Author: Chad

Originally titled, “A Satellite for All Seasons,” I wrote this science fiction short story for a creative writing class way back in 2011 based on an idea that I had years earlier.

The Missing Twilight

It seemed odd to Jim that there was no twilight. The rest of it, he didn’t think about so much. The thin atmosphere wasn’t a problem for him, and he didn’t even mind wearing the respirator for strenuous activities. The low gravity was something that bothered others, but Jim kind of liked being able to jump so high. There was also the fact that he could no longer survive back on Earth, even if there was some way for him to return. He had resigned himself to that particular problem even before he had started out on this adventure. Yes, it was definitely the twilight that bothered him the most, the visual passing of day to night.

There was an indoor simulation of the effect, but it was not entirely pleasing to most people. For Jim it seemed almost to offend the senses. He understood, of course, the reasoning for the sun to always burn. Even though this moon had its own geothermal heat source, the surface could never maintain an adequate temperature to support human life unless the sun was blazing constantly. Such was the reality of living this far out in the solar system. This, he supposed, was just one more thing that he would have to resign himself to. Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day, he would accept it. Today, he would mourn the loss of what seemed to be the most natural thing in the world, here in this decidedly unnatural one.

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As Doctor James Pearson began his work the next morning there was a quietness among the staff. They seemed not to be their regular upbeat selves.

“Something going on today?” he asked the staff.

“Just some bad news from the first new field we’ve studied,” his lab assistant answered. “Nothing to be upset about, I’m sure.”

Jim knew the kinds of problems this news could bring if it wasn’t handled properly.

“I’d better look it over before I do anything else.” Jim was in no mood to open up a new can of worms without adequate reason. He sat down to examine the findings. Only time and persistence would tell him what he wanted to know.

Jim considered himself fortunate to be a part of this colony. In what was supposed to become a completely self-sustaining settlement, there were only so many positions available. While Jim was certain he could have lived out his days on Earth with no less satisfaction than he had now, he felt like taking part in this colonization project made him part of something bigger, something far more important than the every-day.

Besides, most agronomists on Earth rarely achieved the recognition he had received here. Agriculture on Earth has become refined to the point where there was little left to do other than to maintain the current status. Here, there was an opportunity to conduct real research. There was also the added benefit that he didn’t have to involve himself in power management or waste reclamation. Anyhow, this report he was looking over was not good news. This was the kind of news that could bring an end to a project such as this. He would have to tell the director himself.

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Director Thomas Calhoun’s office was cold and utilitarian, as was most of the compound. Built from pre-fabricated materials shipped directly from the Earth’s moon, this building and every other one in the colony was built in the same style. The walls were bare, but there was one picture frame standing on his desk, a photo of his wife and son.

“I’m not happy to hear this news of course,” said the director. “In fact, if you had brought this to me much sooner we would have had a major issue. As it is, we may have to do some adjusting, but since we’ve made it past the first checkpoint, I don’t think this will put the mission in jeopardy.”

Jim knew the checkpoint the director was referring to. A lot of important people back on Earth thought this colony wouldn’t make it past the first five years, so it had been decided that if there were any major problems within that time frame, the project would be abandoned. Now that they were in their sixth year, even this news wouldn’t mean an automatic recall.

“And you’re certain it’s a problem with the sun?” The director asked. “It couldn’t be an atmospheric disturbance?”

“Well, it could be almost anything,” Jim replied, “but the only statistically probable explanation is the sun. There just isn’t enough light to feed the plants outside of the current growing area.”

“What do you suggest?” asked the director. “Are there crops that we can grow with less light?”

“There are,” said Jim. “But they bring their own problems to the table. What we really need is another sun. The overlapping rays should be more than enough to quadruple our growing area.”

“Another sun!” The director sounded like he had just been asked for a miracle. “Why don’t you ask me to make it rain as well? Then we wouldn’t need to bother building a new irrigation system.”

“Listen Tom, I know that it wasn’t planned this early, but it has always been a long-term goal to put another reactor satellite in orbit.”

“Yes of course it was, but certainly not this soon, and then only if it were deemed absolutely necessary. We’re going to have to keep this quiet for a little while. That won’t be a problem will it?”

Jim didn’t like where this was going. Keeping a secret like this in a relatively small colony would not be easy. The reactor satellite that acted as the colony’s sun was easily the most expensive part of this expedition. The long-term plan was for the colonists to mine this moon for resources and eventually build new satellites. That way, the settlement could be completely self-sufficient and eventually expand; maybe even to other locations in the Solar System. But the director was right; that part of the mission hadn’t even gotten started yet, mainly because keeping the existing settlement going was taking up almost all of their resources.

