life – Frank is Emptiness

Reunion

February 8th, 2026

I received a letter a week or two ago from a couple high school classmates. They are busy organizing a 50th anniversary celebration for the Class of 1976. I find it almost impossible to wrap my head around this development. Based on the letter, there has already been a massive amount of planning and preparation involved with this event. They have arranged a tour of the old high school. The organizers have a dinner and party set up at a local hotel. There are detailed instructions in the letter about how to pay for reservations. Still, I have lingering questions:

“Why? Why do all this? Why bother?”

At the risk of stating the obvious, fifty years is a long time, and at least in my case, a lot has happened during those years. What do I have in common with these classmates from five decades ago? What do I even have in common with the person I was back then?

Probably not much.

I have kept in contact with a grand total of three of my high school classmates. I’ve only seen two of them during the last decade. If I went to this soiree, I doubt that I would recognize anyone. I expect that nametags will be necessary for any sort of socialization.

The letter asks people to “meet us in the Grand Ballroom at 4:30 for dinner, conversation, reminiscing, dancing, cocktails, meeting old friends, and making new ones.” Dancing? Seriously? How many cocktails will people need for that?

What about reminiscing? This implies that a person wants to talk about what it was like back in high school. I am hard pressed to recall much that is worth remembering, much less discussing. Do I really want to converse about the days when I was young and stupid? I once read an interview within which John Lennon was asked about getting the Beatles back together. He sarcastically replied to the interviewer that it would be like going back to high school. I can understand Lennon’s viewpoint.

When I look back half of a century, I don’t feel nostalgia. I recall most of all that burning desire to get the fuck out my hometown. I wanted to see the world and have adventures, and that I definitely did. When I really think about it, it is clear to me that almost everything I did while in high school was part of an effort to go somewhere else and to be somebody else. Paul Simon best described my feeling at the time in his song, “My Little Town”. The lyrics go like this:

“In my little town, I grew up believing
God keeps his eye on us all.
And he used to lean upon me as I pledged allegiance to the wall.
Lord, I recall, in my little town,
Comin’ home after school, flyin’ my bike past the gates of the factories,
My mom doin’ the laundry, hangin’ out shirts in the dirty breeze.
And after it rains there’s a rainbow and all of the colors are black.
It’s not that the colors aren’t there, it’s just imagination they lack.
Everything’s the same back in my little town,
My little town, my little town.

Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.

In my little town, I never meant nothin’,
I was just my father’s son. mmm.
Savin’ my money, dreamin’ of glory,
Twitchin’ like a ginger on the trigger of a gun.

Leavin’ nothin’ but the dead and dying back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.
Nothin’ but the dead and dyin’ back in my little town.”

That song tells part of my story. Eventually, years later I returned from California to my place of birth. I came back a very different person. I came back mostly because my wife and I had a baby boy and he needed more family than just us. Was it a good decision? I have no idea, but that’s what we did.

We live within ten miles of my old school. We live within ten miles of the hotel where they want to have this shindig. I could easily attend. Sure, Karin and I would have to find a babysitter for our little grandson, Asher, but we could figure it out if we wanted to do so. I don’t want to.

Faulkner once said, “The past is never dead. The past isn’t even past.”

He’s right. My past is an integral part of my identity.

I don’t need to go somewhere and wallow in it.

Hold You

February 3rd, 2026

There are times when out grandson, Asher, wants me to carry him. That is usually not a problem. He’s just over five years old, and he tips the scales at just over forty pounds. The thing that I have to keep in mind is that, with each passing day, Asher is a bit bigger, and I am a bit older. At some point, perhaps soon, I won’t be able to carry him. That’s just reality.

Last night was a rough one for Asher. He sleeps with me. He has done that for years, and he dozes off with his heavy head lying on my left bicep. When he came to bed yesterday, his legs were hurting. He had been playing and kicking a lot earlier in the evening, but I don’t think that’s why his legs were bothering him. He has sudden growth spurts, and when those occur, his legs ache. Sometimes, the soreness is mild. Last night it was fierce. He quite literally had growing pains.

Asher fell asleep in my arms, but he was awake again after only an hour or so. He was crying and moving around. I got up to find him some Children’s Tylenol. My wife and I asked him to take the Tylenol for his pain, but Asher wanted no part of it. He doesn’t like to take pain meds. That might be a good trait for later in his life.

