(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) 

Marketing.  Marketing.  Marketing.

It’s the key to success in so many professions.  Just ask the cooks out at United Community School. Kitchen manager Joni Robinson knows all about marketing.  She said the popularity of the cafeteria’s macaroni and cheese had begun to sag.  “The kids just weren’t eating it,” she recalled.  So they began to use macaroni spirals instead of traditional elbows and consumption jumped back up. “Sometimes all it takes is a different shape or color in a dish to make it more appealing to the kids,” she said.

Like I said,”Marketing.”

Last week a January menu from United Community showed up in my mailbox.  The menu item for Wednesday jumped right out at me:” spiral macaroni and cheese.”

After reviewing the macaroni and cheese at the Boone High School a month ago, I couldn’t resist.  I had to give equal time to United Community.  (Besides, I can never get enough macaroni and cheese.)

Robinson and her staff, Jodi Stephens, Joan Tripp and Dorothy Nutt, serve 400 elementary and sixth grade students each day.  I noticed that the students were very polite and reasonably well-behaved on Wednesday.  An argument seemed to be brewing among a group of boys on one side of the cafeteria, but it didn’t seem to be too serious.  They just couldn’t decide if the Iowa Hawkeyes could defeat the Boston Celtics in a basketball showdown. 

Although the students seemed polite to me, Robinson said they can be demanding.  She said they often clamor for new menu items and changes in existing dishes. As if to accentuate the point, one sixth-grader in the background demanded to know why her pineapple wasn’t served with cottage cheese.  “We can’t please all of them all of the time,” Robinson said.  “But we try to make things that they are going to like.”

I cornered three Boone sixth graders, Jennifer Backous, Melissa Nelson and Tiffany Hasstedt, and asked them what they thought of the cafeteria food of United Community.  They were little shy and considerably less opinionated than the seventh and eighth grader boys that I interviewed at the Boone High School.  Backous, Nelson and Hasstedt agreed that tacos and pizza were the best dishes served in the cafeteria.

Their opinion of the macaroni and cheese?  “O.K., but al little runny.”

I thought it was much better than, “O.K.”  I thought it was delicious.  The macaroni was tender, but not mushy.  The cheese sauce was deliciously cheesy, but it was a little runny.  For that reason, I’d rate the BHS macaroni and cheese just a tad higher than at United Community’s.  Robinson tells me that Dorothy Nutt usually cooks the main dish and she wasn’t at work on Wednesday.  “If Dorothy had made it, the macaroni and cheese would have been perfect,” she said.

Sounds like they are already itching for a rematch.

 ”You kids had better wear hat and gloves, you’re gonna get sick!”

It was a never ending mantra with our Dad when he would see us walk out the door.  Regardless where we were going or what we were doing - he would recite it with a bit of ‘don’t you kids know enough to come out of the rain’ frustration.

And yet, we kids tended to refuse.

In elementary school we complied, the opportunity of recess was the siren song - football in the snow, snow forts, fox and goose, all of those wonderful winter games wouldn’t be played if the teachers didn’t make sure that we were bundled up.

But when high school hit, it was different.  Then it became as issue of ‘coolness.’

It just wasn’t cool to wear a stocking hat and walk around with messed up hair.  If it was school, or a basketball game, or even religion class on Wednesday night - a hat just seemed less practical then impressing the girls.  Frost bite be darned, we were after women.

Gloves - gloves were cooler then stocking hats.  They didn’t mess up your hair, but then there was the practicality of it, where would you put them?  Usually they were too big to put in your pockets (without your jacket looking goofy), so you either carried them when you weren’t wearing them (awkward), put them in your jacket pocket (unfashionable - see impressing girls and frostbite in previous paragraph), or you risked losing them, which was darn near a crime in our family.  Frost bite was a better alternative then trying to explain to parents and siblings how you could possibly have lost a good pair of $10 ski gloves.

So out of a sense of fashion, shame, and hoping for love, we risked frostbite on an almost daily basis.

When the temperature dipped to forty degrees below zero…we too questioned our sanity, but fashion, shame, and romance kept us warm.

And Dad continued just to shake it head.

In fairness, overall, there was little damage done.  The most severe case of frostbite that I got was to my fingers feeding cattle in full winter garb, not running to the bus.

