, surely someone among you will find a way to come and rescue me when I run out of money in Podgorica! …That was a trick question to make you check and see whether such a place even exists.

Here is the itinerary for a trip that will either prove I can do this every-country-in-the-world thing—YES I CAN—or that I started this project a bit late in life and might have to settle for every country in…say…Europe.

It all began when my friend, Andreya, told me he was performing his new dance in Zurich in August. I said ‘I’ll be there’ because I like both Andreya and his work very much and would like to bring this new dance piece to Albuquerque. And besides I had enough frequent flyer miles.

Next I said to myself…well Switzerland is the one country I have not been to in Western Europe but flying all that way to add one new country to my list is simply not good enough.

You have to start somewhere

Then it occurred to me that this would be the perfect time to get those pesky principalities/kingdoms/little tiny countries out of the way. I had managed Luxembourg and Monaco back when I was a princess but there are three more: Andorra, Liechtenstein and San Marino. Okay. Done.

I peruse my new National Geographic Atlas of the World just in case I’ve overlooked some small place that could bring me up to five countries on this jaunt. Well, look at that, San Marino is just up the coast and across the Adriatic from Albania (Croatia too but I’ve already been there) so maybe that could be an inexpensive way to add a fifth country. I check and a one way crossing is about $75 and all night in a deck chair. I can do that.

I’m sure you can guess where this is going. I feel like one of the TV hoarders…only it’s all about countries instead of Tupperware or teddy bears. I think about money, about how much vacation time I have coming, about stamina, and about loneliness. Usually when I travel there is eventually a meeting up of friends at a far-flung festival. This time, after Switzerland I will not know a soul. But I am not deterred by these few conundrums and I continue planning.

How many countries in how many days was that?

From Albania to Macedonia to Bulgaria to Kosovo to Montenegro to Bosnia & Herzegovina to Serbia to Romania to Moldova. Or to use the stranger and more romantic sounding city names: Tirana-Skopje-Sofia-Pristina-Podgornica-Sarajevo-Belgrade-Timisoara-Chisinau-Bucharest (two cities in Romania). Guess the tiny countries and Switzerland have slipped off my route. Next time.

The basic itinerary is done. Three and one-half weeks. Cheap hotels. Bread and coffee and a bit of wine or the local plum brandy along the way. Many hours on buses and trains. I’m furiously reading history (very bloody) and Lonely Planets (very picturesque).

the classic

I am excited and challenged and eating pancakes right now to gather strength for the journey.

One–misshapen pancake–for the road

A train station somewhere

Is there really something wrong with me? I love my family and a few friends. I’m interested in the goings-on of quite a few people I know and many I don’t know. My job’s decent, my apartment’s fine, my health is probably above average. I just returned from a generally pleasurable 10-day East coast trip with a granddaughter. My clothes are washing and the walking pain in my left knee is easing.

AND, as we speak, I am packing for my next trip which begins August 24^th.  

I will go to every country in the world before I die. I WILL.

Recent blogs have focused on family journeys. The kind where you visit people and places and the kind where you celebrate lives lived and now over. NOW it’s back to the ‘every country in the world’ task I have set for myself!

Yes, I am packing for an August 24^th trip but I am not mad…it is a trip to 12 or so countries and I am doing it all by bus and train with ONE rolling suitcase/backpack. So I am following some advice I once read which said to pack everything you must have with you a few weeks before you go, remove half of it, carry the suitcase with the remaining stuff around the block a few times and then make your final cuts.

My new suitcase is an REI Stratocruiser 22 which can be used as a backpack and has wheels. It seems ideal for this crazy ‘backpacking for the elderly’ thing I’m doing. I will take two jeans, four shirts plus hoodie, sweater, pajamas and underwear in addition to what I’m wearing.   

Any traveler will tell you preparation and planning are frequently the best part of travel: More fun—as you imagine the exotic new sights and sounds you will soon experience; more stimulating—as you read travel literature, social commentary, and novels about the historical sites and national treasures you will soon visit; more controllable as you make those tidy lists of how much bus tickets, hotels, meals will cost, how much you can allot for tiny and light-weight but still meaningful souvenirs.

