Life on the Eights

 Last week I became 68 years old. Three score and eight. My grandaddy always said "I just want my three score and ten, like it says in the Bible" He got a lot more than that.

Anyway, looking back on the eights, here goes. Roughly as I told it to my kids and their kids after blowing out 68 candles (true). 

When I was eight it was 1964. I lived in Pensacola.  3rd grade. Had a younger brother who was almost six, and a new baby brother. I think my dreams/plans in life were vaguely to 1) be a good Christian 2) Have a good family 3)Not be poor 4)Be somebody. 5) Play for the New York Yankees. Simple difficult goals. 

When I was 18 it was 1974 and I had graduated from HS and moved to St. Petersburg Florida. Sacked groceries at Publix in the Northeast Shopping Center. Started college in early 75. 

From 74-84 I sold Kirby vacuum cleaners door to door. Sold Bibles and kids books door to door. Sacked groceries. Ran a gas station at night. Maintenance crew and dining room crew in college. Landscaping. Day Camp Counselor. Sold Iinsurance. Sold Investments. 

In 1984 I was 28 and one of the toughest periods of my life, thus far, was over. The Dark Years were past. I had written my last hot check. There was a little money in the bank and I owned my first house. Finally found something I could do, which was investment stuff. Started by selling it, later managed it. I was married and my oldest child was four. This was the year I paid off my $2000 student loan, $30 at a time. Doesn't seem like much until you're three months behind and the college is getting ready to turn you over to a collection agency. I was very involved in numerous political campaigns. 

In 1994 I was 38 and lived in St. Louis. My wife Robin and I now have three children. Daughter 14, son 8, daughter 2. A good happy time. My maternal grandparents and my parents were still alive. I had earned a difficult professional designation and had some letters after my name on my business card. Since 1984 a man I knew had been elected President and I had been a delegate to the national convention of our shared political party. Robin and I went to a Christmas party at the White House.  Around this time I stopped my political stuff and focused on family and career. The Soviet Union, that nemesis that had me scurrying under my desk in grammar school, was no more

In 2004 I was 48 and lived in Minneapolis. Career events I did not anticipate sent me north. It was wonderful, eventually. By this time my grandparents and my father had died. My oldest daughter was in Law School. my son was in college and my youngest daughter was in middle school. I was traveling a lot for work and for a professional organization of the investment world. 

In 2014 I was 58 and lived outside Minneapolis, on a lake and thinking about retirement. My son was married and I was a grandfather. My youngest brother had just finished year one of a five year war against cancer. 

In 2024 I am 68. My three children are all happily married. I have 5 grandchildren. I am even more happily married than my children for I have been able to convince a wonderful woman to stay with me for 45 years!!! I have joined the Catholic Church. I am retired. I play the banjo. My youngest brother has died of cancer (One might say the cancer beat him. Welcomed into the glory of his heavenly Father, I doubt he would put it that way.) As I write this I am canning green beans from my garden. 

Eclipse

 Saw the eclipse on April 8th. Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Amazing. No clouds. Clear sky. Totality for 4+ minutes. 

The advice on viewing was constant. 'Don't look at it or you'll go blind". This is true but something in me wanted to look at it, just to be sure. And so did my four year old grandson, Ben. Like his granddad, he did sneak a peek, but just a quick one and survived, as did I. 

Something about the way that advice is given. You are only told not to stare at the sun when an eclipse is upcoming. I guess that means that we assume people are smart enough on normal days, but somehow turn stupid under the power of the eclipse. 

On a bright sunny day, Moms of the current age might call out to their kids, "put on sunscreen", "don't stay out too long", "drink plenty of water", (in the 60s they said none of these) but she will never cry "Don't Stare at the Sun!!!"

Independence Days Remembered Part II

In looking back over the years the thing that stands out from my youth is the absence of big fireworks displays. Growing up in Florida I do not recall ever going to a big fireworks event ever. That was something we saw on TV, but never in person. It's not that we didn't go, it just didn't happen. There were plenty of sparklers and firecrackers, cherry bombs and M80s, buzzing things and flying things, things that exploded and things that soared. But none of the really big stuff. 

Thus, I have no big kid memories of the 4th. Except for the time that Bill Leap and I soaked a bunch of cattails in gasoline and lit them as torches. I was about 13 or so. We soaked them for a week and they made a nice display in his back yard. 

