…my true love gave to me:  four epic tax cuts, three cheesed-off commies, two times for choosing, and a shining city on a hill!

…and early this AM to do a whole lot of posting.

It’ll be on the light side today.

…my true love gave to me: three cheesed-off commies, two times for choosing, and a shining city on a hill!

…my true love gave to me:

Two times for choosing, and a shining city on a hill!

(more…)

…my true love gave me me, a shining city on a hill!

(That’s right – 12 shopping days until Reagan’s Birthday – the official holiday of Shot In The Dark) (more…)

It’s a season of celebrations; Christmas, Chanukkah, Eid, Solstice, New Years, the Saint Paul Winter Carnival…

…and, to wrap up the season of celebrations, Reagan’s Birthday is coming up in a mere 12 days.

And to commemorate this solemn yet happy day, Shot In The Dark presents a special artistic achievement over the next 12 days.  Suitable for a National Endowment for the Arts genius grant, it is nonetheless being done entirely on the free market.

Tune back at noonish.

It was Monday, January 23, 1989.

I woke up on Mark and Bill’s couch, and drove to Northeast Minneapolis.

I hadn’t spent much time up there in the three years I’d lived in the Twin Cities – really, other than watching the occasional band at the occasional bar on Hennepin or Central, I’d never had the occasion to go.  But I dug out my old map, and found the address – just a few blocks off Central, near 34th and Johnson.

The owner – actually owners, a late twentysomething guy and his older brother – and I hit it off perfectly.  He needed a renter now, and I need a place now.  Better, as we talked, we discovered that we had a ton of common acquaintances; they both worked with my old roommate Liz and her boyfriend.

The place was perfect for me – almost the stuff of single-guy dreams.  It was the entire upstairs of a small house; I had a private entrance, a waffleplate stairway that led up the back of the house.  A nice-sized living room with a south exposure, a tiny (hence less-stuff-to-clean) kitchen with a 20 year old fridge and a beat-up gas stove, a cozy little paneled-wall bedroom, and – mirabile dictu – a bathroom of my very own, for the first time in my life.

They said I could have it; I drove directly to a bank branch over by Apache Plaza, grabbed the damage deposit and a month’s rent, and arranged to move in on Monday.

Life started looking up just a bit.

It was Sunday, January 22, 1989.

And every time I wonder if God is really watching out for me – keeping me from screwing up too irredeemably bad – I remember the events of this day, and sigh, and banish all doubts.

Because it was only through the grace of God that I didn’t end this day in jail.

After yesterday’s train-wreck, with my pan-addicted roommate Wyatt shooting up the house, I should  have called the authorities.  I should have sicced the cops on my erstwhile roommate.

But I took the hard way.
———-

I woke up on Mark and Bill’s couch. I hadn’t slept much that night. Part of it was the adrenaline.

Part of it was the nagging doubts about the plan Bill and I had hatched for the day.

But it was my plan. And I was going to follow through.

I got on the phone with the Yellow Pages and called the Midway U-Haul as soon as it opened. They didn’t have one of the $20, 20 foot trucks in stock – but they DID have a thirty-footer they’d give me for the same price. Overkill for what I needed to haul, but I’d take it.

Like a lot of new converts to shooting, Bill had become very enthusiastic. He had the whole collection laid out in his room; the SKS, a Colt M1911 (his father’s, from the war), a Walther P38 (which his father had liberated from a German officer in the Teutoburger Wald), an Enfield Mark IV, and a Smith and Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum – a blued beauty with a five-inch barrel. We figured there could be one or more more of Wyatt’s drug dealer friends in the house when we got there; it paid, we thought, to be prepared.

I stuck the .22 into the pocket of my jacket, but packed the .45 and a couple of magazines as a holdout to keep under the seat of the truck. Bill loaded the .44 with hollowpoints, and stuffed it in a jacket with a very deep pocket.

We drove to Saint Paul and checked out the UHaul truck, and left my car parked out on the street. Bill and I very carefully transferred our jackets and their we-had-no-idea-how-illegal cargo into the truck (along with the .45, wrapped in a blanket) , and the three of us lumbered down University to the East Side – to Lafayette, up Tedesco past Morelli’s, up Payne to the Stroh’s brewery, and left on Minnehaha. Finally, I maneuvered the too-big truck gingerly up the too-narrow side street, and parked in front of the house.

