Grouse Hollow Journal for June 30, 2016

Canada 2016

We started off our annual Canadian holiday with dinner at Rockies in Stoddard.  Ellen’s sister Barb Wright and her husband Chuck met us there on Thursday evening.  Barb said she had the first disaster of the trip when she remembered she forgot her homemade cookies.  Too late to run two hours back for those though, so we’ll just have to “rough it” with Ellen’s homemade cookies.  Anyway, as usual, we had a great dinner at Rockies.  Maggie, our waitress stayed very composed while putting up with my brother-in-law.  When we told her we were leaving for Canada the next day, she said that she was going on a trip the next day too, heading to Tennessee to watch her sister perform in a rodeo.  Yee Ha!  We wished her and her sister well.  Like our dinner, the service was excellent.  Back at the ranch, we hit the sack to make an early start for the border and our annual fishing safari to Keystone Lodge on Cedar Lake in Ontario.  We said goodbye to a very sad Scout at 5:15 the next morning.  After a breakfast break at MacDonald’s in Osseo, we had clear sailing all the way up Highway 53 until the Iron Range in northern Minnesota when we hit an occasional shower, punctuated by thunder and a streak or two of lightning across the northern horizon.  

We stopped for one of Ellen’s homemade ground beef sandwiches for lunch at a bait shop and convenience store in Cook, MN.  On one side of their parking lot, there were two guys in official looking garb with a steam washer cleaning boats.  During a lull, they told me they were part of a Minnesota DNR initiative to make the public more aware about stemming the spread of invasive species.  We had a nice chat, but they declined to power wash my truck.  It started to rain as we pulled out anyway.

We filled up in International Falls - $2.14 a gallon by the way; we saw much lower gasoline prices in northern Minnesota, so I gotta ask: why is our gas $2.40 from the same company?  When we got in line to cross the US/Canada border, the line was moving steadily along with three border guard posts open.  I chose poorly though as there was a guy with a boat getting a real going over by a border guard.  Barb and Chuck had been behind us, but they had to wait for us on the other side maybe fifteen minutes.  I was able to switch lines up close to the border, and you guessed it, the line we had been in starting moving quickly; I actually looked around for Jerry Seinfeld or the Candid Camera crew.  Anyway, we were able to navigate the road construction in Fort Frances without too much trouble and head west on Canada 11 to hook up with 502 North through the rocky lake country to Dryden, Ontario.  We were surprised at the Great Bear store when they couldn’t sell us fishing licenses.  The OPP, Ontario Provincial Police, license system was down all across Canada the lady said.  Gasoline in Canada was $1.19 (a liter that is!).  Minnows were $4.87 a dozen - not a scoop, a dozen.  Crawlers and leeches were over $4 too.

The drive north to Dryden was uneventful except for some poor party whose motorhome and boat were in the ditch, crashed into a rock wall.  What a nasty start (and probably end) to a trip. There was a tow truck and squad car there, and no ambulance, so . . .  

That evening we got our licenses at Canadian Tire in Dryden for $41.10 US for an 8-day Sport license each.  One also needs a Canadian Conservation Card but ours were still good yet.  They'll be around $10 next year.  We ate at Pizza Hut for supper.  Chuck tried to rattle the waitress again, but she was just finishing her 11-hour shift and handled him with ease.  El and I watched Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino in our hotel room that night - good film.  

Before turning in that night, I checked the La Crosse Tribune online and found an obit for our friend Brian Haydysch.  We had heard that Brian had a heart incident on Saturday while camping at Goose Island.  Brian was our mailman and friend.  He had stopped up with a package the week before and told me about going with his dad on the Freedom Honor Flight.  He so enjoyed that time with his dad and was so impressed with the program.  Brian put his own special touch on delivering the mail, often driving up to leave a package on our porch for us.  One recent summer day, he pulled in and got out because he had a package for me.  He handed me the mail and then opened the door and out jumped Scout.  He said he saw her along the road too far away to be good, so he brought her home.  (To be fair, another mail carrier did that with Scout as well.  Unlike most dogs, Scout loves the mailmen.)  Anyway, I will miss our talks about hunting and fishing and everything Stoddard.  Brian will be missed by so many.  He always had a smile and he was always involved in doing good things for others.  Our condolences go out to Sue and Erica and the rest of his family and community.  We missed Brian’s memorial service because we were in Canada.  He would understand that.

