cott Suprenant’s grandson Ethan Bohnen, dressed for Halloween. Ethan has agreed to chair the 150th Anniversary of Ruth’s Visit to Sleepy Eye.
Randy Hanging with the Great Bambino. (created by Dean Brinkman’s cousin Brian Harstad
From left: Scott Surprenant, Randy Krzmarzick, Dean Brinkman, Judy Surprenant, and Terry Helget. (created by Dean Brinkman’s cousin Brian Harstad)
The 1993 film, “The Sandlot” is a humorous coming-of-age story about a group of boys learning life lessons playing pickup baseball games on a sandlot in Los Angeles. Through a series of misjudgments, a Babe Ruth autographed ball ends up in the yard of a fierce dog. That night, Babe appears to protagonist Benny Rodriquez in a dream, encouraging him to be a hero, face the “Beast,” and retrieve the ball.
I thought about that in October when I found myself living with Babe’s memory. He never did appear in a dream though.
Some years we promoted it, and a couple dozen people grilled hot dogs and chased our kids around. Other years, it was few of us having a beer in the grandstand at night after a day of farm work.
A few years ago, we could see the hundredth anniversary coming up. There are more important things in the world, global hunger and climate change come to mind. But having a fun commemoration didn’t seem like the dumbest idea. Dean Brinkman and I began assembling our “Babeophiles” to see what we could pull off.
Early, we met with Christina Andres, the Chamber Director. This would fit nicely with the 150th Anniversary of Sleepy Eye. Soon the Chamber and city were on board. Kurk Kramer from the EDA helped raise funds for a historic plaque. Brandon Streich was a contact with the Baseball Association. The owners of the Coffee Shop/Brewery and manager David Forster were excited to join. There were others, “too numerous to mention,” who took a piece of it.
Last spring, Dean and I met with Stew Thornley. Stew is a writer, Twins scorekeeper, and Minnesota sports historian. A few years ago, he came to a townball game in Sleepy Eye wanting to see the ballpark where Ruth played. Stew was glad to be part of our day.
Sue Nelson, Twins organist who was a Nicollet farm girl, has gotten to know us. We are part of her “Sleepy Eye boys” who visit with her at Target Field. She’s a Minnesota treasure and an incredibly sweet person. Sue became a headliner at the ballpark and at the Brewery.
David had worked in public relations out East before moving back to town with his family. He volunteered to do some publicity. It turned out David knew what he was doing, and our little event got lots of attention.
Newspapers statewide had our story. Christina and I were part of the Twins radio pregame show. Scott Surprenant and I did a WCCO Radio interview, part of their One Tank Trip series. KEYC-TV did a story with Christina, Tom Larson, and “Ryan” Krzmarzick.
Those were in addition to being on SAM 107 and in the Journal, Sleepy Eye Herald Dispatch, and Mankato Free Press. For a guy who doesn’t get off the farm much, it was a lot. I joked to friends that I’d become a media whore.
Pat Reusse, Star Tribune columnist and small-town baseball aficionado got in touch. He was going to be in southern Minnesota as part of a birthday tour; Pat grew up in Fulda. He wanted to visit Sleepy Eye the Thursday before our celebration.
In the morning, the Babeophiles and other baseball nuts met with Pat in the grandstand. It spun into a fun conversation about baseball and small-town life.
Patrick had asked if any Western Minny players were still around. That semipro league attracted crowds in the thousands to games in Brown County after World War II. The league folded in 1956, so players are sparse. I assembled what I called my Old Guy Committee of men who remembered the Western Minny as kids and baseball in the Fifties and Sixties. (Sorry fellows, I should have called you my Mature Gentlemen Committee.)
That afternoon, Lefty Reynolds, Leon Tauer, Chisey Hanson, Larry Heiderschiedt, and Tom Hirsch gathered around a table at the Pix with Reusse. Soon they were off, telling stories about games and characters from sixty years ago. There was much laughter, some disputes about who was on third that one inning, and camaraderie among men who grew up in a similar time. Reusse enjoyed it, and bits of his day in Sleepy Eye appeared in three columns.
I wasn’t sure what to expect of our celebration. I hoped whoever came would have a little fun. We were fortunate to have pleasant weather after a week of cold and wind. There were a couple hundred-plus at the ballpark and a hundred for a program later at the Brewery.
Dean had asked his friend Dana Kiecker if he would pitch to would-be Babe Ruths. Dana is the only major leaguer born in Sleepy Eye. He grew up in Fairfax, but we claimed him this day. Dana was amazing, pitching to young, old, boy, girl, athlete, couch-potato. For little kids, he was on his knees tossing underhanded. For current ballplayers he could still bring it from the mound.
With a field full of shaggers and others playing catch, it was a joy-filled scene. Behind the cage, others had a 1919 root beer or a 2022 Grain Belt, standing around talking all things baseball. You could get your picture taken with a life-size Babe-in-Sleepy-Eye sign. Sue provided music. The high school band played, as they had 100 years ago. The mayor welcomed the crowd, as he had in 1922, Mayor Fialka then, Mayor Pelzel now.
If you were there, you know that it was also very much a day to remember Dean Brinkman, who we lost tragically September 5th. Brian Sieve marshalled friends to get a sign made with Dean’s number to go on the outfield fence. At the park and uptown, there were heartfelt remembrances of a great ballplayer and even better person.
A beautiful coda to this occurred the next week. Mike Max and a photographer from WCCO-TV were at the ballpark. Mike was another friend of Dean’s; there were many. He prepared a report that would appear on the 6:00 news the next week.
Word went out one day to watch for that. I was combining corn. I found a feed from WCCO on my phone. When “Maxie’s” story came on, I stopped the combine to watch. It was a well-done, with fun film from that day. It was also a tribute to Mike’s friend Dean, including a touching interview with Sandy Brinkman in the dugout.
