We have a 12 year old grandson from Wisconsin who came to visit us last week. He’s come up here “In-The-Middle-of-Nowhere Minnesota,” for a few weeks every summer of his life except 2020, as I recall, when the threat of Covid was at its zenith and almost everyone with the exception of thousands of non-believers and naysayers didn’t venture out into public spaces or to family gatherings.
I.T.M.O.N. isn’t the most exciting place for young people of the 21st Century nor is it particularly wonderful for most older-than-young people of this time period either as it’s a mostly agricultural region of northwest Minnesota located, on average, at least 125 miles from any metropolitan population of 50,000 or more including Grand Forks, North Dakota; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Duluth, Minnesota, and Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The best thing to do around here man, woman, or etc, etc, or child the year-around, is fishing the Lake of the Woods; hunting would come in a likely second best thing; then winter sports activities such as hockey, snowmobiling, and ice fishing.
As you can see, entertaining a 12-year old sports-minded grandson could be challenging so when I saw an ad in the weekly July issues of The Trading Post for Warwick Workouts: The Ultimate Basketball Skill Developing Program being offered in Warroad August 1st, 2nd, and 3rd this year for, among other grade levels, the 7th-12th grades 9-12 am, I called the grandson and asked if he’d be interested in participating; how could he not be? So I signed him up.
https://www.averasportsteams.org/warwickworkouts
We had to drive 40 miles from our house to Warroad, one way. To eliminate travel boredom, I varied the circuitous route each day, one time going by the old Salol Anhydrous Ammonia station on Roseau County Road 12.
“I used to work there,” I said to my young passenger wearing white ear buds connected wirelessly to the cellphone in his lap. He glanced at the blur of a white steel building we passed.
“Oh yeah, that’s where you kicked a dead skunk off the road and it stunk up your boot ...”
Ha! He was wrong about it being ‘there,’ but right in remembering an identical building north of Wannaska, an anhydrous ammonia plant built by Farmers Union Oil Company/Cenex of Roseau in the fall of 1979. The kid has quite the memory sometimes ( I may have to ask him about things I’ve forgotten, in a few short years)
I started feeling like a soccer mom, driving up to the school in our 2000 Saturn station wagon, er ... RUV (Rural Utility Vehicle) and letting my child out by the door to the Warroad High School athletic facility.
Actually, the first day, I stuck around to see how the grandson would do in such a challenging foreign setting. Not surprisingly, he held his own on the court for he had attended the Four-Older-Brothers-School of Higher Learning since birth, I was reminded.
Since he was three years old, no one could intimidate him no matter how tall they were or attitude they’d cop, but you could perturb him as had another player repeatedly, against whom he was trying to defend.
The other player charged the grandson had traveled with the ball when he said he had not, then they wrestled over the ball neither gained before a coach stepped-in. I saw other player expressing enjoyment behind his back that he had made the grandson angry.
“I’ve known people like that all my life,” I said. “They just love making other people mad for no reason. You can't let that get to you”
Grandma and I told him he had to learn to control his anger; and that the other guy enjoyed ‘pushing his buttons.’ “Concentrate on you," we told him. "Not the other guy, that’s just what he wants.
”What was that Adam Sandler movie we watched on Sunday night? Hustle wasn’t it? What was the single biggest problem that player from Spain had? He let what other players said make him mad ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nM4iy0reaCA
On Wednesday, the other guy was put on a different team by chance. Whether the coaches observed the exchange between the two the day before, I don’t know, but center court they talked about sportsmanship and everything else under the sun of basketball. I was happy to observe that behavior in my grandson well in advance of this incident. Likely the other kid did too, but contests of skill sometimes generate contention between the best of combatants.
As I watched the kids play, I thought of how much my dad, quite a basketball player himself in the early 1900s, would’ve loved being there to watch these young men and women playing these rousing games. It was a fun three days -- even for grandpa.
Thanks for the reminder to never kick a dead skunk.
ReplyDeleteI like your advice to the boy to avoid blood on the court.
The rest of the Never Kick a Dead Skunk story is at the Wannaska Anhydrous station where Chairman Joe and I worked (at different times in our lives) someone traveling MN Hwy 89 had smushed a skunk with their vehicle and its flattened carcass laid there slowing sinking into the asphalt with each vehicle thereafter, car, truck, motorcycle or tractor.
DeleteWhat the first vehicle didn't kill was the skunk smell, that as you know ... lingers, on whatever wind there happens to be, in this case often generated by each passing automobile -- and right into the doorway of the station office.
Taking matters into my own hands, I took the opportunity, on a slow day, to go up on the highway and swiftly kick that wafer of skunk hide off the highway where I couldn't smell it. Little did I know it would follow me.
On the toe of my boot.
Sitting in the office, minutes later, gladdened that I had gotten rid of the skunk smell, it overwhelmed me again as though a skunk had followed me into the office!
IT WAS ON MY BOOT!
Try as I might, with every liquid I had in the tiny spartan office room and garage size storage area behind it --even diesel fuel, I could not eliminate the skunk smell from my boot. Farmers would come to the office for their anhydrous slips and swear there had been a skunk there moments before. What had I done?
I had to remove my boots to drive home after the day was over. I pitched them somewhere far from the house. Had to get new boots.
Never kick a dead skunk.