WE ARE IN THAT DREADED IN-BETWEEN TIME — that dead time caused by making it through airport security way too fast and having two hours before our plane departs. A harrowing situation for my wife who generally likes to hook a wool rug, send instructional messages to our middle-aged kids, and maybe pave the driveway, all before breakfast. One is either doing SOMETHING at all times or one is in the grave. 

But here we are. In the airport. Trapped until departure. Of course she could read one of the 15 hardback books she has brought. Nope, that won’t work. Or she could play one of the 75 word puzzles she downloads daily on her phone. Mmmm . . . probably not.

“Or what about knitting that complicated Estonian sweater you have in your bag?”

“Puh-lease, Joe.”

She is at a loss as to how she is going to spend her time. And I of course am trying to stay out of her line of sight so that I don’t become a much-needed rehab project.

So we stop for breakfast at an airport cafe.

My wife reads everything on the menu. Then she looks at the big board over the bar to examine all the specials. Then she goes back to the menu. Then she looks around to see if there are other different menus, perhaps with wines, that she hasn’t read. Nope, she’s done it all. Wonderful.

Then she orders: “Toast with butter, please.”

At this point, things can go multiple directions. But her ancestors are Irish and she’s from Iowa. Duh. She is going to want to know where the cashier was born, how many kids they have, where they presently live, and what their views are on the world situation. This is a good thing because time will pass. Finally, the cashier returns to her life after sharing with my wife her home address, phone number, and the location of her future grave plot. Good to know.

Whew. We’ve made it this far. Only 95 minutes until departure. Ah, my wife has to run to the restroom. Great. Tick tock.

As we wait for her to return, I was wondering if you’ve given any thought to this so-called Information Age we now live in? Some folks call it the Digital Age. I didn’t even know there was a formal name for it until recently. 

Merriam-Webster says the “Information Age” is “the modern age regarded as a time in which information has become a commodity that is quickly and widely disseminated and easily available especially through the use of computer technology.” In other words, we live in a time when the access and distribution of information is the name of the game. This is distinct from the preceding Industrial Age where manufacturing was the name of the game.

I don’t think things are so clean as these definitions state, but as I think about the phone that is surgically implanted in my hip, I do wonder at the value of this mountain of information I consume every day and whether it is good or bad for us humans. Particularly in these divisive times. And I do think about AI and the internet and self-driving cars and doorbell cameras and Amazon Prime and those precocious twins, Siri and Alexa.

Noah Hawley recently wrote an article in The Atlantic called “Vonnegut and the Bomb.” He says:

“In some ways, Little Boy [the bomb dropped on Hiroshima] was the ultimate invention of the Industrial Age, which ended a few years later. What replaced it? The Atomic Age, of course, followed in the 1970’s by the Information Age. Were Vonnegut alive today, he might say that whatever they call the age you live in is actually the name of the weapon they’re using to try to kill you.”

Lordy.

My wife returns. 

No toast yet. Then a strange robotic cart with a cat face rolls around the corner, comes up to our table, and waits patiently.

After my dropped jaw rejoins my face, it dawns on us that our food must be on one of the shelves. Sure enough, there are trays of food on the shelves below. 

But no toast. 

And after a while the cat/cart/robot purrs off. 

Well, that was an experience. We wait patiently. Still no toast. Then my wife tracks down the human server, who comes eventually with some cold toast. 

So, what does all this mean? Is it a parable about how the so-called Information Age may very well make information a commodity, but it doesn’t actually bring you your toast? Or is it a story about how my wife didn’t ask the robot/server about its family and what this lack of connection means for the threads that hold society together? Or is it reaffirming the well-known maxim: cold toast is . . .  cold?

Got me. But thankfully it’s time to get on the plane. Although now I have the next dreaded time as we travel — what will my wife do on the plane? I’ll keep you posted. 

Joe

 “Let’s go to Vienna!” “Let’s go to Sarajevo!” “Let’s go to Belfast!” . . . says my wife.

And my go-to response? The very first loving words out of my mouth? Are . . .

NOOOOOOOOO WAY!

You see, my wife wants to see the world. I get it. We spent all our working years and kid-raising years never leaving Iowa (except for her stint with the UN in The Hague — which counts for something, doesn’t it?). Now that we are old, she wants to make up for lost time by going to see museums and castles and cafes and vineyards and mountains and oceans and the Eiffel Tower sparkle with lights. 

Nope. Not for me. 

I’m 71 years old. I’ve seen the Girl with a Pearl Earring. I’m a little tired, a little settled, and a little inflexible in every sense of that word.

But my wife scares me. So I always accompany her as a very hesitant travel companion. Which is the reason for this small guide, for those few like me who are just a bit dubious of this whole travel thing and would rather just go drink coffee on the back porch.

VIENNA

Picture this my fellow sufferers . . .

The opera aria soars across the square, past the fresh water station and the tall clock, across an angled street, and round the table of the Viennese gentleman who is drinking one glass too many, all the way to our table. We are sitting quietly with our wine outside a small cafe on this busy corner at the end of a workday in Vienna. 

