Pure Schmaltz

Well, I got my first rejection from my publisher this week. The next book I'd envisioned seems to focus upon an over-served topic (Change) and employs some culturally iffy messengers. Here's a taste. david

Introduction

Amy and I are standing on a brick platform, waiting for the Ringstrasse tram that will carry us to the other side of Vienna. We are on a mission.

My front pants pockets bulge with almost seventeen Euro in small change. I collected this change by begging, which is illegal in Vienna. I shook a Starbuck's coffee cup—just having a Starbucks cup is, all by itself, a significant social sin in this birthplace of the coffeehouse—jingling with small change in the direction of the delegates to a professional conference. I stood near the top of the grand marble staircase in the historic Haus der Industrie, where every attendee except those who chose to ride the ancient lift had to pass. Few chose to ride the ancient lift.

“Got any spare change?” I pestered.

I was trying to learn about change. This conference was titled Changing Change Management, and Amy and I had been invited to convene two sessions. We'd traveled a long way to speak about the future, only to discover that the conference was being held in a marble mausoleum to the past. In the main auditorium, Emperor Franz Josef beamed beneficently from his portrait hung between gilded statuary. The furniture in the break-out rooms could not be arranged in circles, the shape that everyone who's anyone working on the cutting edge of change management, ourselves included, would certainly require.

Vienna, the source of modern bureaucracy, was hosting a conference aimed at reconsidering organizational change. Sonja Raditz, who's company, ISCT, was hosting the conference, had chosen well. The change masters were in a quiet uproar, unable to manipulate this infrastructure to create the proper context for change. Just like in the real world, we visited our meeting room and found it wholly inadequate for the purpose for which we intended to use it.

Our long, rectangular room featured a huge canoe-shaped conference table and a few more chairs than would comfortably fit around it. There was no obvious space front or back for us to ‘hold forth’ from. A huge projection screen dominated the far inside wall. We’d have to work with what we found there, not what we’d imagined finding there. How we’d do that, we didn’t yet know.

The change masters would have to change.

Everyone asked after Amy's dad. Everyone knew he was in the nursing home and each wanted to know when "Johnny" would be back. This place is changing. There are too few old ladies in training to keep this delicate social fabric together. We dined today at Caroline's smorgasbord, the only restaurant in town. Broasted chicken, ham, meatballs in a creamy sauce ,and twelve different salads, two-thirds of which are cool-whip based. At $4.75 a head, the place is packed and we took Johnny and sat astounded at his depth of community. Everyone who passed by the table stopped to engage him and he was as warmed and energized by this as anyone could ever be. I commented to him after we left, as we were waiting to be admitted to drive around the threshing bee park ("Johnny can't walk? Of course he can't. Just drive your car around there, then.") "So," I said, "Looks like you've got pretty good credit here." "Oh yea," he sighed, " a fella's got to. This is what keeps me goin'," he continued, "If I didn't have these folks out here, willing to take care of me, I wouldn't have any hope of gettin' out of the nursing home."

Johnny will not return home from the nursing home. He's catching on and accepting. After all, his life has been defined by the same abrupt changes that have defined all of his neighbors' lives here. He has mastered abrupt at the knee of South Dakota. He was more interested in getting an ice cream than he was in looking at the steam tractors. "Once you've tried to make a living with these old machines," he confided, "You'd just as soon never see or think of them again." Today was plenty for him. We drove him back to the nursing home. He dozed between bites of ice cream, one terrifically tired teddy bear. We bundled him off to his room, to a nap which took him back to the times when he was one of the masters of this humbling territory.

Over lunch, he responded to one old friend that he thought he was doing pretty well. He was either going to get better or maybe he'd just go to sleep and go to heaven, which, he confided, wouldn't be so bad either. He's sleeping more these days. There's no depression in this doziness. It's clearly well-earned rest. His Parkinson's and his pernicious enema rack his body and sometimes his mind. He was clearer this weekend. "A fella's got a lot of soul-searchin' time here," he reported, "That's pretty clever of them to make it like that. I can see where I am from here and it's just the way it is."

