My Dad can cook.

It hasn’t always been the case, and there have been some hard lessons in some of the culinary skills, but overall, my dad can find his way around the kitchen fairly well.

At times, he has too.

There just isn’t that many people that make some of the old family and old world favorites.  His ground cherry pie is good.  His beet pickles are the toast of the town.  His grape jelly is a neighborhood favorite.  No one can touch his creamed cucumbers.  He can make some of the old family dishes too.

Years ago, as dad was learning his way around the kitchen, he broke out some of the old family recipes.  Some of those things that even as kids, we never experienced.  He would cook up some of his specialty Czech sausages, Jiterice.  The slimy sausage was best described to me by a butcher in the very Bohemian town of Lonsdale, MN.  When asked what was in the Jiterice sausage, he stopped wrapping the sausage in the white butcher paper…paused for a moment…then slowly turned my direction.  Folding his arms across his chest and squinting at me slightly, he said in a very earnest voice….”The Czech are a very frugal people…”

Then he turned around and kept on wrapping.

I was not surprised to go home one weekend to find dad in the kitchen.

“You need to try my dumplings.  They are good.”  He said.

“Are you talking about the dumplings like Mom used to make in her sauerkraut?” I asked innocently.

“Are you kidding!  No.  These are good, authentic, Bohemian dumplings.  They are meal all by themselves.  Especially served with scrambled egg and sausage.”  Dad replied.

Sure enough, the next night, the dumplings came out.  Made of potatoes and flour, formed by hand into softball sized balls, they are boiled and cooled.  When you need the carbohydrates for a meal, they are cut up into pieces and fried in a pan with butter.

We didn’t have eggs with them…I will admit, I wanted to try these taste temptations without the eggs, just to see if they were really that good.

Putting a healthy…nope…a generous helping onto each of our plates next to the sausage, I had my first taste of my Dad’s potato dumplings.

“Dad, these are really good.”  I said, with a smile on my face.

“Yeah, but they aren’t like your great grandpa used to make.”  My Dad intoned, he had lived with his uncle and grandfather (my great uncle and great grandfather) on and off through his youth.  And bachelor and a widower respectively, they had to learn to cook and eat for themselves.

“How are they different?” I asked, putting more of the morsels into my mouth.

“Grandpa’s dumplings were just a lot darker.”  Dad said also between bits.

Running through the list of ingredients in my head…I struggled to find one that would impact the color that much.  “What did he put in them that would make them darker?” I asked.

“Nothing.  Your great-grandpa just didn’t wash his hands that much.”  Dad replied.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

The mornings this week held a chill.  More than once I could see my breath as I shuffled through the dew on the way across the backyard.

There have been plenty of signs of fall.  Trees are exploding with color.  School is settling down to a comfortable routine.  Gardens are getting the bedraggled look that comes at the end of a productive season.  Television shows have new episodes.  The calendar puts it in black and white: “First Day of Autumn.”

Still, fall caught me by surprise.  “Summer can’t possible be over,” I think.  There is too much to do.  I still don’t have all those storm windows up.  I’d like to do a little painting.  The yard could use some work.  Summer can’t be over.”

Then one morning, I walked out the back door and the air was so unexpectedly cold and crisp that it caught in my throat.  There is no denying fall then.

Fall signals an end to summer and all it’s lazy pleasures.  It’s a harbinger of winter with its gray skies, snow and ice.  And yet, despite those dire messages, fall is somehow exhilarating.

 Autumn sunlight is golden.  Sunrises are spectacular, eclipsed only by the colorful whimsy of sunsets.  Brown rows of corn and soybeans stand ready to give up their bounty.  Combines, trucks and tractors creep across the fields.  In the twilight their lights cast yellow cones of brightness through swirling harvest dust.

