Here's an article about the proposed move, if you're interested.
The pictures in it are pretty poignant. Robert E, the barber, has cut my hair a time or two, and my Dad's more than we could count. The photographer had to basically turn to his left after taking the picture of Robert E to take another of the pictures - the one with the end loader. The building with the sidewalk being taken out in front of it is the Red Apple Inn, a restaurant that's re-opened in recent years, where we used to occasionally go out for fish when I was a kid. The white building beyond in that picture is the locker plant, owned by Jim Chellevold. They butcher Dad's cows for him. All of the meat in their freezers went bad, I'm sure...The vacant lot between the two used to be Hillman's, the bar owned by my grandmother, and then my aunt Shirley and uncle Ray. Both my parents tended bar there, and used to go whoop it up together and play cards there, both while courting and during their younger years of marriage, practically every Saturday night. It burned in the late 70's or early 80's, can't quite recall. That's where the family heirlooms mostly were - Grandma's blackjack, for example. Kept it behind the counter. Up in smoke. The town has never really been the same since the fire took Hillman's out of its heart, and it looks like the rest of the place might finally have realized that it's dead.
A few people had their houses raised after last year's floods, but only a few. When the veterinarian rebuilt after a flood some twenty years ago, he had his building built on what was essentially a berm he'd had bulldozed, and he's up and out of it, but the mechanic who just moved in, the gas station, the grocery store...All are soaked. Again. I think the furniture makers moved out a few years ago. There are more vacant lots downtown every year. People decide not to rebuild - a few have had the houses moved out to higher ground already. It's sad. If you look at the video I made of our trip to Wisconsin, the shot where Dad is looking out over the valley should give you an idea of what they're up against. The whole bottom flat area of the valley fills up like a punch bowl. Dad's house is out of it, but the rest...It's just going to get it every few years. And people get sick of laying new carpet and buying new televisions.
Some of their rain has made its way out here in the last few days. I sat through a high school graduation - yesterday, at the charter school where I used to work. I knew those kids well, so I went to see them flip their mortarboards. It started at 1:30, and went until three o' bloody clock in the afternoon. Lenox's graduation a week or so ago went the same amount of time - because three students spoke, and they read out every single scholarship that any of them received, as well as their plans for the fall. It went on and on and on - But, hey, there were 68 of them or some such. Figures it would take a while.
This school's graduating class yesterday was ninety strong.
Sorry - typo. It was a NINE strong.
OK, it was their first-ever graduation, so they took their time. And the students had put together a video of their future plans and some interviews, which were funny, interspersed with shots from various video projects they'd done over their time at the school. (Most of which were segments from the music video I shot with them for "Nada que perder" by Mana.) So it was kind of understandable that it should go on. But, cripers, I just couldn't enjoy it.
I was squirming a bit, partly since Q's baseball game had been scheduled to start at 3:30, and I was easily 25 minutes from home, but mostly because I had to go to the bathroom. Because, truth be known, the last hour of the ceremony was held (indoors, luckily) above the din of an absolutely torrential downpour. "Game's canceled," I thought. "I've got time." So I said a nice congratulations to the students, and drove home by way of Olympia Sports, where the baseball bats were 50% off. (Though I later learned that most things are marked at 50% off most of the time there.) When I arrived in Williamstown, I saw that everything was bone dry - The game! It's been going on for 15 minutes...! I raced to the park.
But it turned out they had been delaying while they made up their minds whether to play or not. Rumbling thunder in the distance, you know. They eventually decided to go for it, and played the full game. Never did rain any farther north than Lanesboro The other team was a powerhouse, though - from Lanesboro, in fact. Lots of good hitting (on our good pitching), and very good pitching that we weren't able to hit at first. So we were beaten pretty handily, though the boys (and girls) made it respectable in the end.
Q has this tendency lately, and I'm not sure what to do about it, where he just watches excellent pitches go by. He seems absolutely convinced they're bad, and steps out of the box, and then slumps when the ump calls out "STRIKE!" I think maybe what he most likes is to be on base, regardless how he gets there, and he's figuring (somewhere deep down) that if he just doesn't swing, he'll get on. And most of the time, he's right. But this is not a sustainable philosophy, and it's absolutely maddening to see him take these called strikes and then kick himself afterwards. He walked every time he batted, but never did swing.
So today we did some batting practice - or should I say, "swing practice". We went to the field and I made Q promise that he would swing at absolutely every pitch, no matter how bad. Just to train his brain and his body to smoothly transition between thinking deciding to swing and actually swinging. And it was much better - when I put them in the strike zone, he hit them, very consistently. I'm absolutely sure he never would have swung at most of those had I not made him promise - he was shocked that he hit some of them. "That was outside!!", he would protest. I would shrug. "Parece que tu idea de 'outside' no cuaja con la realidad." Hopefully that will sink in some.
I also told him, as he was taking grounders and firing them back at me, snatching them off the ground to his left and turning that motion into a perfect 180-degree turn and aiming and swinging his arm before he's even all the way around and facing me and firing a curving laser that pops into my mitt some twenty-five yards away, that to my mind, there are two Qs: The one I saw today, so graceful and agile and adult-looking, and the Q who chews his lip and stands there between second and third, watching his teammates madly trying to make an out at second and at third and at home, twisting his lower lip into folds and pushing it into his teeth, mitt hanging lazily at his side, knees perfectly locked, never quite realizing that he is, at that moment, the third baseman - never, that is, until a deep, bearded, vaguely Norwegian-inflected voice cries out in Spanish from the sideline, "Q! SOS VOS EL TERCERA BASE!" At which point he tip-toe jogs to the base, never letting go of his lip. He got a kick out of that idea - and I get a kick out of knowing that soon, the Q who was playing with me in the park today will show up in a game. And then - look out.
Here's some pictures:
Daddy spends some quality time with his precious little baby. And with T.
75% of the Johnstadts, taking in the action at the Cal Ripken Baseball year-end picnic, this very evening.
T making dessert messiness look gooooood.
And T failing to do that very same thing.
Q hangs out by the foul pole and watches the Home Run Derby, where all the coaches take turns seeing how many they can put out of the park. I didn't participate - you may have heard this summary of my athletic abilities before, but here it is again: If the sport involves knocking people over, and / or outrunning them, I'm your man. Anything else? ...Not so much.
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