Reminiscing in the Bear Den

By Tom DeBruyckere

Tom DeBruyckere has never met a stranger. That’s a running theme in Reminiscing in the Bear Den, where he shares stories of the people he’s met, the people who have filled his memories, and the people who became his friends. These interactions shaped his world view and this collection of stories illustrates how, no matter how long the person remained in his life, the connection remains strong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543910094

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After a certain age, when time and nature have taken away our ability to do certain physical activities, we begin to reminisce about particular events in our lives. Sometimes, this happens in your late 20s or early 30s when you get together with friends and talk about, as Bruce Springsteen sang, Glory Days. But the reminiscing I’m writing about is more personal and solitary and usually begins in your 50s or 60s when life slows down a little compared with the hectic days of family and career of younger years. The designated favorite spot for reminiscing varies for different people; it could be a rocking chair or a swing on the porch, a window seat, a chair in the kitchen with a view of the backyard, or a chair in the living room or den. My favorite reminiscing spot happens to be a comfortable La-Z-Boy chair upstairs in the game room tucked in a dormer space where I can see the tall fir trees in our backyard from the skylights and hear the rain and breeze; I call this my Bear Den.

The following stories about my life are memories that I frequently reminisce about as I spend time in my Bear Den. This is not really a true autobiography, as many important events in my life are left out; these are just some of the memories about which I reminisce. They are all true, but some of the names have been changed or omitted to protect the guilty, and because I was raised in the land of Paul Bunyan, it is possible that some of the facts may be a little enhanced. Three years ago (January 2013), I was diagnosed with lymphoma, and after two years of cancer treatment, I retired and began using my Bear Den to take afternoon naps to recover. The naps were preceded by a few minutes of reminiscing about great events in my life, and I wanted to record some of these stories for the future entertainment of family and friends.

It isn’t by accident that most of these stories are positive and humorous. It isn’t that I haven’t had my share of difficulties, losses, and sadness. It is just that when I am in the Bear Den, I tend to focus on the positive and fun. I have noticed while reminiscing in the Bear Den how many everyday things I have enjoyed. It isn’t that I don’t have wonderful memories of great vacations or special events, but I really enjoy the memory of the simple everyday things I’ve experienced throughout my life. Not everyone has to live a life of great adventure and worldly travels to have enjoyed life in their own way. I think it is important that we focus less on what we are missing out on—because we don’t live the glamorous lives of some other people—and instead focus on the great joys we do have in our lives. Just because someone else does something you haven’t done, it doesn’t mean your life isn’t fulfilled. Do what you love, enjoy what you do, and share it with special people.

I grew up in rural southwest Minnesota on a farm. The closest town was Ghent, population just over 300 with a Catholic church, a Catholic school (up to sixth grade), two bars, a gas station, and a small grocery store. Growing up on a farm as a boy with a lot of energy was a fantastic life. We were poor, but with the fresh food that we grew, I was never hungry, except during Lent and before Sunday church service, when fasting was enforced by my mother regardless of the fact that I was a growing boy burning a lot of calories doing farm work (more about that later). I was a very dorky kid. I needed glasses from the first grade; I was extremely skinny until midway through high school; and, as I said, we were poor, which meant I got hand-me-down clothes from my older brother who was huge compared with me and buzz cuts from my dad (and this was in the late 1960s and 1970s when long hair was cool). The Catholic school I attended for the first six years had only three girls in our class and after the third grade, only two girls. They were wonderful and cute, but with my dorky looks and limited odds. I focused on studying, reading (I had read every book in the small school library by fourth grade), and playing sports at recess. I was skinny but fast and tough, which often caused issues with the glasses I was wearing. Because funds were limited, a pair of glasses had to make it a whole year, which meant that my glasses had a lot of tape and glue by the end of the year. I got better at saving an old pair of glasses for sports, but if I didn’t happen to have my old pair and a football game was going on, I wasn’t going to miss it—so, even the new glasses often were held together with electrical tape.

