What to eat, and not eat, during the hoidays...

My sylta, enjoyed by dipping
 chunks in a bowl of white vinegar

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune 12/7/24

Here they are, the holidays. They mean so much to so many people with fond memories of Christmases past as they anticipate Christmas present (and presents).

Food is a big part of holiday celebrations. There are so many dishes that are exclusive to the holidays, many of them reflecting the ethnic backgrounds of the participants.

That’s the case with me, for sure. A significant part of my ethnic heritage is Swedish, on my mother’s side, and she always prepared some foods associated with the home country of her parents.

Of course, the mind immediately turns to fabled lutefisk at times like this. We had it every holiday season, but not on Christmas itself. She wouldn’t dare. Roast turkey was the main menu item on Christmas in our home just as it was and is in many others.

I’m not going to visit lutefisk today; it gets so much ridicule each year I think people are getting as tired of hearing about it as they are of eating it. Codfish soaked in lye are not my idea of edible repast.

Then there’s “fruitcake,” baked and served in my growing-up home. I hate to use the word abominable to describe it because it’s an effort to spell, but there it is. You can interpret the expression “nutty as a fruitcake” as you choose. And don’t get me started on “lefse” or “kaldolmar” (cabbage rolls). Don’t worry. 

No, today I am going to address something the Swedes (Norwegians too) call sylta. (Warning: Never name a newborn girl Sylta.)

The real “Scandahoovian” aficionados call sylta “head cheese.” This is because REAL sylta, old country sylta, was made from parts of calves, pigs and sheep that cannot be made into ribs, chops or roasts but the early “cooks” didn’t want any part of the late animal to go to waste.

The solution: Use parts of the head. (Are you getting hungry yet?) As a youngster being taught the “facts” of life I thought that among these parts of the animals’ heads meant what is loosely called the “brain.” In fact, I believed that until recently. But research has shown that the brain was usually not involved when preparing sylta, AKA head cheese.

What a relief. But research has also shown that parts of the head in early sylta vary, with one source saying this might include tongue but not eyes or ears. Yippee! Hold it. Tongue? Hmmm.

Well anyway, apparently they mix it all together, throw in copious amounts of gelatin, onions and other culinary detritus, form loaves and call it sylta.

Now on to the important part of this narrative: Many of our Duluth grocery stores sell sylta at this time of the year. But do not despair, it contains no parts of the head. The sylta I bought recently simply lists “pork, water, gelatin, onions, celery, salt, all-spice and white pepper.” And I love it.

Actually the “inspiration” for visiting this subject today was a recent encounter with a check-out person at one of our fine supermarkets. Among my purchases was a small brick of sylta, and as the worker checked it though the scanner, he looked me in the eye and asked, “What is sylta?”

I was surprised that anyone in this part of the country had never even heard of sylta. One time in the past, as I was checking out some sylta in the store, the clerk took one look at it and said “yuck.”

In the recent encounter, I answered the check-out clerk in the briefest possible way by simply saying, “It’s a Scandinavian holiday delicacy,” He nodded and went on with his business.

I didn’t mention to him that it’s also known as head cheese. I didn’t include reputed ingredients of the past like maybe brains, but not eyes, ears and tongue. There is also mention of “feet” in some descriptions but I don’t know if I believe that. Feet are a long way from the head, we all know.

For the record, I love modern sylta sold in stores. Cheese-size slices soaked in white vinegar and served aboard a cracker are a rare delicacy only at holiday time. Enjoy or yuck, depending on your preference.

Well, this is my final column of 2024, so I wish readers a happy (even merry) holiday (as they say in Sweden, “God Jul”) and extend best wishes for 2025. I’ll be back in January, hoping for the best.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Flags galore: So proudly we hail as vote nears...

American Flag-Wikipedia

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/11-2-24

 Well, it’s almost over. Election day voting is Tuesday in the most contentious national election cycle I can recall, and I ain’t no kid, friends. My first vote was in 1960 when Kennedy and Nixon faced off.

