Rambling Josh

Yesterday I took my son, Jackson, to meet his fifth-grade teacher and today I took my daughter, Sierra, to freshmen orientation at Stevens High School. The last year of elementary school and the first year of high school for these Ellis kids.

As I stood at freshman orientation listening to the principal blather on about this, that, and another thing, I looked at my daughter sitting amongst her friends, amongst a sea of other kids, sitting amongst their friends and I thought, “How did this happen?…When did I get older…? How did my children grow up so fast?… I’m not mature enough to have kids this old.”

It seems like yesterday that I stood and watched them wave to me as they proceeded single file into their kindergarten classrooms like ducklings. Now I stand in amazement as they begin to stretch out their wings and edge closer and closer to testing the skies on their own. This stuff is hard on a sentimental old… ah older…fool such as I but it is a privilege to witness and an absolute joy to be a part of.

A favorite quote or lyric of mine from John Lennon seems to sum it up, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

Thankfully I don’t make a lot of plans, so I haven’t been too distracted from being a part of the two young lives that have been bestowed upon my wife and me. I always say if you don’t have plans, you’re never disappointed by plans that didn’t go how you planned and you’re generally left to be pleasantly surprised by the plan that develops unplanned.

I would hazard a guess more than a few of us have been surprised by the unplanned. Some result in running into old friends and enjoying a few unplanned laughs and some result in marriage. I guess if you played your unplanned cards right both could happen the same night but enough of the unplanned biology lesson.

Despite their father, I would have to say my kids have turned out quite well and I’m glad neither of them seems too embarrassed to be seen with me yet. Maybe when my belt line encroaches on my armpits and I have to reach over my shoulder to grab my wallet they’ll start minding the distance between us in public a little more.

They just grow up so fast… physically anyway…some of us lag behind a little in the mentality department. The day I don’t think a fart is funny better be the day I lay my last rosebud out on the breeze for the loved ones gathered around me to enjoy. I want to leave them gasping and clambering for an open window…. give ‘em something to cry about… it’s the simple things that make life worth living.

Becoming a father seemed simple enough…all the screaming and carrying on made it seem a little less simple for my wife, but it sure made for good watching. As I said… some of us lag behind a little mentally which brings about physical discomfort when we say stuff that should have remained unsaid…so I’ve heard and said.

Speaking of fatherhood and such, I would like to extend a Happy Birthday wish to the finest meat cutter in Burke County. Like a good ribeye, he just gets better with a little age. Love you, Dad.

A beautician, a carpenter, a professor and a rocket scientist walk into a bar…. No joke, we were just thirsty and hoping to numb a little tenderness. The kind of tenderness reserved for those who tottered about on bicycle seat across the state of South Dakota. The Highway 212 Gut Check was this past weekend, and Lignite was represented well with Susan Dixon, Tim Chrest, Jay Stevens and myself completing our 414-mile leapfrog across South Dakota in a bit over 27 hours.

A wind out of the west had all 28 of this year’s participants smiling as we chit chatted and milled around the SD/WY border awaiting the high noon rollout for the SD/MN border. The miles between the borders may have caused smiles to fade on occasion but temporary discomfort generally yields to the permanent satisfaction brought about by accomplishment.

Our team had a great time and lots of laughs at one another’s expense. Fueled by scotcharoos and boiled raisin bars we finished in a very respectable time as well. I’m hoping that my elder relatives can keep their minds and bodies in sufficient working order so we can give it a go again next year. Well, the bodies anyway. The fact that I was able to talk them into this in the first place is proof that the mind is faltering.

As our favorite shop teacher would say, “Ignorance is bliss.” If only ignorance was bliss enough to erase the discomfort of a bicycle seat.

Some team highlights for this year have to be Susan setting out at around 1:30 a.m. to, “Maybe do 10 miles,” and rolling into Gettysburg at 3 a.m. with 26 miles behind her. Jay expertly maneuvering around a large rattlesnake warming itself on the highway in the darkness of night (which we decided not to tell Susan about until after her ride). Tim hammering the pedals faster than a one-armed sheet rocker and catching the same guy twice. I’m sure he will fill you in on my grueling 40 mile day and I’m sure most of it will be true.

