The land of Mardi Gras....

I've been a bit busy lately with some other writing tasks and just a busy life. And now– here it is–time for me and my wife to travel south on our winter vacation for (we hope) some sunshine and warm weather.

We're heading to the land of Mardi Gras and sandy beaches. The photo on the left was taken last year at the annual Mardi Gras parade on Fat Tuesday near where we stay. The krews on the floats throw beads, moon pies and you name it. So we all "catch" a bead necklace or two and every person gets in the spirit. It's a great tradition that we seem to miss up here in the north.

Hope you'll check the blog later for some of my musings, from the beach.

Stay tuned....
Jim

A short jaunt up the North Shore by way of the digestive system...

By Jim Heffernan

Split Rock Lighthouse

As I lay on the operating table last week waiting for the anesthetic to take effect before the start of an extremely invasive procedure, the woman nurse asked me a few innocent questions about my past life.

Where did I grow up? Duluth. “I’m a native.” What high school did I go to? Denfeld, way back when.

The doctor performing this extremely invasive procedure hadn’t arrived yet in the operating room, so I decided to ask the nurse a few return questions about her past life. She said she was originally from Silver Bay.

Ah, Silver Bay. I know it well. Well, not THAT well, but I know it pretty well, mainly by reputation.

As the anesthetic continued to course its merry way through my vast vascular system, and still no doc on the scene, I told the nurse how when I was in high school the word was that girls up the shore in Two Harbors were really hot to trot, an expression of the day that means everything that it implies.

She told me to be careful because a second nurse in the room, this one a male, was married to a Two Harbors “girl.”

I told them both not to worry. Continuing, I told them that years ago I had a colleague who hailed from Two Harbors and that, discussing things in general, I had shared with him that when I was in high school the word about Two Harbors girls was that they were really hot to trot.

This Two Harbors colleague said he found that strange, because when he was in high school in Two Harbors the word was that Silver Bay girls were really hot to trot.

At that point the doctor came in to conduct this extremely invasive procedure involving the insertion of a long camera doohickey through your entire digestive system by way of an entry point usually employed as the exit for usually solid wastes, but not always.

The doctor’s presence halted my conversation with the nurse (by now nurses) as he started getting down to business. As he did so, the anesthetic, failing to knock me out but – it was fervently hoped – succeeding in deadening my entire digestive tract, I told him about the West Duluth-Two Harbors-Silver Bay hot to trot connections.

He cheerfully said that when he was in high school – he didn’t say where – it was generally believed by the boys that the girls in the next town to the north were similarly hotter to trot than their own girls.

As he got on with this extremely invasive procedure we conjectured that it appeared the farther north you got, the hotter to trot the girls used to be. The doctor wondered aloud what might happen if you got all the way up to Canada. We all laughed.

By then I was wondering how far north he had progressed in my digestive system, which, it turned out later, he had taken a few snapshots of as he moseyed along, just like we might take snapshots of Split Rock lighthouse on our way to Silver Bay and maybe beyond. Tofte? Lutsen? How grand might the girls of Grand Marais be? You wonder.

At the end of this extremely invasive procedure, I was presented with a few of these color snapshots of my innermost innards, which I now have at home, awaiting reproduction in our 2012 Christmas letter along with the grandchildren and the rest of us, especially me. 

Here's news for Bachmann: America not missing...

By Jim Heffernan

Before Michele Bachmann got to the point in her withdrawal speech in which she said she would “step aside” from her presidential campaign after finishing dead last in the Iowa Republican caucus, she repeated many of the themes she and other GOP hopefuls have been sounding throughout their campaigns:

They keep saying they want to “take back the country.”

I didn’t know the country had gone anywhere.

The United States (“of America,” as the politicians all add in case there was any confusion about which United States they might mean) seems pretty much the same to me as it has for most of my lifetime, a not inconsiderable period of time, it turns out.