Eventually, Asher settled down and slept again. About two hours later he was up again, once more crying. My wife came to bed to comfort him. Asher laid between the two of us. The tears flowed for a while, and then he calmed down and slept.

This cycle went on for most of the night. Asher would sleep fitfully for a while, then wake up and cry because of his aching legs. Each time, I held him close as he wept. I could feel his body slowly relax and his sobs fade away. I couldn’t think of anything to do anything to ease his pain. I could only hold him so that he would endure it. He did.

The last attack came before 3:00. It wasn’t as intense as the previous bouts of pain. His body was finishing its work extending his bones and muscles. Asher eased on to my shoulder and closed his eyes. He finally slept peacefully.

I stayed awake. I stared at the skylight and thought about the words of a song:

“I can’t carry you forever, but I can hold you now” – lyrics from, Hold You Now by Vampire Weekend

Wars that Come Back Home

January 20th, 2026

“Another head hangs lowly
Child is slowly taken
And the violence caused such silence
Who are we mistaken?

But you see, it’s not me, it’s not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks and their bombs, and their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head, they are crying

In your head, in your head
Zombie, zombie, zombie
What’s in your head? In your head?” -from Zombie by the Cranberries

I got a call a couple hours ago. It was from a young man who is very dear to me. He lives in Texas with his wife and young children. I have known him for many years. He served in the Army. Fifteen years ago, he was deployed in Iraq. That experience changed him forever.

The young guy did most of the talking. He wanted to tell me about his work pumping concrete at construction sites. He lives in the country. A lot of his jobs are in the Bryan/College Station area. He told me that six out of eight of his company’s recent jobs were cancelled because ICE agents were grabbing people that looked illegal to them. He had mentioned to me previously that almost all of the concrete finishers on the jobsites were Latinos. During the last few days very few of them have been showing up for work, so the young man has not been able to work either. In general, he likes to work with the Latinos. They bust their ass on the job. In the past, they have been friendly and shared their food with him.

He went off on a tangent for a moment, and said, “Well, if things get bad pumping concrete, I might just join up with ICE. I don’t know what else I would be able to do.”

I thought to myself, “Jesus Christ, don’t do that.” I didn’t reply out loud to his comment. I could imagine the conversation going down a deep rabbit hole.

At one point, the young man asked me,

“What do think of that woman who got killed in Minnesota?”

I replied, “I got some thoughts. It’s not a good idea to surprise a guy carrying a loaded gun.”

The young man said, “She was coming at him at high speed.”

I got pissed off, “No, she wasn’t!”

He answered me, “Yeah, well, I would have done the same thing he did.”

I responded, “I know you would. If somebody started coming at you, you would be right back in Iraq.”

I felt scared and hurt, nearly shaking. The young guy was speaking the stone-cold truth. If he had been in that situation, he would have pumped four rounds into the woman too. I know that in my heart. He would have been at war again.

I had actually been thinking about the killing of Renee Good before the young man called me. I have been wondering if the ICE agent was a combat vet. I have been wondering if he had PTSD like the young man I know. Did the shooter just react? Was the decision to shoot automatic? Was he suddenly back in a very scary place far, far away from Minneapolis? Did he bring the war back home like my young man?

I don’t know. I can’t know.

The young man knew I was upset. He told me, “Well, I took a different path. I’m not an ICE agent.”

I replied, “I’m glad.”

Christmas Cards

December 21st, 2025

I send Christmas cards. Lots of them. I think that my wife and I have mailed over seventy cards this year. I have posted most of them. Almost every day I wrote notes in some cards, put stamps on their envelopes, and dropped them into mailboxes.

Why do that?

The main reason that I send out Christmas cards is because I like doing it. I suppose that is the main reason for me to do anything. In this case, I do it in order to maintain the tenuous relationships I have with far-flung friends and family. I write cards to people all over the world, and with some of them I haven’t seen their faces or heard their voices in decades. Yet I still feel a connection with them. Sometimes we get responses to our cards, but often we don’t. Writing a card is a lot like putting a message in a bottle and tossing it into the sea. The recipient might get it, and they might read it, and they just maybe might write back. Writing and sending physical messages is an anachronistic practice, one that is nearly lost in our age. However, it a means of communication that has soul. There is something almost magical about sending or getting a handwritten card.

