One would think that with the wars going on in the world and the bitter fighting between political parties, we have nothing to be thankful for. The opposite is true. If we woke up this morning, and all of our friends and relatives woke up, we have them to be thankful for. If we had a meal on the table, and a place to sleep we are grateful. The sunshine is also a gift, as is the lack of sleet and snow. We are thankful if we have gas in our cars and places to go. Most of all, I am grateful I can write this ode and wish my internet friends happy Thanksgiving Holiday.
These two tom turkeys are looking for attention from the hens of the flock.
Turkey joke: Female turkey to her partner,
“Is that your meat thermometer, or are you glad to see me?”
My experience is that there is nothing more dangerous for a man than a mouse in the house. Last evening, I returned from the regular Tuesday Stray Bar WIne club and was immediately confronted by Lovely to inform me of an intruder. It is Fall in the Midwest, and the temperature often drops below freezing at night. The vast network of wild creatures seek comfort in the heat. The frogs sink to the bottom of the pump well, where the water is warmest, and often, they get swallowed by the pump—a rather macabre way to die. Birds seek the comfort of dense shrubs and trees like Juniper Pfizer or pine, and mice seek refuge in loosely piled leaves or wood piles. Except there is an occasional mouse that takes the easy way out, he finds a tiny opening in the structure of a house. If the opening enters the interior unobstructed, warm air blows out of the hole and signals a clear path to a comfy winter. One of the attributes that God has given the mouse is the ability to squeeze through tiny openings much smaller than their bodies. Young mice, just born a few months ago, have little bodies. Combine that small size with a powerful desire to get warm gives them the urge to wriggle through that speck of an opening.
Hundreds of cartoons show a woman standing on a chair and shrieking, “Eek, it’s a mouse.” I have seen a fair share of these cartoons, and because they are so common, my correlation of women becoming dangerous when sighting such a creature in her domain is valid. Such was the state of mind when Lovely announced her plight to me last evening. She didn’t say hi, or hello dear, or how was the meeting? No, she said, “there is a mouse in the house. Go downstairs and trap it.” In my semi-drunken stupor, I put it to rest by saying, “I’ll deal with it tomorrow,” and that really made her dangerous.
Now, it is the tomorrow I promised to take care of the monster mouse problem, and here I sit writing an account about it and thinking I had better get my ass in gear to go hunting. Most men would take a wife’s demand that he go hunting as a sign of affection, but I am a bit Leary of that line of thought. I do believe I had better take care of the matter, and soon.
As I gaze out my office window, I see seven sparrows lined up on the decorative Juniper tree growing there. The birds all stare at an empty bird feeder, reminding me that the time to begin feeding the tiny critters has arrived. In the past five days, I have spotted a Slate Junco and two woodpeckers in the yard. Clearly, this is a sign that winter is arriving.
Bird watching is one of my favorite hobbies, and I have decided to keep a log of birds spotted in my yard. Logging birds has been one of my pastimes, but I have fallen out of it in the last twenty years. My previous log was kept for over ten years, and I logged seventy species of birds visiting the yard. My binoculars and bird book are always handy during those times.
When the feeding of birds begins, other creatures appear in numbers, like squirrels, rabbits, opossums, and raccoons. When these creatures arrive, I also spot an occasional coyote passing through. Living near open farmland, trees, and wetlands is a benefit. My lot borders the wetland, and a row of very tall cottonwoods grows on the wetland’s edge. Another 500 feet away is a linear forest where an abandoned rail bed has been converted into a bicycle trail. This trail stretches for twenty miles, cutting through the towns of Frankfort, Mokena, and New Lenox. Over the last twenty-five years, the land on either side of the trail has been left to its own and has grown into a thick cover of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. The trail also provides a highway for meandering wildlife through the connecting thickets of trees and even some woods.
Over the past forty years of living in this area, we have been graced with the presence of deer on a few occasions. In the fall and winter, I welcome them into the yard, but during the summer months, I chase them away because they love to eat everything I plant.