 

One thing I’ve noticed this campaign is the proliferation of U.S. flags all over the place. Not just on Independence Day and Memorial Day, but every day. Not just at schools or government buildings, but on homes and cars. And an occasional pickup truck will roar by with Old Glory waving on both sides of its box.

 

Patriots? Super patriots? Or politics?

 

I’m patriotic enough, like, I’m sure, your average American is patriotic. I love our country for the good things about it, and recognize bad things about it both in the present and the past, and hope they can be addressed. I willingly served in the military. Nobody’s perfect.

 

Also, I don’t associate the flag exclusively with any particular presidential candidate in this election, but I sense that some do, big time.

 

I put a small flag out on Memorial and Independence days. It measures about 12-by-15 inches and has a narrow arrow-like staff I stick in a flower pot facing our street. It’s like the flags that line the rows of veterans’ graves in cemeteries on Memorial Day…graves that include my father’s.

 

My generation was taught to venerate the American flag hanging in our classrooms, and we were preached to by elders on how to handle flags. We pledged allegiance to it regularly with our hands on our hearts. I remember being told that if you were handling an American flag and somehow it touched the ground you were supposed to burn it, out of respect.

 

Whew. I was always careful not to let that happen because I wasn’t supposed to play with matches.

 

There’s something disquieting to me about the proliferation of flags these days — fairly large ones prominently displayed on numerous houses the way my father always displayed a good-sized flag on my growing-up home but only on appropriate days, including Flag Day each June.

 

A few years ago I read that when you start seeing an unusual proliferation of flags all over the place it could be a sign of impending war. Who knows? We can hope not. Of course there’s plenty of war going on right now, but generally not directly involving U.S. troops.  

 

I sometimes wonder what might happen to a politician — presidents, presidential candidates, Congress people from both major parties — if he (this mainly applies to suit-wearing men) neglected to put one of those tiny American flag pins on his lapel. They never appear in public wearing a suit without a tiny flag on the lapel and they almost always are clad in suits. (Some woman politicos also don them when they wear blazers.)

 

I guess they think it proves they’re patriotic Americans and that they love our country in case there was any doubt…“so vote for me.” Also, the higher level politicos never appear on TV without a row of tall American flags draped behind them. “O say can you see…?” Yup, sure can.

 

I have one of those little lapel pin flags, given to me under unique circumstances. I was a pallbearer in Texas for a relative who had been a career U.S. Army officer, lived a good life, and died an elderly veteran.

 

As we awaited the start of the funeral service, a friendly woman I didn’t know came over and pinned little U.S. flag pins on the pallbearers’ lapels. Fine with me; it was an appropriate occasion for wearing one as we honored a man who had devoted a good part of his life to serving America in uniform.

 

So thanks, ma’am, whoever you are. Inquiring later, I was told that the lapel flag pin lady was the daughter of Ross Perot, the Texas business tycoon/Reform Party politician who ran for president in 1992 and again in 1996, and made relatively good showings. She was a nearby neighbor to the daughter of the veteran we were honoring.

 

I still have that little lapel flag. It’s in a small china cabinet in our home where we display fancy crystal accumulated over the years — and almost never use. I never use that little lapel flag either.

 

No disrespect for the flag. I’m just not running for political office. And I don’t wear suits much anymore.

 

Don’t forget to vote your conscience on Tuesday.  I’ll be voting my heart…along with whatever’s left of my brain. You shouldn’t have any problem finding your polling place. There’ll be a flag out front. Let’s hope none of them touch the ground.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

The way we were when we were car crazy...

Heffernan's 40 Ford

Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/10-5-24

One of my grandsons recently passed his driver’s license test upon turning age 16. He’s very happy to be able to legally drive a car, just as his older brothers and cousins were before him.

But this milestone seems more routine these days compared to when I got my driver’s license many long years ago, at mid-20th century. Being able to drive was a huge deal in the lives of teenage boys of my generation.

