Congratulations Gale! Now make dessert for 200 to honor yourself

Gale Gand, judging an apple baking competition, Northbrook, September, 2013

    This story changed a lot as I worked on it. Originally, it was much more personal, telling of the time, for instance, of the first time I invited Gale and her family over my house, and my poor wife had to figure out what to make for the James Beard Award-winning chef and celebrity baker. But as Tuesday progressed, and I talked to more people, I decided to squeeze out my own impressions of Gale, such as sharing a bottle of champagne at the Ritz bar that, to our vast surprise, cost over $500, and not the more modestly-priced bottle we thought we had ordered. That was merely a droll tale, if not  braggery, and what her colleagues had to say about her was, I decided, far more interesting. I think this version is better; though I wish I could have saved the image of a fruit tart she once served at her house: the beautiful, perfect, glistening colorful fruit on top, the rich yellow custard within, and that crust. It's burned into memory.

     Gale Gand is sweet.

     Which is fitting, as she is a pastry chef. Though she is also a food star, not only now — Oct. 15 is officially Chef Gale Gand Day in Chicago — but for the past 20 years, ever since she and then-husband Rick Tramonto opened Trio in Evanston in 1993. Brasserie T in Northfield followed in 1995, then she really made her mark in 1999 when the pair opened Tru. “Ultra-hip, ultra-haute, ultra-pricey” is how one Sun-Times columnist (OK, me) described the place in 2000.

     Since then she has starred in her own Food Network show, written eight books, opened another hip restaurant (Spritz Burger) and created her brand of root beer.

     Lest there be confusion, I can’t pretend that I’m impartial, that I’m Mike Wallace holding Gand between my pincers and examining her under a sodium vapor light. I’m her friend; I’ve been shoveling her chow into my maw for a decade and a half, pausing between bites to chat about the challenges of being a celebrity chef (hard and fun), a parent (fun and hard) and always coming away impressed, informed and well-fed.

     Don’t take my word for it. The mark of great chefs is what young chefs who have spent time in their kitchens say about them. 
     "Gale has been incredibly wonderful to me," said Leigh Omilinsky, who started at Tru and is executive pastry chef at the Sofitel Chicago Water Tower. "She likes to see her kids do well; she's like a proud mama."
     Omilinsky said she tries to pattern her own kitchen demeanor after Gand's.
     "Just her overall patience," she said. "She wants to put her people in a position where they'll succeed, and she'll do anything to help them. She encouraged people to really learn. There's no doubt she's the boss lady, but she's very approachable. She didn't want her people to call her 'chef' and I don't want my people to call me 'chef' because it creates a barrier."
     "She hired me right out of pastry school," said Meg Galus, executive pastry chef at the Park Hyatt and NoMi. Gand taught her a chef can embrace newcomers. "Bringing up the next generation is huge," Galus said. "I always want to make sure my team is learning and growing so they can take over someday. I credit a lot of that to her."
     Where did Gand learn the importance of that? Her last boss was Charlie Trotter, and while she would never put it this way, I will: She watched how Trotter treated his staff and then treated hers the opposite.
     "I learned how it feels to work for someone else and how I'd want it to be for someone else who worked for me," Gand said.
     This week's honor is part of a quartet of days for chefs being inducted into the Chicago Culinary Museum & Chefs Hall of Fame. And if you're asking yourself where the Chicago Culinary Museum is and why haven't you visited it, the answer is that the place is still notional, existing in the imagination of backers. Some in the Chicago culinary community support the museum; others snort in derision at mention of it.
     With honors, mitigation often follows. If I get an award, it's promptly given to someone I disdain. For Gand, being named to the Hall of Fame came with a surprising duty.
     "When they first asked me, I thought I was being honored," Gand said. "I didn't realize I had to cook. They want me to show up with 200 portions of dessert. But that's the life of a chef. For one second I slipped into the idea that I got to go to the party. I accept the lot in life. My dad is a musician. We're never the guests at the party. We're always the entertainment. I'm not sure what I would do with myself at a party if I didn't have work to do. It's what I do."
     Gand, by the way, is whipping up 200 of her trademark banana cream pie spoonfuls. "A great dish," she said. "Vanilla custard, whipped cream, banana and pie crust."
     How does it feel to be in the hall of fame?
     "It's nice to have some impact on people's lives, especially when just doing what you do," she said. "This is nice for my dad (Bob Gand, of Village Music). I was going to be the one they had to support. They thought I would be the loser who always needed help, and this coming from a family of musicians. So it's nice I'm not a burden to the family."
     What's her secret for culinary success?
     "If you can help people do the things they want to do outside of work, they're happier at work," she said. "I'm probably the only chef in the world who thinks that. Part of it is, I'm a pleaser. That's why I'm a chef and why I'm a pastry chef. I like to help you celebrate and mark your important day and make you an impressive dessert to propose marriage over. I want everybody to be comfortable and happy."

