Octoberless

All is quiet now.
by Charlie Leck

It is a rainy, bleak and chilly day. God didn’t give us an October in Minnesota this year. Perhaps we were being punished for something or other. We jumped right from September into Minnesota miserable and I missed out on my favorite month. There are not a lot of Octobers left for me, so it is painful to have let pass this one.

I generally live for October to roll around. In a normal October the days are pleasantly warm here, but not too warm. It is a time to roll out sweaters and chord slacks. The evenings are chilly, but not cold. The air is exceptionally different and a pleasure to breathe in. It’s perfect weather for walking, golf and yard-work.

This year there wasn’t a single round of golf in October. The leaves, wet and mushy, still cover the yard. It was way too rainy for much walking (the most rain of any Minnesota October on record). Hopefully, November will bring some dry days that will allow raking and tidying up around the house.

It is the last day of October as I write this – Halloween Day. I think back to this day in 1991, when we were moving into our newly constructed house. My wife was in New York, at a horse show, and missing all the fun. My sister had flown up from Dallas to help me set up the furniture and unpack the things for the kitchen. The moving company showed up with a large semi. I had told them to arrive in two smaller trucks because the driveway was not suitable for turning a semi around. The unloading started about mid-morning, just about the same time the snow began to fall. By noon, the snow was falling in amazing abundance. It was difficult for the movers to get stuff into the house without gathering a lot of moisture and we had to call off the unloading. There was already a foot of snow on the ground and the truck driver faced the daunting task of backing his rig down a winding, quarter-mile long driveway that went up and down charming little hillocks. Fellow-workers walked along side the trailer, indicating the edge of the road where there were a few serious drop-offs. They just made it to the gravel road that leads down to our house from the highway. Fortunately, the city had made its first pass down the road with a snow plow. The big truck managed to climb the hill that leads out of Sheepy Hollow.

With little work to do, my sister stood at the kitchen window and looked out into the heart and soul of a Minnesota barn-burner of a snow storm. It wouldn’t let up. Little kids would not be out trick or treating on this night. Our little seven-year-old was disappointed, but even she understood reality as the afternoon wore on and the snow wouldn’t cease. My sister excitedly worked the phone while it functioned. She called friends in Dallas and tried to describe the wonder of what she was watching. Eventually, the power lines and telephone lines fell under the weight of the snow. We trudged down to the farm to spend the night in the tiny apartment we kept in one of the farm buildings. It wasn’t awfully cold, so I didn’t worry about the water lines in the new house freezing. I wondered, though, how long it would be before that truck could return with our furniture. My dearest one would not miss out on the unloading adventure after all. It was sometime in the night when it finally stopped snowing. The official announcement from the airport was that thirty-one inches had fallen. At our farm we were sure it was a few more inches than that.

It had been a remarkable October up until that final day of the month. The carpenters and painters had been able to get full days of work in on the house. We were even able to begin some semblance of a yard and the driveway was fully groomed. I must have golfed a dozen times that October.

Remarkably, in a week the snow was gone and mild weather returned. Some final touch-up work on the house recommenced and the moving company returned with two small trucks and the remainder of our furniture.

That was nearly twenty years ago. The little one is grown up now and living on her own in the big city. My sister has gone to the stars. Mom and I now spend our Octobers here, in the same house, alone and anxious for Thanksgiving when children will return with children of their own.

Tonight, as always, no kids will venture down our long and winding driveway to trick or treat us. Nevertheless, we bought plenty of candy, as we always do, just in case – just in case this one time they decide to pay us a visit.

The Degrees Keep Piling Up

I’m suffering from a bit of an inferiority complex because Delta Dog keeps piling up the degrees and honors!
by Charlie Leck

Don’t think me the fool! Give me some consideration – perhaps, even, support. I have a couple of degree certificates posted on the wall in my office. (I just noticed, now, that they are in need of dusting.) I take some pride in them and some comfort as well.

Now, however, I am beginning to feel somewhat like a slacker. The dog, you see, pushed on by the woman of the house, keeps piling up degrees. This week another arrived and he is insisting that I frame it and post it with his half-dozen others. When I snickered at the idea, he showed a few teeth and grumbled at me (that’s a stifled growl).