This adventure begins.

Nothing to do with travel but since the post ended up on this blog and since these women are two of my heroes it will stay. I wouldn’t be roaming around the world without fear if I hadn’t had so many examples of strong brave women in my life. 

Lydia Jackson (my sister-in-law’s mom) and Grace Williams (my friend since 1972) died this week.  Strong, important women who influenced generations of students and community activists. Lydia and Grace were both in their 80s with too many friends to count and daughters who do them honor by being the kind of brave and smart women—and loyal and attentive daughters—of which any moms would be proud.

Marsha and her mom, Lydia

Lydia was born and raised in Minnesota and never left except for a brief sojourn in Florida with family. She taught school for something like 50 of her 80+ years on earth. Her ex-students populate a big slice of northern Minnesota life and would all say they are better for having been taught by Lydia Jackson.

Grace Williams came here from Oklahoma by way of some other temporary locations but New Mexico was completely home for her and the politics of New Mexico her life passion. Her commitments to the ACLU (which she directed for a number of years) and the Democratic Party were well known and widely admired, certainly by her fellow Democrats and maybe by more than a few Republicans.

Both of these women were dedicated family and community members but they lived life on their own terms as well. If anyone had tried to take Lydia out of the classroom or Grace out of party politics they would have had an unwinnable fight on their hands. These were opinionated women—about education and human rights and, it would probably be safe to say, Lydia could be a trifle stubborn on occasion and Grace more than a little outspoken…especially if George Bush’s name came up!

Here’s to Lydia and Grace then. Two of my heroes. To lives well lived.

Sara, my 12-year-old granddaughter, was with me in Washington DC when Lydia and Grace passed away. While she is an excellent student (Lydia would be proud) she has only the normal amount of kid interest in history museums and political institutions—that would be little to none. Sara has a long life ahead and whatever her interests and passions turn out to be, I hope she lives it as well as Lydia and Grace lived theirs.

My fortunate grandchildren have first-rate parents and just the right mix of grandparents. The one with the pool, the one with the lake, the one who made all of the special party decorations and the one who especially encouraged sports and studies. And then there’s me. Trying desperately to infect them with the dreaded ‘travel bug.’

Boston Harbor summer 2011

This is my first big trip with Sara, 12-year-old honor roll cheerleader tumbler tweenie. The trip began with a meeting in Boston and a few hours to get a bit of a feel for one of the places where it all STARTED—the United States of America that is—on to NYC for a day and a half of where it all IS and finally here in DC for a Capitol Fourth—just Sara and me and half the rest of the world celebrating who we imagine ourselves to be.

BOSTON: We left Albuquerque a week ago today—Sunday. Some brief airline rerouting…but into Boston in time for a walk down to the Harbor and a very nice little pizza of flat bread, arugula, grilled smoked chicken, goat cheese, fresh tomatoes and caramelized onions—Sara’s first venture into gourmet pizza!

 The next two days were occupied for me by meetings at the NEFA/NDP headquarters in Boston while Sara set herself up with books, iPod touch and drawing materials in a cozy little spare office—only coming upstairs for food to take back down to her lair.

Waiting to go…

We did manage an evening walking about the Commons and Boston Gardens with spaghetti and risotto at a hip little Beacon Street restaurant. Sara thought the spaghetti was ALMOST as good as her dad’s.

The not-quite-as-good-as-dad’s-spaghetti spaghetti

Flowers by Sara

BAD New York: Tuesday evening at 6+ PM, we left Boston on the train for Grand Central Station where we were scheduled to arrive around 10 PM. All went well until around the half way point when we lost power and came to an abrupt halt. An engine problem, the announcer said, to be fixed by trusty Amtrak mechanics shortly or we would be pushed into the next station by a substitute engine from somewhere up or down the line. It was dark by now but the only panic came from the loss of power for all of the iphones, ipads, itouches and other istuff. The book-worms on board crouched at the end of the cars where emergency lights made reading barely possible. While the power lasted Sara played games on her itouch angled in such a way that light was cast on my book page—hence we survived the emergency.