Odd Wisconsin: Rocks for Fun Cafe Pastie Shop

   The northern Midwest is beautiful and strange. 
   Monday started beautiful, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, heading home from our weekend on Lake Superior. Just as we left, a bald eagle—the largest I've ever seen—appeared silently overhead, seeming to guide our way as we drove through the yellow-leaf splendor.
    For several hours, all was fallow corn fields, scenic barns, and stunning woods.
    Then we entered Wisconsin. 
    Wisconsin is beautiful, too, but also kinda strange. The miles clicked by.
    "If you see a place that looks like it makes a good burger, you can just go ahead and stop," I said, riding shotgun.
    It was shortly after 12 noon, and we were hurtling down Route 45 with only a donut, the UP version of a scone and a cup of coffee to hold us since morning. 
    Just south of the Menomonee Indian Reservation, near the banks of the Embarrass River, my pal, Rory, who was driving, noticed this stone building that looked promising -- basically anything that is not a chain restaurant looks promising-- and pulled into it before we even registered the "GREAT PASTIES" in the window.
     "A pasty is beef in a pastry," I explained, as we got out to of the car. "I had some in London. Street food. We should try one." 

     I did glancingly notice the painted Packer-themed rocks out front— foreshadowing if this were a horror story, which it is, a little— but shrugged them off, and never even read the enigmatic sign: "THE ROCKS FOR FUN CAFE." People are like that. I was happy to stand up straight after three hours in the car, and occupied thinking about a cheeseburger. The sign could have said, "ENTER AND WE'LL KILL YOU" and I probably wouldn't have noticed.
    A very busy interior to the place. Lots of stuff on the walls. But then, backwoods eateries and taverns tend to decorate with agglomerations of junk.
 

     "Can we eat at the bar?" I asked the waitress Linda -- at the bar it seemed like we'd have a better chance to study our surroundings.
    "If you're nice to me," she replied.
     I paused, looked for a fingerhold on this remark, and finally promised to be as nice as I could, then asked for coffee. politely.
      She left, and before we could look at the menu a white haired man came over and offered us the chance to select our very own "Lucky Rock", a small googly-eyed pebble attached to a business card. We had a dozen to choose from; I picked this fellow. The card bore the title, "Rock Creator: Don McClellan" and I almost said, "So you're Don?" but really, it was obvious. Who else would he be? This was not a job that gets delegated.
    "Would you like to see a rock off the moon?" Don began, and we admitted that we would. Don began a spiel that quickly turned into a pun, of sorts, or a kind of play on words.
    "The reason I know they're off the moon is because they're not on the moon," he explained. "All my rocks are off the moon."
     There was more of that sort of thing. And there were a lot of anthropomorphized rocks, arranged into humorous tableaux, and they came fast and furious. Don challenged Rory to tap a rock and say his name. He did.