Wyatt’s van was there.

No turning back now, I thought. Here goes nothing.

Bill stood behind me, checking out the windows as I unlocked the door and walked inside. The house reeked of dog crap, stale pot smoke and Wyatt’s usual burned cooking. Mookie the little black Chow whimpered, needing to go out, as Jack the Akita – who clearly didn’t need to anymore – slunk away.

But Wyatt seemed to be gone.

———-

The nice thing about being a single, broke guy was that I didn’t have a lot of stuff. We took everything – a little dresser with my small, utilitarian collection of of clothes, my hanging wire and suit bag with my few “good” clothes, my table and little aluminum bookshelf and twin bed/mattress a couple of bags of extra stuff, my cello, and a couple of boxes of books – in less than an hour. Everything I owned in the world fit in one loose layer on the bottom of the huge truck, with plenty of room between items, and plenty more room to spare.  I could have moved eight or ten of me that day.

Depressing, but convenient under the circumstances.

As I went through the kitchen on a last go-round, emptying all of my pathetic collection of utensils, plates and food together into a box, I briefly thought about “rescuing” Mookie, but I had no place to put her, and no indication that I’d find a place that’d take pets, much less stolen Chows. I swallowed the regret as fast as it had popped up, and went to work.

We drove away in under an hour, guns safely hidden and un-used.

———-

We drove back to Minneapolis, unloaded my stuff at the band’s house, and took the truck back to Saint Paul. We picked up the car, and stashed the guns safely – and, finally, legally – in the trunk, and drove over to Henri’s bar for a beer and a pizza, the reward for helping me out in a jam. I picked up a “City Pages” on the way in, and looked at the “Rentals” section as we waited for the ‘za to come up.

I bypassed the “Roommates” column. Hell no, I thought, never again. It was gonna cost more, but I’d had enough.

And my eyes were drawn to a listing; one-bedroom upstairs duplex in Northeast Minneapolis. $300 a month.

I calculated my monthly income against my monthly outgo, took a deep breath, and circled it.

———

We drove back to Minneapolis again. I called the number. The apartment was still available, and I could take a look at it tomorrow at 10AM if I’d like. Until I found a place, Mark and Bill’s couch was going to be my home.

And then it was off to work. City Limits in Rosemount, again.  Much as I wanted the night off, I needed to rack up the hours.

I stuck the .22 in the pocket of the tweed jacket. I didn’t know what kind of drug Wyatt and his friends were going to be on that night, but I figured if he was addled and impaired enough to blast holes in the ceiling at imaginary crack dealers, either he or his friends could get just as crazy about someone who knew everything about their little business disappearing.

———-

In the years since then, I’ve pondered how lucky I was that day. Lucky the night before that Wyatt wasn’t awake and irrational and reaching for my loaded, chambered rifle when I burst into his room with my own loaded pistol. Lucky that neither he nor his “partners” or customers were around when we went to the house that day, with big attitudes and warped post-adolescent priorities and hollow-points. Lucky we didn’t get pulled over, strapped like the Barker kids. Lucky we didn’t all end up in jail.

I’d like to say that life bottomed out that day. In a way, it did; I’ve never done anything quite as dumb as that since then.

I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

And at least I learned something.  I pondered, for the first time in two decades – whatever happened to Wyatt?

After almost two decades of not really thinking about this whole stupid chain of episodes, I googled Wyatt (which is, by the way, not his real name) when I first wrote this installment (back in March of 2008, as I recall). Putting the story together, Wyatt – the scion and only son of a mind-warpingly wealthy Connecticut/New York family, son of a Korea-era Navy UDT frogman who’d become a multimillionaire in the insurance business – was apparently arrested about two years ago, at age 41, for breaking into a liquor store in a major coastal city and stealing $300 worth of wine. He apparently then jumped bail, and was arrested months later on a “Failure to Appear” warrant.

I can’t say I was much surprised.

It was Saturday, January 21, 1989.

Just so you know, I have standards. I had ’em back twenty years ago, too. Examples:

• Steal my stuff? I could get upset.
• Trash my place? Don’t do it, buddy.
• Threaten me? Not a good way to make me happy.
• Bring a criminal trade – and plenty of criminals – into my place, putting me at risk of getting arrested as an accomplice if I don’t report you, and getting beaten up or killed by a bunch of drug-dealing thugs if I do? Wooooh, now I’m starting to get upset.