His latest achievement is a degree of commencement from READ – Reading Education Assistance Dogs.

I thought he had climbed to the very top when he received his DELTA DOG certification. It came with an academic cape, a leather bound diploma and a degree certificate meant for framing. It was immediately followed by a host of job offers that required him to fly to various locations in the United States on recruiting visits. Since no funds were included for me to accompany him on his flights to these cities, I refused permission for him to leave. He’s treated me rather coolly ever since.

Perhaps I should feel guilty about this, but I have finally made my feelings known to the top-dog of this house. I shall not stand for any more educational or continuing education endeavors by this creature. He is, after all, only a dog – a simple, uncomplicated animal that is supposed to be servant to me, his master.

This string of degrees has gone to his head, however. Because his wall is now covered with these degrees and other citations of achievement and excellence, he is beginning to feel that he is the resident-superior and that I am but a dismissible servant.

How’s that for a “man and his dog” story. Help!

FAUX REPUBLICAN

Chris Stephan, running for the City Council in my community, is NOT endorsed in any way by the Republican Party and he has been naughty to try to make people think so!
by Charlie Leck

I know a good Republican when I see one. The mayor of our town is a Republican and a danged good one. Wheelock Whitney, who lives out on Highway 12 in our community, is one of the most famous of the Republicans in our state – and he’s also a danged good one. My father-in-law, the extraordinary Lyman E. Wakefield, Jr., was so Republican that it was one of the most prominent things he listed on his resumé. Oh how he loved the Grand Old Party. Oh yes, and his daughter, my wife, is a Republican, too.

Several members of the campaign committee we’ve put together in this town are also Republicans – and not just in name, but, rather, they are sustaining, supportive, committed members of the Party. Our committee also has committed Democrats and a number of Independents.

In this election battle, which will be consummated on Tuesday, political party affiliation is not a matter of concern. City Council elections in our community have traditionally been non-partisan in nature and this has been an important element in the way our residents vote.

Chris Stephan has flaunted the Republican “flag” in the face of this tradition of non-partisanship. He has inferred that he is a candidate of the Republican Party by including the logo/emblem of the Republican National Committee on a campaign card he has distributed around town and on lawn signs he has posted in the yards of some of his supporters. When I saw this, I was stunned by this brazen act of deceit.

Shame on Chris Stephan for this very dishonest attempt to mislead the residents of the community! Shame!

Am I surprised by this dishonesty? Is John McCain a Democrat? No, I’m not surprised. Chris Stephan has a history in this community and it is not a good one. He has a very stained and questionable reputation. One only needs to flip through the thick files relegated to him and his civic naughtiness that are housed in City Hall. There you will be able to construct an image of the real Chris Stephan.

Chris Stephan has no business running for office in this community just like he had no business implying that he is an endorsed candidate of the Republican Party. This fellow continues to astound me with his brazenness time after time.

October in Iraq

How many deaths will it take 'til we know, that too many people have died?
by Charlie Leck

I remember the day in autumn of 1964 (Or was it during the winter months of 1965?) that I decided I had to go out on the streets to protest the war in Vietnam. I was sitting in an ethics class in graduate school. Our ethics professor was highly admired for his fairness and openness. He didn’t make sweeping judgments and pronouncements; but on this particular day he was troubled and his mind seemed in chaos. We had spent the previous two weeks or so talking about Dietrich Bonheoffer, the German theologian and pastor who had stood bravely up to the policies of Adolph Hitler. It had been an emotional study and a tear was shed here and there when we considered how Bonheoffer had been executed in a German concentration camp only a few days before American troops had arrived to liberate the prisoners.

Our professor rose to the lectern on that extraordinary day and announced that he wanted to outline a history of the current war in Vietnam. He proceeded to present us with all the evidence any thinking man would need to determine that several Presidents of the United States (Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson) had made ignorant and foolish decisions about the involvement of our nation in the civil struggles in that faraway Asian nation.