As it concluded, I looked up from my phone to see a rainbow right in front of me in the east sky. It was a surprise and stunning. I smiled, while tears formed in my eyes. The rainbow was perfect.
On a mid-October morning I stepped outside. It was cold, and there was death all around me.
Okay, I’m being overly dramatic. It was plants that were in various stages of expiration. The year’s first hard freeze was the Grim Reaper for all things green and rooted.
In recent years, as Pam has had more time, she’s planted a larger number of flowering things each year. Some are in pots, some in the ground. For a few months, it makes for a colorful and cheery environ with our house in the center. It’s a lot of work, especially in a dry year, dragging hoses and carrying watering cans about. It’s not my favorite thing to do. But I love my wife, so don’t grumble much.
This fall, we had a series of light frosts that nipped Pam’s more sensitive fauna the first half of October. The tomato plants in our humble and not-terribly-productive garden gave up the ghost early, but most plants survived. Pam’s favorites got a sheet thrown over them to guard from 31 degrees. A number of flowers about the yard held their color bravely and gamely.
Till this morning. Nature declared the growing season over. Sheets are not adequate to protect from 17 degrees. Everywhere, leaves were curled and brittle looking. Flowers that had aimed at the sun the day before were drooped. Summer would now relinquish any grip she held. Colors were fading, on their way to brown. Brown will be the dominant color around here till white falls to coat the Earth.
Looking around, this was all a perfect metaphor for death. It is that way every year when summer passes away. As I walked, seeing my breath, I thought this year I was not especially needing such a metaphor. I’d been to several wakes lately of people I liked very much and the funeral of a very good friend. Death has been real enough, no need for the poetry of nature to reinforce it.
For Pam’s annuals and a certain number of bugs and crawly things, it is not a metaphor for death; it is death. If they’ve succeeded in the warm months, there are seeds and eggs to carry the species to another growing season. For Pam’s perennials, there is life in the roots. Some critters burrow into the ground, to emerge in the spring. Others are just tough enough to get through it, knowing how to shelter from the worst of blizzards. Nature is amazing in that way.
I enjoy the seasons, but this is my least favorite time on the calendar. The days shorten dramatically from the beginning of harvest chores in September to its conclusion in November. The day shrivels. Throw in a time change, and it feels like we’re living in the Arctic Circle. The sun goes down about middle of the afternoon. At least, it seems that way.
After my 66 times round the sun, I know if I hang in there a month or so, it will change. Right there, on the winter solstice, the light will slowly begin its return. It won’t feel like it at first. But sometime late in January I will be outside, and the sun will be stronger and feel good on my face.
And somewhere out there, in a time that seems immeasurably distant right now, green will reappear. At first, it will only be a tint, then a hue, and finally real green. Life will return. Returning to metaphor, that will be a season of birth, a counterweight to this season of death we find ourselves in.
The farmer in me knows these rhythms. The plants I fussed and worried over for half a year have died. I have harvested their seeds and tilled their stalks and stems into the soil. I will plant seeds into that soil in six months and we’ll do it all over again. If I step back from the day-to-day stresses of markets, weather, breakdowns, etc., I can look at this thing I get to do as a great gift. My work is totally defined by the seasons.
Seeing the seasons as metaphor for life is about the least creative thing I’ve ever written. The notion has been around a while. About 2,500 years ago, someone wrote, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”
That’s in the Old Testament. Seasons-as-metaphor are all over the New Testament and the Christian story. Light comes to lift us out of the dark, a star over Bethlehem to guide us. Christmas was placed with solstice long ago. It was perfect then and remains so. Then there is the crucifixion and resurrection. Death and life. Winter turn to spring. The empty tomb is found on a spring morning, another perfect alignment of spirit and season.
I can know there will be spring, but I still feel melancholy in these short days of little sun. Earlier in the fall, at the end of a workday, I sat on my truck tail gate with a beer, a favorite thing to do. I was looking out over the yard at the barn swallows darting and flitting. I knew they would be leaving soon for their winter home. It occurred to me that some of them won’t be back next year. I felt momentarily sad.
Some day I won’t be here for the spring greening. In that way, I am more like one of Pam’s annuals than her perennials. Back to metaphor, we sprout from this world and grow up toward the sun. We flower, doing the work and touching whatever lives we will. But winter will come, and we will fade, eventually dying into the Earth from which we sprang.
Okay, I’ve taken this metaphor about as far as I can or should. I’m going to turn on all the lights and eat a bowl of ice cream. If I’m going to make it to spring, I will need sustenance.
I
I’ve lost several friends along the way. Most, there was some lead time, time to fill the hole that would be left inside. When death comes suddenly to someone close to you, that work must be done afterwards.
Monday, Labor Day, Dean Brinkman’s friends knew that Dean was in a situation of some risk. By calls and texts, we knew he was having emergency surgery almost two months after open heart surgery. That July 12 surgery had gone well by all reports. Soon after that, Dean was his usual buoyant, joy-filled self.
I surely don’t understand medical matters. But something went terribly wrong. We ask a lot of that organ called the heart, wanting it to operate flawlessly for decades. We take it for granted. Till we don’t.
I was doing stuff outside, when I came into the house to see I’d missed a call from Dean’s cousin Brian. Brian has become a friend, but a call on a Monday afternoon was not normal. A sense of apprehension filled me. I made myself sit down at the kitchen table.
I called Brian and my anxiety proved accurate. Dean had passed from this life. The next moment was more sobbing than words between the two of us. No matter what you know about the biology of death or how you much embrace the hope of Heaven, that moment can best be described as if you’ve been hit by a truck.
