Comment: Recent readers may not know that occasionally I depart from personal/political commentary and write about one of my favorite characters from my fictional town of Hubbard, Wisconsin. Sadly, I’ve neglected Hubbard and its residents, as the last letter from Hubbard was written on January 12, 2008. If you want to catch up, just click on “Hubbard, Wisconsin” under the “Categories” heading in the left toolbar; there you will find all 33 episodes.

Dave Takes Joy in Spring

Even though it is May 15th, the temperature in Hubbard, Wisconsin has lingered in the high fifties with brisk winds. It doesn’t yet feel like summer, which explains why the faded blue sweatshirt remains hanging on the rusty hook on Dave’s back porch. Up in northern Wisconsin it actually snowed an inch on Thursday which makes it even harder for Dave to accept the concept of global warming. It’s been a darned long winter. Friday was a day for Dave to celebrate the rights of spring, which in Wisconsin means that it’s time to put away the winter contraptions and get out the summer stuff.

First on Dave’s list were the snow blowers. There’s the 20 year-old, rusty 4-horse single stage blower that Dave takes to Chicago each winter, only to be hauled back to Hubbard for maintenance after the last snow falls in the windy city. Then there’s the fancy, almost new two-stage, 12-horse Simplicity blower which works overtime in Hubbard’s harsh winters. Dave tuned up both blowers and filled their crank cases with new 5W-30 oil. Fuel stabilizer was added to the gasoline to insure that both blowers will start next December when they rightfully re-assert their claim as the most important pieces of mechanized equipment on the face of the earth. Dave puts a little piece of masking tape on the handle of each blower, writing on the tape that the oil was changed and fuel stabilized on May 15, 2009. In past seasons, when Dave has not placed a note on the blowers, he has forgotten whether he did it or not. Forgetfulness is a hazard when you become 40 years older than your oldest snow blower!

Then it was down to the shed to check out the 17-foot Alumicraft fishing boat and the two Polaris jet-skis. It is often said that the happiest two days in the life of a boat owner is the day he buys the boat and the day he sells it. Dave is reminded of this as he tries to start the jet-skis. Neither one of them makes a sound when the start button is pushed, despite the fact that the guys in the marina installed some chargers that were supposed to keep the batteries ready all winter. The batteries probably froze solid during the winter, even though the chargers were plugged in. That means a couple of new batteries again this year. Looks like It is time for Dave to have a “come to Jesus meeting” with the friendly guy down at the marina. Fortunately, the old 35 horse mariner attached to the Alumicraft kicks right over. If only Dave were a better fisherman!

Now it is time to go back into the garage and make sure the other three “summer” tools are working properly. The Stihl gas-powered hedge trimmer kicks right off. This machine will cut your arm off if you’re not careful, but it can make quick work of a hedge. Dave didn’t even know they made gas-powered hedge trimmers until he saw some Mexican landscapers carving up hedges in Chicago. By the time he had driven back to Hubbard Dave just knew he had to get one of those “kick-ass” machines. He hasn’t been disappointed.

The mulching mower wouldn’t start. After pulling the starter cord back umpteen times, not a pop came from the supposedly fancy 4-cyle, overhead cam Honda engine. Dave took the mower over to Jimbo’s place. Jimbo is one of those quiet, unassuming guys that works out of his garage. If it has a small gasoline engine attached to it, Jimbo can fix it. In Dave’s mind Jimbo is a genius and Jimbo’s outspoken dislike of government at the federal, state and local levels gives Dave another reason to like him. The bad news was that Jimbo had so many mowers backlogged that he couldn’t look at Dave’s mower for three weeks. After some nagging from Dave, Jimbo smacked the Honda carburetor with a small hammer. This “un-stuck” the carburetor needle and the thing kicked right over. Jimbo wouldn’t take any money because it took only a second to “tap” on the carburetor. Dave reprimanded Jimbo for not taking the money, telling him that “It isn’t banging on the engine that counts; it’s knowing where to smack it.”

At the end of the day, Dave went back to the garage to find the Stihl weed wacker. This is a commercial unit costing around $500, and Dave has had it for years. It is his pride and joy! After searching the garage for about 20 minutes, Dave couldn’t find it. He went to the shed, to the rental garage unit next door, and even down to the basement looking for the darned thing. He looked everywhere but his underwear drawer! His precious weed wacker had disappeared! Dave thought: “Who would break into the garage and take my weed wacker? Did I loan it to anyone? Ah, what the heck, even if I did loan it to someone, I wouldn’t remember who borrowed it.” After stewing about his “stolen” weed wacker and losing a few hours sleep, Dave was resigned to the fact that it was gone forever. The next morning he found it in the garage, propped up in front of a window where he had left it last fall. He must have walked by it 5 times and never seen it. “Ah, the world is good! I’ve got my weed wacker back!” said Dave.

Spring is a wonderful time of year. For many, spring joy is a hike in the woods to hunt for morel mushrooms or to gaze at wildflowers. For Dave, it’s a fresh oil stain on his overalls and the wonderful, distinctive smell of gasoline on his hands. It’s the fresh scab on his knuckle that split when his wrench slipped off the oil drain plug. It’s the leaky hose that he will fix on Tuesday and the awnings that will go on the windows next week. Alas, spring joy is in the eye of the beholder!

