I still remember the election of 1984.  In Miss Slausen’s class, we watched our weekly papers with interest.  We debated the issues and even wrote a position paper on those issues that highlighted the key issues.

Perhaps tellingly, all of the girls picked abortion.  Most of the guys picked nuclear deterence.  Me?  Perhaps telling of my future eduction in economics, in the third grade, I picked the thrill a minute issue of tax policy.

Whoo-Hoo!

I remember debating at the time the pro’s and con’s of the cold war.  How long would it take for one side to win, one side to loose.  Which would come out on top.  Which would dominate the other. Which would win - free market, capitalism, liberty, freedom or planned economy, socialism, communism, despotism, repression.

Do we appease?  Do we hold out to the last man?

I think that everyone agreed, failure and surrender was not an option.

For me, an American by birth, by loyalty, and by choice, Czech blood flowed through my veins, and I knew that my family, my kin lived behind that dark wall that Winston Churchill called the “Iron Curtain.”

The pall of fear that was cast by that Iron Curtain spread out over the whole world.

I think that we all agreed in our third grade class that we would be fighting that battle to our last breath.  We too, like our parents, would have to learn to live, and thrive, under that shadow.

I don’t think that anyone, let alone our class of third graders, could forsee what would happen only six years in the future.

I remember that fall very well.  With interest and alarm, I watched the situation in Poland unfold.  I knew enough about history to know what happened in Hungary in 1957 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.  I knew that the US couldn’t intervene.  I knew what could happen.

In awe, I watched as Poland shook off the shackles of communism with little more then a groan.  Then came the unbeleivable fall of the Berlin Wall.  In the US, most people were still in shock - how could this be?  How could this evil empire crumble with little warning.

I think we were all waiting for the assault that we all expected.

But nothing came.

I still remember that day twenty years ago when the news came across the radio in our barn.  The uprising in St. Wenceslaus Square, the suppression, the victory.

Freedom.  The country of my grandmother’s birth was not only a live and well, but had thrown off the yoke of communism.  Freedom reigned.

As I milked the cows that night twenty years ago, I knew that the world had changed.  I wasn’t sure what it would mean for me and my classmates, I didn’t know how things would change, and develop.  But I did know that the very face of the world had changed.

The shadow cast by the Iron Curtain, the millions of people that lived in the darkness and the billions that were cast in it’s shadow could see the light of freedom.

 Lets say you have a country boy, a farm boy, from northern Minnesota.  Born and raised with the closest neighbor over a quarter of a mile away…and the next closest over half a mile. 

This man’s hometown had twelve hundred people.  Perched on the edge of the prairie, it was the largest town for forty miles.  This town has four churches, three gas stations, one café, one drug store, and two bars - one the American Legion club, and one the Municiple Liquor Store.

Graduating class of sixty.  This boy’s idea of a body of water is the small slough next to the farm house where he was born and raised.  Closest ocean?  Fifteen hundred miles away.  A foreign car?  The Pontiac LeMans that he bought for $2000 that was assembled in Canada.  A four wheel drive?  The Ford pick up truck had the wagon tires in the back.

Originally this man’s idea of a wild weekend was doing chores, milking the cows, going to the football game, buying a pop at the pizza parlor, and going home to do chores the next morning.  Saturday was milking cows and doing chores, breakfast with the family, working around the farm, dinner with the family, more work outside, a little lunch, evening chores, milking, then cruising main with a Mountian Dew and friends only to make it home to get a little more sleep before waking up, milking cows, doing chores, having breakfast and going to church with the family.

He liked the life.  No, he enjoyed the life.

Lets say you fast forward the life fifteen years - where do you think you would see this young boy now?

Maybe working for a large company.  Living in Australia.  Two blocks off the beach.  Let me repeat, living in Australia, Melbourne to be correct, and living two blocks off the beach.  This is the same Australia where the women are beautiful, and much like the spiders, aggressive.

The weather - exactly the opposite of his hometown on the prairie.  And in Celcius.  Only warmer.  Melbourne?  About the same population as this man’s hometown - only three million nine hundred and eight thousand eight hundred more.  Number of bars - unlimited. The car?  Foreign - a 2009 Mitsubishi Outlander…fully loaded.  His commute?  A forty five minute walk to work.

His love for his hometown, his home weather, his family and friends?  Unchanged and unquestionable.

Do you really think that a country boy, a farm boy, could possibly enjoy this experience?

Oh yes.  Definitely yes.

View from Apartment Windown

Another View From Apartment Window

View of St. Kilda Pier

St. Kilda Beach

 It took me about an hour to get through immigration and customs.  The people in front of me, boxing promoters, got a good grilling by the immigration officials.  I was expecting to be grilled too.  The immigration official said simply, “Welcome to Australia Mr. Jirik!” and with a smile and a stamp on my passport, I was in the country - after getting my bags, customs were even faster - and just as polite.