I attended St. Eloi Catholic School in Ghent from first through sixth grade. We had nuns at the school, they were not my favorite, especially the one who seemed to care only about music, and I have zero musical talent (a funny story about that in eighth grade). The lay teachers were great, especially Mrs. Arnes. She taught fourth and fifth grade at the same time. In the same room, half the class was fourth grade and half was fifth grade. She would teach one grade for 30 minutes while the other studied and did homework and then she would switch. She was incredibly patient and kind and made learning, as well as how to learn, a priority over memorizing answers for a test. The school had a paved area for playing sports (which also doubled as extra parking for the church on Sundays), which made playing softball interesting——not much sliding or diving for balls. Luckily, we also had a small grassy area to play football, but unfortunately, one side had a fence that was also one of the sidelines. More than once, I was pushed into this fence while running the ball. You would think that we would have avoided this side of the field, but the other sideline was the edge of the pavement and being tackled there wasn’t much better. The other cool thing about this grassy field is that one end was out of sight of the main area. It had a culvert that we could crawl through to get on the other side of the road and uptown to the store (which was forbidden during school hours). The storeowner would let it slide occasionally, but if it happened too often, he would call the school and suddenly a teacher would be posted in view of our escape culvert for few weeks.

Catholic school meant attending a religion class and mass every day as well as training to be an altar boy. I enjoyed the history and the pageantry of the religion, but even from an early age, I never really believed many of the stories. I remember telling one of the nuns that I thought that Jesus was an alien and was beamed up like in Star Trek and that is why he was so good at healing and miracles—he had the cool medical devices like Dr. McCoy on Star Trek. She did not think that was amusing and threatened to tell my mother, which scared me to death. I quickly changed my beliefs (at least that is what I told her). More than getting in trouble with the nuns, I feared the threat that my mother would find out I had gotten into trouble. She always threatened that if she ever found out I got in trouble in school that I’d be punished 10 times as severely when I got home. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time was no excuse; just being around trouble was bad enough. That didn’t stop me from getting into trouble, but I worked hard at not getting caught.

Most of second-grade religion class in a Catholic school is devoted to preparing for the sacrament of First Communion in the spring. Communion is a big deal for Catholics and many hours of practice and studying go into the preparation of being able to properly receive the host and understand the significance of the sacrament. To those who are non-Catholic, communion is the moment during mass when the priest offers the host to each individual after it has been consecrated (this means turning the bread wafer into Jesus’s actual body), which I guess makes Catholics cannibals if you truly believe in the sacrament. In the winter of second grade (eight years old), I got severe pneumonia and had to be hospitalized. It was touch and go for a few days, and I even received the Last Rights, the sacrament you hope to receive just before you die because it gives you an express ride to heaven. A priest made the rounds each day to check on patients and provided communion to them. One day, when I was conscious enough to talk, he offered me communion. I told him that I had not yet finished my training for my First Communion. He assured me that it was okay, as I was very sick and needed all the help I could get. When I informed my mother of what had happened, it created a crisis and a scandal. Priests and nuns were consulted to help decide whether I still could go through the First Communion ritual. Had I committed a sin by receiving communion before my official First Communion? The decision was made that I could still go through the ritual with the rest of the class, but nobody else in the class could know. It was a very poorly kept secret among other classmates, but all of them had been sworn to secrecy by their parents. It was only many years later that a couple of my friends told me that they knew about what had happened and what an issue the whole situation had created. I just know I was the first in my class to receive communion.