Trees, now losing their fair-weather foliage, cast long, shadows in the clear air and sharp light.  Crisp nights are perfect for football, bonfires, favorite sweaters and romance.  Lakes and rivers and romance.  Lakes and rivers give up their summer-saved heat as steam to early morning coolness.  Cheeks turn red as the maple leaves that crunch underfoot.

Pumpkins turn blazing orange, in anticipation of Halloween Jack-O-Lanterns carvers and Thanksgiving pie makers.  Apples glow rosy red in their baskets, promising cider, applesauce and other delights.

Autumn rituals abound.  We winterize our houses.  The furnace gets a test run.  There a red leaves to be raked and a garden to be tilled.  Where’s the snow shovel?  The car’s antifreeze gets an annual check.  It’s time to think about snow tires.

It all reminds us that soon snow will drift around the empty trees, the wind will howl at the windows and snow will pummel door.  The cold will suck the color from the landscape and we will long for spring.

But on these golden September mornings and during crisp October evenings it’s easy to push winter from my thoughts.  There’s no time like Autumn in the Midwest.  There are so many sights and sounds and odors.  Life in Autumn’s light cries out to be enjoyed, not squandered worrying about winter.  Even breathing feels good.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today on October 7, 1987)

 Harvest is in full swing now and just about everywhere you go tractors and combines are scurrying across the fields to get the crops in.It’s an exciting time in rural Iowa.  Attention has been focused on the crops.  How will yields be this year?  What’s the quality like?  Where will we put them?Almost equal media attention has been focused on farmers.  We’ve all seen the pictures of the stoic farmers firmly facing the future.  Will the American farmer survive?  Will corporations replace family farms?

 My grandfather was kind to a fault.  As a kid, he laughed often, he had a great sense of humor, and he was willing to stop and explain things, which to a youngster in a big family, was not just admirable, it was darn near heroic.

Grandpa, my mother’s father, was born on the outskirts of St. Paul and spent his life raising his ten children and usually working two jobs in the process, with most of his time and energy spent working in the packing plants of South St. Paul.

In my young eyes, my grandfather had only one fault, he was a baseball fanatic.

Growing up on the farm, we couldn’t quite understand the attraction of baseball.  Most of our summers seemed liked in epic battles with the weather, with the land, with uncooperative cows, with low prices, with trying to make sure the crops got raised, the hay got baled, the cows got fed and milked.  We didn’t have time for baseball.

In the evenings as we did the evening milking, we would get disgusted as the Fargo radio station switched to the Twins broadcast.  We would loose the music, we would loose the news, we would loose the weather and would be stuck milking cows to the sound of the Minnesota Twins and their foes for the evening.

True baseball fans will be horrified by this point in time, but you need to realize that while milking, your life is lived in one minute snippets of time.  It was three minutes of work followed by two minutes of rest as the machines milked, it was our time to catch up on the happenings of the day before we had to change the milking machines again.

Baseball was not meant to be listened too in two minute snippets.

One minute we would hear that Kirby Puckett was 2-3 and the Twins were down 2-4 with the Kansas City Royals with one batter on second in the bottom of the 6^th and we would be called away to change the milkers to the next round of cows.

Three minutes later, it was the bottom of the seventh with the Twins back to bat, now up 5-4…and we were left to scratch our heads wondering what in the world had happened.

For Grandpa, it was a near obsession.  On Sunday visits to their retirement home in Park Rapids, MN, he would meander off into a corner of the yard with his radio to listen to Herb Carneal call the play-by-play.

When they would come to visit us on the farm, Grandpa and Grandma would help Mom in the garden, but the work would either come to an end or move to the sound of the television or radio in the house as the national anthem was played and the players took the field.

I remember one day in particular when I was twelve, my grandparents were visiting on a clear October day, helping Mom get the last of the vegetables out of the garden.  At seven, before milking was done, before the garden was cleared, before the table was set for dinner, my grandpa stopped and walked into the living room and turned on the television.

“What are you doing grandpa?”  I asked.

“I’m watching the Twins.”  He said with a look of mild surprise in his face.