“Well, my people aren’t going to go spreading rumors based on preliminary data,” replied Jim. “But once this is verified, which I’m certain it will be, it’ll be hard to keep quiet at that point. I really think we should be ready to meet this head on. Once word gets out about the crops, setting up a reactor satellite committee could do wonders for people’s morale.”

The director’s eyes suddenly brightened.

“What an idea Jim, a committee. They’ll spend years discussing the problem. We’ll give them a small budget for research. I’ll probably be retired before any real resources need to be allocated. But who to head such an auspicious committee?”

The director’s gaze fixed on Jim.

“Me sir?” Jim stammered. “Surely there must be someone better. After all, I’m no physicist.”

“Now Jim,” answered the director. “You don’t need to be a specialist to head up a committee. You just need to be able to organize its members and report to the council. You run a department, don’t you?”

Jim nodded.

“ It’ll be grand Jim, you’ll see. And you’ll be seeing a lot more of me.”

“Just what I always wanted.” replied Jim, only half-jokingly.

“Now I’ll need you to prepare a statement for the next council meeting. Nothing too involved, just something to show them that you’re competent. I’ll need a draft by Friday morning, and I’ll see you again then.”

Then, before Jim could protest any further, the director was walking him right out of the office door.

“So much for keeping a low profile.” Jim muttered to himself.

It was cold walking away from the director’s office, far colder than Jim liked. But then, all of the days were cold here, just one more side effect of living under a weak sun. Perhaps he would feel better tomorrow. Would the future appear brighter because he might have a hand in making it so? Jim could only hope.

I spent the weekend at a family gathering. It was near the town where my mother grew up and I got a chance to visit the old family farm. I waded in the river that my mother played in as a child, and decided that this would be a good time to share a short memoir piece that I wrote about her childhood. This piece was written way back in 2012 for  a Memoir and Creative Nonfiction class.

Soda Pop in Glass Bottles

My mother grew up on a farm and, like most of us, she has stories to tell. I ask her to tell me what it was like on the farm and get small bits of disjointed narrative. There was the river that ran through the property, although upon description, the river sounds more like a creek, not being very deep or wide. But it was a river, the Mustinka River; I looked it up. The river starts near the city of Fergus Falls, and flows for 68 miles through the counties of Otter Tail, Grant and Traverse in western Minnesota. This was where my mother, her five brothers, and her two sisters played on hot summer days. It seems odd to think of my mother playing in the water as a child, when she never did learn to swim.

I remember my uncle telling me about ice-skating on the farm. I thought it must have been on the frozen river, but when I ask about it, my mother says they never skated on the river. “One winter” she says, “so much snow fell, that we skated right there on the hard-packed snow.”

“Did it rain, and form an ice sheet?” I ask.

“I don’t know about rain,” she replies. “But we skated on the snow.”

There’s a picture of my mother on her fifth birthday. With no flash-bulbs for the camera, they took the cake outside for her to pose with. Of course, being December, it was cold outside, and her little fists are balled up tight to keep warm. There was snow on the ground, and bare trees in the background; and what looks like an angel food cake sitting on a glass plate on a small table. Of course, standing in the snow in what was probably her best dress doesn’t keep her from having a huge smile on her face.

Then there’s the picture of my mom on a pig. That’s right; she’s on a pig, riding it like a tiny horse. She would ride real horses later when she visited her friend at a nearby farm. She says her friend was poorer than she was, but having horses seems like a luxury to me. While I was growing up, I never knew my mother rode horses. It’s one of those strange things that I didn’t find out about until after I was an adult. “You rode horses, really?” I ask her, after hearing the story for the first time. It seems like something I should have found out while I was growing up. It amazes me that there are still things I do not know about my mother.

The story that I remember most from my mother is that of a school party. It was a special occasion and my mother had been given money by her mother to buy two bottles of soda, one for her, and one for her younger brother Robert. When I was growing up, soda was a treat that we didn’t have every day, but for my mother, it might be the only bottle she got all year. Unfortunately, after she bought the sodas, one fell and broke. Being the younger brother of older sisters myself, I thought for sure that Robert was going to be the one to lose out that day. It was only after the story unfolded that I found out that my mother went without her soda. I like to imagine that Robert was blissfully unaware of the small sacrifice my mother made that summer day.

I ask my mother if she has any other good stories about her and Robert, but there’s nothing that seems to compare. “I wasn’t always nice to him,” she says. “Sometimes I was downright mean.”

“Is that why they took Robert to Montana?” I ask. I had heard the story of my mother being left behind to take care of her younger brothers and sisters for a week while Robert got to go with my grandparents to visit my great-aunt Verna.