The opera singer has a white cane in one hand and a small tip container in the other. He stares straight ahead. Blind, it appears. His voice booms with power and vibrato. I imagine he has no choice but to be great in this town. It’s Vienna — the home of Mozart and the grave of Beethoven. It’s a town that boasts of Schubert and Strauss and Mahler and Haydn. To sing in Vienna is to sing in the Big Leagues.

And for the next hour the blind man sings over the competing sounds of buses and trucks and cars and loud people. He stands tall, gripping his white cane, oblivious to the world. Unbending and unrelenting.

Well, that wasn’t horrible. But was it enough to overcome my dithering and skepticism about travel? Mmmmmm.

SARAJEVO

Excellent. You’re still here. Now imagine this . . .

Like spilled milk, the graves from the Bosnian war wind down the side of the mountain into Bascarija, the old town in Sarajevo.

Sarajevo’s shell-pocked buildings and mortar-scarred streets still remain witness to the over 500,000 bombs that fell on the town during the long siege of the city. A time that still hangs heavy.

From our perch we smell cooking meats and strong spices coming up from the old town. Delicious smells. We walk slowly down through the narrow streets, tasting our way toward the river.

Eventually, we walk past where Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated. This unassuming spot is only famous because the Archduke’s driver took a wrong right turn. Yup, you heard me correctly, a wrong right turn.

And if that wasn’t enough bad luck, the assassin, still carrying his gun and grenade and cyanide tablet from an earlier failed assassination attempt, looked up at just the right moment to see the Archduke take that wrong right turn — directly in front of him. Everything aligned in that one fateful moment.

And World War I started.

This infamous street corner is tiny, a little dirty, and a frequent stop on walking tours. Today, a street dog takes his afternoon nap on the historic spot. Yup, a street dog. 

And this is why you now have to cross the river to the cafe on the left bank and order real Bosnian coffee. If you are not clear-eyed about the quirkiness of history, you will be after drinking that strong punch in the gut. As for travel hesitancy, is it also history? Stay tuned.

BELFAST

And the final destination for all of us still dragging our travel feet . . .

It’s raining in Belfast. Not that fun misting rain that frequently hits these North Sea countries. Nope. This is an Iowa rain. Hard and cold and drenching.

We are here because my Dublin daughter and her Scottish partner are off listening to a band in downtown Belfast. So we are set free to wander the streets of Belfast. Alone. Parents off leash, is the way we see it.

But it’s pouring rain. We walk to the river, wet and a bit dispirited.

But wait! Look at that. There are crowds and street performers and make-shift tents and a Ferris wheel. It’s a street fair!

And the rain relents.

See, there’s a pirate walking on stilts. And there are mimes dressed as sailors. And there are costumed old-timey swimmers. And there’s food and drink and the good cheer of people undeterred by tough weather. And the rain comes and goes and comes.

We dip into a pub and order a pint. An older man sits on a stool at the front. A guitar near his side. Drinking a coffee. Eventually, he is joined by an even older leprechaun-looking man carrying a fiddle. After some laughter between the two, they settle in and begin to play. Traditional Irish music. Jigs and reels. Instrumental music and storytelling songs. 

On this cold and wet day in Belfast, we are momentarily in heaven. 

“Well, that’s enough of that,” as my mom used to say when things got to be too much fun. But is it finally enough of my travel hesitancy?

Got me.

But just today my wife said, “Joe, what about the Bahamas in November?” 

“No way!” was my go-to first thought. But really?

So my underwear is rolled into my spare shoes and my backpack is next to the bed and hesitancy is buried deep under my one flowery Hawaiian shirt. But do I really have to swim with pigs?

Joe

The Irish lilt is a thing of beauty. It moves up and down the vocal scale like a soaring and diving bird rather than the flat and plodding groundhog of American English. It wouldn’t surprise me if Irish was the dialect spoken in the Garden of Eden. Angelic and holy.

“Jesus Christ, I almost stepped on your toe there,” says an older Irish woman at the table next to me. 

Okay, not so angelic and holy. 

I’m in a coffee shop in Swords, a skip and a hop from Dublin. My latte and scone are the price of admission as I’m surrounded by Irish customers taking a break from shopping at the large mall. My wife and my daughter are off doing their thing and I’m unwisely left on my own to eavesdrop.

So far this morning I have heard the name of the Lord called upon in a multitude of creative ways that appear to have nothing to do with spiritual salvation. Clearly, the Irish have an intimate relationship with “your man,” and call upon Him frequently whether they are in church asking for forgiveness or queued in line waiting for a scone.

”Christ, that was unholy good.”

Sister Timothy Mary, my sixth grade teacher at St. Mary’s Elementary School in Iowa City, would have sent them all to the principal’s office and then marched them right to the confessional for such inappropriate language.

“If you want to die and go to hell for cursing, fine. Otherwise, you will say three Our Fathers and two Hail Marys. Now go back to your desks.” Yup, the rules were clearer back in sixth grade.

