Fr. G. Sarducci; Cedar Falls cont'd; Cat Manicure; Truck driver poem; Things to see and do downtown; Five Minute University

Now PLAY this:

No, not that arrow, this:

*http://www.youtube.com/embed/0AKvRvL5r3A?rel=0

..............

Cedar Falls, Iowa - In this sleepy town a fine family

waxed full in a four square house similar to the one we

used to have at 517 Arcadian, Waukesha WI. As a boy

visiting my grandparents there - after having been born

there - I had many indelible foreign adventures.

In the attic there were lots of toys carefully stored

in trunks, including an Indian suit and a bow and

arrow set, plus a cowboy suit with lariat and six-gun.

It was an exotic territory for a Wisconsinite.  Somewhere

not far from 2009 Clay Street somebody kept peacocks

on their lush property.  The cry of the peacock is unfor-

gettable, especially at night huddled as I was in a dark bed-

room.

Grandpa Dix would buy chickens live and dispatch them

at a tree stump with his hatchet.  One time a beheaded chicken

ran dying and followed my scurrying self up the back porch 

stairs.  I was permanently scarred by this headless chicken spouting

blood.

Grandpa hid his laughing face from Grandma as she came to

my rescue, saw Grandpa giggling and issued her admonition

that was so familiar to me:  : "WHY, RAY!"

See: http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2011/12/

      grandpa-his-post-office-to-sever.html

Another Cedar Falls experience that contributed to the way

I am was the Iowa chigger bites I garnered at every visit.

We covered that already in UNVARNISHED TRUTH:

http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2008/02/

it-all-comes-down-to-this.html

............................

KD CAT GOES TO HAWS FOR A MANICURE

Saturday, 5-11-13

KD was taken to the Humane Society Animal Welfare clinic

for a trimming of her claws.  So far in our relationship it has

been impossible to clip her sharp toenails, but HAWS, the place

where we got her, mesmerizes her somehow and she maintains

a docile posture when their technician does the deed.

Sure, she might be a bit feisty when first taken out of her cardboard

carrier, and Dee does think of her exposed nose at first, but the kind

though no-nonsense experts have nearly immediate sway with her.

Snip-snip, all done in 30 seconds,  NEXT?

.....................

Iowa City to Boulder

by William Matthews

I take most of the drive by night.
It's cool and in the dark my lapsed
inspection can't be seen.
I sing and make myself promises.

By dawn on the high plains
I'm driving tired and cagey.
Red-winged blackbirds
on the mileposts, like candle flames,
flare their wings for balance
in the blasts of truck wakes.

The dust of not sleeping
drifts in my mouth, and five or six
miles slur by uncounted.
I say I hate long-distance

drives but I love them.
The flat light stains the foothills
pale and I speed up the canyon
to sleep until the little lull
the insects take at dusk before
they say their names all night in the loud field.

.......................

"Iowa City to Boulder" by William Matthews, 

from Search Party. © Houghton Mifflin, 2004

.............................

Interesting things we've seen

at the Waukesha Farmers Market

* Duck waits outside the PIX theater, now the Waukesha Civic Theater,

      for the opening of the doors for the Dixie Swim Club production.  He

      and his mate astounded the crowd of produce buyers in the main aisle

      of the Saturday market by not fearing the throngs of people who stepped

      aside or halted entirely for the pair of determined, theater-bound ducks.

      [5-11-13]

* Regular market-goer and her little tag-along dog.  So well-

   behaved, the dog stays safely on the scooter platform no matter

   what.  Kerry Mackay at his Steaming Cup stand is good for

   a cup-lid of whipped cream, and the dog seems to anticipate that.

   (See: http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2012/11/gingko-tree

          -pacsirta-from-hungarian.html

* Spring rhubarb.

                     To make rhubarb sauce:

                     3 cups chopped rhubarb

                     3/4 cup sugar

                     1/4 cup water

                     

                     Dissolve sugar in boiling water

                     add rhubarb, cover with lid and

                     simmer till gets mushy, 

                            about 15 minutes

                     Chill, eat, as-is or over ice cream, etc.

SPRING IS HERE !

.......................

Touring the downtown 5-15-13

Interesting juxtaposition between the roofline at the

Putney (Odd Fellows) building and the canopy over he

1950s or 60s remuddle of the National Bank.  Both struc-

tures owned by the Berg Combine currently.  The bent

of the current owners is preservation.  In the clean-lines

50's-modern, many downtown storefronts took on the pre-

shopping malls look.  That's what happened to the National

Bank, and now this camera angle affords a good study

of the comparison of downtown styles.