The train to NYC

 Into Grand Central station about 1pm. Fortunately we have hotel reservations I say to Sara. The Milford Plaza near Times Square. Sounded okay on Expedia and only about $200 a night. If it sounds too good to be true…..

 IT IS…this was bad. Remember it is 2AM. Sara lives in Albuquerque, has traveled to smaller cities and to her cousins in San Diego but this is her first moment in THE CITY. It’s supposed to be exciting…not traumatic!  The cab drops us off and right away we both know…this lobby does not portend good things…you know that sort of tawdry look…like something shiny covering something dirty. But we still have hope. Down the long dirty hallway. Losing hope. Open the door. Hope is gone. We sit on the bed…our last tiny tiny bit of hope is that nothing will bite us while we contemplate our situation.

The BAD hotel…what to do?

Once, when my sons were small and we were returning to New Mexico from a trip to Minnesota in one of my string of miserable cars and, as usual, quite broke we stopped at a cheap motel in northern New Mexico—just too late and tired to drive on into Albuquerque—and entered a room somewhat like this. In all fairness to the Milford Plaza, the New Mexico room had an actual hole in the wall while here in midtown NYC, only the plaster was peeling off. But the level of cleanliness was approximate and that smell of haphazard cleanings with cheap and nasty cleaning fluids was the same.

 In New Mexico all those years ago we took our suitcases and the family dog, which was of course along, and moved up the street to a brand new motel I really couldn’t afford (probably cost $30 or even $35!).

NOW I did the latter-day version of the same move. Called my American Express concierge and I finally feel justified in letting an AmEx rep talk me into the platinum card some months ago; now he lines up something for early check in the next morning, Ritz Carlton in Battery Park. That cannot be bad can it? Except for my budget. Then I called Expedia who immediately cancelled our second night in the Hotel from Hell. Phew! The worst is over and we managed to sleep fitfully for about four hours. Left the hotel without even showering before 8am and checked in to our new life—for 24 hours!

GOOD New York: Obviously the AmEx concierge wasn’t going to find a cheap hotel for us! But we do not care—for only $425 for the night we can take a shower without worrying about odd things pouring forth from the tap. Two BIG beds, a bathroom the size of my apartment, view of the Statue of Liberty…and a $100 credit for room service or meal. Of course I cannot afford this; on the other hand I certainly do not want to turn Sara away from a life of exploration in strange places. Since room service was part of the deal we had to try to use up our $100 voucher for a lunch…..turns out we are just not $100 lunch girls…much as we tried we only got to about $75. And this time Sara said her dad’s pasta was definitely BETTER.

A DAY IN THE CITY: Freedom Tower/911 Exhibit: Sara, let’s go here to see the 911 exhibit. What is 911? WHAT? I am stunned. How could she not know about the EVENT that so effects our communal psyche and military policy and foreign policy and ‘who we hate’ policy? She’s an A student in a good Albuquerque school. But then I thought…okay a generation is growing up NOT consumed by 911—it’s good I think.

 BY SARA

The Met and the Alexander McQueen Exhibit: The Alexander McQueen exhibit was amazing!!!! It had so many weird outfits, but the outfits were beautiful! They had the stuff you would never think of! Many of the dresses he made Lady Gaga had! I bet she loves the stuff too! I hope Alexander McQueen had a great life, to me he had a wonderful life with his designs and money!!!  This one dress was my favorite it was a gold dress/jacket and it was feathers! In the inside was a silk white dress! Another one of my favorites was a dress made out of real and fake flowers!!!! There were all different colors so it made it as pretty as can be!!

No photos in McQueen Exhibit…next best thing…magazine on the train

 LION KING: OMZ!!!!!! The lion king was the best play of my life!!!!!!! I thought they wouldn’t tell the story just dance. But they actually did tell it! And in a beautiful way!! My favorite characters were the bird and Simba’s friends!!!!! I loved it and if I could I would see it 10 more times…haha!!! The lion king story was about a lion being born and sooner or later him becoming a king!! But when his dad dies his uncle tells Simba to run away why he did that was so he can control the kingdom! Later Simba has to find his true destiny to become king and to talk to his dad again! 

