Then & Now

RUSTY of St. Paul: “When I was growing up, in the late 1950s and 1960s, we had an old, heavy Admiral TV. It had a black steel cabinet which sat up on legs. It had tubes that had to warm up before the image on the screen appeared.

“Often the vertical hold would goof up, so that we had a pile of lines moving from the bottom of the screen to the top. There was a vertical hold knob to twist to adjust the problem, but sometimes it didn’t quite solve the issue. In those cases, either my dad or we boys would slap the right side of the box with an open hand as hard as we could . . . and that usually was the ticket.

“Fast-forward to last week. I was having trouble with our P.O. box at the post office in the small town in northern Wisconsin where we live for half the year. I could open the door with the key as usual, but when I locked it shut, I could then open it with my fingernail placed under the corner of the door. But then I couldn’t close the door unless I keyed it shut again, as something in the lock was keeping the door from shutting. And when I keyed it shut, I could again use my fingernail to open it. It was not secure.

“This is a small town with a low or no crime rate. I think Barney Fife is our cop. So I wasn’t really worried about anybody stealing our mail, but I thought the postmaster should know about it.

“He came out from behind his counter and fiddled with my key and his fingernail and the key again . . . and no luck.

“Next thing I knew, he SLAMMED the door with his hand as hard as he could. It shut, and then when he tried to open it with his fingernail, it stayed locked! We tested it with the key . . . and voilà!

“Incredulously, I asked him: ‘What did you do?!’

“With a grin on his face, he said: ‘Old-fashioned tech support!’”

The highfalutin amusements

GREGORY J. of Dayton’s Bluff: “Subject: Me and my shadows.

“This summer I had a number of whimsical garden ornaments in the rock-garden portion of my yard. At night they were illuminated by a solar-powered spotlight. They created a nice view when I looked out my kitchen window.

“Autumn arrived, and eventually the . . . let’s call it ‘foliage’ . . . behind the ornaments died and was removed. That night I looked out my window and saw not only the ornaments, but also the rather large projection of a gargoyle on my garage. It was a bit startling, to say the least.

“Of course there was only one thing to do: experiment with making other shadows. I rearranged the ornaments, and the new view on my garage was of gnomes and snails.

“I’ve always wanted a very large Drinking Bird, but for technical and safety reasons, they aren’t practical. But with not too much effort, I created a 4-foot-tall Drinking Bird shadow on my garage. It was truly frightening to behold when it began bobbing up and down.

“In case anyone is wondering, not any of my neighbors who have a clear view of my garage have asked me what was going on. I guess by now they are used to the odd things that happen in my yard.

“It was fun creating shadows with other objects, too, but I’ll end this with a couple of images for the upcoming holiday season.”

Fellow travelers

POLLYANNA of Clifton, Wis., “formerly of Lakeland”: “Subject: Road trip.

“My sister The Artist and I like road trips. It takes us a LONG time to get anywhere because, well, she’s an artist. We stop to take pictures. We stop at thrift stores and antique stores. We stay off the freeways and visit the tiny towns. . . .

“The Artist asked me if I’d like to go to Japan. ‘Nope.’

“I asked her if she’d like to go to South Dakota. ‘Sure!’

“The first day, we made it to Pipestone (225 miles). We averaged 37 mph. We hit the small towns of LaSalle (pop. 79), Dovray (pop. 58), Hadley (pop. 61) and Hatfield (pop. 54). We went to a good thrift store in Glencoe and had a great lunch in Hutchinson.

“Day 2, we went to Split Rock Creek State Park, then visited Ihlen (pop. 61) and Kenneth (pop. 68). Just south of Jasper, we visited the Jasper Windmill Farm. The windmill farm was one we’d visited several years ago, but we greatly enjoy it.

“We had lunch in Luverne, where we also found two thrift stores. We headed to Valley Springs, S.D., to find the tri-state marker where South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota meet. We didn’t find it there. We were sitting at a corner looking at a map when a nice man in a pickup stopped and said: ‘I see by your license plate you’re not from around here. Can I help you find something?’ He gave us directions. We didn’t find it following his directions, but it was nice that he tried! I kept searching for information on my phone and found out we wanted Valley Springs Township, not really the town of Valley Springs. We found the monument, then used the G.P.S. coordinates on it to find the railroad spike driven into the two-lane road where the states meet. They had the monument in the exact spot for a while, but a concrete monument on a dark two-lane road isn’t really conducive to accident-free driving! When we found the marker, The Artist told me we had to lie in the street and take selfies. I was not in favor, as we don’t get up as quickly as we used to, but she talked me into it. The pictures turned out great!