When Friday, August 31, 2007 finally arrived, along with American Airlines flight 307 to O’Hare airport, Marcus was eagerly awaiting Subani’s return from Colombo. When he saw the big smile on Subani’s face as she entered the baggage claim area, Marcus’ apprehension about her love for him melted away in a second. As they kissed, tears of happiness mixed on their cheeks; regardless of time or place, both of them were “home” again.

Her summer in Sri Lanka had seemed like an eternity for Marcus. Every day, doubts entered his mind as to whether or not she would return for her Junior year of college, if her parents would find a match for her in Sri Lanka, or whether she would fall in love with another man. Marcus’ fear of losing Subani was as intense as his love for her. Suddenly his decision to leave his job on the foundry floor to pursue his degree in engineering made more sense to him than ever. With a degree in engineering he could earn a decent living to support a family. As he and Subani drove up I-94 and crossed the Wisconsin boarder the talk was non-stop. Marcus thought about a day, perhaps years in the future, when Subani would give him a son or daughter. The idea of being a father to her children was for him not an act of progeny or a biological event; it was the privilege of a lifetime.

Subani’s summer had passed slowly for her. She had always looked forward to summers at home, but her heart and thoughts this last three months had been with a strapping, handsome fellow in Hubbard, Wisconsin. Summertime had been a beautiful in Colombo, punctuated with sunny days, fresh fish, and tasty mangos. Subani “went through the motions” of shopping with her mother at the market, attending various social events with family and friends, and giggling with the household servants while helping them prepare meals.

Everything was predictable until three weeks after her arrival. On one of the walks that she and her mother take every afternoon, Subani’s mother blurted out, “You’re in love with someone, aren’t you, my dear? I can see that your mind has been somewhere else ever since you arrived back home. You can confide in me, honey. I’ll never speak a word of it to your father.” “How did you know, mother?” exclaimed Subani. “I was a girl once, too, my dear,” said her mother. “I had those same feelings and a secret of my very own, but that is another story for another day.”

Subani was astounded that her mother was so perceptive, but they had always been close. Her mother was her confidant, her protector, and her best friend. Subani opened up and told her mom the entire story about the handsome young man she had met in Hubbard, Wisconsin. She talked about his smile, his character, and his serious attitude toward his engineering studies. Subani even showed her mother a photo of Marcus, which she had tucked hidden away in the folds of her wallet.

For a while her mother just walked in silence. Then she said, “Subani”, how serious is your relationship with this young man? Subani answered, “Some day he and I will give you a grandchild.” “Not soon, I hope!” said her mother. “No, mom, not for a few years,” said Subani. “Your father will not hear of this for a while,” said Subani’s mother. “We’ll break it to him slowly, over the next two or three years. Our first hurdle is to convince him conceptually that interracial marriage doesn’t mean the end of the earth. We’ve got a big hill to climb.” “I know, mom,” said Subani, as they hugged in the dusty street.

Thanks to his acquaintance, Renaldo, Jose was able to hire some illegal Mexicans to work for his construction firm (See Sunday, June 4, 2006 “The Gonzales’ Dilemma”). This was a last resort for Jose and Angela, as they couldn’t find workers to complete the many projects that Gonzales Construction Company had backlogged over the summer of 2006. Since hiring these additional workers, Gonzales Construction Company has continued to grow and Jose has built a reputation of completing quality buildings on time and within budget.

For Jose, the hiring of the illegal workers was a gut-wrenching decision. On the one hand, the workers are illegal without proper documentation. On the other hand, if he hadn’t hired them his firm would probably have gone out of business for not completing pending construction contracts on time. All of the illegals he employs are making between $15 and $20 per hour; hardly an exploitive wage. Income taxes are withheld from their pay, along with social security taxes. Due to the fact that the workers have bogus identification papers they will never see an income tax refund and the money deducted from their wages that is sent into the Social Security System will never have to be paid out because the recipients don’t officially exist. Despite the fact that they won’t collect a dime of Social Security, Jose’s workers appreciate the work and send a large amount of their take home pay back to Mexico to assist their families.

One of Jose’s workers, Ernesto, is a supervisor of finish carpenters. These are the highest skilled of the carpentry trade, specializing in custom cutting of moldings, trim, and cabinets. Ernesto is one of the finest workers that Jose has ever met, and he’s met a lot of skilled craftsmen in his day. In his mid 40’s Ernesto’s wife and three children live in Mexico. His goal is to work in the US for five years and take his savings back home to build a nice house for his family. This is a significant sacrifice due to the fact that Ernesto’s children are in their formative years and miss him dearly.

Like most illegal workers, Ernesto’s false documentation is good enough for his employer, but it won’t pass muster if presented at a bank to open a savings account. Therefore, Ernesto must hide his cash in his rented apartment. He’s chosen to put the cash, a little over $12,000, into a small metal box, which he has placed above a suspended ceiling in his bedroom. This is his stash, savings from almost two year’s work. It’s the stuff from which new houses are built!