     "Would you believe that your complete name is now etched in the center of that rock?" he said. "Not only that, would you believe your phone number is on a piece of scrap paper at the center of that rock"
    And so it was. The words, "Your Complete Name," etched in the center of the rock, as if by magic, and "Your Phone Number" jotted on a piece of paper, just as he predicted. 
     Lest I be left out of the fun, I was handed a "Speckled Python Rock" that weighed three pounds, felt it heft, then told the next one weighed eight pounds, and did flinch when it was projected at me—foam and nowhere near eight pounds, though looked identical. I slid off my stool and retrieved the Speckled Python Rock, which had bounced off my chest and onto the floor.
      More rock creations, more jokes, or puns, based on the 346 rock constructions Don has installed on every wall and flat surface of the restaurant, plus more hanging from the ceiling. Jailhouse Rock. Rolling Stone. (You can see dozens of the pebbly figures on their website). There was a rock that squirted water at Rory and a rock that, when I shifted over to the proper stool, wet me in a place I would not want to be thought of as wet. There was the rock he had spent five years teaching to walk, whose skill he display, scampering across his hands, then instantly explained (a hidden thread, clipped to his apron). Some of them took an impressive amount of ingenuity, technical skill and pure unabashed corniness.
      "Have you had a chance to order yet?" Don asked, eventually, as an afterthought, and we admitted that no, we had not, but we would like to. Don explained that he opened the restaurant eight years ago, then three years ago went all pasties. I've always flinched at the word "pasties"—it always seems, at first glance, a typo of the word "pastries" then, at second, a reference to what strippers wear in dismal 1950s bump-and-grind joints. But I did eat them in London—they're originally from Cornwall. "Pasty" (or "Pastie," Rocks for Fun spells it both ways) is a creole of "Cornish Pastry.") More rocks, more jokes. Eventually we looked at the menu—no curry chicken, alas. Linda returned, and as nicely as I could I asked for the Bar BQ Baby Back Pork Ribs ("Our second most popular pasty" Don said) and Rory went for the Cheesy Philly Beef.

      After we placed our order, I stepped into the main restaurant to examine the rest of the displays, with Don hot on my heels, pointing out various highlights and masterpieces. I later found that Oddball Wisconsin: A Guide to 400 Really Strange Places, calls him "the guru of geological guffaws," and like many gurus, he tends toward the hard sell. He pointed out a Marriage on the Rocks display, commemorating his 50th anniversary, and noted that today, Oct. 13, was the actual day of his anniversary. I didn't know whether to say, "Happy anniversary" or "Is your marriage really on the rocks?" so I went with the former. Safer. Don pointed out the 50 dollar coins, given as an anniversary gift, incorporated into the display.
     A large sign declared how many pasties have been sold since the restaurant began serving them three years ago: 89,404. "Do you change it every day?" I asked. 
     "Several times a day" he said—the restaurant is opened seven days a week, from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m.

     About three minutes after we ordered, our meals arrived. A rather plain looking well-browned crescent pastry on a styrofoam plate, with three slices of their "famous Idiot Pickles" and a small cup of applesauce. $7.50. I tried to cut the pasty crust with my butter knife and was thwarted. It was tough.
     Biting into it was challenging too, because it was chewy outside and blisteringly hot within—three minutes nuked in the microwave, rendered the dough like rubber and the filling like lava. 
     By dunking it in the apple sauce and vigorous blowing, I managed to eat the thing with only a little blistering. I resisted the suggestion that we buy more to take home. "Some people buy 30 at a time," Don said hopefully. "They come frozen."

