Greensburg, Kansas

June 4, 2007: We left Albuquerque at 9 a.m., passed through the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and into Kansas on U.S. 54 and we're getting hungry. All the towns listed in the Atlas are small or virtual ghost towns with no cafes. But Greensburg is listed on most mileage signs and at a crossroads so that's our goal figuring that, if it merits a sign, it must have a place to eat. We're looking for Kansas steaks, by the way. At Bucklin, eight miles before Greensburg, we find an open cafe with meat and potatoes and chow down. I pick up the Hutchinson, KS Leader, the local paper, and the headline has a One Month Ago Today headline with a big photo of a flattened Greensburg. The tornado struck Greensburg on May 4. We drove the eight miles. Highway 54 goes right through Greensburg's north end. The grain elevator (every town in Kansas, seems to have one) on the north end was the only structure to appear to be undamaged. Everything else was mostly flattened with just a few beat-up structures for relief. It was similar to what I saw of Katrina over 90 miles on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, meaning it was total destruction. There's nothing left for a round 2. Greensburg had a high school and a city hall. Just some brick walls remained. The Guard or Army Reserves has trucks and tents on the track and foot ball field. The rest of the photos I took will be on my photo site.

Off to see the Lizards

Hey, I have a photo blog http://picasaweb.google.com/sturvoni/OkefenokeeKayakRide?pli=1but have only one of many albums submitted. For now. And we're off, too, to the Bay Area, to see the wizards and wizardesses of that Ozzie land. After 4 days or so of hanging with the Turners, Tony, Erica, and Angie, its another Road Trip! To the Grand Canyon, Carol in Sedona and Merle in Albuquerque.

pogo

Here I am with my friend, Pogo Possumhttp://www.pogopossum.com/index.htm at the north entry to the Okefenokee. We were turned away from this entry because of the emergence of the wildfire that's burned in the area since then. Fortunately we were able to enter at the southeastern entry for the refuge http://www.fws.gov/okefenokee/

Albert?

Ok. Here's one of our friends checking out our kayak in the Okefenokee.

Al McGuire

Even though it's a "busy being born" theme, I'm busy seeking an identity, or at least a blogger sense and purpose while self-consciensely trying to avoid pretentiousness. So I've carried around a stagnant list of "blogits" that stopped after:
Al McGuire
Should have said at 60th
Urban/Wild Dinner
During the NCAA madness (of which I am afflicted) the NYTimes ran a piece by Ray Glier on April 1, on the inimitable Al McGuire the second paragraph of which, in its entirety, says:
"McGuire, who was 72 when he died of leukemia in 2001, would suggest to his players that they spend six months bartending and six months driving a cab after graduation. They would be better prepared for life, he said."
In 1964, Marquette basketball coach, Al McGuire was the speaker at my Wausau Newman High School athletic banquent. He gave that same advice to us all-white, dumbass, midwest Catholic jocks. I was so impressed. He spoke to us as people, not as kids or subjects. He was...comfortable and sensible, as far as I could see. I don't recall any other adult figure in my life, teachers, friends or family that hit such a home run with me. Bart Starr certainly didn't the next year as our speaker. Stiff, remote, irrelevant, the evil twin of Al. And Bart was the superstar. Al's celebrity was waiting for the NCAA championship in 1977, the year he retired from BB. And so I finally got it together and signed on as a bartender in 1972. And Al was right. I'll follow up on this some other time.
I signed in today because of a random restaurant review in the Capital Times today of the restaurant called The Old Fashioned and its old Wisconsin menu that included string potatoes which triggered a recollection of my encounter with string potatoes, or the potato chip like snack food that came in bags or cans. This must have been in about 1960 or so when I spend much time walking the shore of the Wisconsin River which wound through Wausau and approached within a few blocks of the childhood home. An early scavanger (a family tradition) I found floating in the "hardest working river in the world" a sealed No. 10 can with no label. I took it home and Dad and I opened it. Of course, it was a commercial size can of shoe string potatos. Ever practical Dad noted the previously sealed contents and said, without any concern for where the can was found floating for who knows how long; "Let's eat". This, of course, was on course with the dump garden experience where a produce company dumped a load of old stuff early one spring and by fall all sorts of stuff had sprouted and Pa reasoned that it had to OK and we harvested lots of stuff. We also hunted rats in that same dump.

Something

Yes. Retirement is OK. We just got back from a 2 week road trip with an endpoint in St. Augustine, FL. and we will be flying out to SF on May 24 and driving our old van back with whatever Tony and Erica want to send with us. Speaking of Tony and Erica, those two and I went up north the day after the party and continued the sap run and boiled down another gallon of syrup (about 40 gallons of sap). And if you are interested in T, E & Angie making sausage a couple of weeks ago, check this out...
http://www.ethicurean.com/images/slideshows/salumi2007/
mmmm...

Savannahland

Just returned, April 24, from the Southeast Coast; Savannah and St. Augustine where, serendipitously, we got a personal tour of the renovation of possibly the oldest house in the USA. And with the owner, a product of Wausau, no less and also a graduate of Newman H.S.; she, the class of 61, me, '65. The house, the surviving walls and facade of which are made of coquina, a sedimentary rock made of shell fragments, was, according to the national historic place plaque, orginally constructed about 1583, or so I recall (I forgot my camera as well as just forgot). The Newman grad is just completing a massive renovation and rehab and was going to spend her
first night there along with her sister and brother in law the night of the day we visited.

We were all in the area for the wedding of Carl Jehn, Tom and Heidi's son, just south of town. MJ and I had left Madison on the 11th for an arbitration in Springfield on the 12th followed by a night in Paducah and lunch the next day at the Mothership Barbecue http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Columns/Dining/2006/07/13/Smokin_/index.shtml in Nashville before moving on to Cousin Jimmy and Jean at their new home in Rome, GA. Then on to Savannah and a couple of days getting acquainted with the quaint. On the way down to Gainesville and Lisa, we pulled into the Okefenokee Swamp to pay respects to Pogo, Albert, Churchy, Howland, Porkypine but mostly saw Albert's Alligator friends on our kayak trip into the swamp. And these were the big guys and up close and personal. Of course, there were ibises, sandhill crannes, egrets, comorants etc. but the gators dominated and got us pretty juiced. Once I figure out how to insert photos here, I'll do it. Same with hyperlinks.