Last Tuesday Ernesto was awakened in the middle of the night. Standing over him was a masked man with a pistol. He demanded that Earnesto give him money. Ernesto handed over his wallet with about forty bucks inside. The man was furious and said, “You fucking taco son of a bitch! Everyone knows that you bastards keep your savings in cash. You’ve been working in this town for over a year; give me the money, dammit, I know it’s here in the house! Ernesto hesitated and acted like he didn’t know what the robber was talking about. At this point he was repeatedly pistol-whipped until his eye sockets were black and blue and his face was bruised and bleeding. Finally, for fear of losing his life, Ernesto relented. The thug walked out with Ernesto’s metal box containing all $12,000 of his hard earned savings. His dream was over. He had gone without the love of his wife and children for nearly two years and had received nothing but heartache in return.

The next day Ernesto went into Jose’s office to tell him what had happened. Jose offered to replace all of Earnesto’s $12,000 and put it into his own bank account to make sure that this didn’t happen again. Ernesto left in tears, saying he’d think about it. Later that afternoon one of Jose’s workers saw Earnesto board the bus south to Chicago, from where he presumably returned to his family in Mexico. A week passed and Ernesto never returned. Jose and Angela figured that Earnesto had too much pride to accept charity from them. Because of the loss of this kind and gentle craftsman, who had become their employee and friend, both Jose and Angela shed tears at the dinner table for several days.

Two weeks after Ernesto departed, agents visited Gonzales Construction Company from the US Immigration Service. Reacting to an “anonymous phone tip”, they demanded documentation for all of Jose’s workers. After their investigation 28 of Jose’s workers were arrested and deported back to Mexico. Jose and Angela faced fines of over $150,000. The possibility that the “anonymous tip” was phoned in by the same worthless creep that beat Ernesto infuriates Jose. Like Ernesto, for the first time in their lives, Jose and Angela now have second thoughts about their American Dream.

The summer of 2007 has been long and lonely for Marcus Harnack. Frank Kedzic, the metallurgist at Hubbard Foundry (and perhaps Marcus’ biggest fan), made sure that Marcus got in a lot of overtime at the foundry with a nice raise in pay. The summer job proved to be Marcus’ saving grace, not only because it generated enough income to pay for another year at Hubbard State University, but also because it temporarily diverted his mind from thinking about his love, Subani, who has been spending the summer with her family in Sri Lanka.

To Marcus it seems like an eternity since he embraced and kissed Subani at O’Hare airport last May. Prior to her trip back home she hadn’t told her parents about Marcus and he has been desperately worried about the many educated and handsome men that her parents might introduce to her over the summer as potential suitors. She is, after all, the most beautiful woman he has ever laid eyes on. Men are attracted to beauty such as hers and Marcus has suffered from the thought of losing Subani to a handsome Sri Lankan medical doctor or Ph.D. He is also mildly disturbed because Subani has not used “instant messenger” all summer, preferring instead to email him from a new hotmail account that she created right after her arrival in Colombo. While instant messenger is much more personal and intimate than email, Subani has explained that its use might easily be detected by her parents, the house servants, or other family members. A newly created hotmail account is more easily concealed. Subani’s emails indicate that she has not yet told her parents about him and that she does not intend to bring up the subject at all this year. She feels that the time is not right and that the disclosure of their dating would just infuriate her father.

While Subani’s emails have expressed her continual devotion and love for Marcus, Sri Lanka is a long way from Hubbard, Wisconsin. Marcus has been dogged by repeated thoughts that Subani may actually be in the arms of another man. There are no facts to warrant such feelings, but there are also no facts to the contrary. Having the wisdom not to reveal his jealousy to Subani, for fear of doubting her love for him, Marcus has been tortured by the nearly four-month separation from a woman that he knows he cannot live without. At night he dreams of making love to her upon when she returns, yet his next thought harbors the fear that she may not return at all for her Junior year at Hubbard State University.

Over the summer Marcus got up to Minneapolis to spend a couple of long weekends with his old high school buddy Frank Rogers, who was recently promoted to a senior manager position at Price Waterhouse Coopers in Minneapolis. Frank is living the life. Single, with a nice income, Frank’s weekends are spent partying with some of the finest chicks in Minneapolis. Frank’s friends, all in their late twenties and early thirties, represent the new elite of college grads, rapidly advancing in their careers as business analysts or mid level managers with leading corporations. They drive fancy cars, own expensive condos, dine at the twin cities’ fanciest restaurants, drink only imported beer, and sample the finest wines from Europe and California. Marcus enjoys the fellowship and a couple of nice-looking blondes have shown interest in him, but it has been easy for the handsome Marcus to resist their overtures. As long as the body and soul of Subani exists on this planet, she is the only woman for him; she and no other! To Marcus, the pale complexion of Uptown blondes pales in comparison to Subani’s lovely brown skin! In the mind of Marcus Harnack the caress of Subani’s smooth, chocolate shoulders has no earthly comparison. He can’t wait for her return!

