Hold tight

There were wet afternoons when she would grab a plastic bucket from her sandbox and trace the curb. Occasionally, she would stop, set her bucket on the spring grass and bend low. In time she would return, and in the bucket would be fat purple night crawlers and pale earthworms as thin as spaghetti. It resembled a squirming ball of grey string – viscous and foul – and I would look at her, and she would smile.

I sometimes wonder where that little girl went. Or I wonder if I might have imagined it all. But then I will stumble across photographs of her – or photographs of her and me – and I know she was no figment or fancy.

We look to tomorrow and so miss today. It is a tragic fault of ours – one the poets have long noted and one I did not escape. Too often my thoughts were elsewhere: on money and bills and work. Rather than burn each moment she and I shared into memory, rather than observe her every detail from the slightest grain to the smallest thread, I let the fog of ambition and self-interest sweep between us.

There were other errors as well.

Frequently, I failed to say what should have been said or – worse – said what I shouldn't have. When life hurt her – as life will do – and the moment called for consoling the punished, I condemned the punishers instead. When achievements were accomplished, my praise contained caveats to keep it up or to do even better.

Poison is no remedy.

Words of congratulation should carry no qualifiers.

At times I was a poor host. I dismissed the notion of boyfriends without the courtesy of much explanation. I mumbled something about there being a time and place for everything. Boys, of course, still showed up at my door like some wide-eyed stray. I let them in though I welcomed them like I would a flat tire.

Or I made my worries hers. When I saw her at night, I did not always drop the weights of the world I had picked up during the day. Childhood is brief and should be forever brilliant. It was my job to keep the clouds away. Instead, I brought them home and let their shadows darken places where light had been.

So now when she and I cross paths and I observe her deep compassion for the less fortunate or hear her frequent laugh at something someone says or watch as she assiduously attends to each moment that each day brings, I breathe a sigh of relief. My disadvantages are not hers. She is a better person than I am, and I am glad.

On those days when it fell to me to pick her up from kindergarten and take her to the babysitter, I would reach over the seat once she had scrambled into the back of the two-door Pontiac I owned, and together we would hold each other's hand. Tomorrow, she graduates from high school, and in three months she will be on her own.

Even if it meant making the same mistakes, if I could do it again, if I could relive the past 18 years, I would and without question.

But I cannot. Yet my hand will always be there.

Say it ain't snow

I can only imagine what the neighbors are saying. But in my defense I want you to know it wasn't my idea. You also need to know I've shoveled more snow than half the inhabitants of Siberia.

It is uncanny. Every driveway of every house I've owned has been cursed. It might snow an inch across city and county and state. In my driveway there will be a foot. I'll walk outside after a storm and the neighbors will be sweeping the snow away. My driveway will look like our Lord and Snowmaker has spent the night sifting flour on my house. Before long kids from up and down the block will emerge, snowboards tucked under their arms, and start ripping sick half-pipes off the garage. Trailing behind the little buggers will be entire teams of St. Bernards and behind them Swiss yodelers and Sherpas.

I have scooped snow, pushed snow, carried snow and carted it. I have hauled snow, heaved snow, hoisted snow and lugged it. For almost a decade I lived in Grand Forks, N.D., and for almost all of that time I lived in a house that had a driveway so long, it is visible from the moon.

A piece of advice: If you ever find yourself living in Grand Forks, N.D., do not buy a house that has a long driveway. In fact, find a house that doesn't have a driveway at all. In Grand Forks, you see, it doesn't even have to snow for drifts to stretch across your driveway big enough to swallow caravans of vacationing Canadians. All it takes is wind, and in Grand Forks, if the wind isn't blowing, you should see a doctor. You're probably dead.

Shoveling that driveway was my own personal Green Mile. There were years I would start in October and not finish until June. I despised that driveway, and when I sold that house and moved to another, I didn't sneer and stick up a certain finger from the moving van window. But I should have.

The driveway at the next house I owned was considerably shorter – and categorically worse. You might have seen the driveway on TV. It was the site of the 1996 Winter Olympics. Even the Sherpas stayed home that winter.

What I did to deserve this penance, I do not know. There is so much to choose from. But a driveway deep in snow is my cross. I've come to accept that. Heaven forbid I should end up in the catacombs of Hell someday, but if I do, I am certain 10-foot snowdrifts and a teaspoon await me.

I could get a snow blower. The thought has crossed my mind. But after all these years, frankly, it has become a test of wills, this struggle between snow and me. Perhaps all this shoveling has frosted my brain, but I feel like I'm in an epic battle between man and nature. If I buy a snow blower, I'll be surrendering. I'll be raising a white flag, which, if waved from my driveway, no one would see anyway, so what good would it do.

Plus I'm cheap.

So when I walked into the kitchen Monday morning and found my wife wearing snow boots and mittens and my driveway clean of that night's slushy heap, I had mixed emotions. A part of me – an extremely small part, minute, imperceptible to the naked eye – thought: "I am pathetic." The rest of me thought: "Heck yes!"

