Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

As temperatures plunged the last few weeks, the snow didn’t stop. It just came in frequent, relatively small amounts, blown around by gusty winds. Due to my advanced years and easily frozen fingers, the only snow I moved during the lengthy cold snap was off the porch and around the car. Our driveway, better described as “park” way, is a couple of feet longer than our car and as wide as two cars side by side. While these inch-or-two snowfalls happened almost daily, I would sweep snow off the car and push it into a fast-growing snowbank where the second car, if we had one, would go. I left that growing snowbank until now, at the end of the month, when I shoveled it all. Temps were slightly above zero.  While shoveling, my thoughts went from avoiding my demise from a cardiac disaster to contemplating the birthdays of our direct descendants. There was a reason for those thoughts that went beyond the fact they’d get zippy-doo-dah from my “estate,” if my old ticker were to give up the gh...

After seeing a television report about Minneapolis the other day, the Bohunk and I coined what seemed to be a new word: horrification. My AI assistant noted that the word has actually been around a long time, used by writers to emphasize horror unfolding or being inflicted. It applies here: the horrification of our community began the moment the first chemical canister was deployed directly into the face of an unarmed citizen, pinned to the ground by three large ICE agents—an act of pure brutality. This column begins my fifth year as a freelance writer for the North Shore Journal. In the past four years, my humble efforts have resulted in over 300,000 words on the newsprint: enough “content” to fill two or three novels, and up to six business books. Not much of what I’ve written expresses the depth of my anger when the President, his appointees,  and Republican members of Congress describe our state as a hellhole of terrorists and criminals who hate America. They go on to revel in ...

Once upon a time, I was infatuated with cars. Not what I’d call a gearhead, I saw myself more as a car guy, a driver and admirer, not a tinkerer. At the tender age of five, I could already identify the make and model of almost every car. On road trips, I’d drive my parents up the wall, reeling off the make and model of every car I saw. I think my dad was impressed, and he’d often point out a vehicle for me to identify. His motive was likely to get my mom to stop driving from the back seat for a minute. Before I could legally drive, there was a slot car hobby. Different makes, models, and hot rods populated my stable, kept in a cigar box with the parts and pieces that made up my “road race” set. But getting behind the wheel, and not just sitting on my dad’s lap and turning the steering wheel, was a significant goal.  Finally, when I was 12 or 13, he let me drive the car from the highway on Fernlund Road to Grandpa’s farm. It was maybe a mile or two, but it seemed much longer. The ca...

Seriously, why all the awards shows? In October, I was an Honoree at the Red Rock Democratic Club Silver Jubilee in Las Vegas. Honored because I was president of the club when it was chartered by the county party 25 years ago. I earned a picture in the program, a brief bio, and an acrylic star engraved with the club logo, the jubilee date, and my name. I didn’t fly to Sin City to collect my award. Hence, the club shipped me my star, which now sits atop the bookshelf in my office alongside a wood carving I did in a North House class, a Dala horse my Swedish grandparents brought over in the 1950s, and a bronze sculpture of two wolf heads we’ve had for 30 years. When I played Little League baseball in the '60s, I didn’t earn a trophy. By the time I had kids in the Bloomington Athletic Association, the kids were all getting trophies or ribbons for making it through a season with a coach who was sometimes under the influence of legal, adult beverages. It was the beginning of participati...