Nevertheless, every time I hear Bachmann and Willard “Mitt” Romney and Republican also-rans say they want to take back the country, I wonder what they could possibly mean. I look out the window, and there it still is – the United States (of America) looking pretty much the way it has looked for the last half century-plus that I have been paying attention.

Still, when I hear them say these things about our country, I worry that I have somehow missed the theft of an entire nation and didn’t even notice. I wonder if I had Rip Van Winkled for a few decades and suddenly awakened to find that my country had been taken away.

So I jump in my car and drive around, looking for signs that my country had disappeared, and find that at least one small portion of the country, Duluth, Minnesota, is still there pretty much as I have always known it. There are cosmetic changes, of course, but there it is, a shining city on a hill, as President Reagan might have described it. And atop flagpoles, there they still are, the stars and stripes, forever waving in the wind.

I have a hunch the rest of the country is still out there, too.

So, I wonder what these Republican presidential aspirants and, one assumes, their supporters, mean when they say they want to take back the country. I hate to sound too cynical, but could it be that they mean they merely want to take back the presidency? Could that be it?

If that’s what they mean, they should say so. I sense that many tea-drinking Americans simply don’t accept President Barack Obama as a bona fide president like all of the white, male presidents of the past. Somehow, they can’t see him as as strong a commander in chief of the armed forces as past presidents, especially some of the great White House warriors like Reagan, who spent World War II in uniform on the 20^th Century Fox lot in Hollywood making training films, or George W. Bush, our immediate past president, who flew for the Texas National Guard…over Texas, but not Vietnam.

It’s getting hard to find presidential candidates of either political party who have actually served in the armed forces, but Bush fils has probably taken care of that when vets of the wars he started begin to seek political office.

Finally, Michele Bachmann accuses Obama of being a “socialist” because he wants everyone in America (that’d be the United States that has gone somewhere and needs to be taken back) to have access to affordable health care.

That will be quite a change for America – health coverage for everyone, like in Canada and most of “old” Europe. I’d say bring it on, but somebody already said that. In a different context, of course.

A Christmas Gift: When my Grandma played Jingle Bells

Note: My mother, Ruth Heffernan (a local church organist and choir director, now deceased), could play the piano with skill and feeling. It was when Ruth sat down at the piano at Christmas time to play for her family a thrilling rendition of Jingle Bells that the magic of Christmas was realized by us all. My son, now grown and the father of three young boys, writes (below) his recollections as a youth experiencing Ruth at the piano at Christmas, especially playing Jingle Bells. Jim Heffernan


By Patrick Heffernan

I cannot describe the way my grandma could play the piano, but I will try. She had a natural gift for playing and could play anything she heard by ear immediately. She enhanced this gift with about 57 years of being a church organist and also giving piano lessons for much of her life. Unless you’ve been in presence and up close – I mean right by the piano- with someone who can play like she could, you simply can’t understand it. Her hands would fly; her feet would frantically press the pedals as she would make the piano sound like an orchestra or a big band, depending on the piece she played.  

Of course my grandma could play everything including beautiful, complex piano pieces, but in my mind there was one song that she played that was far and away her very best. That song was Jingle Bells. My sister and I loved her version of Jingle Bells so much that we would request she play it year 'round. Many times she would arrive at our house for a Sunday dinner in the middle of the summer to be greeted at the door by my sister and me begging her to play, of all things, Jingle Bells. Now I understand that it probably gave her great joy to play the piano with two of her grandchildren right by her side. I know it gave us great joy.

My Grandma’s version of Jingle Bells was incredible. She’d sit down and quietly start as we began “dashing through the snow". The song and the sounds would build and build with her hands frantically flying way, way up into the air while the keys were pressed all over the place–the left hand creating a deep booming almost drum-like beat while her right hand was way up creating the sounds of bells.   Those hands of hers…now I look back and realize, especially in her later years, they probably looked frail, but to me they looked like pure magic. I can honestly remember grabbing her hands after she played to see if she had more than the usual ten fingers. 