Walking out of the airport and too the taxi area, I was met by a small, stocky, man with much, much less then a full head of hair.

“Where are you off to young man?”  he asked with enthusiasm that seemed a bit surreal for 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

“Quest in St. Kilda.” Was my reply.

“No problem at all there sir, we’ll get you fixed up no problem.”

With a little heave ho - he got my first suitcase into the trunk - and with another heave ho, I threw my other bag into the back.

Beyond customs and immigration, this was my first interaction with the locals.  As I reached for the door to the back seat, he said, “Please, sit in the front.”

How could I refuse.

For the next forty-five minutes, we had a conversation about a full range of topics - from weather, snakes and spiders, but perhaps the most interesting was the story of the taxi driver himself.

Born in Triste, Italy before World War II, he saw his father drafted into the Italian army and forced to fight for a cause he didn’t support.  Then he saw his father desert and openly defy the facists. 

He wanted to go to America where he and his sons would never be willing to fight for evil again.  The Marshall Plan only steeled his resolve.

But the doors to America were not open.

Instead, he took the first boat they could hop on in the early 1950’s - a boat to Australia.

For the last sixty years, the family had built themselves from poor Italian immigrants to business people.  His children had all attended university.  They were all well employed and contributors to society.

It was a great convesation.  As he helped me get my bags into the hotel, he gave me a firm handshake and said, “Enjoy it here young man, this is a great country.”

In my first two hours on the ground, I would have to agree with him, and in large part, because of people like him and his father - who risked it all for a better life.

 The plane ride can be summed up in one word - long.

Sleep and reading, reading and sleep.  The fancy screen that they provided with music and movies worked well for the first movie…then cut out half way through the second one.  I was alone with my thoughts, my book, and my i-pod.  Which wasn’t bad at all.

I struck up a conversation with the flight attendant on that Quanta’s flight from LA to Melbourne.  He recounted for me the wonders of Australia and regaled me with stories and suggestions of things and events that I had to see while in Australia.

He was an effective advocate for his home country.

For the rest of the flight, when he would see me, he would list another something to see.

As we winged our way closer, he came running down the plane to me - and almost shouted - “Open your windown!”

The shades of the plane had all been drawn over 10 hours ago to allow people the opportunity to sleep as we soared through the Pacific skys.

Sliding open the window, I looked down to the expanse of the Australian coastline stretching below me.

“We are just coming up on Sydney!”  He exclaimed. “See - you can see Jackson Bay, and the big one is Botany Bay - Cook named that one.  Those big white things are Syndey Opera House - and you can just make out the bridge.  Remember - you need to see the bridge.”

We both looked on in silence.  After a couple of minutes, he ran off again - and a moment or two later, he announced over the load speaker, “Ladies and Gentlemen, off the right of your aircraft is Sydney Harbor.”

I looked on in a bit of disbelief.  This was real.  This was Australia.  This was the place that I was to call home for twelve months.

I almost crapped my pants.

Whether it was nerves or the airline chicken, the world may never know.

 One of the favorite records that made its way onto the stereo during the holidays was one of my Mom’s favorites - and one of the staples for the season, the infamous, “Christmas Sing with Bing” featuring the one and only Bing Crosby.

Moving away from home, it was one of the first CD’s that I purchased.  The familiarity of the music put me right back into our family’s home up there on the prairie.

One of the songs that struck me was the non-holiday song, “Blessings.”  The song that instructs us to remember the good things, to look beyond the stress, beyond the hectic life, and count those things that are truly the blessings in our lives.

It is sound advice.

Over the course of the last month as I’ve wrapped up my life and condensed it all down into two suitcases and two carry-ons, it has forced me to take a look at those things that are important and those things that aren’t.

On the surface, there is the job, the career, the income, the savings account, the stock account.

But you soon realize that even those things are fleeting.

Then you think about the friends in this life.  Those people that always greet you with a smile, that share their joys and concerns, those that are there for you.  In my life I have certainly been blessed.  I am blessed and thankful for those friends that are there for me, that stand by me, that remember me.  It is humbling.

Then there is the family - my brothers, Tom, Jack, Jaime and my younger sister Margaret and their my sister-in-laws and sister’s boyfriend - sister-in-laws and friends don’t describe them, they are brothers and sisters, maybe not by blood, but certainly by heart - Mary, Becky, Michelle and John.  There are my nieces and nephews - Abby, Sarah, Matthew, Nick, and Parker and one that I have yet to meet.

I have been especially blessed by my parents.  They set a high example on how to live life, and how to die well.  Courage, honor, and love was and is their creed.  My mother has been gone for almost fifteen years, but her love and her grace still bless us.  My father, a quiet man, none-the-less speaks loud with his actions and proves his righteousness, his humbleness, and his love of his fellow man.