“Yeah, we didn’t always get along so well,” she says. “And my parents thought it would be easier for me without him there. But it was good for him to go. It was a good way for him to spend some one-on-one time with my parents. It’s difficult to find time for everyone when there are eight kids in the family.”

There are other stories about her being the bossy older sister, first fighting with her siblings, and later trying to keep the peace among them. And there are stories about going to town to see free movies, driving through blizzards to visit relatives, the sink that they let drip through the winter so the pipes would not freeze.

But when I think about my mother as a child, I always think about broken glass at a country store, riding horses at a friend’s farm, standing in the snow with a birthday cake, and playing in the Mustinka River—on hot summer days.

The Mustinka River on the old family farm.

River rocks from the Mustinka River.

This will be the last entry from the Writing About Place archives. This piece was written in December 2012 about a trip I took to see the ocean in 2002.

Pacific Highway One

Prologue:

I was well past twenty years old and had never seen the ocean. Growing up in Minnesota, in the heart of the Midwest, I had traveled some, but never to see the ocean. I had been to North and South Dakota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Arkansas, and even Texas. Not to the gulf coast of Texas, but Texas nonetheless. But, I had yet to see the ocean, and the ocean was something that I very much wanted to see. One day, I got it in my head that it was time, and started planning. I would drive, alone, from Minnesota to Virginia, and see the mighty Atlantic Ocean in all of its fury. Then, I would turn around and head west. Drive straight through from one coast to the other, just stopping to eat and sleep. That would be how I would first see the ocean.

At least, that’s the way I had planned it. My mother was worried that driving such a distance by myself wouldn’t be safe, and there wasn’t anyone I could talk into coming with me. I really had wanted to do this on my own, a rite of passage of sorts on the road to find my independence. I probably would have gone ahead by myself, but then Mom offered to bankroll the trip and come along, with the conditions that we stop to visit my uncle and only visit one ocean. I had the best intentions of saving money, but it always ended up slipping through my fingers. Short on cash, I begrudgingly agreed.

Day One:

We had driven into California on interstate 40, which merged into I-15, and then we finally reached I-10, also known as the San Bernadino Freeway. The widest freeway I had previously driven was a total of eight lanes wide; this one was ten, and it was all stop and go. It was a Saturday afternoon. Where was everyone going? They couldn’t all be headed to the beach, could they? When we finally arrived, I changed into my swimming attire, and headed out onto the sand.

The ocean was both like and unlike what I was expecting. Having grown up in Minnesota, visiting the north shore of Lake Superior was not an uncommon event for me, and since the size of that lake made it impossible to see all the way across it, I figured that an even bigger body of water would have a likewise infinite expanse to it. The major difference here was that not only did the water go on forever, but the shore seemed to reach endlessly in both directions as well. Then there were the waves. Superior sometimes had waves, but they were nothing like this. Never ending rows upon rows of relentless water crashing upon the sand. And then the smell hit me. It was like a warm, dry day suddenly turned hot and humid, only all of the moisture in the air carried the aroma of wet salt along with it.

I swam in the ocean that day, carrying myself out as far as I could walk, and then diving into the waves. Once I was past the whitecaps, I thought it would get easier, but then it seemed as if there wasn’t any progress at all. I was fighting against the ocean, and only the ocean could win. It was relentless. It never tired. It was just there, not caring that I was trying to fight it. It would conquer me without even trying, and I was in awe of it. I played in the surf for a while longer. Some folks had boogie boards, and I thought that those might be fun, but they would have to wait. This was just my first taste of the ocean, and it was time to press on.

Another difference between the ocean and any lake I had ever swam in was once again the salt. Usually, after a swim, I feel clean and refreshed. After being in the ocean, I was coated with a salty film, and completely worn out from fighting the waves. Fortunately, there were showers available to rinse off the muck. There was a line of people waiting to use the showers, but it moved quickly and before I knew it, I was taking my turn at rinsing the film of salt that the sea had left behind.

As we left the beach behind and started driving north up California State Route 1, the Pacific Coast Highway, I rested my aching muscles and looked out once again at the endless blue sea meeting the ever blue sky out upon the distant horizon. There were still a couple of hours of daylight left, and we wanted to find a hotel north of Los Angeles, so we began to look for vacancy signs as we were driving along. Unfortunately, there was some kind of exposition being held, and there wasn’t anything open for miles.

We drove on and tried a few places. There was one hotel that had a single room. My mother would have taken the bed, and they offered to throw up a cot for me to sleep on, but it was a smoking room, and Mom wanted to try and find someplace else.

“We should have taken it,” I said. “There might not be anywhere else, and it’s getting late.”