“But theirs work to do!”  I said with an equal amount of surprise.

“It’s the Twins!  They are in the playoffs!  This is history!”  He replied.

Going out to gather another round of tomatoes, I wondered about my grandfather.

Looking back, I admire grandpa more then ever.  Baseball is America’s pastime for a reason.  There is strategy, excitement, comradery.  It helps break through the fog of the work-a-day world, especially for the back breaking work that my grandfather had to deal with.  It was a relief; it provided a sense of hope.  It gave something to cheer about!  I wish I would have watched that game with my grandfather that night…both to spend some time with a man I admired but knew too little about…partly because he was right, it was history…the Twins were on their drive for their first world series victory that year!

 I’ve moved before.  From the small town in Minnesota to Fargo.  Fargo to Illinois.  Illinois to Wichita.  Wichita to Minneapolis.  Minneapolis to Ohio.  Ohio back to Minneapolis.  None of those moves seemed permanent.  All were still in this country.

For some reason, the move to Australia seems a little more permanent.  Though it is a twelve month assignment, part of me feels like it is a sign I’m growing up, growing older.

Heading back to homecoming at North Dakota State University this weekend, the memories floated through the fog of time, sometimes crystallizing in such clear detail it was like I was right back there.

Seeing my friend Dave brought back the first meeting at his folk’s house in Devil’s Lake, ND - trying to recruit him for our fraternity.  Who would have guessed that eleven years later he would have married his high school sweetheart Traci and that they would both become some of my closest friends?  I’ve been in their wedding.  I’ve the Godfather to their son.

Seeing my friend Tobin brought back the memory when the long arm of the FFA humbled me back down to earth.  Celebrating at the Red River Valley Fair in Fargo one summer, enjoying the night, enjoying a concert, and making a scene of myself in the process, Tobin tapped my shoulder and asked, “Didn’t you speak at my FFA banquet?”  Gulp.  I never felt so small.  Tobin and his wife Karen are both good friends and close confidants.

Sitting around the table Paradiso in Fargo with friends from college and their families brought back memories of breakfasts long, and not so long ago…breakfast’s of my FarmHouse family.  Sometimes four people, sometimes twenty.

Watching my friend Dave play in a duet at a local watering hole flooded back memories of seeing him and his band play back in the college days.  Lonesome Run was a destination for our fraternity family…Acoustic Addiction, his current group, is obviously a destination spot for us today, with over twenty of us front and center for their Friday night performance.

I saw Scott and Elizabeth - newlyweds from this summer.  Both much younger then me, one a Bison fan, one a Sioux fan.  Both darn good people.  Scott was brave enough to ride shotgun with me on an icy stretch of road in Iowa years ago on a breakfast run.

Seeing my friend Matt walking through the tailgate brought me right back to the foyer of our fraternity house ages ago - at the time thinking how could I ever be friends with this cocky loud mouth?  Once again, was humbled, for I judged too harshly.  It doesn’t seem that long ago that I flew into his wedding in Bismarck from Ohio.  I’ve drove the back roads of North Dakota, checking crops, checking the local watering holes, spending time with his wife Stacy and two little boys, enjoying their hard work, good conversation, and sense of fair play.

I saw Derek and his wife Jen…and their three boys.  I met them separately.  Derek at college, Jen at a party in my hometown dating a friend from high school.  Who would have guessed at the time they would meet and marry?  But I remember being impressed with them both from the start, so it should come at no surprise.

I saw Chris and Kelly - and their two little boys.  I’ve never sparred with people that have as dry of humor as them…and I realized how much I miss that.

The list of friends and memories go on…Greg and Melissa, Todd and Heather, Dan and Shannon, Ryan and Jena, the Goettle clan.  Then there were those that were missed…Jed and Shannon, Ryan and Erin, Matt and Pat, Kaaren, Gladys, Bob…and the list goes on….