Thank you to all who donated to the cause, it is greatly appreciated. They say you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your relatives….whoever picked mine did a fine job.

See you next year.

The carnie folks have packed up their array of stuffed treasures and dismantled the rides, but your corndog coma may not subside for a few days yet.

I came to Lignite to help hold down the fort while Mom gallivanted around the state fair snapping photos of unsuspecting fairgoers. She had a badge, so it was legal. She also had a few assistants this year as my daughter accompanied her for pack mule services and Craig, a friend of mine from Watertown, SD, tried his hand at the state fair paparazzi gig.

As usual, Sierra had a great time with Grandma and as a reward for her patience and pack muling my mom let her go on a photographic assignment with Craig to the KISS concert. Better him than me as I would rather eat a three-day-old secondhand Twinkie on a stick than go to a rock concert.

Craig likes that sort of music and informed me that Sierra had been properly baptized into rock concert land as she got beer spilled on her, got burned by a cigarette, and can now distinguish between cigarette smoke and a smoke that’s not as legal.

I’m not much for the state fair but I went one day to simmer in my own sweat with more strange people than I guessed would have lived in North Dakota. As the comedian Jeff Foxworthy says, “If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.’”

My dad is not much for the fair either, but he went as well and drank his usual $30 worth of Tubby’s lemonade and strolled around with Sierra while she was on her break from her photographic assistant duties. Sierra enjoyed her time with Grandpa as well and talked Aunt Amanda into going on a few rides after us elders turned her down. I used to like fair rides but now I can’t even take an underdog on a swing without feeling nauseous.

While Sierra was whooping it up at the North Dakota State Fair poor Jackson was stuck in Orlando doing what he could to have fun at Disney World. He was invited to go along with one of his best friends and their family and like the KISS concert… better them than me. The Flaxton Fair is about as big as I ever needed so unless Mickey and Minnie go on tour and wind up with Sherwin Linton at the Flaxton Fair you won’t see me in a photo with them.

Jackson gets back home this week and has called about once a day while he’s been gone to let us know what he’s up to. He even got to go to see his Yankees play while he was there so I’m sure his camera will be full of interesting eleven-year-old low angle photos. My wife got into the traveling spirit as well and took off for a week in Germany with her sister on Saturday.

So, the last few weeks we’re going to be all over the map, but like Grandpa Ardell always told me, “Travel while you can and see as much as you can because someday your body might quit on you.”

Smart man.

I am very happy to report that as of this past Saturday, I’ve successfully advanced my streak for not dying to 38 years. Thank you to all the birthday well wishes from the Facebook crew.

One of the downfalls of being on Facebook is that your birthday doesn’t slip quietly into the night. I spent this one as I have many of my birthdays–no, not inspecting the toilet at the 109 Club–but at a baseball game.

With a July birthday there is a very good chance you’ll either be playing or watching baseball and that’s fine with me. This year it was a little league all-star game and since I forgot to look busy, I ended up in the crow’s nest keeping book and running the scoreboard. It was a real test as I generally don’t like to pay that much attention for that long of time, but I managed.

Throughout my 30’s my son Jackson, whose birthday is the day before mine, has been numerically tied. When he turned 3, I turned 3+0, when he turned 4, turned 3+1, when he turned…well, I hope you get the picture by now.

So, this numerical linkage will continue until I hit 40 and start that slippery slide into what every 40-year-olds slip into. Orthopedic shoes, polyester pants, hospital gowns, a steady spiral of self-pity… and so forth and so on.

At that same time Jackson will start his slippery slide into his teenage years. Seeing how my daughter is 14 I have seen what teenagers slide into and I also keenly recollect what teenagers slide into as I myself was a teenager at one time or another in my life. Teenagers are weird and seem to hang great importance on trivial matters while being oblivious to what really matters. Of course, the parental view of what matters and what doesn’t is skewed by many years of having to pony up the cash for the trivial. Those shirts, shoes, video games, and what not that-were-to-die-for lay in a heap of materialistic items destined for the back of the closet and the underside of the bed.

