Hello, all…
I have to start by offering my apologies to anyone who tried to contact me through email or myspace while I was gone. I thought I’d get into town a few times throughout the week to check my computer, but it turned out that I only got to one WiFi spot the whole time I was up north. So…if you emailed me or messaged me on myspace, you didn’t get a response. My bad. I’ll answer you ASAP.
As I type this, I’m sitting in one of those unbearably uncomfortable airport terminal seats in front of gate G18 in Minneapolis. They’ve changed me from another gate to this one, and there’s no sign here indicating the change. I hope I get on the right plane. Anyhow, while I wait for news about my flight, I think I’ll put together a little summary of what went down this week for any of you who are interested.
I arrived on Thursday night to a snowstorm. There wasn’t any serious amount of snow–two or three inches–but it was blowing and swirling and generally making driving sort of a difficult exercise. It took about three hours to drive from the airport to my parents’ house, a drive which usually takes about an hour and twenty minutes. After much bobbing, weaving, cursing, etc., we finally made it to the house. My little brother Cameron was there with his girlfriend Mandy, and we proceeded directly to Howie’s Corner Bar in St. Stephen, MN. This is a one-stop-sign town. The four-way stop features two bars, a church (Catholic, of course), and a vacant lot. Beyond that, there’s nothin’ but farms. You can imagine the clientele. We had a good time, and I mercilessly whooped my brother and Mandy at Silver Strike while we relaxed with some beverages.
For the following two days, my mother dragged me around town while she Christmas shopped. She’s usually prepared weeks in advance, but a good friend of the family got into a serious car wreck a couple of weeks ago, and they’ve spent a lot of time at the hospital visiting him and talking with his family. This has been the focal point of many people’s lives for quite a while, and many of my family and friends were a bit unprepared for Christmas. Consequently, my mother dragged me all over town through God-awful traffic and inconsiderate drivers, all the while peppering me with such questions as “What do you think your dad wants for Christmas?” and “Does Chissom have brown corduroy pants already?” I was little to no help. I did, however, accomplish a little shopping of my own. During the evenings of these two harrowing days, one or the other of my brothers showed up at the house to hang out and (again) relax over a few cocktails.
Let me say here that the older of my two brothers, Chissom, has a toy fox terrier named Tinkerbell. This dog is the devil. It only likes Chissom and his girlfriend, JoAnne. My youngest brother, Cameron, also recently got a puppy. His name is Tanner, and he’s half Beagle and half Pekingese. He’s the cutest damn dog I’ve ever seen. Both of my brothers feel compelled to bring their dogs when they come to my parents’ house. Add my dad’s hunting dog, Maggie, to the mix, and you’ve got complete canine pandemonium. The barking, biting, teasing, yelping, and other assorted cacophony could just about drive a person nuts. Of course, my family is around this all the time, so it doesn’t bother them. As for me, I have to retreat into the bedroom and take a few deep breaths occasionally to keep from freaking out. It’s been a long time since my life contained that sort of bedlam…at home, anyway. School, as many of you know, is another story.
Maggie and Tanner: Aren't they cute?
This is Tinkerbell. I think the hideous satanic eyes are appropriate.
On one of these nights, either Friday or Saturday (I forget which), I helped Mom decorate the tree. She had already put on the lights before I got home, but she and I hung ornaments, draped garland, and placed the tree topper which belonged to my mom’s grandmother and is one of her prized possessions. The tree at my parents’ house is a motley-looking thing. When my brothers and I were kids, my folks bought us each an ornament every year. These were always little-kid appropriate, and never matched. The tree is a menagerie of fuzzy mice, plastic train engines, ceramic smurfs, and various other artifacts of Christmases past. Add to these all the ornaments that my mom has received as gifts from friends and family, and a few ornaments that she sewed and stuffed by hand in the years before she and my dad had kids, and you get one hell of a mixed up tree. I don’t think anyone outside the family could begin to comprehend the history and stories that hang on the tree, but we love it.
This is the much-adored Lindner family Christmas tree, with my two brothers and I sitting in front of it. As you can see, I'm the brainy one, but not the good-lookin' one.
Whichever of those nights wasn’t spent decorating the tree, I spent with my father, assembling the new dinette set. My parents are in the middle of remodeling the upstairs, and that involves new furniture. They bought the table and chairs a week before I even landed. Every time they called about delivery, the store staff told them that the truck was “really busy today,” and they might get their stuff tomorrow. Well, a few days before Christmas, my mom got kinda panicky about not having a table on which to serve Christmas dinner, so my dad and I went to the furniture store and just picked the stuff up. Of course, it wasn’t assembled. Thus, he and I spend the evening sipping a few cocktails and assembling six chairs and a dining room table. Again, add in the various hyperactive dogs, and you have an event on your hands.