     I liked Don, and appreciate the rock pun world he has created around himself. Quizzing him about his background, he said he was a tile salesman, and the vibe of the place had a definite salesman schtick quality, like a jokey bar napkin come to life.  I am loath to bring big city Chicago judgment to bear on the star of his own ongoing show in Tigerton, population 724 according to a nearby sign. To question such a quaint and idiosyncratic piece of Wisconsin's culinary and artistic heritage. (One website called the pasty the "state meal"). Rory and I marveled at the time he must have spent to craft the 346 rock dioramas, plus the 180 more that Don said he has designed but yet to execute. I realized that I'm probably thinking too much about something that isn't supposed to be thought about at all.
     Still, we both wondered, driving away, if perhaps Don might be well served if he devoted less time to creating new rock scenarios—as it is we could only have a dozen, or two dozen, or three, of the hundreds there, presented to us before we paid our bill and fled—and devote a bit of that ingenuity to making the pasties more fit to eat. His customers certainly would be better served. I am not a gourmand or restaurant professional, but perhaps some pasties could be kept from the freezer for a day or two and popped into a conventional oven to warm after being ordered: that might take 13 minutes instead of three, but that would leave more time for jokes, and the improvement in palatability could be considerable.  I would definitely go back—the coffee was fine—and soak the whole place in again, and spend more time with Don, who is certainly an American marvel. I'm just not sure I could make another go at a pasty. The thing tasted, I realized after I got home, like nothing so much as a rock. A Scalding Tough Pasty Rock. Suddenly the name "Rocks for Fun Cafe" took on an ominous double meaning. Perhaps that is part of the joke.
   
   

Gruene Coal Company

   

     A friend was sick, and I offered to bring her some cookies from D'Amato's. She wasn't familiar, and I said, "Last coal-fired bakery oven in Chicago" and sent her this column. Re-reading it, after five years, I thought, "That's a nice column," and decided to lay it out here, as a reserve, in case I ever found myself at midnight with another day looming and nothing to share, or, if you're reading this on Oct. 13, in the Upper Peninsula where I can't access the Internet to write a blog post. That day must have come last night, because here this is, for your reading pleasure. And if your reaction is, "I read that in 2009!" well, I enjoyed reading it a second time, and I wrote the thing. 

     If you've never seen four tons of coal dumped in an alley — and my guess is you haven't — it's a surprisingly complex process.

     As the bed of Paul Schoening's blue dump truck tilts slowly upward, a lone preliminary lump of Harlan County, Ky., coal tumbles to the ground, as if reconnoitering.

     Then, the whole mass shifts, slightly, almost expectantly, while remaining on the truck bed.

     Then, a scattering of pieces, ranging in size from eggs to loaves of bread, clatters to the asphalt.

     Then, all at once, the coal crashes down in a roaring cascade, five long seconds of dry, percussive sound, like 10 bowling balls scattering a hundred bowling pins. The 8,000-pound pile is a yard high, 10 feet across and 6 feet wide.

     Five men, employees and owners of the Coalfire Pizza Company, 1321 W. Grand, set upon the coal with shovels. Using two green wheelbarrows, it takes half an hour and 40 trips to move the coal into the restaurant's coal bin.

     DOWN TO 2 CUSTOMERS

      Coalfire is one of two remaining customers of the Gruene Coal Company, the last coal hauler in Chicago.

      Once, the combustible black rock — the carbonized remains of plant life that dinosaurs failed to munch — heated most buildings in Chicago

     "Calumet High School, it was unbelievable," recalls Schoening, who in his first and best year — 1968 — sold 10,000 tons of coal.

     Now, he sells 100 tons a year. A dozen tons to Coalfire, the rest to D'Amato's Bakery two blocks east, at 1124 W. Grand (the one owned by Victor D'Amato, not to be confused with the D'Amato's Bakery at 1332 W. Grand, owned by his brother, Matteo).

     The proximity of Gruene's last two customers can't be coincidence, and isn't. Coalfire was started three years ago and intentionally opened near D'Amato's.

     "One of the reasons we chose this location was D'Amato's was right down the road, using the coal bakery oven," says owner Bill Carroll. "We figured, if someone objects to our using it, it's [already being used] right down the road."

     Why a coal-fired pizza oven?

     "Mostly, it's to get a high temperature," says Carroll. "You can achieve a similar high temperature with wood, but the coal fire burns a little more evenly. You don't have to stoke it as much, and it's a little cheaper."

     Co-owner James Spillane suggests a more nostalgic reason — both men are from Massachusetts, home of coal-fired pizza.

     "I wanted to burn coal," he says. "I really couldn't tell you the difference between wood-fired pizza and coal-fired pizza. But coal — coal fuels cities; coal was the fuel of the Eastern cities."

