“Air-conditioning.” The very word bespoke pleasure and danger. I imagined cool, restful nights with the windows closed against the often torturous heat of July. I sensed danger when I imagined the words “air-conditioning” and “manse” appearing in the same sentence at a trustees meeting. I decided to be cautiously supportive. “That would be nice but …” I said, my first and last utterance on the topic.
I had been raised in an upper-middle-class and slightly warmer world where air-conditioning was assumed to be as much a necessity of life as central heating. It was a comfort that had always just been there, a flick of the thermostat away. When we arrived in North Haven we had been mildly surprised to discover that neither the church nor the manse had air-conditioning. When I once inquired about this curiosity, the reply was “Don’t really need it so far north, usually.” We discovered that “usually” is about eleven months of the year. But the one month that falls outside of “usually” can be hell. Maybe a lifetime of breathing conditioned air had atrophied whatever heat-enduring strength I had been born with. Or perhaps it was the fact that it is so seldom terribly hot here. But, in any case, the middle two weeks of this past July, with a string of nights never below 85 degrees, had reduced me to a sweaty lump of irritable letharg y. I wanted air-conditioning.
Jimmy, bless his persistent soul, wouldn’t let go of the heat pump idea and convinced Arnie, who likes new gadgets and has air-conditioning in his house, that the heat pump was the way to go. The trustees were to meet later that week at the church to decide on the matter.
It was, unfortunately, a cool and comfortable evening. Everyone arrived knowing all the details about the matter at hand. Only Arnie was a declared heat pump man. Bob Beener is the newest and youngest trustee. He’s about thirty, half the age of most of the others, and is tiresomely zealous in his trusteeship. In preparation for the meeting, he had conducted a one-man random-sample survey of the church membership and summarized his findings in a three-page document, plastic-bound copies of which he circulated to the board. It was entitled: “Varieties and Distribution of Home Cooling Technologies among the Membership of Second Presbyterian Church, North Haven, Minn.: A Survey.” Bob had been to college and knew that two-part titles divided by a colon bore great authority.
There was a full page describing his methodology and then a few disclaimers about statistical projection, all of which meant that some folks weren’t home when he called or had told him it was none of his business and he was making a good guess. On page 3 was the meat of the matter: 45 percent of church homes had electric fans (“window and/or oscillating”), 38 percent had window air-conditioning units (“one or more”), 12 percent had whole house air-conditioning or heat pumps, and 5 percent sweated it out with nothing.
The more they talked about it, the more angles there were. Clearly, air-conditioning was controversial. “If we’re gonna aircondition anything,” Bob suggested, “we should start with the church.” Opinions were offered as to air-conditioning and health problems (“causes summer colds”) and benefits (“for folks with allergies”).
But the unspoken text was the shared cultural assumption that air-conditioning was a moral issue. There was the “fairness” question: Is it proper for the minister to be one of the elite 12 percent? But far deeper was the bred-in-the-bone conviction shared by most in little Minnesota towns that air-conditioning is fundamentally decadent, a wimpy urban extravagance appropriate only as an indulgence for the weak. Summers are short, money is tight, and these are people weaned on a Nordic stoicism that knows you can die from the cold here, but not from the heat. When Angus allowed that he had only had it put in his house because of Minnie’s bouts with hay fever, the case for whole-house air-conditioning in the manse was closed.
But these are sweet folks, and they know how hot the second floor of a house can get in the unusual months of July and August, so a compromise was reached. Instead of spending the extra $500 on the heat pump, they voted to put in a regular furnace and buy two window A/C units for the upstairs bedrooms. These two units ended up costing $300 apiece, but they were noncontroversial (38 percent of all church members owned one or more). Everybody went home happy, even though there seemed to be a lingering awareness that the logic behind the decision was less than consistent. I went home and told Annie that we should load up the car and leave early the next morning for vacation. She didn’t ask about air-conditioning.