To those of you out there who are keenly aware of how addicts and their enablers work – yep. I am – or was, in 1988, anyway – a ripe suck. A pushover. An easy target for a real addict.

But even I had my limits.

———-

It was bitterly cold night. Wyatt had left early before going to the bar to do his bouncer shift, so I relaxed a bit for the hour before I had to head out to my bar for the evening, the Mermaid. I drove out, grabbed a burger before my shift, and went to work.

It was a Saturday night at the Mermaid.  As crappy as I’d felt the previous night (er, morning), Saturdays at the ‘maid always made me feel good.  I mean, I hated my job, but at the ‘maid, at least I was able to do a good job that I hated.  The bar was jumping.  I kept ’em out on the floor.  It was a good night.

The bar closed down around 2AM (no booze after 1, of course).  I had an after work drink with the staff, and went home.

One drink.  In retrospect, it was a good call.

I parked out on the street, and walked in the door. It was about 2:45 AM, and very dark.

Shane was waiting in the front hallway. “Hey”, he whispered in the voice he used when he was about to let you in on a big secret.

“What’s up?” I asked, tired and waiting on the punch line.

“Wanna know where your rifle is?”

I felt a cold chill race up my back.  My heart sent a message to my brain; “Permission to start pounding, sir?”.

“What do you mean?”

Shane padded over to the stairwell and pointed up.

There were three jagged holes in the plaster above us. I felt a cold draft; I couldn’t tell if it was the cold night air leaking down through holes through the roof, or just my blood running ice-cold in fear and anger.

“He came home with some bar snatch” Shane started. “He was coked up…”

“Naturally…” I responded, leaning over to pick up a cartridge casing from the floor.

“…and thought he heard a crack dealer in the attic”. He’d been paranoid, apparently.

“So he…”, I started, already knowing the answer.

“He grabbed your rifle, loaded it, and busted off a couple of shots”, Shane completed the thought. “I was sitting in the living room watching a movie. It scared the shit out of me”.

“So where is he?”, I asked, waving Shane toward my room.

“Up in his bedroom, with the skeeze”.

“Where’s the rifle?”

“He took it up there with them”.

I walked through the door to my little garret in the front room, which Wyatt had helpfully left open, and flipped on the light. A box of cartridges lay on the desk, with a bunch of rounds scattered on the floor where Wyatt had let them scatter, apparently in his frenzy to shoot the “crack dealers in the attic”.

“I can’t handle this shit any more”, I muttered.

“Yeah”.

A plan formed in my head. Or, should I say, a “plan”.

I grabbed a day or two’s worth of clothes, the box of cartridges, a couple of personal treasures – some photos, books and so on – and stuffed them into the duffel bag. I took them and my acoustic guitar (my electrics were over at the band’s practice space) and a little .22 rifle I had stashed behind the bed, and ran them out to the car. Shane grabbed a trash bag full of his own stuff and did the same.

One more thing to do.

I reached into my jacket pocket and grabbed the little .22 automatic.

Shane’s eyes got wide.  “Mitch, what the f**k?”

“I’m gonna get my rifle back”.

I racked a round; the little .22 chambered with a not-as-reassuring-as-a-.45 “snick”. I lowered the hammer (it was a double-action) as I padded up the stairs as quietly as I could go in my “work” dress shoes.

I held the gun in my right jacket pocket; I slipped the safety off as I stood aside the door frame, in case he figured he’d missed one of the “crack dealers” in the attic who was now coming to avenge his riddled buddies.

I knocked on the door. “Wyatt?”

Nothing.

“Wyatt?”

Still nothing.

I opened the door and stepped inside, moving out of the doorway into the shadow by the wall. The room reeked of booze and pot smoke. Wyatt and a woman I’d never seen (not that that was anything unusual), a thin black-haired woman who had the too-skinny look of someone who was no stranger to coke and uppers, were passed out under the covers. Soundly unconscious, they didn’t budge.

I saw the rifle, leaned against the wall by the bed. I grabbed it and quickly left the room, not bothering to shut the door. I safed and pocketed the pistol as I walked down the stairs, and checked the rifle as I walked into my room. The safety had been left off, I noticed as I remembered Wyatt’s “all the guns in the house should be under my control” rant the previous weekend. I unhooked the magazine and racked the bolt carrier back; a round flipped out onto the floor, and one more glared up from the detached magazine.

