Category: My life

What is the longest project you have ever worked on?

My longest project is … me. I have been working on that literally my whole life, but the crystallizing moment. When I was going off to college, my father asked me what I wanted to be. Asking me a question like that is like trying to get a drink out of a fire hydrant. I recall telling him that I did not when I came to die discover that I had not lived. Of course, young men don’t talk that way. I didn’t either and when I went off to college, I had not yet read Thoreau for that cool quotation. What I really wanted back then was just to get a well-paying job where I didn’t have to work too hard. But looking back, it is what I wished I had said, what I should have said, and it was the start of my lifelong project. We all want to lead meaningful lives, but what does that mean?

It is actually very simple, if not easy. I am not going to lay out criteria, since each life is different. Everybody needs to find what is important for them but let me give you an example of a good life. There are many to choose from, but my example is someone I knew well, but did not grow up knowing.

Since I cannot be objective with my own parents, let me take Chrissy’s father as my example of a good man and a good life. Arnold Johnson was an ordinary guy. There is great nobility in being an ordinary guy, even if we do not often recognize it. He grew up in Wisconsin around friends and relatives. Worked hard and lived in a green and peaceful part of the world. The Driftless Area of Wisconsin is one of nature’s gifts to all who live or visit there.

When the call came to leave and to serve his country, he did so gladly, landing at Normandy and driving a tank across France with Patton’s army until he was severely wounded and sent to recuperate in England. He returned home after the war, married a wonderful woman, Pearl Olsen, and raised a family on the dairy farm where he had grown up, always providing for his kids and serving his community.

I knew him as an old man. Chrissy was child number six, born when Arnold was already forty-five, so he was about my age now when I met him (maybe not that old).

Arnold & Pearl Johnson retired from farming and move to the town of Holmen, right across form the Lutheran Church that was central to their lives. What impressed me about Chrissy’s parents was their rich social life. I don’t think you can have that anymore. People move too much. They saw friends and relatives that they had know for more than half a century. Arnold took “meals on wheels” to “old people” and was a valuable part of his community almost to the end of his long life.

He was mourned and remembered by many when he died and many more were grateful that he had lived.

The measure of a man is that simple. If lots of people are grateful that you lived, some not even aware BTW like my kids, you have had a successful life. This is available to everybody. It is simple but not always easy.

So this is my life project: to be a good man and lead a good life. If when I shuffle off this mortal coil, if I can be as successful as Arnold, I will be content.

This is my penultimate StoryWorth & this is a good question for the end. I think I will make up my own question for the last one. Not sure what that should be.

My first picture is Arnold & his older brother, Julian. Next is Arnold with his tank. Next is the Johnson Farm in Long Coulee. A coulee, BTW, is a long narrow valley caused by melting of glaciers. The glaciers skipped western Wisconsin, but their effects did not. Picture # 4 is Chrissy’s family. Chrissy is in the middle, stunningly beautiful. I always wondered how I was so lucky. And finally Pearl, Arnold, Chrissy, Espen & Alex.

What was the stupidest thing you have ever done? My StoryWorth for this time.

This is a hard one. I do stupid things all the time, but I often adapt and often make the dumb decision turn out better than an initial smart one. My philosophy is not to make great smart decisions to start but make lots of contingent ones and adjust until I come out right. You might call it sweet serendipity directed.

Generally speaking, you get either a good result or a great story to tell.

Hitchhiking with no plan
One of stupid thing I did was try to hitchhike to Florida on spring break, with no map and only $15. It made a good story that I have written about elsewhere. Suffice it here to say that I ended up sleeping in a graveyard in Alabama before high tailing it home. That was stupid, but I was only eighteen, so I can blame youth.

Streaking
Another youthful indiscretion was when a group of friends and I went streaking. I could never be appointed to the Supreme Court, now that youthful fun would be reinterpreted as something horrible and oppressive. Take that off my list of ambitions. It was in style back in the early 1970s. They even had a song about it.

There was a joke about two old ladies that decide to streak through the nursing home. They run past a couple of old guys on the porch. “Who was that,” says one old man. Responds the other, “I don’t know, but their clothes sure were wrinkled.”