I mentioned that I was an altar boy, which was supposed to be a great honor and privilege, but for me, it meant time away from Sunday activities like sports and hunting (especially in my high school years) and unbearably uncomfortable hot summer days. As I mentioned earlier, my mom was a stickler for the fasting rules during Lent and not eating before church. This meant that I would get up early on Sunday do a couple hours of chores and then would have to go perform altar boy services before being able to eat. On hot summer services (no air-conditioning) and wearing a couple of layers of heavy church garments this would cause me to get light-headed while standing during communion services. Once I left during communion services because I thought I was going to black out, which brought on the wrath of my mother, and she told me to tough it out in the future. A few weeks later, I was feeling the same way, but I was going to tough it out. The next thing I knew, I was dreaming that I was flying, and when I woke up, my grandfather and three other men were carrying me out of the church. I had fainted and the priest had tried to catch me from falling, which caused the sacred hosts to spill on the floor, quite embarrassing and I’m sure entertaining for many others. After that, I learned to sneak a little food before serving as an altar boy, which solved the fainting problem, but damned me to hell for eternity for breaking the fasting rule—the price to be paid to prevent future embarrassments. Serving as an altar boy did provide me with a great perspective on life and death that most young people don’t get to see too often, that is, serving at funerals. I knew the families, if not the individual, of every funeral service at which I was an altar boy, and I saw the grief from their loss and the comfort that the service provided. Many of the funerals were for World War I veterans and had a military service at the funeral. The playing of taps always made me tear up and this experience gave me a great respect for the service these veterans gave to their country. I mentioned the heavy garments that I wore as an altar boy that made serving in the hot summer uncomfortable; well, they were a blessing when standing graveside in extremely cold weather. I remember a number of times while serving for funerals in the winter that the holy water would freeze, which certainly made blessing the casket interesting.

After graduating from the sixth grade (St. Eloi in Ghent had only six grades), I entered St. Edwards Catholic School in Minneota. Minneota was a town of over 1,000 where I eventually would go to public high school (St. Edwards had only eight grades). Going to school in a place called Minneota, Minnesota, often drew a confused response when I first would tell someone where I went to school. I even made up a little rhyme about it Minneota, Minnesota, the place you got to go to, it sounds even better when you use a little Scandinavian accent (you know, the one from the movie Fargo) when you say it. Minneota was three times as big as Ghent, but didn’t have a bar when I was growing up there, and now they have a place that sells pizza and beer. St. Edwards was huge compared to Ghent, the class had more than 30 students compared with only seven in Ghent and almost half of the students were girls. The teachers were great, even the nuns. Sister St. Lucy was a terrific math teacher who instilled in me the love of math and logic that has helped me in life and my career. Ms. Becker was a terrific history teacher that encouraged my love of history and reading. She was also the music teacher, but much nicer than the mean music teacher at St. Eloi. Even though I was one of her favorite history students, her love of music triumphed over sparing my feelings about my music talent. Every year, the eighth-grade class would take a trip to St. Paul (the Minnesota state capital) for a music competition, and the school always performed well. In a small Catholic school, everyone participates in choir, including me. The week before going to St. Paul (or the cities as everyone called Minneapolis and St. Paul) Ms. Becker pulled me aside after choir practice and gently told me to just mouth the words when we were at the completion and not to sing. I’m not sure what our performance rating was from the music competition, but I did my part by mouthing the words. One classmate threw up on another classmate while we were getting ready to start the competition, and a snowstorm made the drive home quite difficult right after the competition. Was God disappointed that I wasn’t singing? It’s just something to think about.

I still was skinny and dorky, but now I began to get pimples—just to ensure that any girl in whom I may be interested was properly repulsed and thereby keeping me chaste and pure in actions, if not thought. One girl was kind to me (not physically attracted to me, but very kind) and taught me many of the hidden secrets of girls, like bra size and women-specific issues. We stayed great friends through high school, and I repaid her with help in history and math as well as doing my best to answer her questions about men-specific issues. She was the girlfriend of a good friend of mine, which was interesting because I heard both sides of a high school relationship. We lost touch after high school and, sadly, she died recently. I really would have liked to ask her whether she ever thought about the talks we had back then and to thank her for all the kindness she showed me and the insight she provided.

