There just isn’t any holding ….
There just isn’t any holding back. As much as I’m enjoying the last days of July, this paper is dated August, and by the time you read this, school registration for the new school year will be completed.
This noon I was reminded of it as well as I watched the sun shining brightly and showing through with the sun rays showing up on the floor. At home I watched this carefully as for about three weeks each summer the sun got high enough in the sky not to shine in at noon time. Then gradually it grew from a slim sliver and grew almost across the room by December.
It’s an age old thing, time marches on and as each day passes I can be thankful I’m still around to enjoy every minute of it.
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I guess I was reminded of that last week as the mail brought me my new license plate tab which makes me legal to drive my car until the end of August 2023. Hopefully we won’t see another increase in the fee. I see the governor and the Republicans are sparring over where to give taxpayers a break. The governor wants to lower gas taxes and the Republican legislators want an income tax break. Well, which is the fairest? Not everyone drives the same amount and there are also people who don’t pay any state taxes. Maybe lowering the license plate fee would be a lot fairer. We all pay the same if we drive 10,000 miles a year or 50,000.
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I got a big laugh out of an ad in the new American Legion magazine that just came today. It was for the Legion itself promoting their annual convention coming up at the end of August. They are suggesting checking out the Harley-Davidson Museum, the Veterans Park, the bronze Fonz statue from the Henry Winkler’s Happy Days, the Milwaukee Museum, Pabst Mansion, the Brewers and last but not least – CHEESE CURDS!
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The other day I read someone was wondering if they remembered reading the Dick and Jane book in school. I guess I’d have to ask, why don’t they, if they aren’t. That was my first introduction to reading. And it must have been important. I can still remember it. Dick, See Dick Run, Run Dick Run. See Jane, See Jane Run, Run Jane Run.
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Another couple of words I have down are roller skating. I don’t remember what brought that up, but yes, I did a lot of it. At least twice a week. When it comes to dancing some people are always amazed that I never learned how to dance. I guess the answer was roller skating was a wonderful form of entertainment when I was growing up. Dancing was not. I guess because most dancing took place where beer and/or liquor was served. Not only would it have been illegal, I know my Mother would not have allowed it.
We had a place just off the north shore of Pipe Lake, just a bit over three miles from home. We were lucky, some people drove many miles, all the way from Luck or that area to be there. We had all kinds of skating: everybody skate, couple forward, triple skating and all this ended with the grand march and crack the whip. One of our neighbors was always the anchor on crack the whip and he really knew how to swing that line of skaters ahead of him around. I was generally a watcher as you really had to know how to hang on so you didn’t break the string of skaters.
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Then there are a couple of words that really sent me back to my younger days. Father Gordon. I’m not even sure how it popped into my head. I guess I was just roaming the computer and had been looking up some communities I was acquainted with back in Polk County. There were three small towns, Balsam Lake, Centuria and Milltown and the editor of the newspaper in Balsam Lake got the idea of consolidating all three schools into what is today, Unity School District. It took some doing and at one time it got so bad he thought maybe they should call it “Disunity”.
Back in the days when I was pretty young if there was something going on in that part of the county the name Father Gordon came up. I never knew why. But the computer had the answer. He was only the second Native American to be named a Catholic priest. He was very knowledgeable and President Coolidge appointed him to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and brought him to Washington. There he got himself in lots of trouble, especially over what he called “those greedy whites”.
To get rid of him they sent him to the Catholic Church in Centuria, Wisconsin, where he lived until he died in 1948. So it was possible that he was up and about at the time I was just growing up.
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I know it is election time next week, but I have a real problem with some things going on. Back in 1969, Steve Gunderson called me to say he was resigning from the Wisconsin Assembly. In questioning how his seat was to be filled he said there would be a special election and even suggested I run since the paper covered two cities, a village and four school districts. Well, I bit, along with five other people. The Republican Party called us all together one evening and explained the rules. One of which was, if you have any skeletons in your closet – DON’T run.
Seems to be that rule of thumb doesn’t seem to apply to our current contest for the U.S. Senate. I found it alarming that one of our elected senators serving Wisconsin was also one of the Republican Senators who voted not to investigate the attack on the United States Capitol. Since then he or his staff have been found to have been involved in passing a paper around which tried to show the election in 2020 was rigged. I guess the key word ought to be — integrity.
