JFA, Inc. News Release Communiqué de Presse Comunicato Stampa Pressemitteilung             Comunicado de Prensa                      Four D’s in May Dubuque, The Dog, The Drive, and The Denver JFA Driving through the Heartland  of America May 2011 Dubuque I knew I was going to leave Dubuque last Thanksgiving 2010. As soon as I left Dubuque to begin a five hour ride to go to Minneapolis to spend a weekend with friends and family, the thought struck me that my closest tie to this community was mainly a 15 year old neighbor boy. He did all sorts of errands for me, I would call him my aide de camp and who would come over and want to jam ; our joint guitar rendition of Sweet Home Alabama is really pretty good. Get up, shake and clap your hands! Sure I had lots of friends and ties to the local Unitarian church and wrote a column for the local paper  and belonged to a neat foreign relations group,  but my support system and the reborn professional career I wanted to start was in Minneapolis, a 5 hour drive away. The unexpected death of your soul mate that had all deep the connections to the community finally hit me square in the face. Being there alone just didn’t’ feel  right. And I eventually I wanted, if not needed to find a chum. To find someone in Dubuque would be harder and take much longer had lot so of alone time to think out the rest of my life in that big lonely house. Every room in that big house with marvelous, tall, light filled windows overlooking the forest that we planted brought a poignant memory, as did how we gave Emma our black but somewhat graying Lab mutt a workout every morning. We would take our orange Kubota side by side tractor and tell Emma to run and we would do several laps on the various trials that we made. The Kubota was even a necessity for me as my knees had given out and I couldn’t even walk 100 feet without tremendous pain. And Margo of course had all those hip issues. There were some woods at the back of our land and Emma would go sniffing there and do her business. It was perfect, but now even that Kubota is up for sale.I did keep the quaint cottage in the Galena Territories in Illinois 30 miles from Dubuque and do plan to spend a lot of time there writing, and kayaking. So if you need a serene retreat surrounded by quiet if somewhat boring rich people from Chicago this is it! But I will not leave Dubuque in number of ways. I will keep my accountant, picture framer, personal physician, car dealer, and optometrist. And as a part time Galena resident, I hope to keep contributing relevant commentary to the TH (Telegraph Herald).But I will miss the land and the landscaping we did replete with waterfall which will be painful to see again as I will be there for the close May31st when all the tress we planted will be all green and leaping with new growth. In Dubuque, not too far from the mighty Mississippi, we had a new tree landscaped  1.5 acres which was down from the 12 acres  we had in Lexington Virginia and 4 acres much earlier in leafy Golden Valley outside of Minneapolis but still enough for Emma to go romping. But my subsequent move to a big townhouse in Minneapolis to a place with no land made me feel guilty for Emma. Emma also likes to swim and every day lovingly eyed the shimmering pond off of the back deck.Ok it was a little murky as well. The Dog Although I found some temporary ways to allow her space to run in her new surroundings, I could not provide the companionship and love she needed. She always wagged her tail as I walked by hoping I would stop to rub her tummy or throw a ball or something. I also realized that in 9 years I had never put leash round her neck (a requirement in the community where I live) or ever picked up after her; we always had lots of land for her to frolic in. I do have a James Bond ego image of myself and I never could accommodate the thought of walking around with a plastic bag of warm and moist poop; I asked myself “Would James Bond do this?” So I sent emails and called everyone I knew (you probably got one) and one of my daughters put Emma’s plight on Facebook. Two of my daughters said they would disown me if I took Emma to the dog pound. Emma was sacred in that she ( and me I suppose at some level ) are the last living vestiges of my wife so to see one pass out of sight was hard for them. Finally a colleague of my daughter’s liked what she read about Emma and wanted her –in Denver and me in Minneapolis. It was electronic match making at its finest and I sent a nice letter and additional photos. They have a 14 year old dog and wanted another one (a calm one for their 3 young boys). I didn’t have to mention if: Emma liked to walk barefoot on the beach, or go out to dinner, the theater, whether she went to college or not and that she liked to travel the world. And of course Emma did not smoke but did not go to college although she was around two master’s degree owners for nine years. And right before we left for Denver, as a good will gesture, I let Emma jump into the pond off my townhouse and swim and grime through the mud for a half hour; she was in doggie heaven. The Drive The famous author john Steinbeck once wrote a book called Travels with Charley, his dog, and dealing with all their wanderings throughout America. Steinbeck took the trip because he knew he was dying and wanted to see America once last time.  I took the trip as part of a plan to start a new life after this one ended so abruptly. So this could be called Travels with Emma on the way to Denver and without Emma on the way back. And this drive also taught me that Minneapolis is not my last residence in this lifetime. I still long for the trees and forest we had in Southwest Virginia, and so I might be going back there as I will in the Fall or New Zealand where I will also go shortly. And why not? Minneapolis to Denver is 1000 miles and with today’s’ gas prices is more expensive to drive than to fly. However I really dislike flying these days and decided to put Emma in the back of the spirited BMW          ( drove mostly at 90 mph)  and go, she would pop up her head once in a while to see if anything was happening, saw that I was just driving, and go back to a catatonic snooze. I could hear her snoring. Even a huge dark and ugly thunderstorm that enveloped us driving through Omaha did not wake her.  