I and my fellow students were held spellbound by the lecture. I hesitate here, wondering if I should outline the extraordinary statement of that day. So many of my readers are young and don’t remember the diplomatic mistakes and misjudgments that led us into the internal affairs of the Vietnam nation. The French, before us, had made serious misjudgments about Vietnam and, somehow, they convinced us to pick up their fallen and failed strategy. It was Eisenhower who agreed, but John F. Kennedy picked up the misguided Eisenhower policy and ran with it as well.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was in the White House on that day when I sat and listened to the kind, Herr Docktor arrive at his own conclusion that war was not only misguided diplomatic policy but that it was totally immoral. We had no right to be propping up such an unscrupulous and dictatorial regime as the one that ruled in South Vietnam.

“Only cowards – and I have been one – could support in mind and in action such an unfair, unjust and destructive war policy as the one being conducted by my own nation – the United States of America.”

What makes me think now of that day 45 years ago?
The war in Iraq has taken an ugly turn in the last few days. Many brave, young American soldiers have been slain. October has actually been the “deadliest” month for the American military since the war began. So far, just this month, 53 military personal have died.

I will never forgive President Bush for dragging us so unnecessarily and foolishly into this war. I am quite certain that there was a high degree of dishonesty involved in justifying our invasion to the American public and to the international community. The questions in Iraq are as complicated as were the questions in Vietnam. Basically, however, they come down to: How can we now leave? What happens to the nation we have so badly battered? Will the leadership that assumes power be even more cruel and selfish than the one we displaced?

If you are old enough you will remember the same questions were asked about Vietnam. The war dragged on for years, and thousands and thousands of more people died, as we debated just those questions. Today, in a peaceful Vietnam, beauty and order have been restored. It is a prosperous nation and its future is hopeful. In America there was an unspoken confession that we had chosen the wrong approach. We had allowed the ghost of communism to frighten us far beyond the realms of reality.

Is the same thing happening in Iraq? Is there an American leader courageous, bright and moral enough to step forward with a call to end this preposterous, ignorant and immoral war?

“The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind – the answer is blowing in the wind!”

“How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.”
[Bob Dylan]

And then, there is Afghanistan! What kind of nation are we?

LEAKING OIL

Coming down the home stretch and I’m hobbled, sore and tired, but still running neck and neck.
by Charlie Leck

Portrait of a small town election
So the metaphors get mixed! There’s worse going on in my brain than that. It’s whirling, dimming occasionally and plenty confused.

We are, indeed, approaching the wire. Election Day here in this wonderful, little town is next Tuesday. Today the gloves drop and the sides really start going at each other. Typically our opponents in these elections start sending out all their smelly mailings about now, telling tales that aren’t true. Facts and accuracy have never been big with these guys. Their tactic is to frighten the voter into coming over to their side.

It comes down to lower taxes
Everyone wants lower taxes; yet everyone wants their services to either stay the same or, actually, improve a bit. The gravel roads should get graded more often, the pot holes ought to be fixed in the tarmac roads, and the traffic ought to be monitored and controlled better out on the Highways. People are driving way too fast past my house and why can’t a patrol car be more visible out here? When we’ve got a security problem, we want the police to show up in moments and not in a half-hour. Why aren’t ordinances enforced better? Couldn’t some no-parking signs be posted on my road?

So it comes down to a debate about taxes and services. Our opponents in this election are out promising dramatic cuts in our community taxes. To do this they are going to dramatically reduce spending by cutting back on services – even by abolishing our police department in favor of a County Sheriff who would roam around out here on occasion.

How do we make voters understand that such cuts in taxes also would impact the resale value of our homes and property? Values on real estate take into account the quality of the services in a given community.

How do you communicate issues in a small town?
We can’t go to the radio and television! It’s futile to run newspaper ads because you can’t say enough in them. We tried to hold an open house, to invite people to come have coffee and talk about the issues with our candidates. It never works. John Smith gets home from work and he’s tired and the kids have got math homework on which they would like some help. There’s a Major League playoff baseball game on TV and mother’s going off to a Tupper Ware party.

So, you stuff mail boxes with letters and cards and brochures and fliers and hope people read your material. My fingers hurt from sticking postage stamps on envelopes and peeling labels off of sheets to transfer them to letters and postcards.

It’s about all one can do.

