Mom, a Butcher Shop, and Her First Glasss of Wine……

I was back in town for mom’s 85th birthday, and we had steaks and martinis the night before her party.  If you want to grill great steaks in Ottawa, there’s only one place you buy them – Polancic’s Meat Market, and that’s where I bought them.  As we were eating the steaks, mom said “you know, the Polancic brothers worked at the meat shop right next to Grandma’s house before they opened their own shop”.  No, I didn’t know this.  As a matter of fact, I didn’t know there had been a butcher shop next to Grandmas.  “Oh yea, it was owned by Mr. Steinbach.  He’s also who sold Grandma and Grandpa their house”.  Now, I was really interested. 

 It turns out that Grandma and Grandpa had rented the house from Mr. Steinbach for years, before buying it from him around 1940 (for the princely sum of $4,400).  When they were renting the house from him, a condition of the rental was that Mr. Steinbach was able to live in the house in the “back bedroom”.  That room was off limits to the kids unless Mr Steinbach invited them in, and a whippin’ was the penalty if caught.

One day when she was 7 or 8, mom was in the kitchen and the door to Mr. Steinbach’s room was open.  She couldn’t help herself, and went on in.  Once in the room, she was looking around and there was a trap door open to a different part of the cellar.  She went over to the trap door and there was Mr. Steinbach in the cellar.  He saw her about the same time and asked if she wanted to come down into the cellar.  He held her hand and she walked down the steps.  Low and behold, there were several large barrels in the cellar, one with a spigot in it.  It turned out that he was having a glass of his homemade wine.  He had another small cup there, filled it and handed it to mom, who sat down with him and had her first wine.  They drank the wine and had a nice visit for a while.

After they finished their wine, they both went up the stairs and Grandma and Grandpa were in the kitchen.  Mom was evidently feeling the effects of the wine and was walking a bit funny.  The adults were all chuckling at her staggered steps right up until she slipped and fell against the stove and cracked her tooth.  That started her to crying, but it turned out she was alright.

 

 It worked out well for mom, as she later had a job working  in the butcher shop in 1944 or ’45 when she was 13 or 14.  The Polancic brothers were already working there then, learning the trade.  Later, they opened their own shop.  Today, it’s on the north side of town (and is run by one of the sons and their grandsons).

I love the connections that are in small towns.  I felt lucky to learn about this one.  

I was not born an environmentalist, but I have come to care greatly about the environment and the future, particularly for this great country of ours. That’s a big reason I am on the executive board of The Nature Generation (NatGen), a nonprofit focused on preparing youth  for the environmental challenges of the future, by connecting them with nature today.

We all travel different paths in life to get to where we are, and my path towards environmental concern started as a boy growing up in Illinois in the 1960s.  Looking back, there were a couple things I remember, that sort of amaze me now. The first was that there was always trash along the side of the road.  Always.  And a lot of it. The second was the fact that if you fished in the Illinois River, you would never catch anything but carp or bullhead because the river was so polluted.  I liked to fish back then and anything we caught, we’d throw on the bank because you couldn’t eat them due to the pollution.  That was just the way it was, and no one seemed to think anything else about it.

  Then you became aware of things taking place more broadly, like a river on fire in Ohio due to pollution, or eagles dying from DDT.  And you start to think, it doesn’t have to be this way.  Earth Day happens, and we all start to pick up trash, and plant trees. The EPA was formed (under a Republican president), and we started going after polluters, and lo and behold, our air, and our water started cleaning up. Forty-five years later, and the world is different.   

 You don’t see near as much trash on the side of any road.  The Illinois River is rejuvenated, and there are bass, walleye, crappies, and other game fish.  There are bald eagles and waterfowl on the river, something I never ever saw in my youth.

My wife and I live on a small farm in Virginia now, and about 6 years ago I joined NatGen.  Living on the farm, my connection with nature and the environment is much closer.  The weather affects you more, streams cross your property, and you notice other things.  Woods that existed one day and are clear cut.  Large chicken farms that have the potential to affect the entire watershed.  Building projects with mud and sludge running into local creeks.  You read in the paper about a chemical company that has poisoned an entire community in Pennsylvania.  Your friends that have lived on the Illinois River for over 15 years have to move, due to the development of frac sand mining nearby. 