     Midwestern cities, too. Chicago was once defined — and blighted — by coal. "Chicago seemed an unreal city whose mythical houses were built of slabs of black coal, wreathed in palls of gray smoke," wrote Richard Wright, of his first visit here in 1927.

     IN 1913: 800 COAL DEALERS

     Gruene Coal, founded in 1883, was among 800 coal dealers listed in the city's 1913 directory. It has been Chicago's only coal company for decades. Schoening, a weathered but jovial mustachioed man in a watch cap, is its owner and only full-time employee.           

     Most of his income is from selling fuel oil — he considers coal "a hobby" and a tribute to his dad, who owned the Old King Coal Company on the Near South Side.

     The next day — and this was coincidence — Schoening made one of his monthly deliveries to D'Amato's. This was a much easier process, since D'Amato's oven uses crushed coal — stoker coal — which a rusty hopper shoots into the oven.

     The bituminous coal — softer, smokier coal than the harder, better-burning anthracite — is like coffee, in that it costs the same ground or whole: about $1,350 for 4 tons, delivered. Here it doesn't get dumped in the street, but is poured, through a hatch in the back gate of the truck, onto a black rubber conveyor belt that hurries the coal through a little metal door in the May Street side of D'Amato's and into the coal bin in the basement.

     Above, workers place loaves of dough on wooden pallets attached to long poles and thrust them into the oven to bake, a job unchanged for 5,000 years.

     Across the street, Vic D'Amato, sitting in his small office at the wholesale branch of the bakery begun by his father, brothers and himself, considers the question — why keep the last coal-fired bakery oven in Chicago? — with a patient grimace, as if a child had asked something naive.

     The building, he explains, was constructed right after the Chicago Fire. It was built around the coal oven — the oven is part of the building itself and hence part of D'Amato's Bakery. It's still there — he doesn't actually say this, but I sense it — because anything else would be wrong.

     When she heard that I was visiting D'Amato's, my wife had instructed, "Bring home bread." So I dutifully secured a loaf.

     That evening, I brought home the loaf of D'Amato's bread that had been baked that morning on a large wooden pallet shoved into the century-old coal-burning oven.

     "This is very good bread," my wife said, more than once, adding further instructions: I was to return frequently to get more of this very good bread.

     I cut myself a thick slice, buttered it and took a bite. Delicious. Yet. Perhaps it was me. I'm sure it was me — but I somehow thought I detected a trace of coaliness; not a flavor, but a hint, a suggestion. A second bite. It must be psychological. But, yes, a whisper of coal.

Barney never says, "Hiya kids, let's talk about the Marburg virus!"

     Ebola is all over the news, and readers seem divided between those who feel the media is blowing it out of proportion, and those who suspect the whole thing is far worse than we're being told, no doubt a government conspiracy. That Fox News... The former have a point. The odds of Ebola taking hold here are very small, because in the United States, gravely sick people are not cared for by their relatives at home the way they are in Africa, and the chances for the handful of cases that reach our shores then spreading are miniscule. 
      But an illness as savage as Ebola has a fascination all its own—not many people are killed by sharks, either, but look at the coverage shark attacks get. Media coverage is not a meritocracy, not a reflection of carefully-calibrated social science values: it's more a kindling and reflecting of  public fixations. Ebola was of interest when only a few hundred cases were known about, years earlier. The growing alarm over Ebola reminded me of this column, a decade ago, about my older boy's childish interest in disease. Oddly, it mentions two books that also appear in Wednesday's column. And if you're wondering, yes, reading this made me miss the lad, now 18 and off in California, studying, particularly the parting note about college at the end. He kept me on my toes, as you will see.

     It's 5:13 a.m., and I'm sitting in my office at home, tapping happily away. I've been at it since 4 o'clock. Not the ideal work time, but my 7-year-old wakes up awfully early.

     Every day, I tiptoe by his door, and — boing! — he bounces out of his room, wanting to play chess and Othello and Cathedral and Breakthru and Uno and Stratego, sometimes all at once.