I never wasted my parent’s financial resources when I was a lad. That “Fart Spray” was a life changing purchase and those acid washed jeans made me who I am today. Actually, those pants were so tight the only thing they made was my voice an octave higher and my feet swell. A single Canadian dime was the largest denomination of currency you could fit in those pockets.

The advancement of one’s age does create changes in the way birthdays are celebrated. My wife and daughter were out of town for a softball tournament so without the ladies to hold us back, us birthday boys celebrated in style. We lay in the hammock, each with our preferred beverage, and chit chatted about this and that while gazing at the stars above.

The perfect ending and beginning to another trip around the sun.

Well, the Three Stooges completed their lap around Ireland without incident, unless you count a blown tire and several bouts of car sickness as incidents.

As I’ve reported before the roads and driving in Ireland are an adventure. A nauseating, torturous adventure for those who tend to get car sick when crammed in the back seat of bobbing, weaving, swerving, stopping and starting automobile. Two of the stooges, Paul and Bubba, seemed to have an issue with this.

As for the blown tire…. well, I was driving at the time but it wasn’t all my fault. Who builds stone walls right next to a highway and then lets so much vegetation grow on them that you can’t see the rocks in the rock wall?

I recall Bubba yelling from the back seat to pull over quick so he could take a picture of a castle. Being the obliging tour guide I pulled over quickly and apparently too far as a large sharp rock that had been holding up a rock wall for a few hundred years tore into the sidewall of the front tire.

So, Paul and I put on the spare while Bubba snapped award winning pictures of his precious castle. Paul didn’t mind the mishap and was delighted with the opportunity to take a break from the nausea rocket. Back in the nausea rocket to find a new tire we tottered along on the little spare donut for a bit and then shelled out 90 Euro for a new tire. The rental car insurance didn’t cover rock attacks. We saw a lot of Ireland but of all the lovely sights we saw nothing compares to the people we met along the way. We had many a wonderful “jaw wags” as they call it.

We spent the last night in Ireland the same as we spent the first, enjoying the Dublin nightlife. The plan was to enjoy it to the point of exhaustion so we could sleep most of the seven hours of confinement in the airplane ride back across the pond. At 3 a.m. we bought some Pringles and decided a rickshaw ride would be the best way back to our hotel.

The rickshaw puller was a spry young man, and we cheered him to pass other rickshaws as we made our way through the Dublin streets. A few blocks, a long up hill, and the burden of three guys and a can of Pringles wore on the poor guy, and his stride was reduced to shuffle as we approached our hotel. The charge was five Euro, but we gave him 15 and a half a can of Pringles for his trouble.

Riding in a rickshaw made me feel a little uncomfortable. There’s just something wrong about having some guy pull you around when you’ve got two perfectly good legs of your own. I offered to help and even offered to give him a ride but apparently that’s against the Rickshaw Code of Conduct. He probably would have gotten more than 15 Euro from us if the gypsy ladies outside the pub hadn’t guilted us into handing them over some change.

All in all, it was a great trip and we all agreed if we went again we would just pick one specific area and see a lot of a little rather than a little of a lot.

I highly recommend traveling to a foreign country, other than Canada or Wyoming, nothing makes you appreciate life in America more.

About halfway through our trip to Ireland last year, after several nights of sitting in pubs listening to Irish music, my wife wore down to the point of suggesting that I go back again sometime with my good friends, Paul and Bubba. So, like a dutiful husband I took her up on the suggestion and am sitting in Kenmare, Ireland writing this column.

Paul, Bubba and I, the Three Stooges, landed in Dublin on June 10 and will be conducting a clockwise spin around the island back to Dublin for our exit on June 19. Other than our first night in Dublin and the second night in Carrick-on-Suir we will be rolling plan free and just see where the narrow winding roads take us.