“I know,” Mom said. “But there still might be somewhere a little further from town.” So we drove until it was dark, and then we drove some more, but that was the only open room we had found. We finally ended up finding a dark corner in a parking lot, setting the seats back, and trying to get a few hours of sleep in the car.

Day Two:

I woke up in the car, already driving down the road. It was still dark.

“Why are we driving?” I asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Mom replied. “So I figured we might as well get going.”

“Maybe we should stop and eat,” I suggested. “We can’t see anything in the dark anyway.”

We drove around until we found an IHOP. International House of Pancakes. I’d never heard of them before, but Mom said they were a famous chain. I ordered the raspberry pancakes because I like raspberries, and why would you order anything but pancakes at the International House of Pancakes. While the raspberries were good and tart, the pancakes weren’t anything to write home about; I probably should have gotten them plain with maple syrup.

It was light out by the time we were finished, so once we left the restaurant, we got back on good old Pacific Highway One and started driving north again. We drove for a little while, and before too long, we saw what looked like a giant rock coming up out of the ocean. It was Morro Rock, and we were at Morro Bay, in San Luis Obispo county.

“This place looks nice,” I said. “Maybe we should stop here.”

“Stop for the night?” Mom asked. “It’s hardly noon.”

“I know, but then I could sit and enjoy the ocean, and you could take a nap.”

“I suppose,” she said. “Are there any hotels nearby?”

“Yeah,” I said. “They still might all be filled up, but we can give it a try.” We found a nearby hotel, and Mom went in to enquire about a room.

“Don’t pay more than eighty dollars.” I said, as she got out of the car, knowing that she would ignore me. She returned a few minutes later with a key.

“They had one room because a reservation didn’t show up,” she said. “It was ninety dollars.”

“Well, that’s not too bad,” I replied. “And we are within walking distance of the ocean.”

“That’s what I thought too.” Mom paused a moment. “They said it was a non-smoking room, but that someone had smoked in it. They washed all the bedding, but there still might be an odor.”

“It’ll be fine,” I said. “Even if it’s not perfect, it will be nice to stop and rest for most of the day.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” She still sounded skeptical about the situation.

We carried our bags into the room, and lo and behold, it was the nicest room we had stayed in throughout our entire trip. Despite a faint smell of smoke, the room really was very nice. They even had a coin-op laundry down the hall, so I decided to head into town for some detergent, and told Mom she should take a nap.

There was a Target store in town, and it seemed strange to be wandering around a Target in California. It was exactly the same as it would have been in Minneapolis. I bought the laundry soap and headed back to the room. Mom was sleeping, so I started my laundry and walked down to the beach. I sat there for a couple of hours reading, and then went back to the room to find Mom awake and watching television.

“The ocean’s right outside and you’re watching television?” I asked.

“I was just waiting for you to come back,” she said. We then walked back down to the beach together.

We sat and read. I remember that Mom looked so happy then. The cares of last night and this morning washed away with a few hours sleep and the constant roar of the ocean upon the sand. The beach here was different than in Los Angeles. Lots of jagged rocks stuck out of the sand on the beach and in the water. Their rough surface was in stark contrast to the smooth feeling of the sand. I looked out again toward the horizon, amazed at how blue the ocean was, with the white caps of falling water that reached the shore with every wave.

We ate pizza that night. I could probably eat pizza every night, but there were so many different places to eat.

“You have to have an In-N-Out burger before we go home,” Mom suggested.

“When we get to San Francisco,” I said. “Tonight, it’s pizza.”

Day Three:

This was our last full day on the coast. Tomorrow we had to start driving home. There was a flyer at the hotel for Hearst Castle. It isn’t a real castle of course, but a giant mansion that was built by media mogul William Randolph Hearst. When we got to the castle grounds, there were options for three tours. I wanted to see the swimming pools and the library. All three tours included the swimming pools, but only one of them featured the libraries. It wasn’t the main tour, but we only had time for one, so that’s the one that we went on. The grounds were magnificent. Hearst Castle is five miles away from the ocean’s shore, but it sits high on a hilltop, and boasts palm trees and beautiful ocean views.

The outdoor pool was alive with marble statuary and impressive looking structures, including what looked like a miniature Parthenon. The main library was very impressive, with the room being fully furnished, including decorative rugs, and even a wood carved tile ceiling. The bookshelves all had locking glass cabinet doors that, according to the tour guide, Hearst added after one of his guests pocketed a rare first edition for his bedtime reading material. The second library featured a large meeting table, and a desk at which Hearst conducted his daily business.