There is my extended family too - grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins…all special people, all deeply loved.

Even if all of this is taken away, even if all of these people - the my family, my brothers, my sisters, my nieces, my nephews, my Godsons, parents, everyone were gone - I would still have my character and my faith.

As much as I have, as many things as I’ve been given - it is humbling to think that the true gifts, the true blessings, are not the things - it is the people, it is morals that these people helped to form, it is the faith of things unseen.

As my plane flew through the night sky from LA to Melbourne - these were the things, these were the people who were in my thoughts and prayers.

 Sister Rosella was a forced to be reckoned with.  The first grade teacher was the first encounter that I had with the nuns in our school.  She was the first grade teacher at St. Michael’s School in my hometown on the edge of the prairie.

I had heard some stories, some good, some bad, by my family members.  My brother’s had a few run ins with some of the other nuns in the upper grades.  My mother used to tell the story about Sister Margaret Mary and Sister Mary Margaret at the school she went to in South St. Paul.  One of them walked the halls with ruler in hand, ready to strike at the slightest of infractions.  The other broke her leg when she was playing baseball with the kids…as she was sliding into first base with her habit on.

I had even heard the comment from our local priest, a farm boy himself, and quite the character, who made the comment about the Sisters of St. Benedict, or as it was abreviated, OSB…he said that in some cases, the OSB meant Ornery Son of…well, you get the idea.

In short - I was fearing the unknown, what would first grade bring?  What kind of a teacher, a person, would Sister Rosella be?

I shouldn’t have been worried.

She was perfect for the first grade.  She was gentle but firm.  She herded us through the day, which was exactly what we needed.  She was solid in her teaching skills in all of the basics - reading, writing and arithmatic.  She could play the key board.  She could sing a little.  She liked Smurfs, just like her students.  She could pick out a good story.

In the end, she was a good teacher.

More then a normal teacher, she served as an example.  She wasn’t perfect - her keyboarding skills were not top notch - though we did learn all verses to “Peace is Flowing Like a River.” Sometimes I think we tired her out.

But we knew that she cared about us.  She served as a living example of a teacher that truly, deeply cared about her students, regardless if they were rich or poor, smart or not, boy or girl.  She extolled us, even as first graders to make the right choices.  I remember when she caught another classmate and I calling each other names…she wouldn’t stand for it in her class or among her students.

I still remember that.

I ran into Sister Rosella recently, she has aged and I have grown.  She made the comment that she has shrunk as she has gotten older.

In my mind, and in real life, she still towered above the class.  She still stood as tall as she did back then.  She may only be four feet and some inches tall - but her character and her dedication still stands head and shoulders above any of the classes she ever taught.

(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) 

It happened years ago when I was still a teen-ager, but I still remember it vividly.

I was trying to untangle a twisted bundle of hay form around a shaft of a mower/conditioner.  The tractor that powdered the machine idled quietly.  No owner’s manual ever recommend such a maneuver.  “DANGER!  TURN OFF TRACTOR BEFORE ATTEMPTING TO CLEAN OR ADJUST MACHINE!”  The book said.

With the power-take-off out of gear, I figured that I could ignore the warning.  There would be no harm in untangling the hay with the tractor running.  I was just reaching for the shaft when Dad spotted me.

He just blew a gasket.

He raged on and on about the dangers of cleaning out a machine with the tractor running.  He suffered a run-in or two with farm machinery in his younger days but escaped with few scars…physical scars anyway.  He also had several friends and relatives who hadn’t been so lucky.

He related it all to me at several decibels above the comfortable hearing range.

Last week I was reminded of his stern warning as newspaper and television reports told of all the people who were injured by their snow-blowers.  All those who lost fingers or mangled their hands because they tried to unplug their snow blowers with the engine running obviously never heard the warning dad gave me.  Of they had, they wouldn’t be wearing bandages now.

My home town, Mahnomen, Minn., is slightly smaller than Ogden, but has long been a powerhouse in high school football.  When I was a junior in high school (in 1981) the Indians won the Class B state title.  In 1983 the Minnesota State High School League moved the high school indoors to the Hubert H, Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis.

Since then, Mahnomen has never won another state championship.  Despite playing several games on the home field of the Minnesota Vikings and the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers, Mahnomen’s football team never tasted victory in “The Dome.”

Until this year.

This year, both the semi-final and final games of the high school championship series were played in the dome.  Mahnomen was victorious in both rounds.  That’s two victories in the dome in 1990.

If I recall correctly, that’s more than either the Hawkeyes or the Cyclones were able to win there this year.

Even if the Hawkeyes win the Rose Bowl, it’s unlikely that they’ll be named national champions.  The process of selecting a champion among the big-league teams is so convoluted and precocious that sports writers, coaches and athletes are questioning it’s validity.