One of the reasons we chose this time to come to Ireland was that Paul and myself are, as Bubba says, “Clancy Brother Super Fans,” and the Clancy Brothers Music Festival took place on June 12 this year. I enjoy the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem’s music more than any other music and was extremely excited to attend the festival. With the passing of Liam Clancy six months ago none of the Clancy Brothers or Tommy Makem are alive, but their children carry on their legacy quite well.

The concert on Saturday night was wonderful, but the singsong to follow in the pub across the street was one of the most enjoyable musical experiences I have ever had. A singsong in Ireland is an unorganized gathering where whoever wants to can belt out their favorite song. This particular singsong was a virtual Clancy Family Reunion that we were very fortunate to be a part of.

One by one our favorite songs were sung by a different member of the Clancy family, most of which are professional recording artists, with the entire pub joining in more often than not. This went on until a little after 3 a.m. when the pub owner finally said, “Have you no shame? It’s three in the morning… go home.”

The pubs close at 12:30 in Ireland but we were told we were in an “Irish Lockdown.” This basically means if you want to stay you can stay, but if you go you can’t come back in. We weren’t going anywhere.

There is a picture of the Clancy Brothers that was taken during a singsong in a bar in New York City during the groups hay day in the 60’s. In this particular picture the Clancy Brothers are sitting around a table in the middle of a packed house, and I always wondered what it would feel like to have been a part of that. Well, now I know, and to have the opportunity to share the experience with two of my best friends made it better than I ever imagined.

So, as I sit in Kenmare Ireland listening to the sound of Irish music drift up to my hotel room window from the pub across the street I am truly thankful. Thankful for the experience of last night’s singsong, thankful for good friends and the time to spend with them, and thankful for my wife and family. Without their support it would be impossible to undertake and enjoy such a trip.

That’s all for now…this is the Three Stooges on assignment in Ireland for the Burke County Tribune…signing off.

I was asked to speak at Memorial Day services for the Lignite and Portal American Legion posts this year, an honor I readily accepted, and would like to share that speech with all of you.

I hope you all had an enjoyable Memorial Day weekend and took the time to honor those who are no longer with us.

When I was a cub scout, a few years back, Memorial Day was a day I always looked forward to because it was the day we got to march with the soldiers. I can remember watching the veterans get ready for the Memorial Day march in the Legion Hall while us cub scouts attempted to fight the urge to poke one another with the American flags we were all given to carry as we marched. We didn’t fight it very hard and a few of us would always get our flags confiscated by our den mother, who just happened to be my mother.

Marching with the veterans in my cub scout uniform always made me feel proud and I would imagine myself as John Wayne fresh from the front lines. It’s hard for an eight-year-old with stubby legs to pull off the John Wayne swagger while trying to keep step with the veterans. Today I felt that same pride as I got the opportunity to march with the soldiers again.

Many of them are the very same veterans I marched with 30 years ago. Many of them I didn’t know had served in the military until my first Memorial Day march as a cub scout.

I knew these men as farmers, teachers, mechanics, oil field workers, and businessmen. To find out they were soldiers changed them forever in my eyes. I would look at them and try to imagine where they had been, what they had seen, what they had endured, and wonder how they could go from being John Wayne to a work-a-day citizen of Burke County.

Each and every time I encountered them, I would yearn to ask about their experience, about their war, but I never did. I never did because even to a curious eight-year-old it seemed to be a private matter and as a curious 37-year-old it still does.

I had plans to contact each veteran who is here and get their story to share with you today, but I doubted many of them would want this day to be about them. This day is a day to remember the men and women who served our country and are no longer with us.

Some left here young and full of life to serve our country and fight for the freedoms our flag represents and returned lifeless under the cover of that very same flag. They are who we are here for, they are not to be forgotten, the sacrifice they made cannot be forgotten. That is why these men and women, these soldiers, these veterans march every year. It is important we have this day of remembrance and take part in these services.

General George S. Patton once said, “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.”

I disagree with the General, which is easy to do given his current status. We mourn the death of a soldier because they were more than a soldier. They were a brother, a sister, a son, a daughter, a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, a friend.