On our drive to Indiana in quest of the Sandhill cranes, we saw several dead deer on the highways. This is a sure sign the deer are in rut. Driving during the sunrise and sunset hours can be dangerous because deer dart across a road without looking both ways and often occupy the same space as a driver. The moment that happens usually means death to the deer, and depending upon the car’s age, it can mean the same for it.
As we passed through the vast open farm fields, I thought about living alone when the nearest neighbor might be a mile away, and his house is invisible to you. In most cases, the nearest town maybe ten or twenty miles away, so if you need something from the store, you must consider the cost. Also, getting healthcare in towns of five or six hundred people is difficult, if not impossible. Country living is not my cup of tea, but living in a town of five thousand people could be fun.
When I first moved to Frankfort, the population was about four thousand. All of our neighboring towns were the same. Since then, Frankfort has grown to twenty thousand souls, and I do not like it. The traffic and congestion are heavy, the amount of open space between towns is small, and the distinction between towns has become the same as Chicago with all its neighborhoods. All that is different is that each town has its government, police force, fire department, sewage treatment, water department, library district, park district, and the costs associated with maintaining them. Suddenly, the idea of living in the desolation of farmland becomes appealing again.
Last Friday, I stood outside on the driveway chatting with my grandson as he added fluid to his sacred diesel pickup truck. Suddenly, I heard a familiar noise coming from above. I saw the vee formation of a gaggle of Sandhill Cranes flying past high overhead. Their distinctive noise identified what they were. They are often misidentified as Canada Geese because of their flight pattern. I called Lovely out, too, so she could also see them. She saw them, but being vision impaired, she didn’t really understand what I was getting excited about.
Later, she and I went for a brief walk, and I told her that we would see the birds the next day. Again, she didn’t understand what I told her, but she knew we would drive to Indiana. We left at ten the following day to go to Jasper-Pulaski Wildlife Preserve in Medaryville, Indiana. Luckily, it was sunny, which made driving in the countryside enjoyable.
Even though I had used a GPS to navigate, I became a little confused when we were within two miles of the preserve and stopped at a service station for instructions. The lady I asked was accommodating and excited to talk about these magnificent birds. “I live across the road from here with my Uncle, and they stop in the cemetery behind his house. I saw a flock take off early this morning at breakfast.”
Five minutes later, we arrived at the parking lot of the viewing area. It was sunny, windy, and bitingly cold. It wasn’t lovely weather to be bird-watching in an open field. The two-story viewing stand was a short walk away, so we hiked to it to get a closer view. About a thousand birds bunched up along a tiny creek that meanders through the field. Some were standing with their heads tucked under their wings, probably sleeping, while others were pecking at the creek, searching for a snack, and still others danced about each other as though courting. Luckily, I brought binoculars, which made them closer to view. The flock was a hundred yards away from the fenced viewing area. Since it was so cold, we cut our viewing short and hurried back to the warmth of the car.
Lovely and I sat looking out through the windshield using the binoculars when three birds appeared out of nowhere and landed in the flock. Then four more came down, and the stream of arriving birds continued. I opened the sunroof and looked up into the sky, and there they were, a vast flock circling downward, then landing to join their friends. The cranes will fly as high as six to seven thousand feet, rising to twelve thousand feet to cross mountains and travel up to five hundred miles daily.
After watching the cranes land for thirty minutes, we headed out for the next leg of our day. We were only thirty miles from Rensselaer, Indiana, the home of Saint Joseph College, my Alma Mater, for the first two years of college experience. The GPS guided us through towns like DeMotte, Hebron, Roeslawn, Monon, Remington, Rensselaer, and Collegeville. All are etched in my memory from when I traveled through them to get home for the holidays. Along route 231, we passed through field after field being harvested for corn. The traffic encountered is the long thirty-foot-long dump trucks filled with corn going to the storage silos. Between the corn fields were acres and acres of solar farms and a few scattered windmills with the blades turning. Indiana’s top three crops are corn, soybeans, and electricity. Power has to be considered a crop because once the panels are installed, the rich, fertile black soil is unusable to grow anything. We, as a culture, choose electricity over feeding the world.
