Seeking Closure

While sometimes things are better left unsaid, more often than not closure is a good thing. Closure brings finality to the end of a relationship, agreement, arrangement or understanding. It clears out the cobwebs of words left unspoken, gestures not returned and comments not made nor taken back. It leaves both parties with their questions answered or resolved. Or at best, it brings acceptance that some questions never will be or perhaps simply can never be answered. The end of a friendship can be like that. Like the friends I made in Europe who stayed in place while I moved back to the states.

Unfortunately, there have been a number of involvements in my life that ended rather abruptly or without closure. Recently, I wrote about ‘Ghosting’ in my November 12th blog. Those relationships, agreements, or arrangements ended rather abruptly and without a clear explanation of ‘what happened.’

Me and My Mother

With her strong German heritage and stoic parental upbringing, my mother never talked about ‘personal things.’ In another blog ‘Hilde and the Old Man,’ I explored my mother’s fascinating upbringing that I never knew anything about until late in her life. As the end got closer, my mother slowly started to reveal things about her life and background growing up. But by that time, she was too far gone (in terms of mental lucidness) to have a really clear, succinct grasp of her past. Her memory was slowly failing and her stories kept contradicting themselves and causing only more confusion and doubt.

Me and My Father

My father died when I was six years old and for twenty-one years his name was never mentioned in our home. I never knew anything about my father so there was nothing to bring closure to that relationship. No chance of ever figuring that connection out. Therefore, I never had closure with my Mother or my Father.

Me and Mickey

I’ve experienced that same ‘failure to close’ with some past relationships and partnerships. There were words left unspoken, feelings left unanswered and questions still dangling in space. Growing up, there were friends who slowly but surely went their own way. There were school mates who promised to be there forever until we both faced graduation. There were job partners who stuck around when I moved on to something better.

Wendy

Me with Pat

There were romantic entanglements that began in colorful hues and tints of spring. Then at some point gradually began to fade in the harshness of our collective conflicting feelings for each other and the future.

St. Thomas Yearbook

Maryland Center Gang

Then there have been a number of events and episodes in my life that came to a natural conclusion and it was a good final good-bye. Some past jobs simply ran their course and we parted on mutually agreeable terms. Phases in my life like real estate investments, producing, and marketing video programs and athletic endeavors all gradually ran their course and new opportunities took their place.

I read a million years ago that ‘if you’re in a good place’ in your life now, then you can look back at all those things that worked and didn’t work. The goals accomplished and failures along the way. You can summarize your past openly, honestly and without regret because in the end, it just life playing itself out again. That’s where I’m at now.

As Woody Guthrie immortalized in a song, ‘So long, it’s been good to know ya.’ It’s been one heck of a wonderful trip thus far and I hope for many more miles to go.

C2C

Out on a ledge at Machu Picchu

The ones that got away are always the most elusive. Their importance seldom diminishes over time. Instead they become encased in this fantasy framework of ‘what if’ and ‘I think I could have.’ For someone who was never athletic nor a team player, these fantasies of mine always seem to include incredible feats of endurance and mind-fracturing challenges. I’ve tackled a few but many more have managed to get away. Recently my kids reminded me what a thrill it is to actually complete such a challenge.

It’s called ‘C2C’ for those in the know, ‘Cactus to Clouds’ for the rest of us. One of the top ten toughest hikes in North America. It is, by far, the hardest and most challenging mountain climb in the Coachella Valley. This thanksgiving week my two kids, Brian and Melanie, completed ‘Cactus to Clouds’ in just 13 hours, which while not a record, still a remarkable time.

Granted, neither of my kids are novices at this sort of endeavor. Brian has climbed all 54 fourteeners (mountains over 14,000 feet) in the State of Colorado. Melanie has run numerous road races, marathons, half marathons and run up Pikes Peak. C2C was a gift to herself for her 40th birthday.

There’s a family argument as to who really brought up the topic of C2C. I’m convinced that I did and Brian is just as certain that he found it on his own. No matter, they did it after first talking for several years. So scratch one more fantasy venture that I probably won’t complete in my lifetime. To think it began with a Life Magazine article way back in 1961.

Hong Kong Ferry

Growing up, one of my many fantasies in land-locked Saint Paul, Minnesota was to sail the seven seas on a tramp steamer. At the time I probably wasn’t even sure what a tramp steamer was. But the name conjured up images of beautiful brown girls, swaying palm trees and vast blue oceans. Perhaps it was some ‘50s Errol Flynn movie that warped my malleable mind into wondrous thoughts of riding the high seas.

By my mid-teens, it had become a feverish dream burning a hole in my idle hours. I began perusing magazines, novels and seafaring books for clues on how to enter that maritime world. I devoured Joshua Slocum’s ‘Sailing Alone around the world’ and ‘Moby Dick.’ Jack London’s ‘The Sea Wolf’ gripped my imagination more than Dick Tracy or Tarzan ever could.