 Back then we were able to get a permit and take the driver’s test at age 15, and most of us promptly did so. The reason is we were what was referred to as “car crazy.” I don’t think many of today’s teens, including my progeny, are car crazy, even though they are pleased to have passed this D.L. milestone and sometimes speak of Lamborghinis.

 

Passing the driver’s test for me and some of my friends was considered the overarching achievement of our lives then and forevermore, amen. It was everything we wanted to achieve in life. Crazy? Of course. Car crazy.

 

In those days, the tests were headquartered at the National Guard Armory on London Road where Bob Dylan saw Buddy Holly perform a few years later. You can’t mention the Armory without including that. Never mind that world renowned composer-pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff once performed there too. 

 

A Minnesota highway patrolman known as Officer Blinn (maybe not his exact name, but close) gave the tests, with dreaded parallel parking roped off on Jefferson Street alongside the north face of the Armory.

 

A close friend, a few months older than I, passed the test before me with an almost perfect score — 98 of a possible, flawless, 100. Whew, that was daunting for me when my turn came around a few months later. And I didn’t achieve it but I did OK with an 87. Seventy was passing.

 

Why do I recall all this so vividly lo these many decades later? Because it was so important to most boys of my generation. It opened the door to possibly getting a car of one’s own, and “customizing” it into something akin to a “hot rod.”

 

Customizing involved altering the outside of the car by removing such things as hood ornaments and trunk handles, filling the remaining holes with lead and repainting. Lowering the rear end was also de rigueur.

 

Possibly the most important alteration (other than huge fuzzy dice dangling from the inside rear-view mirror), was installing dual exhausts with “Smitty” steel-packed mufflers that rumbled loudly through chromium echo cans on the tail pipes when the engine was revved. These were called “twin pipes.” (Later, after I got car of my own, I was pulled over and ticketed by a Duluth cop for having those loud mufflers on my twin pipes.)

 

Mechanically minded kids “souped up” their engines so they could beat the drag race competition at downtown traffic signals.

 

But back to the state driver’s test at the Duluth Armory, where, about a week after I passed the test, I almost lost my license.

 

I was allowed to take the family car — no twin pipes — to school on the day of a city-wide high school music festival at the Armory, which I attended with other Denfeld kids. On a lunchtime break from the festival, a friend lined up a trio of girls from another high school to join us for a noontime joyride in my family’s car. Fun.

 

With the girls in the back seat and my friend riding shotgun, I “peeled” out of my parking place on London Road and began roaring through the neighborhood, “scratching” in second gear when I shifted. Scratching meant making the tires squeal by popping the clutch and “goosing” the engine when shifting a manual transmission from low to second gear. Peeling out was also known as “burning rubber.”

 

Just about every 15-year-old driver tried it, and my dad’s car always responded well, even if he wouldn’t have. Ford V-8.

 

Anyway, after tearing around the Armory neighborhood for several minutes we arrived back outside the festival where I screeched to a stop, a uniformed law officer waving me down. Yikes, it was Officer Blinn who had passed me in the road test barely a week before.

 

He strode over to my side window and sternly said something like, “Any more driving like that and I’ll take that license away from you.”

 

I was chagrined, the passengers in the car cowed, and I never drove that way again until the next time I got the family car a few days later. There was something about peeling out and scratching in second that couldn’t be resisted…when you were 15.

 

But don’t tell my grandchildren.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Veep nod eludes math-phobe, onion hater...

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth NewsTribune/ September 14, 2024

As many loyal readers might have surmised, I got passed over for vice president again this election. Maybe it’s just as well, what with my spotty record as, well, as a human being, I guess.

 

For the past month I’ve been fascinated by the detailed opposition research into the life of our governor, Tim Walz, since he was named as the Democratic candidate for vice president in the upcoming election. I shudder to think what they’d find out about me were I running.

