The Midwestern Snow Dance

This week I have watched as my neighbors have donned their tall furry hats and industrial boots. They have rosined their snow blowers, tuned them to each other and started the ballet that I imagine occurs on snow covered streets across the Northern United States. The whirring of the motors has been kept in rhythm with the scrape of shovels and the flop of snow from trees—the symphony and the dancers perfectly in sync.

I have watched from the bay window in my living room as the family across the street—a mother and two girls—grab color coordinated shovels, and with a flourish begin clearing their driveway in a well-practiced choreography. They go from left to right three feet from each other and push the snow to one side, then step-turn back, pushing the shovel to the other side. I am mesmerized, as I start planning my own choreography. 

I decide I am not going to go from left to right, I am going from my garage to the street. I decide I am going to wait until it quits snowing, because isn’t it better to just shovel once? I admire their chorus line coordination, but why oh why are they starting so early? Why are they going across, wouldn’t you just need tire tracks to get out of your driveway? Maybe they are just doing what they have always done and maybe it takes a newcomer to revolutionize the process….

Yep, that’s right, I was an arrogant American in a foreign land! You can only imagine what a calamity of errors occurred in my driveway the next morning from the moment I raised the garage door. With the first push of the shovel I hit such the wrong note on my first attempt at this winter symphony.

In my defense, I have a narrow short driveway with retaining walls on either side, so it wasn’t completely out of the realm of possibility to be able to push snow to the end of the driveway. After all it was the softest, most powdery snow I had ever seen. And the retaining wall certainly had to change my mode of operation compared to the folks across the street who are sans retaining walls.

Well, 10-ish inches of snow, piles up pretty quickly! So after about 5 feet of my “tire track” every single thing I had watched the night before clicked into place. Start early and shovel often, then the snow isn’t quite so heavy! If you shovel out to the street there is nowhere to put the snow, so you have to pile it up at either side! Genius!

My learning curve continued and expanded to include my wardrobe. I started in my chin-to-ankle parka, which quickly became very hot. Half way through the job, I went in and changed my coat, ditched the earmuffs for a hat (because the tree over the driveway kept throwing snowballs directly on top of my head!) and changed from my rain boots to something with more traction. I also changed from sweat pants to jeans, which held up against the wet snow better. The costume change revolutionized my proficiency!

By the time I reached the end of my driveway, I was exhausted, but not finished. I have 152,000 steps from the street to my front door and the mailman will not deliver the mail to my mailbox perched at the top of those steps, if they are not cleared (rain, sleet or snow, my eye!). Additionally, the city will charge me $35 for every hour they note I have not cleared the sidewalk in front of my house.  Luckily my neighbor, who has a snow blower saw me sliding down the front slope of my yard as I struggled to shovel the steps, so he performed and a la seconde and cleared the sidewalk in a matter of minutes!  He also “shaved” the piles of snow on either side of my driveway, informing me that those would be there until March and close in on the driveway with each snow. He is my danceur noble and will be receiving a world of baked goods for these kindnesses!

Before the second big snow, I assessed my tools and determined that perhaps I should look at a snow blower, maybe find a sharper shovel that will scrape the concrete and find some salt to see if I couldn’t clear the driveway completely before the new snow. 

I took an intermission to Theissens (pronounced Tysons) a farm store. It was the biggest of educations so far. There were clothes, sleds, snowboards, ice fishing shacks, boots, snow blowers, with heated hoods and handles (all very expensive) and a myriad of shovels that didn’t even look like shovels. I started there— lifting shovels, examining handles, miming shoveling motions, talking with other patrons who were full of advice. I loaded the recommended shovel into my cart and then made my way across the store. Apparently I drew an audience with my accent and my novice snow shoveling banter. As I made my way with my chosen shovel in my cart across the store, others stopped me and commented on the conversations they had overheard and corrected the advice I had received previously. After being stopped by three other people with advice, I went back to the shovel section and exchanged the shovel I had chosen for an ice chipper, which is indeed what I needed….

I must say the second attempt at shoveling has gone much better. I performed an overture, starting early, shoveling the first 2 inches and will probably go out again before bed and shovel it again.

Meanwhile Mr. Beuchle (pronounced Beakly) is already out there performing his solo dance with his snow blower on my sidewalk, so I have some Molasses cookies to make this evening too!

I suspect this will be my song and dance until March!