Another area that the tour featured was Hearst’s personal bedroom. It was surrounded by windows, open to the elements, and featured quite the view. The indoor pool, in its own building, was underneath the tennis courts. It boasted more statuary and, excepting the entry area, was ten feet deep all around. What joy it would have been to wake up to that view of the ocean from Hearst’s private bedroom every morning, a view of freedom, and then spend time swimming laps in that pool. If only I were a famously rich media mogul.

After our visit to the castle, we headed north once again. We stopped to see a large group of elephant seals warming themselves on the sand. There were a couple that looked like they were fighting. I shot a few photos of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t really capture the effect of their movement, and the images just show the seals raising their heads up above their gargantuan bodies and throwing sand around the beach. Further up the coast, we ran into a lighthouse. We stopped to take a closer look, and found out that the lighthouse was also a hostel. I was tempted to find out if they had any room, dreaming of falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing upon the shore, but we pressed on, stopping one more time that day to watch the sun set over the Pacific.

There were clouds in the sky that evening, and the sun backlit the sky with a brilliant yellow that filled the horizon. Then, just for a moment, the sun came below the clouds, painting the sky red before it quickly sank into the ocean. We wouldn’t leave the coast until tomorrow. We would drive across the golden gate bridge in the morning fog, and have our obligatory In-N-Out burger. We would then drive back to Minnesota, across the mountains, and the great plains. But for me, that sunset marked my goodbye to the Pacific Ocean.

Epilogue:

It had been three days of beauty and reverie, with a bit of real life thrown in for good measure. This wasn’t the first trip that I had taken with my mother, and it wouldn’t be the last. We eventually made our way to Virginia to meet the Atlantic Ocean. Driving south and then west again to Key West, Florida. Riding a boat even further west to the Dry Tortugas National Park. A small island out between the Gulf of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve even spent a couple of Thanksgivings on the Gulf Coast in Texas, a tradition in my brother-in-law’s family, where I finally got to try out one of those boogie boards; they are fun. But there was something powerfully serene about the Pacific. With a quiet strength, its waves endlessly struck the wild coast of California. I miss it, and still dream of its beauty.

Maybe I dream about the ocean because it reminds me of my search for independence. Looking for a balance in the relationship that I have with my parents has never been easy. When I was still a child, I thought that once I became an adult, I would no longer rely on my parents for anything. But in many ways, I lean on my parents more now than I ever did back then. In the ocean, I can still almost see the lost dreams of my youth, just beyond the endless horizon, waiting for me with every crash of water upon the sand.

Here is another one from the Writing About Place archives. I’ve removed a few commas from the original. I don’t know what I was thinking with all those commas. Written in December 2012, this is the only time I ever attempted to write satire. I’m afraid it isn’t nearly as clever or as funny as I would have liked it to be, but here it is.

Parking at the Park

Today, I want to bring your attention to the atrocious problem we have here in the city of Minneapolis in regards to parking at the parks. It seems no matter how hard we try, it is still far too easy for people to park at our lovely city parks. There are several reasons why we need to make parking at the parks more difficult.

The first reason, overuse, is a major one. Every time I visited a park this past summer, there were always lots of people there. There does, of course, need to be accommodation for some people in the parks, but at the rate we’re going, people will have used up all the parks and there won’t be anything left for our grandchildren. The other, and probably more important, reason is that every time I try and park at a park, I end up driving around for hours looking for a parking place. Imagine all those cars driving around for hours looking for parking spots. Burning all that gasoline is bad for the environment, and ever since I was made aware of the dangers of global warming, I have been trying to live a greener life and encouraging others to do so as well.

It’s true, that the parks department has made some headway into the issue of parking. I remember when I was just a lad and we would go to the Point Beach on Cedar Lake. It was easy to park. We just drove our full size, gas-guzzling, Ford LTD across town, pulled into the parking lot, and parked. No fuss, no muss, it was way too easy. Now, the lot is split into two areas. Half of the lot has parking meters that you can pay so that you can park your car by the half-hour, hour, or two-hour maximum. This is especially effective for those who tend to accidentally lose track of time at the beach. There’s nothing like an expiring parking meter to remind one of one’s priorities. The other half of the lot is reserved for patron parking. Some of you may ask, what exactly is patron parking? Well, let me tell you all about it.

According to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board website, “The Annual Patron Parking Permit offers 12 months of easy parking at regional parks in Minneapolis. Permit holders enjoy parking privileges in specially designated parking spaces at some of the park system’s most popular regional parks including Minnehaha Park, Lake Harriet, and the garden areas at Theodore Wirth Park.” Now I know what you’re thinking. That sounds too easy. They even say the permit offers easy parking. But this is why it was such a brilliant move. They said it was easy, but when they started the program, it confused almost everybody. Most park-goers either didn’t see the patron parking signs, or just ignored them.