“On to Sioux Falls, where we visited Cousin Bill and his wife. We went to Buffalo Ridge to see a ‘robot town.’ It was creepy. We do not recommend it. Stayed in Mitchell that night. Averaged 10 mph that day!

“Day 3 started at the Corn Palace. They had an exhibition of some Oscar Howe prints that were used for Corn Palace art decades ago, which my sister found interesting. We kept on, heading to the Salvation Army store in Mitchell. Free lunch! Sign us up! We had meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, rolls, creamed corn, watermelon, cantaloupe and two kinds of Jell-O! Not even a bowl for a free-will offering. Delicious homemade food. We were driving through a small town called Platte when I noticed a hay bale in the street. We parked and found Hay Daze! It was a tiny community festival. There was a woman singing from the back of a flatbed truck, cornhole boards set up, and a chili cook-off. My sister took part in the voting for the (two-person) chili cook-off. The first contestant gave her a cinnamon roll with her chili. She was to dip it! The Artist tried it, but was not a fan. The second participant was a young married pastor and father of three. He was very kind, and a little envious of our ability to just go where the wind blew us. He got the chili vote. From there we went to Lake Andes, then on to Pickstown on the Missouri River. We stopped at the Fort Randall Dam, then headed to Chamberlain for the night. We saw the Dignity statue just before sunset. It was beautiful.

“Day 4, we saw a pheasant made of railroad spikes, lawnmower blades and other metal scraps. (You’d be surprised how much scrap-metal art is out there if you care to look!) We went to a playground with prehistoric animals to climb. We tried to drive along the river and have a picnic, but it isn’t very accessible. That night we stayed with our late cousin’s wife. I already have four sisters, but consider her an honorary sister. We played games and visited. . . .

“I’ll interrupt myself to stay that, when we planned this trip, we hoped to visit the buffalo roundup in Custer and see the wild horses in Theodore Roosevelt State Park. This is when reality hit me. We had a week for our trip. Custer and Theodore Roosevelt State Park were each about 200 miles away. It just wasn’t going to happen. We moved on.

“We planned to spend the night in Gettysburg. On the way, we passed through Agar and Onida. Agar was the closest town to the farm where our mom grew up. In Agar, we drove around a bit (it’s literally 3-by-4 blocks) and got stopped by a train! There is only one road that goes to Highway 83, and the train stopped across it to load or unload cargo. We waited awhile, then found a gravel road and drove north on it until we could get back to pavement. We have a cousin who lives in Onida. I texted her sister to get her new address, and we took more gravel roads to get to her. As we were walking up to the house, we heard her tell her husband: ‘If that’s people selling insurance, tell them to go away!’ Happily, we were NOT selling insurance and were warmly welcomed. It was a great visit. . . .

“Day 5: We also have cousins in Gettysburg, but hadn’t seen them in many years. We learned that two of them (sisters) have coffee together every day. We scoped out the coffee shop, but were told by the proprietress that they wouldn’t be there till afternoon. We went to the grocery store just for fun and talked to a nice woman who had been working there for 36 years. She knows a lot of our relatives. As we left, we said hi to a guy in the parking lot and headed for the cemetery. There we found graves of our grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Did I mention that my maternal grandparents have more than 370 descendants? Anyway, as we were looking around at the cemetery, I got a phone call from the sisters’ sister-in-law, wife of our cousins’ brother. She said: ‘[Cousin] said he saw you at the grocery store. Are you in town?’ He didn’t recognize us right away, but figured it out when he saw my personalized Wisconsin license plate. She said: ‘You have to come over!’ So we did! And one of the sisters joined us! And of course, their daughter would be thrilled if we stopped at her house! Of course, this was backtracking most of the way we had driven the day before, but so what? We had no plans or reservations. We left our cousin’s house with watermelons, cantaloupes, just-picked-by-us raspberries, apples and tomatoes. Then we got fresh-from-under-the-hen eggs from their daughter! At her house, we fed apples and melons to the chickens and sheep. It was fun. There are more than 100 sheep there. When we threw the fruit in, they all turned around and faced into a corner across from us — like, if they can’t see us, we can’t see them!