It should be noted that I am choosy about what kind of card I send to an individual. Some folks are very focused on the religious aspect of Christmas, and to those persons I usually send a card with a Christian theme. However, I know Jews, Muslims, Buddhist, and atheists who don’t give a hoot about the birth of Christ, yet they celebrate during the season. They get other types of cards. My Jewish friends all got Hanukkah cards. We are celebrating different festivals, but they long for the same things: love, joy, and peace. I try to express similar hopes and wishes in the cards I send to other non-Christians. My family celebrates Christmas, but the message of the Incarnation is universal.

I know people who are insistent that Christmas be solely about Jesus. These are the ones who believe there is a secular war against Christmas. There may in fact be a war, but the real enemies of the holiday are consumerism and greed. Christmas has always been tied with paganism in some way, and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Years ago, we had a real tree in our house and burned real candles on it. That’s a very old German tradition that harks back to pre-Christian times. Christmas has a deep connection with ancient feasts that celebrated the winter solstice and the rebirth of the sun. The holiday is fundamentally about the return of light and warmth in a world that has become cold and dead. The symbolism is all around us this time of year. I have only to look out my window and see all the Christmas lights trying to bring a bit of joy to my part of the world.

When I send a card, I write a message in it tailored to the recipient. I seldom just scribble my name on a card and call it done. Do others actually care what I say? Maybe not. I think they realize that some effort has been put forth. I hope the recognize that I give a damn.

Peace on earth.

There is Always a First Time

November 11th, 2025

I got a haircut today. In a way, getting a trim is kind of pointless for me. There isn’t much hair left to cut. However, the little bit of hair that is still on my head was looking scruffy, so I decided to a “hair salon”, which is basically a fancy name for a barber shop that pays its stylists low wages.

I wound up waiting quite a while to get a cut. I couldn’t understand why the place was so busy. Then I saw a seemingly endless parade of old guys staggering into the salon to get vouchers from free haircuts. It didn’t click in my mind why the shop was giving out vouchers until I noticed that a lot of old men were wearing caps with military insignia. Suddenly, I remembered that today was Veterans Day. A long line of elderly vets stood in line, many of them leaning heavily on their canes, and waited to get a freebie.

I got out of the Army in August of 1986. I became a veteran at that point, but to the best of my recollection, I have never taken advantage of any of the Veterans Day benefits. I am not sure why I always avoided the handouts. Maybe I was too proud, and or maybe I just didn’t want to flaunt the fact that I had served. It always seemed kind of tacky. It seems like on one day each year, people momentarily recognize that others sacrificed something to serve our country. A few of those people who are aware of the service that veterans gave to them try to give something back. What is given to vets is usually not very much: a haircut, a free breakfast, something that can qualify as a tax write off. I just didn’t want any of that.

I finally got called up for my haircut. The lady that cut my hair knows my head, if not my history. She knows that my needs are simple. All I want is for her to use a clipper with a Number 2 guard all the way around my noggin. I sat down and she put the chair cloth around me. I told her,

“For what it’s worth, I am vet.”

She shrugged and replied, “Thanks for your service.”

I said, “I flew helicopters. That was a long time ago.”

She smiled and told me, “It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. The important thing is that you served.”

She mentioned that a cousin of hers had been a military pilot and now flew for Flight for Life as a civilian. We talked about flying for a while. Then I spoke to her about my son who was deployed in Iraq. She told me about her nephew who had also been in Iraq. Her nephew wanted to get into the Rangers, but he got in a serious motorcycle accident and had a brain injury. He had memory loss, but somehow still remembered enough bad stuff from Iraq to have PTSD.

Our conversation was brief. It doesn’t take long for a stylist to give me a buzz cut and trim my eyebrows. She had me check out her work with a mirror and then pulled the cloth off me. I got up and walked to the counter. She did something on her computer and said,

“The haircut was on us. You don’t have to pay anything.”

This was my first time getting anything for free on Veterans Day. I pulled out my wallet anyway. She still deserved a big tip.