I cased the rifle, and ran out to the car. I stuffed the case in the trunk and drove away. I don’t think I locked the door on my way out.

———-
I’ve wondered about many things about that evening for the past twenty years. Did nobody in that loathsome neighborhood hear a bunch of large-caliber rifle shots coming from the house? Did nobody call the cops? (Why, indeed, did Shane apparently just keep on watching his movie?)

And, above all, for twenty years, I’ve pondered – what was the chick Wyatt brought home thinking? You’re met a skeezy, lowlife bouncer at a bar. You go to his place. He hears crack dealers in the attic. OK, if you’re drunk or jonesing I can see maybe letting all of that slide.

But then he grabs a rifle and blasts several holes in the ceiling – and then you go upstairs, hoover up some blow, and get the freak on?

Sometimes I’m happy that I got out of that time of my life with any regard for the human race.

Also, alive.

———-

I drove Shane to his friends’ place in Frogtown. Their phone had been disconnected, so I drove over to the old Texaco station on Snelling and Minnehaha to use the pay phone. I called my bandmates – it took a couple of tries – and arranged to sleep on their couch that night.

And one other thing.

It was Friday, January 20, 1989.

I worked at City Limits in Rosemount.  It was a pretty tame night.

Bummer.  I’d hoped for a fight to break out.

Because I wanted to hit someone.

My heart raced, I think, all night; I seemed to be on a big adrenaline buzz, and for no good reason.  I didn’t do drugs – and I didn’t have anything positive going on that’d justify it, either.

It was a slow, cold night.  The bowlers took off by 10.  The few girls that tried dancing left by 11ish. By midnight, the bar was down to me, the bartender, a waitress and a couple of regulars.

I looked around.  I hated the place.  Not just this place; I hated every one of the horrible bars I was working, City Limits, Jams, Wallaby’s, Whispers, Shooters, the White Bear, Silks, you name it.

I hated the way my ratty tweed jacket smelled like smoke.  I hated the ratty tweed jacket.  I hated the music I was playing – indeed, I was starting to hate music.  I rarely listened to music at home anymore.  Music – the joy of my life, the thing that’d led me to the Twin Cities three long years before – was an irritation.

Toward midnight a bunch of drunk snowmobilers came into the bar.  Four of them sat at the table next to the DJ booth.

“Heeeeeeey”, one of them bellowed.  “When are you gonna quit playing this…”

He’s gonna call it “n***er sh*t, I thought

“…n***er sh*t off and play some…”

He’s gonna call it “white peoples’ music”, isn’t he?

“…white peoples’ music?”

I hate my job, my jacket, music, the smell, the sound…I hate my life, I thought. But not as much as I hate you, you fat f**k.

“Ah.  White peoples’ music.  Sure.  What did you have in mind?”  Hank Junior? Lynyrd Skynyrd?

“Play some polkas“.

My jaw may have dropped.

“Sorry, fellas.  I’m fresh outta polkas”.

“I brought some!”

I stood there,mildly agog. “You brought polkas – on a snowmobile…” I started.  Then stopped.  “Sure.  What the f**k.  Bring ’em in”.

Two of them got up and left the bar.  They came back five minutes later with four albums of Swedish polkas.

Not even f***ing Polish polkas, or German polkas.  Swedish.

I stood there, as I cued up a song, puzzled at the depths of the rage I felt for the fat, drunk, bearded rednecks.   Why do I hate them so?

It mattered not.  I did.

I played a polka.  And counted the beat in my head; perfect.

I reached into the record bin and pulled out Prince’s Erotic City.  I cued it to the chorus, sped up the turntable just a bit…

…and during an instrumental break, mixed in the bit from the chorus:

“We can f**k until the dawn…”

The rednecks were none the wiser.

I cued it back, scratching the record over the polka beat.

We can…we we we – we can…we we we – we can f-f-f-f-f**k unti the the dawn…

Three of the rednecks sloshed around the floor, dancing with one of the drunk women from the bar, oblivious.
I stowed Prince.  Just an hour to go.

———-

Usually, when driving home from City Limits, I either went to Cedar (and then 35E) or drove up HIghway 3 to get to Saint Paul.  This time, when the bar let out for the night, I wandered over to Pilot Knob road.  Slowly – well below the speed limit – I meandered the back roads through Apple Valley, up through Eagan, and to the West Side of Saint Paul.  I crept through the side streets, as if I were sneaking up on an animal in my car – shifting, applying gas slowly, driving slowly and quietly.  Trying, it felt like, to disappear into the dark.

