I am 65 now and really starting to feel it. It’s get harder to deny aging each day. My eyes have dimmed and sometimes now when recording music I cannot tell the difference between the tinnitus and the whirring of my computer fan. But like most everybody in the community I live, I pretend and carry on, simply because there is no choice. There is no such thing as a courageous battles, there are just battles.

Aging changes what I think about. During my working years I dreamed, fantasized, and ruminated about money, fame, glory, romantic love, career and personal recognition, power, and sometimes how effusively generous and happy I would be after winning the lottery. Now, I do not know what I would do with the money even if I won a lottery. More and more these days I am preoccupied with time, health, and sudden deep and curious remembrances of my youth.

I want desperately to tell my stories to anyone who will listen, and strangers seem like the perfect choice. People near to me are alternatively bored or sickened by the repetition and just the knowingness of me for so long. To them my routine is so well known that even the improvisation of life looks staged. No, I want to tell my story to someone new, maybe even a little audience of new.

In my minds eye, I am taking a trip to a place where so many memories were hatched. It was during the wonder years between 6-14 when everything was new, and all experience had yet to be lived, and I was enveloped by total trust and faith in the people and world around me. I am driving to see the lake cabin of my youth in northern Minnesota on Tyler Lake and the tiny town of Portage. I spent a lifetime there every summer, where limitless days stretched time and everything was possible. The cabin has long since been sold and gone, 1979 I think. My Dad and Grandfather built it, and it was never quite finished. The walls were covered in sheetrock up to the rafters, which were wide open, enough so I could look over the walls from my bunk bed, from a bedroom shared with my 2 brothers into the main living area and see the front room, kitchen, and gaze out the expansive front window right on to the lake. As I turn down the driveway, I can see that the owners have finished the cabin and grounds. I park beside the kitchen window and see a woman gazing at me. I knock on the door and am greeted by a woman, 3 kids living the wonder years, and a friendly dog. I briefly explain who I am, and am invited in to take a look around and have a soft drink.

They are curious about me and the history of this place. The kids sit on the sofas near the kitchen table, and the woman sits at the kitchen table with me. I tell them about my first memory, my dad under the crawl space early in the spring priming the pump for the well water which powered the all important kitchen sink, toilet, and shower. After finishing with the water on he turned his attention to the electricity. I was in awe of my fathers mechanical ability, a plumber by trade, I saw him pour concrete, put up walls, use heavy equipment to clear land, paint, do finish work, carpentry, and of course do all the plumbing. He seemed like a superman when I was 8 peeking into the crawl space door and watching him with a flashlight bringing the cabin to life each spring.

Our family of 5, 3 older boys and 2 girls slept in 2 of the 3 bedrooms. I pointed to each of the rooms so that the kids could see where we slept. The floors were covered with rugs over plywood flooring when I was a kid. Each morning after breakfast we boys would take off on the lake path through the woods on either side of the cabin. My dad owned many of these lake lots, but there was a little cabin off to the north about 300 yards away occasionally occupied by a man, we heard he was a Catholic priest. In between clearings we went down to the lake about 20 feet below and stood on gigantic rocks left by glaciers, and gazed down into the clear water looking for fish. Each spring the suckers ran, there were thousands of them and we caught and released them in fishing nets we brought with us. Lars Torson, the old Norwegian bachelor farmer, who lived nearby, had a smokehouse and we could smell the fish from miles away.

When we came back to our cabin, we would have a war in the tree house my dad constructed for us out back in the woods. Wooden swords, slingshots, and great speeches with fealty oaths occupied most of our time mid morning. There was a small pond near the cabin and we would wander down and catch frogs to chase our sisters with. As boredom and hunger set in around lunchtime our Mother would not let us in until we ran 25 times around the outside of our house, such was her fear of the terrible energy we possessed. Lunch was usually a sandwich and sometimes soup, accompanied by the soap opera my Mom loved, As The World Turns, with only intermittent crackling reception through rabbit ears on a small black and white TV in the corner. Then it was out of the house we go right after lunch.