The song built and built–one time I think I may have seen a spark fly from the piano as the keys caused those strings within the piano to scream a beautiful sound.  At some point each time she would play, I would wonder if maybe, just maybe, even in the middle of summer, we would get a visit from someone who we called “The Jolly Old Elf” but most call Santa Claus. 

On that note, you don’t need to take my word on her piano playing, just ask Santa how my Grandma could play Jingle Bells. You see, each year on Christmas Eve we would gather with a bunch of family members and enjoy Christmas together. After all the food was eaten and all the dishes were done it was finally time for my Grandma to make her way to the piano–it seemed like it was 2 am to me but probably more like 8 pm. My little grandma would sit at the piano and begin my favorite song-and it was pure joy. Just like every other time it would build and build. But on Christmas Eve it got so loud that way, way up in the sky Santa could hear it. Can you imagine the chaos of that evening for Santa, the elves and the reindeer? At this point they were probably running behind so he had the reindeer going full tilt through the freezing sky. 

“On Dasher, On Dancer, On Comet, On Cupid” as he cracked his whip into midair. “On Donner, On Blitzen……whoa…..whoa…… Ruth Anna Aurora Heffernan is at the piano! To Duluth we go!” So down the reindeer would dive and they would go into a free fall pointing directly at Duluth, Minnesota.  I imagine Santa would arrive and peek in a window and see my grandma playing with all the kids around smiling at her playing and all the adults around smiling at the kids smiling, and of course, the song. I’d bet at this point he would say “now that is a gift”. Just about at the end of the magical song the doorbell would ring and there would be Santa. We’d hear the bells ringing and he would pass in a big, huge bag of gifts for the kids. We’d run to the door to catch a glimpse of him but, sure enough, by the time we got there he was on his way.

Every single Christmas Eve went exactly this way and it was pure joy for the young and I’m sure for the old, too. What could be better than being all together and having my grandma play Jingle Bells?   But just like everyone else, my Grandma started to get a bit older. One year it was time for her to move out of her house and into a nursing home. Her old piano happily found a home at my parents’ house where it still sits. I was about 10 years old at this point, so my memories are that of a child. I remember visiting her at the nursing home and finding she was getting foggier and foggier. I didn’t know it then, but I now realize as an adult that elderly loved-ones march into heaven too fast for your heart and too slow for your head. This was the case for my Grandma.     

I remember one time in particular my dad and I visited her and she didn’t seem to know who we were- pretty confusing for a ten year old. But I think I started to understand what was happening, as much as I didn’t want to accept it. At this time, we decided to see if she could still play the old piano. Life is pretty funny; while time and her advanced age had taken her ability to walk and her ability to reason, it had not taken her amazing ability to play the piano. Almost instinctively, I asked her to play my favorite song. And away she went, playing Jingle Bells just as good as she always did. I can assure you, that nursing home piano had never, ever been played like that–not even close. Yet again, I wondered if just maybe the Jolly Old Elf would come walking in the nursing home and in the room. 

That would be the last time I would hear her play her magical version of that song. After all those years of her playing Jingle Bells on Christmas Eve, I knew I would miss it on that special night and I sure do.  But I soon realized that, even if she wasn’t here with me, my Grandma playing Jingle Bells would be with me forever. I’m sure my grandma gave me many thoughtful gifts over the years–toys, hockey stuff, and games, but the only one I remember is the one she played on the piano for all of us. And oh, what a gift it was.

Christmas Memories: The Coal Man cometh, with the Night Stalker not far behind...

By Jim Heffernan

One of my grandsons, a five-year-old kindergartner, is concerned that he might be getting a lump of coal for Christmas. We all know why he has that concern, although lumps of coal aren’t as prevalent these days as they used to be.

A lump of coal for misbehaving was not part of my Christmas tradition growing up. We heated our home with oil, assuaging any concerns I might have had. Our next-door neighbor heated with coal, though, and I think the excitement and drama of the arrival of the “coal man” has been lost in our time.