 

Of course I’ve been passed over before, in too many elections to count — not enough fingers. That’s one reason I couldn’t be selected for such a high office: I still count on my fingers. It’s a habit I got into as they tried to drive arithmetic into my brain in elementary school and I never broke the habit. Math has never been my strong suit.

 

But when I see all that they’re dredging up about Governor Walz, I breathe a heavy sigh of relief that I wasn’t chosen. They’d have dug up my old report cards and seen that I always got bad marks in math and tended to be a daydreamer, staring out the classroom window. What a disgrace.

 

There’s other stuff that they’d find out about me too. As a youngster I never liked onions. How could an onion hater ever be elected to high office, or even low office? America’s onion lovers, clearly a large majority, would never vote for me. I’m not sure where Walz is on the onion issue, but I’m betting we’ll hear before the election.

 

I graduated from high school and college but didn’t get the best grades, I admit. The opposition would find out about that. But to my credit, I once got a “B” in college Speech 101 (to B or not to B? That was the question). This would have been in my favor in politics where you have to give a lot of speeches. Actually, variations on the same speech over and over.

 

Years later I was asked to give a commencement speech at my alma mater, and I responded to the invitation by asking if they’d seen my transcripts (grade records). But I did it anyway. I titled my speech “The Skin of Our Teeth,” a sly reference to all the grads who’d made it through like me.

 

Like our governor, I joined the National Guard after completing my education but not out of patriotic fervor. Males of my generation were subject to be drafted into the United States Army at age 18, or when you completed your education. It was called your military obligation. So, I joined the guards after college to avoid spending two years on active duty, just six months.

 

I was not a good soldier. Ouch! Let me put it this way: I was not a bad soldier either. I just did what they told us to do, shined my boots and stayed out of the way. Political opponents looking into my military record would surely find out about the time I was cheating with one knee on the ground doing multiple punishment pushups and got kicked in the hind end by a drill sergeant whose name was Sergeant Poisson. This was in basic training, also known as “boot camp.” I’ll say.

 

As an aside, I might as well point out that our other drill sergeants’ names were Savage and Drear. Savage, Poisson and Drear — this does not bode well for your first months fulfilling your military obligation. But I made it through and served in the National Guard for six years, achieving the rank of Specialist 4, a low rank about the same as corporal, the same rank as Napoleon (“Little Corporal”) Bonaparte in France. My crowning achievement was that I was a fast, accurate typist. The Army loves typists with shiny boots. Napoleon’s crowning achievement was that he became emperor.

 

Onward. After I left active duty while still serving on the home front, I found myself back home and jobless. My father suggested that I try journalism because I wrote what he thought were good letters home from the Army. The top editor of this newspaper at the time decided to give me a try, and I hung around for 42 years.

 

As a result, I have known enough politicians to realize that a background in journalism would not recommend one for high office like vice president. True politicians generally dislike journalists and are wary of them. True journalists are suspicious of politicians and are wary of them. This does not mix well.

 

I met a lot of politicians extant during my active journalism career including two vice presidents, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale. I also covered a local appearance by another candidate for vice president, William Miller.

 

William Miller? Who, in heaven’s name….? I think it’s safe to say that I am the only person still alive who remembers him. He was Republican presidential pick Barry Goldwater’s running mate in 1964 and was taken seriously while campaigning in Duluth, dashing around the UMD campus with a full entourage of aides and press. Find out for yourself who Barry Goldwater was.

 

The way things turned out; I don’t think either one of them liked onions.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Facts of life more than the birds and bees...

 Written by Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/8-3-24

 There comes a time in every family when certain things should be discussed with children who are showing signs of leaving childhood and entering adolescence.

 

These are highly sensitive times for parents, uncomfortable times for both parents and their kids, but every responsible parent must take on the job of making sure their offspring understand some of what used to be called certain “facts of life,” some of which change through the generations.

 

I’m way beyond those years as a parent, of course, but as I move through the world, I encounter so many things that should be discussed with today’s young people that I sense are not being talked about, who knows why?

