Addendum-New Orleans

As I walked down the stairs to the smell of freshly sizzling bacon, the sound of a large breakfast being made for the family, I realized I was terribly bereaved. I felt a sense of emptiness inside that grated on me really hard, and I was having trouble dealing with it. I stuck it down into my subconscious and left it alone.

John and Kimmy had taken the workers back home last night, I was too distraught to do that. Everyone saw that, and they organized two van loads back to Fargo without me saying word one. Some things just don’t need to be said to be understood. I was very grateful that they could recognize that. I’m not sure I could have successfully completed the drive.

As I was walking into the kitchen, people from all over the farm were coming in to the main house and down the stairs, as it was time for breakfast. Jeffery was in the kitchen directing all the cooking. Full family breakfasts were always an event. It was served at the big table in the dining room, from a buffet table off to the side.

It wasn’t a fancy breakfast, but we all believed in eating full cooked breakfasts. It required a lot of work to use the not-quite-large-enough kitchen to produce a full breakfast of scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage, bacon, toast, and potatoes. Jimmy and Jeffery had the sausage and bacon frying in the frying pan and the electric griddle, to produce the grease necessary for the preparation of the rest of the meal.

Mary Ann was off in the corner grinding the coffee to put in the big urn. Samantha was mixing the pancake batter in a large bowl next to her. Jason was chopping up potatoes.

“Jeff, is there anything I can do?” I asked.

He looked around, “Yeah, crack eggs into a bowl for me.”

I went to a pair of trays of two and half dozen eggs each, and started cracking them into a few large bowls, breaking the yolks with the shells as I went. Cooking a full breakfast for twenty adults and children and three babies was a production, doubly so in a kitchen that, while originally big when the house was built, was not designed for preparing so much food.

It was doable for dinner meals, because much is prepared beforehand- and we had three kitchens on the farm that could be used for it. But breakfast food requires preparation just before serving, and it didn’t make sense to carry dishes over from the other two houses. Proposals to expand the kitchen with more commercial-grade appliances- like a griddle- had been batted around before, but Jeffery insisted he could manage these breakfasts without that.

When I was done breaking the eggs, I added cream, salt, and pepper, and I put one of the three big bowls onto the mixers turntable and turned the mixer on. After a minute, I switched bowls, and then did it again after another minute. By this point the bacon and sausages had been completed, and were taken to appropriate chafing dishes out in the dining room. Mary Ann started scrambling eggs in batches in the frying pan, and Jeffery made pancakes on the griddle, while Jimmy was dropping potatoes into the deep fryer.

Toasting the bread was done in the main oven, 40 slices of bread. We often had leftover food from full family breakfasts, but we made each non-infant 3 eggs, two slices of bacon, two sausages, two pancakes, two slices of toast, and a good size helping of potatoes. Full family breakfasts were not what was eaten every day; it was generally done once a week. Breakfast at our house generally consisted of 2 eggs however the person wanted them, either two strips of bacon or two sausages, potatoes or baked beans, and toast, for example.

When the meal preparation was done, all the food was in chafing dishes in the dining room, and there was a line of people scooping their fill onto their plates. My father was still the major subject of discussion. We all agreed, without much debate, that the farm work would resume tomorrow, although I felt the need to do a supply run to the restaurant and store with one of the farm Sprinters today.

It would be less than ideal, since they weren’t refrigerated, but it was cold enough outside that if I left the heater off, it should be fine. I’d just have to dress warm. But the store had to keep on going. It wasn’t so much the money as the fact that our customers depended on us for produce, meat, and dairy. I didn’t want to disappoint them, let them down, or possibly lose them to another co-op. Plus the employees needed the work, and the money from it.

After breakfast, Frank, John, Jason, and I started loading everything that was ready to go to the store into the van. It wasn’t quite a full load. The deliveries had, of course, stopped, but so had the production work. It was a problem because even though I had swapped into a bigger van last year, we were already at the point of it being inadequate. We were debating whether to upgrade to a larger Freightliner box truck, or make trips every day. I would need to get another person to make some of the trips, though, as driving the hour and half each way everyday would get to be a bit much.