Coal was the main source of furnace fuel when I was a child, and throughout the winter large trucks loaded with it crisscrossed the city in winter. Their boxes had a sliding trap-like door at the back with a handle that, when lifted, would release the coal into a chute positioned so that the coal could fall directly into houses basement coal bins.

If the truck couldn’t maneuver close enough, the coal man – a grim looking fellow covered from head to toe with coal dust – would load a wheelbarrow and push it into position above the coal chute. Coal was king well into the era that Nat King Cole started singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire (over coal?).

The thing that intrigued children about the process was the hope – never fulfilled – that they could slide down the coal chute into the coal bin. Nobody in my neighborhood ever pulled that off, probably realizing that when they completed their slide they would be, like the coal man and a certain jolly old elf, covered with black ashes and soot, the result being the threat of receiving only a lump of coal for Christmas.

But rest assured, the threat of receiving a lump of coal instead of colorfully wrapped gifts beneath the Christmas tree still exists, as witness my grandson who might never have even seen a lump of coal, unless charcoal for a grill counts. I suppose it does.

But enough coal. In keeping with the Christmas theme of this reminiscence, this week I heard a program on National Public Radio that devoted fully half an hour to discussion of the movie “A Christmas Story,” which has become as much a Christmas entertainment tradition as “White Christmas” (or Not-So-White Christmases in the coal era.)

People love that 1983 movie about the boy, Ralphie, who desperately wants a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas and whose adventures leading up to the grand holiday include getting his tongue caught on a metal pole, encountering and triumphing over a neighborhood bully, a fall in his snowsuit so stuffed that he couldn’t get up by himself, and a nightmarish visit to a department store Santa Claus and his elves. No further description is needed – everyone surely has seen this delightful romp written by Jean Shepard, one best humor writers of the 20^th century.

I was reminded, listening to the radio program, that actor Darren McGavin played Ralphie’s father, he of the living room leg lamp. If you have seen the movie, you know what I mean by leg lamp; if you haven’t go straight to Target where I notice they are selling them this year.

McGavin had earlier played a character on TV called “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” in which the title character investigated strange crimes of violence that the police had given up on. At the time, mid-‘70s, I was writing a column for the Duluth News Tribune and devoted one to “The Night Stalker.” I can’t recall what I wrote, but somehow in that pre-Internet era it caught the attention of McGavin himself.

Soon after I received a box in the mail from a Hollywood studio containing a nice personal note from McGavin thanking me for mentioning his show in the paper, and a narrow-brimmed straw hat, a replica of one the actor wore in his role as Kolchak (or should I spell it Coalchak?).

I wore the hat once, on Halloween one year, and now it has disappeared from my hat bag. (I do have one; it contains, among other hats, my father’s World War I “Smokey the Bear”-style uniform hat and my own coonskin cap from my Davy Crockett years.)

McGavin died in 2006, the gospel according to Google reports, hastening to add, “of natural causes.” No night stalker involved, nor any coal men, I trust.

Oh... and Merry Christmas, everyone!

Devil missing from hell; said lurking in details...

By Jim Heffernan

Here’s some good news you won’t find in the mainstream media – just in time for the holidays.

DATELINE HELL -- Officials here announced today that the devil has gone missing. “Our ruler disappeared from his golden throne the day after Thanksgiving and hasn’t been heard from since,” a Hades spokesman stated in a terse message. He denied the disappearance had anything to do with Black Friday, a perennial favorite of the prince of darkness.

Christians and others around the planet, together with multitudes already in heaven, were jubilant, although U.S. church authorities urged caution before jumping to the conclusion that the devil is dead. “Without the devil, of course, there would be no need for the churches,” said a retired Episcopal bishop who asked not to be identified by name for fear of being struck down.