International travel with no plan
When I was a few years older, I saved enough money for a flight to Germany. I had to stay a whole month, since it was a charter flight. Otherwise, I think I would have gone home, since when I got feet on the ground. I had one of those “oh shit” moments. I had a map, but not much of a plan. I spoke bad German and soon found I didn’t have enough money. I hitchhiked around, so I kinda ended up where the flow took me, sometimes sleeping in hostels, sometimes on the ground. I lost about fifteen pounds, since I economized on food. Still tried a lot of German beer, however. It was often cheaper than Coca-Cola and it had calories I needed (liquid bread), so it was okay. I got lots of good stories.

A fool & his money are soon parted
I had a few recoverable financial stupid mistakes. One that depressed me for a while was when I bought a whole-life policy. I was in grad school and I thought it was part of being a responsible adult. I was dumb. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I got a lot of coverage and a “savings plan” for very little money. What I did was take out a policy loan greater than the cash-value of the policy. Had I died, my father and sister would have got a good payoff, but the insurance company knew the actuarial odds. It took me a while to pay it off so that I could close the account. I suspect that sequence was part of their business plan and I think it was dishonest of them, even if I signed freely. A young person w/o dependents doesn’t need life insurance at all. Presumably some people would have been sad had I died, but nobody would have suffered financially and that is the only reason for insurance. It was a good lesson for me, however. A fool and his money are soon parted.

I coulda been somebody
I also have a financial missed opportunity. As soon as we paid off our student loans, I got a Charles Schwab 1 account. In those benighted days, you still had to call to make trades and I was thinking of my first purchase of common stock. I considered Microsoft & GE, but then I read a book about investing, learned about book value and ratios, so I went with IBM. This was in 1991. GE did well in the next ten years and Microsoft went through the roof. IBM underperformed the market. I feel bad now. I just figured it out. With the IBM, I just about broke even before I generally got out of individual stocks in 1999. Had I invested instead in Microsoft, I would have $88,235.23, but whose counting? Of course, such great gains probably would have made me arrogant and less prudent. Likely I would have taken more risks and lost all that money and more.

Love of the land
I have often said that buying forest land was an objectively stupid decision, but one I was glad to make and glad to have made. It was stupid to mortgage the house to buy land in a place I had never been before to work in a business I did not understand because I liked forests. I say objectively stupid, because subjectively it was one of the best decisions I ever made, something I long wanted to do and had thought about literally for decades, almost a lifetime, and it worked out.

Into the desert of Iraq
A lot of people told me that volunteering to serve in Iraq was stupid. I suppose it depends on the premises & criteria. I thought then and think now that it was the right decision. I got a lot of shit at the time, but none from anybody whose opinion mattered to me. Of course, a few moved from the “care about” to “not care about” because of giving me shit.

Ignoring life-threatening disease
I dodged the bullet with a stupid decision to ignore the pain in my leg that turned out to be peripheral artery disease. I limped around for a year and it eventually got better, but the doctor told me that it was the kind of thing that could cause you to lose a leg or even kill you. This is a kind of non-decision/decision. You cannot go crazy every time you get a little pain. I didn’t recognize the categorical difference. Eventually something will kill me. It will probably unexpected and I hope that it is. Better to go that way, before you have to worry about it too much.

Sometimes the bear gets you
There are bears prowling my land. I have never seen one, but I have seen tracks and the hunters capture their pictures on game cameras. One of my joys working on my land is not working. I like to relax in my folding chair, drinking a beer and dozing off before the next shift of work. I imagine the bear coming up behind, catching me unawares and swatting me. Not that this happens often, or ever, but I can imagine it. I told the guys at the hunt club that if something like that happens, they not tell people I was probably taking a nap after a beer. No, they should spread that story that I fought that bear, almost drove him off, and succumbed only after a protracted struggle.

That is the way to be remembered.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