I remember one visit to the aforementioned Cedar Point Beach in which I had the auspicious good fortune to meet a woman who had just been ticketed for parking in a patron spot. She hadn’t seen the large blue sign posted at the lot’s entrance. Serves her right I say. Can’t be bothered to learn all of the obscure parking rules related to the city parks, she deserved a $40 ticket. The main problem with the patron parking is that people have gotten too used to it. I think it is past time to change up the rules in order to make the parking system unfathomable once again. One thing we can do, is limit the ways in which park-goers can purchase patron parking passes. Right now it’s far to easy to acquire one, as they are available online, and at six different park offices. There should be just one centralized location. This would cut down on park overhead costs as well.

Another major problem with the park’s parking system is that there is still far too much free parking. Not only are there free parking spaces along the many wide areas of the city’s parkways, but the parking at all park Recreation Centers is free. While it is true that the neighborhood Recreation Centers do not have the same overuse problems that many of the city parks do, people do park in the Recreation Center parking lots, and then go on to use the associated city park.

I have even met people who will park on the city streets near a park in order to use the park’s facilities without paying for parking; can you imagine? I think it is obvious that all of this free parking can only be bad for our park system. We should put an end to this ease of parking immediately by expanding the use of parking meters, changing the city’s rules regarding the availability of parking on the city streets near parks, and extending the range of park patron permit parking. Thank you all for reading, and please join me next week, when I will be discussing the role of lifeguards in our city parks. They cost more to employ than the grass mowers and the park trash collectors combined. Do lifeguards really save lives, and if so, are those lives really worth saving?

I seem to have lost momentum, or maybe it’s motivation. Either way, I’ve been pretty slow about doing a new blog entry. To try and remedy the situation, I’ve decided I would start to post some writing from my school days.

I worked in a grocery store for more than a dozen years before deciding to go back to school and get a degree. While trying to decide on a major I asked myself, “How much fun would it be to take a bunch of writing classes?” The answer? “It would be a lot of fun.”

To get a bachelor’s degree in writing, you have to take more than a few of these fun writing classes, and so I have more than a few stories that I could share with you. To start off, however, I’m going to give you one of my creative non-fiction pieces from a class called Writing About Place. This essay was written in October of 2012.

The Nature of Backyards

Some of the tomatoes are still green on the vine. It is mid-September and the days seem unnaturally cool. Autumn doesn’t officially start for several days, but it already feels as if fall is here. If the frost comes too soon, we will be throwing blankets on the tomato plants, or bringing green tomatoes inside and waiting for them to ripen. The tomato yield this year has actually been pretty good, with tomatoes filling the kitchen table quite regularly. If the plants had been in the ground a month earlier, it would have been a bountiful crop. I dug out a parcel of dirt right in the middle of my back yard in an effort to give the plants more sun, but as the shadows grow longer across the yard, the neighboring box-elder trees are providing more and more shade for what has become my tiny tomato forest. As I sit here in the backyard of my North Minneapolis home, looking at the yellow extension cord draped across the lawn, I think about the peculiar collision of nature in our lives, and how it makes this yard such an enjoyable place to live and work.

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It was just a couple of years ago that I saw my first raccoon in the city. I’ve heard about sightings for years from friends and family members, but I had never managed to get a peek of one myself. My first experience was when they moved in next door. The house had been abandoned for several years after a string of different owners had occupied it. The new family was a mama raccoon and her three babies. We saw them one morning when they were heading back into their house through a gap in the roofline. It must have been the young ones’ first time out as the mama raccoon was trying to coax them up the side of a porch post. Regrettably, the young ones weren’t quite certain they could make it. We got the camera out and took pictures. The mama raccoon was not at all happy about us being there, gawking at her unfortunate predicament. After a lot of hissing and coaxing, she finally managed to wrangle them all inside.

I sent my sister, who lives in the back woods of Upper Michigan and sees raccoons all the time, a photo with the caption of “Our New Neighbors.” She replied that they were not at all good neighbors to have. It is interesting that what was an interesting and entertaining event for us was just an everyday nuisance problem for her. The nature that she had come to despise was for me, a grand adventure. We have so-called wild squirrels and birds that always run or fly about the yard, but there is something just a little more exotic about the raccoon. It isn’t nearly as exciting as it would be to see a mountain lion, a coyote, or even a fox, but there is still that sense of the wild with a raccoon, a collision with the wild that isn’t supposed to happen in my own back yard.