Vacation was gracious oblivion, a respite from clocks and telephones and vocation. This year we went north to Nisswa, Minnesota, the other side of Brainerd, for two weeks in a rented cottage at Sundquist’s Singing Sand Resort on the grassy shores of Pelican Lake. We got up late and made coffee and waffles. Annie and I sat in the painted metal lawn chairs, read paperbacks, and watched the kids splash in the lake. Late in the afternoon, we fished for sunnies off the end of the dock with a drop line and angleworms. In the evening, we put on orange kapok life-jackets and circled the lake in the aluminum boat named only Cabin 3 with its five-horse Evinrude. Often I didn’t know what day it was and the phone never rang. At night, we made love very quietly so as not to wake the kids, whose breathing we could hear through the knotty-pine partition that separated the head of their beds from ours.
When we returned home, we walked right into the arms of one of the great church doings of the year: “The Annual August P. W. [Presbyterian Women] Chicken Bar-B-Q,” which is held in the town park next door to the church. It has been held right after services on the last Sunday in August since as long as anybody can remember.
We all sat at folding tables eating three-bean salad and smelling the chicken that the Men’s Bowling Team was roasting over the cinder block barbecue pit. The air-conditioning business was still in the back of my mind. Annie and I had still not talked much about it, but the silliness of it was somehow emblematic of so much of the silliness of life in general. Sitting next to Angus and across from Bob Beener, and not wanting to talk about it, I asked, “How did things go the Sundays we were gone?”
“Slow,” Angus said, “slow. It’s been hot. Last Sunday was hot. Nobody told you yet what happened, Dave?” The preacher for the last two Sundays had been the Reverend Mr. Tuttle, a retired Baptist whose low energy level, kindly and mild manners, and, now, great age, have conspired to make it impossible for him to be that which he has long desired to be, namely, a spellbinder, save-the-socks-off-of-’em-“Amen, brother!” Baptist preacher.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Well,” Angus said, pushing his paper plate of chicken bones away from him. “It was hot, never even got cool Saturday night. By ten o’clock Sunday morning, it was hotter than Hades in the sanctuary. Well, you know what I mean. All the windows in the church were wide open, everybody was dripping wet, fanning themselves, hoping for the least breath of air.
“Reverend Tuttle was preaching on the topic ‘Be Ye Prepared.’ He meant prepared for judgment. We were prepared for him to be finished. He told us that he dare not shorten a sermon on account of heat, for this was but a hint of what was to come for the unprepared. What with all the windows wide open, a grasshopper had got himself into the church, one of those big greeny-brown ones about three inches long. This old grasshopper somehow ended up perched on the railing in front of the choir loft up in the front. It was hot for him, too, I suppose, and he just sat there for the longest time, watching the choir, the choir watching him.”
Our choir is just nine folks: eight lady sopranos and one gentleman who sings various parts as needed. Angus sipped iced tea from a foam cup and went on. “Every now and again, the grasshopper would sort of fidget, and the ladies in the choir would gasp and scootch down a bit in their pew. They knew he was going to jump any minute. He was getting prepared and the choir was getting prepared, just like the Reverend Tuttle was saying in his sermon.
“He was winding up with this description of the fate of the unprepared. He went to draw a breath, and that grasshopper jumped, jumped right into the middle of the choir loft. The
whole choir leaped up and threw their arms in the air and screeched and started shaking their robes to make sure the grasshopper wasn’t in there. Pastor, it was a fine sight for a slow Sunday morning. Well, the Reverend Tuttle was stunned. He had not seen the grasshopper and all, and concluded that it was his hell-fire that had succeeded in gettin’ the choir all excited. He looked over at ’em leaping around the choir loft, looked down at his sermon notes, and smiled.”
Angus winked at me. Across the table Bob Beener was laughing so hard that he had tears running down his cheeks. He got control of himself and said to me, “Listening to dear old Sam Tuttle is like watching paint dry. Glad you’re back.”