Involuntarily Offline

November 9th, 2025

Ten days ago, my laptop took a shit. I was kind of expecting this to happen at some point. The laptop was already six years old, which meant that it was well into obsolescence. In addition to that, I had dropped it a couple years ago creating an ugly crack at the corner near the on/off button. The crack had increased in size over time. Finally, the computer refused to allow me to type on the keyboard. I was required to do something if I wanted to go online.

I took the ancient laptop to Best Buy. I have total coverage with Geek Squad, and I planned on using it. It should be noted that it is nearly impossible to go into a Best Buy and physically talk to a Geek Squad agent without an appointment. Just getting an appointment is no easy task either. A person either has to do it online (which is not possible if the device, like mine, doesn’t work) or do it on the phone, which requires a number of long and unpleasant steps. In any case, I had an appointment, and I did in fact speak with a human being.

I turned in the computer for repair, and I was informed via text that the work was completed a day later. I went to the store to pick up my resurrected laptop. I should have had an appointment for this, but somebody handled my issue anyway. The man explained that they had not been able to replicate the problem with the keyboard. He told me this as he played around with the computer. Then he realized that, yes indeed, the keyboard did not work. The tech sighed and said,

“This always happens during check out.”

He gave the crack in the corner a hard stare and told me,

“That may be the death sentence right there. There is lot going on underneath that crack, and the mother board might be damaged.”

I asked him, “So, you are telling me to buy a new one?”

“Well, you could…”

I interrupted him, “Never mind. Where do I go to buy a laptop?”

He pointed across the room. “The salesperson will help you.”

The sales guy did help, and then he took me right back to Geek Squad, so that they could transfer the data from the old computer to the new one. The bottom line was that it would take at least two days to transfer the data from the memory. I bowed to the inevitable and left both computers in their hands.

After two days, I once again went to the store. I got my brand-new Hewlett-Packard Omni Book and proudly took it home. I plugged it in and got online. It worked splendidly for five minutes and then it didn’t. It froze up completely every five minutes.

Fuck.

I restarted it and rebooted it and I finally went to the Best Buy site to chat with a Geek Squad agent with a multi-syllable first name. He did a complete tuneup on it. I tried it again. No change. I contacted Best Buy again, and this time the agent threw up his hands in despair and gave me an appointment to visit another store.

Nice.

I had to wait two days to go to the store. In the meantime, I tried to write on my blog using the partially incapacitated laptop. That was a bitch. I had to restart the computer several times and find the page where it locked up. I finally finished the essay (my previous post on this blog), but it cured my desire to go online.

As this saga continued, I came to understand that I really only need to go online for maybe a few minutes a day. The rest of my time was wasted reading articles on the Internet that either depressed or infuriated me. I had been trying to ween myself off the computer before it quit on me. I never take the laptop with me anywhere. It stays at home. I don’t have a tablet or a smart phone. I am attempting to avoid being a prisoner of the Matrix. I actually want to be part of the physical world in all of its beauty and horror. This takes a certain amount of effort.

I took the new but broken laptop to Geek Squad. A pleasant young woman asked whether I had gone online for help. I assured her that I had already jumped through all of the required hoops before coming to her. She determined that I was right. The piece of shit was broken. Fortunately, my coverage allowed me to swap out the new/old laptop for a new/new laptop. Of course, I had to let Geek Squad transfer the data again. That took another two days and required yet another appointment.

This afternoon, at long last, I went to the store, and the young lady presented me with a fresh, data-infused laptop. I took it home. Miracle of miracle, it works just fine.

That’s why I am writing to you now.

Carrie

October 19th, 2025

Carrie Zettel is dead.

On October 12th, Carrie was killed by her daughter. The young woman bludgeoned her mother to death with a rock in the backyard of their home. The killing was all over the news, probably because of its particularly gruesome nature. My wife, Karin, and I didn’t know about Carrie’s murder until a couple days later. The funeral was yesterday, Saturday the 18th. Karin attended the service. She went there because, years ago, we knew that family quite well.

Two of our children attended Tamarack Waldorf School with Carrie’s two kids. She had a son and a daughter. Her son was in a class with our youngest boy. Both of our families lived in the southern part of Milwaukee County, which is far away from the Waldorf school, so we carpooled to school nearly every day. We did that until our son and her son graduated from Tamarack in 2008. After that, our paths diverged, and we lost contact with each other.