“Want me to come with you?” John asked.

“Sure,” I said, “I could use the company.”

We set off from the farm towards the interstate. While not full, this model was a 3/4 ton, and was overloaded. It also was equipped with the four-cylinder diesel, rather than the V6, so it was a bit underpowered. The driving was a bit on the slow side and required more care than with my 1-ton V6. I don’t know why the weight ratings are specified that way- the standard LWB 2500 Sprinter (supposedly a 3/4 ton) could carry 3200 lbs (1.6 tons), and my V6 3500 LWB EXT could carry 4800lbs (2.4 tons). And the new Sprinter 4500 1.5 ton could carry 6200 lbs (3.1 tons). Obviously I am digressing.

“How are you feeling, dad?”

“Like I’ve been gutted,” I replied, “Guilty and it reminds me I gave up on my mother.”

“I sometimes feel that way, dad,” John replied, “But at least in my case she’s done that to herself.”

“Don’t be so harsh on her, John,” I said, “She finds your life hard to understand.”

“She hates Kimmy,” John argued, “How can anyone of right mind hate Kimmy? She’s the kindest, sweetest, hardest working, most loving, person I’ve ever met.”

“Well of course you feel that way,” I pointed out, “You married her, after all. Your mother can’t see her for who she is.”

“Enough that she refuses to ever see her?”

Apparently, yes. John went back to Nevada with his mom after my wedding. Kimmy and John kept in touch through cellphone for a couple of months, until Jenny found out that they were talking. She forbade him from talking to her, and tried to take away John’s cellphone. John bought a burner phone and defied his mother.

Kelly had wielded a bit of her influence to get John into University of North Dakota’s law school. It took a surprising amount of doing, because they prefer to take students from in-state. But his transcripts were immaculate, his recommendations extremely earnest, and his test scores were top notch. With the strong intervention of a departmental dean of another state university, his admission was foregone, though.

We didn’t really know anybody in Grand Forks, so getting him a job and a place to live while he was up at school was difficult, but we managed it. Jenny flat out refused to cover even one cent of the cost of the school. Cheryl wanted no part of this kind of argument; this was the kind of thing she detested most of all- families not getting along. In the end, Kelly agreed to loan him the money to go.

At first he was up there in Grand Forks alone most of the time; Kimmy went up to visit him frequently, and I went to visit him sometimes. He was trying to get along without a car, until my dad gave him his old Mercedes 240D. Then he’d come down to visit Kimmy almost as often as she visited him, and he came down to Fargo from time to time. Jenny would call me up frequently to try and convince me to pry them apart from each other.

She got so obnoxious that despite preparations for starting our store in Fargo, I hopped on a train and went to Reno via Chicago.

“Its not right,” she said, “That slut is like a daughter to you.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I said, “If somebody was to call Susan a slut, what would you do?”

“She isn’t a slut.”

“Neither is Kimmy,” I replied, “John is the only man she’s ever been with.”

“They’ve had sex already?” Jenny had steam coming out of her ears.

“You can’t have it both ways,” I said, “She can’t be a virgin slut.”

“Don’t be a bastard.”

“I’m not being a bastard,” I replied, “You are being preposterous.”

“How am I being preposterous?”

“You hate me-”

“I don-”

“Don’t deny it,” I retorted, “And you do so because I wasn’t there, as the love of your life, and then I deserted you and turned into somebody else. You don’t see them together, so I’m going to tell you this unequivocally: those kids are deeply in love. You don’t like me, and you don’t like my family, so you want to keep your son away from them. You want to tear him away from the love of his life because I did it to you. Because you don’t like my family.”

‘I can’t lose him to this family, too.”

“You don’t have to lose him to my family,” I said to her, “That’s entirely up to you. You can join our family and interact with it at any time you want.”

“They are insane.”

“To quote Bruce Feinstein, ‘The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.’ So I’d say they-”

“How are they successful?”