My head turned quickly to thoughts of unimaginable pain of Dean’s family. Wife Sandy, kids Alex, Deonna, and Carter, brother Dan, parents Don and Donna came to mind. I know them all; they’re all favorites. Minutes later Dan called, and another call of more tears than talking.
Over the next days were calls among Dean’s friends. There are many. Dean made and kept friends and kept them close better than anyone I know. There were school friends, baseball friends, friends among his patients at Sleepy Eye Chiropractic, friends from everywhere he’d been.
Dean had a large personality, but not a loud one, if that makes sense. He didn’t need attention from a crowd, although I remember well Dean standing on a pitcher’s mound with all eyes on him, him filled with confidence. I’m thinking of the thousand small conversations I saw him have, and in each the other person had his full focus and respect. As boisterous and exuberant as Dean could be, he was a listener. Those qualities rarely match up.
Dean the chiropractor was the same person as the one I loved having a beer with. He could listen, empathize, and then offer advice where it fit. My mom loved Dean and my son loved Dean. My mom overlapped Don and Dean Brinkman as a patient. My son went to him with some hockey ailments. He made my 85-year-old mom smile and my junior high kid giggle.
Dean gathered friends almost like he collected baseball cards. Then he loved to share them. He enjoyed nothing more than to introduce Friend X to Friend Y and make sure everyone felt included. Some years ago, he created an early morning texting group from scattered places, knowing we would become friends. He expanded each of our worlds.
I was talking to a classmate of Dean’s and was a little surprised to find out he was voted class clown. Certainly, he could be the life of a gathering and had a great, full laugh. But I thought of conversations we had on serious matters. Making the world a better place, loving fully a family, matters of faith, he thought about these like he thought about baseball strategy. As much as he made me laugh, he made me think.
When you lose a friend, you lose the odd and sometimes goofy memories you shared. Certain phrases, glances, situations when you knew you were thinking the same thing: those are all broken in half, with a piece gone missing.
No more going over to Dean’s to see what was in the Fridge of Many Flavors. That’s what I dubbed his extra refrigerator with its collection of different beers. The Thursday before his death, I stopped over to have one out on his patio. As was usual, time was spent visiting with bikers and walkers passing by on the street which is also the bike trail right there. A friend often said, “Dean knows everybody.” It wasn’t far from the truth.
We talked about the planning for the Babe Ruth’s visit to Sleepy Eye centennial. We’re celebrating that with events on October 15th. You shouldn’t be surprised to know Dean was a lead force in organizing that, pulling from his many contacts. Some of us are going to have to pick up the pieces now. I have a feeling our Babe Ruth Day is going to double as a Dean Brinkman Tribute. Which seems perfect.
Dean filled in this space through the years covering columns when I was busy with farm work. We always enjoyed working on those. Once he came upon a story or idea he wanted to write, the words came tumbling out of him. It wasn’t unlike talking to him when he was excited about something. Your brain had to race to keep up. He would send me a draft, and I would have to whip it into publishing shape. I always had to remind him that we needed to slice his tome into paragraphs.
Dean was more emotive a writer than me and connected well with readers. He liked to wander back to his childhood in a way that lots of us could go back to our own. He would admit he was blessed with a good home and parents, and later wife and kids. He wrote in a way to make us all appreciate those parts of our lives.
When Dean’s obit was published, I texted to friends, “A big life, well lived.” I felt honored to know him. I’m not much for Heaven metaphors, but this came to me:
On the basepaths of life, I’m not sure where I am. At 66, if I’m lucky, I’m between second and third with some years ahead of me. So, I don’t know when. But Dean, I’ll see you at home.
I was up in the Cities on a recent Saturday. It was my first Minnesota United soccer match at Allianz Field. I learned a bit about soccer when son Ezra played. I know the playing field is called a pitch. I kind of figured out offsides but not really stoppage time.
It was pleasant weather and a close game that our Loons won 2 to 1.
Baseball will always be my first love, but I can begin to see why soccer is the planet’s favorite. The steady play with repeated ebbs and flows had 19,000 of us intent on the action.
Allianz Field was as advertised, a place dedicated to this single activity, every inch of it for the game and its fans. Plus, no commercial timeouts!
I said I was in the Cities. It was St. Paul actually. As long as my consciousness goes back, I’ve lumped Minneapolis, St. Paul, suburbs, and exurbs together and called them the “Cities.”
Later as I left the Cities, driving past cornfields, I thought about cities, small c. The experience I’d just enjoyed was, by definition, an urban experience. Things like pro sports stadiums aren’t built in small towns. They require a certain population to sustain them.
The same is true for charming Target Field. But it’s not just sports venues that feed off a large number of human beings. Things like Orchestra Hall, Minnesota Zoo, the airport, even the State Fair couldn’t sprout in smaller cities.
In addition, there are the top-end medical facilities that we’ve all been to with family in the Twin Cities. I’m glad the Cities is there, or are there. Minneapolis, St. Paul and the burbs with their attractions are about 100 miles away. It’s a day trip I’ve done many times.
As I write, looking out at a soybean field, I enjoy where I live. I spent two years of college in the Twin Cities, and it wasn’t a great fit for this farm kid. For someone who’d grown up with cows for neighbors, hearing sirens out my open window at all hours was discomforting.
Of course, not everyone has a farm to come back to. Many classmates and friends did end up in the Cities or some city. That makes sense; that’s where the jobs are. I’ve written before about how our primary export from here isn’t crops or livestock. Rather, it has been generations of talented kids who couldn’t stay down on the farm once they had seen Paris, to paraphrase the World War I era song.
When I was younger, it seemed that everyone I met from the metro area was a generation or two removed from a farm. (For Black people, that would be a generation or two removed from the South, and one or two further back to slavery. I guess that’s “getting off the farm” in a different way.)