I do wonder what happened to “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain”in this formerly Catholic Ireland. You remember, it is the third “Thou shall not” on the top-ten list from the Old Testament. Perhaps the use of the Lord’s name by my coffee shop neighbor is not “in vain” because it is done with such earnestness and good cheer. In fact, she is smiling like we’re all having a second pint at the pub.

So I sit back, drink my coffee, and listen.

And the older woman does not disappoint. She says loudly to her friend: “Oh Mary, that fecking chair leg is caught on the table.” She pulls hard on the chair and frees the leg. 

Oh my goodness, did I just hear that correctly?

According to my say-a-rosary-every-night mom, the f-word is the very worst curse word one can say. And, sure, “fecking” is not the f-word, but it sure behaves like the forbidden slippery-slope word “geez” for Jesus. In my family, near-miss words still paved the path to perdition. As I was already pretty far down that path by my teenage years, I steered clear of wannabe curse words — that is, until I didn’t when I started teaching cops. Go figure.

Well, according to the “Irish Star,” times have changed: “Nowadays in Ireland feck is essentially a far far milder version of the f word. It can be said on television at any time, and you might even hear it at Sunday mass.”

And Julian Walker with the British Library even argues that “feck” has its origins in the word “faith,” not in the f-word. Can’t get holier than faith. And heck, in today’s political Wild West even politicians drop the f-bomb now and again. See, I AM behind the times.

I order another latte and continue to admire the linguistic vigor of this older woman at the next table. 

And of course the inevitable happens with her crumbly pastry.

“Oh shite,” she says as her buttered scone breaks apart and falls into her lap.

Wow.

Well, it is pronounced with a long “i,” wholly different than the American variation. And apparently the word is quite popular in England and Ireland, along with its close cousin, “gobshite” — a stupid or incompetent person or a braggart. But really?

See how travel opens your mind?

Oh well, my eavesdropping opportunity is over. Time to go. My wife and daughter gather me up and we make our way to the pub. As they drink their hard ciders, I patiently wait for my pint of Guinness to settle and the bartender to do a second pour to give it just the right head. 

“Here it is,” the bartender says, holding the glass with two hands as if raising a chalice.

I thank him. He smiles at my non-Irish accent and says, “God bless you.”

Oh my. Old women curse and bartenders bless.

As I said, the Irish lilt is a thing of beauty. 

Joe

“SHOW ME WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE.”

The woman with the bullhorn looks expectantly at the crowd. We are wilted, red-faced and smiling in solidarity — while the asphalt road is burning through our shoes. Ouch ouch ouch. 

“THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE,” we shout exuberantly.

The woman wipes sweat off her forehead and repeats the call and response.

And we march on down the road protesting the rule of kings — while dancing from foot to foot against the oppression of sweltering heat.

“SQUEAL!” “SCREAM!” “SCREECH!”

The happy shrieks of children are heard way before the pool comes into view. 

“Hurry up, Grandpa!”

My granddaughter sits queenlike in an old stroller held together at crucial points by duck tape and good will. No one can ever accuse me of being handy. She is weighted down with towels and a swimming noodle and goggles and dolls. My son, her father, walks beside us.

My job is to push us to the pool, which is just fine. I am no swimmer. I sink to the bottom of a pool faster than an old piano. So pushing on dry land is the perfect “swim” job for me. 

We turn the corner into the pool area. Children are everywhere. The adults generally ignore the kids, hoping for a moment of quiet in their lawn chairs and at their picnic tables and laid out on towels. I wish them luck.

I enter the water a toe at a time. But not my granddaughter. She leaps high from the edge of the pool with pure abandon — KERSPLASH! 

“TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS!”

The parade is a love fest. The marchers are hugging their friends on the side of the route and the friends are jumping into the parade and becoming the marchers. There is no such thing as a spectator during a Pride Parade.

And just like the Fourth of July parade in Urbandale, swag and candy fire the crowd up into a joyful frenzy. 

“Beads beads beads!” shouts the crowd moving into the street. And we are all rewarded with a handful of necklaces and a dancer’s smile and shimmy. And then we rush back to the curb before security gives us a scold.

But we don’t stay put for long. As the bright colors of the revolution continue marching past, we once again surge into the street shouting this time for candy, “here, here, hear.” And a shower of sweetness rains on us all.

“THROW IT TO ME, THROW IT TO ME, THROW IT TO ME!”

The shout crescendos across the water from a group of young boys.

These seal-slick kids bat a large beach ball over the top of the water, dunking and splashing their way to world domination — at least until it’s time for the popsicles their mom packed in the cooler.  

And over on the other side of the pool is the unmistakable:

“Marco!” 

“Polo!”

A game older than me. Is that even possible? And supposedly based on the notion that Marco Polo was lost most of the time on his grand adventures in China. Hah, one moment your friends with Kubla Khan and the next you are the loser in a swimming-pool game. 

Meanwhile, my six-year-old granddaughter is thrown high into the sky by my son with a squeal and a spin and a cry of pearly laughter.

I am motion sick on her behalf.

“FREE JEANETTE VIZGUERRA!”

The small crowd yells again, “Free Jeanette Vizguerra!”