Jumping off cliffs with Gina

I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.  ~Mark Twain

Gina Lage Jones and I have traveled far and wide together. The highlights include my first trip abroad to London, a camping trip involving campgrounds in 3 states, a mountain biking adventure in North Carolina, visits in Florida, Alabama, Illinois….

Gi and I are the yen and yang of traveling….She’s organized and some sort of map whisperer and I am….well….compliant. She tells me where to go and I get in the car. And yes, mom, if she jumped off a cliff, I would surely follow.

This time she traveled to see me in Dubuque and now that she has been here and seen it, Dubuque and I are validated. This is a cool place!

A small crime spree notwithstanding, we were “good” tourists all weekend in Dubuque.  We ate, drove, walked and relaxed our way through an entire 11-mile area that is Dubuque proper.

Dubuque really rolled out the red carpet atop Eagle Point. The 164-acre park--which costs a dollar to drive through, or is free if you can park by the back entrance and jump the fence (okay that is an exaggeration…there is a free back entrance, with a gate that you can walk right through)--follows a bend in the Mississippi River from a 500ish-foot bluff.  From this back entrance, high above the river, you walk right into a rock garden of sorts. Paths, natural rock benches, a koi pond and small waterfalls that splash in and out of leafy patches of sun overlook the Mississippi at Lock and Dam number 11.

We followed a part concrete, part dirt path along the fenced bluff to take in unique views of the Mississippi as it dodges in and out of coves, around islands and up against Wisconsin. Benches, pavilions and walking paths offer Jesus-Mary-and-Joseph views at every turn. People with picnic baskets dot the park along the river and birthday parties, tennis players and wheeled vehicles weave in and out of the trees more inland.

Our red carpet welcome really was quite the feat considering Eagle Point Park sprouted because Dubuque wasn’t quite rolling out the red carpet for anybody….

Legend has it, Charles M. Robinson, who was famous for designing urban landscapes in Virginia during the early part of the twentieth century, visited Dubuque and said, “I have never seen a place where the Almighty has done more and mankind less, than Dubuque.”

Turns out Dubuquers didn’t much appreciate that. Judge Oliver Shiras and the Dubuque’s women’s club bought, collected and donated the land around Eagle Point.

It is called Eagle Point for a reason….Although, Gina and I did not see any Eagles when we visited, neighbors say once the leaves are off the trees you can see “flocks of eagles” around the point. There is an Eagle statue at the old streetcar turn around, which surely stands as evidence that the birds are present around there somewhere.

Streetcars and trolleys are still seen around Dubuque, but mostly as tourist attractions and rental vehicles for special occasions. There is a streetcar elevator to help climb the bluffs to a lookout point just above downtown. Gina, the consummate runner that she is, ran her way up the bluff and took some pictures of the 4^th Street elevator and the river. (I stayed in the flats by the river and WALKED around, while she iron manned her way to the top!)

I won’t tell you about all the wonderful food we had while she was here—from the Naughty Dog, which will get its whole on blog entry later, to L. May and Café Manna Java—I will just say we were not starved for things to do or places to eat within our 11-mile radius.

What also makes Dubuque worth the trip is the trip itself. Gina flew from Nashville, changing planes in Chicago, flying right into the Dubuque Regional Airport, where I met her the minute she stepped off the plane. One gate, one provider—American Eagle. In the lobby waiting area, where you can see the arrival/departure gate and the baggage carousel, there is a library of books that you are welcome to take and donate to while you wait! Gina’s round trip ticket cost around $300 when all was said and done. She got free room and board and a personal chauffer for that price. I am willing to work the same deal for you if you would just get on the plane and get here!

See you in the 50s, Andrew

“There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” – Charles Dudley Warner

Sometimes, when my 4-year-old friend Andrew and I would part after a day out in Murfreesboro, Tenn., we would recite the little dialog—

“See you later, alligator.”

“Afterwhile, Crocodile.”

“See you in the 50s!”

Well, Andrew…. I am in the 50s.

I bought a 1956-constructed home. It has held only the Cherrier family since then. Mr. Cherrier, the one-time Assistant Fire Chief in Dubuque, built, maintained and lived in the house with his family until his death in 1996. And Mrs. Cherrier, employed by the telephone company for more than 25 years, lived in it until she sold it to me August 10.  It has all the stability and charm that you might expect from such a responsible, Midwestern family.

It wasn’t love at first sight. There was a spark of warmth, but no ring of fire. I lusted after a Queen Anne right downtown Dubuque—an interior designer’s dreamy interpretation of the mine-rich Victorian Era, when Julian Dubuque staked his claim on the Mississippi River.