 

So let’s outline a few here, hoping that today’s parents of not-so-young kids might appreciate the insights I have to offer as a registered geezer who has seen just about everything but heard less and less, although a hearing aid helps.

 

We’ll start with luggage. Yes, luggage. Were I talking to a young person today I would come right out and tell them: “Daughter (or son) there was a time when suitcases didn’t have wheels or pull-up handles to ease one’s way through airports or other places.”

 

How did people travel? (I knew that question would come up,)

 

They CARRIED their luggage, clinging to small handles affixed to the top of suitcases. Petite women, elderly people, everyone. If they were traveling anywhere and had a suitcase, they either carried it themselves or found someone else to help them.

 

I know it’s hard to imagine that such conditions once existed, but, trust me, they did. I once carried a big suitcase through huge Kennedy Airport in New York and survived, but just barely, And I was only about 30 years old.

 

I know a couple of generations — maybe more — have journeyed through life in America (also Europe and Asia but not Antarctica) without ever being told luggage once had no wheels. Well here it is.

 

Let’s move on to another aspect of the past that today’s youth has no recollection or understanding of: The Bell telephone and telephoning.

 

Brace yourself, kids. All telephones had wires sticking out of them connected to whatever building the user was in, most commonly the home. Most telephones consisted of two parts, the “receiver” and the part you held to your ear. A wire connected them, too. (All outdoor utility poles were once called “telephone poles” inspiring the accusation, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long as a telephone wire,” a reference to Pinocchio, until recently considered the greatest liar in history.) 

 

All you could do was talk on phones in those days. To call out of town, you had to connect with a long-distance operator and ask for help. Phones

couldn’t take and store snapshots or movies or show the faces of the person on the other end. Which brings us to cameras.

 

Incredibly, at one time in history, to take photographs you had to have a separate (from the telephone) instrument, a small portable device with a lens and viewfinder called a camera. Inside the camera you had to insert something called “film” which recorded the images you photographed. When the film ran out, it had to be taken to a processor to be what they called “developed” and printed on special paper. This cost money too.

 

I know this information is old hat to many readers who have been around awhile, but there are millions of younger Americans who are not aware of this history, or, if they are, never experienced it. Like when all nurses were women and they all wore white uniforms consisting of a starched dress and small white cap. Many wore a blue cape over their nursing uniform when outside the medical facility — capes of good hope.

 

Finally, of course, when enlightening young people, there’s the matter of what used to be known as the birds and the bees. That’s simple. Just tell them: “When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore.” 

 

Nature will take over from there. But be careful: Birds can leave a mess and bees sting.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

How age spared me from going to pot...

Written by Jim Heffernan/DuluthNewsTribune/7-6-24

I have confession to make: I have never smoked marijuana. Never. Why? Was I too pure…goodie two-shoes? Nah, too old.

 

Oh, I know a lot of people my age have tried it in spite of the dire warnings we received as teenagers. But not me.

 

My generation was influenced by what was called “Reefer Madness.” It’s actually the title of a movie made in the mid-1930s (even before I was born) sounding the warnings of marijuana use. “Reefer” was among the many euphemisms for marijuana cigarettes.

 

I never saw the movie but when I was in junior high school in the early 1950s (yup, I’m that old) the words in the title were a springboard for some all-knowing adults to preach about the dangers of smoking marijuana, scaring the bejesus out of us.

 

All this has come to mind with the widespread loosening of restrictions on marijuana just about everywhere in the country, with many states, including Minnesota, opening the door to broader marijuana growing, distribution and use. Police records of past marijuana offenders are being expunged in some places.

 

Well, how about that!

 

I’m not inveighing against these moves. I suppose people who know a lot more about such things than I are confident these changes are good for America. But it brings me back to junior high when we were given a different message about marijuana, or, I should say, the evils of marijuana.