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According to local legend, our house was only the second built on this old block. Nothing but farmland and a few other houses back in 1904. There is a nearby graveyard with the name of Crystal Lake Cemetery. I was always curious about this, as Crystal Lake was about three miles away in the suburb of Robbinsdale. To further add to the confusion, there is another suburb beyond Robbinsdale called Crystal. There is another local legend that there was once an immense lake in North Minneapolis. I concluded that Crystal Lake must have once been much bigger, and was slowly drained off for farmland and housing.

I eventually got my hands on an antique atlas from a geography expert. With his help, I solved the riddle of the disparate naming of Crystal Lake landmarks. In this old book, before Minneapolis had yet expanded into the North, the countryside was divided into townships. The area that now covers North Minneapolis, Robbinsdale, and Crystal were all within the confines of Crystal Lake Township, named after the lake. So, when they plotted the cemetery, it is likely that it was still in Crystal Lake Township, hence the name. Then, when Robbinsdale was established, it left only one small part of the township remaining, which eventually became the city of Crystal.

It is interesting how the natural feature of one small lake influenced the way we now think about three different cities. It is often the case that we name things because of the way nature has influenced us. Even the city name of Minneapolis has a natural influence, a mixing of the Dakota Word Minnehaha, meaning laughing waters, and the Greek word polis, which literally means city. These two words colliding became Minneapolis, the city of waters, named for Minnehaha Falls, as well as its abundance of lakes, streams, and of course, the Mississippi river that runs through the heart of the city. I look toward the direction of the river, almost a mile away, there are too many obstructions to even see the river gorge from here, but the river is still a constant reminder of life here in this river city.

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This isn’t the first year that I have grown tomatoes, but I never have been very good at it. It is difficult to know exactly what I am doing wrong, because there are so many things that can go wrong with tomatoes. This year, I had ten tomato plants that I started indoors. I planted six out in the yard, and saved four in case I needed to replace any. It turned out I never did need to replace any, and I ended up with four tomato plants in pots that I put along the fence.

This fence bordered the yard where our friends, the raccoons, had previously lived. Three years after the raccoons had moved in, the house has been rehabilitated, and it now hosts a family that had been displaced when a spring 2011 storm of tornadoes collided with the Northside of Minneapolis. The storm damaged hundreds of homes and felled thousands of trees as it tore across the Northside. One day, while I was out watering the tomatoes, a young girl from the family next door had an unexpected question.

“What happened to that tomato plant?” she asked. “It’s growing out along the ground instead of standing up.” This particular plant did not have a cage around it like the other ones in my garden did.

“That’s the way they grow naturally,” I replied. “Tomatoes are a vine plant, and if they don’t have something to grow up against, they will just grow out along the ground.”

This really got me to thinking about all the ways we try and harness nature to do our bidding. For the tomatoes, I cleared the ground, kept the weeds away, watered regularly, and even fertilized the soil. I went to great lengths to put cages up around the tomato plants and encouraged them to grow up into them. I pushed the branches this way and that, the bitter smell that came from touching the vines and leaves belied the sweet taste that would come when the tomatoes were finally eaten. It was easy to keep the plants under control at first, but the cages that house most of my tomato plants are not very strong. The plants are now leaning over, causing the cages to bend under the weight of the ever ripening beefsteak tomatoes. I’m going to have to look for something sturdier if I plant again next year. Maybe I will build a trellis, anchored deep into the ground, a monument to the garden crop growing among the more decorative plants.

I look elsewhere in the yard and see a crabapple tree that I had transplanted several years ago, with its still-green leaves and tiny apples that will never be large enough to eat. I chose to dig up a semi-wild tree, because I thought it would be more natural than one purchased at a store. Still, I prune the tree, cutting off branches in a way that I think will make it look more beautiful. Now, I wish I had bought a tree that might have produced something useful. Would that be less natural somehow, and how important is it for this tree to be natural? The main reason for planting the tree was to have blossoms in the spring. The apple blossoms will be nowhere near as fragrant as the lilacs on the other side of the yard, their aroma wafting on the wind, but I hope they will be prettier to look at. Alas, I imagine a Honeycrisp apple tree from Menards would look just as nice, and there might have even been apples to eat.

Then, there is the ever present lawn, with its mix of the long lush bluegrass that we want, and all of the weeds that we don’t. There are dandelions, of course, no longer flowering, but still sitting dormant in the yard, some kind of big leafed weed that has gone to seed and seems to be everywhere, patches of crab-grass, and the soft clover interlaced throughout. I actually kind of like the clover, with its puffy white flowers, but it’s just one more thing that should not be there. Or should it? A weed, after all, is just another plant that is somewhere we don’t want it to be. And if I like the clover, maybe it isn’t a weed after all.