     I always have work to do. I sincerely want to tell him, "Scram, kid!" But I open up my mouth, and "Sure!" comes out. Every time. We end up playing until it's time for me to bolt into the shower.

     Anyway, it's exactly 5:13. Here comes a quick patter of bare feet on the red-pine floor and —whoosh — I'm enfolded in a big, arms-stretched hug. Such a sweet early-morning moment. He puts his cheek against my back and says — I swear to God — "Tell me about tuberculosis."

    I wheel around in my desk chair and gape at him, thinking: Where in God's name did THAT come from?

     "Well..." I say, buying time, "it's an airborne lung disease that used to kill a lot of people until it was brought under control by modern medicine." I tell him what I know, about TB wards and quarantines and Eugene O'Neill. He's sitting cross-legged at my feet, beaming up at me. When I finish, he says brightly, "Tell me about another disease."

       What would you do? In hindsight, I should clap my hands together and chirp, "Chess time!" But I don't. I think: OK, this is strange, but why not? It's education, right? Maybe he'll become a doctor. I pick something historic — scurvy — talking of the British navy and limes.

     Warming up now, I segue into AIDS — also an important illness! — and he listens politely about HIV and immune systems and sub-Saharan Africa. I try to present the sanitized, 7-year-old version — in my tale, AIDS is something that happens to drug addicts — but keep being nudged toward the more complicated truth, such as after he asks, rather perceptively, "But, Daddy, if it just kills drug addicts, they're bad people, shouldn't we just let them die?" Then, I have to get into mothers passing AIDS to their babies, and addiction, and sex, and stuff.

     It is about an hour later, I have gratefully moved on to a more comfortable area — bubonic plague — and after fleas and rats and plague-ridden corpses being catapulted over the walls of besieged medieval cities, I am just telling myself, "My, isn't THIS going well!" when, quite suddenly, it falls apart. My boy dances away, chanting, "Bubonic! Bubonic! Bubonic!" It begins to dawn on me that I am in trouble.

     "Now, now, none of that," I say, arms extended, fingers spread. "I told you about the plague because I thought you were grown up enough to learn about it. Hundreds of millions of people died. I can't have you singing 'bubonic plague' all day in school. It isn't right."

     In the days since, I've been trying to control my folly. My boy who, like most 7-year-olds, can sometimes act 17 and sometimes act 3, has kept begging to learn about diseases. I've tried to stick to manageable, non-gruesome, kid-friendly illnesses. — like polio and pellagra. I've done research to learn talking points. (Did you realize that both George Washington and Abraham Lincoln had smallpox?) I savored the existential thrill, just last night, of saying, "If you sleep past 6 a.m. tomorrow, and let Daddy work a little, I'll tell you all about rickets."

This is the book the older boy picks up.

     And, most importantly, I kept this all from my wife. She doesn't understand guy things like being fascinated by deadly illnesses. 

     That is, I kept it from her until Thursday morning. I am telling both boys — the 5-year-old has joined the fun — about cholera, also a historically important disease, and its role in the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs. My rendition must be dull because my older boy opens up a book on germs that I have pulled off the shelf to crib from and goes through the contents — they teach these kids to read, which I once thought was a good thing. He points to the entry for Marburg/Ebola virus, something I know a bit about, having read Richard Preston's The Hot Zone. I start pontificating about the blood pouring from the various orifices and people's skin falling off. The boys get so excited, they want to share the cool information about this affliction with their mother. Before I know what's happening, they bolt away.

     I will spare you details of the ensuing argument, though the image of my wife bursting into the bedroom, eyes blazing like an angry lioness, shouting, "Are you INSANE?" will stay with me forever. I try to muster a defense — history, medicine, science. She isn't buying any of it, but keeps shouting, "Strep! Why can't you teach them about strep! Or the common cold! These are children! Think of Barney. Barney never bounces out and says, 'Hiya kids, let's talk about the Marburg virus.' "

     I try to shift the blame. "And who told him about tuberculosis anyway?" I say hotly. "That sure wasn't me. I didn't say, 'Good morning, buddy, ask me about TB.' "

     "It WAS you," she hisses. "Don't you remember last week? When everybody had coughs? And you said" — here, she mimics a blowsy, pedantic voice — "'It sounds like a TB ward in here.'"