 

Here’s what I took away from those messages:

 

If somehow I tried it, after taking one drag of a marijuana cigarette I would be irrevocably drawn into a life of hopeless drug addiction. In short order I would desperately need to move on, craving stronger drugs, especially heroin, poking needles into my arm while sprawled on a curb in the downtown bowery in rags and in need of a bath and a haircut, a boy with a golden arm. Reefer madness! EEK!

 

Whew, I was supposed to be a good Lutheran boy and those prospects were not attractive to me at all, not that I was a saint. I did take up smoking cigarettes in my teens. They only made you dizzy at first, but boy, did they ever make you cool, as in cool cat. And tough (in your own mind). I quit more than 50 years ago, and still miss it.

 

Practically everybody and her sister smoked cigarettes in those days — days that took me through high school and into college.

 

The only time I heard the word marijuana used in college (it was at UMD in the early ‘60s) was in a class called Psychology I. The professor talked about the effects of drugs on the human psyche and stated that marijuana could be found growing along the highway in South Superior.

 

What? South Superior? Cripes, I thought you had to go to Mexico to find it in the dusty provinces supplied by shady guys wearing sombreros and flared pants with shiny buttons up the sides. Then you would have to smuggle it across the border into the United States by hiding it behind the door panels on the inside of your car. If you got caught, you would be sentenced to up to10 years in prison doing hard labor wearing shapeless striped garments.

 

I never heard of any of my peers going to South Superior to find and pick marijuana. College students at the time were not into it at all. It sort of explains why I never tried it, I suppose.

 

Of course illegal marijuana use became pervasive in our society just a few years later, but by then I was too old to join in. I recall being at a large party one time when I was older and seeing a circle of younger guests seated cross-legged on the living room floor passing a joint among them. So, did I call the cops and did they all do five to 10 in the pen wearing those shapeless striped garments? No-no-no-no-no…I’m no party pooper.

 

Segue now to more recent times when I was working as a journalist at this newspaper. For one period of my career, I handled the letters to the editor mailed to the paper. By then there were many strong advocates for legalizing marijuana, seeming to believe that if restrictions were lifted life would be worthwhile, or at least better. They often wrote letters to the editor.

 

Suddenly, many of those letter writers stopped using the word marijuana, instead calling it cannabis. Cannabis? "What the heck’s that?" I recall thinking (this was more than 25 years ago). I guess the thinking among the advocates was that if you called marijuana something else, maybe they’d make it legal. It seems to have worked.

 

But why call it cannabis when the more recognizable pot, weed, grass and Mary Jane were already available? Reefer madness.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Father's Day Tribute from a son...

This is Voula, Jim's wife writing on his blog. Our son surprised us with this guest opinion column (see link below) appearing online today in the Duluth News Tribune. Jim deserves this sweet tribute from our son. He is now-and was back when the kids were young-a great dad. 

This Sunday is when we honor dads and those men who have mentored kids everywhere. My own dad was pretty special and his legacy is with me forever. And we notice how giving and supportive our own son and son-in-law are in their roles as dads to our six grandkids. We are surrounded by awesome dads!

I did research in my grad school education on dads who parent kids with special needs and learned through that process the significance of dads in children's lives, whether they are living with them or not. Dads give so much to our kids and we appreciate you all. Kids need you in their lives!

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY TO ALL YOU MEN OUT THERE WHO ARE SPECIAL TO KIDS!

Click HERE to read the DNT column: Behind the Wheel With a "Local Celebrity" by Patrick Heffernan.

Attack of a 50-foot woman and other travails...

Source: Wikipedia

Written by Jim Heffernan for DuluthNewsTribune/6-1-24

I woke up extra early the other morning and clicked on the TV. It was tuned to a classic movie channel where groups of terrified men and women were running to and fro, apparently escaping from some dreaded horror.

 

Then it showed a shapely woman wearing a somewhat scanty white outfit akin to what some woman tennis players sport. She was wandering through a forest and I noticed she was taller than the trees.

