As the train pulled up, I understood what the taxi driver had been talking about.  I was decked out in my best blue jeans and dress shirt, as well as some of my best walking shoes.  The other passengers, clearly heading to Chicago and home for the week were still in their pajama’s and some clearly still suffering from the night before - from their pre-spring break festivities.

As I watched my fellow travelers stumble onto the train in their drowsiness or drunkeness, I was happy that I had a quiet night at the Illini Inn with friends - a famous Bonnie Jean’s Calzone and only two mugs of PBR, just enough to celebrate a semester half way over and still be in bed by ten.

Not only would this be my first major ride on a train, it wouldn’t be just any train - it would be the famous, “City of New Orleans,” the train that went back and forth between Chicago and New Orleans.  Although I’d only be on the train for two hours, it was still riding a piece of history.  I like history.  Meanwhile, my father was already a couple of hours into his trip, on the equally esteemed west coast to Chicago train, “The Empire Builder.”

Getting on the train, I found a seat by myself, away from the drunken revelers and the napping pajama wearers and revelled in the experience.

As the train pulled out of Champaign, it passed through the partially snow covered landscape of Illinois.  It passed through the small towns and the regional cities of Illinois.  Names that had only been names on a map or in the pages of history books suddenly came to life.  The flat, windswept fields of Illinois broken up by the proud little farming towns that gradually gave way to the seemingly bleak industrial suburbs of Chicago.  I remember especially the steel works outside of Bourbonnais - a perfect example of the industrial might with rows of trucks to haul the massive amount of steel sitting in perfect piles of grey and black beyond the chain link fence of the rail yards.  To me it was the dividing line of the country and the city.

Slowly, the trip winds its way through the south suburbs of Chicago, past the historic working class neighborhoods and slums.  Past the weathered churches and the forlorn factories.  Past the projects and the shotgun houses and tennements.  This was the gritty heart of the city.  This was the city of Chicago.  Chi town.  The city of broad shoulders.  The city that works.  This was its heart.

Pulling into the heart of Chicago about eight o’clock that morning and walking into the heart of Union Station, I rented a locker and hit the streets of Chicago - it was going to be a very good day.

My first stop was the Chicago Board of Trade.

 It was snowing.  It was the big, heavy, wet snow of March - and it was piling up.  Not that it bothered me, it could sock in Champaign-Urbana, IL as much as it wanted, I was going on spring break.

Yessir, I was heading towards the warm, balmy, tropical paradise of Middletown, Pennsylvania.  Compared to the winter that central Illinois had suffered that winter of 1998 to 1999, it had to be be better.  But I really couldn’t complain, having spent the prior twenty years of my life in the harshness of northern Minnesota, central Illinois, or even eastern Pennsylvania had to be better then a cold, snowy March in Minnesota.

I was looking forward to the trip.  My first year of graduate school had opened my eyes to both the wider world, as well as to the number of things you could get by with on a tight budget, and this trip would be no exception.  I had been planning it for months - and it was going to be simple.  Take the train from Champaign to Chicago, where I would meet my father who was taking the train down from Fargo.  From Chicago, we would take the train direct into Harrisburg, where Uncle Hank and Aunt Peg (my Dad’s brother and his wife) would pick us up and take care of us for the week.

The logistics were daunting.  First of all - I had no money.  Second, I had never been let loose in a big city.  Third, the schedules didn’t exactly mesh - I would have to spent twelve hours in Chicago before Dad would arrive.  Forth, the trip was long - almost eighteen hours from Chicago to Harrisburg.  Finally, I was traveling as a twenty-two year old filled with piss and vineger with my sixty-eight year old father going to see his sixty-four year old brother, both of who used to be able to have a pretty good time…but now I suspected that their idea of a thrilling evening was a cliff hanger on Matlock.

The first leg of the trip was the simpliest, but also required the greatest decision - how to make it to the train station?  Living about three miles from the train station, I was tempted to walk it.  I had several friends volunteer to take me, but I hated to impose…so I broke down and did something that I still loath to do to this day - call a cab.

As the big white flakes floated down outside of my apartment building on Lotus Street, I waited outside anxiously for the taxi to make its way down the slippery street.  Hoping that I had given it enough time.

“Where are you off to?”  The taxi driver asked as I climbed into the back seat.

“Spring Break.” I said.

“Ah, sunshine!” He replied, “Must be nice to escape this stuff.”

“Ahhh, actually, I’m going to Pennsylvania…with my father…to see my uncle and aunt.” I replied.

“What type of college student are you?” The taxi driver asked in astonishment.