I looked around the park at the congregation of Second Presbyterian gnawing at chicken bones and chasing cold three-bean salad around paper plates with little plastic spoons. Most all of them had lived lives harder and leaner than my near-forty years of suburban ease. If the long bleakness of their winters, the caprice of crops and climate, and the fact that they stayed when others left had bred a resolute pride in them that disdained air-conditioning, they were to be forgiven, even loved, for it. The hot weather was past and the 38 percent of us who had one or more window units would probably not be needing them again till next summer. I was glad to be back.
– 13 –
The Treasure Hunt
When we returned from Nisswa, I found a stack of unopened mail on my desk about eighteen inches high. Next to it was a much smaller pile of a couple dozen “While You Were Out” message memos from Maureen, the church secretary. Each one represented a call, a visit, or a meeting that I would have to make in the next week or two. There was no way that I was going to have any time for the Kaffe Fest this year, no matter how much Christopher wanted to go.
Most everyone in town still calls the annual community celebration held the first few days of September the “Kaffe Fest” (pronounced “Coffee Fest”). Officially, it is billed as “Summerfest ’90” or whatever the year happens to be. The Jaycees came up with this latter name after the less popular “Soybean Festival” was married to the more popular “Kaffe Fest” six or eight years ago. It seems as though pulling off two big celebrations in town every year was stretching the local organizers a little thin. One big town festivity instead of two feeble ones seemed just the thing.
But the new name coined for this marriage sounded contrived in most everybody’s ears and never really stuck. The old Soybean Festival had originated as the brainchild of some boosterish County Extension Officer back in the fifties when soybeans began to be a popular crop with local farmers. He was convinced that soy-everything was the wave of the future and proposed a festival to raise the public image of what is admittedly an unromantic agricultural product. In the early years there was a parade featuring children dressed as soybeans and a beauty pageant climaxing in the coronation of “The Queen of the Bean” and her “Soy-al Court” (all of the runners-up). There were contests for the growers (best yield per acre, most promising new hybrid, etc.), and contests for the best recipe featuring soy meal (never a wildly successful event).
The Kaffe Fest was born in the prohibition battles of the twenties as a counterpoint to festivals in general, which had historically featured stronger stuff than coffee. The local Swedes and Norwegians, most of whom equated Prohibition and the Volstead Act with the coming of the Kingdom, were particularly keen on this celebration of their favorite beverage, hence the Scandinavian spelling. The chief feature of the Kaffe Fest had always been the closing off of Main Street from Jefferson to Jackson and the construction of one four-block-long table. From eight to five Monday through Friday coffee is served at a nickel a cup to locals who consume it (black, sometimes with sugar) in even greater quantities than usual. They down cup after cup, ruminate about the weather, and speculate about the size of this year’s Kaffe Fest crowd as compared to last year.
So at the end of each summer, we crown the Queen of the Bean (soy or coffee, take your pick). A parade marches down Main Street, and we gather for the four-block caffeine binge. Two years ago the Jaycees invited McQuade’s Mobile Concessions and Entertainments (“the cleanest show in Minnesota”), featuring half a dozen assorted thrill rides such as the Tilt-O-Whirl, the Scrambler, the Bullet. The alertness induced by the eight cups of coffee you have had since lunch sharpen the experience of riding on these machines.
Last year the Jaycees introduced yet another element to “Summerfest ’89”: a treasure hunt. On the radio every morning at eight for the week of the Kaffe Fest, just after the St. Paul stock market report, Bob Schlict reads a “clue” handed to him “just this morning in a sealed envelope” by a member of the North Haven Jaycees. Bob is the host of the “Sun’s Up, What’s Up?” morning show on KZRT AM and FM (“The Voice of the Valley”). This clue is a more or less cryptic intimation as to the location of the “Treasure Box of the Day, hidden somewhere in or near North Haven, Minnesota.” In each box is a fifty-dollar gift certificate donated by a local merchant.