My observation was a generalization. But it does indicate the flow of people from the country to the city that has been a global trend since the Industrial Revolution. Raising up and sending off young people to good jobs in the city is one way rural and urban complement each other.
“We grow food that they eat,” is another, also part of a basic formula that exists around the world.
Our commodities need markets. “Markets” is another word for people.
Much has been made lately about a rural/urban divide. That’s not new. It seems to re-create itself every generation. I interned at the state Capitol in 1975. Then, many issues divided themselves by metro and outstate. That was more defining than party in the ’70s.
Of course, now everything is split by party, and the parties have sorted themselves geographically. Urban Republicans and rural Democrats are nearly extinct.
There has always been a strain of tension between city and country. But as with all things in our internet-connected, social media-laced world, it’s risen to a higher temperature.
Here in Minnesota, COVID-19 and the George Floyd murder came together to raise fevers on all sides of every divide. Rural/urban was not immune.
We all know people who talk about cities with disdain, as if they are some kind of enemy. Urban elites are supposedly out to steal our children’s minds and warp our culture. It is as if the guardians of truth and goodness all live outside the 494/694 loop.
No doubt there are those in the city who look at us as backwards and unsophisticated.
These are stereotypes that have existed forever. But now they’ve been baked into our politics in an unhealthy way. There are people on both sides of the urban/rural line fence who drip with venom.
Tangled in the barbed wire of politics is the notion that cities are rife with crime, dangerous places for innocent country folk like us. That is being used as a bludgeon by certain politicians to scare up votes. It’s always been true that it’s best to avoid times and places that a modicum of common sense should inform you about. But to speak of every city as Sodom and Gomorrah is unhelpful and untruthful.
Minneapolis is not the hellhole some politicians want us to believe.
It is as if there are those in the outstate who want the metro to fail, as if that proves some kind of moral superiority.
For most of us who enjoy a Twins game, play at the Guthrie or lunch at a funky urban diner, we are rooting for our city cousins.
“We all do better when we all do better,” may be a political slogan, but there is truth in it.
We’ve come round to the 160th anniversary of the U. S.-Dakota War of 1862. It has had that name in recent decades. For years it was called the “Indian Uprising,” or less delicately, the “Indian Massacre.”
(I’m not sure it’s right to say anyone really “wins” a war. Even the winners have bodies to bury and young men left to live lives without limbs. Not to mention minds saddled with PTSD.)
Meanwhile the “losers” 160 years ago were forced to various camps and finally on to reservations, places not of their choosing. Reservations were invariably placed on the least desirable land. Their ancestors have since by every measure been among the poorest, least healthy, with the most limited opportunities of any Americans.
Part of losing was also having 38 men hung in Mankato the day after Christmas, 1862. We know a few of those were innocent, but public passion demanded revenge more than justice.
For a long time, the anniversary of these events was cause for great celebration. New Ulm was the site of two battles. For years, that city hosted a parade, concerts, a grand banquet, ball games and a carnival on the anniversary. Costumed actors reenacting the fighting delighted crowds.
A century ago, the New Ulm Review reported: “The big Home Coming celebration and Indian Massacre anniversary program will commemorate the trying days of 1862 when so many of the earliest settlers were massacred by the Indians.”
The Brown County Journal stated: “Dances will be held at Turner Hall, the Armory and at Riverside Park. Famous orchestras have been secured and will whoop ‘er up.”
“We shall never forget” was an anthem in New Ulm. Of course, that meant not forgetting the settlers. The Natives in the story were also never to be forgotten but certainly not remembered with honor or sympathy.
In my lifetime, there has been a shift in the interpretation of what transpired those hot days of August 1862. I suspect that even amid the festivities 100 years ago, there were some who quietly wondered what desperation compelled the native warriors to strike out as they did. Now, whooping ‘er up has been replaced by more reflective observances.
There were specific hardships the Indian people felt that summer. There was hunger, which is always strong incentive to action. Payments from the United States were late or stolen by corrupt officials. Andrew Myrick, trader at the Lower Sioux Agency, famously said, “So far as I am concerned, if they are hungry let them eat grass or their own dung.” Try to imagine being told that when your children are starving.
Whatever the situation was in the Minnesota River Valley needs also be seen in the larger picture of treatment of the Natives over two centuries. Inch by inch, the people who were here were displaced by those who came. It may not be exactly correct to say that our ancestors “took” the land from people who were here. The Natives didn’t own it the way we do with a title and a deed. But they were here raising children, living off the bounty of the land, in communities.
And then they weren’t.
I wrote a few years ago about the phenomenon where humans see other humans as being lesser. I was writing then trying to understand slavery. How does one rationalize that a set of people can be owned and kept like livestock? I couldn’t answer my question.
Reading early newspapers from this area, one is struck by the same phenomenon. These were “savages and primitives” who had to be removed so we could create a civilized nation. I’m sure there were here and there white people who saw the humanity in these darker skinned people. But more saw the redskins as something to be removed, like an undesirable species.
Pope Francis was recently in Canada. With humility and decency, he apologized for the church’s involvement in schools that tried to indoctrinate Indian children to Western culture. Of course, here in our country, Native people were always given the option of becoming just like the white European settlers. As Christian farmers, they’d be accepted. It was a narrow path to redemption.
There is much angst about revisionist history. It is as if once written, we dare not challenge the first drafts of history. That’s crazy. Thank God we can grow in our understanding of the past. Of course, the first drafts were invariably written by white men in positions of power.
The notion that history is etched in impermeable stone has never been correct. We always struggle to understand things given the small and limited view each of us has. Look at the widely different versions of what happened Jan. 6, 2021. And we all watched that live.
Here on this 160th anniversary, we no longer “celebrate” those days that were filled with fear and terror. Is “commemorate” the right word? Maybe just “remembering’ is all we can do.