A day or two farther down the road, there we were, Chissom and JoAnne, Cameron and Mandy, Mom and Dad, and me (feeling WAY single and WAY stupid about it), gathered at my parents’ house on Christmas eve. Mom made a fantastic two-course dinner with pheasant pie and venison steaks, along with assorted sides and such. GOOD stuff.
I must say, if you’ve never eaten pheasant pie, you’ve never eaten at all. Imagine pheasant breast cut into bite-sized pieces and cooked into an amazing cream gravy. This is spread into the bottom of a casserole dish. Then, biscuit dough is placed over the top, and the whole works goes into the oven. When it’s finished, you just dig into it with a big serving spoon, flip it over onto your plate so that the gravy is on top, and dig in. Except for a few stray shotgun pellets, it’s the best thing you’ll ever eat….except for venison steaks.
Here's most of the gang at dinner. From left to right, this is Chissom, JoAnne, Cameron, me, and my dad. Mandy was elsewhere, and mom was taking the photo. I'm particularly fond of the various goofy expressions.
After dinner, enacted a few Christmas traditions that are REALLY important to my mom. She takes great pride in the fact that there are some things we do the same every year, and it would break her heart if we missed one. The rest of us love our traditions, too, but it’s Mom who always makes sure that we do everything right. After dinner, while the rest of us relax with a few cocktails (see the pattern, yet?), she whips up about six colors of icing. Then, we all sit around the table and frost the cookies she’s been baking for the past couple of evenings. She’s had the same cookie cutters since I was a kid: angel, snowman, camel, bell, star, Santa, Christmas tree, gingerbread man. We’ve invented several new techniques for icing cookies and placing sprinkles of various kinds on them. I’m sure these tactics will be all the rage in high-end bakeries around the world, if some fancy chef just caught a glimpse. We’ve got streaks, drizzles, lines of sprinkles, three-dimensional sprinkle features on gingerbread men, etc. My dad always pretends to HATE icing cookies, but he always sits there and does it.
After icing cookies, Mom gets out the family Bible and opens it to the second chapter of Luke. We read verses 1-16, and then place the Christ child in the nativity scene. It’s a beautiful nativity set that my grandmother made and glazed, and it sits in a manger that my grandfather crafted out of wood from the forest behind their house. The whole set occupies a rather large coffee table in the living room. The figure of Christ is never in the manger during the days before Christmas. On Christmas Eve, after we read from Luke, my mother gets out her Anne Murray Christmas cassette and cues up “Away in a Manger.” Everyone in the family sings the song, and then the Christ child can finally take his place between Mary and Joseph as the Magi and camels look on.
Following the completion of the nativity, we relax with a few cocktails and exchange gifts. Among the gifts my family gave me were a quilted flannel shirt (you know how I love those!), Donald Hall’s new poetry collection, and Guitar Hero for play station. We had a good time shredding the wrapping paper, and the dogs had a fantastic time playing in the wreckage.
Another of the traditions in my family is the attendance of midnight mass. About fifteen miles from my parents’ house, there is a private Catholic University called St. John’s. Among other things, the campus houses a monastery, complete with an abbey. It’s a most impressive and beautiful church, and the monks always give an hour-long concert of Christmas carols and Gregorian chant before mass begins. The whole family made the pilgrimage to St. John’s for midnight mass. All of you know that I’m not especially religious, but an entire abbey full of Minnesotans singing “Silent Night” in the original German could make atheists see the light. It’s a moment I look forward to every year.
“Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. Alles schlaft, einsam wacht.” You wouldn’t think that German is a particularly beautiful language, but you’ve got to hear it sung…
Hmm. If you notice a shift in the tone at this point, it’s because I had to stop typing and get on the plane. Although I’d hoped to finish writing this on the plane, the bunghole in front of me reclined his seat so far that I could have done his dental work and left it that way for the whole flight. There was no hope for the laptop on what was left of my tray table. I now come to you from the guest bedroom at Scott’s parents’ house, conveniently located just five minutes from the Houston airport. The flight took a little over four hours; we had to fly around some thunderstorms and tornado-ish conditions.
So, after the many traditions of Christmas Eve, we all headed back to our various houses and crashed. When we awoke, we spent Christmas day laying around the house and generally being lazy. We also ate a tremendous amount of leftovers, and Dad and I watched hockey. We literally did not leave the house all day. It was a fantastic day of doing nothing but hanging out.
On the 26th, Dad and I got together with Chissom and his friend Marty and headed for Pleasant lake to do some ice fishing. There was a solid six inches of ice on the lake, and the fishing was pretty good. In about three hours, we landed three or four small pike. The weather was unseasonably warm–about 30 degrees–and we fished in light clothes. All I had to do to be comfortable was put on a pair of wool pants over my jeans, a flannel shirt over my t-shirt, boots, and baseball cap. I never put on a jacket all day. Note that this is NOT especially good fishing weather. In the evening, more hockey.