Nevertheless, Pope Benedict XVI said Catholics should celebrate the news in Christmas masses, and veteran protestant evangelist Billy Graham issued a statement from his hospital bed expressing hope that reports of the devil’s demise are true. “If they are, I’ve finally won,” Graham exuded.

President Obama spoke briefly from the Rose Garden, saying, “First we got Osama bin Ladin and now I am pleased to learn that Satan might also be eliminated.” Obama faces a tough election next year.

The surprising news had the effect of shaking leading Republican candidates for president, catching them off guard. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said he wouldn’t be surprised to learn the devil had taken up residence in the White House, “where he has often been a guest.”

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich, who has been rising in the polls, said on Fox News, “Beelzebub is a wily character who throughout history has been known to show up at various times and various places outside of his home base. I know him well, and he’ll be back.”

In a statement from the Netherworld, where he has resided since his death in 1972, former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said his agents know exactly where he is. “The devil is in the details,” said the disgraced ex-top cop.

Film at 10.

When wolves almost got the deerslayer...

By Jim Heffernan

Firearms deer hunting season is over in Minnesota, but the Wisconsin nimrods are still going at it.  I do not hunt, but my father did – deer only. Never partridge or ducks in the years our lives overlapped.

The old dad, George, died 40 years ago this month, and with deer season and that anniversary plying my mind, I recalled the time he and his three hunting buddies (they were known to their wives as the Four Horsemen) went beyond their normal range well into the 

wilds of extreme northern Minnesota to Mizpah, up there by Northome, in Koochiching County. We all know that terrain, right?

They stayed in a hunting camp with a bunch of other deerslayers, and, unlike today when most hunters climb aloft into camo-draped stands and wait for deer to wander by, my father’s generation of hunters did the wandering around in the woods and frozen swamps hoping to encounter unlucky deer.

I must have been about 10 years old, putting this hunting expedition in about 1950. Could have been ’49 or ’48. In any event, when George returned, he had quite a tale to tell, one I believe to this day because he was not a fibber or enhancer. He truly believed he had stared down a pack of wolves in a clearing somewhere near Mizpah as he hunted alone.

Here’s how he described it. He had set his rifle – his trusty pump-action Remington 30 – against a sapling in the middle of the clearing to light a smoke when all of a sudden an unseen wolf howled from the nearby denser ticket. Then another howled a short distance from the first. Then another, and another.

George believed he might be their next meal. So he forgot about the smoke and slowly reached down, picked up his rifle and stood his ground. He believed if he showed fear or tried to run he would have been attacked. 

So he just stood there, rifle at the ready, and eventually – I suppose it was just a few minutes – the sounds disappeared. He said he never saw a wolf, only heard them.

Back at camp that evening, he was told by locals that wolves had attacked a hunter once and all they found were his boots, with his feet inside.

Can this story be true? George was not given to hyperbole that I know of. Certainly not with the family. But I have come to learn that cases of wolves attacking humans are virtually nonexistent. And if there were wolves surrounding him, they didn’t attack. He believed it was because he didn’t panic.

I only remember him bringing home one deer in the years he hunted. The gutted doe was hauled into the basement of our house to await the grisly ministrations of the Four Horsemen, which involved skinning the animal a short time later in a shop of one of his companions as we children watched. I found the process fascinating at the time, but nothing I would care to partake of as an adult.

George continued to hunt well into his elderly years, seeking other companions after the other three “Horsemen” died. Then he joined them 40 years ago, leaving two sons who never took up hunting, maybe because he never took us with him when we were young.

Come each deer season, I never feel the urge to join the thousands who take to the woods in search of venison. I just can’t bring myself to kill a brown-eyed mammal.

Moral: If you’re going to hunt around Mizpah, be sure your toenails are neatly trimmed. Just in case.

Reflections on 11/11/11: The ignominious final salute to an ancient uniform...