The U. S.-Dakota War was a tremendously sad event. Of course, many of those killed were innocent of any responsibility. That is often the case in war. We just passed the anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No one knows the exact number killed in that different August, likely more than 200,000. It was another war our side “won,” which is best remembered somberly and maybe prayerfully.
Innocents were killed, and a people were vanquished 160 years ago. No, we won’t celebrate.
Those who know me, know I’ve made that day 1922 into a bit of a cottage industry. I’ve researched it, written about it, celebrated it, and even showed up in a couple videos. Now a group is making plans to commemorate the centennial of Ruth’s visit to our little town on Saturday, Oct. 15.
In the 1990s, I was doing research for the Brown County Historical Society on baseball in the county. I began to think more about that day. He was baseball’s biggest star when baseball was the national pastime, a giant celebrity in early days of national media.
More than that, the ballpark where Ruth played is still a ballpark. You can stand at home plate in Sleepy Eye and pretend to be Babe Ruth. I’ve done it.
The visit by the Yankee stars was part of a 14-game barnstorming tour after the 1922 World Series. Omaha, Kansas City, Denver – Sleepy Eye. Local businessmen made a connection with Ruth’s agent, Christy Walsh to promote Sleepy Eye and perhaps turn a profit.
In 1992, I talked to four men who were at the game.
Then came the serendipitous discovery of Len Youngman, the little boy peeking around Meusel in the photo. Len was 104 and had vivid recall of playing with friends out past the outfield. Remarkably a home run Ruth hit rolled to him which he still had. That was documented nicely by Channel 11’s Boyd Huppert, one of his Land of 10,000 Stories, easy to find on YouTube.
We visited Len three times before he died in 2018. Ironically, Len passed on the anniversary of Ruth’s visit to town.
So how does that get me to Detroit? A few years ago, we learned about an annual celebration of Babe Ruth’s birthday at Nemo’s Bar. It is a fairly random event. Ruth played at old Tiger Stadium, blocks from Nemo’s. Otherwise, he had no special connection to Detroit.
In 1987, Tom Derry hung out at a small bar owned by a feisty older woman, Ethel Thompson. There was juke box with a version of Happy Birthday that Ethel hated. So of course, Tom and his friends had to play it. They began digging up celebrities birthdays as an excuse to have everyone sing along. The list was heavy on baseball players as Tom was a fan.
Babe Ruth’s birthday grew to a special status. Ethel passed away, and Babe’s party shifted around, settling at Nemo’s. It became a celebration of all things baseball.
Our group talked about going someday. When we thought about the centennial of Ruth’s visit, it occurred this might be the year to go.
It really doesn’t make sense to fly to Detroit for one night to attend a birthday party for a deceased baseball star. But shouldn’t we do things that don’t make sense a couple times in our lives?
In February, my friend, Scott Surprenant, researched cheap flights to Detroit for April 30. He assured me we would leave Saturday early, and I would be back on the tractor by noon Sunday.
Scott is persuasive. In 2018, it was Scott who challenged Dean Brinkman and I to drive up to the Iron Range to visit Len Youngman: “Is this beer talk, or are we going to do it?”
Throwing down the gauntlet again, I agreed to our junket to Detroit. It turned out it was too wet to be in the field anyway, so nothing lost.
Joining us was Keith Olsen. who works with Scott at Mathiowetz Construction. Keith is not as rabid a baseball fan as Scott and I are, but he enjoys the idea of doing slightly crazy things. So, the three of us headed to the airport at 4 a.m. Maybe it was more than slightly crazy.
Things went smoothly, which is not always the case with traveling. We found ourselves at the hotel by early afternoon, walking distance to Nemo’s. It was also walkable to old Tiger Stadium and new Comerica Park, so we set off to see those before the party.
The playing field of Tiger Stadium has been preserved, although most of the bleachers have been torn down. It’s become home to local teams. There was a junior college game that afternoon. We watched a couple innings, visiting with parents and girlfriends who attend those kinds of games.
A hike away is Comerica Park. The Tigers were on the road, but a high school showcase meant there was a game there, too. Again, we watched a couple innings, visiting with players’ family. If you are a baseball fan, being able to watch ball on both those fields, new and old, was good fortune times two.
Then it was off to Nemo’s. Scott had messaged Tom that we were coming, and he was excited to greet us. We were mini-celebrities there with our 100-year-old story of Babe’s visit to Sleepy Eye. We didn’t win the award for traveling the furthest, as a fan from Germany beat us. All in all, I ate too many hot dogs, drank too many beers, and had too much fun visiting with dozens of people who have a love of baseball in common. If you are a fan, you know that is all you need to spark a friendship.
So, keep an hour open Oct. 15 to celebrate a bit of Sleepy Eye history.
Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye where he lives with his wife, Pam.
Say a tree has become overgrown with a large branch hanging over our house. You and I have to decide what to do about it. We go out and stand in front of a tree. If one of us says that’s a tree and the other one says that’s a cat, we might have a difficult time fixing our problem. Or if one of us says it’s a good tree, and the other says it’s an evil tree, that could also get in our way of coming up with a solution.
The above paragraph is silly. But it illustrates what happens if we can’t agree on simple facts. A lot of us fear that is happening in America today.
Today, anyone with a phone has access to literally all the knowledge mankind has accumulated. I can find everything from translations of ancient documents to news happening this instant in Beijing. Early in the internet era, there was a pleasant notion that this could be a golden time for humanity. Armed with information we all shared, this great democratization of knowledge, we could cooperate to solve problems around the globe.
But not if we can’t agree a tree’s a tree.
Discerning fact shouldn’t be difficult if we have all the information in front of us, right? Wrong, as we’ve come to find out. On issues as far-ranging as COVID-19, climate change and a certain recent election, we find “facts” that are absolutely opposite. Tree, cat. How in the world can we solve a problem or find the best way forward in that environment?