Every death is a tragedy, but some deaths defy understanding. Apparently, Carrie’s daughter has a long history of mental illness, so perhaps the killing was not completely unexpected. But still, how does a person wrap their head around this kind of violence? How does Carrie’s son deal with this? Is it even possible to come to terms with trauma like this?

I don’t know. I have never dealt with a death of this sort. The closest I’ve come is when our oldest son went to war in Iraq. He killed people there, and I have had difficulty accepting that reality. However, my experience is like nothing compared to what Carrie’s son has to process.

My wife told me that the funeral service was well done. The son gave an eloquent eulogy about Carrie. Another person mentioned to me that the son “stood tall and spoke well of the new commandment” (“Love one another” from John 13:34). I thought that maybe I should’ve gone there with Karin.

I had another place to be when the funeral was in progress. My friend from the synagogue, Ken, had invited me a couple days before the funeral to come to his home for kiddush, seeing as it was Shabbat, and his wife was out of town. I had already told Ken that I would come to share the meal he had prepared for us before I knew anything about the time and date of the funeral. It was impossible for me to tell Ken that I had a funeral to attend. Since he is an observant Jew, he does not communicate electronically at all on the sabbath: no phone calls, no texts, no emails, nothing. I couldn’t just not show up. So, I went to Ken’s home and kept him company for two hours. I needed to do that. We ate, we talked and enjoyed each other’s company. Shabbat is a gift from God, a day for rest, prayer, and friendship. Nobody should be alone on Shabbat.

I told Ken about Carrie, and we talked about her at length. I am sure that Ken prayed for her. Even if I wasn’t at the funeral, I remembered her.

She was good woman. I grieve for her. I grieve for her children.

Funeral

September 6th, 2025

Yesterday morning I dropped off my grandson, Asher, at the Waldorf school. It made no sense to me to drive all the way back home since I need to pick up the boy in four hours, so I wandered around the east side of Milwaukee. I decided to walk from Brady Street south on Van Buren to the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. The cathedral is the heart of Catholicism in southeastern Wisconsin. Sometimes the heart seems to be suffering from arteriosclerosis, yet it still beats. Many years ago, when our kids were at the Waldorf school, I would often hike down to the church. Somehow, after nearly a quarter century, the journey yesterday seemed significantly longer.

The doors of the cathedral were unlocked. Way back when, the place was always open during the day. During the winter months, homeless people would huddle in the rear of church, often sleeping in the pews buried in their overcoats and caps, just trying to stay out of the bitter cold for a while. When I walked into the sanctuary yesterday, there were no homeless folks, but there was a funeral Mass in progress. A woman handed me a pamphlet describing the liturgy. I took it and sat down in the back.

The Mass was for Thomas “Tommy” August Salzsieder, a person unknown to me. The priest was in the middle of giving a eulogy. I wondered how well the priest knew Tommy. I have already been to funerals where the presider knew almost nothing about the deceased, and his speech was basically a work of fiction. The priest described Tommy as a man of faith, and that “his life was not ended, just transformed”.

I also wondered about that comment. What does “transformed” actually mean? Looking at the assembled mourners, I noticed a lot of people with grey hair or no hair at all. They were all elderly, my age. We are all in the batting order for this transformation of our lives. The priest talked about heaven, a concept that I simply do not understand. When I was young, I thought heaven was someplace where God pats you on the head and gives you a cookie for being a good boy. Now, I have no idea what it is. Honestly, heaven does not sound terribly inviting. I would be okay if the end of my life was like when they put me under anesthesia for surgery. Nothing. A void. A blank screen.

I thought about Tommy, and frankly I envied him. His work is done. He no longer needs to fight or struggle in life. Life is beautiful and glorious at times, but it also literally exhausting. Tommy can rest now, whatever that actually means.

The liturgy was a work of devotion. I could tell that. The cantor did a soulful rendition of “Panis Angelicus” from Cesar Franck. A funeral can be inspiring if there is love involved, even love that is buried in grief. I have been to funerals where it was obvious that the service was the result of reluctant duty. People went through the motions hurriedly in order to get the dead person deep in the ground as quickly as possible.