But that winter in the early 1990’s, Dad had his revenge.  The snow wouldn’t stop that winter; it was piled high on each side of the road.  The snow plow struggled to push it up higher, and in the farmyard, the snow blower too struggled at times with drifts that were often measured in yards instead of feet.

There was so much snow, that the road, snow piled up six to seven feet high on each side, would drift in with the slightest wind.

We never thought it would happen, but they called off school - and the bus couldn’t make it down our road, because it was too drifted in.  The bus waited at the end of the tar - one mile from the driveway to the farm, and waited as Dad came to get us, rumbling down the road with the old John Deere 3010 and snow blower - clearing a path for himself down the drifted lane.

We left the safety of the bus as Dad pulled up in the wind and snow.  There wasn’t enough room for us in the cab of the tractor, so my brother and I took our places hanging on the back of the tractor, and our little sister got in the warm tractor cab.

It was a cold, cold, cold ride home.

“I told you kids you should wear your hat and gloves.” Dad said proudly as we unpried them off the back of the tractor once we were home.

We know Dad.  We know.

 December 27^th dawned bright in Thredbo, and I was feeling great.  There is something about the cool mountain air, dry, but refreshing, that is just great for sleeping and refreshing the soul.  Today, was going to try a bit more of a challenging trail.  The Dead Horse Gap trail started at the summit as well, but this one had not metal path.

After the same hearty breakfast (primarily bacon and fruit…the breakfast of champions?), I made my way once again to the chair lift after securing my chair lift pass from the same helpful front desk. 

“The weather looks good up top!” They happily told me as I took the lift ticket.

The first drops of rain hit me as I was walking towards the chair lift.  By the time I reached the top, my sweatshirt was starting to feel soggy.  With my feet firmly on the ground at the top of the chair lift, I pulled out the emergency rain poncho and pushed through the mulling crowd at the top of the ski slope - trying to decide if they should fight the rain or go back down from whence they came.

There was no question for me.

Taking the track off the nice brick one - I followed the sign that marked the Dead Horse Gap trail.  It wound its way up through the scrub brush above the tree line, through rocky gaps and boulder fields.  Occassionally, I’d depart from the path and climb over a boulder to try and gain a view from protruding boulders…but the fog and mist prevented me from seeing much into the haze.

About a kilometer in to the fifteen kilometer hike, I overtook a young family, struggling over the boulders - they would be the last people I would see for the next two hours.

The trail started to descend and I made my way out of the scrub brush and into the snow gums, white spindly trees, contorted in the tree line where altitude and winter cold made life barely endurable.

In some places, the trail was slick and muddy, and more and more lizards, small black and red ones, flitted out along the trail as I approached.

Carefully, I made my way down the mountain side, weaving in and out of the tree line, with the skeletal shapes of the gum trees mixing with giant boulders and boulder fields - along with large swathes of mud and water from the recent rains.

Bridges marked the streams, some of the swampy morasses had metal grated bridges that kept shoes, socks, and feet dry, but as the rain came and went, and after the first place that I sank ankle deep in mud, that fact became less and less important.

As miserable as it seems - with the rocks, the rain, and the mud - it was refreshing.  The trees, the sights, and the peacefulness of the mountain valley was pure - I was told that there was a few stray kangaroo’s or, if I was very lucky, the stray herd of brumbies, wild horses, that roamed the mountain side.  But I saw none of them, only the stray hiking party now and then.

At the bottom of the gap, it ended at the Thredbo River.  For the balance of the trip, about five kilometers, the trail crossed and followed the beautiful Thredbo River - over water fall and rapids, through swampy fields, and peaceful mountain pounds.

The largest downpour of the day happened just as I was making it back into the village of Thredbo, and as I made my way back into the hotel, I was met by a group of hikers that were complaining that they couldn’t make it out because of the weather…as I walked by them with mud up to my knees, my shoes and socks, wet and black with mud, my sweat shirt soaked with the rain and sweat - all I could do was smile.

 Boxing Day, the day after Christmas for those of you living outside of the confines of the British Empire, dawned overcast and misty.  The forecast for the next couple of days called for the same type of weather, so I decided that this would be the day that I would attempt to scale the heights of Mount Kosciuszko.

After a hardy breakfast, I carefully packed a gallon of water, a gingerbread man, and some fruit.  I had scaled some mountains in the Rockies only about five months earlier, and I had learned some hard lessons.  The highest point that I had reached in the Rockies was Electric Pass, a pass at about 14,000 feet, so even though Mount Kosciuszko was half the height, I also knew it wasn’t always the height - and you needed to be prepared.

