27 Ògmhios, 2024 Fast Forward by Sven Guyson

 

The tree inline with the fire hydrant is the first tree I ever planted by hand; it's a maple. It is located on 1912 Des Moines Street, Des Moines, Iowa where I spent the first 20 years of my life. The house no longer exists but in photographs and in memory of these two trees and the hydrant.

 Fast Forward Back to June 24, 2024

Roseau's own Tractor Supply

   “ DON'T YOU IGNORE ME!” yelled the man who was leaving his truck toward me from the other side of the Tractor Supply parking lot in Roseau.
   

I looked behind me, thinking he had to be talking to somebody else for nobody emits loud utterances like that on Roseau's northside just for no reason. The closer he came the more he started to look like somebody I knew, and lo, t'was Winnipeg Pete himself; full-sized; both his shoulders back so straight looked as if he had a fence post under his shirt wired around his upper body. He walked up smiling where I stood by my car, idling there. He admired the handsome car, briefly, then thrust out his hand to shake mine, and said,  

“MR. GUYSON! LONG TIME NO SEE!"
 

Anyone who ever lived on Roseau’s eastside back in the early 1960s would immediately recognize Pete, his apparent energy notwithstanding his age of 75 should their recollections include that he used to sport a silver-capped front tooth back then. I remembered that detail from my childhood visiting there during the summer, when my folks and I came north to see Grandma Palm and Uncle Raymond who lived next door to the Eastside Grocery. Pete and his buddies, who were a little bit older than my cousins and I, frequented the store on occasion. So it was we could be mouthy, I admit, and so may have instigated their forthcoming retaliation at some level, but how it was Pete and I would become friends fifty or sixty years later, I do not recall.
 

“Hey, hey, hey! If it ain’t Winnipeg Pete!” I may have said in greeting, accompanied by a good hearty laugh that two old friends who meet unexpectedly often spontaneously exchange in Minnesota. Turning my head to look at his distant vehicle, I said “I see you’re still sporting Manitoba plates, eh.”
 

“Heh, heh, heh Sven!” he managed to say as we energetically shook hands between gasps of laughter, mutually noting the possibility of rain growing large in the western sky.
 

“I read about Winnipeg every night in a CBC newsletter. The city sounds brutal in places. You still surviving the Hood?” I said happy to meet up with him. Pete had told me that he and his wife had worked as counselors in the poorer communities in and around Winnipeg, and had made them their home as well as neither were intimidated by much. He talked about his experiences living among an unarmed population, he thought ridiculously helpless in the face of street crime because of Canada’s strict gun control laws that keep people so vulnerable. “At least U.S. citizens have Permit to Carry ...”
 

Changing the subject, he smiled and said, gesturing toward Tractor Supply, a farm supply store, “I’m stopping here to buy some underwear.”
 

I was wondering what the punch line was, then broke out laughing. "What? For real? You’ve come to buy underwear at Tractor Supply??”
“Yeah, Fleet didn’t have any,” he managed to say with a straight face.
 
“Are we talkin’ floral print or plain? I said, nonplussed, trying to ascertain his manly fashion sense. 

“Briefs or ...?” I asked, not remembering what that other kind of men's underwear were called.
 

The absurdity cracked us both into great peals of laughter so loud that could’ve been heard in the drive-up window line of DQ across the highway. Laughter and attempts to alternately breathe shortened my question.
 

“Yeah, ... them,” Pete said not remembering what that other kind of men's underwear were called either. “I wore briefs all my life until my wife bought me a pair of ..., he stammered, trying to gesture what wasn’t a brief but longer in the leg.
 

“So you're needin' more room for all your dangily bits, now?” Sven queried, hardly able to stand-up so wracked as he suddenly was at the prospect that Pete had gone off the rails in front of him.
 

“I heard that things are supposed to get bigger on us old guys, our ears, our noses, and the like. You’re older than me by a long shot, so even them too? Is this why you’re shopping Tractor Supply for underwear?”
 

“Fleet only has long-johns,” Pete said, determined not to laugh. “You do know, that they sell clothes there?

 

Fleet only has long-johns

With one raised eyebrow, Sven looked at him quizzically."And?'
 

“Well, where else is a guy supposed to go in this town for men’s clothes?" Pete implored, his serious expression cracking. “Fleet has shirts and jeans and boots and jackets, but no underwear, only long-johns ....”

Unable to maintain their sobriety they both hooted and guffawed loud enough for everyone in and out of the store to hear. “FLEET ONLY HAS LONG-JOHNS! That’s funny!”
 

“BOXERS!” Winnipeg Pete blurted, almost doubling over in heaves of laughter. “I’m looking for BOXERS! They’re ... just so comfortable!”
 

Oh by the way, Happy birthday Steve!