A while back my therapist gave me an odd question. He wrote and asked,

“What do you want Asher to remember about you — not what you did, but who you were?”

I have no idea. In a way, the question seems irrelevant. I won’t care what Asher remembers when I’m dead. I’m pretty sure of that.

However, what Asher remembers may very much matter to him. His memories might affect the trajectory of his life. Will he remember when I was angry and impatient? Will he remember when I had his back? Will he remember when I failed to listen to him? Will he remember that he received unconditional love from me?

But I’m describing things I do, but not who I am. I don’t know who I am, not really. Maybe Asher will have a better idea of who was when I’m gone than I have right now.

I hold Asher in my arms at night so he can sleep. When I die will a meta-parent hold me in their arms? Will God whisper to me,

“I embrace you now. I have always embraced you.”

Back on Brady Street

August 25th, 2025

Asher starts kindergarten at Tamarack Waldorf School on September 3rd. This is obviously a big deal, both for Asher and for Karin and me. Going to school will open up a whole new world for Asher. He will get to know his teacher, and he will make friends. He will have to learn how to follow a schedule. He’s never had to do that before. Asher has mostly done what he wants when he wants, and for the most part we, as his guardians, have been okay with that. That all changes in a little over a week. He is going to have to get up early, eat breakfast, get dressed, and go to class for the morning every morning. I’m almost certain he will balk at this, at least until he gets comfortable in his class and starts looking forward to doing things with the other children.

I will mostly likely be driving Asher to class each morning. I am a morning person, unlike my wife. The Waldorf school is close to downtown Milwaukee, which means Asher and I will have a half hour drive to get him to class by 8:00 AM each day. Traffic will suck. My wife did this kind of thing with our own kids twenty-five years ago. We know the drill. Since Asher will only be there until 12:30, it is kind of iffy as to whether it is even worthwhile for me to drive back home once I drop him off. I might as well stay in area around the school while he is in class.

Tamarack is located on Brady Street on the lower eastside of Milwaukee. It’s close to Lake Michigan. Tamarack uses the old school building from St. Hedwig’s Catholic Church. The steeple of St. Hedwig’s towers over the other buildings on the street. It is the anchor for the neighborhood. The school building is ancient. It has classrooms with high ceilings, tall windows, and hardwood floors. The school has a feeling of solidity and durability. If you listen closely, you can hear the voices of previous generations of children laughing and yelling in the halls. For me, there are ghosts in the school. Even if I am surrounded by the new parents and their kids, I can still feel the presence of the people who taught and learned in that place a quarter century ago. The school contains echoes of the past, but it is also vibrant with the energy of the latest generation. It’s like life is coming full circle.

Brady Street is an interesting neighborhood. It always has been. Early on, it was an immigrant community of Germans, Poles, and Italians. St. Hedwig’s is named after a Polish saint. There is still an Italian grocery store (Glorioso’s) a few blocks away from the school. Peter Sciortino Bakery is across the street from Tamarack. During the 60’s and 70’s, Brady Street was a hippie hangout. Now, it’s a narrow road lined with bars that cater to a mostly hipster crowd, young people with money. But the neighborhood is still quirky. The community is very LGBTQ friendly. The area is ethnically diverse. Brady is a good street for walking and browsing. There is a paradoxical sense of permanence and simultaneous upheaval. It’s a neighborhood that is alive.

I came to know that area in the 1990’s. I used to go down the block from the school to the Brewed Cafe for coffee. Sometimes, I went there by myself, and sometimes with my wife. Brewed is not there anymore. They closed down a few years ago, and now the place is a Brazilian coffee shop. The new coffee house is nice enough, but it’s not Brewed. The Brewed Cafe had this scruffy, working-class, antiestablishment atmosphere. Once a person managed to get through the front door, which never really opened and closed very well, they would see numerous pamphlets and posters advertising upcoming shows by local bands or political events or art exhibits. The front counter was small and cramped. At busy times of the day, customers lined up almost all the way back to the door. Once at the counter, a person could order coffee or other beverages. They had beer (it’s Wisconsin-almost every establishment serves beer). There was a tiny kitchen in the back where people made vegan sandwiches and other dishes. The folks working at Brewed all had more than usual number of tattoos and piercings. I’m sure they worked for minimum wage, but they got to pick what music was played in the coffee shop.