Note:  The Odd Fellows symbol of the all-seeing eye 

and the chain links of friendship was incorporated into the

 roof-line.  On the Main Street side is the Masonic symbol.  

                        >>>>Just look up.  They're there!

Inside the corner of the bank bldg is the old city of Wauke-

sha seal in a recently restored terrazzo floor.  The present

tenant has a screen blocking the front door and that door

is not open to the public.  That is lamentable because the

floor is lovely.

The floor restoration underway.  Now it is completed.

Dee, seated outside, withdraws a straw from a malt.

Dee revels at the Bryant sector of the Riverwalk.  Beyond her gaze might come 

the convention center/city hall/ county office bldg/ and/or - you name it.......

......................

Five Minute University

  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO8x8eoU3L4

This is another Guido Sarducci clip.  Viewing optional.

Vous souvenir votre mere; Day off; At the same time; Pam's gone; Wie kann ich, wenn ich fy keine Flugel haben? ; Magnolia tree

VOUS SOUVENIR VOTRE MERE!

You remember your mother!

..............

Note to My Father After All These Years by Marjorie Saiser Today I spend money. Doodad this, doodad that in a town in the sun on the border. I sit outdoors with my doodad dog at the coffee shop. Time passes. A man casts a shadow across my latte, asks if he can borrow my lighter for a minute. I have none but he talks to me anyway, generous with conversation, his tattooed hands giving my dog some good attention. I can't see his eyes, only the dark of his sunglasses. His unlit cigarette bobs in his lips as he talks. This, or something, reminds me of you. He says the people here are nice. He loves it here, says it's way better than the big city; it' s all money anyways; every time he left the house it was forty bucks. He sees someone across the street, waves his arm, shouts: Jack, I'm free! He rises. He's gone. "Note to My Father After All These Years" by Marge Saiser, from Losing the Ring in the River. © University of New Mexico Press, 2013 I ride with Dad's brother, Uncle Meredith  at an early mini-car track; note different expressions. PLAY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4NVg8i8i1Y                                                   .................. Smoke by Faith Shearin It was everywhere in my childhood: in restaurants, on buses or planes. The teacher's lounge looked like London under fog. My grandmother never stopped smoking, and walking in her house was like diving in a dark pond. Adults were dimly lit: they carried matches in their pockets as if they might need fire was meant to be smoked in a garden thick with summer flowers. I'm speaking of moods: an old country store where my grandfather met friends and everyone spoke behind a veil of smoke. (My Uncle Bill preferred fragrant cigars; I can still smell his postal jacket ...) He had time to tell stories because he took breaks and there was something to do with his hands. My mother's bridge club gathered around tables with ashtrays and secrets which are best revealed beside fire. Even the fireplaces are gone: inefficient and messy. We are healthier now and safer! We have exercise and tests for breast or colon cancer. We have helmets and car seats and smokeless coffee shops where coffee has grown frothy and complex. The old movies are so full of smoke that actors are hard to see and they are often wrapped in smoking jackets, bent over a piano or kiss. I miss the places smoke created. I like the way people sat down for rest or pleasure and spoke to other people, not phones, and the tiny fire which is crimson and primitive and warm. How long ago when humans found this spark of warmth and made their first circle? What about smoke as words? Or the pipes of peace? In grade school we learned how it rises and how it can kill. We were taught to shove towels under our closed doors: to stop, drop, and roll. We had a plan to meet our family in the yard, the house behind us alive with all we cannot put out... "Smoke" by Faith Shearin, from The Empty House.  ............. A tree in spring bloom outside the Odd Fellows where smokers gather beneath, excluded from Dave's Grill or the Alanon Club next door. (Chorus) Such beauty and ugliness downtown residents get to see all at the same time. Imagine being one of those overhanging blossoms doing its absent beautiful thing while the noxious soot and smoke wafts upward (Chorus) And imagine being those carefully-placed white-laden branches when high-decibel motorcycles blast by at eventide: VROOM VROOM VROOM testing testosterone-y cajones leather-crotches vs ephemeral tissues Singing the song of the downtown (Chorus, ibid) ............... PAM, DAVE'S RESTAURANT WAITRESS POSES WITH THE REVEREND LEROY Two of our favorite people allow a photo on the occasion of waitress Pam's last day at Dave's, after 18 years of true service. Learning of Pam's departure when we walked into  this restaurant across the street our heart became warped. Jose, owner of Dave's and the aforementioned magician  at the short-order griddle, was taking it grim and quiet. Pam recently moved out near Okauchee Lake and sought and found waitressing part-time and nearer her home. Dee and I are going to miss her hugely. We wish her well!  She will be kept informed  of things via the Raccoon. .................... My mother, Ruth Elies of Sun Prairie WI had a Kodak Brownie box camera wie kann ich, wenn ich fy keine Flügel haben? An inscription on a drum here now at the Odd Fellows says: ~ How can I fly, when I have no wings? ~ The story: Mom told me she was riding in the old family  jitney in the days before seat belts, and the driver was quickly rolling along a dirt country road.   Ruthie (Mom) was standing up and leaning out catching the breeze as we have often seen our pets do. Ruth's mother admonished her in German, Ruth be careful you don't fly out! She answered, in German: ~ How can I fly, when I have no wings? ~ Flash forward now decades, and see me  painting the traditional German family  sayings on the rim of an elk-hide drum, after doing a zeppelin etc. Some of us believe that the music of a  once live animal-hide continues to sing forever. This drum was loaned recently to Rev. John Helt of Colgate WI to be played by him in a sermon.  We are told it worked. ................. A Tree Grows on Barstow Right now, if you drive up  Barstow Street hill,  and a couple blocks from the crest near  the Moor Baths  golf course, you will see a humongous  MAGNOLIA  tree! This used to be the Martin house.  The Raccoon editor  was a member of the Waukesha High School class of 1954  with Sally Martin. That tree has grown and grown  and g-r-o-w-n, so that now  it dwarfs the small house  with its dormered attic.   The attic was made into a dormitory  'uni-bedroom'  for Sally and her many siblings.   They all slept in the  slanty room which seemed vast,  and sometimes, Sally says,  it was a bit chilly up there. Yesterday (Thursday) I picked up  Joe Beringer to have  one of our  Steaming Cup coffee sorties.   We were driving  down Delafield St. and Joe advised me to detour  a couple blocks to go past the Martin Magnolia tree.   Joe used to live near there and came  to cherish that pink-flowered tree. In Mrs. Martin's later years, Joe as  a 1st  Presbyterian Elder used to bring her  the Sacraments, and especially loved  doing so at the time of year  - spring - when that tree was in bloom. We were smitten by the beauty yesterday,  but we only had our lower crustacean  cell camera with us, so we used that. The scene deserved a better quality photo,  so today (Friday) we drove over  and took the attached pictures with the Nikon.   Trouble is, it rained heavily  during the night, and the petals,  many of them, lay on the ground. Not to worry, though.  The tree still  looked beautiful. And that is so right, in that my friend, the same age  as me, is also still looking beautiful. It was not a sunny day, unfortunately. But on the bright side, Sally Martin  has brilliant children and grand-children. Everything, compartmentalized,   IS how you look at it.

