I’ve Been Thinking . . . About Too Little . . . or Too Much

The Midwest has four seasons.  If you would like proof, buy an ice cream store!  As a proud former owner of a Baskin Robbins franchise, I can confirm that winter is not a good time to sell ice cream in the Midwest.  As far as I was concerned, the only reason for being open in February was Valentine’s Day.  We had a robust ice cream cake business; I particularly appreciated when the holiday fell mid-week because our cake sales would be strong from the weekend preceding to the weekend following.  Then the tumbleweeds would scamper across Main Street until the spring, when the sun shone bright and the temperatures reached the 60s and 70s.

The summer brought lines, sometimes out the door in the evening.  I likened the cycle to a bear:  you need to eat a lot of berries in the summer to get through the winter.  As summer faded into fall, business became more erratic.  Sometimes those warm Indian Summer days brought more people in, but both the weather and sales were unpredictable.

I also struggled more with scheduling employees in the fall.  For many of my employees, this was their first job.  When I hired someone, I always explained that they could not find a better job in retail food service:  every customer who walked through the door was either in a good mood, or they were in a bad mood and they came here to get into a good mood – all the employee had to do was be friendly and efficient and the customer would leave happier than when they came in.

The problem with fall scheduling was that almost all of my employees were in high school or college.  Guess what happens in the fall – football – high school Friday night, college Saturday afternoon, and the NFL on Sunday.  “Friday night lights” were particularly onerous because all the high schools played; in order to help hedge my bets, I had employees who attended six different high schools, with the knowledge that not all six schools would have home games the same week.

One aspect that pleased me was that many of my employees became friends.  We had two marriages result from relationships developed by working there.  That was nice.  It signaled to me that we had a positive and friendly workplace; and many was the time that customers would compliment me on that atmosphere.  It exacerbated the scheduling problem, though, as their friendships strengthened and they began doing things together (I had 2/3 of my employees go one time as a group to a concert.)

I once had three employees who were active in theater, particularly musicals.  I always struggled to schedule them during rehearsal periods leading up to the actual production, but when I could, it was not uncommon for them to break into song or dialog from the play, much to the delight of the customers in the store at the time.  We had an elementary school student choir come in as a treat following one of their performances and one of my musical theater employees led them in a song.  If only social media had been around. . ..

Now, I’m describing these things for a reason.  Having owned the franchise for eleven unpredictable Fall seasons, and working many shifts for high school and college employees who had a lot going on, as well as having a full family life myself, my wife and I used to observe that Fall was a busy time!  Well, it probably seems more pronounced, given that we have spent the previous two Falls hiding from Covid, but we have commented often this Fall that Falls are busy.  Hence, I am going to attribute my lack of Fall blog production to this busy-ness . . . and, no, I didn’t buy an ice cream store.

Hunting Season

Along with football season, Fall carries other seasons, such as hunting.  Did you know that coyote season lasts the entire year, except daylight hours for two weeks in April?  Go figure.  We also have a falconry season for hunting dove in the Fall.  And who wants to hunt skunks, in season or not?!  Do you really think skunk tastes like chicken?

Deer season is most interesting and most popular.  Among the states with estimates of their deer population, Missouri ranks third with 1.5 million.  The deer harvest is generally around 20% of the population, so about 300,000.  The deer population has grown significantly over the years, and deer are becoming a common sight in suburban communities.  It wasn’t always like that:  nearly a hundred years ago, the state had 564 deer.  Two decades later, following multi-year hunting bans and two reintroduction efforts, the population grew to 5,759.

This is significant when you consider that much less land area was developed at the time.  The human population of the state has grown by about 73% from 1926 to 2021, while the deer population exploded by 2,659%.

My first – and last – deer hunting expedition was quite memorable.  There were five in our group and we had permission to hunt on private land.  We split up after identifying approximately where we were going to set up.  My friend and I climbed a couple of trees near an area where we could tell the deer had been bedding down.

As we waited, we heard dogs howling in the distance, heading our direction (hunting deer with dogs was illegal).  Within a few minutes, we heard a shot over a nearby ridge in the area where the others in our group were.  By the time we climbed out of the trees, we heard another shot – the first shot probably just wounded the deer and the second shot finished the job.