“I sometimes wonder that myself.” I replied as I paid the man his money and headed inside the Champaign train station to catch the 6 am train that blustery Friday morning.

 When the speech contest official - usually the local head speech coach at what ever town the contest was in - would walk out with results in hand, the gym would erupt into cheers.  As she took her place at the head of the room - usually flanked by a few chosen people next to a big table filled with ribbons, trophies or medals.

With much fanfare, each speaking category was announced and the top six individuals were called up and an award was presented with hooting and hollaring from the crowd.

When all of the awards were presented, each school was given a large envelop that had the judges comments - the critiques sheets.

As we climbed into the van after the award ceremony, each revilved in the triumph…or comisurrated in the loss.  It was always a challenge because there was always a mix of the happy and the deflated on the van ride home.

It was my job on those van rides to provide the comedic relief.  Driving to the contest, I’d be cracking one liners and telling the latest Ole and Lena joke.  On the way home, some cleaverly turned phrase or some antic would get all but the lowest people laughing outloud.

Dispite the fact that on the way to the contest - my heart was pumping and my hands were shaking.  In typical Northern Minnesota fashion, I would prepare myself for failure - hoping for victory, but knowing it may be too much to ask, after all, I was just a simple country boy.

On the way home from the contest, it was trying to discern how I could have medaled.  Because, not to brag, but I usually left with a little hardware.  There is only two contests where I didn’t walk away with a showing in the top three.  But there was always a bit of that feel of the ancient Roman legend of Ceasar riding triumphantly with servant riding behind him, telling him that his glory was fleeting…

If we were really lucky, we would get to pass through Crookston on the way home from the contests and we would stop at Happy Joe’s Pizza.

It was the perfect tension releiver.

The pizza wasn’t just good, it was really good.  The atmosphere wasn’t just fun, it was really fun.  The ice cream at the end wasn’t just tasty - it was REALLY tasty.  You could peer inside the kitchen to see them make the pizza through a glass wall - really!

As pull back into the school parking lot, with hardware in hand, I make my way back to the pick up truck.  Cows still need to be milked, and while the speaking skills and the hardware won’t help with that…the sense of humor just might.

 The time in between the rounds at the speech tournaments were, well, excruciating.  When you participate in the extemperanous speaking contest, the people were serious.  These were the people that thought of themselves as the intellectuals of the speech contest world.  While the people in the humor category were reciting the latest Dave Barry colume to themselves and the dramatic speakers were lamenting the fate of the late ninteeth century bongo drum player in the American Southwest, we were pacing the library stacks wondering what the latest tax rate hikes were going to do to the world economy.

Well, most of us.

A couple of us would drink a Mountain Dew and make flatuance jokes in the corner.

But we needed to, first to work off the stress, second, we were teenagers and flatuance jokes were the only polite things we could really make jokes about in the library.

As the third contest wound up, we made our way to the cafeteria where we would eat and drink, sometimes with other extemp speakers from other schools (contestants, but also friends), or sometimes with the other speakers from our school….sometimes trying to meet the cute, normal speakers from others schools, always seemingly in short supply.

Then we would wait.

The results from the contest were carefully tabulated in the smoke filled back rooms of the schools.

Each judge would turn in their sheet with their scores (usually ten categories such as voice, posture, content, body structure - of the speech, OF THE SPEECH), with the ranking of each contestant - then those rankings would be added up and the lowest number would be the winner.

So if you were ranked 1^st in the 1^st round, 2^nd in the 2^nd round, and 1^st in the 3^rd round - your score would be 4 - and the winner of the competition.

So we would all sit and wait in the auditorium or gymnasium, listing to bad pop music, hyped up on adrenaline and sugar.

And there were some interesting people, strange people.  There were people like me - in our suits and ties.  There were some of the other people that would change into sweatsuits and track gear, still others in their best goth atire.  Some of the people would be clutching their stuffed animals.  Others reading some ancient tome.

In the end, waiting for the result.

“Wearing your butt kicking boots again today?” One of the coaches from the neighboring towns would ask, looking down at my black cowboy boots.

“Well, we’ll see.  You know your guy is pretty good.” I’d reply.

“Yeah, I know, but you are wearing your butt kicking boots.” He’d laugh.

 As soon as that contest official behind that library counter said draw, my hand reached for the topics laid face down on the counter between us.  Quickly, I’d draw up three of the fifteen to twenty-five slips of paper that were between us.

My eyes would scan them…

“What impact does the proposed nuclear agreement have on Russian/US relations?”

“Can Democracy take hold in the Eastern European countries after the fall of communism?”

“What can be done to control the rising health care costs in America?”

Remember these were different…and not so different times of twenty years ago.

