Dean playing in the 2005 Senior Baseball State Tournament Semi-Final game.
Carter mastered Dean’s swing at a very young age.
Batboy Carter cheering on his dad at the state tournament.
Carter and Dean in the Hanska Bullheads 2005 State Championship team photo.
Carter, a senior on the Winona State University Baseball squad.
A couple of weeks ago, the attendance at a doubleheader in Mankato between Winona State and MSU got a boost from an enthusiastic band of fans behind the first base dugout. A cheering section was there to root for the Warriors, with special attention to the left fielder.
Some friends of the Brinkman family all had a similar idea: watch baseball and cheer on Carter Brinkman at a ball field a short drive from Sleepy Eye. This is Carter’s last season of a good college career. It is a season different from the others in one way. Heretofore, Carter’s father Dean never missed any of his games. That was true from rookie ball up to college spring trips to Florida.
It was a good day for ball, one of the first in a wretched spring. The games were important in the Northern Sun Conference. Both games were close, each team winning one. The baseball at this level is enjoyable to watch. All the players are gifted, near the peak of their skills. They make a difficult game look easy.
I admit I spent more time visiting with the folks there who had connections to Carter than focused on the game. Watching baseball lends itself to conversation by its nature. Our group’s attention turned toward the field whenever Carter was at bat, or a ball was hit to left.
More than one comment was made about the similarity of Carter the ballplayer to Dean the ballplayer. The same long strides on the field, the same textbook swing and follow-through were there for those of us old enough to have seen both play.
Later I was thinking about watching Carter play baseball and remembering Dean play baseball. Of course, they share a body type. That’s genetics. But an approach to the game, the manner they each moved about on the field, a comparable way of interacting with others: those are things that are taught.
Dean spent many hours teaching the game of baseball to Carter. It is a game of unique skills that aren’t just a matter of athleticism. Going the other way on an outside fastball, transitioning the ball from glove to hand after backhanding a grounder, taking the turn at a first base on a ball to the outfield are things that better players do better. Somebody teaches those things.
Parents teach a lot of things. It is what you do when you have children. We teach them to dress, we teach them how to brush their teeth, we teach them how to hold a fork when they are young. We keep teaching as they get older, more complex matters: how to fish, how to cook, how to drive a car.
In this glorious explosion of activity in nature that comes this time of year, we’re watching the birds and other wildlife return and spring to action. All God’s creatures are busy. Year-old swallows will build their mud nests, hatch their young, feed them, and send them out in the next months. They know how to do that.
But how?
I suppose in a way, their parents “teach” them. But not in a way we understand. The birds and the bees don’t have to be told about the birds and the bees. We write that off as instinct. But it is remarkable if we think about it. Young swallows, turtles, crickets and geese know what to do. Nature works to generate replacements for all of them. It will work for thousands of years and generations.
Well, except when we humans get in the way by destroying habitat. Instinct doesn’t know what to do when the prairie is gone. Most of the birds and bugs that were here are gone, as is the plant life that supported them. A small number of species adapt, but most won’t. Nature is a miracle, but sometimes it can’t perform miracles.
Back to the human species. In our teaching, we want our children to do well in the world. But parents aren’t just about transferring a set of skills. We want to pass things like values to our children. Right and wrong are more nuanced than how to bait a hook. And it matters less what we say than what we do.
If we tell our children to be kind and respectful to others, but then snap at our spouse or make fun of the odd neighbor down the street, guess which lesson is more powerful?
Life is a classroom. As we eat with our kids, as we drive with them, as we walk with them, we are teaching, even in those moments we don’t intend to.
This past January came news of David Crosby’s death. Being in the middle of dark winter, I spent time with his music one evening. In my growing-up years, David was part of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Down on a basement shelf I have several of their albums and 45’s. Those are orphaned right now in that we don’t have a functioning turntable.
So, I turned to YouTube to listen to my records. I kept coming back to the song, “Teach Your Children.” Crosby’s bandmate Graham Nash wrote that, but Crosby sang on the 1970 recording. The lyrics have roots in the Sixties anti-war movement and have some complex lines. But the gentle melody that hops along like a small child makes it easy to listen to multiple times. I did that.
The song bridges from being to the parent to being to the child. “Teach your children well'” becomes “Teach you parents well.” Each part ends with this admonition:
Don’t you ever ask them, “Why?”
If they told you, you would cry.
So just look at them and sigh,
And know they love you.
It is interesting to live long enough where I know people who are grown up now and I know, or knew, their parents. Children aren’t duplicates of their parents, but you can see reflections. As Carter ran down the first base line, I could see a bit of Dean’s gait. It is a joy to have seen both play this game I love.
Babe Ruth played in Sleepy Eye 100 years ago last October. Believe it or not, that wasn’t the most unlikely thing to happen in Brown County baseball in the fall of 1922. How about a local man pitching for New Ulm on a Sunday afternoon and days later pitching for the Cleveland Indians against the Boston Red Sox?
Elmer Joseph Hamann was born in New Ulm on December 21, 1900. He was the first child of Frederick and Dorothea (Greibel) Hamann. Frederick and Dora were first-generation Americans, immigrants from Germany. After Elmer, they had daughters, Edna and Louisa, and another son Clarence. Frederick supported the family as a well-driller.
Elmer grew to be 6-foot-1, an athletic young man. Two years in a row, he led New Ulm High to the state basketball tournament at Carlton College under coach Mickey Church. In 1921, New Ulm lost the championship to Minneapolis Central 19 to 15. Hamann scored 13 of his team’s points and was named all-state.
In May, Hamann debuted as a pitcher for New Ulm’s semi-pro team, a mix of local and paid players. From the New Ulm Review, “In the sixth inning Hamann, the local high school twirler, was put in the box and given a tryout. He held Winthrop to two hits in three innings.”
Baseball was wildly popular in New Ulm a century ago. The ballpark was at the fairgrounds, and the grandstand was regularly filled with 2,000-plus fans. New Ulm’s population was only 6,000.