Let me reiterate. I did not know she was out there shoveling while I slept. My wife sets her alarm clock for 5 a.m. For the past 25 years that clock has screeched at that infernal hour. If she wants to get up when only dairy farmers and the dead are stirring, that's her business. But there is no way I am rolling out of the rack at that time unless there is a fishing boat or a duck blind in my immediate future.

My wife has given birth to three children. So what's a little snow to her? Still, it must have been quite a sight: All the neighbor men maneuvering their snow blowers in the early-morning gloom, their muffled churning collecting in the crisp March air, and there in front of the Okerlund house, a solitary shoveler, slight in frame, her cream-colored scarf tight against her neck, toiling mightily.

To be completely honest, it wasn't the first time this woman has shoveled in my stead this winter. She tells me she doesn't mind. It is good exercise, she tells me.

What's there for me to say? Except thanks.

Dog days

Most people rake in the fall. I rake in the spring.

The reason I rake in the spring is because every year at this time my yard looks like it has giant liver spots.

The reason every year at this time my yard looks like it has giant liver spots is because I have a dog that pees napalm.

The reason I've had a dog for the past 12 years (and, as fortune would have it, one that pees napalm) is a story I've told here before, but I'd rather not tell it again today because, though I usually find some humor in it, I'm positive I'll find none at the moment.

And the reason for that is simple: I hate to rake.

There is a scientific explanation why dog urine kills grass. I've had people who know their bluegrass from their tall fescue explain it all to me – something about ammonia and excess nitrogen and pH balance and whatnot.

But science never has been a strong suit of mine, and somewhere out there is a retired high school chemistry teacher who'll freely admit to that. All I know is that every winter when the dog does its business, it does a number on my yard.

I've already raked out the dead spots once this spring. I'll need to rake them out three or four more times before grass will grow in them again.

Round one of the raking took place on a recent Saturday morning. Like she does every spring, the dog lay in the yard – a patch, coincidentally, she hadn't scorched this winter – and watched. Like it does every spring, the scene went something like this:

Rake. Stop. Wheeze.

Rake. Stop. Wheeze.

Raking isn't quantitative physics. Scratching requires more thought. So it gives one ample time to ponder other things, and more often than not my mind will drift to a certain yellow Labrador looking at me while I lean on a rake gasping like a beached sea creature.

"You know," I'll mutter, "I should put an ad in the paper. I know just what it would say, too: 'For sale. One dog. Goes by Angel. Don't let the name fool you.' "

Her tail will wag. "You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. That's just what it would say. Of course, who would be crazy enough to want you? You have more tumors than a cancer ward. Your breath could strip paint. But you know what you're biggest flaw is? You have an exaggerated self-image."

As if on cue, she'll turn her head and bark at some lap dog scuttling next to its owner down the block and across the street – a distance of at least 50 yards. And then for good measure she'll growl. The sound is like rocks in a blender.

"You see. That's what I'm talking about. Do you think that woman and that dog are interested in your opinion? I've got news for you. They're not. On top of that, now they'll think you've got a bad attitude even though we both know the only thing you care to sink your teeth into is a chocolate chip cookie."

Because I'm looking at her, she'll slowly stand up, steady herself, hobble over and plop down beside me. "You have got to be kidding," I'll grunt. "You ruin my yard, and now you want me to pet you? Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm not. You can sit there all day. You will get no pets from me."

My arms feel like they've come loose from my body. Tomorrow when I wake up, I'll think someone has inserted razorblades into my spine. And even though I'm wearing gloves, I can tell I have blisters forming the size of bowling balls.

Before people do something they can't – or at least ought not to – undo like get married or have a family, they might want to get a dog. What they'll probably discover, if they haven't already, is how much give they have to go with their take.

Because when someone finds muddy paw prints on the top of her antique mahogany table or his best pair of ostrich-skin boots chewed to shreds or the pantry door open and that 10-pound bag of rice that had been full is now empty, they learn quick how much tolerance they have for imperfection and how much capacity they have for sacrifice. If what they find is that they don't have much of either, they might want to rethink getting that engagement ring or swapping the den for a nursery.

Every dog I've ever known is part friend, part frustration, but I haven't met a single person yet whose flaws are fewer or one who can be trained.

In time I'll look at the dog looking at me. She has always had as much white in her coat as yellow, so it is hard to see how grey her face has become. To get into and out of the bed of my truck now, I have to lift her (which I think she secretly enjoys). Seldom do I catch her chasing butterflies anymore. Instead, she sleeps for hours at a stretch – even during the day.

How many more springs of liver spots will there be, I'll wonder as I drop the rake, ease onto the grass and take off my gloves.

IMASUKR

After seeing in this newspaper the list of clever vanity license plates some South Dakotans have, I've decided to get one myself.

Torn between IH8BRAN and SNOWSUX, I asked my wife what she thought. She suggested HORRIBLYFLAWED.

Funny woman I married.