Heaven; Norb Blei, friend; Mel's dump-truck; Ghosts in the attic

Raccoon press room pauses....

(Waukesha WI 4-29-13)  On the top floor of the Odd Fellows building, the Sewer Raccoon News press room takes a break between print runs.  KD cat, press-feline, reposes catching her breath after a morning of near-frantic activity (work), guiding the newsprint through the rollers.

Wait a minute:

?

There's a new sound downstairs in the gallery. By golly, the editor has flung open the window!  Is this what is meant by....S-p-r-i-n-g?
As we are on break, KD says, I shall fly downstairs to investigate!

Oh, thank you, Mr. Dix!  You have added a new dimension to my life.  I can more clearly hear the noises of the human activity below this way.  It's just like, just like----being there. Heaven, I'm in heaven!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3RSlUkw9U0

Give it not another thought, Miss Cat, we reply.  Not only are we lifting a barrier to your circumbscribed life by flinging open a window to welcome the sounds, smells and sights of spring, we are giving you a press room laborer raise!  We shall up your Pounce moist chicken Dollar Store treats to three per serving.

Now let's get back to work!

............................

Last week on the heels of receipt of the news that author friend Norb Blei had passed in Ellison Bay WI in a surgery recovery facility near his beloved chicken coop work shop, we intended to include some of the exquisite work he provided to us in the past three years since we've known of him.

Norb regularly send via his blogs the snapshots he took of his Door Co. surroundings.  Above is his chicken coop studio, bathed in green.

A Door Peninsula rainbow;

At work in the coop;

Another coop shot;

Norb lecturing;

Door Co. Zen arrangement photoed by Norb;

Taken off our computer monitor;

AND

This is a post card I got from Norb that he painted in his water color way, a means of communications he maintained with I believe several others, particularly Milwaukeean, Jeff Winke.

I was tussling with the proper arrangement of the words for a short rhyme.  Norb obligingly gave me the best result.

Address side of the card. The stamp he placed on it must have been his advice to me (probably advice he gave to others as well): The important is invisible. (Fr.)