My general rule of thumb was - take the international topics.  They were generally less controversial then the domestic topic (agruing a conservative viewpoint in front of liberal leaning judge was usually a death sentence and vice-versa).

With the topic selected, I would nod at the contest official…and make my way to my seat.

Forty-five minutes.  That was the time that I would have to research, write, and practice my speak.

The first fifteen minutes was spend reading and rereading articles about the topic that I drew…trying to decipher the information and trying to scrape enough together…or paring pack the information depending upon the topic. 

The second fifteen minutes was organizing and being creative.  It was a simple formula:  Introduction (attention grabber, topic, tell them what you are going to tell them), Body (three clear points, three clear sub points) and conclusion (tie back to intro, tell them what you told them, end it).

The next fifteen minutes was spent changing, adding, deleting, and practicing it - taking my notes down to one notecard with about twenty words on it….

Usually with about two minutes to go, I’d go to the door of the room, sometimes an office, sometimes a classroom, sometimes an auditorium to give my five to seven minute speech - any less then five and points were deducted, any more then seven, and points were deducted.

When I was called in, most of the time it was just the judge and me - sometimes a few spectators to see the potential blood bath.  Compared to most of the other speaking evens, there was little preparations and little practice, which meant the speech didn’t have the phony preparedness of some of the other categories, and it also had the potential to go very, very wrong…what happens if the speech only goes two minutes?  Or ten?  What happens if there is a swear word?  Or the person stumbles, spits, and sputters through it?  What happens if the speaker is just an idiot?

Walking into that room and facing the judge was, for lack of a better word, terrifying.  It was a massive adreneline rush.  This was competition, this is where you would live or die in the competition.  This is where the trophies were won or lost.

Five to seven minutes later, the speech was done - the judge was thanked, and back into the hallway we would proceed.

Whew.

But this was only round one…there were still two more to go…

 Every Tuesday afternoon in winters would find me in Ms. Cronin’s classroom after classes, studying, reading, and organizing Newsweek and Time magazines that I pilfered from the library or the senior social class.  Each issue was read and a Post-it was applied to the bag listing the subject matter of the national and international issues that could be found between the covers of those internationally reknown news magazines.

It was all in solemn preparation for the coming events that happened every February and March: The Speech Meet.

After chores almost every Saturday in February and March, I’d drive into town and catch the van to one of the exotic locations where I would compete.  Fosston, Crookston, Bagley, East Grand Forks, and Red Lake Falls were all on the usual route.  Occassionally, we would make the trek to Fargo for one of the big meets.

There was a wide range of different categories that people could participate in - humorous, interpreative, dramatic, prose, poetry, and then there was my topic - extemperaneous speaking. 

Like a gunslinger in the wild west, the extemperous speaker faced the judges each week with no preparations and only their smarts and their wits.

In some ways, I was only filling in a family tradition, my older brother Tom had done the circuit years before me.  But each week as we went from town to town, the same thrill, the same nerves would boil up inside.

While the rest of the speech team staked out their place in the gym or cafeteria, I’d head to the library…where most of my competition would stake out their places, like cowboys in a barroom, fingering their Newsweeks and glaring over their file boxes…into this gauntlet I’d walk with my simple box of magazines under my arm and a small stack of notecards in hand…

Though we were a lonely lot, some of us did grow to be friends.  Tony from Crookston, Peter from Gonvick, and a few other folks that came and went through the season.

Then there were those that were out for blood - Kirsten from Ada, Anthony from Red Lake Falls.

At nine o’clock sharp, the first first name would be called from the list of contestents, randomly chosen - probably drawn out of a hat, the rest of the speakers would watch.  Slowly, the first speaker would stand and walk towards the librarians desk where the contest official was seated….cracking their knuckles and slowly streatching their hands as they approached.

Laying out on the desk were laid small scraps of upside down pieces of paper.

The contest official - usually a college student or some student teacher - and the speaker would look into each others eyes, unblinking, all emotion drained, slowly, waiting for the seconds to pass, listening to the quiet ticking of the clock.

Then, the contest would draw a breath, and speak that fateful word….

“Draw.”

 February on the Northern Great Plains is still cold, but winter was now almost four months in and while the country was still firmly in the grips of old man winter, the power was beginning to wane.

But so too were the supplies stored up for the winter.

No where was this more evident then in the big hay barn.  Sitting above the stanchions below and seperated by stringers made of stuot two by twelves and rows of four by fours, the haybarn was solid.  With thousands of small bales of hay - stacked yards deep, it also proved to be well insulated.

