2015 Trek - Blog #9B - July - - Minneapolis Part II

   And … we’re back!
   The 2nd half of our Minnesota stay began Sunday, July 12, after our re-encampment in Prior Lake on the grounds of the Mystic Lake Casino.  After a quick set-up, we made our way east to Lakeville for the Alperts’ barbecue with a lot of old, OLD friends.  To give you an idea of how old, we’ve carbon-dated all these guys and here’s what we’ve come up with: Steve “Alps” Alpert, first met in 1955 during a kindergarten brawl in which he bit me; Dick “The Ax” Anderson, 1956 1st-grade classmate; Randy “RJ” Johnson, 1968 playground leader co-worker; John Ophaug, 1968 rival high school basketball opponent; and Jeff “Nellie” Nelson, the relative newcomer to the group, with whom I played softball during the late 70’s.  All the corresponding wives/girlfriends were there and were forced to listen to fables and tales of the guys’ that were up to 60 years old and had been told at least 60 times.  What a bunch of troopers our ladies are.
   

Here’s where the blog gets a bit sticky … uh, “stickier”?  That’s because the next morning, we got in Zippy and drove to Menomonie, Wisconsin, to the home of Diedre’s younger brother, Remy, and his wife, Lisa.  The plan was for the three of them to drive Remy’s car to Michigan for a family reunion where they would meet up with DK’s feisty, yet oh-so lovable 91-year old Aunt Jane (see June 2013 Blog) and other cousins while Zippy and I made our way back to Minnesota where I would spend the evening going to see “Jurassic World” without my science-fiction-averse wife.
   Due to this week-long division of Kaye and Stuart, the blog now moves to a new dimension, one of time and space.  No, you have not entered “The Twilight Zone.”  It’s really going to be more like “parallel blogs,” if you will: me from Minnesota and DK from Michigan (as written by me pretending to be her after deciphering her clever, yet cryptic e-mails).  And for the remainder of the Michigan blog, Diedre, Remy, and Lisa will cumulatively be referred to as “Dr. L”.
   Clever, huh?
 

 MI Blog, DK: So, “Dr. L” (see how I did that there?) stopped the first night on our way to Michigan to visit Remy and Lisa’s oldest daughter (Nicole) and son-in-law (Daniel) in Milwaukee. 
 But the not-so-cleverly-disguised-REAL-reason for our deviation in plans was the chance to see grand-daughters/grand-nieces Zoe (pronounced ZO-ee unlike Joe or Moe, not to mention doe, foe, hoe, Poe, roe, toe, and the ever-popular “woe) and Alexis (Alexx still claims she’s named after him although no one on my side will cop to even the remotest of con-nections and in fact call her Lexi). 

Dr. L was given the honor of picking the kids up at school.  I became an instant hit with my four and two-year old nieces when I gave them the gift of “hand-puppets.”  That night the “Bitchin’ Margs” margaritas prepared by me went down quite easily as evidenced by the next day’s reminiscences (or lack thereof) of the night before.

   Tuesday, July 14-MN blog, Alexx:  Now being a “single” oldster on his own, I did what any wild-and-crazy guy would now do with this unfamiliar freedom: I went for a walk around Lake Harriet in Uptown Minneapolis.  The iconic elf was still living in the base of the tree at Harriet, but since DK’s phone is the only camera we own, we’ll have to use the “elf-tree” photo from two years ago.  In fact, unless friends of mine I see have phone-cameras, there will be no pictures submitted by me this week for the MN Blog.  I did go to Walgreens, but they no longer have disposable FILM cameras, so that’s another thing I can add to my manual typewriter/VCR/rotary-telephone scrap heap.
    As is my style every year at this time, I sought out an appropriate viewing locale to watch the Major League Baseball All-Star Game being played in Cincinnati this year.  I put out a “baseball S.O.S.” e-mail and immediately got a response from longtime pal Ellen Joseph and her baseball-nut husband Dennis.  They kindly took care of my baseball-addled addiction by escorting me to “Whitey’s,” a great little bar in Northeast Minneapolis where they had, in fact, held their wedding rehearsal dinner not so long ago.  Ellen and I go back to 1968 and our positions of authority at St. Louis Park High School: her as head-cheerleader and me as captain of the basketball team.
   MI Blog, DK: Dr. L drove all day and got to Walloon Lake, Michigan, that night.  (YAWN!)
 