Hamann quickly became the staff ace. He won 26 and lost 6 that summer. Included in those wins were two one-hitters and a fourteen-inning game.
In July, Hamann threw a “splendid game” at Sleepy Eye, losing 1 to 0. “One of the largest crowds that has ever witnessed a game in this part of the state. A circus could not have drawn better.” A week later, New Ulm prevailed in a rematch in front of “the largest crowd that ever witnessed a baseball game in Brown County,” over 3,000. Hamann shut out the county rivals, 5 to 0.
Somewhere along the line, Elmer took a nickname. In September, it was reported that “Elmer (Doc) Hamann left last week for St. Paul where he is enrolled at St. Thomas College. He will take up accounting.” Doc soon became a star athlete there, too, playing basketball and baseball.
His coach for both was the well-known Joe Brandy. Brandy had been a quarterback at Notre Dame, a teammate of George Gipp, aka the “Gipper.” Hamann was a forward on the Tommie basketball team and ace pitcher on the diamond. That spring, he defeated the University of Minnesota 1-0 and struck out 14 in a 1-1 tie with Carleton College.
Summer, 1922, Hamann was back in New Ulm. “When Doc stepped to the mound, the crowds in the grandstand gave him an ovation no other player has received.” It was another summer of big crowds and fine pitching. From the Review: “Hamman threw a classy game.” and “We cleaned ‘em up! Doc Hamann was the hero of Sunday’s game and easily New Ulm’s best man.”
Meanwhile, for the Cleveland Indians, it was not going well. Future Hall of Famer Tris Speaker had become player-manager in 1920 and led the Indians to their first World Series win. The next year, they battled the Yankees down to the wire. In 1922, the Indians fell out of the race early. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that they were “in a state of disintegration and needed new blood.”
Scouts were dispatched all over the country to find that new blood, “the most energetic drive for players ever put on.” That September, twenty rookies were in Tris Speaker’s dugout, an amazing assemblage of unproven players. Among those was New Ulm’s Hamann who had drawn attention pitching in St. Paul.
From the September 13 New Ulm Review: “Big Doc Hamann, the sensational pitcher who has been the main factor in the downfall of every baseball team with championship aspirations when they had to face the New Ulm team is on his way to join the Cleveland team of the American League. His admirers hope he will make good in the ‘big show.’”
On September 11, Hamann shut out Hopkins 2 to 0 at the fairgrounds. Eleven days later he pitched in the Major Leagues.
Speaker used his group of rookies sparingly as he was probably unsure what to make of them all. But on September 21, the Indians fell behind the Boston Red Sox 8 to 1 in the fifth inning. It was time to give his young charges a chance. Nine rookies came in for Speaker. They made the game close, and the score was 9 to 5 after eight.
Speaker sent out Hamann to start the ninth. He faced seven hitters: walk, walk, hit-batter, walk, triple, single, single. That was enough for Speaker and Hamann was pulled. Who knows how nervous the 21-year-old from Brown County was on that unfamiliar mound in a strange city?
It was the only game Hamann would appear in. By some measures, it was the worst “career” of any Major Leaguer ever. He is one of 22 pitchers with an infinite ERA, meaning they got no one out. Ironically, two of those were born in New Ulm. Fred Bruckbauer was raised in Sleepy Eye but born In New Ulm. Fred appeared in one game for the Minnesota Twins in 1961.
Hamann was listed in the Review as one of four New Ulm men scheduled to play at Sleepy Eye in Babe Ruth’s barnstorming exhibition October 16. It’s interesting to think of Hamann pitching against Babe Ruth a month after playing in Cleveland. He didn’t play that day, however. Instead, he returned to St. Thomas and the basketball team.
The next spring, Hamann turned down an offer to go to spring training with Cleveland to stay in school. Unfortunately, he and teammate “Jiggs” Donahue were barred from the Tommie baseball team in May after admitting they were paid to play for Austin the week before. The line between pro and amateur was fluid then, but that apparently crossed it.
Hamann pitched briefly in the Dakota League. Then in July, he signed to play with the Minneapolis Millers for $900 a month. The next March, Minneapolis sold his contract to Wichita. Alas, Doc met the fate of so many other overused pitchers: arm trouble.
In an interview, after Hamann had passed, his sister told local historian Carl Wyczawski that her brother had what they called a “sprained ligament.” Elmer went to see a specialist in New York and was told he wouldn’t be able to pitch again, Likely, modern medicine would have saved his career.
Elmer went to work in St. Paul. He married Lila Baumann, and they moved to Milwaukee. At times, Hamann worked as an enameller, pressman, and machinist. They had three sons together. Elmer Hamann died on January 11, 1973, and is buried in Bayside, Wisconsin.
Doc’s was the briefest of Major League careers. In his later years, he told a researcher from the Hall of Fame that he “absolutely” would do it again. I think any of us who ever picked up a glove and dreamt of stepping on a Major League field would agree.
Sources used:
Wikipedia
Society for American Baseball Research, article “Doc Hamann” by Chris Rainey
Newspaper.com
Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, Minnesota Historical Society
Baseballreference.com
Article written for State Tournament yearbook, “New Ulm Has Had Its Share of Professional Ballplayer” by Carl Wyczawski
When I think about what to write, I try to find things that are clever and a bit off-center. Not this time. I’m taking what the world is giving me. It’s spring. I’m going to write about that. It’s a fastball down the middle.
The like-a-miracle quality is multiplied this year coming out of one of the most relentless winters in our lifetimes. Let’s take a moment to congratulate ourselves. We did it. If you didn’t bang yourself up slipping on the ice or pull something shoveling snow, extra kudos to you.
We spent a couple weeks in a warm place this winter. It felt a little like cheating. I knew in my brain that it’s possible to leave winter. But my body was confused. When I stepped outside in Tucson, I instinctively pulled my coat collar up to my chin.
Otherwise, your neck gets cold, right?