During the week there was no land transportation, only the pontoon and sailboat tied up down on the dock. My dad took the car back home 240 miles to work and then come back on Friday nights. Only years later did it occur to me what a burden that was for my mother to be stuck alone with 5 rambunctious kids each week. The sun slowly warmed the earth, even during the summer months in northern Minnesota, but by afternoon we donned the swimming suits and into the cold lake we went. We had old car black inner tubes, and had races and water fights. Mom would come down with a lawn chair and book and sit on the beach to watch. There was always a chore to do like pitching rocks from the lake bottom onto the beach, or pulling up beach encroaching bulrushes. We had unlimited access to the small sailboat my Dad purchased. My mom was terrified as my brothers and I would sail into the middle of the lake heeling to the maximum, and riding downwind with the jib. Speed and excitement were the only goals, and with hoots of joy we tested our skills. The pontoon required gas, so we had limited access. But when permission was granted we ran it at full speed all the way down to the end of the lake, where there was a landing beach and a 2 block walk into the town of Portage. My Mom would give me, the oldest, 1 or maybe 2 dollars to split between all of us to buy a trinket or candy at the general store located on the only corner in town.

The weekends came and went, always starting with Dad’s arrival each Friday night. It was delightful to have him back, especially for my mother, she glowed when he was around. Weekends brought friends and relatives to our lake. Friends of my parents and their kids, who we knew so very well, arrived at various resorts on the lake, or stayed with us. Our mornings were punctuated with Dad’s “Tarzan Yell”, the sound skipping like a stone across the early morning glassy lake, and returned in kind by Tom Lundeen, standing on the resort dock so very far away. The days were filled with great times and wondrous adventures. We sailed, went waterskiing behind Doug Lunds boat, swam, played board games on the dock and in the cabin, hiked through deep woods and swamps, and around the entire lake.

The weekend nights were filled with laughter, adult banter around a card table, the clinking of hi ball glasses, and great wafts of cigarette smoke climbing through the air. The kids made big bonfires on the beach, cooking hot dogs and s’mores, and listening to music by bands like the Doors. The sun sets late at night in July in the northern latitudes and by 10 o’clock all of us could barely keep our eyes open as we crawled into bed after dusk. More often than not my Mom would turn on the old fashioned tube radio for us to listen to far away radio stations in Texas, Chicago, and sometimes New York, the radio signals careening off the atmosphere and bending around the globe to get to us. I fell asleep each night with the reassurance of my parents and friends voices in the front room, and dreams of far away places on my mind.

My grandparents would stop by once a week or so, they had a cabin on 9th Crow Wing lake. Sometimes my parents would leave me with them for a week or two, and once for over a month. My Grandpa always fell asleep in the early afternoon in his lounge chair watching a Twins game on his newfangled color TV and Grandma was always doing something in the kitchen. Getting up and driving into town to get the mail each day was a huge adventure. My Grandfather provided a steady narrative about the “rub dubs”, “hoosiers”, and “loafers” he saw on the streets. We stopped at the gas station, post office, and grocery store, and I listened to my Grandfather engage in endless stories, mostly about the weather and food prices, with his Norwegian brogue accent dripping from every syllable. He didn’t care if the grocer or mailman seemed disinterested, he stood fast against the rising tide of listening ambivalence. I will always remember his laugh, it was loud and it happened often. I still have cassette tapes that he made and mailed to me when they left for Florida each winter. His voice harkens me back to a simpler, and in most ways, a better time. It is a voice of an immigrant and survivor of a Depression, it is the voice of experience and practicality, and above all it is a voice of gratitude.

My Dad taught us all golf. He loved the game with a passion, and we loved him, so. I remember caddying for him at all of the small town northern “shortstop” tournaments. It was a carnival, with the same cast of characters traveling from town to town on Sunday afternoons, arriving like old West gunslingers at the local bar or restaurant the Saturday night before the big match, sharing stories of made putts, and just in time chip-ins to save pars. My Dad prepared for the tourneys by having me “shag” (no-not that shag) golf balls for him on an occasional week night at the old Ft. Snelling Polo grounds near the airport in Minneapolis. I closely observed my dads opponents on tournament days, taking note of the high waisted polyester pants, the shirts with big collars, down to the smallest details of how they marked their golf balls, what kind of golf gloves they wore, and even the swing waggle just before the shot. I loved it all, the sights and the smells, and the anticipatory anxiety on tournament day. I wanted him to win so badly that it hurt. He placed at some events, and did generally middle of the pack well in the championship flight. Years later, when he was dying, he retold the story bout how Steve Antonovich made a 25 putt on the final 27th hole at the Perham tournament to beat him, that’s how much it meant to him.