Growing up, I was a big Minnesota Vikings fan (I was so happy that my high school mascot was also the Vikings). Watching them on Sunday was a ritual, and I knew all the players and cried when they lost in Super Bowls and playoffs. In seventh grade during the winter offseason, some of the Minnesota Vikings players came to Minneota to play in a charity basketball game. I was ecstatic and was there as the gym opened so that I could get a seat behind their bench and watch them practice. They were led by Bench-Warmer Bob Lurtsema. He didn’t play much, as he was a backup lineman for one of the greatest lines in all of professional football, but he was a fan favorite and a great guy. I remember how big and fast the players were, and I was sitting right behind the bench; it was great. Toward the end of the game, Bob was going to shoot a free throw, but instead came over to me and brought me out to the court to shoot it for him. I was so nervous I barely hit the backboard, so for the next shoot he picked me up and held me over his head so I could dunk the basketball. Then he took pictures with me. I didn’t have a camera, so I don’t have a picture of that great moment, but I do have his autograph. He became my favorite Vikings from then on.

After graduating from eighth grade, my days of Catholic school ended, and I spent my high school years in a public school. To help the poor unfortunate Catholic kids who had to go to the ungodly public school, weekly classes were set up to help keep us on the straight and narrow Catholic path. These weekly classes were called CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) and usually were held on Wednesday nights. However, the last two years of high school, they were held on Sunday after church, which screwed up many Sunday activities and especially messed up Sunday football. About the only thing I learned from these classes is that not all religious people are good people, and I developed a deep fear of the dangers of religious brainwashing. That is about all I’m going to write about this, as it wasn’t a pleasant time. If it comes up while I’m in the Bear Den, I try to purge it from my mind as quickly as possible.

While going to public school, I was exposed to the Lutheran religion. Lutheran and Catholic was as much diversity as we got in southwest Minnesota. I’m guess there were people of other religions, but they didn’t have public places of worship, and I was never aware that any other religions existed. I still remember the fear and anxiety I caused my mother when the first person I dated as a junior in high school was a Lutheran, and not just a Lutheran but also the daughter of a Lutheran Minister (more about her later in the story). I’ll never forget my mother’s concern that I may actually marry her, and if that happened, in which religion the children would be raised—things many steps beyond what I was concerned about when I asked her out (like would she say yes and would she kiss me with braces and pimples).

I enjoyed high school, but there aren’t many things that are worthy of Bear Den time. I played sports and was pretty good, but other than winning some track races, I don’t often think about the organized sports I played in school. It was the friendships I made and activities outside of school that really stand out to me. I was the track MVP for two years, but even that memory usually doesn’t make it to the Bear Den. I had good teachers, liked school, and got good grades, but nothing significant really stands out as something worth sharing.

I do remember meeting a girl from Clara City at weekend youth camp, and we remained pen pals most of the way through high school. Her name was Shelia Jensen, and I still have some of the letters she wrote to me. They bring back great memories of that weekend just talking with her. I never heard from her after high school, even though she went to the same high school as my college roommate and best friend Greg. I should look her up some time and see whether she remembers me. In the next chapter, I cover growing up on the farm, which also includes the years I attended grade school and high school, but not many specific high school memories are worthy of the Bear Den.

Growing up on a farm in rural Southwest Minnesota was great for a boy who loved the outdoors and had a lot of energy. I can’t imagine the trouble I would have gotten into if I had grown up in a big city. Our farm was three miles from the nearest town, Ghent, population just over 300. The town where I went to high school, Minneota, population just over 1,000, was seven miles away, and the metropolis of Marshall, population just over 10,000, was 10 miles away. It was more than 90 miles to a city Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and more than 150 miles to a real city, that is, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. We had a telephone, but it was a party line, which meant a number of neighbors would share the same line. Therefore, before you would make a call, you’d have to see whether any of the neighbors were on the phone, which also was a good way to check on local neighborhood news. Many of our neighbors were Dad’s fishing and hunting buddies, so when they were planning something, they would all just get on the party line, the original conference call.

We lived on a gravel road and right across the road was another farm, unusual in farm country, but great for me, as the family was terrific. Ken, the oldest, was two years younger than I was, and Cheri, his sister, was three years younger than I was. They also had four younger sisters and brothers. Ken and I used to play baseball, football, hunt, or just hang out at each other’s place. We weren’t really close in a best friend kind of way, but we always got along great and had a lot of fun together. Cheri was the all American girl next door—cute,