So it is, on an incredibly sunny August afternoon while Marcus selects his textbooks for the upcoming fall semester, that his cell phone alerts him to an incoming text message. It reads: “Leaving La Guardia, 1:30 p.m. Arriving O’Hare, AA flight 307, 2:55 p.m. Friday, August 31. Can you meet me?”

He texts her back in a flash: “Nothing will keep me away from O’Hare that day! I love you so much!”

Summer has arrived in Hubbard, Wisconsin. The June daytime high temperatures have been in the eighties with night temperatures in the fifties. This is the kind of weather that Dave likes, cool at night for sleeping, yet warm and comfortable during the day. For the last couple of days Dave has been cleaning up leaves that fell after the fall raking. He’s also had to pick up sticks on the lawn that winter wind and snow have claimed from maple and hackberry trees. By the time Dave finishes gathering up all of this natural debris his pickup is full.

Dave’s most practical choice for dumping his “compost” is to drive out to the farm of Tieg Rasmussen, known around Hubbard as “The Self Sufficient Man”. Dave has dumped his compost at Tieg’s for over 30 years, and the men enjoy each other’s company. Like Dave, Tieg is in his mid 50’s and while the two men are both non-conformists and mechanically inclined, they are on opposite ends of the “economic dependence” spectrum. Dave’s a free trader who relies entirely on specialization and exchange. As a result, Dave’s economic well being is inexorably tied to the fact that he receives money by selling goods and services, thereby exchanging that money for products and services he receives from others. Tieg stakes his mental and physical well being on the concept of self-sufficiency. His farm contains virtually everything he needs to live, including goats and cows for milk and meat, chickens for eggs, vegetable crops that can be canned for winter use, manure recycling for heat and cooking gas, solar panels, and wind-generated electricity with full battery backup. Tieg describes his farm as a “closed cycle” of complete economic independence.

As Dave shovels the sticks and leaves out of his truck into Tieg’s compost pile, Tieg breaks into his favorite topic of conversation; satisfaction with his own self-sufficiency. Tieg reminds Dave that he is vulnerable to the “rotting underpinnings of the capitalist economy.” Tieg says to Dave, “While I am self-sufficient and depend on nobody for my survival, you, my friend, will be in bad shape when the economy collapses. You must buy your food from the grocer, your gasoline from a corrupt oil oligopoly, and your clothing and consumer products from the Chinese and Bangladeshi’s. This whole false globalization economy of yours is going to collapse very soon and things are going to get real bad.” Yeah, says Dave, “It’s going to be bad for sure, I’m really going to be sucking gravel when the end comes.”

Dave knows better than to argue with Tieg about the economy and self-sufficiency. He distinctly remembers Tieg telling him thirty years ago that “the economy is going to collapse soon.” Thirty years later, Tieg is still talking about “the end of the capitalist economy” and the suffering it will bring. During those thirty years Tieg’s life has changed little. He has no luxuries and works seven days a week to make ends meet. There is no question that Tieg is self-sufficient while Dave is not. There is no question that if and when the “end of the capitalist economy” occurs, Tieg will be able to survive. But even Tieg depends on the capitalist economy. The batteries he buys for his electrical backup, the pump for his well, his tractor, his wagons; all of these are the products of others. While he doesn’t like to admit it, even Tieg must trade with others to survive.

While Dave’s income and standard of living have grown steadily over the past thirty years, Tieg annually reminds Dave about the pending economic calamity. What bugs Dave is that Tieg seems to be actually looking forward to a collapse of the U.S. economy! After all, such a collapse would vindicate Tieg’s reason for his self-sufficient existence and philosophy. It’s occurred to Dave that if Tieg goes to his grave without having witnessed an economic collapse, he’ll be dreadfully disappointed! What a legacy!

Dave sees things differently than Tieg. In Dave’s view the move from self-sufficiency toward specialization and exchange has been a primary tool in liberating the average American from backbreaking labor and poverty. With the dairy farmer specializing in milk production, the electrician specializing in wiring buildings, and the professor specializing in educating students, the farmer can send his daughter to college for a better education than he could provide if he tried to educate her himself. With the tuition income from the dairy farmer, the professor can hire the electrician to wire his home at a lower cost and with more safety than if he did it himself. The electrician can take his wages and buy milk that the farmer has produced without ever concerning himself with all of the technicalities of milk production. The entire society, by specializing and trading, has a greater variety of products and services, enjoys higher quality products and services, and pays a lower price for those goods and services than would be the case if everyone tried to be self sufficient.

While Tieg is a “live and let live” reasonable kind of guy who has a healthy respect for clever capitalists, Dave wonders about the motives and affiliations of those who truly despise capitalism and free markets. As Dave sees it, if people who support emissions regulations on U.S. business are doing this for the sake of reducing greenhouse gasses, that is fine with him. Dave is in agreement with anyone who is working to achieve new, cost efficient methods of producing energy and products with as little negative environmental impact as possible. However, many of the people who have rallied behind emissions regulations are affiliated with groups whose primary goal is to undermine capitalism and free markets. Dave thinks that most of these are resentful non-producer, non-achievers who envy people who dream dreams, accomplish their goals, and serve as the font of human progress. These non-producers will climb on any bandwagon (including the global warming bandwagon) primarily to destroy the economy and it’s productive participants, both of which they despise. Motivated by jealousy and feeding upon myths and ignorance, they are, according to Dave, the economic terrorists from within.

