Winter Weather, Last Minute Shopping and Al

Here in the Southeastern tip of Minnesota we got more than the one inch of snow that was supposed to dust the area yesterday. Tramping out to the car it varied from three to four inches deep and made cleaning the Subaru off a bit of a chore. But my father and I had good reason to go out despite the snow. It had suddenly dawned on me that he hadn’t done any of his Christmas gift shopping – not even online. I checked and sure enough that was the case, so something needed to be done about that.

Heading for La Crosse, the situation reminded me of my late friend Al Ulven. Al was the proprietor of a drug store and a variety store in the small town of Spring Grove. Many believed he made a great deal more money than he actually did, so it was always amusing to watch him around Christmas time.

Though thought of as a miser, Al really didn’t have extravagant sums to throw around. His adult children were often in need of help and the profit margins of his businesses were pretty slim. Did all this make him a Scrooge?

No, he was a giving person, if frugal. But it was the nature of his Christmas gifts that made me shake my head in wry amusement. You see, Al would always wait to the last possible minute to get Christmas presents. Usually this was on Christmas Eve and he wasn’t willing to travel to the nearest city of La Crosse to shop.

Instead, he would put out the least amount of effort possible. Once he claimed that he wanted to keep it local to help the community, but I called him on that since he almost always bought the gifts from his own store. The truth was he was too lazy and would put the shopping off until he was backed into a corner.

So some of the oddest presents would be given with little tailoring to the individual. Knick knacks aimed at elderly women were presented to bachelors, office supplies to kids, and so forth. The thing is he would give the gifts with a twinkle in his eye and you couldn’t get offended even if you wanted to.

Another Christmas time memory of Al was triggered by noticing the lights festooned by the City of La Crescent on some of their trees along the highway. He was always involved in the city council in Spring Grove, plus the Ballard House and other town institutions. Sometimes he would shanghai me into assisting in some of the tasks involved and one time it involved replacing light bulbs.

How hard could replacing a few light bulbs be?

Said light bulbs turned out to be on decorative strings meant to festoon the trees in the town’s biggest park. Many long strings of lights that had been subjected to the worst that Minnesota winters could throw at them were stored away waiting for winter to come again. This was before LED bulbs and so many feet of had to be checked for bad bulbs.

Untangling Christmas lights is tough enough for decorating trees in the house, now imagine industrial sized lines determinedly knotting together. It was tempting to use Alexander the Great’s solution to the Gordian knot, but these were expensive items. The size of the them meant it would be difficult to work on them, but fortunately the Fest Building was available to do so if a little chilly.

There Al, his friend Ted, and I worked on untangling and laying out lights, then plugging them in. Searches for broken and burnt out bulbs followed with many a light needing replacing. Al would be in and out running errands during the work which took hours. Eventually all the strings that were fully functional were carefully wound into bundles for others to put up on the trees. That entailed bucket crane work and I’m glad it wasn’t my job.

I miss those misadventures with Al.

Captain Al

Continuing a series of posts about my late friend, Al Ulven.

As I've written before, Al loved to have fun and was pretty good at making his own if there wasn't any already in sight.  That skill served his desire for entertainment well, even as it occasionally exasperated others. Some of my more exasperated moments came as a direct result of Al fulfilling his retirement dream of owning his own boat.

I can remember him calling to say he had bought a boat which turned out to be a used Bayliner 2155 21" cruiser with trailer.  My father and I went to see Al's dream and Al gleefully showed off his first command -- Captain Al had been born. He even had a captains hat with the golden scramble eggs. It didn't phase Al that he didn't know much about boating or safety regulations. What mattered is that he had his ticket to fun in the sun on the Mississippi River.

It was love at first sight when Captain Al found his Bayliner and he adored the vessel over the years he owned it, though maintenance was far from his strong point.  It gradually faded from its initial glory, as he didn't have enough crew to regularly swab the decks and Al was slowing down a lot. We ended up assisting him on that and my dad did most of the maintenance work, especially during the spring and autumn when the Bayliner was either coming out of storage or going into storage.

While Al may have been slowing down physically, there was one thing he always liked:  moving at high speeds.  Fast cars entranced him, but were a little scary for him personally.  But the river looked open for miles upon miles and there he could race the wind.  At least until his deteriorating eyesite scared him one too many times.  More than once he had me get the Bayliner planing at high speed and enjoyed the ride, his face red from the wind and laughing gleefully the entire time.

On that image, I'm going to finish, for his various adventures on water require their own entries into the log.

Adventures with Al, Part 2

Traveling with Al Ulven could get interesting at times, as a previous post showed. Reaching back into the murky depths of my childhood memories, there was one time that I wish I remembered more about. That was the mid-1970's expedition to the upper peninsula of Michigan to visit my half-brother Jud and his first wife, Therese. They lived up in the Houghton-Hancock area and for some reason Al decided to go with us. Perhaps he wanted to see the mining ranges up there, as he always had a curiosity about anything involving trade history around the Great Lakes. Curiosity has been said to kill the proverbial cat and Al was filled with curiosity about many things. In this case, it wasn't fatal but it certainly led him into a little trouble.