Back in Canada, we wiled away Saturday morning in Dryden by sleeping in and breakfasting at a truckstop with another excellent waitress, followed by a shopping trip for groceries and such at Walmart.  In Vermillion Bay, we stopped at Bobby’s Bait Shop and Store in Vermillion Bay to check out the tackle and apparel and gifts before heading the final 40 miles into camp.  We lunched on another beef sandwich along Robinson Lake near what was once Camp Robinson.  Now it is only some vague outlines of buildings in the ground.  The lupines were in full bloom.  So were the dragon flies, black flies, skeeters, and deer flies.  

The road into Keystone had red signs telling drivers to use the road at their own risk.  Hmmm . . .  We found a couple of construction crews working on the road and got through just fine.  Keystone looked welcoming as Cedar Lake came into view.  The Monroe/Juda, Wisco contingent of Rich Ahrens and family rolled into camp in Rich’s motorhome just as we finished off loading in Cabin 2.  It is always good to see them.  This year they will miss Art Riess who died tragically on the way home from Keystone last June.  Rich told us that he and Art were hammering huge crappies on the last night in camp last year.  Rich said it was getting dark but Art didn’t want to quit just yet, so they fished longer.  Art said on the way home it had been the best trip ever.  I guess coming home from the best fishing trip ever with your best friend might not be the worst way to go.  

We checked out Cabin 2 when we pulled in and then walked over the Lodge to check-in.  Our hostess, Leanne Frostiak was as welcoming as ever in the lodge shop, signing us up for the catch and release club and explaining the laws.  I told her I had a complaint.  She looked startled and then I told her that after all of the years we have stayed in Cabin 2, I figured we would have been consulted on the new furniture!  She laughed and said she went to the furniture store when they had complete rooms for sale and bought three!  Very nice.

Last year, we got 2 year-old Smoker Craft boats to use.  This year we got new boats.  The lodge provided us with G3 fishing boats with 50-horse tiller Yamaha engines!  It seems they were having issues with some of their 4-stroke Mercury engines on the Smoker Crafts, so these were replacements.  These G3 boats are nicely appointed with a built in ice chest, aerated bait compartment, double live wells, front mounted trolling motor, Lowrance fish finder, rod storage, and three padded seats.  These machines could move.  

The weather was a tad iffy when El and I got our boat ready, but with the 50-horse, we decided to chance a run to Portage Bay.  The big four-stroke engine is so smooth and quiet we could talk without yelling as we cruised down the lake.  In Portage we anchored on the north end of a weed line.  I baited up with chunks of crawler and tossed out into 6-feet of water.  I hooked a nice crappie for our first fish.  Over the course of three hours, we caught many perch, keeping 20.  We had three really nice walleyes too.  We watched a bald eagle swoop low over the lake in search of dinner and setting off a loon alert across the bay.  Fast moving clouds loosed a sprinkle on us a couple of times as we filled up our up livewells with a fish dinner.  At cocktail hour, we ate fried fish filets, potato salad, macaroni salad, topped off with homemade cookies.  It rained and rumbled that night.

On Father’s Day, we had bacon and scrambled eggs with cinnamon bread for breakfast.  It was warm in the sunshine but cool on the lake when we motored up the Narrows to the clearwater area called Times Square.  There were many boats from nearby lodges all along the Narrows with fisher persons who appeared to be at rest as we never saw a hook set.  We anchored on a weed line in what was usually clear water.  The water was stained dark green from the previous night’s rain.  I put a Mini-Mite on Ellen’s rod and she started hooking little perch on a bare hook.  Unfortunately, these perch were all mini too.  I got only a couple little perch and we moved.  The sun was hot.  We motored back up the lake and found Barb and Chuck just pulling out of Musky Bay.  They didn’t have any keepers either.  The storm had them spooked we figured.  El and I tried a couple other bays, seeing some ducks but no fish.  We tried a spot in Portage Bay along a tall rock wall where we have often hooked dandy walleyes and smallmouth bass.  We didn’t today.  We checked out Loon Point where we found the Wright’s trying the usually prolific smallmouth spot.  We decided to head in for Father’s Day dinner.  The girls fried fish and we had potato salad and such topped off with chocolate cake with strawberries.  After a decent Father’s Day afternoon nap, the girls critiqued the snoring as a musical concerto.  El and I went on a tour stopping to wet a line along a variety of weed lines and rocky shores with no fish in the boat.  That’s why they call it fishing instead of catching anyway.