Others. As an adult around 1982 I helped fire off the big stuff for the Pine Bluff Arkansas Jaycees event. It was fun launching them and seeing the fear and excitement on the face of my toddler daughter. 

Mid 90s. Richmond Virginia, with friends. One of the kids got sick, I recall. 

Mid 90's St. Louis. Watching at eye level from a conference room in the Boatmen's Bank building with colleagues and our families. 

2005 Approx. Lake Minnetonka. Excelsior Minnesota. Nice display and I remember the traffic and parking being not near as bad as expected. 

2010 I was in Buenos Aires on July 4th. Odd to be somewhere when this is just another day. 

2022 I better be able to remember last year's. Watched a nice display sitting in the back of my now gone Ford F150 with my wife. Parking lot of target store in Waconia, MN. 

Note: As I was writing this I recalled writing a similar post in the past. Here it is. https://midnightdiner.blogspot.com/2011/07/independence-days-remembered.html

Tranquility in the Airport Lounge

 Amex Lounge, Minneapolis Airport. 

Tranquility to me is simply being in a place that you don't want to leave. An airport lounge is usually not such a place. But on this day I am sitting alone, writing, drinking coffee, watching the day unfold undisturbed. I am on a trip to  Charlotte to wrap up a family business matter. It is without controversy or messiness. It is unfolding just as it was supposed to. Nearby are people to assist me with my travels but they keep their distance and are silent. If you were sitting across from me I would speak this now: "I could stay here all day". 

So as I write I am draw to other times and places when I had this same sort of sense, that temporary well-beingness. I know this will pass but it was worth the wait. This overwhelming desire that the day last very very long. 

Other times...

Once when sitting in the parking lot of a Best Western in Oregon. Cigar and crossword puzzle in hand. Why this always comes to mind is lost to me. 

An evening with good friends at Cajun's Wharf restaurant in Arkansas. 1980's. 

Fishing with my oldest daughter in the dawn of her adulthood. 

On the couch with my wife, watching the snow fall. Any winter. 

Listening to Jack Buck call a Cardinals game. Cigar. Back deck of my brother Kevin's house. Early 2010s. 

Driving across the Flint Hills region of Kansas with my youngest daughter. 

Throwing a baseball with my son, mid 90s, our back yard, 8pm. 

Roan Mountain State Park, When I am the only one there. 

Jackson Square, New Orleans. Cafe DuMonde. Early Morning. Katrina aftermath. 

Rod McKuen was the narrator of my college era

On August 6, 1976 I bought a paperback book by RodMcKuen. I still have it. It has been in my garage for years, by the trashcan. I have tried to throw it away but always pull it back. I wrote my name and the date on the inside, as if it were important that both be recorded. I was 19, almost 20. I sacked groceries in a small town in southern Missouri and lived in a trailer. It was the summer before my junior year in college.  

I am probably one of the few people on the planet who can lay claim to having lived a life influenced by the poetry of this man. But there was a brief time when I wanted to be a younger version of him. The contemplative loner, hanging out in a cafe in Paris, composing a letter from a LandRover in Bangkok, walking the beach at sunset in Malibu, meeting a friend for tea in St. John's Wood, writing ballads about sunsets and hitchhiking. 

I look at the lines I underlined and realize I plagiarized so many of them in letters to long forgotten girlfriends, perhaps even to my wife of 43 years. If any of you are reading this I must confess that these lines were not originally from me...

 "I've drawn your face on tablecloths across the country"

"I was drifting while waiting for your eyes to find me"

"I have yet to see a sky or world quite good enough for you"

And this is just a sampling. This book is dog-eared, underlined, highlighted. I sat on a rock by my driveway and re-read all my favorites. Some seem corny and schmaltzy but others still speak to me as they did 50 years ago. 

There truly was a time when my hair was thick and long and my bellbottoms were size 28 or 30, that this book slipped perfectly into my back pocket. If girls were not impressed with my charm, or my grades, or future prospects, there is always Rod. When doing my lonesome walk to class, or through a park, or being pseudo-contemplative, he was there, narrating the scene. Meanwhile, I loped and moped and hoped she would ask the question... "whatcha readin?". 