The last two years have been absolutely brutal for Unity Wilson. A long time protestor, for years she has railed against corporations, profits, production, corporate farms, CEO’s, high prices, foundries, gasoline oil refineries, child labor, exploitation of females, and global pollution. She has a few cohorts in Hubbard who regularly join her in protest, but they don’t make much of dent in a town where most people are obsessed with raising their kids and keeping bread on the table. Once in a while, to get her “protestor batteries” recharged, Unity goes up to Minneapolis to visit her sister, Serenity.

Hubbard contractor Jose Gonzales calls folks like Unity and Serenity “Granolas”. The name is probably derived from their “back to earth”, organic approach to life. In south Minneapolis, where Serenity lives, there are thousands of Granolas. Unity calls south Minneapolis “Conscience Heaven”. Many of south Minneapolis’ Granolas are fifty or older and purchased their homes years ago. They live in homes that most of them couldn’t afford if they had to purchase them at the market prices paid by their stockbroker, business analyst, investment banker, and accountant neighbors.

Granola homes are easy to recognize. Granolas don’t have lawns, choosing instead to plant wildflowers and native grasses. This is, after all, how the land looked before their evil ancestors came to ruin the country and rape the landscape. Folks like Craig Johnson, who lives in the suburbs and dutifully applies all five stages of Scott’s fertilizer and crab grass control on his carefully manicured lawn, think the Granolas are just plain lazy. According to Craig, the Granolas’ claim to the “restoration of prairie grasses” is a big, fat excuse to justify a yard full of weeds.

If one looks past the prairie flowers and potted plants on the porch, it becomes apparent that most Granolas aren’t really very good at fixing things. The screen doors have holes in them and a close look at the siding reveals a lot of peeling paint. The Granolas often look at their maintenance-deprived premises as some kind of vow of poverty, as if they should not be bound to meaningless activities like painting and roof repair. Jose, who is one of the few Hubbardites who will work for the Granolas, is put off by their lack of foresight in repair matters. Rather than putting new shingles on the house, the Granolas opt for a cheap repair of the roof, which will again leak in a few months. Time after time Jose explains the virtue of doing the job right the first time, but his advice usually falls on deaf ears. The Granolas don’t generally have a lot of extra income, so they never want to spend what it will take to actually fix the place. Then there was the Granola who wanted Jose to provide him with a data sheet detailing every input and production process used in the manufacture of wood shingles, just to make sure that he wasn’t guilty of damaging the environment. Jose just walked out the door, smiled, and told the guy to call him when he got tired of putting buckets on the floor.

There are distinct physical, fashion and spending attributes that separate the Granolas from the rest of the human race. Men wear long ponytails and dress in khaki pants or jean cutoffs, with button down shirts. Women wear their hair long, almost like the 60’s, hanging loosely down their backs or tied up like the men. Women wear loose fitting 100% cotton garments that reveal no female shape whatsoever. Earthy, muted-colored tunics are often worn with baggy slacks underneath. Accessories include Birkenstock sandals and knapsacks in lieu of purses. Granolas shop at 2nd hand stores, both for economy and to avoid channeling their money to the fashion industry. Women don’t wear makeup and probably don’t shave their legs or underarms, but no body knows for sure. Granolas home school or send their kids to public schools. No private, elitist schools for the offspring of Granolas! One place where the normally thrifty Granolas don’t mind spending lots of money is the local coffeehouse, where they purchase expensive herbal teas and ten-dollar sandwiches bulging with sprouts. Probably one of the biggest reasons the Granolas go to the local coffee places is the fact that there are a lot of other Granolas there to commiserate with. Granolas think themselves to be quite intelligent compared to other human beings. In reality they are urban mystics who often believe that they have the answers to all of the world’s problems, if only the rest of humanity would listen! No Starbucks for the Granolas; that would be selling out to corporate America!

To their credit, Granolas are not generally obese. It is rare to see a really fat Granola. They may have a bit of a tummy, but after all, you can’t get very fat on homegrown cucumbers, pure grains, and tomatoes. Because the Granolas don’t spend a lot of time watching television (except for PBS), they have a lot of time to wander in their jungle-like yards and to (badly) repair their houses.

Global warming is something that really troubles the Granolas. Convinced by Al Gore that humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb, the Granolas believe that we have less than 10 years to avoid the ultimate destruction of the earth. Many Granolas think that we have already reached the “tipping point” where it will be impossible to avoid floods, famine, and killer heat. Frankly and sadly, this has caused tremendous depression in the Granola community. Both Unity and Serenity are deeply depressed. If there are Granola shrinks, they must be doing a land office business!

Spring semester is finished at Hubbard State University and Marcus Harnack is standing on the sidewalk outside the Chicago O’Hare airport terminal building. He received straight “A’s” in all of his chemistry, science, and math classes, but it looks like he will probably get a “B” in psychology. He just hasn’t been able to concentrate on psychology, largely because it requires a lot of rote memorization of terms and concepts of which he has no interest. What does interest Marcus is Subani De Silva, whom he’s been dating since February.