We left him tonight at supper. He was a bit confused about why he didn't need to put on his hat and coat, after all "it looked plenty cool out in the fields." His monologue disclosed that dinner might be out in the fields tonight as it had been on so many of his nights, delivered by dutiful wife or daughters, all grown and gone now. His dinner would be at a table set so his wheel chair could fit, with others, now in brightly colored bibs, who kept this place together. No wimps among them. I left proud to be aging and satisfied with our humanity.

The prairie and South Dakota are places like this. The work gets done. Community cares. So much gets lost in the shadow of pale artifice. It's not supposed to be particularly pretty or necessarily tidy. We make the bargains we make, wishing that we had someone to grow older with and deserving someone, too. Despair, they say, is the difference between what we expect and what we experience, and can always, it seems to me, be resolved by either accepting the way it is or by changing my expectations. The people who live here are masters of life. Not the flashy Elvis-impersonator life we too often mistake this journey for, but the stumble and stutter life that each of us eventually understands is our lot. No surprises and no regrets. There is a community around us that will sustain.

Modern life might have missed this point. Ignore the expectations television offers. Distrust everything the politicians and actors and the in role people suggest. There is a heart beating out here, a dedication founded in bed rock. None of us are strangers. We all share these feelings, these experiences, yet we pretend that we do not. Then again, on odd evenings, we bust these illusions and parade through a sleeping town, blowing off our steam and stranding ourselves in a common mud. We laugh, when we are together, and we pull ourselves out and continue. The stories continue. The traveler, the stranger at the bar ,might catch the pattern here and find no way to share his observation. Each is blessed with their own damned experience. Each is delightful. How can I tell a total stranger how I feel? Find your partner! Don't despair! There are no strangers here. Beer?

Eventually, the band disbanded, finishing with a rousing Goodnight, Irene. One of Kevin's men came into Marske's to report that the coal was getting low and that the Steam Roller should be leaving for the park. Everyone fortified themselves with a beverage to go and we all exited to the trolleys, arrayed behind the steam machine. Whistles and chugging brought the antique into motion and we rumbled through deserted streets, stopping where some who was not present lived to hoot the steam whistle and loudly chide the resident to come out and have some fun. We, on the trolleys, became fast friends, more than one engaging in "That Kevin" quality conversations. He was clearly revered, loved, and sometimes feared for his legendary temper. Still, many agreed, he is a great man to work for.

Kevin or his whiskey decided to take the scenic route, since a direct path would leave a trip of only about five blocks. Kevin took a right turn at the abandoned school house and a left at the next street. Five more minutes of steaming, coal cinders sparking the dark sky, brought us into a field. A damp field. The short story was that Kevin drove the slick-wheeled steam roller into a soft spot, unseen in the dark. The machine stuck. More steam brought the mighty ten-foot tall cast wheels spinning and throwing mud. We got off the trolleys and tried to push while another of Kevin's men found a huge eight wheeled John Deere tractor, backed it up to the front of our caravan, and chained it up. It took a few pulls to free us. Some of us thought the steam roller might break, front roller sideways in a slick track- the roller was turned so far that it left some of its red paint on the boiler - but it didn't break. We pulled into the park much later and colder.

Amy had met Kevin's assistant, a woman who used to cut her mom's hair, on the trolley. Amy had spoken with Kathy some months ago, after a conversation with Kevin about his business. The conversation had resulted in a considerable bonus for Kathy and she showed her gratitude by hugging Amy and by offering us a ride back to Marske's on another golf cart. We wended our way back out of the park, Amy, Kathy, and I- with three other guys hanging off the cart at odd angles.

Conversation had taken over the evening at Marske's, even though a little old guy with a lap held Hawaiian steel guitar, harmonica, base drum, and high-hat cymbal was holding forth with polkas and such at the front and several couples were imitating dancing in the middle of the place. This time was for talking. I met many folks. The guy who I later learned had accidentally driven a corn combine over his father, killing him. Another who had lost his thumb in a horrible fly-wheel accident. (Good thing he was home. He would have had a heck of a time hitching a ride... they said.) Another guy, the town drunk, which is saying something, I learned later was also a talented and bitter wood carver. I learned a half-dozen solid life stories. Each moving and illuminating.