When I told her that vanity plates cannot be longer than seven letters, she closed the book she was reading, pursed her lips and studied me like I was a museum exhibit. "OK," she said. "How about BIGDUME? That's seven letters exactly."

Sensing in the woman a sharp disinterest in the conversation we were having, I hopped out of bed and e-mailed my oldest son in northern Minnesota to get his opinion. Knowing he despises shoveling snow even more than I do, I had a hunch which of the two expressions he would pick.

His response popped up seconds later. "Got a better idea," the message said. "DRILSGT."

Failing to find the humor in that, I e-mailed his younger brother in Nebraska. His reply arrived even quicker: "HARD*SS."

I was tempted to send both this suggestion in case they ever get vanity plates themselves: DISOWND. Instead, at church the next day as he and I were shaking hands after the service, I told the pastor about my plan to get a set of vanity plates and asked what he would recommend.

"PRAY4ME," he said.

The man must have noticed the color draining from my face. "Lying is a sin," he shrugged. "What choice did I have?"

I didn't like the direction this was going. Still, when I went to the doctor a couple days later, I decided to seek her advice. The woman took an oath to care for my well-being. I figured she had to suggest something helpful.

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I know just what you should put on your license plates," she said at the end of my appointment. "I'll write it on the back of this prescription for cholesterol medication." Outside, I looked at what she wrote: "OVRWAIT."

Frustrated, I began asking everyone I met what they thought should be stamped on my plates.

I asked my mechanic as he handed me the keys to my truck. "IMASUKR," he grinned, fingering his Rolex and nodding at my bill.

I asked some subscribers to this newspaper as they had coffee at a local cafe. "WINDBAG," they crowed.

I asked my students as I was teaching them the difference between gerund and participle phrases: "ZZZZZZZ," they yawned.

I asked a kid at my door after I told him I wasn't interested in buying the popcorn he was selling. "TITEWAD," he muttered.

I asked my high school basketball coach. "Who is this again?" he barked into the phone. I repeated my name and reminded him of the year I played for him: 1981. There was a short pause. "4GETABL," he growled and hung up.

I asked the teller at the bank as I deposited my paycheck. "UNDRPAD," she answered through the intercom.

I asked my dentist after he stuck a series of sharp metal objects in my mouth. "GUMDZEZ," he scolded.

I asked my brothers while we were out hunting. "That's easy," they smiled. "MISFIRE."

About to give up, I turned to the one person I've always been able to count on to sing my praises. "Of course I'll help you," my mom said as I sat down at her kitchen table. "Let's see. What do you think of this one? 2BZE2CAL."

I thought about telling her it was one letter too long.

But I didn't.

I think I'll just keep the plates I got.

First class

I never had her as a teacher. Occasionally, though, I would walk past her classroom, and whenever I did, I would look in.

She was always doing something, always helping someone. It was clear from the look on her face she liked it and liked them. But what always struck me most – and what I still remember best all these years later – was the look on their faces.

They admired her.

Fifteen years of teaching have taught me this: Being steeped in knowledge will earn a teacher the respect and appreciation of students. So will being prepared and demanding and current and decent. But admiration takes something more.

To earn that takes empathy.

And empathy isn't easy.

Get past the piercings and the purple highlights and I suspect young people today are not much different than young people have ever been. That, of course, is not the prevailing sentiment. Public opinion – or at least Hollywood producers and YouTube videos – will have us believe if young people nowadays aren't out shooting up, they're out getting knocked up or beaten up or worse.

It is an ugly fabrication. And an unfair one.

Yes, young people today have problems. Yes, some of their problems are enormous and tragic and sad. And like they have always done and will always do, they carry their problems wherever they go. School included.

When I started teaching, I had a couple of college degrees and had spent the better part of a decade as a journalist. I couldn't have been less prepared. Nowhere in the job description does it say teachers are required to help students carry their problems. Yet it might be the greatest obligation a teacher has.

She understood this.

To her they shared their problems. They did, I suspect, because they trusted her and because something told them she, too, had felt pain.

Young people are reluctant to let us shoulder the load unless we have shouldered one ourselves. I suppose they want some proof that we are up to the task. It seems to be a prerequisite before they will confide in us their confidences.

So besides reading them poetry and teaching them prepositions, whenever the need arose, she permitted them to unpack their troubles.

Year.

After year.

After year.

Where she gathered the strength is a wonder to me. What, after all, weighs more than woe? It wears like the wind.

But she never said a word, never entered a complaint, never begged relief. Which made what she did all the more remarkable.

Some claim there are no teachers like her anymore. That, too, is a myth. I still walk past classrooms and, occasionally, I still look in. Often, I see the same look on the faces of those students as I saw on the faces of hers. Or just as often a student will suddenly turn to me and ask – unexpectedly, out of the blue – if I happen to know a certain teacher, and when I say I do, at that moment – right then – admiration will appear.

No, she was no teacher of mine. I was even more fortunate.

She was a mother.

The great divide

The folks at NASA go to great lengths to get photos of barren and lifeless places. They should know they don't need to send a rover all the way to Mars for that. Instead, they should just stop by and photograph the walls at la casa de los Okerlund.