On Monday, in Sleepy Eye, a two-hour seminar will address just that. “Evaluating the News” will be an analysis of how to sort out mistruths and false information as it comes to us in media today. It will be led by LeRoy Harris. Harris is the programming and technology services librarian at the New Ulm Public Library.
Early in the spring, a group of local Farmers Union and NFO members were talking about these issues. We occasionally hold informational meetings around Brown County, usually focused on some farm issue. We talked about all the difficult conversations we’ve had in recent years with friends, neighbors, and family. And how often we can’t even agree on the most basic facts. That ends with us talking around, over, and through each other, but not with or to each other.
Our group’s president, Jerome Graff ,wondered whether we couldn’t offer something useful addressing that dilemma. I remembered reading about a series of talks in New Ulm last winter. Some friends had gone and were impressed with the presenter and what he presented.
I reached out to Harris. At first, he was understandably unsure about taking a five-part seminar and compressing it to an evening. He agreed, though, and his effort at distilling and condensing “Evaluating the News” to two hours are available to the public Monday night.
From a promotion for that: “Join us for a no-holds-barred analysis of fact checking, click bait, fake news, misinformation, and bias; including methods for sifting through information and separating facts from fiction.”
It is serendipitous that just as our group was thinking on this topic, Harris was right here in Brown County.
It is free and open to the public, beginning at 7 p.m. It is at the Sleepy Eye Community Center, 115 2nd Ave. NE, behind the chamber office. (On the city’s website, it is noted that the Community Center is “not the Event Center.” Apparently, our centers are regularly confused.)
We’ve been careful to point out that this is not a conservative or liberal or right or left effort. We can’t give up on the idea that there is truth and there are facts. That idea itself has taken a beating the last few years and might be on life support. LeRoy says there are no perfect sources of news. Recognizing that is a good first step.
That doesn’t mean we need to berate and bash the media. I’ve known a number of members of the fourth estate, and they work hard at their craft and try to be fair. In The World That I Grew Up In, those newspapers and television networks that I referred to were tightly edited and competed to have the facts.
That’s ancient history. There aren’t many Lou Grants in this media landscape. We must be our own Lou Grants.
If you are watching Fox News or MSNBC more than an hour a day, you might be in some peril. While there are reporters at those networks, most of their schedule is taken by opinion mongers. If you listen to anything long enough, you can become convinced that a tree is a cat.
Then there are algorithms. That allows whatever media you use to target things at you, just you. If you hate Biden, you get an increasing flow of Biden is bad, and if you hate Trump, you get an increasing flow of Trump is bad. Social media makes money by getting your eyes and time. It doesn’t care about your brain, much less your soul.
Why does this matter? I think it behooves all of us as citizens in a democracy to be responsible with our opinions and for sure our votes. We can’t be if we let ourselves be manipulated. It is a type of laziness to let others control our thinking.
Seeking truth is work. Vary your sources. Listen to the other side. Honestly respect them. Don’t be incendiary. There are already enough people with raised voices.
We still refer to this as the American experiment. Two centuries ago, George Washington said, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican form of government, are staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
It is on us right now to pass the fire to the future. We must do the work of seeking truth.
Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye where he lives with his wife, Pam.
Fiftieth anniversaries are often a reason to celebrate. Usually there’s punch and coffee with cookies, maybe cupcakes.
I’m not sure that will happen in this case: The Brown County Sanitary Landfill opened for “business” the summer of 1972. Happy birthday landfill!
I’ve made a couple trips there this summer, as my wife and I are cleaning out some stuff. Pam went along the last time; she had never been there.
I told someone that’s our idea of a date now.
In the past, I took a kid or two along, and that was a great adventure. I’m sure we weren’t supposed to be doing this, but if there were no other trucks dumping, we’d look around at the pile.
Once, we found a perfectly good toy horse in the rubble. It came home with us, forever to be named “Landfill Pony.”
The staff out there is always friendly and funny. A sense of humor may come from spending your working hours seeing the discards from every farm, business and home of Brown County. It’s kind of the seamy underside of a modern society. Or at least its junky underside.
Going back half a century, I’m sure the Legislature had in mind some level of consistency in handling of waste across the state by mandating counties to have a landfill. Before then, I suspect things were getting thrown, buried, or piled up in all sorts of random and haphazard settings.
I recall Sleepy Eye’s city dump being on the edge of town out the direction of our farm. I remember hearing my dad talking about what the rats would do that summer. We were close enough to have visitors from that rodent community.
I remember hearing as a kid that sometimes they migrated in large packs. Rat packs. I had a couple nightmares with that image in my head.
I can’t say our family’s efforts at waste management were especially enlightened, either. When I was young, we piled garbage on the edge of the grove. Every so often my dad would load it on the truck. We’d haul it somewhere south of here, where we shoveled it down a ravine along the Cottonwood River. Looking down there, we weren’t the only ones using that method of disposal.
When I was older, we had a pit that doubled as a morgue for dead chickens and refuse site for our house garbage. I guess that was an improvement. The good news is that was glass and metal back then. Paper went in the burn barrel. Plastics weren’t as omnipresent as they were to become.
Now when I look into the giant pit at the landfill, plastic-this and plastic-that make up the majority of the stuff in there. As wonderful as plastic is to store food, package things to ship, and a million other uses, we know what an environmental nightmare it has become. Long after our species has become extinct or moved to another solar system, the pop bottle I forgot to recycle will be buried there in Stark Township, leaching toxic crud for millennia.
Speaking of space, the only thing to compare the landfill to is a bizarre gaping lunar landscape. But it’s not a barren, colorless one. When you drive out to the spot where you dump, you look down into a great canyon with mountainsides of garbage. It’s a weird collage of our stuff with all sorts of colors, drab and bright.