It is humbling to think about how richly we have been blessed with good friends, good times, and good memories.  Regardless where I reside, what far distance piece of the earth my head might rest on at night, a piece of my heart and mind will still reside with those people on the prairie who have graced my life with their friendship.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

Going home is bittersweet.

It’s great to see family and friends.  It’s wonderful to revisit old memories and catch up on what’s new.  We had a great time during our visit at home during the holidays.

But each return to my parents’ Minnesota farm brings home the fact that I’ll never catch up with what’s happening there.

My mother fills me in on the vital news around town.  I know the news that makes the newspapers.  I’m up on who married who, who did what, and what’s being built there.

It’s the most subtle things that I’m missing.

I remember a time when deer tracks along the road were news to be discussed over breakfast.  We wondered where the deer was hiding.  In the slough near the alfalfa field?  The grove of trees around the vacant farm down the road?  Could it have been the buck we saw during harvest?

Other happenings were big news too.  We chuckled about the frisky, new-born Holstein whose gangly legs seemed to more than he could handle.  A cow with no appetite was cause for concern as was a broken chain on a manure spreader.

The tigerstrip cat and her bulging midsection led to speculation about when the next batch of kittens would appear.  The season of the year lent themselves to different topics.  Is the hay “fit”?  Are the oats too “tough” to combine?  We could tell how cold it was by how many pipes were frozen in the barn.  We knew that steam rising from black fields in the spring was “the frost coming out.”

I knew where that dent came form in the combine.  I knew which calf belonged to that big cow.  I skinned my knuckles when we put up new stalls in the barn and I blistered my hands the summer we built that fence by the road.  I remember dusty, dirty, hot spring afternoons spent gathering stumps and branches from just-cleared land.  We piled them high.  When we burned them, the entire western horizon looked as if it was on fire.

Now the stalls are reinforced and the fence is moved.  The combine is parked behind the trees.  All the brush piles are gone now, burned and buried.

There are trees missing from the farm place now.  There is a pipeline milking machine in the barn that I don’t know how to use.  The old Surge milkers that I used to use hang on the wall, gathering dust.  Where did that fence come from?  That dog that I still think of as a puppy is beginning to show her age.

In the grand scheme of life, where great nations die while others are born, these things seem trivial and almost petty.  I think that there ought to be more important things to worry about than missing trees and an aging dog.  Life moves faster and is filled with big decisions, big changes and big dreams.  I find it difficult to slow down enough to enjoy the simple, insignificant happenings of everyday life.

But somehow those thoughts of trivial things linger.  Perhaps those thoughts are so troubling because they remind me that sometimes the insignificant things can turn out to be the most significant of all.

This Country Boy is moving to Australia.  Thanks to a good career opportunity, I will be spending the next 12 months in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.  From the frozen plains of the great upper Midwest of the United States, to the hills and vales of Australia…what a trip for niave country boy.

(Tom Jirik wrote columns in several newspapers in Iowa from the late 1980’s to the mid 1990’s.  This column originally appeared in the The Boone Today) 

“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale,” I sang as I strode into the kitchen.  “A tale of a fateful trip.”

“That started in this tropic port, aboard this tiny ship,” my wife countered with the next line from the “Gilligan’s Island” theme.  Then she looked at me and hatred and loathing flashed in her eyes.  “I hate when you do that,” she said.

“What?” I asked innocently.  “What did I do now?”

“You’ve infected me with another stupid song,” she said venomously.  “You come in here singing some idiotic song and the next thing I know, I’m singing too.”

I didn’t start out doing it on purpose.

By nature, I’m a musical kind of guy.  I was voted “Most musical” in my high school class.  I love music.  I hum or whistle or sing almost all day long.  It’s therapy.  It’s my way of keeping stress in check.

I can’t help it if music is infectious.

I’m sure you’ve been infected by a song before.  The words and the tune circle endlessly inside your head.  No matter what you do, you can’t stop thinking about that song.  And if you’re not careful, you’ll wind up humming, singing or whistling along with the tune in your head.  It can be incredibly frustrating.