Curious what these walls look like? Close your eyes. See that? That's them.

In one month I will have lived in the same house for 10 years. In that time I have bought one picture to put on the walls.

I'm no ascetic. I like art. I like landscapes. I like portraits. I like French impressionists and Watertown native Terry Redlin. I even like those pictures of dogs playing poker. You know the ones – where the bulldog is smoking a cigar while slipping the ace of spades under the table to his bulldog buddy.

Hilarious.

Even Mona Lisa cracked up at that, I bet.

Maple sugar is the color of my living room walls. So says the lid of the paint can that now sits in the basement. Honestly, I don't mind the color, but stare at the walls long enough and you start to feel like you're floating in a gravy boat.

The walls definitely need more pictures, and I'd definitely like to purchase more pictures. But I don't have the money. So I can't – and so I don't.

Four Sioux Falls City Council members voted 12 days ago to increase the city sales tax to raise money to build roads. Four voted against the increase. Mayor Dave Munson had to break the tie.

He voted in favor of the higher tax.

It is the slightest of increases: an additional eight cents on every $100 spent on goods in the city. Yet the heat it drew was red-hot. Granted, there are people who will oppose a tax increase no matter the reason and no matter how small. Years ago these people were called good conservatives. But the protesters of this tax increase possessed a different motivation. They appeared to be of two kinds: Either they were struggling to make ends meet. Or they knew someone who was.

For them their opposition was personal as opposed to philosophical, and their vehemence suggests something important about the fortunes of a significant number of people in this community – and in this country as well.

It is hard to know how our fellow citizens are faring. Seldom are we privy to their true feelings. Even more rare is to be mindful of their supply of – and demand for – money. The content of our checkbooks almost never enters a conversation.

So we often are left to assume how they are doing, and like we often do when we find ourselves making assumptions about the lives of others, we tend to think our experience probably is their experience, too.

I have enough food to eat, we reason, they must have enough food to eat, too.

I can pay my light bill, we reason, they must be able to pay their light bill, too.

I can afford more taxes, we reason, they must be able to afford more taxes, too.

If someone does not have enough food to eat or cannot pay the light bill or is unable to afford more taxes, we often assume there is fault, and the fault is theirs.

They are not working hard enough.

They are frittering away their money.

They are caught up in God knows what.

Sometimes that explains it. But sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it is something for which they have not one iota of fault.

In 1979 in America, 55 percent of pre-tax income went to the poor and the middle class. By 2005 – the most recent year available – that share had fallen to 45 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

While the poor and middle class have seen their piece of the economic pie shrink in relative terms, others have watched theirs grow fatter. In 1979 in America, 45 percent of pre-tax income ended up in the hands of the upper middle class and the rich. By 2005 that share had increased to 55 percent.

To those perched on the highest rung of the income ladder, America has been especially generous. In 1979 the top 1 percent of households pocketed 9 percent of all pre-tax income. By 2005 that amount had doubled to 18 percent.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average adjusted pre-tax income for these households ballooned from $518,000 in 1979 to almost $1.6 million in 2005 – a 208 percent increase. That 26-year stretch was far less lucrative for the least affluent among us. The average adjusted pre-tax income for the poorest 20 percent of households in the nation rose a meager 1 percent – from $15,700 to $15,900 – from 1979 to 2005.

The 20 percent of households smack dab in the middle of the income ladder didn't make out much better. In 1979 when a nice three-bedroom home in Sioux Falls could be found for around $50,000, these middle-class Americans earned $51,000 on average. In 2005 when a nice three bedroom home in Sioux Falls cost two, three, four times what it did in 1979, they earned $58,500 on average – only $7,500 more.

There is nothing to suggest the divide in America between those who have much and those who have less has narrowed since 2005. On the contrary, the evidence suggests it has continued to widen.

When the Pew Research Center asked more than 2,400 adults earlier this year to compare their lives today to their lives five years ago, only 41 percent said their lives were better. Never has this percentage been so low in the more than half a century that Americans have been asked this question.

Likewise, when the 2,400 adults were asked to describe their financial condition, almost six of every 10 middle-class respondents and seven of every 10 lower-class respondents said they have just enough money to pay their bills or they said they have enough money and just a little more.

When asked if they had to cut their spending within the past year because money was tight, more than half of the middle-class respondents and three-quarters of the lower-class respondents said yes. Finally, when asked whether it is more difficult or less difficult today for middle-class Americans to maintain their standard of living than it was five years ago, almost 80 percent of all 2,400 respondents answered more.

If ever the tide was rushing in, if ever the boats of all Americans should have been on the rise, it was the past three decades. That span witnessed three of the longest economic expansions in U.S. history. The productivity of American workers during that time marched consistently higher. In addition, American women entered the labor force like never before. Two-thirds of all women in the United States between the ages of 20 and 64 now hold jobs. In more than half of all married households, both the husband and the wife work.