In fall of 1961, a Life Magazine article pushed me over the edge. It was entitled: ‘Before the Mast’ and subtitled: ‘A farm boy ships aboard a freighter.’ The article went on to chronical the adventures of an Iowa farm boy who was selected by the Seafarers International Union hiring hall in New Orleans to work aboard the M/V Del Monte that was sailing off to Brazil. By the end of the article the young sailor was in Rio de Janeiro and getting a tattoo. I was hooked.  I sent off an introductory letter to some maritime union in Detroit seeking employment on any ship available. Their form letter response demanded an in-person interview in Detroit and I didn’t have the bus fare to get there. Totally dejected, I went to college instead.

Fast forward several lifetimes and after college I went to live in Europe. I ended up working at a Danish laundry outside of Copenhagen. Weekends were spent wandering the harbor and talking to the marginal characters who inhabited that strange dockside world. After a month or so I applied for employment on a Norwegian freighter bound for who knows where. I can’t remember why I was turned down; lack of experience, my glasses or my foreign status. The only available work was as a deck hand or dish washer and I didn’t qualify for either. Go figure. A couple of rough weather weekend runs to Germany by ferry boat got that seafaring wanderlust out of my system for good. Or so I thought.

I began running at age 21, completed a couple of marathons, dropped out at mile 25 of a 50 miler and then read about the Western States One Hundred. I was hooked again.

The Western States 100 mile endurance run is the world’s oldest 100 mile trail race. Starting in Squaw Valley, California near the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics’ and ending 100.2 miles later in Auburn, California. Following the historic Western States Trail, runners climb more than 18,000 feet and descend nearly 23,000 feet before they reach the finish line. No, I never get in good enough shape to even apply for the Western States One Hundred.

The Tram Road

Then there was the Tram Road Challenge in Palm Springs. It’s a road race on the road leading up to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway Station. Beginning at 400 feet elevation, the road climbs to over 2,600 feet of elevation. With over 1,500 participants each year, ranging in age from 5 to 95, this road race is a local favorite. Still, I never got in good enough shape to compete. When my wife discovered my intentions, she put the kibosh to any future plans of running it.

Brian and Melanie ready to go

All of which leads me back to C2C and the tremendous pride I feel in my kids actually doing it. Also known as the Skyline Trail, Cactus to Clouds has the greatest elevation gain of any trail in the United States. It climbs 8,000 feet in the first 12 miles from the desert floor to Long Valley, then joins with the main trail to gain another 2,600 feet to the summit of San Jacinto Mountain.

Back in another lifetime, I had intended to do the climb with my kids but a lack to hardcore training, writing commitments and other distractions prevented me from getting in shape. In the end, I could only travel with them vicariously through their photographs.

Brian and Melanie began their climb at 2:00 am. They carried water, snacks, extra clothes and a treasured GPS to help stay on the trail in the darkness. They encountered and passed two other groups that had started ahead of them.

Sunlight greeted them around six in the morning.

Daybreak on the trail

The views were spectacular.

Snow, ice and windy conditions on the last 5 miles of the trail meant they had to wear their crampons and proceed cautiously to the top.

Putting on crampons

When they got to the summit, a ranger informed them that the mountain was being evacuated because of dangerous windy conditions. It took them and hour and a half for a normal fifteen minute tram ride to the bottom.

Brian and Melanie at the top

Now, what was probably the final conquest of my ever-searching imagination, the C2C, is just another missing notch on my belt of ‘hopeful wishes.’ So I’ll have to file away my three marathons, half of a 50 miler, numerous 10k and 5k races and 45 solid years of pounding the ground and call it my running past.

Thankfully, I’ve still got the Garstin trail among others here in town along with the Triple Crown (The Henderson, Shannon and Garstin loop) to satisfy my weekend jaunts. Nevertheless, C2C, the big one, passed me by.

Oh well, I’ve still got my kid’s pictures to ease the pain.

Hilde and the Old Man

Back around the turn of the century, Martin Noll’s neighbors would have been polite and simply said that Martin had a stern expression on his face most of the time. Today, medical research has a name for it: RBF. RBF, or ‘Resting Bitch Face’, is a configuration of facial muscles that make a person seem to carry a perpetual frown most of the time. Truth be told, it said a lot about him. Martin Noll was a stern task master of his farm, his large family and the surrounding community. To many folks in Sterns County, Minnesota, he was simply known as the old man.

Martin Noll was a taskmaster over his children and hired farmhands. He dabbled in several business ventures. He purchased the first automobile, a Studebaker E.M.F., in all of Sterns County. It had solid rubber tires, a fake door in front and carbide lamps on the front fenders for headlights.  Martin knew his way around local politics and never suffered fools in the town council who didn’t know how to run their town the way he knew farming. Over the years Martin bought and traded more cars but that first one was his most prized possession. 

Much to the chagrin of her older brothers and sisters, the youngest of his brood became the apple of Martin’s eye. Hildegarde, Hilde to her friends, wasn’t like the others. Her father sensed in this young child a longing for something more, something better, something undefined yet rock solid in its determination. He took a liking to his youngest and showed it. He taught her how drive horses at four, a car in her teens and travel solo in her twenties. Hilde always claimed her love of dancing came from her father teaching her how to dance the polka on Saturday night barn dances. He instilled in her a love of dancing that lasted a lifetime.