As I write, remnants of snowpack on the north side of buildings are all that’s left. Winter was so oppressive, that one could almost forget the Earth was underneath all the snowy ice and icy snow. Now, there is a green tint to the landscape, a color that left us five months ago. There are shoots of plants poking toward the sun. Tree buds are imminent.
Every spring, each of us notes these “firsts:” the first time the sun is warmer than the cold air on our face, the first time we leave our coat in the house, the first time we walk across the yard without mincing shuffle steps.
If you spend time outside in the spring, you will have front row tickets to the most wonderful production. Nature in all its elements is jumping to the attention of the returning sun. So much is going on between the birds, the plants, and the critters.
They all know instinctively what humans learn with calendars: the growing season is short this far north, winter will come back, and they better get things done. That means a flurry of activity as everything sprouts, eats, breeds, and bears young, knowing those all must be done in the few months before the tilt of the Earth shifts again.
There’s a lot of reproducing going on out there. That’s exciting, almost salacious. It’s a very frisky time.
Part of ensuring the survival of the species and passing down genes is a struggle for place. Birds and animals stake out territories. In some cases, that leads to clashes between critters wanting not to share a space. Some of what we know as beautiful bird song is the male of the species announcing, “I’m here! This is my tree! Don’t even think about coming near me!”
Meanwhile he is also attempting to make himself desirable to girl birds. It’s the feathered equivalent of certain stupid guy behaviors in bars. We would hope human males would take advantage of a larger brain than that of a bird. Alas, that is not always the case.
We don’t think of plants seeking territory, but the same phenomenon is taking place there. Every shoot of grass and broadleaf wants room for sun and nutrients. It’s a struggle, albeit one in slow-motion. Trees play the long game. Given an opening in the canopy, a tree will push a branch into it over several seasons. All for the sake of sun to create chlorophyll in the hope of creating more seeds.
If you are a farmer or gardener, you get to play a part in this annual drama. Timing is everything. Peas and radishes need to go in early enough to ripen ahead of summer heat. Tomatoes and peppers go in just after the threat of frost is past. That’s not always easy to know.
My own corn and soybeans need a full northern growing season to maximize yield/bushels. If planting is delayed, and that is not uncommon, you dial back the maturities and your expectations. The 107-day maturity corn you plant in April has all kinds of more potential than the 85-day corn you plant in late May. Same for your 2.3 maturity soybeans vs. your 1.1 maturity in June. If that sounds like jargon, ask a farmer.
There comes pressure with that. If conditions are good and equipment is cooperating, it is the most exhilarating time of year. Nothing feels better than planting seed in a good seedbed when the calendar says “go.” Nothing is worse than planting in lousy conditions when optimal dates are receding. That is stress defined if you are a farmer.
After a winter of lounging in the house on long, cold nights, spring is a wakeup call with Reveille blowing. Time feels compressed, like too much to do in too short of time. We’ll see which kind of spring 2023 gives us.
Regardless of the work, it behooves us to enjoy this all. Spring presents us these glorious moments, but we must let ourselves be in them. That sensation of the sun on our face after an insufferably long winter? We have to allow ourselves time to savor that.
Of course, there are problems. Health, finances, relationships, and a hundred more are there for us to dwell on every day. But it’s spring. Give yourself a few moments away from those to feel the warm breeze.
Spring is a gift. The Creator didn’t have to make this all so pleasant and alluring. The number of springs in our lifetimes are not unlimited either. We only get so many. It’s going to happen whether we’re paying attention or not. We might as well live in the miracle.
Depending on when you pick up the paper or turn on your preferred digital device, it will be, is, or was Easter Sunday. (There’s a sentence that wouldn’t have made sense twenty years ago.) Regardless, happy Easter!
For those of us who wear the label “Christian,” Easter is at the center of that. The empty tomb, the risen Christ, is more than the “reason for the season.” It is the absolute essential core of our faith. It can’t be overstated: everything spins from the first Easter.
All those individual believers historically have come together with others in churches, because “where two or more of you are gathered, I will be there.” It is sadly a fact that those churches have splintered into many denominations despite sharing a single story. It is probably the best evidence there is of mankind’s inability to get along. Divided though we are, the fundamental creed is the same. It’s not God’s fault we meet in separate buildings.
Beyond all those Christians gathered in churches, the effects of the first Easter have rippled through history and around the globe. Christianity has had a large impact on the “West.” There is a line that runs from the ancient Greeks, through the Old Testament, and through the Easter event that transpired in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. Of that, grows the Judeo-Christian worldview that the West is rooted in, right up to the 21st century, here and now.
The West is approximately the western hemisphere. As a way of thinking and seeing reality, it centered in Europe and then expanded out to the places Europeans spread their influence. That has not happened without some pain and trauma, often to the native people in those places. Christianity wasn’t always spread by word and love. Sometimes it was violence and control. Again, that’s not God’s fault.
All this is to say that a lot hangs on that first Easter. If you are a Christian like me, the significance is obvious. But even if you’re not a Christian, it’s place in history is undeniable.
That’s the big picture. We don’t live in the big picture. We live in small moments. A bunch of small moments strung together make a life. I will spend part of Easter in a church, specifically Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s. Some of the day will be spent with family. There will be a meal in the middle, a modern-day “feast.” There will be small children, so baskets and an eminent bunny will have a part.
Easter is at the end of Holy Week. Holy Week commemorates a story we’ve known since young. It begins on Palm Sunday with Jesus’ glorious arrival in Jerusalem. There is great excitement and elation. All human emotion is fleeting, and this is no exception. From that high, Holy Week wends its way to the Last Supper, the night in the garden, and ultimately the cross of Good Friday, as far from the joy of Palm Sunday as one can get. But the greatest joy returns Easter morn.
I try to attend the services of Holy Week. I know the story; I know how it ends. But I want to live it again. In those eight days, is every emotion we know as humans. It is exhilarating and breathtaking in its heights. It is crushing and devastating in its valleys. It is called the Passion. A definition I found of passion is “any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling, as love or hate.” Love to hate, and everything in between. That’s Holy Week.