I read this today, which once spoke to a life I could but imagine, and now have, in a way. 

Freedom

"Free I am. 

I have no bills to pay. 

My debts are squared,

the edges smoothed out perfectly. 

My ducks are in a row

and I can sail. 

There are borders

in this final life

that were not here at nineteen

or at twenty-three." 

(It deteriorates from there but you get the point)

I bought this book at a time when I was human play-dough, being molded by chance and circumstance and places. I'm sure it made its way to the small chapel on campus, an aging tennis court, that park I fled to so often, the trunk of my 1969 Ford Fairlane. So now, almost fifty years later I am drawn back to this little book, at obscure times. I can go years without thinking one thing about this guy, until a trigger reminds me a of a time when he was a much bigger influence on me than he should have been. He was a man who accoumplished some things but not a good man that other men should want to be like.  

Now the jeans are size 34 or so and the bottoms have no bells. I would be embarrassed to have this book in my back pocket so it rests on a shelf in the garage. But still there are lines that gnaw at me as I thumb through the pages once more. I see that I wrote my name in it twice that August 6 of 1976, on different pages. Something was going on that day and I think I know what it was. 

Random thoughts on Covid

 I have nothing to add to the debate about whether folks should get vaccinated. This post is mainly for posterity, maybe my great-great-grandkids will read about it and use this post in a school assignment on early 21st century American history. 

I have relatives in the current hotspots of Arkansas and Missouri. I lived about ten years in both states and have an understanding of the mindset that makes people detest being told what to do, for whatever reason. I understand the mistrust of government. It is an easy path for elected officials to make this an issue of personal responsibility and choice. 

But those who oppose vaccines don't mistrust the government in all things. They trust the USDA that the meat they eat is safe. They trust the FDA that aspirin is safe for a headache. They trust the NTSB when they investigate a plane crash. When the National Weather Service says a tornado is likely in their area, they trust that information, even if it later proves incorrect. If they have a legal dispute most take it to the court system, believing there is a good chance that if they are right they will prevail. In all of these situations we are trusting government scientists and government legal experts in matters we know little about. 

But there is something about the nature of this particular vaccine that they feel so strongly that some are willing to take a chance and skip it. That is their choice, that is how we have set this thing up. They repeat that cry of rebellion that we all shouted in our childhood, "I don't want to do it and you can't make me!" Some times that rebellion is right, but in this case it just seems foolish. What is gained?

We all know that government does make us do things. That is what governments do. In the most extreme example, in wartime the government makes men fight and sometimes die to preserve the government. It is not matter of choice, they have to. And they do it. 

The government makes me stop at red lights. It is not a matter of choice. It makes me pay for goods before removing them from a store. It makes me wear clothing in public. It makes me pay taxes even if the money is used for things I don't approve of, a law that bugs all of us at some point. It makes me feed and clothe my children. Why? Because the public good takes priority in these matters over my personal preferences. It doesn't matter what I want to do, the government says I have to. By and large these are good common sense rules that enable us to live together somewhat peaceably. They are also rules that we have agreed to by majority rule, an idea that we don't talk about much any more. 

The government is content to do whatever it can to persuade. Bit by bit that seems to be helping the stragglers, but it won't get all. There won't be a mandate, but as my Dad used to say, "Son, I can't make you do that, but I can sure make you wish you had". 

Life is going to get much harder for those who refuse to vaccinate. It is going to become more and more inconvenient. Airlines, stores, restaurants, and other places where people gather in tight spaces will act. There will be mandates. They will be specific, not general. 

And they will wish they had. 

Penance and Confession

 In the 1970's I stole something from two places of business. One I worked at, one I did not. I was younger and in some ways wiser than I am today. But that did not keep me from doing bad stuff. I finally made things right a couple of weeks ago. 

I just realized this crazy thing. One place knew I did it, let me know they knew, replaced what I had stolen, and let me off. 

The other place knew the thing had been stolen but didn't know it was me. 

For years I carried around in my wallet a piece of paper that reminded me of these debts. Why did I wait so long to fix this? When I finally got around to it I wrote two anonymous letters explaining what I had done, apologizing. Stuffed in cash to cover my sin, plus some. 

Felt pretty good to finally do that. Felt bad that I had waited so long to do something so right.  

