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Quiet Water<BR><BR>It was almost time to put it all away for the season. But on this relatively balmy morning in mid-October, we managed to get the canoe out for one last day trip. The previous month I’d put together a small, four-by-eight-foot brush trailer as a tool to help in clearing the front woods. Today, that same trailer would perform reasonably well as a canoe caddy. The trailer rack is more than sturdy enough to support that heavy old Grumman - and loading a canoe onto a four-foot high trailer rack is much easier than wrestling it onto the top of the pickup/camper shell as we once did. Ahhhhh! Recreation is much more fun when it’s easy. Jane swears much less with this arrangement, she comes out with us more often . . . and I think her cooking has improved.<BR><BR>Today, son-in-law Eric and O.C. (my own eleven-year old) were eager for their last chance to put a line in the water. We had the canoe lashed down to the trailer in minutes.

I was sitting in an antique jeep in Zumbrota, MN when I received the phone call I was dreading. <BR><BR>“Bob passed away a little while ago,” was the message. I don’t remember what else was said by either party. My mind just went blank.<BR><BR>I knew this was going to happen, but of course it’s still a surprise when it does. We were heading toward the downtown area for the city’s Covered Bridge Music and Arts Festival.<BR><BR>This was a big event because it is Zumbrota’s sesquicentennial and the town had turned out in full force for the parade.<BR><BR>I was visiting the Groteboers who are very involved in the Rochester Shrine Cycle Patrol. Steve, as captain, would be leading the motorcycles through the parade route, zooming up and down Zumbrota’s main drag. <BR><BR>But my mind was a million miles away. It took a walk and some time alone to collect my thoughts before I could make some phone calls and clear my mind.

Bob Cary and I had a relationship along two lines. One was as his employer for 28 years, the other was as his friend for 30 years.<BR><BR>In many ways the two were poles apart. As his employer, I expected Bob to show up at the office 2-3 days a week. Sometimes he came in from his home on Moose Lake more often, sometimes less. Since he had no phone it was his choice. Monday was the day the Echo was “pasted up” and part of his job was to paste up and help write the front page, so that day he was almost always at the shop.<BR><BR>He wore plaid flannel shirts, work pants and a big Stetson hat and the phone started ringing when he walked in the Echo door. His wife Lil worked for us in the Echo photo lab and she worked the same hours as he did. It was a package deal. Together they got one pay check, always in Bob’s name.<BR><BR>Together they designed and built the photo lab with its labyrinth entry which kept out the light.

Many of you have had the need to help your parents deal with their increasing infirmities from aging. It is a bittersweet task to acknowledge that time and nature are not the friends of those in their twilight years. Two people I knew in Ely recently died rather sudden deaths. They did not linger trapped in a wheel chair, but then they died years earlier than what those government statisticians claim is our due. <BR><BR>It is natural to fight aging. I always enjoyed the crusty old woman played by Judi Dench in the movie Chocolat. She refused to go to a nursing home as her daughter demanded. Knowing her time was near she threw a party and enjoyed herself too much. That night she died in her chair. I wish we all had that option, but dying comes in so many colors. <BR><BR>The last two weekends I had to drive down to the Twin Cities to see my mother who had landed in a nursing home after taking a fall in a parking lot.

As usual, I’d left the leaving for far too late. In order to honor previously-made work commitments, I would now have to compress 35 hours of driving into a 48 hour period. <BR><BR>Crossing into Nebraska at 2 a.m., fighting sleep and tiring of the compact disks I had with me, I turned on the radio. At this hour and in this state, the only available choices were country music or evangelical fire-and-brimstone. I listened to country music for a while, long enough to confirm that heartbreak, hard times and drinkin’ were still the driving economic force in that genre. <BR><BR>Tiring of this, I pushed the “Seek” button and landed on an evangelical station. An emotional preacher was telling an apparently large auditorium audience about the many horrors of social liberalism, women’s rights, workers’ unions, Muslims and other racial or religious minorities. In short, it was a half-hour hate fest.

Did you know?...The name “Ely Echo” was given to a Finnish male choir which was organized about 1892-93 by the late Emil Bjorkman. The choir was called “Elyn Kaiku,” which means Ely Echo in Finn, and just goes to show you, there are a lot of people with good taste!<BR><BR>Did you know...WXLT was the first radio station in Ely, owned and operated by Charles Ingersoll. Those call letters were the same letters used by a radio station in Alaska where he had worked during WWII.<BR><BR>Did you know?...There are about 50 realtors in Ely? With about 100 (estimated) homes for sale, that gives each realtor two sales a piece. (Guess I’ll stick with my day job.)<BR><BR>Did you know? ...It’s better to turn your car engine off while parking for a short time. Consumer Report says idling uses more gas than restarting.

I read quite a bit. Newspapers, magazines of all kinds, articles on the internet - but most of all, books. And though currently I read mysteries more than anything (a romance novel now and then), they range from one end of the spectrum to the other. Political mysteries. Spy thriller mysteries. Culinary mysteries. <BR><BR>Some are more difficult than others - you really have to pay attention, remember the cast of characters, watch for the details, acronyms, etc. Although they’re certainly good reads, it takes some effort to keep everything straight in your mind. But sometimes, I just want a fun read, quick and easy. <BR><BR>This is the case in Nancy Atherton’s Aunt Dimity series. Lori Shepherd is an American living in the English countryside. Through the series she has met and married her husband Bill; had twin sons Rob and Will; made a number of unique friends in England; inherited millions and discovered a supernatural secret.

By May 21, 1975 the Echo reward fund in the Goedderz murder case had climbed to $1,300, but, at least on the surface, local concerns were more directed toward the region’s economic future. <BR><BR>According to the front page Echo news, time had run out on copper-nickel mining hopes. Ely snowmobilers were protesting along Sheridan Street about the closure of 19 trails that had been in use. Trails included the one which led to Dorothy Molter’s home on Knife Lake in the Boundary Waters. Friends in the area rode their snowmobiles in the winter to bring Dorothy her mail and they helped to cut ice for summer use.<BR><BR>At Ely Memorial $26,985 for swimming pool improvements was approved.

Former Ely American Legion baseball teammates Tim Scott and Josh Mathson are on different but parallel routes in their collegiate baseball careers.<BR><BR>Scott, a 2005 Ely graduate who walked on at NCAA Division I Nebraska, was redshirted by the Cornhuskers this year and will get his first chance to compete at a higher level this summer as a member of the Parkville Sluggers - a Kansas City-based wood bat league team.<BR><BR>Mathson, the Embarrass native who is Minnesota high school baseball’s all-time home run king, is completing his sophomore year at Iowa Central - a Division II junior college powerhouse - and is considering accepting a scholarship offer from Georgia College and State University, the top-ranked NCAA Division II program in the country.<BR><BR>Together Scott and Mathson helped power Ely’s Legion squad to a 28-2 record and a second-place Division II state tournament in 2004, and after Mathson graduated, Scott went 10-1 on the mound

There are people who follow part of the scripture every day. That part in John:15 in which the Lord says: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”<BR><BR>This is what policemen and firemen do every day they put on their uniforms. They lay their lives on the line for the rest of us. It is what our military people do every day. Lay their lives on the line for the rest of us. We recognize that it takes a certain amount of character to do this. Our natural inclination is to watch out for ourselves<BR><BR>Lying on a bed in Ely Bloomenson Hospital last week while two pints of blood were being injected into my left arm gave me time to ponder this matter. The thought struck me that in a very real sense, whoever it was who donated that blood being dripped into my veins was doing exactly the same thing.