What was your life like in the 1970s? Another StoryWorth

I am generally satisfied with the economy and society of today because I spent my early adult life in the 1970s. From the bottom of a hole like that, everything is up. The 1970s were objectively a bad time – the energy crisis, stagflation, fall of Saigon, double digit inflation, long lines at gas stations, Iranian hostage crisis, dollar weakness … Baby Boomers like me had no experience with hard times. Our parents told us about the Great Depression, but that seemed like ancient history, certainly a different America.
A messed up decade
To clarify, what we call “the 70s” didn’t fit neatly into the decade. More appropriate to mark the period from the start of the energy crisis in 1973 until the economy really started to work well again and American confidence returned about ten years later. 1973 is also a convenient starting time for me too, since I graduated from HS that year and that is where I will start my story.
Graduating HS
My mother died the year before, but my aunt Florence attended my graduation along with my father. She was proud also to be a Bay View graduate and commented that the music was more triumphant when she graduated. I responded with youthful ignorance that times were so rough for us. She pointed out that she graduated HS in 1939. 1939 was not an auspicious year.
Milwaukee was still an industrial city in 1973. We had the industrial pollution to prove it, and we had the jobs. Unemployment was a little higher than it is today, but guys like me had a better chance in those days than now.
With a mind that’s weak and a back that’s strong
Strong young men did many of the jobs that machines do today. Lack of experience was no disadvantage when success depended only on the capacity to wrestle heavy, dirty and/or hot stuff from one place to another. In fact, ignorance was an advantage. We loaded bags that weighed 70-94 pounds at the cement company. You were almost sure to develop some sort of work-related injury, usually a bad back, if you did this work more than a few years. The work kinda chewed up each new generation of young men. This and the 12-hour days meant that fresh guys like me didn’t have to compete with most men and with no women at all. Call it strong male privilege. The work was amazingly hard, but I made good money and got 20-40 hours of overtime every week, so it was like packing two summers’ work into one. I earned and saved enough money to be content and comfortable over the school year. I still worked in the fast-food and hospitality industries during the school year, but did not depend on that income.
State colleges
In fall, I started at University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point (UWSP). I didn’t take school very seriously, and neither did most of the people I knew. Our problem was lack of preparation and available beer. Most of us were first generation college students, but with family beer drinking traditions that went back to the middle ages. Drinking age in Wisconsin in those days was 18. That is too young, and we were too stupid to drink responsibly. I learned to sing drinking songs in English & German (actually the one song In heaven there is no beer/ Im Himmel gibt’s kein Bier), but my academic mind was wasted.
I didn’t get my act together unit well into my second year. By that time, I got a girlfriend, who helped civilize me, and most of my drinking friends had left school, voluntarily or at the urgent request of school authorities. Not sure how I survived, but I survived, started to study and started get good grades. I believe in redemption. I still graduated on time, four years after I started.
Water finds its level
UWSP was good for me. I had the test scores good enough to go to a “more competitive” school, but not the habits, skills or culture needed for success in school. Those things I learned at UWSP. Thanks. In the course of learning how to go to college, I decided that I liked it so much that I never wanted to leave college. I did have to leave Stevens Point, however, and go to the bigger and more sophisticated University of Wisconsin-Madison for graduate school. UW was the best university in Wisconsin & non-Wisconsin institutions were largely precluded by my low budget and abysmal grades left over from my time of troubles.
Dreams of an academic life
My dream was to be a history professor, ancient history. It took me a couple years to know for sure that was not a practical option. Ancient history was not a growth field and all the good jobs were taken. I was a little more than a decade late. Universities had expanded a lot in the 1960s to accommodate students like me. They needed professors of everything and a guy graduating with a PhD in 1965 was golden. Lots of students piled in to fill the gap. The Vietnam war made it worse. Students avoiding the draft wanted to stay in school as long as they could; student deferment kept the out of the draft. This led to an unusual boom in advanced degrees. The first ones out took all the jobs and quickly locked up the supply, and since they were not much older than me, I couldn’t wait them out. I ended the decade with a MA in ancient history. I could read Greek & Latin, but otherwise nothing for employers might want, and Greek & Latin were useful in a very narrow set of circumstances. In fact, an MA in ancient history was worse than nothing even in a normal job market, and I was heading into the worst job market since World War II.
I figure whenever you’re down and out. The only way is up.
I am not saying the 1970s were all bad. I was healthy and young, and got to experience all those “firsts” of a young man. Nike invented “waffle stompers” in the 1970s and I took up running, which I enjoyed for decades after. There was good music, some good TV programs and they made “Star Wars” & the Star Trek movie. Most important, I became an educated man in that decade, even if my erudition was not immediately useful for getting a job. Besides that, however, the 1970s sucked. On the plus side, it was a good immunization against hard times in the future. It has been up ever since.
I Don’t have many electronic pictures from the 1970s life. My first picture I took a few days ago. Picture # 2 is my father on my UWSP graduation day. Next is me lifting weights in the back yard, maybe summer of 1974. Picture # 4 is my old dog Sam, our dog of the 1970s. Last picture is my sister, me and her then boyfriend Joe. She wisely got rid of him.

What food did you like and how has it changed? – My story worth for this week.