“Finally, we headed east. We went through the town where my husband and I hit a deer on our motorcycle in 2014, then headed to Brookings.

“Day 6, we went to the South Dakota Art Museum at South Dakota State University. There was art by Oscar Howe and Harvey Dunn, which we enjoyed.

“We had a good lunch at a little bistro and received another text from our cousin’s wife: We should see the McCrory Garden at SDSU. We spent a couple of hours there.

“Back in Minnesota, we visited the tiny towns of Revere, Seaforth, Wanda, Cobden, Arco and Ivan. In Arco, a former gas station is now a home. We stopped in Tyler when we saw Dressen’s Auto Body, a place with lots of old, beat-up cars — which we love! They restore them or sell them so people can do their own restoration.

“After a good dinner in Green Isle, we headed home. And we weren’t even sick of each other!”

Vanity, thy name is . . . leading to: CAUTION! Words at Play!

D. ZINER reports: “Subject: Nautical Vanity Plates.

“The Texas license plate on a car in a northern-Wisconsin marina’s parking lot: ‘SEA YALL.’

“I regret that I was in a hurry and could not stick around to talk with the owner. I never saw that car again. I was curious to know whether there was more to the story and if that owner had a sailboat with its mizzenmast aft of the rudder stock. That would make it a yawl, y’all.”

Where we live

BILL OF THE RIVER LAKE reports: “Subject: Looking to the future.

“This might be a creative and realistic plan.

“I’m looking at a new design for a baseball cap and companion T-shirt.

“The emblems of our Minnesota Twins, Vikings, Wild, Timberwolves and Gophers would be equally spaced around the cap and prominently on the front of the T-shirt.

“I’ll call this my ‘Wait Till Next Year’ wear.

“This might grab the attention of thousands of Minnesota sports fans.

“And, as always in Minnesota, there’s always room for HOPE!”

Our times . . . or: Hmmmmmmmm

THE DORYMAN of Prescott, Wis.: “Subject: Least of three evils?

“I’ve recently read that only about 9 percent of plastic put out for recycling is, in the end, recycled. I suppose it’s still good for the economy, by the amount of equipment it requires and the people it employs.

“It does raise a question for me that complicates my Holiday Wokefulness: Is it better for the environment to buy a plastic tree that is 91 percent destined to end up in a landfill . . . or to destroying a real tree that is biodegradable?

“Hmmm, maybe there is a case for Festivus and the totally recyclable, yet not carbon-neutral, aluminum pole after all.”

What’s in a name?

THE RETIRED PEDAGOGUE of Arden Hills: “Subject: He won’t be stealing any signs — or Christmas.

“This was a headline in the ‘BRIEFLY’ section on Page C3 in Sports of a recent STrib: ‘Southern Cal fires Grinch as defensive coordinator.’”

Our flowers, ourselves@@

KATHY S. of St. Paul writes: “2023 was The Year No Pansies Thrived on the patio of my north-facing apartment. To quote a former neighbor, I have light, but no sun. That kinda helped the pansies for most of the last five-plus years, though the increasing heat made it harder each year than the one before. By July 2023, this year’s plants had all shriveled and burned. I now have only jade plants, which thrive on neglect.

“But hope springs eternal. I hope to try pansies one more time next year, if air conditioning and obsessive care can keep up their will to live.

“Why do I bother? One of my readers in first grade had a story about the smiling faces of pansies. I fell in love, and love (hopefully) conquers all.

“Please to cross fingers!”

The highfalutin amusements . . . CC Division

ABBYSGRAM of South St. Paul: “I have closed-captions on my TV at all times that it is available.

“In a recent hockey game, a fight broke out. Imagine that, a fight. An American-team player was fighting a Canadian-team player, in Sweden. The caption, however, indicated they ‘threw ponchos.’

“I would have liked the opportunity to catch a poncho. Olé!”

BAND NAME OF THE DAY: The Vertical Holds

Your stories are welcome. The address is BB.onward@gmail.com.

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