This experience is like unto the Sacrament of Confession. How often do we let things go unsaid because too much time has passed? Do we think old sins sort of expire after a while and don't need confessing? 

I think it is more likely that we don't really ponder our shortcomings as we should. That piece of paper in my wallet should have been a daily reminder to fix that thing. Instead it was just another faded piece of yellow stuffed between other old pieces of paper. Confession demands the same attention as our deepest prayers. That is the only way we'll get to that sweeter sounding term.... Reconciliation. 

Thoughts on the birth of my grandson, Benjamin

 What a wonderful blessing to welcome a second grandson this summer.

While you are not the first, you are the son of my son, and that makes you special and distinct. Being the father of a son is very different than being the father of a daughter (to state the obvious) and there will be a special set of joys you will bring to your family.  

I have not yet held you, that is several days away. But when I do I will be drawn back to that day when I held your dad for the first time. How wonderful it was, as a man, to hold this small future man in my hands. The first word I will whisper in your ear will be the name of our Saviour, and I will make the sign of the cross on your forehead. Perhaps some day you will be as fortunate as I and will do the same with your child and grandchild, please do. 

How blessed you are to be born to this man and woman. They love you so much and will raise you up to be a true son of our Father. Your sisters will meet you today for the first time and they will get another glimpse of true love as new feelings for you immediately spring forth inside them. 

So much is running through my head as I think about you. I try and picture you as a young man, but that is so difficult. You are a big baby so I imagine you as a big kid and a big man. Ahead lie the St. Louis Cardinals, long hot days at the ball park, other afternoons on some ball field with a team of friends, nights alone studying schoolwork, riding a bike, climbing a tree, driving a car. Each good thing making you more and more into the type of person you should be. 

 It is easy to think about all the troubles in this world and the many trials you will face, but for now I have to set that aside and simply thank God that you are here. I am thankful for your parents and their love for each other. I am thankful for the wisdom I see in them as they raise your sisters. 

Your family needs you. How and in what way, we don't know. But we know their family is already bigger and better and more complete because of you. There will be things about you that make your mom and dad better parents. There will be ways you make your sisters better young women. When the time comes for them to marry, if you become the young man I think you will, they will think often about the best things about you and your dad, and they will want to marry someone who is a bit like both of you. 

As you sleep in the arms of your mother, you are the image to us of the beauty of creation. You are now with her as we should all be with our heavenly Father, totally dependent, unable to do a single thing on your own behalf. Like us at so many times, you are also unaware of the goodness that rains down upon you. Unaware and thus unable to offer thanks for the nourishment and warmth and blessings that surround you. 

Soon you will be baptized into His Church and the grace of our Lord will pour upon your soul. It will be the start of your walk with Him who will guide you always. How great is the love of our Lord for you, that he called you to life at this time and place. 

Remember me in your prayers, as I will for you. God bless you Benjamin Brooks, and preserve you in his Holy arms. 

One good thing from this virus stuff

Perhaps when this is all over with guys will discard hugging, as quickly as they seemed to adopt it.
Or is this a Minnesota thing?

When I lived in Arkansas in the mid-80s, men shook hands, boys high-fived. Normal greetings.

When I lived in Missouri in the mid-80s to early 2000s, men shook hands. McGwire and Sosa made variations of the fist bump or fore arm bump acceptable in certain settings.

By 2003 or 4, around the time we moved to Minnesota, men were hugging. It's always been ok in times of extreme emotions, such as a wedding or a funeral. But for the past twenty years or so, men have been hugging as a normal standard greeting. You stick out a hand to shake, and some will say, "come on bud, gimme a bro hug". Yes, I'm about as likely to do that as give you some of Tinkerbelle's pixie dust, a silver chair from Narnia, or a piece of cake from Wonderland.

It's odd and very much out of character for most of us. Which explains why it never made it into the business world. Not the real one. Same with politics and the arts. Toby Keith hugs, Merle Haggard shakes hands. Kennedy and Nixon shook hands. Bernie Sanders and Jeb Bush offer hugs. Hank Paulson and Warren Buffet shake hands. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos seem more the hugging types.

Anyway, the strong handshake from a strong hand is always welcome, whether during virus time, Christmas time, or any other time.

Identity

Off to the Cardinals/Twins game.