We walk with Jesus, recreating in our minds events that are both historic and spiritual. We’re there with palms. We’re there in the upstairs room with the apostles, and later in the garden of Gethsemane. We’re at the foot of the cross as darkness fills the sky. And finally, we’re at the empty tomb and on the road to Emmaus as word spreads about the Resurrection.
We are Judas. We are Pontius Pilate. We are Peter. We are Mary Magdalene. By that, I mean we steep ourselves in the emotions they held and fought with. Again, every feeling our species can feel is in that week.
In that swirl of human beings at their worst and their best, Jesus is. He is fully human, experiencing a death of incomprehensible pain. Then comes the mystery. He is fully divine and conquers human death. In that is our salvation.
I don’t pretend to understand that completely. Here is faith in God and trust in the Bible. It’s also trust in those who’ve gone before us. It is faith of our fathers and faith of our mothers. Like everything we know, it is passed to us.
If we’re paying attention and embrace Easter fully, we should be moved. It’s probably too much to say every Easter Sunday we should be changed people. But if we profess to be Christian, we should be a little better person after that. Can we be a little more patient with those in our house? Can we be a little more tolerant of those in our community? Can we be a little more understanding of the “other side” of issues and even politics? Can we be a little more loving?
The United States is made up of approximately two thirds Christians. In this nation of religious freedom, we respectfully embrace our Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, and all other fellow citizens. But two thirds is a lot. That seems enough that if the Easter story is laid in our hearts, America should be a better, kinder place the day after.
Alas, that didn’t happen last year and likely won’t this. I know I’ll slip back into some of my more undesirable habits and qualities soon after. We are imperfect beings created by a perfect God. It’s another of those mysteries. But I can try to hold Easter in my heart after Sunday.
There is a movement in the Catholic Church to return to historic forms of worship. The revival of the Latin Mass has been at the center of that. Along with that has come criticism of practices that are lumped under “modernism.” A group of conservative Catholics has become known as the Rad Trads, short for Radical Traditionalists.
I am Catholic. Today though, I want to write about my other deeply held belief: baseball.
I might properly be called a Rad Trad in the Church of Baseball. I am radical in my appreciation of its traditions. The game should only be messed with great care and respect for those.
This year, Major League Baseball has adapted a set of rule changes in an attempt to appeal to a younger demographic. I get that I am not in anyone’s definition of younger. But I’m not sure these will make the game better or attract the video game generation anyway.
I don’t deal well with change. Pam will vouch that. A few years ago, she moved the toaster across the kitchen. I’m still struggling with that.
Unlike most everything around it, baseball hasn’t changed a lot through the decades. It is part of its attraction, that generations played the same game on the same field by the same rules. You’re allowed to imagine Babe Ruth batting off Gerrit Cole.
In my lifetime as a baseball fan, the biggest changes heretofore have been the designated hitter and instant replay. I’m not a fan of either. Pitchers batted and umpires made calls since God created baseball “in the big inning.”
This year, there will be a clock in baseball. Fans have long boasted that ours is the game without a clock. So this is a big step. A pitch clock will count down between pitches, requiring the batter to be ready and the pitcher to throw in a designated time.
Players brought this on themselves as more and more of them have found ways to not bat and not pitch for longer times. Watching the batter adjust his gloves or the pitcher toss a rosin bag up and down are not that interesting. This change might be okay, as everyone agrees the games have gotten too long.
A type of shifting of infielders will be banned. This one I don’t agree with. Putting the fielders where certain batters hit the ball is just plain good strategy that shouldn’t be punished. And as hitters have been instructed forever, hit ’em where they ain’t. Watch film of Rod Carew if you want to see how that’s done.
The oddest rule change will be bigger bases.
Say what?
When I first heard of that, it struck me as strange, kind of clownish. But it might contribute to more action and less injuries, so we’ll give that one a chance.
Altogether, it’s a lot for a baseball Radical Traditionalist. I’m not saying baseball’s rules are sacred. But there are theologians who think they were first given to mankind when Moses made a second trek up Mount Sinai. That is not explicitly described in Genesis. You have to read between the lines.
It struck me that if you can mess with the rules of baseball that have seemingly been etched in stone, what other rules can we consider altering?
How about the laws of gravity? They’re due for some changes. Gravity’s even older than baseball. The other day when I fell in the yard carrying groceries, it would have been nice if I had a second or two more before I hit the ground. I could have had time to decide which limb was going to be sacrificed for the good of the body. I’m not saying we do away with gravity. It still is useful for things like playing cornhole. But if we just reduced Earth’s pull a little, it would help. Maybe fewer things would break.
What about rules of nutrition?
We could use a little flexibility there.
What if for the 2023 eating season, doughnuts would count as a vegetable?
We’re supposed to eat three or four servings of veggies a day. If one of those could be doughnuts, that would make it easier to go back to carrots or broccoli for the rest of the day.
Speaking of things that are rigid and could benefit from some loosening up, what about the seasons? If pitchers don’t have to bat, maybe winter doesn’t have to be so long. I’m proposing that we put a two-month limit to winter. And let’s ban 20-below temps. I think that would definitely appeal to a younger demographic. The older demographic would approve, too.
I’m starting to like this rule bending. Maybe I can convince Pam that some of the house rules that are old and stale could use some freshening up.
Do I really need to pick up my clothes?
Do I have to keep stuff off the table?
The Commissioner, aka Pam, should be open to changes.
What about traffic rules?
Maybe they could use some tweaking. Next time I get pulled over, I’ll point out to the officer that a lot of these laws have been around since the last century and don’t appeal to younger drivers. We’ll see how that works.
I thought I was handling all this well for a Rad Trad. Despite the modifications to the game, it’s still baseball. It’s still the pitch within the at bat within the inning within the game within the season that I enjoy so much. I thought I was doing well. Then I read about robot umpires. Excuse me, I’ve got to go lie down a while.