By Jim Heffernan

WWI campaign hat

 Veterans Day 2011, or, as everyone has noticed, 11/11/11. The first Veterans Day – marking the armistice among the World War I belligerents – was signed on 11/11/18, but has often been referred to as 11/11/11, with the final eleven connoting 11 o’clock in the morning, the official time when everybody was supposed to stop shooting.

The observance used to be called Armistice Day until that name became obsolete with subsequent wars.

My father was in the U.S. Army during World War I, a training sergeant stationed at a base in California. Finally, when his unit was going be sent overseas, the men boarded a cross-country train in San Francisco. While they encamped at Camp Kilmer, N.J., before boarding ships to the front in France, along came 11/11/18 and the unit was kept stateside.

All of this took place long before I was born. But after mustering out the service and returning to Duluth, he kept his uniform, first when he joined his mother and father in their home, and later in their own home when he and my mother married. By the time I came along, the uniform hung on a wooden hanger in the basement of my childhood home in what we called the oil room. That was the room containing the big tank for oil to fuel our furnace.

Why he hung it in the dark and greasy oil room, I don’t know. It just hung on the wall there, year after year, deteriorating – the tunic, jodhpur style pants that laced at the bottom, and what we have come to regard as a “Smoky Bear” hat.

After the folks died many years ago and the old homestead was sold, I took the World War I uniform with me to my own home and hung it in my garage for about 20 years, where it became more and more moth-eaten, and then brought it with me to our next home and into that home’s garage – for another 15 years.

Finally, in our most recent move to a condominium, I decided I’d better get rid of what had become a valueless antique, unless you value artifacts of history. I brought it to the Veterans’ Hall at the Duluth Depot but they didn’t want it. Nor did they want my own Class A (dress) uniform from my Army/National Guard/Reserve days, nor an “Eisenhower” style wool uniform my brother had worn when he served in the early ‘50s. Too many uniforms in their collection, we were told.

The World War I outfit was in bad shape; little wonder they didn’t want that. The Duluth Playhouse gladly added my uniform and my brother’s to its collection, but I took the moth-eaten old uniform back home again.

WWI sergeant stripes

Finally, knowing there was nothing I could do with it, I tore off the sergeant’s strips on the sleeves, saved the ancient buttons, and stuffed the rest of the uniform my father had so proudly worn some 90 years earlier in the garbage can, an ignominious end to a piece of cloth representing so much American history.

On garbage day, I made a point to watch as the truck hoisted the plastic can into the air, making me think of a snappy salute, and dumped the uniform into its refuse-laden box. I watched as the truck pulled away, thinking of the old dad who so proudly wore that uniform.

I often think of him and his uniform on Veterans Day, my most reflective moment devoted to the holiday.

Oh, and I kept the Smoky Bear hat. Maybe one of these Veterans Days I’ll  dig it out of its box in the garage and wear it. But not this year. 

Trick or treat, smell my feet...

By Jim Heffernan

First Captain Underpants book

Three of my grandchildren – boys ranging in age from 3 to 5 – are getting geared up for Halloween, it should go without saying. It’s a great observance for that age group, when ghosts really do exist, and goblins…well…I’m not really sure what goblins are myself. But they go with ghosts, that’s for sure.

The older two of these three children, twins, are in kindergarten now, where the real world outside their own home exists with all of its variety. Accordingly, they are learning through their new friends certain Halloween sayings that have not been part of their own Halloween upbringing.

Thus, they have adopted, or at least mentioned, a new phrase for begging for candy on Halloween night: “Trick or treat, smell my feet.” They have taught this to their younger brother, of course, one of the benefits, or liabilities, of being the youngest.

Really, what is the world coming to? “Trick or treat, smell my feet.” Is nothing held sacred these days?

Their parents have admonished them for such a vulgar utterance, and we – their paternal grandparents – have warned them that their neighbors might not give out the goodies if the boys beg with that slogan, but to not-much avail.

