Pa Hat's Funeral

 

Yesterday Travalon and I went to the closer, earlier Mass so that we would be ready when Richard Bonomo came to our place a little after ten. We caravanned with Tiffy and my other college friend, who does not have a name on this blog. If anyone can think of one for her, let me know. We drove and drove, stopping for lunch at a family restaurant in Tomah, until we came to St. Michael's Catholic Church in Pine Island, Minnesota. While it is very close to the town where I grew up, I don't recall ever being there before. It has a very cute, old downtown. Even though we were coming from halfway across Wisconsin, we got there before anyone else. I was wearing a very Irish shawl, earrings, rings, and a necklace... and then all my brother's friends who showed up dressed all Scottish, either in kilts or with tartan shawls. Since I have a tartan shawl, I could have worn that, had I known. It was like a scene out of a sitcom. When I made a comment about it to some tartan-clad people, one guy said, "We're all Celts. We're just the ones who knew how to swim."

The service was lovely, the Liturgy of the Word from a Catholic Mass, and then outside afterwards I was talking to a woman who said how she felt my father's presence in the church, and this bell tower rang:

She said, "Wow, did you hear that? It can't be a coincidence!" Then we all drove to a nearby park for a picnic dinner. There was a setup with photos of Pa Hat, and I loved this one of the two of us:

This must have been one spring in the Arboretum when I was in college. We look like partners in crime, both in red with beret-type hats and sunglasses. It may be my new favorite photos. Then again, there's this one, where you can tell I was a teenager in the 80's:

The hair! The earrings! The Billy Idol sneer! Ma Hat made this sweater, and it would probably still fit me, since it was so oversized. That was the style back then, and then you wore it over leggings.

Here is a more recent photo of the family:

I know that one's at a weird angle, but it's better than the straight-on photos:

Then we hit the road, and the ladies got way ahead of us, so we didn't coordinate our rest stops like we had on the way up. Poor Rich had to listen as Travalon and I sang to yacht rock. Just outside of Sparta, we saw what looked like a funnel cloud coming out of the sky, but it disappeared back into the sky as we got closer. We prayed a rosary anyway, just to be safe. 

This was on the way out, not the way back, but we stopped at a rest stop on the Mississippi and saw a long train going by. Travalon took some photos of the river and the bluffs.

On the way back to Wisconsin, we stopped at the Dino Stop in St. Charles, MN.

Travalon bought a hoodie. Here he is modeling it for you on our dock this morning.

My aunt and uncle from Colorado sent flowers.

And on each picnic table there were a couple of paper cups with annuals in them and a photo of Pa Hat on them.

Today I worked from home, frantically trying to get some mysterious credit card charges reconciled by the end of the day. In the evening I went to Moldy Jam, and there were a lot more people than usual. It was sort of the birthday of one member (his birthday is actually this coming weekend), so his wife made a lemon blueberry cake, and we sang him "Happy Birthday." Since there were so many people, I only had to call two tunes, so I called "Drowsy Maggie" and "Pig Ankle Rag," which is not Irish after I'd said I only call Irish tunes. But they swing it so hard that it's tons of fun, and I cannot get my band to swing it at all. There was another tune I'd had stuck in my head today, but I didn't know the name, and then someone called it!... but I still can't remember the name. At least I'm learning a lot more of these tunes, even if I can't remember what they're called.

Famous Hat

Locked Out of the Church Parking Lot

 

Today I worked from home and had meetings. On my breaks I went for walks and took some photos. Here are flowers that smell good in my neighborhood: jonquils and crabapples.

In this photo, you can see two crabapples, a magnolia, and a redbud.

To my surprise, as I was out sniffing the flowers and enjoying the sunlight, I came up with a eulogy for Pa Hat, in case anyone asks me to provide one. It's not even a sure thing that we'll have a funeral for him.