Marske had a marvelous popcorn machine. A predictable dollar fifty bought a small, Jiffy-Pop-like sealed plate of corn which, when placed on the hot plate-like machine, caused the plate to gyrate wildly. The plate rotated and jiggled until its popped corn reached a certain height, then the machine turned itself off. I watched a couple of batches and then asked Marske where he got the machine. He pulled out a stack of cards and showed me one from a company in Bloomington, Ill. "You have to get the corn from a place in Iowa," Bob reported, "And we've run out a couple of times for weeks, so I always order plenty." We both agreed that a place like Marske's Lounge shouldn't run out of popcorn.

We, however, by this time, were running out of steam. Bob called last call at 1 am, confiding to me that he had a 2 o'clock license but that he didn't like to stay up that late. His wife and grand daughter and the shelf-butted waitress filled everyone's last order, collected each last buck fifty, and the grateful, modest tips, and we shuffled out into an altogether too quite night. On my way out the door, I called Marske over to the bar to shake his hand and thank him for talking such good care of us that evening. I meant it most sincerely.

This was a smoky, boozy place without redeeming social value, except it was also a confessional, a dialogue space, and a dance floor extraordinary. The place where folks polkaed was a round "hot part," the heat source for the place. The tables and chairs didn't match any more than the couples did. What matched was the humanity.

The Hawaiian steel guitar player eventually stopped playing and, for some reason, cornered Amy and I with his life story. Over several brandy presses, which I have no idea what they are, each of which he ordered by asking for one last one, this seventy-plus year old farmer unrolled his life story. He bought the Hawaiian guitar forty years ago when he was in the army in Colorado. ("It looked a lot better then...") He lost the farm. His wife divorced after five years. "Of course, I'm single..." he started and ended each story the same way. He travels from threshing bees to founders days, finding the local Marske's, and playing his one-rhythm, three chord melodies from behind his harmonica, high-hat, and base drum. Deeply introverted, needing the recognition but barely acknowledging it, performing as if for himself in his own head, he floats from celebration to celebration, searching, he finally disclosed, deep into his "last" brandy presse, for someone to share his life with. "Of course, I'm a single man," he continued, "so I can live a life like this, but I wouldn't complain about having someone to grow old with." Who could? His someone will have to bust space and time to catch the growing part. His hands were the hands of everyone else in that funky place. Nails battered, fingers callused and crazy colored. These hands had done some work and were able to do some more. "No sir, I sure wouldn't mind finding someone to grow old with," he commented before signing off to head back to his camper in the park.

I left buzzing with admiration. I left filled with more than my minimum daily requirement of humanity. I left with a clearer bead on community. Amy belonged- absent these last twenty five years, she still had a role. Folks recognized her and remembered her and asked what she was doing now, genuinely interested. She was clearly no stranger and I, by association, was as welcome as if I had grown up there, too.

... to be continued ...

We will have a long night tonight, the first night of the 25th anniversary James Valley Threshing Bee. Steam engines are being readied as we later stroll through the park where the enormous machinery of a century ago smokes in quiet preparation. The place is ghosts parked in long lines. A dozen or two ancient tractors, some with names not remembered by anyone now living. Strange machines that look like the iron ancestors of modern monster trucks idly smoke. The park is deserted except for a few kids tending boilers. We leave and head for Marske's (pronounced "Mars Keys") Lounge. The streets of Andover have rarely been so crowded. We must pass three or four other couples in the four blocks we walk to Main street. The last couple warns us that we'd better hurry, Marske's almost out of beer. We had no need to fear.

Main street this night is dominated by the smoking, steaming hulk of a genuine steam roller: steam powered and simply huge, as big as a house. Three trolleys sit parked behind. The Threshing park was empty because Kevin had pulled the entire camping population into town for a beer and a dance. We cross the street in the moon shadow of this monster.

Marske's was in no danger of running out of anything but space. It was bursting at the seams. We squeeze our way into the front door, a narrow aisle between those hanging off the bar and a circle of musicians. The circle appeared as follows: an old farmer in seed cap with an ancient and enviable big box Gibson, a younger man in a battered cowboy hat with an equally battered Ovation lyre-back six string, an ancient farmer with a suitcase full of harmonicas, a blue-haired grandma with a silver flute, another silver-haired grandma with an accordion, and a nearly smothered, small, unwashed gentleman in the back, behind the grandmas, plucking a beat-up old electric bass. They intermesh polkas with ballads with near perfect transitions, the accordion or the harp player inevitably taking the lead. "She's too fat, much too fat, she's too fat for me..."