Subani is from Sri Lanka, where her parents are both medical doctors. She is a chemistry/pre-med major, a bit shy, and is incredibly well spoken. Probably the only thing she has in common with other girls on the Hubbard campus is her religion; she is a Christian. Subani isn’t very high maintenance. On many evenings she and Marcus are satisfied to sit around the kitchen table in Marcus’ apartment and study! However, these two are very much in love with each other. There are times when they look into each other’s eyes and ponder the incredible odds that they, born half a world apart, could have ever met. When he was eight years old, sledding down the snowy hill in his back yard, she was riding through humidity and haze in an oil-belching auto rickshaw on the way to her catholic girl’s school. He rode his bicycle to school. Her rickshaw driver would park under a banyan tree and wait the entire school day for her, just in case she got ill or had to leave school early.

Marcus was a bit nervous when he first took Subani home to meet his parents for Sunday dinner early last March. He wasn’t quite sure how his middle class Caucasian parents would react to this beautiful brown-skinned girl. It took about one minute to break the ice, as Subani’s big smile and polite demeanor won them over in a flash. Even Marcus’ middle school brother Timmy was unusually taken aback by Subani. Once, when Marcus went into the kitchen to get some more gravy, Timmy followed him and confided that he thought Subani was really “cute.” Since that first Sunday dinner, Marcus and Subani have visited his folks at least twice a week. On a couple of occasions Subani has cooked for the family, whipping up some tasty curry dishes.

While Ralph, Betty, and Timmy Harnack have gotten to know Subani well, her Sri-Lankan parents are clueless about Marcus. She has not spoken to her parents about meeting and dating Marcus, largely because she fears their criticism. She is, after all, supposed to marry someone of high social and economic standing, preferably a medical doctor. If Marcus were to finish his bachelor’s degree in metallurgical engineering, they would view him as an educated man, but his educational and social standing would not measure up to their expectations for Subani.

It is a typical O’Hare day, the roaring noise of arriving and departing airplanes overhead. On this bright, sunny afternoon Marcus holds Subani in a close embrace counting down the seconds until she enters the building, shows her ticket, and heads back home to Colombo for the summer. He doesn’t know what he is going to do for three months in the absence of her soft voice and magnetic smile. While she’s happy to go home and see her family again, she is miserable knowing that she will not be with Marcus. She walks a tight line as she heads home for the summer. Her parents will probably introduce her to suitors, presumably Sri-Lankan born medical students, home from Universities in the United States or the United Kingdom. She will politely refuse their offers and try to explain to her parents that she has met a handsome gentleman in Hubbard, Wisconsin. They will tell her of the impracticality of marrying a Caucasian, but she won’t be listening as she recalls the snowy moonlight night when she and Marcus first made love.

It will be a moral victory for Subani if she can return to Hubbard in the fall with even the tacit permission of her parents to continue dating Marcus. They would probably disown her if they knew the degree of her emotional involvement with this handsome ex-foundry worker. One last kiss and she walks through security with her ticket. He waits until she has cleared the inspection and is putting her shoes on again. She gathers her belongings and looks back at him, a brave smile on her face as she prepares to return to a culture, the depths and complications of which Marcus can’t even imagine.

Ralph Harnack is now 58 years old. He’s worked at the Hubbard Foundry for nearly 35 years and he and Betty have resided in their modest, yet well-maintained home on Hubbard’s east side for 33 years. Sometimes when Betty writes a check to pay for merchandise at local stores a young clerk will say, “Is all of the information on your check current?” Betty loves to reply, “Yes, Dear, since before you were born!” The Harnacks have raised their two sons on the east end and their work ethic and dependability have allowed them to live a good life. They’re not rich, but they don’t want for the necessities of life. They don’t have any debt or financial worries. This is a far cry from the first four years of their marriage when he and Betty resided in a beat-up mobile home at the Hubbard trailer park.

These were the days before Ralph got his job at the foundry. He worked as a delivery man at the local furniture store making a whopping $2.05 per hour. His wife Betty made the minimum wage of $1.25 per hour working as a sales clerk in the cosmetics department at Hubbard Rexall Drugs. Sometimes the lipstick company would authorize the stores to discard dated merchandise and the boss would give unused lipsticks to Betty. She would sell them to the women that lived in the trailer court for fifty-cents a piece and she and Ralph would splurge on dinner and a movie. Ralph picked up extra cash skirting mobile homes at the park. For those of you who are not well-versed in mobile home terminology, skirting is the metal that goes between the bottom of the trailer and the ground, keeping wind and creatures out! Whenever a new trailer was hauled into the park, Ralph would bang on the door and ask the owner if he needed someone to skirt the home. Because he charged only $120, complete with materials and labor, Ralph usually got the job. It was when Ralph was in this strange side-business of skirting mobile homes that he first met Vaughn Campbell.