Eventually – like toward 2:30AM – I crept up Smith Avenue above the High Bridge. I turned onto Cherokee, which runs along the top of the gorge on the south side of the Mississippi River, across from downtown Saint Paul.  I slithered my car into a parking spot and sat, looking over the city.

I looked around.

I saw nothing but rejection.  My career had rejected me, I thought, flipping the radio off.  The music racket had pretty well had enough of me.  Girls, friends, attempts to break out of the rut – all of them shaken their figurative heads and looked elsewhere.

And so here I am.

F**k. There must be a reason for this.  There must be a reason my life has completely stalled.  That I’m living in a rat trap, getting conned monthly by a f***ing drug addict.  

I deserve this.

I looked over the city.

No.  Bulls**t.  Something’s gotta change.

I felt cold.

But it isn’t gonna change.

I was right.

And wrong.  But not in the way I’d have ever predicted.

It was Wednesday, January 18, 1989.

I was getting ready to head out to one of my bars. Wyatt was about to head out to his.  He’d just sent one of his girls – a bartender from a bar on University where he worked – on her way before Teresa came over for the night.  He was drunk and high.

After the blowup a few weeks ago, we hadn’t talked much.  I was looking for a way either to get him out of there or, perhaps even better, get me out of there.

I’d lived with roommates pretty steadily since my sophomore year of college. Some were good, some were insane – but this was getting ridiculous.  Maybe I can figure out a way to afford a place of my own, I thought as I heard Wyatt padding down the stairs.

“You got the rent or NSP for the last two months?”

He snorted.  “I told you I’d pay that when all the product gets moved”.  He walked on, apparently thinking that settled it.

I’ve heard that before, I thought about saying.  But what’s the point?
“Hey”, he said padding past my room again.  “I’m thinkin’ maybe all the guns in the house should go through me for safekeeping”.

“Uh huh”, I muttered, tying my shoes.

“Because I’m the only person in the house who knows how to handle them”.

“Whatever”.

He padded back upstairs.

I headed out to the car and started driving to work.

He’s dealing drugs out of the house.  AND he’s a moron.  And when, not if, he gets busted, I’ll end up in a world of s**t too.  What can I do?

Part of my brain strained to recollect the names of cops I could talk to, that I’d met while covering police stuff for neighborhood papers back in ’86 and ’87.

Nothing, another part of my brain thought.  Not a damn thing.  Ever.

As much as I razz Twin Citians for their whinging about “cold” and “weather” – neither of which hold a candle to Northern Minnesota, much less the Dakotas’ weather – I’ll make this admission here, to just you and I.

The fact that it’s 19 degrees at 9AM doesn’t bother me.  Not one bit.

Last week, I scheduled “Talk Like James Hetfield Dayaaaaaah” for January 22.

This was before I realized that the annual Blogs For Mirth Day celebration was scheduled for the same day.

I will therefore reschedule Talk Like James Hetfield Dayaaaaaah” for February 24.

Off to neverlandaaaaaah.

It was Saturday, January 7, 1989.

You might recall a couple of weeks ago – Wyatt, my omni-addicted roommate, decided to start selling cocaine from our hovel on the East Side of Saint Paul, to “pay up what he owed me” among other things.

I hadn’t had the highest hopes on that.

Like most things in life, the situation lived down to, and below, my least stringent expectations.

He hadn’t started paying the bills. He had, however, been dipping into the stock – so in addition to selling coke out of the house and from the bar during his evening “job” (as a a bouncer at a sleazy bar on University), he was starting to behave less rationally.

On the other hand, there was the never-ending entertainment of watching the parade of bimbos trooping through the house even faster. He’d occasionally bring home a floozy from a bar during the day, bring one home after his “shift”, and then have the girlfriend over after he shooed floozy #2 on her way.

But the bills? They went begging.

It was about 5PM. I’d just made a frozen pizza, and was watching some Kung Fu movie in the living room, on a ratty recliner that one of us had dragged home.

Wyatt slouched through from the kitchen. “I’m headin’ out to Fargo with Michelle”, he said, referring in his fake arklahoma accent to one of the semi-regular floozies “to the casino”. He was addicted, need I add, to gambling.