My brother Sam and I have a significant shared golf history. Golf markers are present in every epoch of our relationship in childhood, adolescence, followed by a deep slumber in our 20’s, marriages, followed by a reemergence in our 30s playing with Dad once again. I had a 10 year renaissance of the sport from 2000-2010 playing a lot of golf with friends in River Falls, WI, but when our Dad was sick and dying the golf, along with our close relationship largely ended for Sam and I. I will always remember walking 3 miles down the gravel road by the cabin, with Sam ,and our golf clubs, to the highway, and then hitchhiking 15 miles to Bemidji Country Club in Bemidji to play 36 holes or more per day of golf, on a course my Dad described as built for a billy goat. We played often during the week and then hitchhiked back home late in the afternoon. On one memorable occasion we were picked up by a MN State Patrol officer who drove us right to the front door of our cabin. My Mom was scared and a little contrite when the officer pulled up. But those were different days in 1967, with thousands of 18 years olds dying in Vietnam, not much notice was paid to hitchhiking kids.

Mid-August at the cabin. The friends were coming up much less often, and an occasional chilly night and earlier sunsets began to portend the future. As I approached adolescence I began taking the pontoon boat out by myself. I would park it off of Breakfast Point to catch crappies and sunnies and think about the upcoming school year with trepidation. Sometimes I would just lay on the front deck of the pontoon gazing down in the clear water 15 ft to the bottom of the lake. I watched the fish swim by and wondered about my friends and the future. I have never been quite as happy or content since. I remember all of it. Labor Day weekend was the traditional end of summer, and it was usually accompanied by a dense low gray cloud bank, mid 60s temperatures, drizzly rain, and a change of clothes. It was the weekend for 10 years that the Johnsons (Tom and Helen) would come up to the cabin, Tom and Dad played in the Memorial 3 day golf tournament in Park Rapids. Sam and I went along to caddy, and hung over the the front seat of the car listening to the stories they told as Tom casually flicked his cigarette ash out from the front driver wing window. At night, the adults played bridge at the kitchen table, just like the old days of June and July I watched and listened over the bedroom wall, wishing that it would not end. The real end was the Jerry Lewis telethon on Labor Day, bought to us live in on a 15 inch black and white direct from Las Vegas. The packing started at 3pm, the station wagon loaded to the maximum to leave at 5pm. We arrived home after several stops along the way at about 9:30pm, school was the next morning, and summer was over.

I could tell that the kids were getting restless, it was time to leave. Their Mother thanked me for my time and story and they all waved goodbye as I drove away. I permitted myself a wry self knowing smile, certain that she turned from the cabin door to her kids and said something like- “Well kids- he was a kindly older gentleman, but he did go on and on”. I like to think that maybe a little piece, a tiny morsel perhaps, of what I said took root and was remembered. It’s only in this way the I can be assured that the living memory that was our cabin still whispers in the northern wind.

I woke up this morning, in my bed, with a start. It is my usual waking time of 5:30am, deep in the inky darkness just before dawn. I always get up right away and start moving to avoid the creeping anxiety, a habit I learned working for 50 years. I have more nightmares these days, and while brushing my teeth I suddenly remember the one that happened just before waking.
I am standing on the end of a dock stretching into a river. The river is wide and and it is a rushing torrent cresting to flood. I glance down into the river see that it is not water at all, it’s a river of memories, of all human memories stretching back to the beginning of time. I look round and see my memories rushing quickly by. I raised a clenched fist and shout out “I was here” as loud as I could, but the swift wind carried my voice away as rapidly as the water carried my memories.My wonderland questions remain- Why am I here? Did anything here really matter and does anything about my existence make a difference?

The answer is high on Pilot Knob in Mendota Hts. in a cemetery that overlooks the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. Among the famous residents buried there is Charles “Speed” Holman, a barnstorming stunt pilot who died in a spectacular plane crash in Omaha on May 17, 1931. He was the first pilot hired by Northwest Airlines and Holman field in St. Paul is named after him. As I look at his plaque in the ground I have a realization that he died about 90 years ago and almost everybody that was alive when he died is also dead, certainly everybody he knew are now gone. His funeral was the largest in Minnesota history with over 100,000 people lining the route and at the cemetery. With exception of a very few eccentrics and philosophers, nobody would even know his name.

I turn to walk back to shore. In the distance I hear a voice from the low gray clouds on that distant shore. There is a boatman starting across the river and yelling for me to wait. I continue walking to the shore – I am not ready yet.