 

It piqued my curiosity so I checked to see what movie it could be. The title was “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” made in 1958. I missed it at the time.

 

Lacking compelling interest in dangerous 50-foot women, I clicked off the TV remote and wandered into the kitchen to make coffee, turning on the countertop radio as I passed it en route to the electric coffee pot on the counter, eager for some morning action. Action is right.

 

“I couldn’t get my pigs to slaughter,” was the first thing I heard, from a loudly screaming woman on National Public Radio who sounded like she could be 50 feet tall.

 

Welcome to the world on this bright, sunny spring day, Mr. H. (Nobody calls me Mr. H.; I just threw that in because I like the way Dagwood Bumstead’s neighbor boy Elmo calls him Mr. B.) I turned off the pig woman without learning why she couldn’t slaughter her pigs and went about the business of brewing the morning coffee. Oh, and also life.

 

But those scenes haunted me all morning (when this is being written), and might continue into the afternoon, who knows?

 

My first thought upon hearing the plight of the pig woman was that maybe I should consider becoming a vegetarian. You can enjoy a ham and cheese sandwich without thinking about where they got the ham, but if you do think about it, it’s apt to cause reflection. BLT anyone? Thoughts like how lucky those un-slaughtered pigs were that day drifted into what’s left of my brain after maybe being invaded by an invasive worm. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit.

 

In my youth, a long time ago (around the time the 50-foot woman was first lurking about), I had a friend whose summer job at the former Elliott Packing Company in Duluth was herding sheep to their ultimate demise — just like leading lambs to slaughter, you could sing. Didn’t seem to bother him. He was very good at mathematics, so I suppose counting those sheep at bedtime helped him get to sleep.

 

Hoo, boy. I’ve got to cheer things up here. Hostile 50-foot-tall women, pigs and lambs being slaughtered, brain worms…not subjects for a “humor” column, which is usually my goal, like it or not.

 

We could revisit the morning coffee, an absolute must to start the day. It wasn’t always that way for me, though. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was almost in my 20s. The reason? I wanted to live a long healthy life without burning out my insides on my mother’s coffee.

 

She was the daughter of Swedish immigrants, a couple who met in Duluth after emigrating separately from different parts of Sweden well over a century ago. I always blamed my mother’s strong coffee on that heritage.

 

Here’s her recipe: Fill a stove-top pot with water after throwing away the percolating apparatus, bring it to a bubbling boil, dump in an undetermined amount of ground coffee without measuring it, let boil some more, pour it into a waiting cup and sip it, if you dare. She liked cream in it.

 

Both of my parents drank it, and my father wasn’t even Swedish, but when I came of the usual age that one might start trying coffee I couldn’t. Just couldn’t. I always imagined if you spilled some on the ground it would bore all the way to Communist China.

 

So I went without, until I got to college. Seeking to become a pseudo intellectual, I wanted to fit in with the crowd who hung around the cafeteria drinking coffee and discussing compelling world problems like starvation in Africa, which seemed to be in vogue at that time too. They were thinking about organizing an actual “symposium.” So I tried some university coffee and it was fine. One lump of sugar and I was satisfied. What, no Swedes in the kitchen? There’s a relief.

 

It led, of course, to a lifetime of drinking copious amounts of “normal” morning coffee, including on the day a 50-foot woman was invading my life and pigs were not being slaughtered somewhere, not to mention the enduring concern about worms invading the brain inspired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his finest hour.

 

Finally, I don’t mean to cast aspersions on my own late mother so I’ll take this opportunity to make up for it. She was a sweet woman of average height who didn’t keep pigs, made extra-strong coffee and could play J.S. Bach on the church pipe organ in a way that could make you ponder your eternal soul.

 

I sometimes wonder what my children will remember about me long after I’m gone. That’s up to them, of course, but I hope they don’t go publishing it in the local newspaper, for crying out loud.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

A farewell to a fine musician- politician...