It’d be a mistake to say I “snapped”. But I had had about enough.

“You got money for blackjack?” I looked up from the TV. “Could you spare a buck or two for the rent or the NSP?”

Shane, sitting on the couch, looked at us.

“F**k you” Wyatt muttered, continuing toward the stairs.

“I’ll take that as a no?”

He turned around, and stomped back into the room, shoulders squared back, teeth gritted, standing right in front of the chair.

“F*WK YOU!” he bellowed.

“Uh huh”, I nodded my head. “I pretty well am, these days”.

“YOU ARE F**KING PATHETIC!” he bellowed. “YOU WANNA F*CK WITH ME?”, he said, grabbing the arms of the chair on either side of me, leaning over until his face was three inches from mine. “I WILL EAT YOU! THE STRONG EAT THE WEAK! AND YOU ARE THE WEAK!”

It smelled like booze.  His eyes looked coked-up.
Kick him in the nuts, I thought to myself. Buy yourself enough time to get out of the chair. Pull the knife, I thought, the lockblade that I kept in my back pocket and cut him up. Kill him.

Wyatt stood up and stomped to the stairs.

“Yeah, “strong”, Mister Addicted-To-Everything”, I muttered, standing up, reaching my hand into my back pocket for the knife just in case.

“FA*K YOU”, he bellowed. “THE STRONG EAT THE WEAK!”

Come back here and do something, you f****ng scumbag, I thought. Give me an excuse. I don’t care anymore.

“Wow”, Shane said, grinning grimly. Wyatt was into him for bill money, too.

“You need to move the f*ck out of here!”, I yelled.

“F*CK YOU!”, he yelled from upstairs.

“Pay the bills, or move out!”

“YOU MOVE OUT. THIS PLACE IS MINE!”

“Pay the bills or move out”, I yelled, stepping into my room. I slipped on my tweed jacket I wore to work.

The one with the little .22 pistol stuck deep in the pocket.

Wyatt had to go.

Last year and the year before I posted looks back at the previous years’ big goals (I don’t do “resolutions”), just to do a quick gut-check.

Heck.  Why not?

(answers in blue):

1. The bike thing: Start earlier. Indeed, try to start biking to work this spring, before school lets out for the summer, and try to continue after school starts in the fall, to extend my biking season ideally from April through October. (Alternate option: gain a LOT of weight, so I can easily conceal an S&W Model 29 or an M1911A1 or something. Health vs. Firepower…firepower vs. health…oh, screw it, I’ll take the health). (I went with option A – and it was both very successful and a lot of fun!  Although I got started three weeks later than I wanted to; it was a cold spring, wasn’t it?  Not to say I’m not going to invest (or, perhaps, that I haven’t already) in a good biking carry rig – but I’m feeling much better in general)
2. That’s gonna involve the Great White Whale of my personal life; getting my kids to get up and reliably get their own butts to school in the morning. It’s going to take some work.  (Baby steps…)
3. Continue Bun’s great success in school. It’s been a huge, and gratifying, turnaround for her. (It went well!)
4. Get Zam to turn the corner. (Oh, what’s life without a few daunting, difficult-to-requite challenges?)
5. Work hard on enacting True North’s goals for the year – of which much more later.  (It was a very good year!v
6. Find the next step for the NARN, and take it. That mostly involves listening for that banging sound, and figuring it’s opportunity rather than just kids leaving bags of burning poop.  (It was a great year, and there are opportunities.  Who could ask more?)
   

So anyway – all the best to all of you!

For next year?

1. Build that patio.
2. Have my housewarming party – 16 years after I moved in.
3. Get biking by April 1 come hell, high water or deep snow.
4. Find a time, amid all the teenager-y tumult, to have a personal and social life again.

We’ll check back in a year or so…

…but my transmission sticks when I try to put it in “idle”.

My employer gave us a four-day weekend last week.  I can’t say that I’ve never had employers give us a floater on the day after a Thursday Christmas.

But not only do we have today off – we have tomorrow off as well.

I wouldn’t say I’m a workaholic – I like my job a lot, of course – but I don’t do time off very gracefully.  Part of it is having been a contractor/freelancer for most of the past decade; time is money, or at least it was for a long, long time.  Part of it is I’m just not someone who relaxes well.

Today’s one thing.  Nobody’s working.  I can  more or less justify taking a long steam at the gym and vegging out and watching the Monk marathon.