Vaughn and his wife had recently purchased a mobile home which was blocked and leveled when Ralph knocked on the door. After a brief discussion Vaughn and Ralph agreed on a price to skirt the home. The next day was a Saturday and Ralph told Vaughn he would begin at first light and have Vaughn’s trailer skirted by sundown. Vaughn had just been accepted to graduate school at Hubbard State University, pursuing a Ph.D. in biochemistry. However, as a condition of his admittance he was taking a series of three difficult exams to give the university a “baseline” of his accumulated chemistry knowledge. The next day, when Vaughn’s last exam was completed and graded, his professors told him that he had some “substantial knowledge gaps” that would have to be compensated for, should he “choose to go through with the Ph.D. program” in biochemistry. Vaughn was tremendously discouraged, even distraught. As he headed back to the trailer park he decided not to proceed with his Ph.D. program. He would go back to the lot where had purchased his mobile home and figure out a way to get his money back.

There was only one problem. By the time Vaughn pulled his car into the parking space next to his mobile home, there appeared Ralph Harnack from around the corner with a big smile on his face. “How do you like the job, Vaughn? Ralph said. “Ain’t it beautiful?” “No”, said Vaughn. “I’ve got to take this thing back to the dealer.” That’s when Ralph said to Vaughn, “Heck, Vaughn, you can’t take it back now. It’s skirted to the ground. It’s kind of a permanent structure now. You’re stuck now; the dealer won’t take it back now that it’s skirted in.” Vaughn was at the end of his rope. He didn’t know what to do. He had secured a loan for the mobile home and had paid his lot rent already; then there was this grubby Ralph Harnack guy who had bolted the damn thing to the ground! After stewing about his predicament over the weekend Vaughn decided to give it a try and stay in the Ph.D. program after all. “I’d be out of here if that Harnack guy had waited another day to skirt the trailer”, he thought.

Six months after Vaughn’s trailer had been skirted Ralph and Betty bought their little home on the east side of town and left the trailer park for good. Vaughn and his wife lived in their mobile home for the next four years and he was awarded his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Hubbard State University. Soon afterwards Vaughn and his wife moved to New York where he began his career doing research on new genetic variations of food crops. Over the next thirty years both men went their separate ways; Ralph labored as a common foundry worker while Vaughn became internationally famous as one of the world’s outstanding biochemists. As Ralph walked home on snowy winter evenings, lunchbox in hand, covered with foundry grime, Vaughn presented his brilliant research findings in places like Rome and London as he developed new plant varieties that literally saved millions from starvation. While Vaughn never informed Ralph about the specifics of his job, strangely both men exchanged Christmas cards over the years, keeping track of the births of their children and other important family matters.

Two months ago Ralph and Betty received a wedding invitation from New York. Vaughn’s youngest daughter was getting married and Ralph and Betty were invited. Tucked into the invitation were two round-trip airplane tickets from Madison to New York. “Gosh, I guess Vaughn really wants us to be there!” said Betty. They attended the wedding. Despite the fact that nearly everyone in attendance was some sort of famous scientist or research expert, Vaughn and his wife went out of the way to make Betty and Ralph feel at home. During the reception Vaughn and his wife sat and talked with Ralph and Betty nearly the entire evening. After arriving back in Hubbard Betty and Ralph pondered why an important guy like Vaughn would even invite them to the wedding, let alone spend so much time with them. As Vaughn retired for the evening after witnessing the marriage of his daughter, he reflected on his long and fruitful career. He thought about his wonderful family, and he was genuinely honored that Betty and Ralph came to the wedding. Vaughn had come to realize what few people ever know; that in the huge continuum of time and space the lives of two people can cross but for an instant and that can make all the difference! After all, thought Vaughn, if that common foundry worker in Hubbard, Wisconsin hadn’t skirted in that trailer on exactly that particular day, thousands may have starved. The world would indeed have been a different place.

When Dave returned to Hubbard from San Diego on Friday evening the snow was coming down fast and furious. This wasn’t one of those dry Canadian clippers with the consistency of light powder, it was a southern storm laden with wet gulf moisture. By the time Dave had eaten dinner and gone out to the garage the snow was so deep that the plow on his John Deere tractor couldn’t even push the stuff ten feet. It was time to get serious and break out “Old Simp”, his trusty five-horse, two stage, snow blower!

By the time the weekend was over, Hubbard had received 29 inches of snow. Dave spent 16 hours grabbing the handles of Old Simp, blowing tons of snow from the driveway and sidewalks. Dave’s Simplicity snow blower was purchased thirty years ago at a store in downtown Hubbard. About fifteen years ago the blower required new bearings and bushings on the main auger shaft but the dealer was going out of business and told Dave that the repairs would be so expensive that he should buy a new blower instead. That’s when Dave’s friend, an old-timer named Bill Waller, volunteered to repair Old Simp. A week later, after ten bucks worth of parts and four hours of labor, Old Simp working as good as new! Both Bill and the store owner passed away years ago, but the old snow blower lives on, grinding through show banks and flailing ice and slush fifteen feet in the air.

During the weekend Dave was visited at least ten times by neighborhood students from Hubbard State University. College students almost never pay any attention to Dave but because he owns a snow shovel he was as popular as a rock star during the blizzard weekend. You might wonder what a college student does with a snow shovel. I’ll give you a hint; it has nothing to do with cleaning the snow from sidewalks, driveways, or steps. It has everything to do with digging out the college kid’s car! Once the car is shoveled free from the prison of its temporary snow bank a snow shovel has absolutely no other possible earthly use!