     Oh. Whoops. Yes, that was me. My arguments blown out of the water like the Lusitania, I limp off to work to brood. No, boys, I will not explain the Lusitania. Wait until you're in college. And sorry, honey.

                       —Originally published in the Sun-Times Feb. 28, 2003

Saturday Fun Activity: Where IS this?

     As someone who still appreciates books, the more the better, I had to gape in admiration if not wonder at this man's office. It's not often you see a workplace with such an emphasis on the written, paper-printed word, but then again, in this case, I suppose it's fitting. Whose office is this? And where is it located? I'm tempted to zig cross field and give the winner some smoked deer jerky from Held's in Slinger, Wisconsin, but that's an acquired taste. So, in keeping with today's theme, I'll present the winner with a signed copy of my most recent book, "You Were Never in Chicago." As I'm in the UP today, I might not be able to moderate the guesses as steadily as I usually do, but I'll get to them when I can. Good luck, post your guesses in the comments section below. 

Gone to Michigan....

     "Under what conceivable philosophical, moral or aesthetic system," I asked myself, shuffling forward in this line to escape the deafening, smokey, netherworld of Union Station this past Wednesday, "could you possibly even consider justifying being back here on Friday when you could instead be driving to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan?"
     No answer came.
     Every year, I join my buddy Rick and a half dozen guys at his compound on the shores of Lake Superior. We hike and read and swim, briefly, in the chill lake, certain to be extra cold this time of year. We eat heartily and the other fellows drink heartily. We sit in his ample, wood-stove sauna and then leap into the frigid waters to cool off. I bring a couple cigars. We have deep conversations, sometimes pop into town—Ontonagon—for cheeseburgers. Last year I shot a composite crossbow and used a chainsaw, both for the first time. Regarding the latter, I prefer my Gransfors Bruks Swedish Forestry Axe, which I bring along with me, and put to good use, clearing the sides of the road. And there is firewood to split.
      This year, I don't know, why, but I paused, tired. I wondered, "Do I really want to do this? Again? The fourth time. Quite a lot, really." A seven hour drive up. That's a big drive for a long weekend. There's so much work to do here. The book deadline, already booted back once, looms. All those source notes to write. And the newspaper. And this. Every goddamn day. And tons of chores around the house. The spring cleaning of the garage which somehow never got done and became fall cleaning and, the way I'm going, winter cleaning, cycling back on spring again, undone. The porch needs painting. I tried to cobble together a rationale for sitting this one out. 
      But I didn't like the person who was making that argument. He seemed grim and old and tetchy and dutiful and drab. Frankly, the one who's going to the UP feels sorta grim and old and tetchy and dutiful and drab, too, but I'm expecting that to loosen up somewhere around the Wisconsin border. Then there's Held's, near Slinger, and the smoked deer jerky we'll pick up. Always do. Hacking into it as we drive, like gnawing on a wallet. "It tastes like a burned down house," Ross once said. It does, too, but in a good way. "Don't bring any home this time," my wife cautioned.
      After I subdued the impulse not to go, I picked it apart. The fuzzy blue blankie of routine. Wanting to do what you always do, always, even more than something which is demonstrably better. Minimizing your effort expenditure. Even something where you know what' it'll be like because you've done it before and liked it every time. It must be important to me, because on the windowsill is driftwood from the shores of Lake Superior, and in the corner, a perfect walking stick of birch, light, bleached gray-white in the sun, the top gnawed by a beaver. To keep it propped there all year, yet even consider not bringing it back for its annual excursion home.... stupid. Glad I dodged that bullet. Have to keep in mind: pause sometimes, often even, because before you know it, you'll be pausing forever, and wish you had paused even more, and hadn't worked so damn much.