Part of the tourist draw of Thredbo is it’s chairlift up onto the sky lifts.  An extensive system of trails extended out from the ski resort and the top of the chair lifts, and mountain bikers could take the lift up and descend the slopes at break neck speeds.

The room came with a lift ticket, so as I collected my ticket, I asked the person behind the counter if the trail to Kosciuszko was clearly marked.  She gave me a funny look and said, “yeah, it is a raised metal path.”

“A raised metal path?” I asked

“Yes.”  She replied as she handed me my lift ticket, clearly wondering at the intelligence of her guest.

Walking to the lift with my knapsack on my back, there were people in varying degrees of mountain readiness, from those clearly looking like they were going to scale some icy precipice, to those that looked like they were out for an afternoon stroll in shorts and flip flops.

It seemed I wasn’t the only that didn’t grasp the meaning of “raised metal path.”

I hopped on the chair lift and ascended, literally through the clouds and beyond the tree line to the top of the ski runs.  A paver stone path greeted me as I hopped off the lift and soon I saw the sign - Mount Kosciuszko 7 km.

The paver stone path ended at the headwaters of the Snowy River.  After crossing a metal grated bridge, I came to a raised metal path - and then I understood.  A sign told the story.  The environmental damage of having thousands of people tracking across this fragile mountain ecosystem had to be stemmed, so either shut down the trail, or raise the path about eighteen inches off the ground to allow for natural run off and the natural environment to grow underfoot again, unhindered by the path of man.

But it also kind of ruined the adventure to know that you would be wondering on a metal path for the next four hours as it twisted, turned, and meandered over the rocks and passes of the Snowy Mountains.

It didn’t ruin the sights, and the clouds and weather only added to the mystery and allure of the mountains.  It was like walking through some ancient Celtic story with the rocky crags and boulder strewn fields passing in and out of view with the passing clouds.  One minute a fantastic vista, the next minute, a cloud bank rolling towards.  It was like a vision out of ancient Camelot.

The last stretch of trail was back on Terra Firma - a gravel/dirt trail that wound around the mound that was the top of Mount Kosciuszko.  Turns out, it was named by the Polish explorer that discovered it after the tomb of the Polish freedom fighter, buried in Krakow, his tomb a large mound on the landscape.

I will admit, despite fog and mist, despite the raised metal path, it was still awe inspiring, humbling, and a bit surreal to be standing at the summit.  After a good lunch of fruit, gingerbread, water, and a little Diet Coke, I took one more look at the misty Snowy Mountains around me, and headed back down to the Thredbo Valley.

 Growing up on the flat expanse of northwestern Minnesota, with a direct channel of air blowing down out off the Hudson Bay curtsey of the Red River Valley, I’ve seen my fair share of cold winters, and snowy weather.

There were some really bad ones as a youngster, some cold and bitter winters.

But there also seemed to be a bit of cycle to them as well.  Some would be cold and snowy, some warm and snowy, some just cold.

The winter of 1991 through 1992 was, up to that point in time in my life, was the coldest, snowiest winter I had seen.  It was bad.

It seemed like each week, we had another snow storm, another walloping of cold weather and a few more inches of snow.

But through it all, the cows needed to be fed, both inside and out.

The drifts grew so big, and the winds blow so hard - the drifts were rock hard.  So hard, that when the fences of the feedlot were drifted over, we soon had cattle wondering through the farmyard.  That couldn’t happen - because even if they couldn’t run fast (eventually the snow would give out and they would be hip deep in snow) neither could we (same reason).

So there we were, in our insulated coveralls, chopper gloves, carting around metal fence poles and strands of wire to pound into the drifts above the normal fence, tying them into place with the fence where the drift dipped back down to “normal” levels…not to the ground, but at least where the snow was a bit shallower.

As interesting as it made the work of the farm, it made things a bit surreal as well.  Driving down the road out to the farm was like driving down a tunnel - the guys on the town board jokingly said that it might be cheaper just to buy plywood and cover up the roads (since the snow was piled high enough all ready) rather than just keep on plowing them out.

In the end, they had to bring in bulldozers to push the snow back a safe distance from the road and allow the snowplow more room to operate.

It made the isolation of the farmstead even more so.