Emma always wanted to go for rides in the car and so sitting back there in the boot is Ok if you have water and food. I took the quick way out on Interstates (35w, 80, and 76) and so there were plenty of rest areas for me and Emma. And as a writer of ten things at once I could use the time to think; I hardly listen to the radio or play audio books. We drove as far as Grand Island Nebraska the first night and stayed in a less than plush Super 8 that allowed dogs, it was just 10 bucks extra but I don’t know if that was for  me or the dog. Grand Island is in the middle of nowhere (from this perspective) and has two Wall Marts no less. I patronized one as it got really cold and had to buy something warm and found an US $8 sweat shirt which lasted all of eight hours before disintegrating into balls of fuzz and the zipper flew off as well. The next day I had breakfast in Kearney (pronounced karney) Nebraska whose entrance is guarded by a 9 million dollar fort transversing the interstate. It serves the same purpose as the St. Louis Arch but is rustic, wide, made of wood and very cool. Emma and I drove into Kearney to looking to have breakfast at some place other than a Perkin’s or Denny’s. The old part of town had brick streets, new lampposts et. al. But was commercially dead except of Tex’s which is the old time breakfast watering hole and lots of little stores for the Latinos in town. You immediately noticed that Tex’s  had a  dozen or so workers who were all women and the patrons middle age white men like me but wearing faded baseball caps. I told the owner I liked their “Tex’s” T-shirts and would like to buy five and she yelled out “Girls take off you T-shirts this guy wants to buy your shirts.” Turns out that they had sold out their entire inventory and that all that was left was on their backs. It was a nice thriving town overall and the irony of my breakfast stop there was that the person who bought our house in Dubuque is from Kearney: a physician whose specialties are Diarrhea and Vomiting-and I was complaining about by my image carrying dog poop! And it was in Kearney that you began to realize that the topography began to rise which would eventually get to 5,000 feet at Denver. Driving across and stopping in the heartland of the US you notice three distinct ethnic groups; whites, Latinos, and American Indians. The whites are the power structure in each town and able to afford the shops that have set up outside the traditional town centers. The Latinos congregate in the towns that have processing facilities and do the grunt work. They shop at the mini towns that have set up in the decaying town centers where no big stores are located any more. There are tons of radio programs in Spanish and in the motels I stopped in almost as many Spanish channels on the TV as one in English. Then there are the sad American Indians who lived throughout the heartland but now live in reservations and just look awful when they wander into town. I drove back on the back roads and in Chadron Nebraska I saw the saddest scene: a man and his wife both alcoholics-you could tell by their red extended noses and a daughter obviously on meth (by the skin blotches she had) was hunched over and walking into a store. The allowable vices as you drive across America sometimes amaze you. In Nebraska you can buy alcohol anywhere but there no casinos. In South Dakota there are casinos everywhere even in gas stations- slotting machines but liquor is not allowed to be sold on Indian reservations.   The Denver Growing by leaps and bounds, new freeways, developments and a young active population Denver is beyond vibrant. The Old Stapleton airport is now a big box shopping center and Cherry Creek’s shops can match Rodeo Drive in Hollywood any time; a US $1,000 Hermes scarf anyone?  I went to a doggie beauty saloon when I got to Denver and  cleaned Emma up a bit. Then a took her to her new family and everyone seemed content. Emma rolled over and all the boys started to rub her tummy. After visting a number of local eateries with my daughter I headed out for Steamboat Springs , three hours north and deeper into the Rockies. Why? A renaissance man by the name of Duncan Otis, but known as Pock lived there, and invited me up to stay a couple of days with him. The drive was spectacular and you quickly felt the altitude. I definitely am not ready for the Mt. Everest trek. I got light headed at a 10,000 foot pass and had to stop and get my bearings as the elevation got to me. Pock was a former Peace Corps Volunteer like me and now was advisng companies on how to get into business in Asaia. Through a long convoluted series of events he was hanging out for a couple of months in this mountain lined, condo filled community. It was fun to meet an intellectual soul mate and since he will be moving back to the Twin Cities I will see a lot of him. And we commiserated about having to drive   the long  478 miles through Nebraska to get to the Twin Cities. Since it was May there were few skiers and no summer tourists and rightfully so as the climate was so unpredictable. In the three days I was there it snowed two and the other was 70 degrees. Neat shops were throughout the town and I even bought myself a pair of cowboy boots. Again “why not?” and the first time since the Peace Crops that I have had a pair. I drove back well really meandered  on the side roads through the Black Hills and stayed one night the Cedar Shores resort in Chamberlain South Dakota overlooking the Missouri River on 1-90. I had always stayed here before with Margo, driving on our way to Wyoming and points West.  And it is here where I say the West begins. And now knowing Emma has happier surroundings  a new stage in my life has begun as well.