The ICE detention center in Aurora CO is not an architectural monument. It is a flat block of a building with an exercise pen running along one side. Uninspired and sad seems to be its go-to theme. 

The protesters stand in their designated spots across the road as the minister from the First Unitarian Society speaks of Jeanette Vizguerra’s past sanctuary in their church, her 20 years of working and being a mother of U.S. citizens, and then her recent attempts to get her own citizenship. All to no avail.

“Free Jeanette,” the crowd chants.

Good luck with that — “She will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the United States,” an ICE spokesman told CBS News. 

Meanwhile, a single flower appears in the shiny and new chain link fence. 

“GRANDPA GRANDPA GRANDPA.”

My granddaughter somersaults from the edge of the pool and then dives to the bottom to retrieve a throw stick.

“Grandpa, grandpa, throw it farther,” she shouts loud enough that all grandpas in the metro area must be looking around for a stick to throw. 

I dutifully comply. 

A small boy floats past me in an inner tube. He has a sunhat, sun glasses, water wings and a grandma for a motor. He looks comatose. 

Is he my real grandchild? 

“Grandpa, grandpa, I’ll be the teacher and you be the student — do you want to do free style, back float, or breast stroke?” brightly shouts my granddaughter in her loudest outdoor voice.

I smile at my granddaughter . . .  and let myself sink below the water.

Slowly.

Quietly.

Serenely. 

While the sounds of summer drift past above. 

Joe

With an anxious stomach, I stand behind the long black curtains and watch off stage as the teenage girls tap dance before the large audience in Boone, Iowa. It’s the Betty Mae Harris dance recital. I want to throw up. But still, I watch the teenagers who are clever and quick and know all their steps. Shuffle Ball Change, Heel Tap, Toe Tap. Wow, I’m impressed. 

“You’re up next,” the woman at the curtain says.

Yikes!

I know that I don’t know my steps. And I’ve already developed a certain fatalistic acceptance that I’m going to be embarrassed. But I’m mildly relieved that I can follow my three talented sisters and hopefully no one will notice that I’m a step or two behind or that I am one of the few boys among a thousand girls performing at a time when that meant something — and it wasn’t positive. 

“Next up, ladies and gentlemen, The Four Weegs dancing Yellow Rose of Texas.”

And there we are. I am a tap-dancing, plaid-shirt wearing fool. The year is 1964.

As for you in the audience, I knew even as a kid that recitals were absolutely no fun to watch. Look, the audience is made up of parents like my parents, who were required when they received their parent badge to support their very own uncoordinated and spaced-out kid (me in this case). And then, because of societal pressure, they have to support some other parent’s uncoordinated and spaced-out kid because those parents supported my mom and dad’s uncoordinated and spaced-out kid. And suddenly the entire auditorium is supporting someone else’s uncoordinated and spaced-out kid until a Saturday afternoon nap is only a dream for that half-asleep mom and dad. And that’s how it works. The dance recital blues in action.

Now don’t judge me harshly for this observation about the audience. I know you love your highly talented child. Who wouldn’t? And, like most of the audience, I am amazed that her finger can get that deep in her nose for the entire dance number. Bravo to you and to your wonderful parenting. I get it. And, yes, she will dance professionally — and care for you in your old age — if of course she can ever dislodge her finger.  

Which gets us to today — my granddaughter’s dance recital. It’s been 61 years since I graced the big stage in a plaid shirt and tap shoes and wanting to vomit. You could safely conclude that my expectations are a smidgeon low.

My goodness, look at this. The audience is issued glow sticks, which we waive around crazily to the beat of stadium music like we are at a rock concert. A clever pregame warmup. Now that’s a little different. 

First up are amazing teenage dancers, who fly across the stage to let the parents see where it could all end if their kid stuck to it. Smart. 

Then the young kids are corralled and prodded into positions on stage. There they stand frozen. Or they turn their backs to the audience and stare at the projections on the back curtains. Or they actually, miraculously, do the dance.

But, unlike years ago, I’m totally charmed by this chaos. I clap enthusiastically after each number. I stomp my feet. I yell “Bravo!” I’m so enjoying myself that parents are rightfully staring at me. “Who is this weirdo?”

Yup, I get it. 

And so it goes all afternoon. Group after group enter and leave the stage like ducklings crossing the street — some here, some there, and some never leaving the curb. If anyone remembers some of the steps, I applaud like they’d just won at the Drake Relays.

What has come over me?

At last my six-year-old granddaughter comes out with her group. I actually know some of her hiphop jazz steps because she taught me the day before: tap your left foot eight times, swing both arms right to left, jazz hands, jazz hands. Her mom tells me that she woke an hour early to practice her moves. Of course she did. I yell and stomp with joy.

WAY TO GO, JULIETTE!

Here I am, a card-carrying curmudgeon, charmed into loving a dance recital. Who knew. 