 You realize that the challenges to the environment are never over and this will continue forever.  Clean water, clean air, and a clean environment – they should be a given, but they aren’t.  NatGen is one of the organizations making a difference and educating our youth, so they can make smart decisions in the future.  I like to think that passing a torch to the next generation is a pretty good thing for our youth and our environment.  

Earth Day is this Friday, April 22d.  You don’t need to be born an environmentalist to care about the environment and the future.  You just need to care.

  *Would you like some more information? Check out NatGen on Facebook, or their website at: http://www.natgen.org/

  **Special thanks to my friend Laurie Bradach for the use of her photo “Ducks on the Illinois River”.

…..This blog post was first published on the NatGen website in February, 2016…..

Daffodils in the middle of the woods…..
 

 If you leave our house and take a right onto the gravel road called Swains Road, you dead-end in about a mile and a half. At the end of the dead-end is a trail that goes into the woods. Follow that trail for about 200 yards, and all of a sudden, in the middle of the woods, you will see several groups of daffodils. In the middle of the woods. With no house, no yard, and no people.

And then you start to look a little closer, and you see the outline of a stone foundation for a house. It might be a 20×30 foot foundation. And you also notice a pile of stone that might have been a chimney a long time ago. I’ve talked to “oldtimers” in the neighborhood, and no one ever remembers anything about that house. There’s a good sized tree growing up inside the foundation. There are a few old buckets and some broken bottles, maybe from someone doing target practice years later. There are no other houses on this property. There are other existing old cabins in the area that are around 100 years old, so I’m guessing this one might be older.   

I think about the house, and wonder who lived there. Someone suggested to me it might have been a hunting cabin, but I have a hard time believing hunters planted daffodils in front of their cabin. No, this was a family home at some point in time. This would have been well out in the country at that point in time (hell, it’s still well out in the country). Were they scratching out a living? Was it part of a larger farm? Were they happy? I think of the woman who planted the daffodils, trying to turn that cabin from a house into a home, and I like to think she was successful in doing that. Of course, I’ll never know. Eventually, they sold, or moved, or left, or were evicted. The cabin fell into disrepair, and came down, the wood disintegrating over the years, until nothing was left but the stone foundation. And the daffodils out front.

I’ve thought about digging up the daffodils and separating them, and replanting them up at our house. They’d gain a new life that way, and someone to look at them, and enjoy them every spring. So far, I’ve resisted the urge, and so, there they stand as silent guardians to lives gone by. Daffodils in the middle of the woods….

Opening Day!

I’m excited that I will be going to the Nats opening Day on April 7th this year with some friends. Beers, a dog, peanuts, and that thought that all things are possible.

 

Surely Opening Day is one of the true signs that spring has arrived in so many ways. Pitchers and catchers reported back in February, and gave us our first indication that winter wasn’t going to last for ever. But that was in Florida or Arizona, and most of the rest of us are somewhere “up north” where cold weather was still a reality.

But Opening Day – not only the weather has turned, but there is also that sense of renewal that accompanies the start of the baseball season. All things are possible in April, and who knows what the year will bring. Growing up a Cardinal fan, there was almost always promise for the coming season. But on Opening Day, hope springs eternal for all fans – even if your team is the Cubbies. And this year, who knows, the Cubs may make a real run. They’ve got a good manager, and it appears both decent pitching and good hitting. We’ll know for sure in 162+ games, but for now, before Opening Day, the Cubs look like they could be the real deal.

The Mets? Sox? Yankees? Giants? Dodgers? Anyone could make a run for it. The Phillies Or Braves? Everyone says not this year, they are still rebuilding…but they said that about the Mets last year at this time. I’m looking forward to some good conversations with my brother-in-law about the Giants, and my nieces about the Cubs. Maybe a bet or two will get made before the season is over….

I’ve become a Nats fan since they returned to DC, and things are look promising here this year as well. Dusty Baker’s in to guide the ship, Bryce is coming off a monster season, and we have a couple of new players – maybe they can fulfill the promise that has seemed to exist the last three or four years. Hey – it’s almost Opening Day and all things are possible….