Though it was written in 1967 about a different kind of civil unrest, the Buffalo Springfield song "For What It's Worth" captures in its first two lines the sentiment of millions of Americans today: "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear." People are confused. They were promised if they worked hard, they would prosper. Others around them had that promise met. Of this they are certain because everywhere they look are the symbols of fantastic wealth.

Yet it wasn't met for them.

And they are wondering why.

Not being able to afford pictures to put on their walls is not what worries people struggling to make ends meet, of course.

What worries them is not having walls to put pictures on – or money to go to the doctor or to buy gas or to send their children to college.

Those are real concerns of which I have no concept. I know not their weight or their mass. They are outside my experience, and even if I closed my eyes for a thousand years, I could never imagine how monstrous and frightening they must be.

I try not to lose sight of that fact.

True American®

His shirt said: I'M A PATRIOT. ARE YOU?

"Anymore," he said, "you can't tell who is a real McCoy, stars-and-stripes American in this country and who is just a liberal, lefty, light-beer sucking pretender." He pronounced it PREEE-tender, and his upper lip curled when he said it. "But before you can be a True American®, you've got to answer these simple questions I have here in front of me." He tapped the white sheet of paper lying on the table between us. "After each question there are two boxes. One of the boxes says YES. The other says NO. If I check the box that says YES, it means you're a True American®. If I check the box that says NO, it means you're not.

"Got it?" he asked me.

"Crystal clear," I replied.

"OK. Let's get started." There was a yellow pencil next to the sheet of paper. He picked it up. "Are you for or against the Second Amendment?"

"Definitely for," I replied. "I still have the shotgun given to me on my 12th birthday. I was along when my dad bought it at Ace Hardware. Now I'll admit I don't clean the gun as often as I should, and I'm such a crummy shot, PETA has asked me to be a member. But 35 years later, it still works like a charm."

"Spoken like a True American®," he said, taking the pencil and placing a heavy black X in the YES box.

"You bet. Of course," I continued, "the Supreme Court blew it when it overturned the ban on handguns in Chicago. And like any rational person, I am against assault weapons. You'd have to be half nuts to want to own something like that. The only people who should be allowed to bear those arms are cops and members of the military."

There was a long pause during which he cocked his head to one side and then the other. Finally, he erased the X in the YES box and drew an X in the NO box. "You should have quit while you were ahead," he said and gave me kind of a half-smile. "Not to worry, though. You'll do better on this question: Are you for or against illegal immigration?"

"Oh, that's easy," I replied. "I am definitely against illegal immigration. Our southern border is a giant sieve. The wind has a harder time getting across."

"So right you are," he said, marking the YES box.

"Sure enough. Of course," I continued, "it's not like America has a monopoly on smart, hardworking people. If we want to remain the biggest economic power in the world, we'll need all the smart, hardworking, legal immigrants we can get from Mexico and every other corner of the globe. Instead of passing racial-profiling laws, the citizens of Arizona should be figuring out how to do that."

Again, there was a long pause during which he looked at me and softly clucked his tongue. "You know," he eventually said as he erased the X he had made in the YES box before putting an X in the NO box, "just a simple yes or no, for or against, is enough. You don't have to say anything more."

I nodded.

"Good," he said. His voice seemed to brighten. "You're off to a tough start. I got to be honest. But you still have a chance to be a True American® depending on how you answer this question: Are you for or against the War on Terror?"

"This one is in the bag," I replied. "I am definitely for the War on Terror. There are people who want to do us harm. That is a fact. We can't let them."

"Couldn't have said it better myself," he said. The X he placed in the YES box was the biggest he had made yet.

"Heck yes. Of course," I continued, "some people say we can't leave Iraq or Afghanistan until we finish the job. That's bull. Our soldiers finished the job. They defeated al-Qaida. They defeated Saddam. They liberated Iraq and Afghanistan and have helped them to establish democratic governments. That was the job they were sent to do, and that was the job they did. Now it's time for them to come home before any more of them die."

He never bothered to erase the X in the YES box. Instead, he tossed the yellow pencil on the table and slowly folded the sheet of paper and slid it into his shirt pocket. "There are some more questions," he said. "Abortion. Ethanol. The deficit. School prayer. A couple of others. But I see no point in asking them. It's apparent you don't have what it takes to be a True American®. I'm sorry."

I shrugged. "You know," I said, "it's too bad you didn't ask me if I am for or against people who think anyone who doesn't believe what they believe is somehow less of an American than they are and who use patriotism to divide people or to intimidate them or – worst of all – to con them in a shameless effort to make a buck. If you had asked me that question, I am positive I would have gotten it right."

His eyes narrowed. "Are you certain?"

I picked up the pencil. "Definitely."

20-20 again

It takes a certain level of intelligence to stand in a goose pit when the windchill is 20 below and your toes are so stiff they feel like rolls of nickels.

So naturally there I was seven days ago in a hole in the middle of a cornfield overlooking the Missouri River north of Pierre fearing hypothermia and hoping for my kids' sake that stupidity isn't genetic.