Diedre trying to help Alexx out with photos

 Wednesday, MN Blog, Alexx:  As any good non-cooking bachelor whose four major food groups are “junk, fast, frozen, and spoiled,” I made my way up to the casino and had their outrageously-priced “seafood buffet.”  From there, I drove out to “Tavern on France,” a swell little bar in Edina where I met up with Carleton College basketball buddy Dr. Steve “O.B.” Obaid.  OB is just three days older than me, so back in November of 1971 when we both turned 21, he, I, and roomie John Trucano headed down to Northfield’s Muni (Municipal liquor store, on-and-off-sale) where we would have our (my) first ever alcoholic drinks.  Remember that this was during basketball season and our coach was a notorious tea-totaler.
   Since our first drink was free, Trucano ordered us both the strongest drink the Muni served:  ”The Minnesota Stump-Puller.”  I’m not sure but I think it had about nine different kinds of liquor in it, plus parts of an old shoe.  And so from that day on, OB and I were known collectively as “The Minnesota Stump-Pullers.”  Coach Thurnblad never caught on.
   Back to 2015.  OB told me that a lot of people think he looks like Ted Koppell.  I said I didn’t see it, that I thought Koppell looks like Alfred E. Neuman.  OB laughed and then said that that morning, a patient told him, “You know who you look like?”
   “Ted Koppell?” OB resignedly replied.
   “No,” said the guy.  “Alfred E. Neuman.”
   

  MI Blog, DK: -What a day!  I did my 3.3 mile walk/jog this morning.  Remy inspired me to try jogging instead of just walking, so the two of us jogged most of the three miles.  (Note that Remy quit going with the slower me after the 1st day).  I then did 100 squats.  (Alexx says, “And then she carried Aunt Jane’s barbells up to the attic before putting in a new transmission in the car.)  Dr. L’s cousins Doug and Christy Speirn-Smith (see 5/24/13 Boulder, CO, Blog) then joined us for a trip to Petosky where we rented bikes and rode 17 miles to Charlevoix.  (Alexx: What is this, a decathlon?)

Doug and Christy

Remy's pictures were better than DK's but he was here too!

   On the 17-mile return trip, my stomach started rumbling.  By mile three, I felt like throwing up.  At mile five, I began hallucinating that I was wearing ruby-red slippers while riding a lion toward a giant green city.  The next nine miles were pretty miserable.  In addition to my intestinal problems, my thighs were screaming at me for being overworked.  Fortunately, Remy and Lisa opined that my bike seat was too low.
   Thank goodness!
   Once my seat was adjusted I started to peddle more easily and my stomach felt better. By the time we finished, I was completely recovered.  We had a lovely evening with Aunt Jane.  Christy made a tasty dinner of flank steak, corn-on-the-cob, and rhubarb pie.
   Nummy!
   Thursday, MN Blog, Alexx:  Living by myself caused me to now really relive my 46 years in Minnesota.  I lined up dinner with longtime next door neighbors Ken Radde and Bonnie Call at a favorite St. Louis Park watering hole of ours, “The Lone Spur,” which still has one of the best happy hours of all time.  We were joined by “The Ax” and Alps.
   I first met Kenny in 1965 on the Park High basketball team.  Later he became my first roommate after college when I moved out of Mom and Dad’s house, and I was there when he began dating Bonnie in about 1976.  It’s now 39 years later, and they’re still dating.  Here’s hoping it all works out!
   After dinner, I thought I’d drive around St. Louis Park, the city of my youth.  I wasn’t sure when I’d get back there again.  Boy, talk about your old home week!  I drove by Eliot grade school where I first met Alps and The Ax; it’s now condos.
   I then stopped by the house in which I grew up, but for the first time since 1958, a family other than ours was residing in it.  I went to C&C Field where I played Little League baseball from 1961-63; thankfully it’s still a ballpark, now with more fields than ever.  And I went down to watch adult softball games at Aquila Park where I played my first softball game in 1968.  I later went on to play on city championship teams there as well as become the city’s athletic director which included running all the adult softball leagues at Aquila Park.  When I left the Parks and Recreation Department in 1978, they gave me home plate from Aquila Field #1 as a going-away present.  I still have it.
   Finally I went to a game at Carlson Park Babe Ruth Field where I last played 49 years ago on our state championship team.  It was eerie watching a game that night at a place that meant absolutely so much to me back in the summer of 1966.  Things are quite a bit different now: there were only three people in the stands (including me) where we used to always have 50-100 people at our games; nobody bothered to coach 1st or 3rd base, something totally unheard of in our era; and one team had just eight players so they took the field with only two outfielders.  The field looked more or less the same, just a bit bigger now, but nobody was talking it up in the infield, just a lot of silence there that night.  That’s something our coach Vern “Bulldog” Willey would never have let us get away with back in ’66.  It was just a whole lot different than when we used to play.  As it began to sprinkle, I headed to the car, cutting their attendance by 33%.
 