Marsh Lipper Daley, the mayor of Hubbard, received more phone calls from constituents during and after the blizzard than any time in her political career. Like all towns in Wisconsin, Hubbard has a lot of plows, trucks, and city workers to deal with snow storms. However, snow-removal infrastructure is intended to handle the average snow fall, not 29 inches in 28 hours. This time the snow was so deep that it couldn’t simply be plowed to the side of the road. The snow banks from the plows reached five feet tall along the streets, necessitating the use of front end loaders and dump trucks to haul the white stuff away. The rutted streets looked like a war zone, with stalled cars facing various directions as if they had been flung about by a tornado. It was a catch 22. Drivers couldn’t move their cars because they were buried in snow, yet plows couldn’t get down the street because cars were in the way. An endless line of dump trucks rotated from the streets to the east end dump, where the snow was deposited in piles reaching over twenty feet in height. Marsha’s phone rung relentlessly. Everyone wanted the snow removed…immediately. What’s a politician to do?

For a person who has never witnessed this enormous amount of snow, the situation would be almost unimaginable. Even for Hubbardites the storm was an occasion, as it was the largest single snowfall in fifteen years. Dave wasn’t excited about spending his entire weekend behind a snow blower, having thought of at least a hundred better ways to spend a weekend while his tired hands gripped the handles of Old Simp. However, Dave was philosophical about the blizzard. After all, if you’re from Wisconsin you better know how to live with snow. Complaining about snow is unpatriotic for a true Wisconsinite; if you don’t like snow or want to deal with it, you should shut up and move somewhere else.

With the beginning of the spring semester at Hubbard State University, the weather has been anything but mild. After a warm November and December temperatures have dipped below zero, reminding most Hubbard residents of the “good old days” when the frigid months of January and February were to be feared. During the past two weeks the morning lows have been around -15 degrees Fahrenheit. That doesn’t mean much to Floridians, but to Hubbardites it means school busses that won’t start, water pipes that freeze and break, and no choice but to wear sweatpants, sweaters and slippers inside the house. Engineering Major Marcus Harnack is oblivious to the cold, but not because of his obsession for academic pursuits. You see, Marcus Harnack has an incredible distraction, the beautiful brown girl who works in the chemistry lab.

Marcus first noticed her two weeks ago when he was glancing into classrooms looking for his chemistry professor. There she was, working as a lab assistant for another professor. As he peeked in the door she smiled at him, her beautiful white teeth contrasted against her brown skin. Awkwardly he asked if his professor was in the classroom, only to realize the stupidity of his statement. After all, it was a small room and it was obvious that his professor was not present. While Marcus was inwardly embarrassed about this slipup, she didn’t seem to notice. Since then Marcus has noticed her around the science building, but she is not in any of his classes. He’s found out that her name is Subani De Silva, a sophomore student from Sri-Lanka majoring in Chemistry/Pre-Med. Everyone seems to like her and there is another salient fact that has come to Marcus’ attention; she is always hanging around other girls, meaning that she probably doesn’t have a boyfriend!

Subani is a bona fide distraction for the always studious Marcus. This girl is beautiful! When she walks down the hall, her dark brown hair flipping off her shoulders, it drives him mad! The problem is, Marcus is a bit shy, particularly where women are concerned. Other than his two clumsy appearances at the junior and senior prom, Marcus didn’t date much in High School. While he got along with his friends, he wasn’t part of the “in crowd” and despised the social aspects of high school. The day Marcus graduated he walked away from Hubbard High vowing never to go near the place again. Even the job at the foundry was better than High School.

Too shy to phone or speak directly to Subani, Marcus decided to take the coward’s way out and send her an email. No one will ever accuse Marcus of being an author. After writing and re-writing his email letter for over an hour, Marcus’ best, boldest, poetic effort looked like this:

“Dear Subani: You might remember a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for my professor in the chemistry class. Well, that was me, Marcus. My last name is Harnack and I’m from right here in Hubbard. I hear that you are from Sri Lanka. I don’t know much about that part of the world. Well, maybe I’ll see you around in the chemistry department soon. — Marcus”

The second after he sent the email, Marcus experienced immediate “correspondence remorse”. “That email was so dumb”, thought Marcus. ”She will never write me back.”

In her dorm Subani sits at her computer waiting for the cafeteria to open. She still hasn’t gotten that cute guy off her mind since he stuck his head in her classroom two weeks ago. She knows his name is Marcus and he is from Hubbard. Someone told her that he works in a foundry. Her parents would die if they knew she was even on speaking terms with a foundry worker. In Sri Lanka, medical doctors, scientists and engineers would be the only acceptable courtship candidates for a De Silva daughter. Suddenly Subani’s computer beeps and she goes to her email. She reads the note from Marcus and her heart leaps with excitement! She stands up from her chair, no longer hungry. “Oh, my God, he knows I exist! What am I going to do now?” she exclaims.