I live in South Dakota for probably the reasons most of you do. It is home. It doesn't have swarms of people, and the people who are here are good. The air is clean. The water is, too. Children can still ride their bikes to the store.

I also live here because I like to hunt and fish. I didn't do either a year ago. That wasn't just stupid. It was lunacy.

One of my earliest memories is of a badger scowling into the headlights of our car as it bounced across a South Dakota pasture in the morning darkness. My dad started taking me duck hunting as soon as I could keep up. He and my two brothers would pack me like they did their hip waders and the steel boxes that held their shotgun shells.

Though our dog – a Dalmatian and Labrador cross whose legs were short and body round – hunted better than one might expect, the job of retrieving what was shot, if it wasn't in the water, often fell to me. I did it without complaint.

You might say hunting restores my vision. Most days I'm stuck inside from the moment I wake till the moment I go to sleep. Mine is a world of gray carpets and yellow fluorescent lights. It is like watching an old color television set all day.

In a cold goose pit on a Missouri River bluff, the world is high definition again. Cornfields glow like bars of gold. Blue bays resemble socks on a baby boy.

In a cold goose pit on a Missouri River bluff, one has the chance to look out – and to look in as well.

One consequence of a hectic life is that we seldom have time to reflect. Because we're always taking stock of someone else's situation – customers, kids, whomever – we never take stock of our own.

That can be a happy consequence. When we're forced to reflect, to flip the light around and shine it at ourselves, to sweep it across the cracks and into the corners of our own lives, what we see can be discouraging and sometimes painful. In a cold goose pit on a Missouri River bluff, there is opportunity to reflect. But it isn't solely pleasant considerations that occur. There is reckoning, too.

In his short novel "The Old Man and the Sea," great American writer and even greater American hunter Ernest Hemingway wrote: "The clouds were building up now for the trade wind and he looked ahead and saw a flight of wild ducks etching themselves against the sky over the water, then blurring, then etching again and he knew no man was ever alone on the sea."

In a cold goose pit on a Missouri River bluff, ties that have come undone can be refastened; plots that have been dropped can be picked up again.

Though still good friends, time has widened the divide between my brothers and me. That, I suspect, is not unusual. The longer our individual histories become, the less they have in common. In a cold goose pit on a Missouri River bluff, our shared story continues, however, and in the process we close our gap.

When I was a reporter fresh out of college, I took a job at a small-town newspaper in Nebraska. There was a copy editor there who hunted. He must have been 25, 30 years older than me.

One fall Monday morning someone asked him what he did that weekend. He said he and his sons went pheasant hunting. Someone asked him if they bagged anything. He said his sons did, but he didn't. He had quit carrying a gun some years earlier, he said, preferring to just walk in the fields alongside his sons.

At the time what he said struck me as pure nonsense. Why would someone go hunting if they didn't actually hunt, I thought?

I see his point now.

You betcha

It is one of my earliest memories. I'm sitting at my grandmother's dinner table. Before me is a plate of lutefisk, and the smell is making me gag.

It is a horrible odor. Combined, not even my older brother's feet, breath and armpits, which at different times I've unwillingly had to whiff when he could stand my annoying ways no more, smell worse than what is in front of me now.

The lutefisk is swimming in butter. I mean this literally. Its slimy texture and the melted butter my grandmother has poured on it send it sailing from one end of the plate to the other at the slightest disturbance. Lifting my fork from the table, I gently poke the piece of fish like someone might a dead rattlesnake or an old beehive.

It jiggles.

The son of a man who, if given the choice, probably would have picked fishing over fame, I have eaten boatloads – again, literally – of fish in my life. Never before has one jiggled. Aghast, I look at the others around the table. They are engaged in polite conversation. None is staring at their plate in disgust.

Slowly, I take stock of the situation. I am being asked to eat stinky fish Jell-O. I am, I conclude, in deep trouble.

Superman has kryptonite. I have cod soaked in lye and drowned in melted butter. So if it features a lutefisk-eating contest, I am doomed. But if it is rolls of lefse instead that I must devour or if I am asked to survive atop a glacier for 30 days and 30 nights or, better yet, if I'm pitted in a battle to decide whose stoicism is most stout, I have a good shot at being the next champ of "Alt for Norge."

"Alt for Norge" – All for Norway in English – is a Norwegian reality TV show in which 10 Americans of Nordic heritage travel to Norway to compete in games where they discover their Norwegian roots while viewers discover how far they will go to win 50 grand. The contests are more silly than serious. In the show's debut season a year ago, contestants had to herd cows, row a Viking boat and sing the Norwegian national anthem to the accompaniment of an elementary school band.

They also had to eat a hamburger in two bites, kiss contestants of the same sex and pee on a fence while drinking a beer, which, apparently, is what one does in Norway upon graduating from high school as part of a tradition called russefeiring, where, apparently, for 17 days in May high school graduates go completely bonkers.