“Trick or treat, smell my feet” apparently tickles the children’s funny bone, the way Captain Underpants captured the imaginations of children long ago – around 2004, before these boys were born, certainly – but yesterday in the minds of horror-stricken grandparents of that ancient era.

Speaking of which (ancient eras, not Captain Underpants), I had my day in the harvest moon of past Halloweens, trick or treating through my childhood neighborhood. But we were GOOD children. No smell my feet. Certainly no Captain Underpants, or, if you will, the Bionic Booger Boy. Good, you won’t.

We were enamored of Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, and his ilk, and look how well we ran the country once we grew up.

Our saying at the doors we called on for candy way back in my childhood was not marginally vulgar like today’s, but rather only mildly threatening to donors’ homes (actually non-donors’ homes). We shrieked, “Trick or treat (OK, so far), soap or eats.” Yes, “Trick or treat, soap or eats.”

Just think how clean cut we were in those days. Begging for soap on Halloween. Unfortunately, the soap was not for personal hygiene (we weren’t THAT goody two shoes). It was a threat that if they didn’t dish out the candy, we would soap their windows. Smearing dry soap on windows is an irritant, forcing the resident to wash those windows sometime before the hard freeze or Christmas, whichever comes first.

It was an empty threat, though. We didn’t even carry soap, except for one year when we targeted the home of a really nasty neighbor who wouldn’t even answer the door on Halloween and chased us out of his yard on every other day if we trespassed.

He would not forgive us our trespasses, just as we did not forgive his, come Halloween. So we soaped him. But it might surprise some to learn that a bar of dry soap, say 99 and 44 one hundredths percent pure Ivory, doesn’t really make very good marks on windows at all. We should have used Fels Naptha.

Growing up, I longed for the old days of Halloween pranks described by my parents, the most prominently mentioned being the tipping over of outhouses. There were plenty of outhouses in Duluth in the 1920s and, I’m sure, ‘30s. I have it on very good authority that there were still 900 outhouses in Washington, D.C., in 1939, the year I as born, and adopting the role of Major Diaper.

By the time I aged a bit and made it to the Halloween rounds, though, there were no outhouses in our neighborhood to tip over, so we made do with soap, which we used only that once. I’m a Halloween prankster failure, looking back on it.

Back in the future, I look forward to seeing these three grandsons on Halloween, and hope their parents have persuaded them to beg with something other than “Trick or treat, smell my feet.” Or if they do, I hope their neighbors will forgive them their trespasses, just as we forgive those who trespass against us. Well, almost always. On Sundays at least. And All Saints’ Eve.  

Norwegian royalty in Duluth today....

In case you hadn't heard, King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway are visiting Duluth today. They're scheduled for activities with local Norwegians and a re-dedication of Enger Tower in the afternoon. While we have  many Duluthians who have Norwegian heritage living here, even non-Norwegians (including half-baked Swedes like me) are pretty excited for their visit. Dan Kraker, local Minnesota Public Radio reporter, did a nice job of unearthing the spirit here in town around this event. Check out his piece on today's Minnesota Public Radio to learn more HERE. In addition to listening to Kraker's report on this link, you'll be able to see a nice slide show of interesting historical photos and other photos of Enger Tower and activities surrounding the Royal visit. And... you'll even hear my two-cents worth on the air about why it's such a big deal here in Duluth.

Norwegian royalty visit prompts interview by MPR

If you're up and at 'em tomorrow morning, tune into Minnesota Public Radio Morning Edition with Cathy Wurzer between 7-9 am. (It's 100.5 on your FM dial in the Duluth area and may be somewhere else on the dial where you live.) Dan Kraker, local reporter for the Duluth station, interviewed me and others about Monday's visit to Duluth by King Harald V and Queen Sonja of Norway to, among other things, re-dedicate Enger Tower. As you know, I used a little tongue in cheek as I reflected on this visit in the spirit of the old rivalry between the various Scandinavian cultures of long ago. Kraker takes a look at how the city is responding to the royal visit, including my two cents.