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Road-Tripped-Up

The next generation, not having learned a thing from their elders and fumble-bums, continue to commit themselves to the old and mysterious art of marriage.  This time the young couple proposed to cement their vows in a little wooden church at the side of the Norwegian-American Museum in Decorah, Iowa, and then amble on down Water Street to the Old Opera House next to the Winneshiek Hotel.  
The Hotel and Opera House have been resurrected with 20th century money to a condition they certainly had imagined before, and may or may-not have attained before Mrs. Basler took the job upon herself. 

We drove from Tucson to Decorah because we knew that we would have reason to transport a treasure or two.  We did:  a Heltne family chair, a couple of already-tested plastic dump trucks with big tires for Jao (our newest grandson, so far as we know), and a boxfull of treasures for me; things like a marlinspike from days in Alaska on fishing boats, and other tale-generating tools saved for me by Joel.  

 Like much of the 21st century world, we have misplaced our cameras, except for those on our phones.  That is how I took a picture of Mari trying to see what she had just taken a picture of.  That is Mari, above, shading her phone screen.  People driving by took pictures of us, wondering what they had just seen.  

 Elena's wedding took place in a 
well-traveled immigrant church, having been moved from North Dakota just because there is no one left in North Dakota to look at it:  they are all looking for oil under the grass.  I sat there, delighted at the flowers on the window ledge--on every window ledge.  We all nodded and whispered to each other, while Elena and Joe waved and whispered to us that they were up front, just on the other side of the preacher, who kept interrupting our re-discoveries of each other.  

 It was a fine time, there, and up the street to the Old Opera House, where we admired the work of a local microbrewery, and each other.  The next morning, we all gathered, again, in a little dormitory village on the Luther College campus where the Refsals hosted us for breakfast and uninterrupted talk, proof that friends make weddings and life very good.  

 Now we are back in Tucson, but you shall surely hear more of that.  Mari has come out from under her darkroom, and I intend to unload the pickup pretty soon now.  

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