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I’ve been starting to do some “humorous monologue” events in small theaters where I just come out and ramble with stories and such, do a little reading from the books, maybe sing a song, and perform a breathtaking dance, but mostly just tell stories.

I have a ten-minute section in the current monologue about how those of us in snow country pick up certain arcane skills and knowledge as a result of freezing our hinders over the years.  How we can judge the temperature just by how little the pine needles are wiggling in the wind, how we can improve the output of our heaters with nothing more than three zip-ties and the flattened cardboard from a 24-pack of Old Milwaukee, that sort of thing.

So this was fun to read.  Funnily enough, the first commenter used material straight from my monologue…

Sent an email to my friend Jay Moore at Moose Country radio this morning (where the tagline is: If you [insert goofy jackpine knuckleheaded behavior here] … yer one of us.

The next time I smack my shin on the trailer hitch, I may have to just shut up and take it, because I’m pretty sure I used up my full annual allotment of naughty language during the hour-and-a-half it took me to hook up my “easy-attach” snowplow.

If it’s the blizzard of the decade and it STILL takes you longer to hook up your snowplow than it does to plow your quarter-mile driveway, you might be one of … well, OK, you might be ME.

Then again, if one of the great joys of your life is plowin’ snow with your little snow-suited copilots grinnin’ all gap-toothed beside you in the truck cab, well, then, yer definitely one of us.

It’s just snow, folks.  Let’er buck.

…where did I put that snowplow?

Over the years I have been engaged a time or two over my use of certain large-ish words.  I have a whole low-key but determined speech I can give about why I won’t dumb them down or out (it has to do with the taste and rhythm of the right word, even if it is, um, polysyllabic), but for now let me distill the sermon to this: all them words in the dictionary are free, and you can walk right in there and take one whether you wear ratty flannels or academic regalia, and why not?  So it did my heart good to come across this post by Mary Cutrufello (you must read all the way to the end to understand why I was pleased) that invokes diesel smoke, maple syrupin’, rotting snow piles and big beautiful words.

May I also say my original acquaintance with Mary came via her music, which remains her center.

I still remember watching herky-jerky home movies of my great-uncles ski-jumping in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  I suspect the film was shot sometime right around World War II.  I have never been a ski-jumper (general clumsiness and a fear of heights preclude this) but I did have a passing acquaintance with the legendary Lloyd “Snowball” Severude of Chetek, Wisconsin, and I married into ski-jumping royalty (my stepfather-in-law’s brother jumped in the 1980 and 1984 Olympics).  So I’ve had a blast thumbing through the book described in this article.  I especially enjoyed reading about how my friend Frank (I’ve mentioned him in my books, and I wouldn’t be writing if it wasn’t for his early encouragement and intervention) used to watch the jumpers at Silver Mine Hill from the dining room window of his childhood home.  Your best bet to find the book is to contact the Chippewa Valley Museum.