Sara on Broadway

The next morning was a bit anti-climatic. Sara was not actually so impressed by the Empire State Building. Too many people she said…boring she said. NYC was crowded and noisy and a little scary to an Albuquerque kid. Grand Central Station and a quick train ride to DC—SARA’S FAVORITE!

On to DC. A SARA ALBUM.

The NESET woods in Koochiching County, Minnesota

There is a trip to be made when I come home to northern Minnesota. It is about who I was and am, made to remind myself how important this place is to me. It is HOME.

What we lack in sophistication, we make up for in our love of butter and tolerance of mosquitoes

Today’s journey: Grand Rapids on 2 and 46 to Northome, 71 out to the Old Place, then Blackduck (where I was born) for a hot pork sandwich for lunch, back to Helen and Barb’s for cake and coffee, retracing 71 to Northome and to the Forest Hill Cemetery, and finally home to Grand Rapids. Now drinking Baileys and checking in on MSNBC and the Wiener.

Grand Rapids is a pleasant little town on the banks of the Mississippi, which flows to Grand Rapids from its headwaters in Itasca State Park a hundred miles of so away, and on south to the Gulf of Mexico. We drive west and then south through a pine forest to Northome, the non-descript village, 7 miles from where I grew up. We go west again on Highway 71 to the Dead End sign that marks the gravel road down to the end of the road—formerly known as the Neset’s.

Without waxing TOO sentimental, let me say that it was great growing up here because my brother and I were much loved children and, while we were country poor, we had of simple meat-and-potatoes-and-apple-pie kind of food, a comfortable if very basic little house, friends/neighbors, special occasions—the stuff on which good lives are built for kids. Had my mother written her story there would have been disappointment about not being able to achieve a more traditionally prosperous farm life for her kids and about the sort of lumber-camp values of the northwoods, but also a good measure of pleasure over the natural environment, her reasonably good children and a husband who, while not exactly a go-getter, was dear and gentle and did love his family.

Always up here, a mixture of pleasure in the past and great loneliness for it as well

The ‘old place’ as everyone in the family calls it…sinking into the ground. Hey, the voices of the family and the smells of the roasts and pies and the sounds of the animals and the anticipation of the approaching rain or snow or hailstorm are all there. OKAY, so I am getting quite sentimental…always happens.

Another light Minnesota lunch…

Lunch in Blackduck. Another small town of absolutely no distinction except that I was born there. We had hot pork sandwiches in honor of mom and pop because they always ordered them on the very rare occasion of ‘eating out.’

Helen, one of mom and dad’s very best friends and an amazing lady

Barb…also a pretty amazing and special friend

Helen and Barb Weeks. Dear dear old family friends. We’ve known each other since we were born. Back in the day—when people went visiting. Meaning you collected the kids and went to your friends where the men talked and talked and the kids played and the women sat in the kitchen while the hostess stuck a cake in the oven and laid out sandwich meat and homemade bread and jam and sweet pickles and butter and Kool Aid and coffee.

We often went to Louie and Helen’s. Louie may have been my dad’s best buddy. He was a natural-born humorist and often dad was his straight man. Now Louie is gone but Helen is as sharp and funny as ever (at 89) and daughter Barb who takes after her mom—sharp, funny and maybe a little sarcastic about life in general—lives next door and is her mom’s best friend in many ways. We enjoyed some talk of the old days, current ailments, evil Republicans, and the antics of the three dogs while we ate banana cake and drank coffee.

Back down 71 to Northome and the Forest Hill Cemetery. Hi Mom, Hi Dad, Hi Uncle Ike, Aunt Sally. Grandma Asborg, Grandpa Torgus. It’s all green, mosquito-rich, and fake-flower filled.  It’s somehow reassuring to come here. My sons must dig a handful of my ashes down between my mom and my dad.

Grandma, lived to 96