 MI Blog, DK:  Christy, Lisa, and I went shopping for dresses for the March wedding and rehearsal dinner of Remy and Lisa’s son Nate and his fiance Ali.  We did really well and had such fun.  Nate and Ali are such a great couple; Alexx and I get the added benefit of seeing them often as they live and work less than a half-hour away from us in Arizona.
    We then went kayaking at Boyne Falls River in the afternoon.  It was great fun albeit a bit treacherous at the onset. We had to navigate a number of fallen trees amidst a rapidly flowing current. In my usual manner, it was not long before I got hung up in one.  Remy rescued me from one tree branch and cousin Doug from another.  Remy had been quite proud that he chose to sit “upon” his kayak rather than “in” it, claiming it would be the more stable of the two.  Sure enough within the first minute of the trip, Remy managed to fall off his.  Amazingly, we eventually ended up back at the car about five miles away with as many people as when we started.
   At dinner that night, Christy and I put together a great spread of leftovers that I challenge any restaurant to match.  We finished the meal with Ben and Jerry's ice cream and our Firewood Bourbon from Montana.
   NOTHING can beat that!
   

During our stay at Walloon Lake, Lisa took it upon herself to organize Aunt Jane’s refrigerator every day.  That’s just her style.  In fact, she re-organized so well that when we eventually did leave, Jane, in her best “Dorothy and the Scarecrow” imitation, said, “I’m going to miss you, Lisa, most of all … my refrigerator never looked so good.”
   
   Friday, July 17, MN Blog, Alexx- Today was day #85 of our RV trip; this year’s adventure was now officially ½ done.  Where the heck does the time go?
Pining away for my wife who was living it up 500 miles away in Michigan, I spent most of the day on the couch eating pistachios and watching “Gomer Pyle, USMC” re-runs.  Fortunately, RJ and Jacqueline rescued me that night as we attended a wonderful (and free) “Concert in the Park” with 60’s-70’s singer Michael Monroe.  That gave me the will to live for another day.

Beautiful Aunt Jane

  
 MI Blog, DK-The official Michigan branch of “Cousin-a-Mania” took place today and it surely was fun.  Cousins Marcia and Connie drove three hours to get here from Holland, MI.  Aunt Jane and Doug lined up a pontoon boat ride for all of us through the good graces of neighbor Pat.  The day was overcast, but the ride was still quite nice.  Everyone had a lovely time.

Remy and Lisa

Cousin Connie

All but DK gathered on the deck after the boat ride

 

Cousin Marcia

 Saturday, MN Blog, Alexx-John Ophaug and I were co-captains of the 1971-72 Carleton College basketball team.  After graduation and law school, John stayed in Northfield where he runs a very successful law firm.  He had recently let me know that our coach, Jack Thurnblad, now in his 90’s, wasn’t doing that well and that I should get down to Northfield to see Jack sooner rather than later.  So along with my mother who had known Jack when they were students at Carleton, we made the 40-mile drive south to see the old coach.
   Once in town, John and his wife Patsy took us over to Jack’s retirement home.  It was great to see Coach who was actually doing quite well.  We told stories, laughed a lot, reminisced, and I brought him up to date about many of his players from my years at Carleton.  It was a great chance to see a man who had meant a lot to me for so many years.
   From Northfield, Mom and I continued south another 30 miles to Owatonna, MN, the town in which my father grew up.  My Aunt Sally is my only relative still living there.  With her two daughters (my cousins), Lesley and Stacy, in town, they had decided to throw a cocktail party to celebrate Sally’s birthday.  It was such a nice time reconnecting with the family and the little town of Owatonna where I had visited at least twice a year for most of my Minnesota life.  As we did in Northfield, Mom and I drove around town for the memories.  We saw my grandparents’ two houses and all the other sites that meant so much to us for so long.  Mom enjoyed it all as much as I did.
 

