On That Day

Fauver Hill School was out in the country. It had four bright, airy, sparkling-clean classrooms. When the Venetian blinds were raised to the top of the huge windows you could gaze out onto giant oak trees on the playground and beyond to the endless farm fields and pastures dappled with gorgeous, grazing Guernseys. In the distance were lush bluffs with sandstone outcroppings that formed a verdant backdrop for chugging freight trains wending their way through the valley of the La Crosse River headed to big cities in far-off places I had only heard of. Madison. Milwaukee. Chicago. It was my school, my world. And it was built of clear blue sky and daydreams.

Students who would have been entering the 5th and 6th grades at Fauver Hill School were bussed to Irving Pertzsch Elementary School when the Town of Medary School District consolidated with the School District of Onalaska those many years ago.

I didn't like it at all.

Pertzsch was in Onalaska, a town of three thousand people. I might have known about six of them. The treeless playground was surfaced with blacktop. Baselines of a ball diamond and squares for hopscotch were painted on with yellow stripes like you'd find in the center of the highway. The only real earth on the school property was a sand bur patch. An unnecessary rule prohibited playing there.

There were only two things I liked about Pertzsch. One was the name. I couldn't think of another name with eight letters and only one vowel. The other was Mr. Urban.

Mr. Urban was our principal. He was the first man I ever saw who worked in a school who wasn't a janitor. Mr. Urban was as neat as a pin. He wore glasses with tortoise shell rims. His suits were perfectly tailored, his ties precisely knotted. His shoes were the same shade and as shiny as his, wavy, auburn, Brylcreamed hair.

When I was ten years old I was shy around grown-up men, a little bit afraid of them. But not Mr. Urban. Mr. Urban liked you. He shook your hand and said he was pleased to meet you. And he was. You were glad that Mr. Urban liked you. You wanted him to like you.

In stature, Mr. Urban was a small man. He was effeminate. That was something I couldn't have explained when I was ten and would have ridiculed when I was thirteen. Everything about Mr. Urban's manner put me at ease.

The 5th and 6th graders who came to Pertzsch from Fauver Hill were assigned to a makeshift classroom sandwiched between the lunch room and the music room. It was below ground level, windowless, dreary.

Since daydreams didn't come as freely here as they did back at Fauver Hill it was easy to misbehave. We were the charges of Miss Hyatt in her first year of teaching. She had not yet become a forceful woman so it wasn't unusual for Mr. Urban to visit our classroom from time to time. He would come into the room quietly, smile broadly, walk around the tightly-grouped desks, give an approving but barely discernible bow, and walk out. You hardly noticed him.

But on that day, an especially dreary one, he walked square-shouldered to the front of the class and turned sharply, facing us. He was crying. I had never seen a grown man cry. Mr. Urban's tears came without restraint. "I don't like to interrupt you with news unless the news is so very good that I just can't wait to announce it." The words came calmly, deliberately. "But today, I'm afraid the news is very bad. Our president has been shot. His condition is grave. As soon as I know more I will come and tell you."

We sat in silence. Within moments he returned with the news that the president was dead. He sat down with us in one of the small empty desks and stayed for what seemed like a long time.

We were sent home early. I remember sitting on the bus staring numbly at raindrops trickling down the window and thinking nothing bad had ever happened before now.

Another Big Circle

Cripes, you guys. I like to watch television after supper. I learned that from my dad and my grandfather. They liked Gunsmoke and Wagon Train and Bonanza. There was always a fistfight (the best ones took place next to a campfire or a swift river), usually a shootout, and sometimes there'd be the big one: a hanging. The drama was non-stop save for the commercial breaks when they'd try to sell you a Chevy with an incredibly happy family driving around in a car as shiny as you could get it in black and white and a huge chorus of people off-camera singing a snappy ditty that you couldn't get out of your head for days.

Those great westerns are gone now. Crime dramas with carcasses of victims too graphic for my taste have taken their place. So I tend to watch the little half-hour comedies about beleaguered dads who have gorgeous wives and kids who are smarter than both of them or shows about the foibles of the workplace where the characters remind me of people in my own workplace only they have better clothes and are more attractive and you only have to suffer their moronic behavior for a few minutes once a week. The laughs just keep coming save for the commercial breaks when they try to sell you a Toyota cruising the great expanses of The American West but you never see the driver. I'd probably buy one if I had the money and they had a decent jingle.

About a year ago I started watching left-leaning news shows after supper, not for entertainment or to learn anything but to reinforce my biases. I thought when the election was over I might give up on these shows but I'm afraid I've formed a habit. Right now I'm watching a segment about how the (still) President of the United States is in a race against time to further damage our country. It's just one outrage after another save for the commercial breaks when they try to sell you a pill for "male urinary symptoms" with some guys about my age drinking bottled water and driving past The Grand Canyon in a vintage Chevy from the Gunsmoke commercial.

November Sunday

Cripes, you guys. Snowflakes are sputtering in the lead-grey sky, so jittery it's hard to tell if they'll ever reach the ground. The willow is still leafy in a kind of Packers green and gold color. A few leaves cling to the tops of the hackberries, curled, dry, brown. The ground is cloaked in the orange, rust, yellow, and blood-red that recently dressed the maple. Bald trees across the November river give distant bluffs the visual texture of steel wool. A towboat slowly grinds upstream, headlong into the raw wind, as a tight flock of diving ducks speeds through the afternoon sky unnoticed by the roughneck deckhands.

It's good to be outside this time of year. It's not as easy as summer but there is a new and greater sense of purpose. Before long it will be cold. Real cold. There is wood to cut, haul, split, and stack. Warmth earned through hard work provides a satisfying comfort in a hard winter here along the Upper Mississippi.

Fall chores are a race with the sun, hurrying along behind the clouds a lot faster than usual these days. It's best to get an early start. Rushing the work takes the fun out of it. The lawn mower is stored in the basement. The snow blower is in the garage, ready. There's a lot left to do. But not today.

The delicious smell of burning wood makes the cold weather seem like an old friend. And spring is just around the corner.

Play Ball

Cripes, you guys. In the final innings of a high-stakes game some teams will do anything to win. The best hitters have to be ready to protect themselves from the high hard one. Base runners become a little more eager to take out the infielder whose job it is to make the pivot on the turn-two. And forget about the play at the plate. The catcher, who already has the toughest job, has to become more of a defensive tackle or a goalie.

It's like that in elections, too. The guys on the team I'm rooting for are now said to be catering to terrorists, murderers, wife-beaters, drunk drivers, rapists, dope fiends, and other special interest groups. They will end free speech, burn down your churches, and jail The Boy Scouts. Worse yet, these America-hating, closet commies will raise your taxes.

John McCain has followed Nixon's lead by hiring the plumbers to secure his seat in The Oval Office. Apparently John's plumber isn't actually licensed to secure the porcelain oval seat in my own rectangular office.

I have been obsessed by this very exciting game and am a little sorry that it will be over soon. I'm not sure what I will do with myself. I have been listening to it on the radio all day and watching it on TV all night.

I guess, if it stays warm I will have more time for fishing. If it cools off I'll cut firewood and hunt ducks. But cripes, you guys. I really need this thing to end in a rout. If it goes into extra innings (remember 2000?) I'm screwed.