By Randy Krzmarzick
I don’t watch much TV. My wife says I have the attention span of a gnat. That might be one reason. Another might be there are too many choices.
I watched a lot of TV when I was a kid when we only got Channel 12. It was in black and white. I was a teenager before I found out New York City had colors.
Friends watched early in COVID and recommended it. I like soccer a little, so we talked about watching. Finally, this winter Pam convinced me to settle on the couch with my gnat’s attention span to watch two episodes a night. To me, that counted as binge watching. Pam pointed out that real binge watching means staying up past 10 p.m.
This week, the third season of “Ted Lasso” was “dropped.” I figured we’d go back to our two-episodes-a-night routine with snacks and a blanket. Come to find out that one episode a week will be released on Apple TV till all twelve are loosed on the world.
What?!
I have to wait a week?
I flashed to 1967 and my 11-year-old self, having to wait a week for the next Green Acres.
Don’t they know this is 2023?
Of course, that’s the way it worked since the beginning of television in the Fifties. Gunsmoke and The Honeymooners gave you an hour. I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver gave you a half hour. Then you waited a week till the next chapter.
Every story wrapped up in thirty or sixty minutes. Except for those that ended with the dreaded, “To be continued.” That meant you had to wait seven excruciating days to know if Lassie would get help in time to save Timmy, who was trapped in a well or being chased by a bear. Timmy was always in some kind of trouble.
So, we’ll watch “Ted Lasso” and then wait a week. Like the old days. Only I’m not sure I’m as good at waiting as I used to be.
I thought about things I used to wait for. I can remember exact times the markets and weather reports were on KNUJ and WCCO radio. I’d sidle up to the kitchen or truck radio, depending if I was in or out. Now those are instantly available to me on my phone any time. I have six weather apps, so I can obsess about the forecast if I’m trying to plant corn. I tell people I scroll around till I find a forecast I like.
How are the Twins doing? Phone. What about that bill at the legislature? Phone.
What time is that funeral? Phone.
For some of these, you used to have to wait till the evening news. For some, it was tomorrow’s newspaper. It’s like we all had a degree in Advanced Waiting back then.
Similarly, If I want to talk to someone now, I take that device out of my pocket and dial them up. Well, more like tap them up. No more going into the house to call and hoping the person I was calling was in their house, which was unlikely in the middle of the day.
Waiting means patience. It is often said that “Patience is a virtue.” That implies some choice in the matter. In all these examples, we didn’t have a choice. Waiting was built into life. Kind of like eating and sleeping.
Waiting isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While waiting, one can doodle. Or think. Or even pray. Each of those can be a valuable use of time. Doodling has led to engineering breakthroughs, although I mostly do daisies and bunnies.
Earlier this winter, I got myself to an airport exactly two hours before my flight, as we are instructed. Soon, I found out my flight was delayed three hours, then four, then five. It was because of weather. I’m all in favor of caution if I’m going to be 30,000 feet in the air, so I was accepting of my fate.
Outside of shuffling between gates as the airport kept adjusting, I didn’t have much to do for seven hours. It was a surprise quiz in the class of waiting. I walked around, nibbled a bit, read some, and visited with fellow travelers. I suppose I was practicing patience; it wasn’t like impatience would have helped. I thought. I prayed. I didn’t doodle.
Waiting changes as you move through the decades. When we are young, we can’t wait to drive. Then we can’t wait to graduate. Then we can’t wait to get married and have kids. Looking back now, it feels like I raced through those quickly, anxious for the next, barely taking time to enjoy each as it came. Now at 67, I don’t have things “I can’t wait” to do. I don’t mind a little waiting now, slow it all down.
One type of waiting is for the birth of a child. That’s a predictable nine months. Of course, there’s a giant difference between waiting as a father vs. waiting as a mother. Any mother reading this is nodding her head vigorously. That’s the same nine months it used to be. But even there, there’s been a change from The World That I Grew Up In. Now we most often know the gender of the anticipated child. So waiting has changed even there.
If you are a gardener or a farmer, you know the sensation that kicks in about now, when you begin waiting for planting. Golfers and baseball players begin feeling an itch, too. Looking out at giant hills of snow, it appears we’re all going to be waiting a while.
Speaking of waiting, we are in the season of Lent. The church calendar gives us two seasons devoted to waiting: Lent and Advent. We are to do more than sit around and doodle. We’re to take special time to ready our souls for the Lord in the manger and the empty tomb. That is supposed to be every day, but seasons give us focus.
Waiting as part of life has always been. In Psalms, we are told, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” And later, “I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope.”
See. None of this is new. I guess I can wait for Ted Lasso.
It always seemed a little odd that we celebrate the day our mothers birthed us. For children, it’s a way to lift them up with special attention and affirmation. In our middle years, it’s a reason to have a party, especially on those big, round numbers. “Lordy, Lordy, look who’s forty!”
I said to someone that I find myself looking up at the clock now and then. If life was a basketball game, you wouldn’t pay much attention to the clock the first three quarters. But when you’re in the fourth quarter, you start to check how much time’s left in the game.
I am mindful of friends who didn’t make it to the fourth quarter. If you are blessed, you will be in the game long enough to see your children grown. That is not guaranteed. As friends have passed away, those of us left behind say to each other, “You never know.” Now we’re old enough to know that we never know.
The basketball-as-life analogy is imperfect in one way: Unlike set minutes in a basketball game, we don’t know how long the game of life is. Soccer might be a more apt comparison. There is no visible clock. The referee is in control, and various stoppage times and injury times can be added. You play till the referee blows his whistle. Insert your own referee-as-God metaphor here.
I am 67 today. Like I said, oh boy. Regardless of my lack of enthusiasm, it is a fact that as of about ten this morning, I have been out of the womb and breathing Earth’s oxygen that many years. That is measurable. As a sportscaster might say, “You can put it in the books.” As for my time remaining to breathe that oxygen? That’s a mystery. Same for all of us.