Until next time, get out - if you haven’t, please consider contacting your state legislators and ask them to support changing the railroad trespass law.  I understand that the railroad commissioner is going forward with a plan to place a few more crossings in the 200-plus mile stretch along the Mississippi, but not changing the trespass law to allow for crossing over and back where needed.  Just changing the law would save thousands and possibly millions of dollars.   More on our Canadian fishing trip next time.  Enjoy.

 

 

 

Grouse Hollow Journal for June 22, 2016

Ellen came down off the ridge the other day and held her hands up wide, exclaiming, “I saw a moose!”  Of course, she saw a huge big buck in velvet.  She said she had also been startled while walking along a field.  She stooped to pick up a big rock when a wild turkey burst out of the alfalfa a few feet away.  She also saw a doe in the Christmas tree plot.  She checked out kiddie pool turned watering hole pools in the Grouse Hollow and at the Oak Stand.  Both were holding water, as much as 5 inches in one.  She said that the clover was recovering nicely in the food plots I mowed last week.  So were some thistles that just got knock down @#$!  After last night’s two-plus inches of hard rain, I imagine those pools are running over.  Anyway, if the rain ever holds off, I’ll try another run up the ridge with the John Deere soon to mow again.  

Speaking of the John Deere, this powerful little diesel tractor feels a bit tippy when mowing or working on any kind of incline, so I thought maybe some tractor weights might help.  Our friend Will Beitlich said he had some I could use, so his son, Andy texted me he had them so I drove up to pick them up.  Hmmm . . . pick them up might be a bit of a stretch.  Grabbed ahold of and lugged and swung the chunks of iron up into the back of my truck is more like it.  Anyway, Andy and his son Austin had just stopped to have a popsicle, so we discussed the problems of the world for a bit.  The biggest right now for them - and most area farmers - is finding a window in the rainy weather to make hay.  There is hay down everywhere, but that doesn’t mean it will dry to bail.  Thirteen-year old Austin asked me if I wanted a pet.  Huh?  His “pet” sow was about to farrow.  This required another hmmm . . .  I told him we’ll talk when they are thinking about butchering.  They also have a cow that’s ready to calve they wanted to get in a trailer and move to the other farm.  No matter the weather, life goes on at the farm as always.  Back at our ranch, the tractor weights worked to keep the front end on the ground, but they are too tall for my machine as they drag in places and catch on stuff.  This may take some jury-rigging to work.  

Mark Manske brought us some gravel for our driveway last week.  Proksch Coulee Road is under a major repair upgrade so we took advantage of all the trucks coming and going to spruce up our driveway after so much of our gravel disappearing in recent storms.  We raked some and I used the bucket on the tractor to even out the road some.  That night the heavens burst and I had to use the tractor and blade to recover some of the $300 worth of new gravel trying to escape down the coulee.

     

Ellen and I drove up Oak Ridge to get some strawberries from the Byler family on County K.  El was worried they might not be very nice what with all the heat and rain, but we got eight quarts of beautiful, sweet stuff for making El’s amazing jam.  She and Pearl Sikora made a couple dozen jars together.  Pearl labeled them Ellen’s Famous Strawberry Jam.  Anyway, her brother Jake and I got to be quality control.

Until next time, get out - I should be spinning a tale about Canadian lakes, big perch, walleyes, bass, northerns, muskies, crappies, moose, bears, and some great fish fry feasts by then, eh.  Enjoy.