Then we heard another shot . . and another . . . and another . . . and boom, boom, boom.  We watched a doe crest the ridge (restricted hunting:  this was the first day of buck season and killing does was illegal).  She was wounded, so my friend decided to take her, or she would likely wander through the woods and die.  As he was lining up his shot, another shot went over our heads as someone across the gulley took a shot.  When our group reassembled, we could see other hunters scurrying off the land; including us, we counted 13 people in that field hunting – 13 who had inadvertently engaged in a crossfire because 8 hunters were trespassing with their locations unknown by anyone else.

Election Season

How ‘bout those midterms?!  “Election season” makes me reconsider deer hunting!  Don’t worry – I’m not going to discuss politics.  Instead, I’m going to let a couple of great humorists provide commentary:

• “I don’t think either one of them knows what it’s all about, to be honest with you. Both sides are doing nothing but just looking towards the next election.” ~ Will Rogers
• “Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason.” ~ Mark Twain 
• “The Democrats and the Republicans are equally corrupt where money is concerned. It’s only in the amount where the Republicans excel.” ~ Will Rogers
• “Why waste your money looking up your family tree? Just go into politics and your opponent will do it for you.” ~ Mark Twain
• “The 1928 Republican Convention opened with a prayer. If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.” ~ Will Rogers
• “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” ~ Mark Twain
• “One of the evils of democracy is, you have to put up with the man you elect whether you want him or not.” ~ Will Rogers
• “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself.” ~ Mark Twain

Trust me:  it was nearly impossible to limit myself to these.  If I address politics in a future blog, I hope to achieve a balance that represents my disdain for its current state, as both parties shoulder blame.  I tend to relate, however, to a lyric from Leon Russell’s “Magic Mirror”: “The Left ones think I’m Right, the Right ones think I’m wrong.”

There are songs, movies, books, and so on, that I think people should experience as guides to understanding.  “In many ways, the writer uses the guise of fiction to speak the truth, and this world desperately needs the truth.”*  “Stories are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves, and you change the individuals and nations.” —Ben Okri, A Way of Being Free (1997) *

An old movie – Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – illustrates politicians’ cynical fealty to money, and one man’s effort to restore a sense of representative decency and integrity to politics.  One scene might also cause you to consider returning to a former practice for a Senate filibuster.

Thanksgiving Holiday Season

We first tried the process when a famous fried chicken restaurant – Stroud’s: “we choke our own chickens” – offered a dinner.  Delicious!  We continued until the owner became seriously ill and they stopped the offering.  Back to preparing our own.  Too much work; not enough time to visit.

We experimented with others’ meals; some good, some not so good.  Following a particularly disappointing meal, both my mother and the neighbor widow, Jeneva, insisted that we return to preparing our own.  We weren’t going to, but we didn’t tell them that.  Instead, we hid the fact . . . misled . . . lied about ordering our dinner from the area hospital.  Yes, hospital.  They had a great chef and we had ordered other meals from them and found them to be delicious.  The meals were available only as an employee benefit; fortunately, Nancy was a part-time employee at the time.

To sell the ruse, we put the turkey and all the sides into our own roaster and pans.  (I’ll bet you have done that with at least one pot-luck dish!). As things were cooking (re-heating, actually), my mom and Jeneva asked how big of a turkey we got.  Neither of us remembered, so we muttered something about 8-10 pounds.  When my mom opened the roaster, she and Jeneva were stunned – it looked like the huge bird that Scrooge sent to Bob Cratchit (his assistant whose family included Tiny Tim) on Christmas morning – and they declared that our turkey was at least 14-16 pounds!

Mom and Jeneva raved about how delicious our Thanksgiving feast was.  They were thankful for insisting that we serve a home-cooked meal.  We were thankful they never figured out the truth.  Everyone was thankful for the delicious meal and the time we spent together.

Nancy found a prayer composed by Robert Louis Stevenson that I’m certain she will share as we assemble for this year’s feast:

Lord behold our family here assembled.  We thank Thee for this place in which we dwell, for the love that unites us, for the peace accorded us this day, for the hope with which we expect the morrow, for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful, for our friends in all parts of the earth.

Happy Thanksgiving