 MI Blog, DK-Bidding farewell to Aunt Jane and the cousins and pledging to all get together again very soon, Dr. L got back on the road and made the long drive back to Menomonie.  Sad at leaving, I was excited that I would soon get to see Alexx and the kids.
   Okay, the parallel blogs now merge back into one on Sunday, July 19, my mom’s 88th birthday.  Since DK and I would be meeting up that afternoon in St. Paul, I drove to Wayzata to take Mom out for a birthday-breakfast.  We had a nice time.
   I had one very “senior” moment at Mom’s that morning.  I was taking some plates and kitchenware she wanted us to have down to Zippy.  Mom’s apartment is on the 4th floor and it was going to take me two trips.  So after I toted one load all the way down to my car in the parking garage, I then moved Zippy next to the elevator so that I wouldn’t have to carry the 2nd load as far.  And then, after picking up the 2nd load, I seniorly walked right past Zippy at the elevator and walked all the way down to the garage.  Only then did I remember that I had just moved the car up a level.
   As DK and I are often heard to say, “The old guy’s LOSING it!”
 

 DK had attended Remy’s service (he’s a minister) at his church in Menomonie.  Afterwards, she went out back of the church to their Memorial Walk and found the bench dedicated to Barty, her mom.  It’s a wonderfully serene atmosphere and gave her a nice opportunity to commune with nature and feel the great memories she has of Barty.
    From there, Remy and Lisa drove DK to The Happy Gnome restaurant in St. Paul where, surprisingly, the waiters were all quite tall.  I met them for lunch, and after giving them back their deposit, Remy and Lisa returned my wife to me.  AB1 was now, once again, whole.

 

 Our last week in Minnesota was a whirlwind of visits with even more friends and family.  On Monday night, my cousin Stacy brought her big, gentle “Sherman” over to our campground to join us for dinner.  And “yes,” just as DK had vowed, we ordered out for pizza.

  The next day, DK had another chance to see her buddy Jennifer as the two ladies met up to get their nails done.  As Jenn so often says, “Remember to never bite your nails … especially if you’re a carpenter.”
 
 We then drove out to Shakopee to have dinner at Butch and Yvonne Jenny’s summer house.  They’ve become great buddies of ours, but because of Arizona, not Minnesota.  They rent at Terravita, our AZ community, every winter, and that’s where we met them a few years back. Diedre and Yvonne are good hiking buddies and their daughter, Jamie, joins them when she visits.  Butch was a Minnesota softball umpire for years, so we’ve reconstructed our softball history and figured out that there were quite a few tournaments we both were involved in at the same time.
 

 Wednesday was supposed to be two meals out with friends.  Both get-togethers were to be north of the cities.  We first drove to Maple Grove to have lunch with Diedre’s old “T.E.A. Group.”  Don’t worry.  It wasn’t a bunch of ladies sitting around sipping tea and munching on croissants resting on lace doilies.  “T.E.A.” actually stood for “target-equity-acting,” and was a group of actors Diedre helped organize who would get together weekly to help each other work on their acting, the better to aid them all in becoming “equity” (professional) actors.  Today’s T.E.A. Group consisted of DK, Jennifer, and hugely comedic actor and friend, Jack Melberg.  The continual laughs made it hard for us to finish lunch.
   

 From there, we were supposed to have gone on a little further to meet up with Rick and Eileen Nygaard, also RV’ers and a fellow 1968 St. Louis Park High School grad (Rick).  Unfortunately, Eileen called to say that Rick had been bitten by some aberrant Minnesota insect and had to go to urgent-care as he was quite swollen up.  With a free evening thus thrust (“thus thrust”? Really?) upon us, we headed back south to Eden Prairie near where we used to live.  We did our three-mile hike around the always scenic Staring Lake,
 then took time to visit the grave sites of Diedre’s parents, Fritz and Barty. 

From there, it was just a short drive to the site of the house (now just an empty wooded lot) where DK grew up.  We walked the one-acre lot and relived a lot of memories strictly based on location.  Diedre even took a few “imaginary” basketball shots at the tree where they used to hang their basketball hoop.
   We finished our rare free-lance evening with a movie (“Train-wreck”-DK loved it, I thought it was okay) and then had an easy dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, the simple yet always good “Lions Tap” where their burgers are, as DK likes to put it, “To DIE for!”
   The Minnesota days are getting down there.
   

Thursday was a big day for us on both sides of the Mississippi.  We made our way out to Plymouth to have lunch with Ann Gavin at her freshly refurbished home.  Ann is a long-time friend of DK’s who was a bridesmaid in our fabulous 1991 “Hawaiian-Minnesota” wedding at which we actually did serve “fancy Spam hors d’oeuvres.”
   We then had plans to see yet another baseball game that night, this time the “St. Paul Saints” minor league team, so we left Ann’s house early enough to avoid the horrendous Minneapolis rush hour traffic on our way to St. Paul.  
This, however, left us in the Minnesota state capital with quite a bit of time before the ball game, so we did something I’ve always wanted to do: take a self-guided walking tour of St. Paul’s famous “Summit Avenue,” the site of the city’s oldest and largest homes. 