"Alt for Norge" is a big hit. Thousands tuned in each week to watch the Americans face off, but it appears what was just as appealing to most Norwegians were the moments when the contestants came face to face with their pasts – like the day one saw the village church where her great-grandmother was baptized – or when they embraced Norwegian culture – like the night they dined on the heads of sheep or the morning some bravely jumped into a bone-chilling fjord … and promptly jumped out.

Under the right circumstances, I could be a shoo-in to win this show. I lived in North Dakota for almost a decade. If that isn't like being marooned on a glacier, I don't know what is. I also am a lefse connoisseur. I know precisely how much butter and sugar and cinnamon to put on it. Granted, I've never actually made lefse, but no one I know makes it better than Sharon Helgeson. My plan is to spend the weeks leading up to "Alt for Norge" training under the 71-year-old South Dakotan in her Langford kitchen – kind of like a Rocky Balboa thing, but instead of running through the hard streets of Philadelphia in the dark and slugging raw sides of beef in a gritty meat locker, I'll be wearing an apron and rolling dough.

The way I figure it, given these advantages, I'm already a good bet to be the last one standing at the end of the next "Alt for Norge." But what will definitely seal the deal is if the show puts contestants to the true Nordic test: a challenge to see whose stoicism runs the deepest.

Norwegians are known for their stoic nature. Gather a group together, and you're liable to witness more emotion from a lamppost. A laundry basket is less reserved. Told they won the lottery or they need a root canal, Norwegians respond the same: "You betcha." Their blood doesn't boil. It congeals.

I'm not quite as imperturbable as that. I don't regard asking another person for the time to be a public display of affection – like some Norwegians do. On the other hand, I am considering this for my epitaph: The less said the better. In a contest to goad "Alt for Norge" competitors into expressing their feelings, I like my chances.

The search for the next 10 "Alt for Norge" contestants has begun. The deadline to submit an application to the Chicago casting company running the search – including a short video explaining what makes you "Alt for Norge" material – is Jan. 10. To be considered, you must be at least a smidgen Norwegian, be between the ages of 18 and 60 and have never been to Norway.

I'm definitely all those. The only place I've ever been is Canada, and while I'm not 100 percent Norwegian, I'm enough that I mutter "uff da" when the snowplow leaves a 3-foot drift at the end of my driveway. Plus, not one of the 10 contestants in the first season of "Alt for Norge" was from South Dakota. (Four were from Minnesota.)

I'd say I'm an obvious choice, and once chosen, there is but a single thing that can keep me from victory.

It will stink if that thing happens.

In more ways than one.

Stick it

Call me a father. Call me a husband. Call me a son.

Call me a teacher. Call me a journalist. Call me a coach.

Call me an American. Call me a South Dakotan. Call me a Vermillion Tanager.

Call me idealistic. Call me naive. Call me cynical.

Call me ignorant. Call me parochial. Call me a damn fool.

But don't call me a Democrat.

Democrats have made a mess of things. Under their watch, the American middle class has begun to vanish. Where once one wage earner could support a family, it now takes two incomes and sometimes three or four jobs. There has been an enormous and unprecedented shift of wealth to the most well-to-do. Corporations have been allowed to steamroll workers and swindle shareholders. Going to the doctor has gotten to be so expensive, people pray each night they do not get sick. Soaring tuition costs soon will make attending college a pipe dream for the poor and the sole province of the rich. Instead of solving problems on energy, on immigration, on the environment, Democrats point fingers, and when finally tossed from office, they turn up as lobbyists for polluters and unscrupulous profiteers. They pretend to be champions of the powerless. But it is a pretense only.

Call me a Christian. Call me a sinner. Call me a believer of mercy and grace.

Call me a white male. Call me advantaged. Call me free from the slights minorities face.

Call me a capitalist. Call me a worker. Call me an idiot for once espousing supply-side economics.

Call me a Cubs fan. Call me a Dirty Harry diehard. Call me if an extra ticket to the Boss ever drops in your lap.

Say I'm no Dickens, no Frost. Say Bud Weiser must be my personal trainer. Say I'm a lousy shot and a worse dancer.

But don't call me a Republican.

Republicans have made a mess of things. Under their watch, IOUs have been stacked to the heavens. America started the 21st century as a debtor nation and in all likelihood will end it as one, too. Used to be Republicans kept their hands out of taxpayers' pockets and kept their noses out of other people's private lives. Used to be they despised bureaucratic interference, and the thought of accepting a dime – let alone billions of dollars – from the government sent them into shock. Used to be Republicans stood for self-determination. No more.

Because of them, America has become trapped in a long and confusing war. Because of them, the people I call on the telephone, the content of the e-mail messages I send and the books I check out at the library are not just my own business anymore. Because of their use of tax policy to favor the rich, there is a good chance this generation of children in America will be the first to fail to lead better lives than their parents. In public they scold anyone who does not share their moral code while in private they are perverse. So staggering is their hypocrisy, it sickens.

We have a tendency to label each other. We do it, I suppose, to bring order to chaos, to provide a sense of security. We pin labels to distinguish between us and them. Of course, we are more complex than simple labels. Easy definitions do not do us justice.