Like a good case of the flu, a good song is catchy.  And a bad song is absolutely contagious.  TV themes songs almost need a quarantine to keep them under control. And like a contagious disease, the best way to cope is to just let the song run its course.  But in the meantime, you’re likely to infect some else.

And that’s how it happened.  I’d get some crazy song rolling around in my head, like that little tune from the Old Spice commercial, and before you know it Mary would be humming it too.   And it drove her crazy.

That’s when I started doing it on purpose.  I love her dearly, but antagonizing her can be so much fun.  Those of you with spouses know what I’m talking about.

Now I try to think of some weird song.  I’ll whistle or hum while we’re doing dishes or riding in the car.  Other times I’ll try to slip a line from a song into a conversation.  Sometimes, Mary doesn’t even notice.  Sometimes she catches me in the act.  But more often than not, I’ll successfully infect her.

One day last week, thanks to me, she came down with Gordon Lightfoot’s “the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.  “The infection was so severe that I thought she was going to have to call in sick to work, I’ve found that tunes by the Beach Boys and the Beatles are good candidates.  I’ve had a lot of success with “Yellow Submarine.”

But things are beginning to get nasty. Mary is learning to fight fire with fire.  She recently infected me with the theme song from the “Beverly Hillbilllies.”  The lyrics from the end of the show ran through my mind again and again.  “Now it’s time to day goodbye to Jed and all his kin.  And they would like to thank you folks for kindly dropping in.  You’re all invited back next week to this locality, to have another helping of their hospitality.”

It’s a stupid song with stupid lyrics, but it has staying power.  And it does seem like an appropriate way to end this column.

“Y’all come back now! Y’hear!”

I’m not a beauty pageant type of guy.  I’m singer.  I have no talent to speak of.  I look really, really, really, really, really bad in a bathing suit.  I’m a classic introvert…with some decent social skills.Yet there I was, standing on the stage of NDSU Homecoming, wearing the rented tuxedo with the ribbon pinned on me that made me look like a prize winning bull at the county fair.

Yup, I was a “Homecoming Court Candidate.”

The process of becoming a candidate was fairly straight forward.  You were nominated by a group or organization.  You went through several rounds of interviews.  You smiled for the camera.  You showed off your merits and talked about school pride.

I really didn’t think that I had a chance.

I still remember getting the phone call the night about two weeks before homecoming: “Mark Jirik, this phone call is to let you know that you have been selected as a candidate for Homecoming King during this year’s NDSU’s Homecoming festivities.  You and four other men will compete in a voting competition to determine who will win the title of Homecoming King.  Please report to the library tomorrow morning for pictures that will appear in the Spectrum (the college newspaper).  Congratulations and best of luck!”

Gulp.

“What was that all about?”  One of my fraternity brother’s questioned as I solemnly hung up the phone.  More in shock then anything else.

“I think I’m in read trouble.”  I said….to embarrassed to say any more…

When I showed up for my mug shot on the front page of the college paper, I was handed a seemingly massive green ribbon that said, “Homecoming King Candidate.”

“You must wear this at all times as people try to determine who they will vote for!”  the perky coordinator for the candidates told us.

I’m not sure if I was able to hide the horror on my face.  The image of me walking around campus with a big bright ribbon pinned on my chest was a bit horrifying…I could just see the people looking at us like a class of bulls in the show ring….

“That one has good marbling through the center and very nice muscling on the legs.  That one has a nice gait and shows good potential.  That one has a nice texture through the ribs and the flanks….”

When the paper came out Monday morning…people were a bit stunned in my fraternity house as well…

“Why didn’t you tell us?” they asked…

I didn’t have a good answer for them, but given the fact that most of the guys…and most of their girlfriends…had strong FFA and 4-H backgrounds…the fear was very real that they would have a judging background…and I couldn’t stand to listen to a full class of reasons….