I have to confess that although I was born a mammal, my identity as a vertebrate has for many years been with a member of another animal group.

This guy....

I-40 Blues

I was in Knoxville on Tuesday. Drove up from Columbia, SC where I spent mothers day. Wonderful day. The drive through the mountains was very nice. Had a lunch that my mother packed at a rest stop in Tennessee. In your fifties you rarely get to eat a sack lunch packed by mom. They are always a treasure.

There is something about East Tennessee that just haunts me. In a good way. I just never can get it out of my head. It has a certain smell and feel that is distinctive. Whenever I am there I feel like I shouldnt leave. Like the very ground is calling out to me, reminding me that it was here that I drew my first breath and here I am bound to.

While on I-40 I had this feeling I should stay in my rental car and go either east or far west, but not go home to Minnesota. East would take me toward I-81, Johnson City, Elizabethton and other familial grounds. Go west to the end of the highway and I'd be in St. Louis, with my son and daughter in law. For a moment both seemed better than home and both seemed like home. I calculated in my head went I would arrive at either place.

Crazy Stuff

Cards march on the NLCS, and play into the hallowed deep weeks of October.

Best quote from the NLDS. From Game 5....

“I think the last three outs are the hardest in baseball,” Nationals first baseman Adam LaRoche said. “I don’t know why it’s so much harder than the other eight innings, but something about it. Crazy stuff happens in the ninth inning.”

Walmart-Maplewood Missouri-10:16 pm

Last weekend we spent a day in St. Louis. No Cardinals, just family. Had a wonderful day at the lake house of my daughter-in-law's family and got to know her mom and dad and aunt and uncle a little bit better. It's a strong family and it makes me feel good about the way life is unfolding for my son.

We went to Walmart on Friday night. Nothing special happened. Just the normal stuff of life. At these visits even the mundane seems special, because you're with those you love and don't see often.

So for about 48 hours tiny little things like getting gas, and donuts, and petting dogs, and discussing the health of tomato plants seemed bigger and more full of life than they otherwise would. It's great being around family for holidays, but in some ways being together on the ordinary days is even better.

One Night in Baseball Heaven - St. Louis, Missouri

I went to the World Series this week, for the first time. The St. Louis Cardinals are back.

Some years they come storming in like they own the National League and all other teams are mere pretenders. This was not that type of year. This year it was almost embarrassing how the Braves collapsed in September and the Cards finally got hot. When the the dust of summer finally settled at the end of 162 games, the Cardinals were the wild card team. The fans were thrilled, but surprised.

Even more surprising was the way they took care of the Phillies. Less so, how they put the Brewers away.

What all this meant to me was that last Thursday night I found myself in the middle of a long-time dream. When I was a kid the dream was of me playing in the World Series, with Mickey Mantle and Pee Wee Reese. As an adult it was simply one of being there. So pinch me, I'm in Busch Stadium with my son, my brother, my daughter-in-law, and its the World Series.

Our evening included the Budweiser Clydesdales, dogs, brats, peanuts, Lou Brock, Ozzie Smith, Stan Musial and Albert Pujols. The greatest coach in the game, Tony La Russa. The redeemed hitting coach, Mark McGwire. A beautiful ballpark with fans passionate about the game. Some of them, like me, had been following the Cards for decades. Others grew up with them, like Rob and Laura, and being at a game is ingrained in hundred of memories and some of their earliest ones.

Like any big sporting event it included a fair number of people who knew nothing about the game, but were simply there to lay claim to being at the event. Unfortunately I felt obligated to explain to them, particularly the brunette in the middle of our row, that you don't get out of your seat when the ball is in play. After all, this was the World Series and baseball protocol must be followed. I was wrong of course, this game was too big to limit to purists. My suggestions to neighboring fans was obviously more annoying to my family than the traffic flow in our aisle. Somewhere around the 5th inning I realized it and shut up.

I began following the Cardinals in college. I grew up in Florida miles away from a pro baseball team. But I went to college in Missouri, where baseball matters, and spent many night when I should have been studying listening to the Cardinals or the Royals. The last night of our honeymoon was spent in St. Louis, at a Cardinals game. Weird, I know, but it helped start this bond with the team. My second visit was about ten years later when we drove up from Arkansas on a family vacation and took Rachel and Rob to a game. She was eight and he was three. Two years later career opportunities moved us to St. Louis and our love affair with the game and this team went into full swing.