Florian Chmielewski, 2017 Polka Party
Jamie Lund/ Duluth Media Group File

Written by By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/5-4-24

 I hate politics. I love politics. Depends on the day and the politician.

 

I spent the last decades of my full-time career at this newspaper working on the opinion/editorial page. In that job you meet every area and state politician holding elective office or running for one — Congress, state government, city government, county government, school boards. Never met a dog catcher I didn’t like. 

They all come to the newspaper at the paper’s invitation to submit to what we call endorsement interviews. These result in the newspaper, just before elections, telling readers which candidates the editors think would serve best in the jobs they are seeking, not telling readers how to vote.

 

You knew that — at least I hope you did — but I wanted to reiterate it to explain how I met virtually every upper Midwest politician (we covered northern Wisconsin too) in the last two decades of the 20th century and early in the 21st.

 

One of my favorites was Florian Chmielewski, who died recently at age 97. Florian used to stop by the paper and talk to us quite frequently when he was a DFL state senator representing a district south of Duluth. (I call him by his first name because that’s how we related with most of the politicians until they got elected to a really high post such as governor, although I’m not sure we didn’t call Governor Perpich Rudy or Congressman Oberstar Jim.)

 

Of course, most people remember Chmielewski as a consummate accordion player and leader of a family-plus polka band with a popular television show. A man of many talents.

 

Just about everybody’s seen him perform at one time or another, in person or on TV. Not everyone had the opportunity to talk public policy with him when he was a state senator. He was particularly learned in the area of health care, among other issues I recall discussing with him. Very dedicated.

 

Serious stuff, but that broad smile seldom left his face. That is how I prefer to remember him. That and how he tied his ties. No knot, but rather a regular tie arranged like a cravat. 

 

One time I happened to be visiting the hilltop studios of WDIO-TV when they were taping a segment of his TV show Chmielewski Funtime, Florian out front pumping that accordion.

 

Suddenly one of the technicians said something had gone wrong with their recording equipment — they were filming the band but not picking up any sound. What were they going to do? I was told it didn’t matter, they’d just fill the soundtrack with past recordings of the group, not attempting to match the particular song with what was filmed being played. Hmmm.

 

I’m not much of a polka fan but I hope they included “Just Because.” It’s a classic: “Just because you think you’re so pretty,/Just because you think you’re so smart,/Just because you think you’ve got something/That nobody else has got./You cause me to spend all my money,/You laugh and call me Old Santa Claus;/Well I’m tellin’ you, baby, I’m through with you,/Because, just because.”

 

Smile, you’re on Chmielewski Funtime.

 

I recall often seeing the Funtime ensemble roll by on a flatbed truck in the annual Moose Lake July 4 parade. (“I don’t want her,/You can have her/She’s too fat for me…” — another old non-P.C. polka they might have played.)

 

I almost did Florian a disservice one time when he was running for re-election to the Minnesota Senate, where he served for just over a quarter of a century. All of the candidates we interviewed for various offices would emphasize, in their endorsement interviews, that they were “committed” to various things: committed to lower taxes, committed to better roads, committed to education, and so on.

 

One election cycle when Florian came in for his interview, he emphasized that he was seeking to help the city of Moose Lake with its plans for a new high school, among many other things.

 

People of a certain age will recall that Moose Lake was once best known for what can politely be called a mental health facility located there, although for years it was often impolitely referred to as an “insane asylum,” which sounds politically incorrect today. It has since taken on an entirely different role.

 

In any event, in writing a newspaper endorsement for Florian, I emphasized his efforts to help Moose Lake, but I inadvertently headlined it: “Chmielewski committed to Moose Lake.”

 

Fortunately, that never saw print. Until today.

 

Sad to see Florian is gone. He kept going with the music well into his 90s, always broadly smiling and seeming to be singing, “Roll out the barrel, and we’ll have a barrel of fun,/roll out the barrel, we’ve got the blues on the run.”

 

But not this week: His funeral is Tuesday in Sturgeon Lake, where he lived.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.