But on a daily basis, hay was thrown down through holes in that floor, stacked around carefully each summer to provide access in the winter.  Day after day, we would throw hay down through the winter.  Fourteen on one side of the barn and eighteen on the other (one side had the milk room, the other no only had more cows, but also access to the lean to where the youngstock were housed.  As winter drew on, the hay supply was slowly drawn down, which meant the insulation gradually waned.

But the cows below continued to give off a lot of heat, and also a lot of humidity.  While the temperature outside could easily be twenty below zero with almost no humidity, the temperature inside the barn could be fifty degrees and eighty percent humidity.

But that humidity would find a place to go out - through those same holes that we used to throw hay down each evening.  Which meant frost would form on the massive wooden rafters inside the barn.

And when I say frost, I mean frost.

The frost would form long delicate strands that would reach down daintily from the rafters, sometimes ten feet or more from the rafters, like massive snowflakes that slowly built out from the mixture of the wooden and the cold meeting the humidity from down below.  And they would form almost all the way up the roof - so you had frost that hung down not only ten feet, but would sometimes follow the inside of the roof line for thirty feet.

As kids, we would go up into the haybarn together to throw down hay.  It only took one good hit with a fork handle or the good jab with the palm of your hand to get foot of frost crashing down onto an unsuspecting brother.

Being the younger brother, I was usually on the receiving end of these frost falls.  For a couple of reasons, first of all, being the youngest, generally we were trusting.  Second of all, if I went down the barn furious from the cruelty of my older brothers, I was told to suck it up.  If one of my older brothers went down, I’d get in trouble for not respecting my elders….

But in the end, twas still better to give then receive…

 I still remember going through the exercise.

“OK, before Mass, think really hard about what you want to do or give up for Lent.  This is your chance to improve.  To suffer a little bit.  To make yourself a little better.  To do something for Jesus.  To offer up.” Sister Rosella informed us as we entered the side doors of church for the Ash Wednesday all school Mass.

Afterwards, before morning recess, we were each given a mimeographed third length sheet of paper with a cross on a hill in the top corner.

“I want you each to write down at least two things that you are going to give up, or that you are going to do for Lent.” Sister Rosella informed us.

In the neatest hand writing…or rather, printing, possible, each of us first graders slowly wrote out the things that we wanted to give up.  Some people took a little extra time and colored the hillside and the cross.  Others were focusing on their handwriting.  Others on the actual items on the piece of paper.

Once we were all done, we were free to go outside for our first recess of the day.  Sister Rosella, who normally came out with us, stayed behind today.

Maybe she gave up recess for Lent we shuddered…who would want to give up recess?

After spending time in the cold and snow of the northern Minnesota playground, we came running at the sound of the hand bell that Sister Rosella used to call us back into the school.

As we took off our jackets, hats, and gloves and made our way to our seats, we saw that those things that we had given up, those written pledges we had made, we now safely laminated to the top of our desks.  For the next forty days, we be looking directly at those promises, those pledges we had made.

And perhaps worst of all, Sister Rosella knew them too.

“Didn’t you give up candy?”  She would inquire as one of my classmates picked up a sucker.

“Didn’t you say you would be nice to people?” She would say to another.

It was pretty clear it was going to be a long forty days.

But what a great lesson to learn, a combination of leadership, goal setting, and faith.  To this day, my best lents are those where I write down what I’m going to do or give up.  The best goals that I set are ones that I keep in front of me.  The most success comes from those that I prayerfully and thoughtfully think about.

I’m not sure what happened to that laminated piece of mimeograph paper that graced my first grade desk all those Lents ago, but I know where that lesson went, right to my head, and to my heart.

 President’s Day weekend usually meant a variety of things - usually it was the first good thaw of winter, a sign that spring was truly on its way…even if it still might be two months away…we knew that winter wouldn’t be far away.

It usually also meant the yearly butchering.  The time when we would stock the families freezers (including grandma’s and a few other folks) with beef and pork, enough to last the balance of the year until the next President’s Day.

If we were lucky and the meat was aging in the cooler at the butcher shack…not ready for final processing for another couple of days, it might be that the Monday of President’s Day might be free.  Usually, that Sunday night before, we would wait for the sign from our Dad:

“Well, since the butchering is done, maybe we could head to Crookston to the winter show.”

The die was cast, and we were happy.

Usually Dad and us boys, this was primarily male bonding time, would pile into the car and make the sixty mile drive to the Northwest to the Winter Show buildings on the outskirts of the large farming center of Crookston, Minnesota.