Meetings and sporting events were cancelled.  Church was sometimes canceled as well.  School was letting out early, and with the amount of snow piled up alongside the roads, even the simplest Alberta Clipper would wreak havoc on the roads as they drifted in.

But it also made you appreciate the things that you did have, the family, the warm bed, the community that checked up on each other, the school system that was sympathetic to the whims of Mother Nature.

 There was a light rain falling as I pulled into the mountain village of Thredbo.  Primarily a ski resort town, it sits in the shadow of Australia’s highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko at 2,228 meters and is one of the few towns in the Kosciuszko National Park.

And Thredbo seemed dead this Christmas Day, with hardly a soul in the streets.

Finding my way through the wet, windy streets and lanes, I made it to the hotel, right on the banks of the Thredbo River.  Through the rain, I made my way to the lobby to check in.

The lobby, and as I would find out, the entire hotel, was the stereotypical late 1960’s ski resort.  Knotty pine, Alpine motif - it looked like something out of an Andy Williams Christmas special that I watched as a child back home, with the two big exceptions being the weather (Christmas in North America, specifically at ski resorts is cold and snowy and this was 60F and raining), and the state of the resort - it was a late 1960’s early 1970’s ski resort…and it appeared that little had been updated since it was built….

As I checked in, I asked the receptionist if there was a place to grab Christmas dinner.

“Oh, absolutely!” she replied perkily. “You can go to the nice restaurant in the complex where for $85 you will get a full ham, turkey, and seafood buffet, or you can go across to the pub across the hall and get their buffet for $29.”  Then leaning in close she said, “I shouldn’t tell you this, but the food is the same, and the beer and wine is cheaper at the pub. Merry Christmas.”

With a hearty Merry Christmas, I found my way to my third floor room and settled in.

The room too had knotty pine throughout, and it seemed that the only thing that had been updated since the 1970’s was the television - that was a state of the art flat screen, everything else, was clean, relatively comfortable, and a little dated.

But it worked.

I had brought a fair amount of work with me, both personal (a stack of reading material) and for work (a stack of reading material), so I unpacked and then got ready to head down to Christmas dinner.

Christmas dinner at the Thredbo pub was an interesting experience.  It was me, four other single people, and three people that worked there.  The buffet…was interesting.  Thank goodness for the turkey and the ham.  It was here that I was reminded of the two most important rules of eating seafood: Rule #1 - don’t eat seafood in the mountains.  Rule #2 - don’t eat seafood that doesn’t look or taste just right.

The oysters just didn’t look right, and after one or two of them, I left the others on my plate - and first for me as I’m normally fond of oysters.  The prawns which looked good under the buffet glass were not so good once peeled.

I went back for seconds on the turkey.

The staff was excellent, and the beer was cold - which was good especially when I broke out in hot flashes half way through the Queen’s Christmas message to the kingdom.  As the queen was highlighting the work in front of the realm this year, the oysters or the prawns were doing their work on me.

Going back to the room, I ate the first of the gingerbread men and a few of the good chocolates, and saying a prayer, settled down for a rainy Christmas night.

(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) 

I have a special recipe for you to try during the holidays.  It calls for 30 to 40 pounds of macaroni and 35 pounds of cheese.  But I’m getting ahead of myself in this story.

A few weeks ago, during national school lunch week, I wrote a glowing review of the food they served during my grade school days at St. Michael’s School in Mahnomen, Minn.  I had especially high praise for the macaroni and cheese.

The column provoked a strong response.  Friends and strangers alike proclaimed their love or hatred of macaroni and cheese.  Gov. Norman Erbe dropped me a note to say how I had stimulated his appetite for his culinary treat.

One place where readers really sat up and took notice was at the Boone High School cafeteria.  They weren’t about to let me proclaim St. Mike’s macaroni and cheese as the world’s best without giving theirs a try.  Food serviced secretary and bookkeeper Kim Curell promptly issued an invitatation.  So last week I had lunch at the Boone Community School District.

Supervisor Norma Brown gave a tour of the impressive cooking facilities.  Kitchen manager Donnal Byriel showed me the giant vat where they cook their macaroni and cheese in 75-pound batches.  They’re equipped to cook for an army, which is exactly what they do.  The 22 employees serve more than 600 students a day.

After the tour I grabbed my tray and headed for the dining room.  The macaroni was pleasingly firm, not unappetizingly mushy like some i’ve seen.  It was also piping hot.   The cheese was creamy. The combination was undeniable delicious.