    

Grouse Hollow Journal for June 16, 2016 by Greg Koelker

Ellen and I have been making meals together for some 40 plus years (ok, she does most of this and I bar tend).  We do a lot of meals pretty much the same way, like grilling, deep frying, baking, etc.  Since I heard grill guy on Joy Cardin, a few weeks ago, I have been grilling using only one burner and putting whatever I am cooking on the cooler side of the grill to cook with indirect heat, finally moving it over the burner to sear the final product.   I have also done some grilling with a cedar plank  thanks to Mad Dog and Merrill - um, um good.  Last week one evening Ellen and I fixed fish in a different way.  We usually bread our fish fillets with Fry Magic and fry them in our fish pot at 375 degrees or grill them on that cedar plank with lemon slices and butter.  Gordie Hierlmeier has often suggested we try this: cut your fillets in half and arrange them in a frying pan on the stove, cover the filets with 7 Up, and then bring the ingredients to a boil until the fillets start to float, spoon them out and serve with butter to dip in.  It is sort of a poor man’s lobster thing and it works!  El fixed some red potatoes while I boiled the fish.  It was excellent, very lobster like and quick to fix and clean up after.  There were leftovers, so El put those filets in a frying pan the next morning and scrambled eggs over the top.  Excellent too.  You may be wondering about where the fish came from, well, Shell Lake of course.

Last week I rolled out at early-thirty and after coffee with my better-half, pointed the Ranger north on Highway 53.  I stopped at the MacDonald’s in Osseo for a coffee refill and a breakfast sandwich but otherwise made good time, arriving at the Shell Lake landing a minute ahead of Gordie.  The lake and village of Shell Lake is 8 miles or so west of Highway 53 in Washburn County.  The town is small with a population under 1,400, but that probably goes way up on weekends and peak summer vacation times I imagine.  The lake is ringed with homes.  The lake water is crystal clear; when it is calm, one can see down fifteen feet or more.  

Anyway, we drove over to my friends Deb and Dave Ekern’s, where we met up with their son Jake Ekern and his son Aren.  Jake was a student teacher at De Soto back in 2000 and we try to get together every summer to fish, but sometimes life gets in the way so this was the first time in a few years.  Jake and Gordie know each other because they were both Athletic Directors at one time or another in their careers and through me too I guess.  Jake is the principal at Columbus today and Gordie teaches Health, Phy Ed, and Driver’s Ed at Glenwood City.  (Did I mention that I am retired?)  We caught up over coffee a bit and then drove over to Jake’s Grandpa Ekern’s where Jake’s Lund was docked.  Jake complained that we brought the wind with us.  The big water looked a bit rough, but it was blue under the nearly clear sky, broken up only by an occasional high cloud.  

After visiting with his grandpa a bit, we motored out south to try and get out of the wind and find a spot to fish.  It was cool enough that we were glad for our jackets and long pants at first.  We anchored and tried casting some Mepps spinners with no luck.  Actually, we didn’t anchor long as we started realizing that we were taking on water!  Jake hit the bilge pump but we had a boatload of incoming H2O so we pulled up and raced back to the dock a half-mile away.  As it turned out, Jake had to drive over to a marina to get a new plug as his was gone.  For some reason they both chose to blame me because of my previous luck at landings and such.  

Anyway, we eventually got back to fishing, using slip bobbers drowning crawler parts or small leeches or minnows.  We had to move a few times before we started catching fish, but we did hammer the largemouth bass eventually.  I caught the first fish, a dandy largemouth.  One could see the fish move on your bait when the wind died down.  There is a five fish bag limit on smallmouth and largemouth bass on Shell Lake.  The bucket mouths are taking over the lake so we kept them.  We kept largemouth bass and a few pumpkin seeds and bluegills that first boat ride out.  We came in at supper time and cleaned our catch at the Shell Lake landing.  