Of all the books of Blei's I own, this one is my favorite:  MEDITATIONS ON A SMALL LAKE.  The essay titles within are as follows:

You can order this paperback from Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Small-Lake-Norbert-Blei/dp/0933180993/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1367355105&sr=8-1&keywords=meditations+on+a+small+lake

[Or write to Norb's delegated press company for this book:  C/O David Pichaske, Editor in Chief
Plains Press
P.O. Box 6
Granite Falls, Minnesota 56241]
The price at Amazon is more than Norb charged, and your book won't have the personal inscription I got:

To my fishing buddies, friends who have sat fishing and talking with me in small boats on the little lakes like Crooked, Wig-Wig, Pembine Wi's Lake Lundgren, Minnie, etc.  This is a recommended book.  (Attn: Norman Rupnow. We could still go......)

See last Saturday's Raccoon for more on Norb.

....................

MEL STARK'S TRUCK

Congo member Mel Stark and his wife Marge have a great-grandson 2.5 years old.  Mel, the handyman about whom you've read much in the Raccoon, took it upon himself to make a dump truck for the little boy.  And a lucky kid he is.  Mel brought the truck under his arm last Sunday to show some of us during our pre-church confab.  If we'd known he was bringing it we would have brought our better camera.  As it is, the shots in today's Raccoon were taken with our much-touted Lower Crustacean cell phone camera.  They are acceptable photos by our diminished standard.

In the above picture, Mel demonstrated how the truck-bed is lifted by a lever into the dump position, whereupon the tailgate swings open.  Kathy Brunster, Congo-ite, admires Mel's genius as a creator.

Another truck admirer, Wis Guthrie, smiles broadly at Mel's work. The grill of the truck is fashioned from two side-by-side forks, tines vertical; the wheels are fashioned from white PVC pipe sections, the cab is of walnut; a horn powered by a hearing aid battery is activated by a button over the windshield.

Mel points to the horn bell mounted on the truck bottom.

Imagine a 2 year old boy receiving such a treasure.  His date of birth is inscribed on it, too........


...................

Mel made news when he restored the old clock that was in the razed gas station on the East Five Points at Broadway, Lincoln and Hartwell Avenues last year.

One more of the many projects Mel's taken on was straightening the windstorm-crushed weathervane windmill that blew over when illness overcame us in 2005.
That device, which Mel'd originally made the bearings for, now spins on his back fence, as true as ever.

ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL.

..........

Ghosts in the attic Dep't

In looking through the Raccoon archives for something else

the other day we found a verse dedicated to RADAR, the retriever

owned by Ineke and Don Mitchell, now of Connecticut, but 

formerly of Waukesha.

We mourned Radar's and his sister, cat SPATZ'S demises

as is our wont at the News.

RADAR may be gone but he is not forgotten.  Especially due to the

vast archival savings here at The Raccoon.  I dashed a line to Donaldo

who furnished his own snapshot of RADAR by return Email. 

Dog gone gone dog

Radar spelled backwards

Spells Radar

That’s a palindrome

He was a pal alright

a pal at home and everywhere

a palindrome

alright

Spatz

Spelled backwards

Was Ztaps

I think she was German

Or maybe Dutch

She didn’t look like much

By the time I met her, but ch’

-a better know her heart was

golden too

just like the dog’s;

she may have appeared stuffed

but now they’re in elysian fields

together; smooth, unroughed

and not unluffed

RIP

[David Zep Dix 8-17-2002]

[THE FOLLOWING SQUIB WAS SENT WITH THE PHOTOS FROM CT; THEY SAVED IT!]

Donaldo and Ineke,

I am touched by your death notice for Radar, more than a beast, more of a

son and member of that great collective making up your extended family.

Wherever Radar went, and it was pretty far for a dog, he was dearly loved. I

enjoyed his rapt focus on a merely symbolic tennis ball when I threw it for

him during lulls at open houses at the time of selling your house here.

Other dogs do that and I've watched many of them during my long life, but

Radar, aptly named, tracked a tennis ball's trajectory better than any dog I

ever knew.  It was as though a tennis ball to him was only an instrument

through which he could exert gargantuan vestigial instincts, and demonstrate

his uncommon drive to serve humankind, to please.  Within his synaptic

network, among his eyes, brain and muscle now trained, we believe, in a

better world, was peacetime usage of a potential military force our current

and soon to be ousted unelected president would never in a million years

understand.

Is that the most salutary element of his obituary?  I am only an attender on

this day of mourning, and leave that to you whose life will be much the less

without him.  If he was not champion material to the breeder, he was, as you

say, more than that to you.  Our sympathies go out to you today and in the

lonely but healing days to come.  Radar is out there now, finding, let us

say, the way Home.  The home you gave him was the best he could ever find on

this terrestrial plane.

David