Amy and I order beers from a tall, slouch-backed man in stained blue work pants and a forgettable shirt: Marske. Bob Marske was a member of the Andover SD state championship HS basketball team of 1953. He retired a few years ago and bought this half-horse powered beer hall in this half-horse town. It is the sole watering hole in this burg and is clearly the most popular place this evening, which is easy because no other business is evident and this is the only place ever open after seven. The walls swell with humanity and noise. A buck and a half is the standard price for a drink here- be it beer, whiskey, or something fancy, like rootbeer schnapps. Most drink beer- again, an array of clear ones available, many in cans and served table-side by another shelf-butted woman. I work through the crowd to a hollow corner against the trophy case. On the way, Amy bumps into the steam roller owner and driver, a red-faced, class-clown of a guy named Kevin. (Amy's dad refers to him as "That Kevin," as in "That Kevin sure seems to have a lot of money," and "That Kevin always seemed to know how to get what he wanted.") Kevin was in Amy's class in school- he kissed her in first grade, which doesn't set Amy apart because it's no surprise to me to learn that Kevin kissed all the girls in first grade. He's still at it. A blue plastic something-and-Coke in one hand and an antique car horn in the other, Kevin is goosing everyone with this wonderful old farty horn. He's loved as a benefactor and as someone who gooses the world as it passes by. Hoonk! Hoooonk!

Kevin started the James Valley Threshing Bee twenty five years ago. He had a steam tractor and an antique machine or two and started the show. Now it's a destination, swelling this little narrow spot in US highway twelve to the status of a place each September. He's delightful! He embraces Amy and begins announcing, "My drummer's here, my drummer's here!" (Amy played drums in a band with Kevin the summer she was seventeen. She became pregnant and dropped the gig.) He began pushing her to toward the circle of musicians, who had a crude drum set, but no sticks. I egged him on from my safe corner.

The banquette next to me was dark tan naugahyde, patched with snagging duct tape. Three rough-looking women were smoking there, nursing long necks. Three well worn men approached, clearly the men-folk of these women. The largest of these guys was huge- easily a fifty inch waist, in a sleeveless sweat shirt and sporting a large Harley-Davidson logo as a tattoo on his right bicep. He had unshorn and unkempt hair and a beard that completely dominated his features. No eyes, no nose, no mouth, just gray fuzz and more gray fuzz. The next largest is probably the big guy's younger brother. Shoulder-length greasy hair, a strange sculpted, close cropped beard with strips carved out of it, as if more or less deliberately. Round and squirrel-like, Smee, I think. The third was the weasel of the trio, completely dominated by the other two, they were pushing him into the banquette while one of the "ladies" tried to excuse herself to go to the "setter's" room. (The men's room is labeled "pointers," the ladies', "setters.") I tried for a time to watch the band through the girth of the Harley guy, who was apparently the genuine article. I suspected that he had a huge motorcycle parked outside, but I later learned they were more modestly motorized. As we later boarded the trolley cars for the midnight ride to the Threshing Park, the huge Harley guy, his brother, and one of the "ladies" were racing up and down Main street- Harley at the wheel of a golf cart, "lady" riding shotgun, and squirrel lounging in the back, Coors Light can protected in one hand while the other was held high in the universal "hang loose" sign. I hope I never lose the memory of those three toughs so deported.

... to be continued ...

We are in South Dakota this morning (Sunday.) Sunny from two perspectives. On Friday we met in the Twin Cities with a prospective client who seems to have nearly perfect affinity with us: with our focus, our philosophy, and our principles. This left us feeling completely hopeful and optimistic for the drive West on Friday afternoon.

Nearly three hundred miles later, we arrived at about sunset at the H.O.T. Spot, a large truck garage and the acknowledged best restaurant in the area. The place is filled with men who seem to either be in denial about their true waist size or too cheap to buy a new belt. Buckles were well hidden, I suspect well imbedded, beneath what was in many cases impressive overhang. Many of the women, on the flip side, had somehow managed to develop a shelf-like space in their lower back- a place that Amy's brother described as being capable of displaying a full half case of beer. Shelf-butt he calls this. So, the couples arrived in matched opposites- hidden belt buckles opposing unused shelf space.