But later my rose-tinted grandfather eyes aren’t totally blind to a small boy dancer. In several dances he is the only boy in a sea of girls. He must be about four years old. He always enters stage left and pretty much does his own thing as the girls dance their shoes off. No smile. No acknowledgment that he’s on stage. He spends his performance turning slowly in circles and staring at something only he can see. When the dance number ends, he walks off stage like he just clocked out after a double shift at the John Deere factory — the heavy burden of a hard day of work causing him to plod slowly home, shoulders slumped. 

In the boy’s last performance, the music stops, the girls exit in a flurry, and he looks at the audience for the first time that afternoon . . . and he decides to take a run for the edge of the five-foot high stage and . . . freedom?

Whaaaat?

An instructor catches him in plenty of time. But I am mesmerized and want to raise my fist to the heavens and shout support for all the little boys just trying to hang on in a complicated world. So I wave my glow stick in the air and stomp my feet and hope he hears me across time and space.

And there you have it: Grandpa Joe goes to a dance recital.

Joe

“Directly beneath me, in this hotel’s rubble-strewn basement, a massive concrete chamber has been discovered and there is evidence to suggest that that vault once belonged to Al Capone, the richest and most powerful gangster of his time.” 

So began Geraldo Rivera on April 21, 1986, in a much-watched live television show, as a sealed vault was opened in the basement of the Old Lexington Hotel in Chicago, the headquarters of “the notorious Al Capone.” I remember watching the two-hour special and loved the history and the drama. There was even a medical examiner present in case any dead bodies were discovered. But ultimately the vault revealed only a few empty bottles. Massive disappointment. 

FBI photo of Al Capone.

What about the unopened lockbox?

My mom collected things. A lot of things. From unique plates hand-painted by her mother, to grandma’s equally unique gallstones. Her five-bedroom home in Boone, Iowa, is a testament to the notion that one can’t quite live long enough to collect all the empty cottage cheese containers one might need. But my mom gave it her best shot before her “untimely” death at 98 (given the pamphlet found by my older sister, Carol, from the Harvard Medical School in mom’s belongings, “Living to 100: What’s the Secret?”).

My siblings and I are now left with the decaying remains of a long life spent squirreling things away — newspapers, mail, books, toys, clothes, pictures, notes, jars, medicine bottles, letters, furniture, and, yes, cottage cheese containers. Treasures one and all.

Unfortunately for my mom, my motto these days is — “Watch out, folks, the truck is backing up with another dumpster.”

But she did leave a lockbox at the local bank. And, of course, nary a lockbox key to be found. So, there’s the rub: what’s in the lockbox?

The family chat line weighed in quickly and decisively:

Screenshot

These are not bad guesses. For example, the notion that the lockbox might have evidence that my older sister and my father are in fact not dead is just a continuation of my family’s “fun” relationship with death. Fortunately for the family, there are no recordings of the inappropriate whispers at my dad’s funeral (“Did he just wink at me from the casket?”) or video of us while standing at my mom’s grave (“I’m going to ask the engraver to put in YOUR death date on the family tombstone”). Are there therapeutic issues involving avoidance of grief or anger or any emotion? Duh. But . . . what if the lockbox does reveal my sister and dad are still alive and living in Grimes working at a convenience store? See, you’re curious. 

As for the crack about “Clem’s arm,” my uncle lost his arm as a young man in an accident while putting up a ferris wheel at a county fair. No kidding. His arm was buried in the family plot at the cemetery. Many years later, my uncle was also buried in the family plot. After the funeral mass, but before my uncle’s burial, I noticed my aunt (a Catholic nun) and my mom digging in the ground, with their bare hands. Bizarre. I went to tell them the burial was about to begin, they told me they were looking for Clem’s arm to join it with the rest of his body. Of course they were! The two women were unsuccessful that day, but, and this is the important question, is the arm now in the lockbox? Inquiring minds, right?

And the gallstones just speak for themselves. Obviously, they are collector items in my family. We had already found my grandma’s gallstones carefully saved and labeled in specimen tubes from the Mayo Clinic in 1949, so whose might be in the lockbox? I’m on pins and needles. 

At last, it’s time for the big reveal . . .

[lower the lights stage left, softly begin playing “Stayin’ Alive” by The Bee Gees, and then bring in the cranking sound of the wrench against the lockbox]

At last, here’s the black long box sliding out of the narrow slot. Walk with it into the small private room. Flip open the too-long lid. And . . .

. . . it is jammed with papers. And more papers. And more papers. But no hidden bodies, no arm, and not one small gallstone. Zippo, nothing. Yup, massive disappointment. 

When Al Capone’s vault turned up empty, Geraldo Rivera thought his career was over. It wasn’t. His career was just taking off. But the search of Al Capone’s vault did become a warning against staging a big buildup for ultimately nothing.  

But, isn’t the big buildup what it’s all about? Aren’t we looking for the STORY of Al Capone’s life, which Rivera delivered? Aren’t the physical dead bodies and actual stolen money and houses and cars and property and, yes, even gallstones, just what’s left behind like the empty cicada shell hanging on the bark of a tree? We tell the story, and the objects left behind are just props for the story. And the props are even better if we have to make them up in our heads. Right?

At least that’s what you say when you find nothing. 