Shell Lake has  a great fish cleaning facility.  The building is well-lit inside and it has a stainless steel work area with cutting boards and a large and very powerful garbage disposal in the middle under a shield.  Jake and I filleted our catch, pushing carcasses and skins down the drain.  There are two water hoses with pressure sprayers on them too.  Once the fish were cleaned, Jake hit a switch and the disposal roared to life, making short work of bones, scales, and guts.  We cleaned up and headed over to his folks where his mom had a supper of do-it-yourself burritos for us.  After supper we retooled and headed out to catch the sunset walleye bite.  We caught them too, taking three limits.  One can keep three walleyes but only one over over fourteen inches and we did.  We also put more panfish in the livewell.  I caught a snake northern and some small perch and a pumpkinseed or two before we headed in with our running lights on.  Once again, we used the cleaning facility, appreciating the good lighting, water, and fillet boards.  There is an $8 fee for out-of-towners to launch, but the money goes towards maintaining the landing and campground that included the cleaning shack, clean restrooms and lake side campsites.  A guy waiting to use the clean a couple of small walleye said that a lakeside campsite cost $38 a night.  Gordie had to head home, so we said goodbye after a great day of fishing and solving all of the problems of the world, especially those of Wisconsin schools.

The next morning there was room in the boat for Aren, but he had the option to go go-karting at Spooner, so I know what I would have chosen when I was twelve, (especially when he knew they were going out again that night and had three more days to fish.)  Jake and I had coffee with his folks and then went back out on the water.  

The wind had died down and one could see down to yellow sand where the occasional bass and panfish were drifting along the weed lines.  Jake finally found the fish along a weedy shoreline.  We caught bass and panfish again and enjoyed the cool morning and then sunshine.  I pulled the plug on the expedition around noon and headed home with a bag of the aforementioned filets after we cleaned another livewell full of fish around 1:30.       

Until next time, get out - I hope Jake and I and Gordie and Aren too can make the trip to Shell Lake more often and not miss so many years in the future.  Life is good and sometimes, it don’t get no better.  Enjoy.

Grouse Hollow Journal for June 9, 2016

Grouse Hollow Journal for June 9, 2016 by Greg Koelker

Garrison Keillor once said, “The highlight of my childhood was making my brother laugh so hard that food came out his nose.”

Appropriately, it is time to wish my “little” brother, Del another happy birthday.  Let’s see, he must be like 58 today (June 9).  Brother Del was my almost constant companion back in the day before summer jobs and rock and roll took over my time.  When he got old enough to tag along and I wanted to go do something with my friends, like hike up Millbranch Creek to do macho things like fish for chubs, make dams, catch frogs, take an icy dip, play war with rocks or BB guns, make a campfire or cabin or play Rawhide and round up our imaginary herd like Rowdy Yates and Gil Favor on our imaginary horses,  Mom would insist that I take him along or stay home myself.  He was a pain, but in retrospect probably not as bad as some of my friends or me for that matter when it came to complaining about nettles and mosquitoes and the weather anyway.  He earned the nickname Smoke when he went through a “I like to play with fire phase” and singed off his eyebrows.  

He wasn’t always so caustic; I used to read to Del and my baby sister Carolyn.  Their favorite was Walt Disney's The Odyssey of an Otter.  They always laughed like crazy when I read the title, The Odyssey of an Odor!  I also remember an evening at dinner one summer day.  Del was looking down or away most of the time.  Upon close scrutiny, I realized that he was missing part of an eyebrow; Dad had taken him to get a buzz haircut at the elderly barber in Bloomington.  One of his eyebrows had been neatly removed, no doubt by a slip of the clippers.  I think we all teased him about that for quite awhile.  I remember taking him and our cousin Randy deer hunting for the first time when they were twelve.  We didn’t kill any deer during the three-day any-deer season, but we had fun, got cold, and made memories.  Del became a deer hunter in spite of me I imagine.  Anyway, a couple years later, he outdid me by taking a nice 8-pointer on Grandpa’s farm.  That rack hung in my folks’ house for many years.  

Del and Ellen’s brother Brian were best friends in high school and Del hung out at her family farm more than I did for a long time.  He fit right in with the other rotating group of teenagers El’s kind-hearted mother fed and put up with on top of eleven of her own.  Del even hunted with our deer party for some years.  

In 1973, when we got up the last morning we ever shared a bedroom together on the arctic like 29 below day when Ellen and I got married, he offered me a celebratory swig of peach brandy from a pint hidden somewhere before we went to wash cars.  I was 21 by the way . . . hmmm . . .  

Del took me walleye fishing and turkey hunting for the first time, both pursuits he is better at than I’ll ever be.  Like me he loves bowhunting and ice fishing.  Sadly, he has one serious vice, golf.  We try to take an occasional fishing or canoe trip but we don’t get together enough.  We share political views for the most part too - which cuts down on arguments a lot.  