How did BHS’s compare with St. Mike’s?  My memories of macaroni and cheese at St. Michael’s are colored by childhood memories. When I can do a side-by-side comparison, I’ll give you a definite answer.  Until then, I don’t think I can make a fair comparison.   I will say that the BHS macaroni and cheese was the best i’ve has since I graduated from sixth grade.

I had lunch with several other diners.  They included eighth-graders Aaron Starling, Joe Boros and Brian Engleen and seventh -graders Donald Mull and Chris Happ.  Brian and Donald deliver Boone TODAY so I knew they must be men of good judgment and character.

Even though they admitted to critizing the meals in the cafeteria, they agreed the food was generally “pretty good.”  Deli-works sandwiches were hands down the favorite, rating an “awesome” from the entire group.  When I asked what was the worst thing served in the cafeteria, not one of them could think of anything.  The cooks seemed to be pretty happy about that.  It’s probably as close as you get to receiving a compliment.  High school kids are a notoriously tough crowd.

Now, back to that recipe.  I can’t give it to you in good conscience.  It’s a trade secret.  Of course, that won’t keep me from trying it on my own.  All I have to do if find a 40 -pound box of macaroni.

 Christmas Day dawned overcast and cool.  Backing my bags with a few cloths, a slug of books and papers, and some of the Christmas goodies I’d collected (some gingerbread men, some of the best chocolates in Australia, and the trusty bag of filled candy raspberries) and I was ready for my Christmas journey.

I was going to Thredboe, high up in the Snowy Mountains of Southeastern Australia, the famed mountains from sung and written about by the bard of Australia, Banjo Patterson, where perhaps his most famous story was set - the Man from Snowy River.  Made into a movie by the same name, it was my first introduction into Australia, and I was going to those same mountains where my first affections for this land were set.

It was kind of exciting.

Christmas traffic was light on the highway.  All the way up to Wandong on the Hume highway, there was only a car or two on the road, and most going the other way.  I stopped for a little Christmas lunch of Diet Vanilla Coke and a small bag of potato chips at a travel stop outside of Euroa, between Seymour and Benalla.  I continued on the Hume Highway, the main thoroughfare from Melbourne through to Canberra and into Sydney through the regional country town of Wangaratta and finally to Wodonga.

The scenery was surprising.  I was expecting to see vast tracks of farmland; instead, it was small plots amidst big hills and small creeks.  More like western North Dakota and sections of Montana then the land that I imagined look like Iowa - flat and fertile.

At Wodonga, I turned off the Hume Highway and onto the Murray Valley Highway, a two lane highway that would lead me up into the foothills of the Snowy Mountains.  I hardly saw a soul as I rolled through the famous Murray River Valley - the little towns like Tallangatta and Koetong small and quiet on Christmas Day.

There was life at Corryong.  And it was an exciting discovery for me, that this was the place where the actual man that the poem, story, and movie, “The Man from Snowy River” was based on.  This was the home country of Jack Riley.  A man that really lived and though now romanticized, this was where he lived, worked, and died.

A little way out of Corryong, I turned onto the Alpine Way, the road that leads up and over the Snowy Mountains.  Up I climbed, through the switchbacks, the road cut at times through road, sometimes with deep drop offs on one side and sheer cliff walls on the other.  Through the trees and the scrub brush, up and up the climb continued.

It was at this time that I thought that the highway department of the State of Victoria had to have a very good sense of humor.  When the road was relatively straight running through the valley up to Corryong, the speed was somewhere between 65 and 80 km per hour.  Now it seemed to all be 80 km…except around every curve where it was marked at 45 km/hr.  Being a flatlander, I wasn’t used to the curves, and every once in a while, a car would approach me doing the speed limit of 80 km/hour…or faster….and I’m sure cursing me, the flatlander, who couldn’t even drive in the mountains…with a cliff on one side and drop off on the other….I was commonly look for a place to pull over to let these people pass.

Up through the mountains, the trees, the cliffs, the clouds, the fog and mist I continued.  With the stillness of the mountains broken only by the whishing of the windshield wipers and the sight of the radio scanning for a station that just never seem to come.

Finally, the radio scanner stopped and the road seem to widen just a bit, and then I saw the sign, turn off for Thredbo, 1 kilometer ahead…

(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) 

America recently celebrated Nation School Lunch Week.