“Are you happy?”

“No, goddamnit, Johnny.”

“Then they have one up on you.”

“HAPPINESS IS NOT SUCCESS!” She screamed at me, her face turning bright red.

“Who’s insane now?” I replied, “Happiness is the ultimate success. If you are happy, you’ve won. If you aren’t, how could you have done anything but lost?”

“That’s your fault,” she steamed.

“I’m guilty as charged,” I said, “But if you lose your son to this, that is your fault. I am not going to stop him from loving a truly wonderful girl.”

“I don’t really have a choice,” she said, “But I am not going up there, and I don’t want that two bit harlot coming to see me. Ever.”

“That is your prerogative,” I replied, very sad, and extremely exasperated, “Just do yourself a favor and stop harassing John. He’s going to change his number if you keep this up. He doesn’t deserve your rancor.”

“I’ll do what I like,” she said, “Now get the fuck out of my house.”

Remember my reference to The Beach Boys “Caroline, no?” Its so sad to watch a sweet thing die.

She did keep harassing him. He kept asking me what he should do, and I kept telling him that this choice, he must make himself. He begged Kimmy to tell him what to do, but she said the same thing: she was not going to tell him to turn his back on his mother. It was, as often the case, my father who finally ended the mess.

My dad told him to tell her that she was making his life miserable, and that he didn’t want to break off all communication. But for his sanity, if she kept doing this, he was going to. My dad told him to give her my dads number, and that if she needed to get in touch, call my dad. That’s what John did, and she’d call my dad all the time and scream at him. God bless him, my dad never changed his number. He’d always answer her, and try to calm her down.

After John cut communication with his mother, Kimmy moved up with him; this was about 2012. John graduated from the school, and then got a job working as a paralegal as he studied for his bar exam. He passed it on the first try, in early 2014. He got a job working for a small law firm in Grand Forks. He wanted some experience before going into practice for himself.

After working for the firm for a year, Kimmy and John finally got married. I’m not sure if it was because Kimmy got pregnant with Mark, but he was a bit premature if it wasn’t. I called Jenny, to invite her to the wedding, and she flew off the handle at all of us again. She couldn’t accept it, even after over five years of them being together and very much in love.

As a wedding present, Cheryl gave John the money he had given Kelly so far- about half of it- and Kelly forgave the rest of the loan. By this point, the complexity and size of our farm’s enterprise had grown enough that we needed to have a lawyer, so we also helped him establish a small practice in Hillsboro. He was the only lawyer in town- so he got a decent business from it, too.

We sent them off on a honeymoon to the Broadmore in Colorado Springs. They came back looking just as happy and as in love as ever.

The birth of Mark was very special, as he was my first blood grandchild. I had successfully produced a third generation from myself, and I was there for its birth, and to help raise it; something that I didn’t think would be possible for a long time in my life. I was only 49 at the time; my dad that was only 11 years older than my dad was when I was born. All things going well, I would be able to watch him grow into a young man.

Kimmy was a very firm devotee of the system that she was raised under, and after what had happened with his mother, John tended to feel both sides- the depth of societal judgement against perceived incest, and the value of a closely raised family that remained supportive and understanding no matter what happened. They elected to continue living off the farm, but only being as far away as Hillsboro, and Kimmy working on the farm, the Mark grew up off the farm as much as on it.

Cheryl was ecstatic to now have another set of kids producing grandkids, especially as Kimmy was already 6 months pregnant with her second kid, who the doctor said was likely a girl. She doted on Mark the same way she doted on Jared, Violet, and Kevin before him, and Serena the year after him.

We were never at a loss for people to talk with, people to ask for help, people to tell stories to. Kimmy and Kelly remained as tight as they had been growing up, and Mark and Mary spent a lot of time together, as Kelly and Kimmy were always visiting each other’s houses. Kelly was, otherwise, the most distant from the farm, of all of Cheryl’s kids, as she was very absorbed in her career. I drove the supply truck to the farm frequently; she only managed to get out on weekends and the occasional weekday.