Courtesy, consideration and dialogue with community leaders
From our point of view this election is all about behavior and communications. We believe that a resident ought to be able to appear before a town commission or the City Council and be heard out in a polite and receptive manner. These guys who want to sit on the council are angry, brash and basically impolite. They’d rather ridicule those with whom they disagree. They laugh at and scorn people who take sides that oppose them on an issue before the Council. We don’t think town councilpersons ought to be gruff and rude. These guys are known for their boorish snicker. One of them has a hard time putting a sentence together and most of his sentences contain an obscenity or two. The other guy has violated one city ordinance after another and dared the community to try to enforce its laws. Both of them are libertarians who believe they as individuals are more important than we as a community. I don’t go out on a limb to say these things. My comments are backed with an incredible amount of their past behavior in the community. (I wrote about the behavior of one of these guys in my blog a couple of days ago.)

Then you sit back and hope you don’t let your community down
This is the most important election in which I’ve ever voted in this small town. I’ve been involved in politics out here for 30 years and I’ve never seen such unqualified candidates as those whom we are now opposing. We’ve had a lot of good people out working on this campaign and we can only hope their hard work pays off. Otherwise, the character of our community is going to change an awful lot and the inmates are going to be running the asylum.

What gives with Amy?

Minnesota Senator Klobuchar gave up on the public option in health care reform many, many months ago and I don’t understand why!
by Charlie Leck

A huge majority of the people who elected Amy Klobuchar to the U.S. Senate wanted significant health care reform when they cast their votes back then; and they continue to want it today. It’s even likely that a majority of all Minnesotans of every political persuasion want ‘real’ health care reform.

We, in this state, are smart enough to know that 'real' health care reform isn’t going to happen without a public option in the legislation.

Months ago, Senator Klobuchar was somehow convinced that no bill could pass the U.S. Senate with such a public option included in it. She wanted something rather than nothing. That’s what she told her constituents. That’s what she told me. Senator Klobuchar has learned well the art of political speak.

I think Senator Klobuchar gave up way too easily in an attempt to please the White House, which had also given up way too easily.

There are some matters on which one must stand to fight. Thorough, significant health care reform is one of those matters. What Senator Klobuchar wants to pass is not significant reform and I am not so sure that it is better than nothing. It tinkers with health care in America and that’s about it. What it does, as Howard Dean so perfectly explains, is set back real health care reform for more decades to come.

Make the Republicans the bad guys, Senator Klobuchar. Then we’ll be able to go to the nation and tell the people that it was they who kept America in the dark ages in health care, dozens of places behind other nations around the globe which manage to care for all the people all the time.

WOULD A TOWN ELECT A SCOUNDREL?

Blackjack, a massive longhorn steer and one of our town's most famous residents.

A gross, wicked fellow wants to be a city councilman here in my town and I feel helpless to stop him!
by Charlie Leck

I was at the city hall here in my town on Thursday night. A number of people gathered there to chat about our town’s election that is coming up in less than two weeks (Nov 3rd). There I met a gentleman about whom I have heard a great deal but had never before had the opportunity to greet. He lives over on the east side of town, close to some pretty dense population – dense for our town, at least. Yet, even though surrounded by residential sprawl, he stubbornly continues to raise cattle of a prize winning variety.

A former neighbor of his has been much on my mind lately and I wanted to talk about the guy. On a night like this, when we were supposed to be discussing an up-coming election, this fellow wanted to know why in heaven’s name I wanted to talk about this dastardly, former neighbor now moved to a distant part of town.

“Well,” said I, “it’s because he just may get elected.”

“What,” the cattleman stammered in shocked surprise, “he’s not runnin’ for council, is he?”

“Yes, sir! He’s one of the candidates for office that we’re working so hard against.”

I’ll tell you, I may as well have taken a 16 pound bowling ball and slammed it into his gut. Both his mouth and eyes were popped wide open. He stammered a bit and then raised a massive, working man’s hand and covered his lower face with it.

“Well, I’ll be! You aren’t kiddin’, are you?” He was mumbling now and his voice was muffled behind his hand.

I shook my head, stood my ground and remained silent, watching the shock continue to rock him. He took his hand away from his face and put it up against the wall to steady himself.