I certainly hope I have a couple decades to hang out with the rest of you. But, all together now, “You never know.”
Would I want to know my expiration date?
Part of me says no. I like to think that I’ll just put my head down and keep pushing forward till I don’t, whether that’s tomorrow or twenty years from now.
At the same time, it would be helpful to know how long I’ve got. There are a whole host of matters where that information would come in handy. We’re wrestling with when to take Social Security. If you want to find a hundred different opinions on something, Google that. If you’re going to live a long time, there is benefit in waiting. If you’re going to live a short time, take it now. So, you tell me?
Medicare is another largely confusing thing that is thrown at you in your Golden Years. I had that a couple of years ago. Now Pam is wading into those murky waters. Long ago, Medicare was a nice government program that worked. Then private insurers were let in, increasing our choices exponentially, and enriching a bunch of CEOs.
Some of these decisions might be easier if you retired on a certain day. One day you’re collecting a paycheck and the next day you’re not. There is a before-and-after. Farmers tend to ease out the door over a period of years. I joke with Pam about what she’ll need to know if I fall off the bin. I’d like to quit before I do. The last couple years have been profitable, which means I’m having fun.
Who wants to quit when they’re having fun?
Again, if I knew how many growing seasons I had left to go up and down the rows, it would be helpful to making decisions.
Should I upgrade machinery?
Am I fertilizing for the next year or for the next decade?
Having an exit strategy would be easier if I knew how close the exit ramp was.
Would we want to know our end date?
A few of us will get a terminal illness and have a known time to get our ducks in row. Some will die suddenly and maybe have minutes to say our goodbyes. Most of us will decline over several years, gradually walking a path that healthcare providers know well.
The Social Security Administration has a life expectancy calculator. Just going by my gender and date of birth, they give me 17.7 years to live. I’m not too optimistic about that last .7 of a year. There are other surveys on the internet that consider current health, lifestyle, and family history. If I fudge the number of years I smoked and how much I weigh, I come out better on those. Were it so easy to cheat the Grim Reaper.
All we know for sure is none of us is getting out of here alive. Or as someone told me, 10 out of 10 of us are going to die.
See what cheery thoughts come into my head on my birthday?
A while ago I was at a wake talking to a couple young people. Something about writing came up, and almost in unison they said I should write my obituary. We all should, as it would be a help to our survivors. I can see the truth in that, although writing one’s own obit sounds rather morbid.
But what the heck. As an aid to my kids, here’s the Cliff’s Notes version of an obit:
“Randy never got far. He lived most of his life on one farm and got all the sacraments in one church. He raised a lot of corn and soybeans. He was too cheap to pattern tile out his farm. It was a regret. Regrets, he had a few. But then again, too few to mention. (Okay, I stole that.)
“He was better at fantasy baseball than real baseball. He wished it were otherwise, but you get the skills you get. Randy liked all animals and most people. If he offended anyone, there’s not much he can do about it now. His favorite thing to do was drink beer and talk to friends. He never figured out how to make money at that.
“He was most proud of raising three kids who are smarter than him, all doing good and interesting work. The most important thing he did was love Pam for “X” years. Some days he was better at that than others.”
When you do a column, you’re on the lookout for things to share with readers. Sometimes it’s big, like the common threat climate change poses to us all. Sometimes it’s not so big. Like, we all love doughnuts.
The other day, I was looking in the mirror at some old guy who has aged beyond recognition. I guess that’s me. Glancing up, I saw a scruff of grayish, thinning strands. It hit me, “Hair! We all have hair. Or we used to. I should write about hair.”
Last Sunday, I was sitting in church toward the back. The good Lord knows that my focus waxes and wanes during Mass. I’m not around people a lot, so observing them is fascinating. This time I considered the incredible array of heads of hair in the pews ahead of me.
Short, long, none. Blonde, brown, black, red, plus an abundance of whites and grays. Curly, straight, flowing, bobbed. Big hair and tufts of hair. It was a reminder how glorious is our diversity as a species. And this was only one church in a Midwest town on one Sunday. It was a sliver of our planet’s diversity.
Our hair gets a lot of attention. That’s partly because we can do something about it quickly: brush it, comb it, toss it. Other parts of our appearance take more time to alter. Like how much we weigh. Hair gets a lot of attention, considering it is dead cells hanging around the outsides of our bodies. The root in a gland and the follicle are live cells. But once they push one of your hairs to the surface, it is dead. We fuss a lot over those dead cells.
My own history with my hair is short and unimpressive. Kind of how it looks. When I started school, the Sixties was a young decade. Every boy started school with a heinie. A “heinie” was basically a buzz cut. Families were large. Moms already had to spend time with their daughters’ pigtails and ponytails. They didn’t have time to fuss with the boys’ heads, too.
I never thought about the origins of the word heinie in first grade. Turns out heinie was used as a derogatory term for German soldiers in World War I, something to do with referencing buttocks. It also was a common nickname. Heinie Manush was a Hall of Famer who played against Babe Ruth. I’m not sure how any of that leads to a type of haircut.
Regardless, all us boys started school sporting a heinie. Gradually as the Sixties grew into the decade of Vietnam, protests, and hippies, long hair became a fashion and a political statement. Sleepy Eye boys were hardly on the cutting edge of trends back then. But we had Beetles albums and the Monkees were on TV.
Looking back on the Sixties, hair took on an outsized role. Long hair came to stand for many things: anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-Nixon. Peace, love, rock and roll, and hair. I was young but remember hearing of household battles. Fathers and sons were common combatants. Mothers were the referees. Barbers were caught in the line of fire.
If you think I’m exaggerating the role hair took, consider the musical of that name. “Hair” opened off Broadway in 1967 and was immediately wildly popular and stepped into the abyss of the generation gap. From a review, “The musical Hair was written to be controversial, to shock traditional theatregoers with its frank depiction of drug use, nudity, and sexuality, and with its gleeful use of obscene language.”