We entered Collegeville after passing through Rensselaer from the North. A wave of nostalgia passed over me as we approached, and I spotted the bell towers of Saint Joseph’s Chapel at the entrance to the campus. The nearer we got, the stranger things became. I expected to see at least a few of the eleven hundred students everywhere, walking, carrying books and backpacks as they crossed from buildings to the library and the dorms. It is a ghost town. I tried to enter the campus from three separate drives; all were blocked off with heavy concrete barriers like we see on the highway separating lanes. I finally found a road that took us around the back door of the campus. A public highway that encircles the campus. There is not a single car or soul to be seen anywhere. When did this college close its doors? Maybe it was because of COVID-19, but I didn’t get an honest answer until I searched for it online.
Saint Joseph’s College was founded as a private college in 1889 by priests from the Passionist Order. They formally closed the doors one hundred and twenty-eight years later, in 2017. They were in debt for one hundred million dollars, with only twenty million coming in. We all know you can’t run a business that way. Sadly, I turned around and headed for the next stop on the agenda, which was to get lunch. Before we left to visit, I figured we’d find a nice restaurant in Rensselaer, a town of 6300. I asked Garmin for suggestions and decided on Somebody’s Bar and Grill. We walked in, got one whiff of the place, and decided against it. The odor reminded us of smoke, beer, and greasy food. Our Second choice was Joan’s Kitchen, across from the courthouse. It looked nice but was closed. I spotted a sign for Interstate 65 and headed for it. We ended the trip by dining in Frankfort at a well-known, comfortable place.
My batting average for this trip is .333; birds, yes; College, no; lunch in Rensselaer, no. If I were playing Major League Baseball, I’d be paid at least half a million dollars a year with that average.
Ryan’s Pub is my favorite watering hole after the Lions Club meeting room. Ryans has existed for as long as I can remember, which goes back fifty years. Unfortunately for me, I did not truly discover the pub as my place until after my wife Barbara died. I drove past it daily, at least twice on my way to and from work. The very first time I entered the pub was to attend a going away party for an engineer who worked for me. We all had a good time in a space that sounded trashy but turned out to be fairly respectable, not unlike a pub in England or Germany where the local folks go to have a round with friends and to chat and spread the gossip of the neighborhood.
When I began frequenting Ryans after Barb’s death, it was out of loneliness and things to do. I learned that many of my Lion friends also went there to relax and dump the day’s worries. There was a pattern established that I recognized and decided to belong to. Most of my friends went there at 4:30 on Friday afternoon to pick up a fish dinner to take home. While they waited for the fish to fry, they imbibed a beer or a glass of wine and shot the breeze about the days and weeks’ efforts to make a living. Alcohol does a fantastic job of loosening the tongue. The conversations left work quickly as the subject matters discussed turned to hobbies, family, women, and daily matters that didn’t resemble work in any way.
I went to Ryan’s this evening, hoping to run into my friends. For the first time, I arrived, and none of my buddies was there. I sat down at the only seat available at the bar, next to a friendly gent whom I began a conversation with. In the conversation, he asked me if I were a Vet. I said no, but I am a veteran of sixty years of marriage. “Oh my God, he said, that is great. Not many people can claim that long.”
“I have to qualify that because it took me three marriages to reach that goal.” At that, he began laughing hysterically and almost fell off his chair. “Hey everyone, this guy is a comedian,” he shouted across the bar. Just then, my friend Greg walked in and overheard what he was saying. “He is absolutely telling the truth. He has had three wives.” Fortunately for me, Greg saved my ass from any further embarrassment and led me away from the bar to a table. As we approached the table, two more friends joined us. The time went well as friends discussed the things that matter most to us. I bought a round of drinks, and then my order of Walleye pike dinners arrived, and I had to leave.
I am glad I overcame my fear of a bar being an evil place where only badass bikers congregate and start trouble. In Europe, Ryans’ would be referred to as the local Pub. However, Ryans is frequented by bikers who happen to be the local guys who like to ride motorcycles and drink beer with their neighbors.
Three cheers to Ryan’s and all other places like them.