It’s another matter when you get close enough to offload your own contribution to the pile. Up close, the collage becomes individual items. A mattress, an empty toy box, a broken hose, a cereal box. It all has a story. Born in a factory, shipped to a store, bought, and used by one of us, now it’s here to be buried. No funeral or visitation planned.
For most of us, it’s buried and forgotten as we move on to filling our next dumpster. For Mathiowetz Construction Company and county staff in charge out there, they don’t have the luxury of “out of sight, out of mind.” It is extremely regulated and monitored with test wells around it.
I’m glad for that. I know there is a popular attitude among some that opposes regulations and government oversight in general. I don’t want to live in their world, and I don’t really think they would, either. I like the idea that someone cares what might be leaching from the landfill and getting into the water my grandchild will drink.
I have to admit, it can be depressing going out there. This incredible giant pile is just from 25,000 of us who live in Brown County.
What in the world does the landfill for Chicago look like?
Or Mexico City?
There are environmental challenges every where we look. Disposing of our crap isn’t even at the top of the list. Safe water and healthy soils are more immediate concerns, since we need those to live every day.
Global warming overwhelms all others as we look to the future. Climate change is the existential threat to Earth and every species upon it. We are fools to ignore that.
We need, each of us, to do our little piece. While we need to keep our eye on the big issues, there is value in trying to starve the landfill. Reducing our contribution to that is part of treading lightly on this planet. After all, as we hurdle toward nine billion of us sharing this place, that should be our goal. To do as little damage as we can and leave as little behind as possible.
Creation is after all the Creator’s. We borrow it for a short time.
What if each of us used one less plastic bag a week?
Reuse a bag or bundle things together. Or take two trips to the car. Maybe you’ve got a bigger, better idea to send less stuff to the Brown County Sanitary Landfill.
Let’s do it. Consider it a 50th birthday present to the old girl.
Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye where he lives with his wife, Pam.
Levi, Hailey and Gizmo
Sleepy Eye’s wonderful lake/bike trail goes through Allison Park on the south side. Alongside the trail is a faded ten-foot metal merry-go-round. It had six bright colors fanning out from its center long ago. There is more rust than color now. It’s wobbly and not really level.
It’s the type you used to see in every school yard and town park. I’ve been to Allison Park many times as a kid, father, and grandfather, but I don’t remember when this merry-go-round was put in. It’s at least a few decades old.
My grandson is an age where we can easily while away a couple of hours at a park. If there’s another kid to play with, it could be all day. Modern playgrounds have soft rubbery surfaces and kid-safe plastic coverings. A lot of thought has gone into making playgrounds safe. There are less places a kid can fall from and less hard edges for a kid to cut themselves or break a tooth.
The venerable merry-go-round in Sleepy Eye is definitely “old school,” a remnant from the generation of playground equipment that was metal and wood. Scraped knees, slivers, bloody lips were all common. Broken collarbones and stitches were not unheard of.
If you are my age, you probably got hurt at a playground. There were more kids back then from big families. I don’t want to say we were expendable. That’s not exactly right, but some cuts and bruises were expected. Those tall slides without sides, metal jungle gyms and monkey bars, swings without harnesses that went twenty feet in the air: it was easy for laughter to turn to tears in a split second.
Sleepy Eye’s aging merry-go-round looks innocent enough tucked between the trees and shelters. But I can see that sometime, someone is going to look at it, and decide it’s antiquated look and mildly dangerous nature mean it should go to metal recycling. Maybe I’ll spearhead a movement to Save the Merry-Go-Round. (I wasn’t very successful with a certain Save the Golf Course effort a few years ago.)
A while back, I came across a small merry-go-round that was going unused in some trees and brush by an old park. It seemed to need a home. I had Donny Haala sandblast and paint it and found a spot for it in the orchard. I dug a hole, cemented in the center pipe, and carefully set it on with the loader.
Pam was not wildly excited by it, but she has tolerated my oddball ideas. You can see it pictured here. It is good for getting my grandson dizzy when he visits. And me if I try to go round with him.
Speaking of Pam, I noticed something during the raising of our three kids. She was more cautious than I was. I think Anna, Abby, and Ezra would concur. At an early age they learned that if they wanted to do something slightly risky, they knew to ask me for permission.
I took Pam’s approach to be a mom-thing. I am glad Pam was the way she was. Her careful and prudent approach was a necessary counterbalance to my mild recklessness. It was one of many ways we offered our children two ways to see the world.
There are many successful single parents. But there are advantages to a mom and a dad. Having two distinct views about everything has value. For all the times Pam and I drove each other nuts, I can’t imagine raising kids alone.
I can picture a 5-year-old Abby climbing towards the edge of cliff on the North Shore to get a better look at the Lake Superior. Glances went from Mom to Dad as her mind worked the situation.
“Is Mom going to say anything?
I’ll just keep looking at Dad. He understands why I need to climb out here.”
Now as a grown-up, Abby makes her way in occasional precarious situations as part of her job with the United Nations, I’m glad she got of a dose of her mom’s cautiousness. She has some risk-taker in her. I might get blame for that.
That is part of every childhood: learning the grasp of what is safe and what is not, knowing limits and understanding boundaries, when to take chances and when to step back. It’s primarily the work of parents to develop that. But in the sense of it taking a village, we all have roles. When we are in a store and see a small child has briefly moved out of their parent’s sight, we instinctively know to watch that child for a moment.
When a society functions well, there are eyes on children everywhere they go, making sure they don’t run out into traffic or get too close to water. It is the mark of a healthy community when all care about the next generation, even if they aren’t kin.
That’s what is so horrific about child abuse. It is the ultimate betrayal. Not only to a single innocent child. But to the entire society around that child. Sad and ill consequences of such harmful behavior will outlast the perpetrator, decades into the future.
