Original anecdotes, commentary, rumination, and occasional pontification.
AUGUST 27, 2024 – (Cont.) My three sisters and I inherited the place from our elders, who’d inherited it from their elders, who’d inherited it from their elders. After succeeding in business back in New Jersey, our great-grandfather returned to our great-grandmother’s Connecticut roots to establish a veritable Shangri-la over-looking Upper Hamburg Cove just a …
AUGUST 26, 2024 – Ever since I was a kid I’ve been persnickety about yard and garden landscaping and maintenance. If you asked my wife about this self-assessment she’d say, “Huh?!” followed by “If what he said were true, our yard at home wouldn’t look so sinfully scraggly, and he’d get around to pruning [“that huge …
AUGUST 19, 2024 – My main objective in taking the boat for a spin was to see if I could get the darned thing off the lift. I’d already experienced difficulty in this regard before our trip to Portugal two weeks ago, and the lake level has dropped another inch or two since. In the …
JULY 22, 2024 – Here I sit on the porch of the Red Cabin, surrounded by the sound of a soft rain dancing on a billion leaves. In the background thunder rumbles unevenly but continuously. Through the trees that line the berm along the lakeshore 75 feet away I catch glimpses of the lake and …
MAY 25, 2024 – (Cont.) In the morning of May 25, Dan and I found our way to the Dalkon Shield Settlement Claims Administration facility occupying a full city block in downtown Richmond. On hand to greet us was Mike Sheppard. I remember him well even without the aid of my journal. He engaged with …
MAY 21, 2024 – (Cont.) The years passed. While I was in my second year of law school, Fred died at the age of 80. I was saddened by his passing; over the years I’d enjoyed many meaningful conversations with him. Ruth lived in the big house for a few years after Fred’s passing, then …
MAY 20, 2024 – (Cont.) Fred and Ruth had two small house dogs—a Corgi (I believe) named Bambi, and Chico, which, as you can tell from the name, was a Chihuahua—and three kids: Tom, Julie, and Sara. Tom was the oldest—way older than my oldest sister. He was well into grown-up status by the time …
MAY 19, 2024 – (Cont.) Fred was a successful businessman (See 1/3/24 post) who exuded intelligence and whose wry humor was always close to the surface. He liked to joke that everyone in town knew that our neighborhood was the poorest in Anoka because “We all lived on Rice.” While battling the city of Maplewood …
MAY 13, 2024 – To conclude series, The Neighbors, I now reminisce about the Moores, whose expansive river lot faced the Rathbuns’ house and our yard. Moore’s elegant home had been designed by an architect with pleasing sensibilities. Three well-proportioned second floor dormers faced the street, as did the two windows with shutters on the …
MAY 17, 2024 – (Cont.) I don’t know why, but after a couple of years the Kuhlmeys moved. Maybe it was because the lilac bush refused to surrender, even after having been burned at the stake by Mr. Kuhlmey. Replacing the Kulmeys were the Walchessens, by far the most interesting of our successors, mainly because …
MAY 16, 2024 – (Cont.) The third set of neighbors to occupy our old house next door were the Kuhlmeys—Mr. and Mrs., their grown son who’d been on his own before the Kuhlmeys move-in, and their very young son. Our family had very little interaction with these people, largely because they seemed to have little …
MAY 15, 2024 – (Cont.) Taking the place of the Schippers was Mrs. Gage, a widow of my grandparents’ vintage, and her son Dick. I’ve forgotten what he did for a living, if I ever knew in the first place. What I remember, however, is that he wore a suit to work and always flashed …
MAY 11, 2024 – During moving day in August 1961, our family became next door neighbors of ourselves. A year or two before, my parents had purchased the adjacent vacant lot from our neighbor Dr. Spurzem a few doors down and spent months planning their dream home. I remember well the process. Late into the …
MAY 10, 2024 – Next to the Holland cottage was the Violet compound occupying the sweeping rounded corner where the west end of Rice Street and the south end of Levee Avenue blended together. As the maxim of real estate valuation goes, “location, location, location.” Though the lot was across the street from the Mississippi, …
MAY 9, 2024 – Next door (upstream along the Mississippi River) to Caines lived the Moores. The parents, Fred and Ruth, were smart, sharp, kind, cultured, and civic minded, and from my perspective, their impressive house and yard reflected their well-deserved reputation as pillars of the community. I’ll save them for last. For now, I’ll …
MAY 8, 2024 – (Cont.) On warm weather afternoons Bill would stroll down the driveway to retrieve the mail. Hanging from a crosspiece was a wooden square bearing the family name below a silhouetted hunter, gun raised toward silhouetted ducks flying across the top of square. If Bill wasn’t an avid worker, he was an …
MAY 7, 2024 – (Cont.) Caines also owned two Labradors—a black and a yellow. Back in those days dogs enjoyed far more freedom than is the case today. Stormy, the black Lab, wandered freely, at least in our immediate section of the neighborhood. He never took a bite out of my lip, but his size …
MAY 6, 2024 – Next door to Bob Ehlen lived the Caines—Bill and Molly and their three kids—whose grounds and household were as scruffy and unorganized as Bob Ehlen’s were well manicured and buttoned-down. Our old house at Rice and Green faced the Caine chaos, which was perpetually in session. The center of their three-ring …
MAY 4, 2024 – Before we moved to our new house at 505 Rice from our old house next door at the corner of Green and Rice, I hung out a lot right there at the corner street sign. I remember well the day a few weeks short of first grade when I figured out …
APRIL 27, 2024 – (Cont.) Dr. Borrud, his wife Shirley and their three daughters—Lori, Aleta, and Becky—replaced the Spurzems in the Tudor house. The stolid Norwegian doctor, a founding member of the American Academy of Family Medicine, was just 10 days older than my dad. Recruited to the (modern) clinic on Main Street at the …
APRIL 26, 2024 – We live in the Age of Opinion, or more precisely, the Age of Cacophonous Opinion—informed, uninformed and misinformed; often in one-off unorganized bursts, sometimes in regular outrages devoured by legions of subscribers gathered by a common algorithm; scattered to the crosswinds of social media yet occasionally framed according to logic and …
APRIL 25, 2024 – Often I experience highly symbolic dreams. Perhaps the most symbolic occurred 27 years ago during a particularly stressful period at work. In that dream I found myself in a game of pickle-in-the-middle—playing the role of pickle. The other two players were my boss, with whom in reality I’d long been tangling, …
APRIL 24, 2024 – Dr. and Mary Spurzem lived in the elegant authentic appearing Tudor house—with a slate roof, brick-and-timber facing and lots of dormers—next to Gladys and Charlie. Spurzems were quite a lot older than my parents. From the days of my earliest memories, I’d wanted to see the inside of the house, but …
APRIL 23, 2024 – Next door to the Benzians lived Harlan Thurston and his wife, and next to them, Harlan’s brother, Clayton and his wife and son, Gladys and Charlie. If I was ever inside Harlan’s house, it would’ve been ever so briefly—seconds, maybe—and in the company of my mother in connection with some fund-raising …
APRIL 22, 2024 – In a sleek, elegant, modern, low-profile house with a well-maintained lawn that swept down to the Mississippi River lived the Benzians—Dick and Margaret and their three sons, Peter, John, and Stephen. From the street, the house was all but hidden by trees that separated the dwelling from the open half of …