Actually, celebrated many not be the best word to use.  For most people, I suspect the occasion didn’t foster kind thoughts or fond memories.  Most people recall mystery meat entrees with jiggly Jello desserts.  Tater-tot-hot-dish competed with tuna-surprise for the weekly gross-out award.  And do you remember those milk cups with the pointy ends?

No, National School Lunch Week probably didn’t inspire much joy across the country.  But for me and fellow alumni of St. Michael’s grade school, it was an occasion to be hungry.

The school cooks at St. Michael’s should be canonized as saints.  I imagine institutional cooking is no picnic.  Cooking for hundreds with ingredients that come in five-gallon buckets and one-gallon cans must take substantial imagination and creativity.  Most school cooks perform admirably given the number of people they have to feed, the government guides they have to meet and the ingredients they have to work with.

The head cook at St. Mike’s worked miracles.  Each day we eagerly made the trek from the school to the church basement to see what delectable culinary delight awaited.

Mrs. Spaeth made the best macaroni and cheese I ever tasted.  Ordinary macaroni and cheese is no gourmet dish, but Mrs. Spaeth’s creation was no ordinary macaroni and cheese.  The huge elbow macaroni noodles dripped with a delectable cheese sauce.  Every time i’ve tasted macaroni cheese since sixth-grade graduation, i’ve thought, “this isn’t as good as Mrs. Spaeth’s.”

The heavenly dish was a staple on meatless Fridays in that Catholic cafeteria.  Fridays without meat weren’t a penance, but a pleasure.  When I was in second grade, I used to wonder if the apostles get to eat macaroni and cheese for lunch on Fridays in heaven.  I’m still curious.

Mrs. Spaeth’s pizza, cooked on huge flat pans, was reserved for special occasions.  Every student from tiny first-graders to the more mature sixth-graders clamored for seconds.  Deep-dish from Godfather or hand-tossed from Pizza Hut barely compare to her Italian creation.

Holiday meals were spectacular.  They included tender turkey, delectable dressing, glorious gravy, marvelous mashed potatoes and perfect pumpkin pie.

Unfortunately, it all came to an end when we headed off to the public school in the seventh grade.  We were warned about how big the school was and how nasty those public school kids could be.  But nobody warned us about the food.

We eventually learned our way around the new school.  Those nasty public school kids became some or our best friends.  But we never adjusted to the food.

I’d like to stop in at St. Michael’s and warn the current crop of grade schoolers.  “Enjoy it now.” I’d say.  “You don’t know how lucky you are.”

And if I stop in at lunchtime, maybe I could get some macaroni and cheese.

My senior year was a stressful one, as I think they are for all seniors trying to find their path in life.  Being the accused overachiever in the family, I probably made it more difficult on myself.  I was involved in a lot of things.I served as president of band, FFA, National Honor Society, and Speech.  I was involved in a host of other activities and served as a member of the Parish Council, as regional officer in the FFA, and was active in other activities and events in the community.

To top it off, Mom and Dad were doctoring in Fargo quite a bit that year, so much of the farming fell back on me - milking cows and doing chores often by myself before and after school along with looking after my younger sister and being the chief cook and bottle washer.

In short, it was a busy life.

For the first time in my high school career, I had taken a study hall, and it was timed just right - the first hour of the day.  That whole fall, I could do chores, or take care of what needed to be done without fear of being late to class (it helped that a very understanding teacher marked me present everyday for study hour).

But it made that second hour calculus class seem all the more daunting.

Shortly after Christmas, as the second semester (the third quarter for those of you doing the math) was starting, I told the teacher that I had had enough, and was going to drop it to take another study hall.

So I had a first and second period study hall with teachers that were good friends and mentors and would never count me as absent.

This was perfect.

But I didn’t waste the time, to the contrary, I had thirty cows, a pen of calves, and a feedlot of youngstock, as well as a little sister that made sure that I didn’t sleep in those mornings.

Instead, I’d finish up chores, drive in, and spend a good forty-five minutes swimming laps in the high school swimming pool.

I think some of my classmates thought I was nuts.

When it came down to it, I wasn’t a good swimmer, but that forty-five minutes was my time, it was the time of the day when there weren’t obligations, when there weren’t pressing concerns, and where, regardless if it was thirty below or eighty above outside, I could just be alone with my thoughts and my freedom and swim.

I think it was also the best shape I’ve been in my life.