Okay, lights up. Time to go. Please watch out for the dumpster as you leave. Don’t trip over those cottage cheese containers. And if you do find an arm, contact the undersigned during business hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 

Joe

Lithograph made in World War II by the Stecher-Traung Lithograph Corp., Library of Congress. One of many prints issued by the government promoting gardens as a way for civilians to survive the then-existing food shortages.

“Fill the bathtub with water,” my wife yells in a high crescendo while gesturing with her hands as if she is has me by the ears and is trying to shake some sense into me. Naturally, being a good husband, I treat this cry for help with all the love, and all the care, and all the kindness of a respectful relationship — I scoff.

Yup, scoffing — scornful mocking to be exact — is my go-to choice. Scoffing is probably not taught in pre-marriage courses these days. Too bad. Nothing shows good listening skills, compassion for your partner, and loving communication like a well-placed scoff. It’s dismissive. It’s lazy. And its use is a guarantee that you are wrong. And your scoff will be resurrected for . . . let’s see, the next 32 years . . . as Exhibit 1 at your trial for being a dope.

But scoff I do. And I don’t fill the tub back in the summer of 1993.

The 1993 floods come. We lose water for a long time. And my wife and three kids look longingly at the empty bathtub as we scramble to find water to flush toilets. I was vilified by one and all. And, yes, I did win the 1993 award for WHO NOT TO DEPEND ON IN A CRISIS.

And here we are today.

We are old. We get social security from the feds. We get a state pension from the State. We have a fine retirement. But, and here’s where the rubber meets the road, the powers that be are dancing around the idea of blowing up government pensions. Yup, Ebenezer Scrooge has won and WE ARE THE SURPLUS POPULATION THAT NEEDS TO BE DECREASED.

I get it. How many old guys milling around the bakery counters at grocery stores do you need?

“I think we should put in a big garden,” my wife pronounces. She wants a Victory Garden just like in World War II. She believes this Victory Garden will stave off the nuclear detonation of our budget.

“What a great idea.”

This is my new favorite phrase because at my age there is a real possibility I’ll die before any plan comes to fruition. It’s a win win in my book.

But, just so you know, I hate gardening. My siblings and I grew up helping my mom take care of large gardens as she canned and froze and dried produce for our big family. It was hard, unsatisfying work that was always hot, bug-ridden, sweat-dripping, and itchy. Yuck. And don’t green beans grow in the can section of the grocery store anyway?

I need professional help — professional gardening help.

Kathy Byrnes Fallon and Ed Fallon started Birds & Bees Urban Farm in 2019. If you go to their website (team), they promise to educate even someone like me about urban farming. Great.

“Ed and I have our whole adult life have been food producers. When we got together, we built raised beds at our home here in Sherman Hills to add to the raised beds Ed had already built. People who passed were curious about the space. We had chickens in the back. We had bees. People were interested.”

Kathy speaks clearly and carefully, like the high school English teacher she was for 14 years. If she was in a black habit, she’d be a dead ringer for my favorite teacher back when I was in seventh grade, Sister Timothy Mary, who is probably still singing Woodie Guthrie songs and organizing marches up in heaven.

“So I ditched my job and started an urban farm as an educational nonprofit.”

Of course you did.

And what do you offer the public?

“We have for several years taught workshops. We have a nine-month, yard-to-table workshop. We meet monthly and go through all the plans, growing, and harvesting for the year. We have single workshops like how to build and plant a cold frame or how to make a compost container or introduction to backyard chickens.”

“We have recently been speaking up for local urban agriculture in light of the need for it with climate change, and unpredictable supply chain situations and it being just more earth friendly and friendly to your body. For example, there was a recent push to ban backyard roosters. We got very busy fighting against that, including a chicken parade around City Hall.”

Okay, this conversation has gotten way out of control. I dislike gardening and I particularly dislike chickens that can talk back to you and aren’t wrapped in plastic in the meat section at the grocery store.

So I thank Kathy for the information, but I do tell her about my original sin with failing to fill the bathtub with water during the 1993 flood.

Kathy laughs.

“I tease Ed because he has so many saved jugs full of water in the basement it is encroaching on our territory. I have to part the Red Sea to get through the basement.”

And there’s your answer, dear wife.

Do your self-defense gardening. Go to a class with Ed and Kathy. Plant those tomato seeds. I will not scoff once. I promise.

But the real lesson from all this?

The next time we lose water . . . I’m raiding Ed Fallon’s basement.

Joe

“Well, that was something,” she said out of the blue on a Tuesday. A phrase she was fond of saying for nearly any event from the grand to the not-so-grand. Two days later, she died. My mom was nearly 98 years old.

You wouldn’t have known her, of course. My mom was a housewife most of her life. No awards. No claims to fame. No streets named in her honor. She was born, she lived, she died. In the in-betweens she raised eight kids, buried a husband before he turned 50, cared for sick friends and a sick daughter for years, and cooked more than her fair share of pies, cinnamon rolls, pastries, and thousands upon thousands of meals. The idea that food could be a love language was unimaginable for a child of the depression. Food was survival. But food was her love language. Which was a boon for this pastry lover.