Anyway, like me, my little brother married well, has two great kids, a farm, but Ha! Ha! Ha!  Now I can say Happy Birthday Grandpa and he can’t say it back to me!  Brother, here’s wishing you many, many more opening days, sunsets on the river, days in your tree stand, and great times with all of your grandchildren.

Important to readers: so far there are many people working to persuade our legislators to change the onerous 2006 Wisconsin Railroad Trespass Law; not much is happening in Madtown because those folks are taking a break I guess.  Anyway, let your legislator and the governor know how you feel about changing this ridiculous ordinance that restricts legal access to so much of wild Wisconsin.  Also, according to the Wisconsin DNR, the public will have opportunities over the next several months to weigh in on how they recreate in Wisconsin's outdoors and what they feel should be priorities for receiving funding for recreational development and opportunities.  The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is in the process of updating the Statewide Comprehensive Outdoor Recreation Plan, or SCORP, for 2017-2022. The plan serves as a blueprint for state and local outdoor recreation planning as required by the Federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, which provides funds to state and local agencies for acquisition, development and maintenance of outdoor recreational land and facilities.  I will try to keep readers informed through this space, but one can keep up online at: http://dnr.wi.gov/news/weekly/.  If you would like an email copy of River Rats for River Access flyer with addresses, emails, and phone numbers for western Wisconsin legislators, send an email to: grousehollow@gmail.com and I’ll do what I can to get you that info, and thanks!

Until next time, get out - I am tapping this out on the laptop while enjoying my coffee out on the porch this morning.  It is cool - like 59 degrees, with a slight breeze and happy song birds adding background music.  A tom turkey just added a gobble to the general cacophony.  Big and little cottontails are enjoying the clover in parts of our fast growing yard.  Ellen’s garden is enjoying this million dollar wet spell we are having as well.  It don’t get no better.  Enjoy.

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 26, 2016

Grouse Hollow Journal for May 26, 2016 by Greg Koelker

This week starts the annual graduation party-arama.  I love the parties and the food - can you say lemon bars with no limit?  Actually, it is more about seeing so many people we haven’t seen in awhile and honoring the graduates.  From the “For What It’s Worth Department” and maybe a bit from the “I Need Something Other Than Another Turkey Hunting Column To Write About Department”, I’d like to put in my two bucks worth on this kickoff of the next chapter of life for so many young people.  

I have been asked a few times to be a high school graduation speaker and I said no to all but one request.  The one time I said yes, was because of a class full of special kids; however when the dust settled, I didn’t have enough super delegates to win the nomination, uh, that is the class voted for one of their mothers to speak.  She did a great job too, with a speech that was inspiring, humorous and most importantly, short.  Anyway, now that I have reached that “Will ya still need me, will ya still feed me” stage of life, I’ll test the waters with a paragraph or two of my thoughts to share.  So here goes:

To the graduates of 2016, these are the true facts of life: life is always fantastic, life is always fulfilling, life always makes us happy, you can do anything you set your mind to, you must always follow your dream or passion, money comes easily, everyone you meet will be thrilled with you and vice versa, pizzas are really good for you, instant replay isn’t, life is always fair, uh, okay, maybe sometimes, but not always on all accounts. No joke here, life can get out of your control sometimes: illnesses, bills, accidents, and jobs for example.  Unless you can develop an App that you can sell for millions, you will have to find work to live the dream.  I also know that most people have worked a lot of jobs in their lives.  Ask your parents and grandparents and I think you will be amazed at what they have made a living at during all the many stages of their lives.  As for me, well for a guy who never really liked work and would prefer reading a book, singing a song, wetting a line, going to the sandbar, or even working on the many cars I damaged, I have had a few jobs before I finally found my calling:  I helped on the farm, bagged groceries, mowed lawns, delivered papers, bussed tables, waited tables, tended bar (I found out that bussing tables was better than bartending or waiting tables because you get off earlier on Saturday night and mostly nobody notices you unless you dump a tray full of dishes and your feet don’t hurt that much); I pumped gas, changed tires and oil, helped lay down rubber roofing for Texas Refinery Corporation, was a summer custodian at a high school and then a grade school. I was the blacksmith/stable docent one summer at Stonefield Village (I actually put shoes on a workhorse); I was an art director and had a bar sign and banner business; I was a studio news director at noon, six, and ten. I produced hundreds of TV commercials in thirteen years on the job; I was a television production manager and an announcer; I was a wedding photographer and a display manager. I judged forensics, talent contests, and debate; I was a baseball and speech coach and language teacher; behind all that or on top of it or whatever, I made music through the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, playing guitar, trumpet, harmonica, and bass with The Livin’ End, Arnie Junk and Dairyland Ramblers, The Before and After Band, The Mississippi Mud Band, The GMC, The Mark Four, The Buffalo County Band, The Just Friends Band, and Shake, Rattle, and Roll often 7 nights a week.   I hated some jobs like display manager and roofing.  I loved being the blacksmith/stable docent at Stonefield Village and a custodian at my alma mater as well as making music and doing art work and coaching.  Still, I didn’t find my passion/profession until I was 38.  All along the way, l learned a lot of useful or at least semi-useful skills and stuff that carried over into every subsequent job and part of my life; I had a lot of fun at work, and I met many, many people. That’s the best thing ever; at every job I had whether I liked it or not, I met wonderful people and an occasional dud and even a jerk or two, but mostly I met great people; I hope they felt that way about me.  So what?  Well, the “so what?” is mostly that life comes down to decisions.  You decide whether to work all your life at a job because it pays okay and you need the money but you really don’t like it - if it lasts, or maybe because you aren’t confident that you can make it in whatever career you think you’d like; I feared I wouldn’t be a good teacher and given the chance, some of my former students may attest to that I suppose. You decide whether to hate going to work every day because you think what you do is pointless or boring but you need to make a buck or you decide that the work you do doesn’t feel like work because you enjoy doing whatever it is.  I guarantee this decision makes a heckuva difference in the better part of a century you get to spend here on planet Earth.  I tell people that the best decision I ever made in my life besides asking my wife to marry me and having kids was deciding to become a teacher.  I didn’t realize how profound that was until it happened.  My family is great and so is what I did and do mostly, but also I almost never hated going to work when I was teaching.  I still don’t mind going in to be a substitute teacher.  I used to say to kids when they were bugging me, “I hate kids!”  I don’t think they really believed that.  So what?  Find a way to enjoy your job when you can.  If you can’t, find something else.  If you always wanted to do something else, do it.  Work is good.  Money is good.  But remember, we work to live not the other way around.  Do what you enjoy, not what you have to for the money.  Another big decision you get to make, be open to people, all people.  Reject someone at your peril; unless you realize they are harmful to you physically or mentally, all people have worth and you may miss out.  Never stop learning - a cliche’ sure, but it’s true: read a book or two that covers all the historical time of your life to learn what was really going on while you were ignoring what was going on around you except for the music and Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter, map out a trip across country and take it, try cooking something besides Ramen Noodles for a change, learn to fly in an airplane, make a movie, draw or paint or carve something, sew or crochet or knit, maybe learn another language or take up photography or the guitar, or even write a short story or book.  Let people help you when you need it.  It is good for you and it is good for them.  When your mom or dad or aunt or grandma wants to send that leftover roast turkey or casserole home with you on Sunday night, take it.  You have lunch for a few days and she or he’ll feel good about helping you.  Think before speaking in anger - believe me.  I know about this one first hand and from both sides.  Forgive.  Learn the issues, think, and then go vote always - or don’t complain.  Share what you know with others.  Volunteer.  Visit your grandparents; they leave us too soon and have a lot to offer.  That said, listen to old people - I mean really listen mindfully, you’ll understand why after you do - if you think.  And graduates, call your mom or dad or both - and often, nuf said.    

Until next time, get out - at 64, I know that those years vaporize into memories too fast, and that to be angry or unhappy and closed to others for that LIMITED life is a waste when you can decide otherwise.  So 2016 grads, don’t worry, be happy or not; the good news and the bad news is that you get to make the call.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you, and don’t call my mom; I’ll do that myself.  That’ll be two bucks, please.  Enjoy.