Kelly and I got along in an almost scary way, considering the fact that we spent a lot of time apart. We both worked full week schedules, me running the store, her running her department, and teaching her full teaching schedule. But the truth is, she was emotionally close to her family in a way that was debilitative to her career. Fargo was as far as she was willing to get from the farm, at least permanently.

As time got on, John effectively gave up on his mother. I think it is going to get worse now that my dad isn’t there to keep the line on communication. As with Rachel, it was beyond my comprehension that you could give up love for your child and grandchildren despite them doing stuff you consider being wrong. I could get it if it was murder or something like that, but this was just falling in love with someone inconvenient.

We pulled into the restaurant in the morning, and unloaded what it needed for the next few days. We could always buy supplied for it from somewhere else; there were a few other places to get local food, albeit in my opinion not quite as good. But the main chef for the restaurant was going to be missing for another day, so it was not going to be at its best anyway. The sous chef seemed to have a grasp on what he was doing, though, which gave me some hope.

After the restaurant we drove the rest of the supplies to my deeply de-stocked store. They were out of a lot of our more popular items, and one of the workers had the thoughtfulness to put out a poster sign apologizing to our customers, and explaining the low inventory was a result of a death in the family.

We were out of all fresh meat, and I didn’t have anything to remedy the situation. We had not butchered anything fresh since the morning my dad died, four days ago. I was able to restock the more processed meats; the sausages and deli loaves, as well as the things that had extensive smoking. I was able to replenish what was left of the corn, although we were getting late enough into the season that corn was not going to be on the menu much longer.

I also brought a slightly tardy fresh bunch of apples; our first pick of the year. The cider had not been produced yet, so I didn’t have that. I was able to re-supply the cheese and wool products ok. I also had a few cases of liquor for delivery. I was beginning to realize that we really needed to spool up production as quickly as possible.

I called the farm, and found out that the employees at the farm had already taken it upon themselves to restart as much as they could. I told Samantha to slaughter a few animals so we could butcher them tomorrow, and I could take a full van load back tomorrow night or the next day. Getting back to work would help us move the grieving process along. My dad would have wanted us to carry on with our work.

John drove back the farm van, and I got into my stores reefer van to bring it back to Fargo for a full load once we had gotten enough things ready to reload it. It would probably take another week before we were fully back on schedule, and it was important to get everything back on time. I was really pleased Nick was taking charge of the store, rather then letting it fall into chaos.

The key to success is caring about your suppliers, your employees, and your customers. You want to give your suppliers fair money for the supplies, pay your employees a fair compensation package for their work, and charge your customers a fair price for top quality merchandise. If you can manage to build a decent profit into that equation, your success is almost a foregone conclusion. Thanksgiving was a bit over a month away; we needed to be at full strength by then; we already had a ton of turkey and large ham orders.

I hadn’t always been a huge foodie, actually. If it wasn’t for Ambrosine, I probably would never have become one, but thats the weird way of the world, I suppose. Its natural that things happen in weird an unexpected ways. As I drove I thought about it...

The year was 1985, and I had just left the burned hulk of Sadie’s Cadillac not far from Springfield, Missouri. I had booked a bus to a town called Carbondale, IL. It seemed appropriate given the burned out nature of the Cadillac to go to a place named for Carbon. I mean, it made as much sense as anything else. It was a long bus ride, about 12 hours with a transfer in St. Louis.

Carbondale turned out to be not much of a town, and I decided to instead get on a train to New Orleans. While the train left a little after midnight, I had just burned up most of my money in the fire of the destroyed Cadillac, so I was economizing, and took coach. In those days, the City of New Orleans, as the train was named, ran concurrently with a Kansas City-New Orleans via Centralia train called The River Cities, and both carried coaches and sleepers, as well as lounge cars, and the City of New Orleans carried a full service diner.