Somewhere just across the border into Michigan, a decision was made to take a short cut involving a back road that was parallel with the main highway. I do not know who made the decision, but with my father and Al being the only drivers, my suspicions lie with one or both. Back roads can be very inviting, offering scenery and local color you otherwise zoom past. Al loved back roads and my father's shortcuts were a subject of family legend. My late mother would have remembered whom to blame, no doubt.

While back roads can be enjoyable in good weather, taking them after major storms can get tricky. We got far enough to be in the middle of nowhere when the car ceased all forward movement. I'd say this is my first memory of mud so deep it sucked shoes off and stopped a car in its deep, deep tracks. The four of us piled out of the car and surveyed the muck after multiple failed attempts to get free. It was not taking us anywhere.

After some literal head scratching, Al and my dad tried to push it out. That did nothing but give everyone muddy pants legs, adding to the growing misery. Didn't seem to phase Al one bit though. There is an image in my mind of him sitting on the car, smiling despite the heat and dire predicament.

Hours went by, long hours. At some point, a decision was reached and a search began along the roadside. Some distance down the road, some old boards from a broken down fence were found and quickly brought back to the embedded car. After a few tries, the car finally found its caked wheels meeting dry road and we continued on. Al's laughter as we finally got going still lingers, for he'd won one of his small victories in life. It was something I'd get used to over the years.

Adventures with Al, Part 1

Knowing Al Ulven was a unique experience, I think many will agree on that. For me, this was mainly due to his way of turning little chores into somewhat epic quests on many an occasion. This always was accompanied by an absolute cheerful optimism that everything would work out the way he planned it, even if it didn't.

Some of my earliest memories of Al revolve around Ulven Drugs, his drugstore in Spring Grove, Minnesota. For a little kid in the early single digits of life, it was a place of wonder. We lived in a rented house out in the countryside and didn't have a lot, so going to town was a big deal. Being the early 1970's, Al's pharmacy wasn't just there to dispense medicines, it was partly a general store. It had one of the most impressive arrays of candy I'd ever encountered in my short life, toys, greeting cards, office supplies, and best of all -- comic books!

Al was a cheerful presence there, always knowing everyone's name and story, making what was normally a chore seem like entertainment. One thing that defined him was his ability to make his own fun, no matter the circumstances. The best part of it was that Al shared the fun with those around him.

One such occasion was a night time trip around Christmas, where we were taken to the mysterious and previously unseen bowels of the drug store. In other words, the basement where he kept merchandise. The shelves towered over me and were quite amazing, it was hard to imagine so much stuff in one place.

To my surprise and delight, Al informed my family that I could choose a toy from those on the shelves. I don't remember what it was that I chose, other than it was a pull toy of some kind (yes I was that young). There was a kind of joyful magic to all of this and that is what stuck in my head, not the toy itself.

It is my earliest concrete memory of Al, little did I know there would be more memorable moments involving the small town pharmacist.

Our Pal Al

My father and I went out tonight to eat, gather in some groceries, and possibly visit an ailing friend. When we got to the nursing home, I spotted a gurney being prepared next to a van/hearse. It was then that I knew we were too late and sure enough our friend Ellsworth "Al" Ulven had passed away a matter of minutes before.

Al befriended our family in the early 1970's and our families did a lot together over the years. As time went by he became a bachelor again and my parents continued to play three handed Spades with him. When I got older, I found myself roped into different misadventures with him at the beginning of the decade onward.

One memorable misadventure was assisting Al in retrieving the trailer to his beloved boat that he acquired after retirement. This little escapade involved sneaking the trailer through back roads, as he decided to pull the empty monstrosity with his battered old station wagon. While it had a hitch, there was no provision for wiring the lights, which meant it shouldn't be on the road. That meant sneaking around on back roads, mostly gravel, in a station wagon that acted like it was going to die at any moment.

Compounding the problem was that it was a 95 degree day, with humidity around 98 percent. As the exhausted car pulled the heavy trailer, it became too much for the engine and it began to overheat in a very serious way. That did not deter Al, for very little could once he decided to do something. At first, we pulled over and turned the car off to cool the engine, then started uphill again. The overheating came back with a vengeance.

So I recommended lowering the windows and cranking the heater all the way up, an old car trick I'd learned from a TV show on restoring autos. That helped somewhat, but it wasn't comfortable. Then the rain began. Only so much water was allowed in before we had to raise the windows and only so much suffocating heat could be tolerated before we had to lower them again. This went on for an agonizing hour, as we could only make about 20 mph at best in the hills. Often we were creeping at a much slower pace.

None of this phased Al in the slightest.

Eventually, a real thunderstorm passed through that forced us to the side of the road. We waited it out and after it had passed, the temperature had dropped radically, giving the car cool enough air that it could labor home.

After we backed the trailer into his yard, Al turned to me and cheerfully said, "Pat, my boy, we made it!" followed by one of his satisfied chuckles.

That was Al.