Providentially, I was too busy to consider participation in such adventure. All Sunday afternoon, Christopher pleaded with me to drive him around to help him look for the treasure. I tried to explain to him how busy I was. Christopher is my seven-year-old son. Last June he “flunked first grade.” That’s how he puts it, not how Miss Lillian, his teacher, put it. She used all the right words about “rates of development” and “boys sometimes getting off to a slower start.” Actually, he just can’t read yet. Annie and I exuded concern and cooperation to cover up for the knot of fear and embarrassment we both felt as parents. Miss Lillian said, “Work with him over the summer.”
Work with him I did. And it was agony for both of us. We went over sounds and letters, and then over them again, as if these “rules” would help much in the crazy world of English spelling. When it came time to try to read, Chris would always choose the same three books. I realized after two weeks that he had the words memorized. We found new books, and during my vacation we piled up hour upon frustrating hour. Often our session ended up with me angry and him in tears. About two weeks ago, halfway through vacation, Annie called a halt to the lessons.
School had never been hard for me, and I could not shake the impression that Chris’s problem was somehow related to “not trying hard enough,” as though real effort on his part would suddenly break what was still to him a puzzling code of secret symbols. Vacation up north had ended with a strain in our relationship. He was tense in my presence, as if my love for him were suddenly qualified by his “flunking” of first grade. And though I would have denied it, I was simply disappointed in him. For an hour Sunday afternoon he sat on the edge of the sofa where I was reading the Sunday Star and Tribune. He sat in silence until I put one section aside and rummaged for another. Then he would look at me until I returned his gaze and just say, “Please.” Suddenly I heard his insistence as an appeal to ease the discomfort we had both been feeling. He would only be seven once. And a lot of those “While You Were Out” memos would keep.
Everyone in town figured out after the first few days that this year’s clues were the creations of Jasper Werzinski, a Jaycee and a backslapping fundamentalist. All five of this year’s clues were biblical in nature. This odd use of Holy Scripture conforms comfortably to Jasper’s manner of approaching the Bible, which he understands not so much as a story but rather as a divinely inspired puzzle—a sort of spiritual treasure hunt.
Monday morning, the first day of the Kaffe Fest, Chris and I tuned in to KZRT at eight sharp. After learning the current prices of “barrows and gilts” (down in active trading), we listened to Bob Schlict tear open the “sealed envelope” and, after what was either a pregnant or incredulous pause, read the clue: “Psalm 2, verse 3.” Christopher and I looked at each other. He said, “That’s your department, Dad,” implying that I really ought to know the verse off the top of my head.
“Go get your Bible, Chris!” I said as I pointed upstairs to his bedroom, “The one Great-grandpa gave you.” That Bible is a K
ing James Version, of course, which my maternal grandfather tiresomely refers to as the “real Bible.” I helped Chris find the reference and put my finger on the lines for him to read.
But he looked at me pleadingly, and I read, moving my finger along for him to follow: “Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us.”
“What’s it about, Dad?” he asked. I tried to think of a way to explain the ancient Babylonian domination of Israel to a seven-year-old. Then I thought better of it and said that it was about these guys who were being held prisoner by these other guys and who wanted to be free.
Chris and I discussed the possibilities in the clue. Inside of five minutes, we made a dash for the car. I drove as fast as I dared to the North Haven Police Department, which is really the back two rooms of the Town Hall. There is no jail as such, but one of those two rooms is a makeshift holding room with a metal door and heavy mesh over the window. Three cars had gotten there before us and another dozen pulled up as Chris and I and the rest of the treasure hunters riffled through the bushes. We looked inside the mailbox and poked around in the red and white petunias planted around the base of the “North Haven Police Station” sign.
At one point I looked sheepishly toward the building and saw Billy Hobart’s eyes peering out through the venetian blinds. Billy is a typically no-nonsense cop. He turned away, shook his bald head, and headed for the door. A moment later Chief Hobart, who is in fact half the entire force, stood watching with his hands on his hips. “What the heck are you people doing?” he asked. Nobody said anything.
By the time we left, there were a good thirty-five people wandering around the back of Town Hall sniffing for treasure. We were driving home in silence, when Chris fairly screamed, “Bands! Dad, how about the bandstand at the park?”
Good News from North Haven Page 9