Even when there were only a few customers, Brewed seemed crowded. Space was at a premium. The tables were small and wobbly. If you ordered coffee, you got that immediately. If you ordered food, it showed up eventually. The walls were covered with works by local artists. The bathrooms were microscopic in size, and the walls were plastered with graffiti and stickers for bands that I had never heard of. The place was clean, but cluttered. Over the years, it had accumulated a variety of objects that somehow lost their purpose and meaning, but remained there, nonetheless. Brewed was oddly comfortable. Going there for coffee or lunch was kind of like going into somebody’s home.

I miss that place. I will have to find another hangout on Brady Street.

Little Things that Go Sideways

August 15th, 2025

I came home from visiting a friend on Tuesday afternoon. My wife, Karin, wanted me to be home to care for our grandson, Asher, so she could go to her knitting guild meeting. As I backed into the driveway, I saw my wife standing in front of the garage. The garage was open and the RAV4 was inside of it. Karin looked very upset as I pulled in.

I parked and Asher came over to my car and smiled. He said, “Grandpa!”

Karin did not smile. She said, “The car and the garage door are broken.”

Oh.

To digress for a moment, when I was growing up, the standard reaction to a statement like that in my family was origin was emotional chaos. There was always a lot of hollering. Enormous amounts of energy were immediately expended on finding somebody to blame for whatever bad thing had happened. That was the priority. After an initial burst of rage was directed at somebody, then, maybe, an effort would be made to solve the problem. Sometimes, the issue never really was solved. The important thing was to find a scapegoat.

I used to react like that for a long time when I was younger. I think that my wife still expects me to blow my top when she bears bad tidings. Sometimes, if I am worn out, I do, but I don’t get angry nearly as often. I frankly don’t have the stamina for it. Rage takes a lot out of a person. In any case, I barely reacted at all when she told me that things had gone sideways.

My wife explained that she had been backing into the garage when suddenly the door came down hard on the rear of the car. It shattered the rear window. Neither Asher nor Karin were hurt, thank God. However, the accident terrified them both. It would have freaked me out too.

I examined the damage. Ugly. The rear window in the RAV4 was pratty much gone. The storage area in the back of the car was littered with tiny pieces of glass. The garage door was hanging cockeyed. One of the cables had torn away from the bottom panel of the door. It’s an old door, the original door from when we built the house in 1991. The wood on the bottom panel was rotted out in some places. I don’t know if the cable let go before or after my wife was backed into the garage. It doesn’t matter. The door was now junk.

There was no point in me getting upset. My wife was already stressed out. I went about starting the process to fix things.

It was already late when I stared making calls to our insurance, both auto and home. I called a garage door contractor. They were closed for the day, but I got hold of their 24 hour service guy. He convinced me to wait until the next morning for an inspection (they have a $200 surcharge for after hours service calls). I left the RAV4 in the garage (it rained hard later in the evening). I closed the door as far as it would go. After that, it was completely immobile.

I’m still making calls. For the last couple days, I have been talking to insurance adjuster, contractors, and car rental companies. I will be calling a collision repair shop as soon as they open this morning to find out when I can bring in the RAV. This is all a hassle, but it’s one I can manage. The garage door was replaced yesterday. Eventually, it will all get repaired and life will go on.

The Milwaukee area, where we live, suffered torrential rains and severe flooding six days ago. It was bad. We got lucky, and had no damage to our property. Other people in the metro area got hit hard. A large number of residents had flooded homes or flooded cars. One family’s home in a nearby suburb was hit with so much water that the foundation shifted and the basement wall collapsed. Those people are now homeless. That house is probably a dead loss. Those folks have real problems. Our issues are minor.

We had to wait two days to get rental car that is paid for by our insurance. I initially found the delay to be annoying. We finally picked up the rental car yesterday afternoon. The office manager at the car rental explained to us why he did not have a car for us right away. Apparently, that facility only rents out maybe seven or eight cars per day. Since the great flood, they have been renting out thirty cars per day. They don’t have thirty cars available. Nor do any of their other locations in the area. They ran out of cars, and they still don’t have enough to go around.

I have to admit that I am fortunate. Other people are not.

Oh well, it’s time to make some calls.