The coach car I was riding in was an old Budd-built dome-coach, and so I let myself nod off to sleep under the starts riding in the old dome. It was a very pretty way to ride, and for some reason most people kept to the lower level of the car which made it very peaceful. I had a good nights sleep until around Batesville, Mississippi, when the morning light, of course, woke me up to the brilliance of the sunrise on the Mississippi River.

The brilliance of the sunrise was compatible with the idyllic nature of the day outside the speeding train. The weather was supposed to be in the low-70s, with decently low humidity, and skies with only a smattering of clouds. The relentless Amtrak shades-of-brown interior was a contrast the bucolic color of the countryside speeding by out the windows.

I was still a little shaken up about the episode with Sadie and Daphne in the weeks before. I was still angry at myself. Not suicidally angry, not set a Cadillac on fire angry, but with a distinct amount of it, still. It was the kind of anger that comes with deep disappointment in yourself. As Rachel believed, this was one of the great breaking points in my life, where my innocence and idealism got dealt the first major hammer blow on the way to becoming dust.

I still respected myself; I had bent, but not broken. I was also lonely. Marty had provided companionship and a way forward, which fate had taken from both of us. Sadie had provided company; as had Daphne. Now I was alone, and wondering if it was worth it to try to make long-term bunking friends in this lifestyle. I had left home barely a year ago, or thereabouts. The set of life had not quite solidified.

All kinds of choices had not yet been made. I was still malleable, to a great extent. The stories in my head have taken on a different shape over the past ten years, melded by my understanding that my relationship with Suzie had not been as innocent as I had forced myself to believe. It would be ... strange if I didn’t remember that this early in the process. Reviewing my memories in that light, and my journals, I had connected some different dots, reading between the lines.

I wasn’t paranoid yet, not taken to hiding from society with the same vim and vigor that would come to grip me as the years went on. I felt like I would be returning home soon, in another year and a half or so. This adventure still existed in what I assumed to be definite space and time. It would end with a tearful reunion with Suzie, and then we would live happily ever after.

By this time some of my personal aspirations had changed, tellingly. I no longer really had an interest in journalism. I had been involved with too many small businesses, and I had realized that running one was what I wanted to do. The real fibers of our country were held together by the can do spirit of those who would set out to live on their own, doing their own thing, on as much of their own terms as they could muster, rather than those who simply punched a clock doing scut work for somebody else for a fraction of the profit they generated.

My ruminations were cut short due to my substantial hunger that morning, having not really eaten much since the hotel in Tulsa, so I made my way to the train’s dining car. It was also in Amtrak Shades-of-brown, a likely recently refurbished “Heritage” car that had likely originally graced one of the great stainless-steel streamliners of railroad lore. The train was not particularly crowded, and I was seated with an very pretty lady of medium dark skin wearing a very lovely baby blue dress with white trim and long sleeves. She had long, straight black hair, soft brown eyes, a flattish nose, and very warm and friendly face.

It was BC times (before coffee) and so conversation was not currently on the menu we were both consulting. The attendant asked us what we both wanted to drink, and we replied, in perfect unison, “Coffee!”, and we laughed. Thusly, we broke the ice on that beautiful Mississippi motioning, and we went about ordering; we ordered similar items. It was a fairly standard breakfast menu; we both ordered eggs, potatoes, sausage, and toast. It was simple American breakfast faire, prepared well but simply.

“What makes you take the train?” I asked the woman.

“I was visiting family in Memphis,” she replied with a very mild New Orleans/Cajun twang, “Having seven hours to clear my head each way is good good compared to the mess of flying, yes sir.”

“I just hate flying,” I said, “I only did it once on a trip to Florida with my family and my best friends family.”

“You seem to be alone, Mr... ?”

“Johnny,” I said, “Mister is my dad. Yes, I’m traveling the country at the moment. I like to see new places, work little jobs, and move on eventually. Such a beautiful country to stay in one place for too long, I say. What’s your name, missus?”

“Miss,” she replied, “Ambrosine, Ambrosine LaRogue, I own a small little restaurant in the French Quarter, on Dauphine street.”

“I heard the food in New Orleans was pretty good,” I said.