Over the years, usually in October, I often thought how wonderful it would be to attend a World Series, especially with my family and especially if the Cardinals were involved. The Rangers were never in those dreams but perhaps should have been. The first baseball game we took any of our children to was with Rachel and to see the Rangers around 1987. Rob was a baby. We left him behind and spent a weekend in Dallas that I'm sure included a lot of family events, zoos and the like. But the only one I remember is going to see the Rangers. Rachel got a free glove and we saw the "wild thing", Mitch Williams, pitch.

This week, when I sat down for the first pitch at Busch stadium, this flood of baseball memories just overwhelmed me. All of them good ones. Not a single one involved an argument, tears, or hurt feelings, like some family gatherings. They are all perfect. Rachel keeping score while adorned with peanut earrings, Rob with his cap turned backwards, Robin digging into a backpack for one more thing to keep a toddler occupied, Caroline with a lap full of nachos. All the kids at some point giving Fred Bird a high five. Waiting in line in the blazing heat for some giveaway trinket of the day. Our kids and their little league teams parading around the field. My dad waving his fist into the air as Todd Zeile hit a game winning homer against the Expos. Watching Ted Simmons hit two home runs against the Mets on June 22, 1979 with my new bride. 

On this night of the World Series, the Cardinals lost. The good thing is that the loss will soon be forgotten. Time will pass and the cold of that night will turn warmer. What will be remembered is being there, with family, and it will all be good. Specifically with my brother, my son, my daughter-in-law. But in my memories I was joined by the whole family, especially my children, and it's mid-July, hot as blazes, we're somewhere lost in the cheap seats, and the Cardinals are leading by three runs in the 9th. 

The Rehearsal Dinner

Rob and Laura's wedding was this past weekend in St. Louis and it was my role to say a few words to the crowd at the rehearsal dinner. This was really a difficult speech. What I wanted to do was talk for hours about my son and his sisters and his mother. How beautiful they all are and how great it will be to have Laura join our family. How he had made this stunning leap from a 16 year old showing the occasional glimpse of responsibility to grownup in what seemed like a flash. How proud we were of him. I wanted to tell them all about him and the side of him they did not know. Unfortunately I was only given about three minutes. I took what I could get and my comments follow...

Thanks all of you for coming. Rob told me to be short and funny and to bless the food. I promise you son, I will be as obedient to you as you were to me.

You’re here because you are part of Rob and Laura’s inner circle. A relative or a very good friend. Somewhere along the line you played a part in these two little kids becoming adults. You were the uncle who took them to a ballgame, the aunt who put a band aid on a skinned knee, the high school or college friend who kept them out of trouble, or got them into it. Most of you were a very good influence on these two. We have parents and grandparents that we all owe much to. And for both Laura and Rob there are family members who have passed that we cannot help but remember on a night like this.

We are so glad to have Laura as part of our family. I know the Oeltjens feel the same way about Rob. We are still getting to know Laura. When Rob told us about her, we knew we wouldn't get an objective answer if we asked about what type of person she was, so we asked about her family. And as we heard him talk about this uncle and that aunt and brothers and extended family we felt very good. We asked about her parents – married forever was the reply. We all want Rob and Laura to be a strong family, and we are grateful for all the wonderful examples she had and he had from their first days toddling around Christmas trees.

Laura, you have a hint of what’s in store in joining Rob’s family. As you know, it is a very strange and wonderful American casserole. As I know is true of the Oeltjen family, our faith in Christ, more than blood ties is the common glue that hold us together. And it will hold you together as well. Because when you look beyond that, Rob’s extended family is a real murderers row of knuckleheads and goofballs. It's a circus, its a human zoo. We have tea-sippers and teetotalers, liberals and libertarians. We’ve got poodles on the couch and coon dogs on the front porch. Vegetarians on one end and lifetime members of the NRA on the other. We even have an actuary. We like our peppers hot, our gravy thick, and our people warm.

Once you get past the normal people like Rob, you find one of the oddest collections of human beings that genetic ties ever brought together. Some saving souls, some saving the planet, others saving the leftover cole slaw for breakfast. Laura, it's a family in desperate need of someone like you.