She did have a beginning. She was born in Williams, Iowa, and an old picture shows her in the front row with a quizzical smile, round cheeks and a short bob haircut.

Her family moved to a farm outside of Stratford, Iowa, while my mom was still young. The farm had a “rustic” flair — water was drawn from an outside pump, the outhouse seemed miles from the side door, and a corncob furnace in the basement heated the first floor, at best. By the time I came along, a pump for water was just off the kitchen, but the rest was the same for many years. Her dad Bill Smith was a farmer, a trapper/hunter and a rumored card player who may or may not have almost lost the farm. Her mom Mae Smith was a tough, independent teacher who traveled on a steamship to Europe in the early 1900’s with a fellow teacher before eventually settling into marriage and farm life. 

My mom ended up in a roundabout way at Marycrest College in Davenport. There she met my dad. He was an ambitious mathematician chasing a brand new field much later called computer science. My mom had his number and they were married when he was still a senior at St. Ambrose in Davenport and she was a junior.

Children started arriving as the young couple followed my dad’s career around the country before finally landing in Iowa City, Iowa. He eventually became chairman of the Department of Computer Science, “a big shot” — my mom’s favorite words used to describe people who were “all that.” He was all that. And so was she.

She ran a household of eight kids, hosted the necessary social activities for my dad, and cooked and gardened and “warshed” until bedtime. My dad eventually became ill with a brain tumor and he died three years later, in 1977. She cared for him at home the entire time while half her kids were still in grade school and high school. A hard time. But as she would say, she “got that over with,” which described anything from laughing with her beloved grandchildren and great grandchildren to burying her husband before he was 50. “Got that over with” for sure.

I was with my mom when she died just weeks before she turned 98. She was healthy both mentally and physically until right up near the end. But she was dying. Her Catholic priest came to give her whatever the Church now calls the last rites. After he had performed the short ceremony, he asked me if he could sing her an Irish Lullaby — “Over in Killarney, many years ago, my mother sang a song to me in tones so soft and low, ….”

“Of course,” I said. 

And he sang the song . . . and she died. Just like that. I looked at the hospice nurse and asked: “Did she just die?” The nurse slowly nodded her head. I let out a sob. 

“Got that over with,” I heard her say in my head.

But . . . wasn’t that something?

May she rest in peace. 

Joe

The letter began well enough, “Dear friend.” Who doesn’t want to be a friend?

But then it quickly went south: “Back Country will be closing its doors for good in the next few month.”

Oof!

Aging is a little like playing that game where you take away blocks all stacked on top of each other. As each block is taken away the structure sways but then hopefully holds. Knees, hips, ears, eyes, all go by the wayside as you stand there swaying while the air blows through the gaps. But you wake up each morning finding yourself surprisingly still upright and wondering where you can get a cinnamon roll. See, you won.  

And the best part of all this taking away is that as an old person you are no longer in the race, intentionally or not (it took me awhile to come to terms with that proposition). As a result, you can do anything you want. You want to stay up all night? Stay up. You want to talk with a German accent? Talk with a German accent. You want to jump in the downtown fountain? Jump away.

But when it comes to clothes, my wife has drawn the line, which explains why I am in Back Country in Beaverdale. 

“That shirt is just a little too short on you, Joe.”

Well of course it is. My body is a shape not found in the natural world.

“How does this other shirt look?” Jay Cox-Kozel speaks to me with a straight face as if my opinion is trustworthy.

It’s not.

Let’s face it, my fashion sense leans towards pajama bottoms and raggedy t-shirts. Although sometimes I’ve even chosen the pure bizarre — I wore two-tone leather saddle shoes to my wedding 44 years ago with a toe box shaped like the shoes worn by Mombo the Clown on the old Dr. Max Show. I thought I was quite stylish. 

Obviously, my wife had to do an intervention. She suggested (demanded?) that I should let others pick out my clothes.

Enter the wonderful Jay Cox-Kozel, who owns Back Country in Beaverdale. Always kind, never demeaning, smart and — to my delight — deadpan funny, he became my personal dresser without those words ever being uttered between the two of us.

“Jay, I need adult pants that feel like pajama bottoms. What can you do?” 

And Jay would find me pants that felt like pajama bottoms but, and this was key for my wife, without looking like someone should send me to bed and sing me a lullaby.

“Jay, I don’t want to dress like a 20 something, but I need a shirt that is stylish and feels as comfortable as a torn t-shirt.”

And Jay would find me such a shirt and never once laugh at my preference for clothes that felt like something I could use to wipe the oil off a dipstick.

Life was good . . . but then it wasn’t.

“Back Country will be closing,” the letter said. 

“I don’t remember the stages of grief, but for the time being there has been enough work to do that I haven’t yet dealt with the reality of it.”

Jay has melancholy eyes on the best of days. The closing of his store has turned his eyes into those of a very sad bloodhound.

“It’s not guilt, but it is humbling, as it increasingly dawns on me that I’ve been the steward of this institution, the anchor of a community, and I have to pull that out of peoples lives. There’s a responsibility that comes with that.”