There is no such controversy among smaller colleges.  They battle it out in a playoff system.  In Division II, the North Dakota State University (my alma mater) Bison rolled to their fifth national championship in the past eight years last weekend, trouncing Indiana of Pennsylvania, 51-11.

I’m sure that fellow Boone NDSU alumni, Pete Bilden and Don Tucker, can fill you in on the details.

Well, I made it.  It was smooth sailing almost the whole way.  But boy am I tired.  There are a lot of things that I need to  post over the coming days and weeks.  Readers will need to bear with me as some of them may be out of order (example - preparing for the trip posts may come after some of the posts about actually being down here!)

For that I apologize - but the only reason I post is to bring things that are insightful, humour, or just interesting.  That won’t change.

G’day mates.

(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) 

It’s crunch time.

We’re renovating an area of our old house to turn it into a much-needed second bedroom.  “We’ll put in some doors, fix the walls and run some pipes in no time,” I assured Mary back in September.  “Will it be done by Thanksgiving?” She asked.  “We’re having the whole family over,” she reminded me.

“No problem,” I said.

That’s when our problems started.  The deadline was set.  There was no turning back.  We were hopelessly optimistic then.  That was before we discovered that the floor was rotten.  When we ripped out the floor, we discovered the basement below needed new concrete.  When we were pouring the cement, we noticed that the foundation in that corner of the house needed patching.

“Will it done by Thanksgiving?”  Mary asked as we jacked up a sagging wall (another surprise caused by a rotted sill) a few weeks ago.  “The whole family’s coming for Thanksgiving.”

“No problem,” I assured her.  “These are minor setbacks.”

Progress for a while was steady if not rapid.  We wired the lights, plumbed the plumbing and framed the doors.  Our optimism returned.

Then we started on the wallboard.  Someone was moving the pipes and light switches every time I tried to cut holes for the wallboard.  Every piece seemed too long or too short.  We have a truckload or wasted wallboard to haul away.

“Didn’t you measure?!” Mary demanded.

“Of course I measured.  Do you think I guessed?  It’s only off by a little bit,” I tried to explain.

“Close isn’t going to get these walls finished!  Unless you get this wallboard up, we’re never going to have this done by Thanksgiving.   And you promised it would be done.  Do you know that the whole family is coming for Thanksgiving?” She said.  Thanks to Mary’s kind encouragement, the wallboard was soon installed.

Mary took over from there, taping the joints and plastering the corners.  Somehow she plastered herself in the process.  She had mud in her hair, on her face and all over her clothes.  You’d think she had been rolling in the stuff.  But I didn’t dare say anything too critical.  The walls look great and she worked fast.  She’s a natural.

Every night and weekend between now and Thanksgiving is scheduled.  There’s painting to do, wallpaper to put up, carpet to put down, fixtures to install, and doors to hang.

“Will we be flushing by Thanksgiving?”  Mary says we will if I want to live to see Christmas.

 We have a lot of junk in our lives.  From our clothes closets, to our book shelves, to our offices, to our refridgarators and freezers - our society today puts a premium on stuff.  The more of it you have, the better off you are.

But it can be very constricting.

When I found out I was going to be moving to Australia for a year, suddenly my priorities shifted. For a year, I’d be living out of two suitcases.  My closets, my sporting tickets, my book cases, my boxes and shelves of stuff now looked like a burden rather then a gift.

I decided to clean house.

For the last several weeks, I’ve been digging and sorting, sorting and digging.  In some ways, it has been sad - sad on the one level to part with things - sad on another level that I had accumulated this junk to begin with.

How many shirts does a man have to have?

Twenty boxes to good will later, I set off to distribute the balance of the half beef that I had bought and stocked my freezer with last fall, as well as the farm raised chickens that I’d bought this fall.

All good purchases, but worthless to me in Australian (though a frozen chicken would probably travel better then a live one…)

As I distributed meat, cloths, gifts and sports tickets to family and friends, some of them scolded me - these things were worth money and could be sold.

Being an economist (ie - cheap, skin flint, tight wad, etc) part of me was very torn by their suggestion that I was giving away things that I had bought with hard earned money.

On Saturday, one my brothers was even slightly questioning my sanity.  There was some regret that crossed my mind.  My stuff was gone, or was in the process of being disbursed, the things that I had worked hard for.

My pride came into play - I worked hard for that junk, and by God, I deserved it!

That evening, came across the following reading from the book of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)

“Spend your money on your brother or your friend, do not leave it under a stone to rust away.  Use your wealth as the Most High has decreed; you will find that more profitable than gold.  Stock your store-rooms with almsgiving; this will save you from all misfortune.  Better than sturdy shield or weighty spear, this will fight for you against the enemy.”

I quietly ate my humble pie, and went to bed.