So Laura, good luck. We're glad that you trusted Rob when he asked you to spend the rest of his life with him. While he's always been rock solid on important things, sometimes he's on a different plane than the rest of us. He did not start life with the a real good sense of where his make believe world ended and the real world started. When he was six the checkout girls at Schnucks knew him as the kid whose dad played for the Cardinals, or so he told them. In second grade he insisted to his teacher that a weekend trip to Springfield included not just visiting Lincoln's tomb but also digging him up and playing with his bones. Tucking him into bed at night always included the plea, "hey dad, talk to me like I'm Robocop".

That kid is now a very good man joining a very good woman and we are hear tonite to let you know that we are all on your side.

Those are some funny stories, and there will be a lot of them told this weekend. But the best story of all will be the one that Rob and Laura start this weekend, the one that begins... "we were married in St. Louis on August 6th, 2011..."

Closing prayer went something like this.... Lord, thank you for calling Rob and Laura to life and for the circumstances that brought them together. We believe, as they do, that they should spend their lives together as man and wife. Keep the love they have burning strong -- make it stronger. Help us to be there when they need us and to stay out of their way when they don't.

In the midways of life, in Halfway, Missouri

On 32 highway, between the cities of Bolivar and Buffalo, Missouri is the village of Halfway. An aptly named, beautiful piece of America. 

It is Tuesday mid-afternoon in mid november, middle of the week. It is mid autumn, mid sixties farenheit, mid 1930's in political time. I am midway through a reading of Exodus and midway through my first reading of Tom Sawyer. I am not midway through the Koran, though I am perhaps midway to midway. I am midway through a rather contentious business dispute. However, this is offset by knowing that the Christmas decorations are about midway to their full glory.

Not a week for closure, but for simply putting one foot ahead of the other.

When in southern Missouri, stop in Halfway. On some days it is the very best place to be.

Thoughts on the end of the baseball season....

There will be Spring.

Jayhawks in Minnesota

The worst thing about this state, is they let just about anybody in.

Cardinals clobber the reds = A good fight wasted on a team with no soul

Photo by Tom Uhlman / AP

Baseball in August. The Cardinals marched into cincinnati on Monday down 2 games to the reds and leave today with a sweep and the division lead. Back where they belong. 

There was this well publicized fight yesterday and it's a shame it was wasted on a team most of us had forgot existed. Replay this in Chicago or Houston and you've got a brawl that keeps simmering for months. "Reds", what kind of name is that. What is a red? a drug, a communist, a color? Their claim to fame is that that Pete Rose once played for them, but that was a couple of lifetimes ago, and not really something to be proud of. This season they are in the midst of their once a decade run for the division pennant. They should behave like they've been here before... but they haven't.... so they can't.

Players move around so much these days that you wonder if there's much team spirit in pro baseball. Well there is Cardinal named Yadier Molina who answered that. On the flip side there is a red named brandon phillips who will only be remembered for having a bad temper and, umm, uh, uh, hmmm

Go Cards!!!!!

August 6

There are dates that get ingrained in your mind. Something happens, or doesn't happen, and they stick.  Usually they are important, but sometimes trivial, like the birthday of my second dog that I got when I was a kid, March 16 1964. In my country there are many dates we think are important and should be remembered. But I have easily let slip by more than one July 4, September 11, November 11, November 22, December 7 without so much as a thought.

June 16 I remember. I got married. Long time ago but I have never missed an anniversary, never even came close to forgetting.

Funny thing, I cannot tell you when anyone else in the world got married. I guess it doesn't matter to me as much I would like to think it does. I know my parents got married some time in August. I have a cousin who got married the Saturday after 9/11 and a nephew who got married about a month after Christmas. It gets really fuzzy after that. Although I am glad other people in my family are happily married, when it happened is something I can't keep in my head. 

Other dates of importance. November 24, April 17 and November 27. The birthdates of my three children.

August 6, 2011 is the day that the first one of the three above gets married. A wedding date that hasn't happened yet but is already burned in my mind. It's the day a wonderful woman become part of our family. Already the date means something to me, though nothing like what it means to her and to my son.

I look forward to the event, but more importantly, to every blessed anniversary that follows. Welcome Laura.