Broadway is about as far from a farm in Brown County as you can get, but a chubby little kid with a heinie sang along to “The Age of Aquarius” playing on the barn radio.
“When the moon is in the Seventh House
“And Jupiter aligns with Mars
“Then peace will guide the planets
“And love will steer the stars!”
I think the cows liked it.
By sixth grade, all the cool boys had grown out their hair, at least enough to carry around a comb. Fred Braulick and I were the last to give up our short hair. We were both dairy farm kids. The smell of silage wouldn’t be carried in our short hair, which may have been on our moms’ minds. I’d like to think Fred and I wore our heinies long enough that its popularity came back around. I don’t think that was true, though.
By high school even Fred and I had grown our hair out. That led to several years of me trying to look hip, and of course attractive to girls. Despite multiple attempts at parting, brushing, styling, primping, conditioning, and gelling, I don’t think I ever achieved hipness. I’m not sure about the girl thing.
A pivotal moment in my life came in college. I was standing in front of our dorm room mirror brushing my hair every which way, trying to find something that worked with the mop God and genetics had given me. Roommate Jerry Heymans walked over, put his hand on my head and rubbed it back and forth. He said, “Why don’t you try that?”
It was a revelation! Nothing worked with my hair, so why try? I was done with brushes and combs, and a simple quick rub back and forth was all I did from then on. Tussled it was and tussled it has been ever since then. I was liberated from the tyranny of hair care. Besides, my disheveled head more accurately portrays the state of the brain that is inside. Thoughts fly around in there, never really lining up, tapered, or styled. I have thanked Jerry several times.
Eventually I started hanging around with Pam. Ever since, she has told me when I need a haircut, so I don’t need to think about that.
I had a beard for a long time. I could really save time grooming then. Outside of showering and brushing my teeth, I could avoid personal maintenance altogether. It was great. Then whites began to appear in the beard. It made me look old. Shaving is annoying, but I don’t want to look like some old guy. Ahem.
The other time I spent up close with hair was our children’s, when occasionally I was charged with brushing theirs. Mom’s know secrets about brushing that no one ever tells dads.
There is an age I call the ragamuffin stage when hair on a kid is basically a battlefield. Especially in summer when everything from sweat to dirt to bugs might be in there. For my two daughters, brushing before school or church was akin to a type of torture. I’d like to think it hurt me more than it hurt then it did them, but that’s probably not true. Sorry kids.
I was carrying around in my head the death of another friend last week. On the radio came a reference to Stop the Steal from a couple years ago. I thought to myself, “How about a Stop the Sadness movement? That’s what I need.”
But sometimes it comes in waves. It’s as if you are standing to your knees in the ocean, 10-foot waves crashing over you, one after the other, barely giving you time to brace yourself before the next.
Jan Zilka was a friend a long time. I tried to remember when I met her and that is lost in a small-town past. In a place like Sleepy Eye, you’ve known everybody forever. Jan was a California kid; that might explain her spunky and bright personality.
We knew her battle with cancer was nearing an end when we got a call from daughter Sandy. Jan had passed peacefully under the blessed care of hospice, husband Bill and family at her side. It was an end we all would choose if we could only choose these things.
Kraig Boyle was only 48 when he died suddenly two days before Christmas. His passing was a shock, but the circumstances are almost as if from a story. A deeply spiritual man, Kraig was taken from this life as he was bringing his family to morning Mass at St. Mary’s in Sleepy Eye. It was at once an odd and beautiful circumstance that his last moments were by the church which was a second home.
My friendship with Kraig began inside that church. I have the 5:00 Wednesday morning hour in the Perpetual Adoration chapel. Kraig had 6:00. Each week, we had time to share during my going and his coming. It was a moment to check in with each other: family, jobs, plans.
Often there was a nod to the presence of Jesus during our visit. And usually humor. Kraig would ask tongue-in-cheek questions with a serious look, then break into his wonderful impish grin.
How was I to know Dec. 21 would be the last time I would share smiles with him?
I spoke of a time of waves, and this has been one for me. I wrote about friend Dean Brinkman passing in September. There came others. Pat Rosenhammer, Colleen Berkner, Renae Bock are all people who bring a smile as I conjure their memories.
Literally as I worked on this, came word of the death of classmate Jerome Tauer. Jerome lived in Arkansas. It was always a pleasant visit when I’d see him back here. A few hours later I heard of Kathy Spaeth passing. Kathy was a sweet, kind person I’ve known since childhood.
I feel like I should hurry and finish this before there’s more.
If you’re my age, you can make your own list. Wakes and funerals are a large portion of my social life. As we advance in age, everyone in our circle is doing the same. It makes sense that death comes to our door more often. You never think about that when you’re young and the only funerals are your friends’ grandparents.
It’s also true that small towns have aging populations. Everyone graduated with larger classes than their school has now. Nursing homes are an opposite story.
COVID accelerated deaths for a time. Historically, pandemics have reduced population in a cruel way. I thought about other times when death rates rose beyond the ordinary. If you graduated in the Sixties, you likely knew young men killed in Vietnam. War is a pandemic that is totally preventable, one that our species never seems to prevent.
There are statistics and trends, but the numbers are real people. And there have been a lot of real people close to me who have left us lately. I told Pam, I feel like there’s more people I knew than I know.
So, what does one do with this sadness?
I’m trying to figure that out. I have texts on my phone from Dean that I’ve saved. I think of Jan when I take things to the food shelf where she volunteered. Wednesdays at Adoration, Kraig is large in mind by his absence.
Each is a reminder of that person. It’s like pings I get on my phone, something briefly called to attention. Pete Hillesheim died in 2007, a best baseball buddy, and I still wonder what he would say about the latest Twins signing.
The sadness never completely fades. When someone is gone, there is a gradual transition to celebrating the memories. With that is the realization that there will be no new ones. It is all past.