Tomorrow?  Ugh.  I’ll be fidgeting starting by 6AM.  I’ll probably start sanding floors by 9.

How do people learn how to relax, anyway?

…it would go without saying – Happy New Year from the whole staff at Shot In The Dark!

For the 20-somethingth year in a row, I’m utterly hangover-free, having done, well, nothing whatsoever to ring in the new year.

…without comment.

Every year, reading stories like this, the idea of switching to the Russian Orthodox Church – with its January 7 observance of Christmas – resonates.

Just a little.

From Luke – one of history’s original bloggers, 2,000 years ago (give or take a few):

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ^[a] the Lord.

This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.”

Merry Christmas, all.

Posting will be, obviously, pretty nonexistant today.

While I actually had all my serious shopping done a week ago, I always make a point of saving one last thing on my Christmas list for Christmas Eve. 

I like to have that one bit of last-minute, woozy, frantic, cheery mayhem before I head home for the family holiday – but just a very controlled dose of it.  So one item (per kid) it is.  It’s always one of the highlights of the day. 

And time’s a-wastin’, so I’m on my way.

At any rate – this has been a good year for me, the Berg family, and this blog.  Thank you all for stopping by this past year, and may you all have a wonderful, blessed Christmas season.

1. Getting your underwear and t-shirt picked out the night before
2. Laying them out on the bathroom radiator.
3. Putting sweatshirt, gloves and cap on living room radiator.
4. Taking the morning shower.
5. Putting on toasty clothes.
6. Putting on toasty outerwear before leaving the house.

MLP at Casual Sundays with Mr. Curry and I have so many “one degree of separation” links, it’s hard to even count ’em all.

This story takes us back to my sophomore year of college:

Twenty six years ago last night, Jay and I were in Jamestown, North Dakota, at a Christmas party at the home of Jay’s boss, Mike Olsen, the athletic director of Jamestown college, where Jay was in the first year of his first job as a college head coach.Lots of info in that sentence, yet none of it pertinent to the story.

Jay was the head coach of JC’s basketball team.  He also taught the mandatory, perfuntory one-semester phy ed class that was part our general requirements.  So I took Tennis.  I don’t think he knew tennis any better than I did (my dad, by the way, was a tennis coach for many years).
But it was a fun class, mainly because Jay was a hoot. He was also the only other Southside Johnny fan in North Dakota.

I did not remember this bit and,indeed, don’t recall ever meeting MLP when I was at JC – but that’s not unusual.  Most College faculty didn’t hang around town that much.

Yes, we were in Jamestown. But what I didn’t tell you, what nobody knows yet, is that I was over nine months pregnant.

My due date was the 14th. Like most first timers, when my due date came and went, I simply assumed I would be pregnant forever. That’s right; it was all a cruel joke perpetrated by Mother Nature, that bitch! and that I, formerly svelte and athletic, was doomed to spend the rest of my life waddling about like an arthritic blimp.

So we went to a Christmas party at the home of Jay’s boss.

Where my water broke all over their living room couch.

EEEEEWWWWWW!!!!

On the other hand, I never liked Mike Olson much, so – cool!

(Although Olson brought JC a slew of national wrestling championships.  Might as well give the AD his due…)

Many entertaining tangents ensue.

Then:

Back to the past…Jay and I stayed at the party long enough for him to open his present, before we headed to the hospital to meet our future ohmygod, I just Carrie Bradshawed!! I loved the show Sex and the City, but come on! That girl was the worst writer ever. Cutesy the Twat should’ve been beaten to death with her own laptop.Anyway… Jamestown is small so it took us all of ten minutes to run home, grab my night bag and get to the hospital. We checked in at about 10:30 and Tyler Patrick was born around 3:00 a.m. That’s remarkably quick for a first timer, but in my family, slow as molasses. My Mom has nine kids and I had already logged more cumulative hours in labor than she ever would.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Jay decided that that was it; he could never put me through such an ordeal again. Yeah, that worked out. Have you met our three other kids?

Having babies is amazing. When you are in the thick of it, you swear nothing could possibly be worth the trouble. Then, at the height of the awful, they hand you the most wonderful, awesome, fascinating and beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, felt or imagined; your own child.

The world literally changes.

Okay, the world doesn’t change, the world doesn’t even notice. Here’s what’s important; You change.