The regulars found a table- or a part of a table, as the place was filled to capacity- though no one was turned away. There was always, it seemed, a way to hunch over to make room for whoever arrived next. Everyone knew each other. Then, each disappeared toward the bar, returning not with icy beers but with a Styrofoam bowl of warm kraut, which each ate as if accepting a sacrament from the gods. Friday night must be kraut sacrament night at the H.O.T. Spot. Later a waitress arrived for drink orders, a choice of clear beers and soda pop, menus, and warm welcomes. If you don't feel genuinely welcome, you are not feeling here. These are real people; folks. There's not an ounce of airs or put-on among them. The men are farmers and their women teachers, nursing home assistants, or store clerks. Everyone works multiple jobs. Few make any money. Most are paper real estate millionaires and paupers at the grocery store. They grow gardens and talk commodity prices and weather it all with a wry humor, as if this were all a distantly funny joke they are forced to play. Resignation, said another way, perhaps, acceptance reins. There is a serious deficit of self obsession here. They know more than you'd ever want to know about self sacrifice and humility.

They keep warmly cluttered homes. The lawns are mowed but never manicured. Gardens are tidy without evident obsession. The purpose is maintained without show or excess. Farmers learn to pare elements down to essentials, understanding that tidy rarely carries to the bottom line. Further East, where the land is more settled and the weather less severe, farms are more idyllic- looking, like James Whitcome Riley's grandchildren. The farms here in the Dakotas retain their wild unmanageability- several years into a wet cycle have left some farms high and dry and inaccessible by land vehicle. Fields are islands and roads poorly maintained, Johnny-come-lately causeways. Ducks, deer, herons, and toads abound. Roads accumulate in tire wells. Garages are paved in acrid, musty deposits of the prairie's earth. Farmers here haven't made money in several seasons and this year, record yields will leave them losing money on every acre they bothered to plant. Planting at least maintains the soil, which increasingly is promised to the banks for last year's, the year before's, and the year before that's planting loan. Government insurance helps some. Everyone here knows all about keeping their head when treading water. Even though none of them expected to have to become champion treaders, each accepts this delt hand with the quiet, experienced acceptance each born here received as a birthright. There are few exceptions.

Everyone knows everyone else's business. This is like living in a society where everyone walks around in their underwear. No cover, no fooling... And it is with this background that each orders dinner at the H.O.T. Spot. An observant one would notice the similarity between what you order and what your dad and your grand dad ordered in their times. The taste for prime rib seems to run in families. Most order red meat and potatoes without evident self-consciousness. This is a land before cholesterol and winter's coming. The land is blanketed in bird life, swollen by the wealth of the harvest. I would not be surprised to find sparrows with their belt buckles imbedded under pin feathers, fat and ready for winter's bite. The communion between farmer's family and their feedbag continues. Huge, juicy steaks arrive. If it had been Saturday night, nine out of ten would be ordering the prime rib. Following the kraut, Friday's order's are less predictable but none the less fatty. French fries arrive which must have been cooked in pure lard, light and fresh and delicate as they are completely saturated. Bakers arrive with the fixin's unless warned off when ordering. A small loaf of bread follows the lettuce salad, exactly what my dad would order- chopped iceburg lettuce unencumbered by garnish, dressing, or skill- clearly the least important part of the meal. Something to crunch while finishing that first beer to cover the time it takes to cook the real food.

I order the baked walleye, asking for it without the spice, which I have not seen but which Amy warns me is a deadly dirt bath of Lawrey's Seasoned Salt. My baker comes dry, forlorn in a foil coffin. Amy's cheese burger is resplendent in juices and grease, her fries an enticing woodpile. I lose the wrestling match with both the walleye skin, steamed permanently to the filet, and my better judgment as I abandon both to play on the mound of fries. We leave little evidence of dinner ever having been there. A stray fin and some crumpled foil for me. A tell-tale slick for Amy. An empty bottle or two and a half short glass of tomato juice remaining from Amy's attempt at a local favorite, red beer.

I was uncomfortable as we made our way back to the car and continued the last ten miles to Andover, where Amy's father's house is located. The house smells closed-up musty. Amy opens windows as I park the car and start unloading. I check the fridge and acknowledge that Amy had been right, I should have bought whatever I would have wanted before we left the Twin Cities. There are no grocery stores here and there is no bread in this house.