So it is a simpleminded tendency we have, and what degree of security we derive from it is a false one. Still, if I must be labeled, take your pick. There are all kinds of them that fit – some that I am proud to wear, others that I regret.

But please don't call me a Democrat, and please don't call me a Republican. I find no difference between them. Only sad similarities that have left people so disillusioned, they have turned their backs on the political process.

I am not one of these people. Not yet. I will vote on Tuesday because I refuse to give up and because I refuse to give in. Perhaps you feel the same way and will vote, too.

In this, call us united.

Hero worship

When my oldest son was a boy, he had a poster of Oakland A's slugger Jose Canseco on a wall in his bedroom. The poster displayed Canseco at the end of an enormous swing, the bat wrapped flat against his back, his torso a corkscrew, the muscles and tendons in his forearms bundled like steel cables. No baseball was present in the image. It existed only in the slight tilt of Canseco's head and the fixed look in his eyes at something far off in the cloudless sky.

For years that poster occupied that wall. Morning and night it was there, no less constant than the sun and moon. The frozen wheat fields of Grand Forks, North Dakota, where we lived at the time, are light years from the cerulean bays of northern California, yet so great was the pull of the mighty Canseco, my son wheeled firm in the orbit of the Athletics – and does even now as a man.

We need heroes. When times turn tempest, heroes give us something to hold onto. Their capacity to stand unshaken against life's scouring winds reminds us and reassures us of our own measure.

Heroes do more than inspire, however. They also serve as templates of noble behavior, as references of that which is right. From them we conceive integrity and mercy and grace, courage and humility and resolve. We conceive generosity and intelligence. We conceive honor and faith.

“Unhappy the land that has no heroes," wrote German playwright Bertolt Brecht. So America seems today.

The nation is drowning in a sea of cheats. Steroid-shooting athletes like Canseco and Olympian Marion Jones litter sport. In government lobbyists loot Washington. In industry corporations cook their books. In religion sinners masquerade as saints. Left behind in the wake of all this duplicity are dispirited spectators, jaded citizens, ruined investors and grieved believers.

We are desperate for a hero. This ache as much as anything appears to be the impetus behind the ascension of Barack Obama.

Without the benefit of pedigree or – initially – political machine, Obama has gone from unknown presidential aspirant to one within a whisper of capturing the Democratic nomination. His support has turned from ripple to tidal wave. He speaks of hope, and in the eyes of those who support him, it is hope that gleams.

McCain's valor, Huckabee's decency, Clinton's brilliance and backbone elicit their own fervor, but it is not the same. The expectations being placed upon Obama are different and greater. To millions of Americans, he is the promise of escape from the fantastic magic show that is their country – where little is left but illusion, where sleight of hand reigns supreme, where trickery is everyday trade.

Each generation has its symbols, those objects that signify the character of that generation. For those who came of age during World War II, it was war bonds. For the generation after it, it was the image of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon. For us, it is fine print. Make a late mortgage payment and credit card companies feel excused to raise our interest rates. Go to a physician or a hospital without prior approval and insurance companies refuse to pay. It is all so much dirty pool.

Deceit, of course, is an old affliction. The ancient Greek philosophers oft wrote of it. It blackens the pages of Shakespeare as well. Who in literature, in fact, is more conniving than the poisonous Claudius?

To find parallel to our present treachery, however, offers no comfort. We want someone – or some ones – to lead us out of this desert.

Rest assured. I am under no delusion it will be me. To catalog my transgressions would take the Library of Congress the better part of a year. Indeed, my shortcomings are rivaled by only a couple of umpires I know.

But just because I – and perhaps you – are no hero is no reason to think others cannot be and no reason to cease believing others must be. We need heroes whether we're 10 or 45. The minute we think asking for them is asking too much is the minute we settle for something less instead of demanding something more.

Baseball always has been a reflection of America. Both are expansive. Both are pastoral. Neither wishes to be bound to time. It is a bitter period in which America and its pastime find themselves. In 1988 Jose Canseco hit 40 home runs and stole 40 bases. Never in major league history had that been done. The 24-year-old Canseco had scaled a pinnacle that had proven too steep for even the greatest of the game. On hallowed ground he stood alone. A Titan among lesser gods. But it was all charade. By his own admission Canseco was juiced – pumped full of steroids and human growth hormone. What we praised as majesty was make-believe. He cheated.

So did others in baseball. Perhaps most of them in this era. Perhaps even Roger Clemens – he of the seven Cy Young Awards and 354 wins and 4,672 strikeouts – who has been accused of doing exactly that which Canseco did and who Wednesday, in a sad display of irony, proclaimed to a room full of congressmen his actions have always been honorable.

To a boy growing up on a flat North Dakota prairie years ago, a certain baseball player lit the darkness. In the end, however, it was smoke and mirrors. No actual hero existed. The boy discovered he was deceived, and he blew the candle out.

But the longing in that boy for heroes still burns – and forever will.