“It’s hard to believe a… a… a fellow like that could become a councilman. I never figured he’d have such nerve. Why, he didn’t just abuse the ordinances of our community; he mocked them and never considered that they were meant for him.”

You see, this guy who was talking to me had lost a sizeable number of cattle – calves and steers – in that time when our current candidate had lived across the road from him.

He began the story quietly, about how the poisoned ground water made its way through the culvert that crossed under the road and seeped up on to his property; and how it moved on over to the Painter’s Creek waterway and moved on south through plenty of other lush farmland.

The guy across the street, the current candidate for office, was in the lawn service business back in those days. He worked with unfriendly, dangerous chemicals. The containers, in which these liquid chemicals were sold, called for proper recycling and disposal. You just didn’t send them off to the land-fill.

The cattleman shook his head at this point in the story and his eyes clouded over.

“Why, he was just buryin’ that stuff right there in his back yard, up against a wetland area, lettin’ it leach right into the ground water where it would naturally flow wherever the water took it – toward my place and on to that wetlands area southwest of me and eventually into Painter’s Creek.”

He gathered himself for the next chapter. He was biting on the inside of his lip now. His complexion had reddened somewhat. He cleared his throat and went on.

“I found a dead calf one day and a steer on another day. No explanation. Then one day a neighbor called. He’d seen one of my cows and her calf looking sickly. We drew blood. Sent it to the University. It was poison. No question in my mind where it was comin’ from. All the neighbors knew what he was doin’ – how he was diggin’ the place up back there and dumpin’ that stuff in there and coverin’ it up.”

I couldn’t say anything. I could only listen in a sad silence. I was trembling and trying to control my own anger. I wanted to tell everyone in the room to quiet down and listen to this story – this incredible, sad, awful story of misbehavior and malfeasance.

“On down the road, another farmer along Painter’s Creek was losing some cattle, too. Seemed mysterious. One day the critter was just fine. Next day it was dead. He had the University look at them. They couldn’t tell nothin’ though.”

The city brought charges against the guy. He had to clean up the mess. The lawyers involved reached a settlement out of court. They sealed it up so the public can’t look.

The guy closed down his lawn service and moved on to another part of the town. This time he was going to do some horse business. Of course, he didn’t tell the city that. He just said he was going to build a barn for his family’s own recreation. He built it larger than he said. The permits weren’t properly applied for. It was clearly going to be a commercial barn. It was built closer to the wetlands than the ordinances allowed. He also put it closer to his neighbor than any kind man would. When the neighbor protested, the bastard of a fellow thought it would be cute to put a livestock trailer load of hogs right over on the edge of the property line with his neighbor. He’d feed them in the trailer and let them unload their pig-shit right there so that they’d build up a mighty stink. That’d teach the neighbor to complain so much.

The city told the guy to stop his project – that the permits weren’t properly drawn and that he was invading the wetlands. There was a suit and a counter-suit. It cost the city a lot of money. Of course, the libertarians in the town were stirred into a rage.

“A man ought to be able to do what he wants with his own property,” they contend. “ Don’t need no communists telling him where he has to build and how big he can build.”

The cases were settled out of court. The settlements, as part of the agreement, were sealed and we can’t see what the sides agreed to.

Now the guy’s boarding stable is operational. It’s not very attractive. In fact, it’s down-right messy, but, you know, it’s a guy’s own property and he ought to be able to do what he wants with it. Too bad he’s got a neighbor who has to look at it. The guy’s pretty proud of himself. It cost him a few bucks, but he got away with it.

So, he’s running for city office. He wants to be a town councilman and make laws, and approve permits, and decide how the town spends its money. He’s running on the libertarian theme – you know, it’s my land, my life and I’ll do what I want with both. Neighbors and town be damned.

You know, there’s a mighty stink that comes all the way across town, when I think that this guy just might get elected, and the thought that anyone can be so inconsiderate and abusive to other people and to the land just makes me terribly ill.

I went home from the meeting at City Hall and had a drink. Then I kicked some furniture and swore out loud. The dog looked at me and cranked his head to the side at an uncomfortable angle. I took a step toward him and he scampered off with his tail between his legs.

How can such a bastard want to assume so important an office? How can so many people consider voting for him? This is my town. I love it here. Oh, my god!