Life was always tough on the farm even for the youngest. It was a regular routine of field work, caring for the livestock, feeding the chickens, sewing old clothes and walking miles to school in nothing more than a woolen coat and rubber boots. A fireplace heated the farm house and there were corn husks for bed mattresses.

At four, Hildegarde took the horses and wagon out into the forest to gather wood. At seven, Martin let her take the wagon into town for supplies. She rode in her papa’s automobile and thought it great fun when he backed up over the outhouse by accident. By ten she was in charge of cleaning out the barn and managing the chickens, a main source of food and income. That same year, her father shot an American Bald Eagle that was killing their chickens. Hilde rescued the bird and when she realized it could no longer fly, she persuaded her father to sell it to the zoo in Minneapolis for ten dollars which she got to keep. Hildegarde shared one winter coat among her three sisters; each going to mass at a different service in their brand new Sears Roebuck catalogue coat.

Farming kitchen

Farming with horses

Hildegarde went as far as the sixth grade at the Catholic school in St Martin then dropped out to take care of the chickens and other livestock. Since she was the youngest it was expected that she would stay home to help out her aging parents and work the farm as her siblings gradually left for greener pastures.

The depression hit everyone very hard but especially the farmers. Sterns County was an agrarian society back then. Martin Noll had to free-range his cattle further north so they wouldn’t starve. A lot of his brothers and fellow farmers lost their farms. The largest town was St. Cloud which served as a magnet for most of the uneducated and unskilled young women anxious to get ‘off the farm.’ Hilde’s sisters all went off to secretarial school in St. Cloud. Hildegarde stayed home to take care of the farm.

Hildegarde grew up a beautiful and ambitious young woman. The Twin Cities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis proved irresistible to Hilde when she cautiously toe-stepped away from home for the first time. She was hungry enough to break free of the life-choking reins of farm work by testing herself in the cities. But with just a sixth grade education the only work she could get was house-keeping for wealthy clients, odd jobs as a seamstress and cooking. She became a maid on Summit Avenue. Not quite Downton Abby but close.

In her early twenties, Hildegarde struck out for the West Coast. She went to California at the bequest of an old girlfriend and for a short while led the life of a single young starlet. Together, they moved from San Diego to Salinas. By then there were four of them, young working girls just wanting to have fun. They had their employer’s new Lincoln to tour around town in. 

Hilde got a new job on ’17 Mile Drive.’ Even back then it was an exclusive enclave of retired Army Generals, titans of business and industry and movie stars. Her employers had her over to their house on the Del Monte Golf Course regularly to meet movie stars like Joan Fontaine and Olivia DeHavelund. Together they went to the horse races in San Francisco, the youngest trailing along as their guest.

Working days and hanging out with the movie stars at night. Hilde was making good money, dancing every night and having a grand old time. Then her father fell ill and wrote for his youngest to come back home before he died. She did and shortly afterwards Martin Noll died.

The farm was sold shortly after that and as had been tradition for hundreds of years, the boys got all the money. The girls got nothing. So Hilde hired an attorney and sued her brothers. They finally settled out of court.  Hildegarde and her sisters each got $4000 dollars. The brothers each got $6000 dollars. There was no extra compensation for the youngest and all the years she had spent caring for her elderly parents. Nor did her sisters ever pay her back for the money she lent them over the years. But that’s the way it was back then.

Hildegarde continued to do summer chores for her mother and work during the winter months in the cities. It was the height of the depression but the youngest had ambition. She worked hard, saved her money and knew how to spend it when she had to. While others were going broken because of the depression, Hilde took whatever jobs she could get and thrived. At her father’s encouragement she alone traveled to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1934.

Hilde earned enough money to pay $326.00 cash for a practically brand new 1934 roadster. The previous owner had bet on the farm and lost both it and the car when the bank came calling. Her brother, Frank, lusted after that car but Hilde was no fool. It was never available for his forays into St. Martin Township or the Twin Cities.

Hildegarde met her future husband at an ammunition plant on the outskirts of Minneapolis around the beginning of World War Two. That chapter in her single life ended with her marriage to Arthur in 1942. 

It’s truly a shame that none of this rich fascinating ancestral information was passed on to me until just before Hildegarde died. She wrote out her life story in long hand on a faded gray tablet of paper. Ten pages, single spaced, documenting a lifetime of hard work, unbroken faith in her God, loss, rejection, betrayal, heartbreak, and a tremendous (though hidden) pride in her own survival and personal accomplishments.

Unfortunately by then they were just fractured words pulled from a failing memory that left me with many more questions than Hildegarde could possibly answer and leaving a vacuum in my life that has never been filled.

Mom and us kids

Martin Noll, my grandfather, died seven years before I was born. That’s really a shame. I’m guessing he would have been one hell of an influence on me had he lived long enough. So it was left up to his youngest, my Mother, to show me the value of hard work and steel hard, forged determination to get ahead. A legacy that has driven me all of my life.