Every childhood is unique and to be valued and protected by those around the child. Much has been made recently of guarding children from certain truths. According to some, we are to keep them from the knowledge that there are people different than them. And that our country is not a perfect place. I think they do a disservice to young people.
On the other hand, I would like to see more done to prevent children from physical harm. Specifically, from guns, now the leading cause of death among children. That’s embarrassing for our country. There is no other place on Earth where it is this easy to own weapons. More children are dying every day from accidental shootings and domestic fights.
I wrote last time about the Texas school shooting. Many comments made me to know I am not alone in this. If we care about children, but refuse to put any limits on guns, we are fooling ourselves. Unfortunately, we are not fooling the dead children. Children who will never be able to ride a merry-go-round again.
“Socks or underwear, maybe a nice tie.”
That was the answer I got when I didn’t have all my adult teeth, when I’d ask, “Dad, what would you like for Father’s Day?”
I went along with the answer to what I thought was my sneaky question and usually got my hero socks or underwear or maybe a nice clip-on tie.
I recall thinking, “What a crappy gift to want for your big day! Oh well, he’s special and I don’t want to get him something he doesn’t like.”
“I’m gonna be like you, Dad. You know I’m gonna be like you.”
It took me years to figure out why he wanted those things, and that what he really wanted he already had: the woman of his dreams and a family.
Back then, I learned so many lessons through unconditional love and unspoken words.
Things like curfews: “Dad/Mom, everyone gets to stay out after midnight!”
Events or places: “Mom/Dad everybody will be there! Why can’t I go?”
And things: “Why can’t we have that?”
Sound familiar?
Many times, I didn’t want to know what my parents thought was right for me. Time and again, I went stomping off in frustration through my tweens and teens thinking, “You guys are so old-fashioned!”
“What I’d really like, dad, is to borrow the car keys. See you later, can I have them please?”
Answers. They don’t always come when we want them. Even we think we have the answers, they can change or be selfishly misunderstood. Their meaning can come years later.
I am pretty sure that I’m not the only dad who’s had conversations with God during that period of time, “BC” – Before Children. I prayed fervently for a healthy pregnancy for my wife, a healthy delivery and child. I made promises with
God.
My kids know that no matter when Harry Chapin’s song “Cat’s in the Cradle” comes on, I stop and listen. It is my anti-song since my children were born. I try not to be like the dad in the song. You may have recognized the italicized lyrics here.
The song’s narrator is a father, who after his son’s birth is repeatedly unable to spend time with him due to his job. Despite his son looking up to him and saying he will grow up to be just like his father. After years of not being able to “find the time,” the son indeed grows up to be just like the father.
In 1989, my girlfriend (now wife) and I went to the movie “Field of Dreams.” I remember thinking, “What a great baseball movie!” I love that movie and it’s iconic quote from Terrence Mann telling Ray Kinsella, “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”
Years later, on a Father’s Day weekend, my 14-year-old son and I went to Dyersville to “have a catch” at the “25th Anniversary of Field of Dreams Reunion.” Later in the evening, we watched the movie sitting on the right field grass about “a bunt single” in front of Kevin Costner and his family.
We experienced the
real meaning of that movie. It is a wonderful consanguinity of father and son/daughter which happens to have baseball in it. Now, I love that movie for a whole different reason.
Recently, I read an unfeigned Instagram post from “greatestshowondirt.” The writer tied in his love for baseball with memories from yesteryear and the impact of dad and grandpa on his life.
Nothing lasts forever. And good times go away. But there’s a beauty in these times disappearing. It allows us to truly appreciate them, which I believe allows us to live with more purpose today.
To think I could be to someone else what my dad and grandpa were to me. I could one day be the old guy watching baseball with his grandkids. I could be the guy with the dirty old truck who works 12-hour days and comes home and plays catch with his son and daughter. I would never know the joys of this if I didn’t once experience it and lose it.
I’m OK with nothing good lasting forever. I’m OK with never watching a game with grandpa again. And I’m OK with never playing catch with my dad in the backyard again. Because I can see now, and know I can pass that same feeling along to someone else. Because it’s perfect and we need to share it.
“My son turned 10 just the other day. He said, thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let’s play.”
It’s so simple. It was never about my parents on Father’s or Mother’s Day. Their happiness was their family.
I understand lessons lived and learned. Curfews set. Events not attended. Things not purchased. All of this because of love not necessarily being on time. The meaning came later.
There will come a day when I can’t physically be here to be Dad. Many of you have lost your dad, but I sure hope you have your dad with you every day in lesson, example and spirit – even those times that you may have learned how “not” to parent. Nobody said they were perfect.
As it turns out, I’ve lived my life opposite of the father that Harry Chapin sang about. I’m lucky enough to have lived like my dad. I have the woman of my dreams and three children.
Like my father, I wanted to be “Dad,” and I want what’s best for my children. I don’t need to be the World’s Greatest Dad. I just need to be the greatest dad to my kids.
All their lives, my children know that I only wanted a homemade card for a Father’s Day gift. I still have them all. My Father’s Day gift never came on Father’s Day. It is not a present I can unwrap. I don’t want Hallmark to tell me in so many words.
Instead, the gift came with each of my children’s births. Something the creator blessed to Sandy and I. Prayers answered.
This Father’s Day, please count your blessings. Be thankful for all forms of father figures. Also, as the father you are and have yet to be. Whether or not they are here today, remember father figures in lesson, example, and spirit.
And kids, bring me a homemade card.
“But we will get together then. You know we’ll have a good time then.”
Socks and underwear, I have a dresser drawer full of them. Every time I look in there, I realize I have a lifetime of memories for what they really mean. Thanks Dad. Turns out they weren’t a crappy gift after all.