 Architectural walks have gotten to be quite a “thing” with DK and me.  It always makes for a lovely way to pass sunny afternoons as well as get in the rest of our three-mile walks.  The highlight of today’s tour was seeing the “James J. Hill House,” also known as Minnesota’s “Downton Abbey.”  This 42-room mansion was built for Hill’s large family in 1891.  At the time, it was the largest private residence in the state.
   Leaving Zippy on Summit, we then made the two-mile walk to the ball park where we met up with longtime friends Cat Thompson and Greg Belknap.  The new Saints stadium right downtown was surrounded by quite the festive atmosphere as the place was going to be packed that night.
 

 We, in fact, initially hadn’t been able to secure tickets on-line, but Cat came through with four very good seats for the game.  A friend of hers, Julian Empson, gave us his four season-ticket seats just a few rows up from the first-base dugout.  I had heard of Julian years ago when I lived in Minnesota.  He was famous for leading the charge to “Save the Met,” that being Metropolitan Stadium where the Twins played games from their inception in 1961 till 1982 when the new and awful “Metrodome” was built in downtown Minneapolis.  The Met was one of those wonderful small, outdoor parks in the suburb of Bloomington that Julian’s group fought so hard to save.  He has since been the guy behind outdoor-baseball park tours, something we could have used about 30 stadiums ago.  This year he’s even set up a baseball tour of Cuba!
   OLE!

 The festive atmosphere around the ball park included “RAIL-gating” instead of “tailgating” as the park sits amidst an old railroad yard and is also located at the end of the newish St. Paul metro train line.  It was like one big carnival going on all over the place.
   We had so much fun that night.  It was St. Patrick’s Day at the ballpark, so all the players’ jerseys were re-stitched so that their names began with either an “O” or “Mc.”  The first-place Saints continued their winning ways with a 7-1 victory over the Lincoln Saltdogs.  Robert Coe pitched a complete game two-hitter.  A good time was had by all.
  To even things up ballpark-theatre-wise, the next night we made our way out to the wonderful little lakeside town of Excelsior for dinner and a show.  Our niece Becca joined us.  After dinner, we took a nice  walk down to the Lake Minnetonka waterfront.  We then headed over to “The Old Log Theatre,” the longest continuously-run theater in the country.  We were joined by theatre pals Jennifer and Mick Kirkeby as well as buddy RJ and fiancee Jacqueline Watson to see the musical, “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.”
   Now, I have seen plays at The Old Log since the early 60’s, but this was the first musical I had ever seen there.  Don Stolz, a longtime family friend who had run and owned the theatre since before World War II, loved the hilarious English farces and had unknowingly passed that love on to me.  But Don, at age 96, finally sold the place two years ago.  He passed away last year, so this would be the first show there that I would ever see without him present.  DK and I were interested to see how the new owners were handling things.
   Well, the Old Log has definitely changed.  Although they did an okay job with the show, it was just too different for us, plus they had no mention of Don in the program or in the lobby area.  Sad to say, we won’t be going back.  Times change.
   

It’s now Saturday, July 25, our last full day in Minnesota.  We packed up camp in the morning and then stopped by the casino’s gala “Ribfest” to see what they had to offer.  RJ and Jacqueline stopped by for one last visit.  We wouldn’t be seeing them again till their wedding in the fall.
   

That night we would be returning to Jake O’Connor’s restaurant in Excelsior with my mom, brother, and sister-in-law.  We had been there the night before with Becca and had a terrible dining experience.  It had been one of our favorite places, but that night they failed on so many levels, plus the hostess didn’t really seem to care.  On our bill, I left a note stating our dissatisfaction with the experience.  If you know me at all, you’re aware that that’s not something I do often, if ever.
   Somehow, the manager got wind of what happened and contacted DK by using our reservation info.  He convinced us to come back, vowing things would be different if we gave them another chance.
   And they were.
   After a nice greeting, he surprised us with cash to pay for last night’s dinner.  He then made sure the service was impeccable.  To top it all off, he even comped ALL the liquor for the five of us ($100+ value).  Suffice it to say, Jake O’Connors is back on our good side.  I wish more enterprises did business that way.
   We said our good-byes to the family, then staggered back to the RV camp.  I was so exhausted I collapsed into bed with our two boys, Charlie and Casey.  For me, that was “goodbye to Minnesota” …
   … and then “Hello” to Iowa.
   See you in the cornfields!