It was a very calm day until I headed to Adoration. Fortunately I left a bit early in an attempt to see a train from a new vantage point, but no train came. (They used to come around five, but today Travalon saw our neighborhood train around seven.) A relative called, so I was on the phone as I turned into the driveway for our church parking lot and entered the code to open the gate... but the gate wouldn't open. Oh no, I would have to back out into rush hour traffic! And then someone else pulled in behind me, so I was trapped. It was a young priest, and he seemed a little skeptical of why I wanted to get into the parking lot, but I told him I have an adoration hour, and all the adoration spots were filled, plus the non-adoration ones right in front of the church (where you don't have to go into the gate) were taken up by some sort of crane thing. He wouldn't give me the new code, but he did enter it so I was able to get in. He said, "I can't give you the new code. You need to talk to Richard BONN-o-mo." By which I assume he meant Richard Bo-NO-mo, so I called him, and he said oops, he'd forgotten to give me the new code. He texted it to me, so now I shouldn't have this problem again... until the next time they change it. I did fantasize about quitting my adoration hour, and then I wouldn't have to get a sub for going to choro every fourth Tuesday, plus on the second Tuesday I could check out Just Folking Around, but my old church always seems so happy to see me. I can just feel the love pouring out of her. It is good to see her once a week, even if I no longer have keys and feel like a non-entity around there.

Famous Hat

Tiffy's Mom's Funeral

 

We had a relaxed morning after a very sound sleep last night, then we got coffee at the Copper Cup in Ironwood and hit the road, driving through the Bad River Reservation on our way to Washburn for Tiffy's mom's funeral. We stopped in Bayview Park in Ashland on the way.

We got to the waterside restaurant in Washburn just before the scheduled start time, but people were just milling around, so we talked to Tiffy and some of her relatives. The service began half an hour later: a minister talked about Tiffy's mom, then her niece did, and then her brother and his kids did. That part was pretty funny. There was lunch afterwards, and I tried to behave. I was eying the vegan cheesecake, but to my surprise it had disappeared before I went back for dessert, so that saved me from eating dessert. After lunch we went on a walk with Tiffy down by the harbor, and then to my surprise her Millennial relatives like nieces and cousins remembered me fondly from when they were small children, and they all wanted to talk to me. I enjoyed that a lot. Here are some photos of the harbor.

I love the lupines in these next few photos.

We had thought there was Mass in town at four, so we went to the church... and Mass was tomorrow morning. There was one at four, but it was in Bayfield, so we wouldn't have gotten there in time. Instead, we went to Ashland and walked on the campus of Northland College, where Tiffy's parents met and fell in love. It may close soon because it's running out of money. Here are some photos.

Is this deer matriculating at the college?

After that we went to South Shore Brewery, where Travalon had a beer and I had a prickly pear seltzer. That may have been an unwise choice, because between the booze and all the water I drank along with it, I had to pee several times during Mass. We went at six in Ashland, and the church had an impressive reredos. It also had an organ, but this was a guitar Mass, which isn't my favorite thing. Here are photos of the church.

After Mass we saw the sun with beams shooting through the clouds. It was like a painting.

After that we had a real adventure. We went to a tiny town called Moquah which is really just a few houses and a bar they call the Plywood Palace. It is nasty. There were lots of ATVs and motorcycles parked in front of it, and inside it had lots of Trump banners. Unfortunately I had to use the "bathroom," which was a pathetic outhouse, not even as nice as a typical Port-a-Potty, and when I asked if anyone had hand sanitizer, they laughed and called me a "city person." Yeah, I guess so. We did see a lovely rainbow as we were leaving. Travalon pointed out that we had gone to establishments that were the two political extremes, which makes me wonder why they say "dirty leftists" when it was the MAGAts that were filthy. Here are some photos to show you what I mean. Travalon took these with his phone.

Here are a couple of photos of the rainbow, from my phone and from Travalon's good camera.

We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant overlooking the water. Here was our view at dinner.

After dinner we saw the rainbow again, and then we saw a glorious sunset. Here are a couple of photos of it from my phone. We viewed it from three different places.

Here are photos from Travalon's good camera.

When we came back to the hotel, we went swimming, and the pool seemed marginally warmer than yesterday in that if I moved around, I wasn't too cold. Today the hot tub was working, so we warmed up there instead of the sauna. Maybe we'll sleep just as soundly tonight after another round of late-night swimming in a chilly pool.

Famous Hat