Compassionate and self-reflective, Jay’s next calling should be as a very dapper monk, who dresses in layers of course.   

“Really good friends, supporters and customers have come in. I attempt, and probably fail, at expressing gratitude to them. Everybody has been immensely supportive. There is a little disbelief because the store has been an institution for so long and also there is a lot of sympathy.”

What was the best and what was the worst thing about running this store?

“The best thing about the store is the people. The family that started the business, of course, and all the colleagues along the way. And my long-time business partner, Austin. Our customers as well. I really truly consider many my friends.”

What do you think will happen to those friends?

“You develop all these relationships with people you admire and respect and enjoy, but so many exist primarily in the store. They are transactional relationships. I give you product and you give me money. I try to say I really value them as humans and the amount of respect and interest I have in them exists outside of those transactional relationships. I yearn to communicate that in a convincing way.”

See what I mean? A reflective, dapper monk . . . in spades.  

And the worst?

“The worst thing about the store . . . I’m awful at selling things. I don’t like taking people’s money. Not a good thing if you’re in retail.”

So there you have it. My personal dresser is moving on. The store I love is shutting down. Another loss for an old man and for the community. So from now on if you see a guy in pajama bottoms and a raggedy t-shirt wandering around a donut display, smile understandingly at him — that would be me.

Joe

Dear Editor,

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say that there is no spring this year. Dad says “If you see it in Cityview, it is so.” Please tell me the truth is spring coming this year or not?

Virginia

Listen, Virginia, spring isn’t coming. I’ve given it some thought, and, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, it’s just not happening. Not this year.

This is a year of no hope. Period.

Sure, Virginia, those fluffy green buds with white tips on the magnolia trees do make you think spring is coming. But see the dead grass at the bottom of the tree? Yup, it is nearly as white as the few remaining hairs on my head. And over there, the washed-out leaves blown into the bushes against the fence? They are turning into brown dust before our eyes. And look at those poor squirrels! Their fur is so blotchy and they are in such low spirits that they are just going through the motions of digging for nuts. Spring is flat out not coming, Virginia. Sorry.

But, really, is all hope gone? 

Well, hope makes me think of Santa Claus. Yup, Virginia, Santa Claus. Here’s this bigger-than-life figure that year in and year out delivers the goods. No matter your religion or race or what bathroom you use, Santa Claus still comes through. And of course you can criticize him as encouraging consumerism or say he is only for the privileged or that he’s just a stolen holiday from another culture — no matter. Santa Claus is a symbol of giving with grace and receiving with grace. He is a symbol of joy in the moment. And he is a symbol of kindness to others. In other words, the existence of Santa Claus is in itself hope for the future. 

But does Santa Claus even exist?

Francis P. Church wrote an editorial for The Sun (New York), Sept. 21, 1897, in response to a letter asking if Santa existed. Church wrote that Santa Claus exists as “certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist.” Love and generosity and devotion don’t seem bad things to have in your pocket, do they Virginia?

And according to the UPI, December 22, 1983, our very own former Polk County Associate Judge Thomas Renda ruled in a small claims case that “Santa is a public figure and that he ‘maintains a spiritual residence in the state of Iowa and within the hearts of the people of Iowa.'”

Well, look at that. Not only does Santa Claus exist, but he lives right here in Iowa. Wow. Who knew? And it’s the law, Virginia. 

So if Santa exists, then hope MUST exist. And if hope exists, then spring MUST come.

Did you know I used to do morning court at the Des Moines Police Department back in the 1980’s? It was an adventure. There was usually a parade of folks who had gotten in some kind of trouble. Many were kept in a large cell overnight and they did not look or smell their best.

Virginia, imagine what it’s like when you’re having a very bad day. They were having a very bad day.

My boss was Maggi Moss. For reasons only she knows, she picked me out of the pile of prosecutors and made me her right arm in the intake division. It was a gift.

In the intake division, Virginia, we had all sorts of jobs. We went to serious crime scenes in person, wrote search warrants, wrote arrest warrants, and either approved or didn’t approve a charge brought by the police. Yup, you guessed it, I was in over my head. 

And, Virginia, we did morning court.

Morning court was an appearance before a judge for people recently arrested. And Maggi and I took turns being at court. But she generally covered all holidays except Christmas because that was the one time she had family commitments.

This, however, was a big challenge for my young family. Santa of course came during the night, but no one was allowed downstairs until I came home from court. 

So on Christmas Eve my wife packed bottles, milk, and cereal upstairs in a cooler. And on Christmas Day my kids and wife sat on the top upstairs landing in their pajamas, giggling with anticipation, and waited for their dad to come home from morning court so they could race downstairs to see what Santa brought. 

And eventually I did come home and stand at the foot of the stairs. And year after year, I would look up to the landing and see my wife and three kids in their pajamas dancing, laughing, and twirling with excitement before tumbling down the stairs to see what Santa brought.

That’s hope.

And Santa always came.

So, Virginia, I guess spring will too.

Joe