I grew up in the days of Wonder Bread and Oscar Meyer wieners and simple foods in general. Milwaukee in the 1960s was not a mecca for a variety of foods, at least around where I lived. We did not even have a McDonald’s until I was in 10th grade. I tried my first Chinese food when I was already in college. I don’t know if you can call Taco Bell Mexican food, but my first exposure to that sort of food came when I was about sixteen.
Simple foods to start
My mother’s food was good, but simple – meat and potatoes, although never steak. I had my first steak when I was in college. Pot roast and pork chops were our main meet dishes, along with beef stew and backed chicken. We had a lot of spaghetti, Kraft Dinner (macaroni & cheese) and lots of potatoes – mashed, backed and scalloped. My mother’s spaghetti was very simple and not very Italian. Meat with tomato sauce. My cousin married an Italian woman, Irma, and when they lived upstairs from us, I got very good spaghetti. This was when I was already in college, however, and would come home on visits. I admit that I made sure my father told Irma when I would be home, so that I would have her great spaghetti waiting. I have a story about her that I think is funny. Good thing about spaghetti is that it is as good, better maybe the second or third day.
Salamander in the basement
 It is not so much about her as the situation. I had a pet, a red and black salamander. He lived in a terrarium in the basement. I forgot to put the top on right one day and he escaped. I couldn’t find him and presumed him dead. Later, must have been years later because I was off at college and on a visit home, my father told me that he “wondered about” Irma. “Wondering about” someone was his code for saying that he thought they were acting crazy. He told me that Irma claimed to see big lizards in the basement. Milwaukee is a northern city. We do not have big lizards just crawling around like in some places in the south. I asked Irma about that lizards next time I saw her. She said it was red and black and ran off when she saw it. She ran off too, so she was not sure where it went. I never did find this “lizard” but I think it was my salamander. Those things can live twenty years. Our basement was not what you would call “finished.” It still had a dirt floor in some places and the water pipes dripped (my father and grandfather had put them together and there was never a time when they were not drinking beer while they did the work). There were lots of spiders down there, so I presume lots of whatever it is that the spiders were eating. I expect a salamander might feel at home in an environment like that.
The best sausage in the world
Milwaukee has the best sausage in the world, and I learned to love, and still do love bratwurst, liverwurst & kielbasa. Most of our vegetables came in cans and I still like canned peas better than fresh ones and I like canned peaches, but I am not fond of “real” ones. I don’t like the peach fuzz.
College food: good and cheap, well cheap
I stayed in the dorms as an undergraduate and had the meal plan. My father paid for it (thanks, Dad). I kind of like cafeteria food, but it was not really very good much of the time. Breakfast was good. You could get eggs and ham or bacon. I liked that. I was lazy my first years in college, so I did not wake up early. Sometimes, however, I would get up early to get breakfast and then go back to sleep.
My budgets were much more constrained in graduate school, since I was on my own. With no meal plan, not much money and no cooking skill, I ate mostly baked potatoes and beans. I used to bake up a whole pan of beans on the weekend and then eat them the rest of the week. It is very cheap and so monotonous that you are not tempted to overeat. I lost maybe fifteen pound my first months at University of Wisconsin. My haggard appearance alarmed my father when I went home for a visit. He made sure Irma made extra spaghetti and some lasagna that I took back with me.
McDonalds
It was also during that time that I worked at McDonald’s. I worked the lunch rush. In addition to the big bucks they paid me for working there, I got a free meal. If you worked up to four hours, you got a small sandwich (hamburger of fish sandwich), small fries and a coke. My colleagues usually made sure my small fries were filled tightly and you could fill up Coke as many times as you wanted, so it was sufficient for my needs. I worked at McDonalds for nine months and then quit because they would not give me a $.05 an hour raise. They said I had the wrong attitude, didn’t take the job seriously enough.
The boss said that if I didn’t like it, I could quit. He seemed surprised when I walked out. By then, I was also working delivering mail and running errands at the History Department. Between the 20 hours at McDonalds and about the same at the History Department, I was putting in a full-time job. I wanted more time to study (I was a nerd in those days), so my courageous decision to walk out of McDonalds was not so courageous after all.
I ate things I did not like in quantities I did not want, but sometimes good
Poland – Zurek