We knew that the drive up there would hold some of the same traditions.  Watching for wildlife as we passed through the barren landscape north of Twin Valley, through Gary Pines, and on into Fertile.  Dad would regal us with stories of when he and our great Uncle Charlie would go up the winter shows when he was a young man in the fifties.  Driving into Crookston, he would point out the landmarks - the old Cathedral, the little civic center, which was the orignal home of the winter shows.  Then we would approach what seemed to us to be the sprawling, multi-building sight of the winter show.

After parking, we would each get a couple of dollars to spend on juke - at the time they sure seemed like treasures, today….not so much - and away we would go.

When we were small, we would have to stay with Dad and Mom, not straying too far from the safety of their hands.  When we were older, we were free to roam the grounds outselves, looking at the equipment, looking at the toy displays, seeing the latest in the agricultural world.

In hindsight, it all seems relatively amazing - sugar beet lifters, barn cleaners, tractors, combines, harrows, the latest in computer technology, seeds, chemicals, toys, mowers, haying equipment, plows, cattle chutes, dairy equipment, livestock, and a mixed in were a host of food and beverages interspersed.

And it was packed.

Part of the fun was just the people watching.  The families walking down the crowded aisles, maybe one of the only times they would make it to a ‘big city’ from such far away places as Gonvick, or Shelley.  Young men and women there to participate in the FFA and 4-H stock shows.  Old couples holding hands.  Moms and Dads, boys and girls, sometimes three generations of farmers looking over the same piece of machinery and debating its merits.

It was clear even as a boy that the agricultural world of the upper Red River Valley was changing with larger and more concentration, but something about the Winter Show  seemed so simple, so innocent, that you hoped it would last forever.

 In my relatively short life, if I think back to the women who have made the greatest impact in my life, there are two that stand head and shoulders above the rest.  The first, probably obviously, is my mother.  The second is my father’s mother, the women that I simply knew as grandma.

She looked like a grandma should.  She was a big women - physically, socially, morally, spiritually, intellectually.

At six feet tall, she seemed to tower over most of us grandkids, and over most of her peers as well.  She came from a big family - most of her brother’s and sister’s were near or well above six feet tall as well.  And she was strong.  Years of toiling in the gardens, in the farm kitchen, and in the barns, well before most of todays modern convienences.

She had an eighth grade education, merely because that was all she had available to her, but she was an avid reader.  Books, newspapers, copies of Reader’s Digest.  It was always fun to go over and hear grandma’s view on the world as a boy, her knowledge, combined with experience, always brought out the common sense approach to world problems, and often gave us things to think about.

Socially, her personality was naturally a little reserved, but that didn’t stop her from being out and active.  When I was a child, she was living in a seniors apartment complex.  She was constantly out playing cards, visiting her neighbors, or trying to help someone with something.  She believed that being part of a community, as big or as small as it was, meant helping those around you.  Just shy of her ninetieth birthday, she was going from apartment to apartment in her retirement apartment helping people to count pills.  When scolded by my Dad that she shouldn’t be doing that - what happens if something happens and she got in trouble.  She replied that she needed to be there to help the friends…and what was the worse they could do to her at ninety years old?

In a world where so many things seem grey today, where society tries to blend the lines between what is right and what is wrong, where we are suppose to accept all peoples opinions and and just ‘go with the flow,’ Grandma Rose saw things very black and white.  It didn’t mean that she didn’t love and respect all people, but she knew where she stood and took very active steps to make sure that was known - especially to her grandchildren.  More then once I was lovingly, but firmly explained the morality of issues.  I remember my brother joking that he might have to go to Canada if there is a draft…and Grandma turning to him and saying simply…Then never come back.  Even the simple lessons in life…she never let us win at card games, no matter how much we pouted.  “Life isn’t going to let you win,” she said simply.

Spiritually, Grandma never talked religion.  She didn’t have too, she lived it.  Her rosary, Bible, and prayer books were always by her side.  Until old age limited her movement, she walked regularly, almost on a daily basis to church.  But it was how she treated people, how she taught her children and grandchildren, how she gave of all that she had, that truly told us where her heart lay.

She never talked about it, but reading the family history, and hearing the stories of her neices and nephews, it was clear, she had a hard life.  An immigrant at the age of six months with her family, working hard through her young years, marrying right before the Great Depression, holding her family together through some of Grandpa’s recurring illnesses, fighting the weather and finances, her life was not one of tremedous opportunity, and it would have been very easy for her to be bitter - but she remained one of the happiest and cheerful people that I ever knew.

Part of me wishes I could go back and ask her how she could stand, teach such lessons, care so much, in a world that seemed always to be trying to hold her down.  I don’t know if she couldn’t have given an answer beyond “what was the alternative?”  But ultimately, she did have a choice.  And at heart, her life, her legacy, and her attitude could probably be summed up in one word - love.