Dubuque’s charm lies in the Victorian laced bluffs and I would have loved to invest in the young renaissance of a largely dilapidated population of grand homes. However, while I am a dreamer, an optimist and a Taurus, I, for once, managed to plant my feet a little more firmly on the Cherrier’s front stoop.

Once I came to my senses and opted for the more sensible home, I fell in love with the kitchen first.  It reminded me of the one my mother grew up in, in Madisonville, Kentucky. It has the flickering buzz of an exposed circular florescent light. It has an oven that looks like the front grill of a Corsair fastback. And the stainless steel sink is set on the corner, framed by windows that wind out to both the back and side yards.

Once the kitchen charmed me, so too did the warm, maple-ly wood floors that I imagined were underneath the carpet. It took me longer to cozy up to the wood trim, which has always been white in my Southern Living decorated world.

Well, Andrew, it’s wood, it can be painted, right?

I started with my bedroom. I chose the smaller of the two bedrooms, because of the crazy built-in closet. Not that I was going to keep the closet, but I just knew they could become built-in shelves and could be painted white. My dad, who was a college administrator for most of his life, could build them, right? Dads just know how to do that, right?

Turns out, my dad can build shelves, but his daughter can’t paint the maple trim. My friend James Manning, who is the executive director of a historic house and museum, and a general aficionado of historic houses, was horrified that I would even attempt to paint the trim and warned me against its lack of porous surface. After sanding, then painting with kilz, then painting with white paint (and then again and again and again with the white paint), I gave into the retro-cool buttery trim of the rest of the house.

It would seem, Andrew, there is compromise in every relationship.

My raised ranch house is in the middlest of the middle class neighborhood that seemed to sprout 1,200 foot houses with semi-finished basements around 1956. The dark trim, roughed-in closets and shelves are in all the houses within Dubuque’s city limits.

You can follow Dubuque’s success through its homes. The Victorian Era opulence shines from the reflection of the river. Large Brick homes sit atop carved bluffs, some polished and refined, some peering over the edge of the same bluffs, threatening to jump.

It seems fitting that the very year Queen Victoria began her reign is the same year Dubuque became a city—1837. And just as her monarchy was often characterized as peaceful, so too were Julian and the Irish and German lead miners that followed him up the Mississippi as they lived and worked amicably with the Meskquakie Indians, both digging into the bluffs and residing on top of them.

It almost seems all of Dubuque was facing the river and the land that drifted beyond the bluffs to the prairies was largely ignored until the 1950s. When the town filled with meat packing plants and the industries of post World War II, smaller, more middle class housing developed. My house, toward the prairie side of the city is so typical of the rest of Dubuque one wonders if anything was ever built outside the two time periods.

So even though my house is going to show its age a little, it is still going to be retro cool, much like Dubuque itself. Besides, both my house and the houses on the river are what attracted me to Dubuque. It is Americana, family, sustainable living, and a faint memory of childhood. It all feels as if I have been here before.

Besides, Andrew, I always wanted to live in a little house on the prairie!

Battered Luggage, indeed!

Well, here I am again. Piled on the sidewalk, just how Jack Keraouc described. The sidewalk upon which I have landed is right outside 1860 Chaney Road in Dubuque, Iowa. Sally the dog is on her leash and Peanut the cat has already made her way up the winding steps to the 1950s-era door.

Sally and I have looked up from 5 sidewalks since we have been together, albeit, this one is the furthest away and the most drastic of changes.

I know most people do not understand our yearning for change, our interest in moving, even as we grieve over leaving the people and places we love.  I do it usually for a new job and new adventure. Sally and Peanut are the battered luggage, not necessarily wanting to leave their spots in the sun on distant floors, but they do it for me anyway because they know I can’t do it alone. Frankly, I don’t even know why I do it myself, but I think Jack gets it—“the road is life.”

I have decided to document my change, even though it is not extraordinary to anyone, but us. Friends and family in the Southeast might find it informative and I hope at times interesting, but really I just want to understand why I am so intrigued by “places.” As I get to know Dubuque, Iowa and the surrounding places, I want to share it.

So for a while I will write about my introduction to the Midwest, part travelogue, part personal journal, part apology for leaving my beloved South and my friends and family still there.  

We are going to start right here on this sidewalk and take a tour of the house, the city, the state and beyond. I am going to get settled first though, chase the cat down and find Sally a spot in the sun, then I will show you around….