One of the most important jobs of a Foreign Service Officer is to eat and drink for your country. This is harder than it seems. Anybody can eat when he is hungry, but it takes a real man to eat when he is full. At official receptions or dinners, I ate things I did not like in quantities I did not want. Our policy was to eat whatever the host gave us and claim that you loved it. Sometimes – often – the food was very good, but not always. You could get used it, however. There is a kind of sour soup you get in Poland called Zurek. I detested it the first time I tasted it. Continued exposure moved me to tolerate it, and by the time I left Poland I looked forward to getting Zurek. Now I miss it. Zurek is hard to come by in the USA. Most Americans have not gone through the learning process I did.
Norway – Lutefisk
Lutefisk is something I never got to like. They eat that in Norway and also in Norwegian communities in Wisconsin, so I was forewarned. Lutefisk is a kind of decomposed codfish. It has a kind of gelatinous texture, bad taste and strong and unpleasant smell. Norway in the old days was a poor society, with long winters and sparse rations. My guess is this kind of thing was at the bottom of the barrel and everything tastes good when you are really hungry. After a while, they made a virtue out of necessity and called it a delicacy. I guess I never gave it the chance I gave Zurek. Of course, Zurek was commonly served. Lutefisk was reserved for special occasions, thank God.
Brazil – Churrasco
Brazilians have churrasco. This is great. The main drawback is that it is too good. It consists of various cuts of meat, mostly beef, served on spits. It is all you can eat, and I learned to eat a lot. My favorite was something they call picanha. I think it is a rump or flank steak. The grill it on an open fire with lots of salt and then cut off thin slices, cooked crispy on the outside and still rare on the other side. They have these places now in the USA too. Near us are “Fogo de Chão” and “Texas do Brasil.” I would eat at those places every day, if I knew it would not soon kill me to eat so well.
Iraq – Goat grab
The Iraqis used to invite us a lot of “goat grabs,” where you had sheep or goat barbecued and put on a bed of rice. It tastes great, but I was less enthusiastic about how you eat it. They put it in the middle of the table, and everybody gathers around, ripping off pieces with their hands. I don’t mind using my hands, but as an “honored guest,” others rip off pieces and give them to you. You have to eat, bad form to turn it down. I always assumed (hoped) that everybody’s hands were reasonably clean, and I never got sick, so I figure it must have been okay.
There was a lot of good fellowship at the goat grabs. My translators were often behind the curve. A guy would say something evidently important and sincere, talking for a while. The translator would say something like, “he says the goat if fresh.” My several sentence replies were also distilled into a short phrase in Arabic. I am not sure communications were as well served as the goats. Even though I often could not understand what the others were saying to me, they seemed happy and friendly.
Good translation saves my life
Speaking of translators, my best was a guy called Sam Said. He got all I said and more. I may owe him my life, as he talked us out of a dangerous situation with an angry mob in Rutbah when I made the mistake of moving around a couple of parked cars in the market, leaving my Marines very close but so far away. I listened intently, smiled when it seems appropriate and answered questions, but Sam supplied all the cultural lubricant. Lucky, I had my best man with me. Meanwhile, the Marines were getting very nervous. “Sir, get the hell outta there.” I told them that I sure would like to do that but, I figured the safest way out was forward. It ended well. The guys were aggrieved by their treatment by local authorities. They had more trust in Americans and their anger drained with every second we listened. I told them I would inquire, and I did. I followed up a week later. The local guys told me all was okay, but I admit to having no independent way of knowing.
In Heaven there is no beer, no beer in Iraq either
A big problem in Iraq is that there is no beer, at least we were not allowed to have any. As friends know, I am fond of beer, but that is not the reason I missed it so much in Iraq. Beer (vodka in Poland, aquavit in Norway or Cachaça in Brazil, actually beer in those places too, or other alcohol) is a social binder. You drink to others, toast their virtue or just mention some commonality. I suppose you can hold up a piece of meat and say, “this bite is for you,” but it lacks.
These days, I often revert to old form. Today, for example, I will bake up a few potatoes and we will have potatoes and vegetables.
My first picture is me cooking at the Embassy for our “Burgers w/o Borders,” the event where we launched our participation in “Science w/o Borders”. Eventually, around 30,000 young Brazilians went to the USA to study in STEM. Next is a churrascaria in Goiania. Picture # 3 is a goat grab in Haditha, Iraq, followed by a picture of Polish bison vodka. Last is Arthur Treachers, the now defunct fish & chips place. I liked it a lot, but stayed with it when the quality dropped.