As I look to the future, I think about the tomatoes and the oncoming frost. I wonder if I will grow them again next year. Maybe I will focus on ridding the lawn of weeds instead. I look further ahead, wondering if I will grow to be very old in this yard, and if a very long time from now, I will be buried in Crystal Lake Cemetery. The frost is just one more force of nature that threatens to make its way into the yard. Nature is ever present in our lives, no matter how we try and tame it. Whether it is the oncoming winter, the incursion of raccoons into our urban center, the natural landmarks that help us define our geography, or even the fury of a tornado, there is no escaping our ongoing collision with nature. For me, this clash is evident every day, in the observance of my own backyard.

In my last post, I mentioned a car ride to visit my grandparents. I don’t remember if it was for Christmas, even though we would always visit for Christmas. It was a three hour drive from the Cities to Alexandria, and I do remember riding in the back seat and being bored. Somehow the conversation turned to me not being able to watch my favorite television show.

“It’s only a cartoon,” my sister Pam said.

Only a cartoon? I went on to explain how great this cartoon was. It had an ongoing story that dealt with love and war. Characters actually died. It wasn’t just any cartoon.

Pam was reading The Eyes of the Dragon, by Stephen King, and she proceeded to start reading out loud from the book.

“See,” she said. “It’s only the first few pages and people are already dying.”

I told her it wasn’t the same. I wasn’t ready to articulate that the death of an undeveloped character as back story wasn’t really comparable to the dramatic death of an established character. Still, the book seemed interesting, and she let me continue reading it.

It was one of the best books I had ever read, even though I wasn’t really old enough to appreciate it properly. I learned later that King had written this book in response to his daughter not wanting to read his work, so it is unlike most of what he has written. But my interest was piqued.

Some time later, when my sister was reading It, I was first in line to read it next. Then came The Stand. I remember enjoying It, but when I was reading The Stand, I felt like it was the greatest thing that was ever written.

When I was in high school, I heard about the Bachman pseudonym. I checked the school library and there were still books there listed under Bachman. I checked out The Long Walk and read it in one sitting. The end was heartbreaking. Years later, when a friend of mine was complaining about The Hunger Games being a ripoff of The Running Man (another Bachman book), I thought to myself, if it’s mirroring anything, it’s The Long Walk.

I read Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption from Different Seasons before they made the movie. This was another favorite of mine. The Library Policeman from Four Past Midnight was sufficiently scary. I have also read ‘Salem’s Lot and The Dark Half, as well as Pet Cemetery.

When I read Gerald’s Game, I really didn’t care for it at all, and this probably turned me off to Stepen King for a while. But when I heard he was writing a hard-boiled crime novel, I found myself a copy of The Colorado Kid and quickly devoured it. When the book I wrote turned up shorter than what a proper novel should be, I took some solace knowing that it was similar in length to The Colorado Kid.

I’ve been meaning to read Under the Dome for the last five years or so. I finally got around to it last fall. Great storytelling, but so many unfinished narratives. Still on my list to read, Duma Key.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer, because I’ve always loved stories. That’s hyperbole. I haven’t always wanted to be a writer. It’s something that developed because I love stories. I suppose I haven’t always loved stories either, but I can’t remember a time that I haven’t loved them. Still, my love of stories grew over time.

The very first story that I remember loving was Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves as told to me by my father. He did great sound effects for the cave opening and closing after the secret words were spoken.

And I remember having picture books being read to me, and later reading them myself. There was Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman, Please Try to Remember the First of Octember! by Dr. Seuss, The Bear Scouts and The Spooky Old Tree by Stan and Jan Berenstain, and far too many others to mention. Later on there were more advanced books. Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol and The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald were two of my favorite series.

But one of the major story influences for me when I was little was Robotech. Yes, I know, it’s not a book. Not at first anyway. It’s a kid’s television show. Worse than that, it’s a cartoon. But the continued saga of the Robotech story really drew me in. I have always been a nighthawk who doesn’t like to go to bed at night and doesn’t like to wake up in the morning, but when Robotech started airing at 6:30 in the morning before school. I actually got up to watch it.

Robotech can seem a bit disjointed because it was spliced together from three different shows, and some people hate that aspect of it. For me, the three different eras of Robotech following a single overarching story was always one of the best things about it.

I remember telling my sister on a car ride to visit my grandparents that Robotech was a real story because things didn’t always work out in the end, and sometimes people died. My sister’s response to this is another story completely, but suffice it to say, even then, Robotech was changing the way I thought about stories.

One of the first times I walked into a bookstore, it was the display of Robotech books at the front of the store that drew me in. At the time, reading books seemed a little silly to me, but if it were Robotech, then maybe it would be worth it. While I expect I would have turned to reading, and eventually writing anyway, for me, Robotech was that first foot in the door to reading great stories.