That is who we mourn the loss of. Today is their day.

My buddy, Paul and I headed to Montana this weekend to fart around for a few days at the cabin. I say fart around because all the backbreaking, log hoisting labor that used to be a part of going to the cabin is complete.

Is the cabin completely done?

You’re never completely done with a wilderness cabin; it is a perpetual work in progress.

This particular weekend we spent a grueling hour or so hanging up curtains. Rustic red was the color I selected to add a splash of color to the log palate. My daughter and 63 other people already beat you to the “Broke Back Mountain” joke so laugh it up chuckles.

We managed to instill a little manliness in the process by turning sapling evergreens that we mercilessly ripped from their happy forest home into curtain rods, and I almost lost a thumb sawing tree limbs to make the rod holders. So, the cabin has curtains now. I like it because when I went up to the cabin by myself this winter, I felt like I was sitting in a fishbowl at night with Yetis, wild clowns, and who knows what else peering in the windows. My dog didn’t help matters by occasionally perking up and staring at the windows or door. It’s also nice in the morning not to have that pesky sun waking you from a rum instilled slumber.

Also, on the “to do” list for this trip to the cabin was constructing a lid for the gorilla box. The gorilla box is a wooden box about five feet long, three feet wide and three feet deep that I built to store tools and wild clowns in. To me it looks like a crate you would ship a gorilla in, so I named it the “gorilla box.” I’ve never ordered a gorilla but it would be handy to have one as the caretaker at the cabin when I’m not around.

As a conversation piece I plan to paint “GORILLA” on the side of the box with my name as the ship to address. When someone inquires about the whereabouts of the gorilla I will explain we had a disagreement shortly after he arrived about the type of friends he was inviting to the cabin and he now roams the mountains with a Yeti and a wild clown.

With the curtain hanging and gorilla box completed it was time to relax with a friendly game of hatchet throwing. I got two throwing hatchets a few years ago because lawn darts is too dangerous….just ask my sister. There’s something pleasing about throwing a hatchet and watching it turn end over end and then stick with a satisfying “thunk” in a tree.

It’s much less satisfying to watch the hatchet go end over end past the tree and continue end over end down the hillside. I tried to train the dog to fetch the errant hatchet throws but he seemed a little leery about the whole process. I bet the gorilla would have done it.

The hatchet throwing game made it about an hour and a half before both handles had been broken beyond duct tape repair. I contributed the hatchet handles breaking to divine intervention as it was getting dark and the evening beverage service was beginning to cloud judgment.

So, we retired to the campfire to belt out a few Irish songs and reminisce about the days when we had a gorilla to tidy up for us.

That’s all for the May edition of “This old cabin.” Bye now.

May is here for another go around and has brought with it the typical unpredictable spring weather of the Dakota’s.

You’re an optimist or an idiot if you pack away your mukluks, muffs and mittens before mid-August around here. Idiots don’t know any better and optimists will just grin and bear it, so it’s hard to differentiate sometimes.

Speaking of idiots and optimists it’s Mother’s Day this weekend and behind every idiot is an optimistic mother just hoping that all that pain and suffering wasn’t in vain. For some of our mothers the physical pain of childbirth was merely a warm up for the lifetime of mental anguish to follow. Idiots don’t know any better and our mothers just grin and bare it.

My mother is no exception; she is an eternal optimist but is not content to just grin and bear it when it comes to her idiots. She has been my and my sibling’s mother for as long as I can remember and during that time, she has always been there for us. She was always in the bleachers, always behind the camera, and always willing to call us “idiots” when it was warranted.

It was, and still is, warranted a lot and in the true spirit of idiots it never has stopped us from doing whatever it was that seemed idiotic to her. It’s a pretty sure bet if it seemed idiotic to my mom, it was, because a woman who appreciates the endless entertainment a whoopee cushion provides is no fun hating prude.