A big part of relationships is looking ahead, to what we might do the next time we see each other. There is an open-endedness to every conversation with a friend. There’s a future. “We should have a coffee” or “We should go to a Twins game.” There’s always the next time I’ll see you. Until there’s not.
I suppose, too, the death of someone close is a reminder of our own mortality. Creaking knees and wrinkles in the mirror are hints of that. But losing a friend is a jolt. Conversations after a death of a friend are filled with, “We need to count our blessings,” and “Each day is a gift.” Perhaps living a good and decent life is the best way to honor those who’ve gone before.
Still, there is a heaviness to it, losing these fixtures in our lives. I can easily tear up talking about them, and I do. I think it is common to cry more easily as you age; it is true for many of my friends.
At the same time that there is darkness in loss, we are called to bring light to the world. It almost seems like too much some days. It’s an emotional roller coaster, and you just want it to stop.
I read this recently. Laura Carstensen, a psychologist at the Stanford Center on Longevity, has studied the emotional changes that occur with age. “We find that older people are more likely to report a kind of mosaic of emotions than younger people do. While younger people tend to be ‘all positive or all negative,’ older people are more able to experience joy ‘with a tear in the eye.’”
Joy with a tear in my eye. Sometimes, a lot of tears.
It has come to my attention that the column called “Weeds” has been showing up in the Marshall Independent. This is a large increase in exposure for my humble column. It is exactly double, from one newspaper to two.
The Journal of New Ulm and Independent of Marshall are brother newspapers. Or sisters. I’m not sure the gender of newspapers. Like other siblings, they borrow stuff back and forth. Columns from the Independent have been appearing in The Journal. I’m not sure it has come to those writers’ attentions.
There was no preparation for Independent readers for “Weeds.” It just showed up there one day unannounced, taking up space that had gone to George Will or Cal Thomas. If you are missing George and Cal, don’t blame me. I didn’t mean to disrupt your morning read over the cereal bowl.
I thought I should give a proper introduction. I began writing “Weeds” thirty years ago. I took a hiatus to chase our kids around and cranked it back up ten years ago. “Weeds” comes from words that knock around in my head. Sometimes they build up to a point where they spill out on to paper. Or they used to. Now they splash onto a keyboard. It can be an unsightly mess, but I always try to clean it up.
This column is achingly local. It is usually about things in front of me, things I can see, if not touch. That means it’s often about things here on our farm. I live on the home place. Outside of a few years in college entertaining possible futures, I’ve been here. I have moved from the small bedroom to the large bedroom, so you can’t say I haven’t gotten anywhere in life.
Longtime partner and wife Pam makes regular appearances. She’d rather read a good novel than a newspaper, so I don’t think she knows about that. I’d appreciate you not telling her.
At times, we raised pigs, chickens, and three children. Along with the kids came a lengthy parade of pets. They were buried in the Pet Cemetery in the grove after an appropriate service. The kids are gone, scattered about this hemisphere. We do have two cats my wife saved when their feral cat mom was killed. The cats take us for granted like all members of that furry species do.
I don’t get off the farm much: church and supplies a couple times a year. Sleepy Eye is the town where we go for rations. You can see Sleepy Eye from our farm. Sometimes you can hear it if it is still out. You used to be able to smell it when the Del Monte plant was operating.
We occasionally trek to New Ulm. When I was a kid, New Ulm was the big city. I heard of bigger cities like Minneapolis and New York, but they were hard to imagine. They may as well have been the Emerald City.
New Ulm is a fun place to visit. They have lots of bars. A guy can get in trouble there, especially an innocent from the country. So far, I’ve always gotten out of there unharmed.
Sometimes I write about that other nearby city located at the confluence of two great waterways, the Minnesota River and Ruheheim Creek. New Wallum was founded by members of the Burner Society. The Burners were free thinkers. They were said to be agnostic, but it was more a case that they didn’t want to get up for church.
New Wallum is home to Mel’s Beer. Mel’s Brewery is the oldest brewery owned by guys named Mel in the country. Mel Sr. recently turned the reins over to Mel Jr. Granddaughter Melanie has begun to have a role. Towering over New Wallum is the imposing statue of Bauer the Sauer. It is a tribute to the most important figure in German history, Bauer, the inventor of sauerkraut.
When I first wrote about New Wallum, I received an angry letter from a civic leader in New Ulm. He said I wasn’t fooling anyone; he knew I was making fun of his city. I’m not sure where that kind of paranoia comes from.
“Weeds” occasionally gets into the tall weeds and touches on religion and politics. We’ve all been admonished to not bring up religion and politics in civil company. That’s generally a good idea. But such thoughts sometime escape my brain, kind of like when the cows got out when I was young. They’d run around the yard, kicking up their legs, and finally go back to their pen. My thoughts are like that.
I’ve been Catholic my whole life. I’ve been both parties at various times. I admit a bias toward kindness, respectfulness, and empathy. I’m not a fan of rigid, close-minded, rule-centric practitioners of any religion or political party. I tend to take that stuff Jesus said about loving your neighbor literally. I also don’t think “neighbor” means just people who look like us. I already look and act like me. I don’t need to be surrounded by others.
Baseball makes regular appearances in this space. I played long ago, not very well. Regardless, I love the game. The creation and promulgation of baseball is the highest achievement of our species. Being on a ball field is as close to Heaven as we get on this side of the grave. The touch and smell of ball and glove, the sound of bat hitting ball, I’m not going to compare those to sex, but you know what I mean.
I’d like to see a lot more baseball and a lot less warfare. Like we used to say back in the Sixties: make baseball, not war. Or something like that.
Finally, I feel a warning is due. Someone told me once that they liked my writing, but I really didn’t have a point. I had to admit that a lot of times I don’t have a point. There are many writers more than willing to share points about lots of things. George Will and Cal Thomas certainly do. Having to have a point is a lot of pressure that I choose to forgo.
So, if you’re looking for meandering writing that doesn’t really go anywhere, this column’s for you. Thank you for reading. If you’re not, thank you for not reading, I guess.