Observations…:

If it had been up to me, Tyler would never have been allowed to do anything out of my sight. It was Jay who convinced me to let Tyler and Katie walk the four blocks to the ice rink at Lake of the Isles when they were five and seven. I stood at the window and watched the spot where they’d disappeared around the corner until they came back, two hours later. It was Jay who convinced me to let Tyler roller blade from our house near Lake of the Isles to Gramma’s house on Lake Harriet when he was nine. I made him carry identification and call me from my folk’s house the second he got there. It was Jay who got Ty the job as ballboy with the Timberwolves when he was in seventh grade, and Jay who decided Ty could catch a bus from his school to the Target Arena downtown. Boys need Dad’s to grow up to be men. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.In the blink of an eye, that’s what happens. They grow up to be men. I miss that skinny, excitable, energetic little boy with the huge blue eyes. Sometimes it makes me sad to know that he’s gone and he’s never coming back. But the truth is that every year he becomes more of the kid that I love.

Once they get through that teenage stuff, anyway.  Grrr.

When I was a kid, one of the best things about the holidays was that Mom would make Chex Party Mix.

Bear with me, here.

For whatever reason, Mom made a bunch of batches of CxPM with a lot of extra Worcestershire sauce.  This extra sauce baked into a hard, salty coating around the Chex, making it extra delicious in a way that stuck with me for the past thirty-odd years.

It occurred to me whilst walking through the Worcestershire sauce aisle the other day; “I’m a grownup.  I can not only make my own Chex Party Mix – but I can try to re-create Mom’s old recipe.  Maybe improve on it!”

So I did.  Bought the Chex, the nuts, the pretzels, the garlic salt, and the economy-sized Worcestershire Sauce bottle with the no-splash spout.  And I went to work.  I added extra Worcestershire sauce.  I bumped up the garlic.  I let it bake a skosh longer.
And the results?

Totally worth the wait.

That’s my family tradition.
That is all.

Learned Foot [pen name] discusses discovering Learned Foote. [pen name well, blow me down – it’s a real name. Who knew?]

I don’t have that problem, so much – there are actually three Mitch Bergs in the Twin Cities that I know of, and for many years one of them worked in IT. He must have been older than me; while we never met, I knew plenty of people who’d worked with him at Control Data.

My dad, Bruce Berg, had it weirder. There was another Bruce Berg in Jamestown, North Dakota. My dad was a high school teacher; the other one was in Human Resources at the factory on the north hill. To make things confusing, they both lived on the 700 block of 2nd Avenue – one of them on the north side, the other on the south. Every time there was a blizzard, we’d get inundated with people calling in sick; likewise the other Mr. Berg got plenty of calls for help with homework, I’m told. The funny part? In a town of 15,000 where everyone knows everyone, I’m not sure that they ever met.

The top three most maddening things about my name?

3. Oy, Avay: People assume I’m Jewish. Berg is, obviously, a common Jewish surname. As it happens, it’s also quite common among goyim in Northern Europe as well; it’s German, Swedish and Norwegian for “Mountain”; like every goy named Montaña, Montagne, Vuori, Gornik, Núi and Planina, my anscestors were from the hill country. Apparently. It used to cause both yuks and consternation when I was at KSTP-AM back in the eighties; I got the occasional anti-semitic call, even a death threat or two. I’m about as Jewish as a bacon cheeseburger, but this being right after the murder of Alan Berg, I didn’t entirely laugh it off.

2. Punt This: For years – I do mean years and years – I’d say my name on the phone. People would audibly light up; “The Mitch Berger? The Vikings punter?” And no, just because he left the Vikes in 2000 doesn’t mean it’s over; my place-setting at the company Christmas party this year? Yep – the place card was for “Mitch Berger”. Next year I’ll wear a Steelers’ uniform and run with it. As it were.
1. Screw “U”: When I give my name to people on the phone or in person, I usually go “Name’s Mitch Berg, B E R G”. That’s to avoid the one question in the world of which I’m the sickest; “Is that B U R G or…”. In all my years, I have ever once met a single Burg with a “u”. I’m sure they exist, but good lord, they are scarce; there are probably as many people who spell it “Byrg”. There must be 50 Bergs for every Burg in the world. And yet every single time I don’t spell it out letter by letter, I kid you not, people guess “Burg”. Will it never end?

Not a huge problem, obviously. Just had to get it out there.