A side-note about ice fishing…if you’ve never done it, you can’t even imagine it. Most fishermen have a collapsible shelter that they take out on the lake with them. Dad and I took the shelter, the ice auger, the minnow bucket, the fishing rods and tip-ups, and a case of beer out on the lake with us. The first thing to do is set up the shelter. The bottom is made of plastic. Inside are aluminum poles and canvas. The idea is to set up the aluminum poles like a framework and then stretch the canvas over it. There are holes in the floor for fishing. Once the shelter is set up, you just hang out inside and drink beer while waiting for the fish to bite. Light the lantern, and you’ve got more than enough heat to keep things toasty inside. Additionally, you’re allowed to use two lines per person in MN in the winter. Thus, we have tip-ups. Picture this with me. It’s a board about sixteen inches long. There’s a cutout through the center through which is affixed a metal axle rod. On the bottom of the rod is a spool of fishing line. On the other end is a T-bar. So, the board lays across the hole. The spool is under the water, and the T-bar is above the water. Attached to the end of the board is a spring-loaded flag. You just lower the bait into the hole, hook this flag under the T-bar, and walk away. When a fish takes the bait, it spins the spool. The spool, of course, is on the same axle as the T-bar, so that spins, too. When the T-bar spins, the spring-loaded flag is released. When the flag pops up, you just set down your beer, run out to your tip-up, and pull in your fish. It’s ingenious!
Here's a tip-up. Get it now?
This picture shows a few different shelters, the ice auger, the sled, and other assorted ice fishing paraphernalia. That fine-looking fellow in the furry hat is my dad.
The 27th was much the same. We slept in, and then Dad and I headed to Little Rock lake, which is just a bit up the road from the house. The fishing was sort of mediocre again. We caught two pike, a perch, and two walleyes. After two consecutive days of sitting on a five-gallon bucket for several hours, my back was beginning to feel like I’d been hit by a bus. This is a small price to pay for a bit of ice fishing, though. In the evening, even more hockey.
On the 28th, we returned to Little Rock Lake, accompanied by Chissom. We didn’t know he was coming until we were already on the way, though. The weather was a bit brisker today, and the wind was blowing. Before Chissom arrived, Dad and I set up everything. The first thing we did was put down the tip-ups, just to give the fish time to come back to those areas after we made all sorts of noise cutting holes. It didn’t take long. We were right in the middle of setting up the shelter when my flag popped and I landed a pike. After a bit of rigmarole with some needle-nosed pliers (pike have BIG teeth), I returned to the shelter to help Dad finish construction. We were nearly finished when his flag popped and he landed a pike as well. When we were finally able to finish putting the shelter together, get holes drilled inside, and drop lines, we thought we might get to relax. No such luck. I had just settled onto my pail when my flag popped up again. As you may have guessed by now, I caught another pike. When we got back to the shelter, my line had been robbed of its minnow. I missed a bite while I was out landing the last pike! Three fish and a bite in about fifteen minutes is pretty good. Then Chissom arrived and brought some kind of terrible mojo with him. We didn’t get so much as a bite for the next three hours. Also, the colder weather forced him into the shelter with Dad and I. He had planned to fish outside, which would have been no big deal on the previous days, but today was substantially chillier. So the three of us hung out in a five foot square shelter with three ten-inch diameter holes, a lantern, a minnow bucket, and a case of beer. Talk about your close bonding experiences…
Once the whole gang of us headed back to the house, I called up one of only two people from high school that I still talk to, my friend Karl. He works until ten, so we always hang out late. He was just coming in from work as I called, and I headed over to his apartment with the leftover beers. He’s one of those friends I only see once a year, but we never miss a beat. After a year, it’s like we just talked yesterday. We didn’t do anything amazing. We just sat at his place and shot the breeze. Topics of conversation included his sister and her husband, fantasy novels, the merits of various frozen appetizers, and Kenny Rogers.
Today, I didn’t do much. We had to leave the house at about two p.m. to get to the airport by 4:15. This, of course, was necessary because the travel people advised me to get to the airport three hours early, due to “extreme backup at security checkpoints.” Much to the contrary, I got through security in fifteen minutes going both ways. Anyway, I had breakfast with Mom and Dad, gave Maggie a goodbye smooch on her wet nose, and headed for Minneapolis. Amid copious tears from my mother, I headed in to the airport and commenced typing this unbelievably long narrative.
If you’ve read this entire document, I applaud both your stamina and your willpower. I hope that your holiday was as much fun as mine. I loved seeing my family, but I’m also glad to be back in Texas, where I’ll get to see many of you!
Peace,
Chauncey
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