As we’ve gotten older it seems Mom’s reference to us as idiots has lessened. This is either due to maturity on our part or acceptance on Mom’s. “Eternal optimist reduced to realism by idiots.” Film at eleven. Swing by our next family gathering and judge for yourself…it’s worth the price of admission…a whoopee cushion and a jug of rum.

I remember my first whoopee cushion. My brother, Jarvis in his zeal to make the loudest fuuuuurrrrp, jumped up and landed on it and blew it out. He rolled around clutching his backside and yelping while I, the concerned brother, ran to check the status of my poor whoopee cushion.

We took it to the gas station to get it patched and nervously paced the floor sipping Coke and eating Corn Nuts waiting for the prognosis. They were able to patch it but it never sounded the same after that. It had a listless half-hearted “fss” sound that just didn’t pack the same humorous punch. So I sat on my brother and produced the real thing to teach him a little lesson.

Mother’s Day is a day set aside for us to drag our mothers and wives to overpriced buffets in an attempt to put our conscious at ease for another year. Don’t you think they deserve more effort than that? They smile and remain optimistic while their kids drag whoopee cushions to the local gas station to get patched.

Let’s strive to make Mother’s Day more of a sustained effort that sounds like, “fuuuuurrrrp” rather than “fss.”

Happy Mother’s Day.

There’s no place like home.

I think I had a wee tear in my eye as I spotted the Black Hills from the airplane on the last leg of my return trip from Japan. I have never been so happy to see those hills and the hundreds of miles of wide-open space between those hills and the Minneapolis airport as I made my journey from concrete to conifers.

Since my last trip to Japan two years ago, I must report that not much has changed. Still a lot of people, a lot of buildings, a lot a lot and too much of everything for this small-town boy.

Apparently “Country Folk” in Japan live in “rural” settings of around 100,000 people and when I explained that I come from a town of about 150 people the usual response was, “Do you know everyone in the town?” Everyone and their dog… and that’s the way I like it. Speaking of “a lot,” the dietary choices haven’t changed much either. You have to be a marine biologist to identify what you’re eating most of the time. The Japanese know their sea creatures, but then again when the sea creature on your plate isn’t much different than its swimming, living, breathing self, it simplifies things a little.

Here in the Midwest, we have to rely on taste and smell to identify our food, well you people who can taste and smell do, I rely on what I’m told. It would be easy to tell the difference between our various meats if a hoof, horn or antler were hanging out of the bun but thankfully we don’t care to have our food resemble its living, breathing self.

Speaking of various meats. Being a good guest I thought I would bring my Japanese associates a little piece of South Dakota and bought about $150 worth of buffalo, elk and deer salami and bacon cheddar cheese to bring with for gifts. I hope the workers in the quarantine station at the Tokyo airport enjoyed the gifts from America.

When we landed in Tokyo, I saw the signs at the airport banning the import of any meat and debated on trying to smuggle the salami past the salami sniffing dogs, but who knows what they do to salami smugglers in Japan, so I came clean. They looked over my stash and politely pointed to the sign, I handed over the salami, and the salami sniffing dogs all smiled.

When I’m in Japan, I have to wear a suit and tie much more than I would like. I don’t mind wearing one for the occasional bar mitzvah but not all day long while sitting in hot stuffy Japanese buildings, eating in hot stuffy Japanese restaurants, and traveling in hot stuffy Japanese trains. It’s hard to be pleasant while developing a heat rash but thankfully my grimace resembles a smile and no one was the wiser.

It takes a lot of self-control to drink hot green tea and eat a big bowl of piping hot miso soup while feeling sweat roll as far as it can roll while you’re sitting on a hot nonporous surface with nary a breeze to speak of. Visions of baby powder danced in my head as I longed for a stiff upstate North Dakota gale to somehow find me and whisk the sweat from my brow before it headed south to take care of more pressing issues.

When I returned to Rapid City, I dropped my suits off at the dry cleaners and I think I saw the people who work there out by the dumpster beating my suits with a dead carp to freshen them up a bit. I think I’ll wear culottes and a tube top if I have to go to Japan next year.

I’ve got the knees for it, but I might have to trim my shoulder hair to a respectable length.