Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

The Bohunk and I have been making weekly trips down Highway 61 to Duluth to set up our new residence for two geriatric loners and their pets. She does most of the driving, which is a new trend after half a century of wedded bliss. I sit in the passenger seat and start ranting whenever I need to disrupt the peace. Last week, we followed a late-model pickup truck, which, like most vehicles, slows way down on the curvy parts and speeds up on the passing lanes. So I started to rant about the pickup truck fad we’re living through. Once used as work vehicles to haul tools and cargo and occasionally fitted to haul campers, many of the trucks I see today haven’t hauled much more than a set of golf clubs in suburbia. Still, they are among the most popular of vehicles sold today--another of the unending series of fads fed by new, shiny things. More than just fleeting trends, fads reflect something fundamental about humanity. I just don’t know what. My golfing buddies in Las Vegas were into mov...

"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"  Delivered by Chico Marx as Chicolini in the 1933 Marx Brothers film "Duck Soup," this quote is a classic question used to describe situations where someone is trying to pull the wool over everybody’s eyes.  When skillfully employed, deception proves highly effective in recruiting believers for Ponzi schemes, religious cults, political campaigns, and conspiracy theories. True believers are always shocked to find out they’d been duped. Until December 2008, Bernard Madoff operated a Ponzi scheme of epic proportions. His investors believed in his BS. He hooked them with promises of consistent, above-market returns and used new investments to pay off early investors. The investors all were true believers in Madoff’s genius (and integrity) right up to his arrest. Before its bankruptcy filing in December 2001, Enron was widely regarded as an innovative and highly profitable company. The believers in that story were ma...

Back in the day, “Uncle” Kay was famous in my circles for a particularly salient quote he regularly uttered to end phone calls with me. This quote, 'Nothing stays the same except rocks,' was his way of acknowledging the inevitability of change —a philosophy that he applied to every shift in company policy and market fluctuations. We aren’t blood relatives. Kay was one of my direct reports, opening and managing a successful office in Sioux Falls for many years as we built a world-class (in our opinion) logistics company. The honorific "Uncle" was a sign of my respect for him, both because he was my senior in age and he was a management genius. He was never afraid to challenge me, and often did, asking hard questions until he understood the decision and accepted it with a sigh, saying, “Nothing stays the same except rocks.” Those questions made me a better manager. In our lives, significant changes are a constant.  The Bohunk and I are experiencing some changes right no...

July the Fourth is a day for celebration and some serious reflection. Independence Day. For the Bohunk and me, blessed to be baby boomers, independence meant hard work. It was hard to find a job in late 60s suburbia for a couple of mid-teeners. You had to know someone, and once a job found you, it was best to put your heart and soul into it — even for minimum wage. My next-door neighbor worked in the kitchen at a nearby Mr. Steak restaurant. At 15, through his introduction, the manager hired me as a busboy. In that job, I learned a lesson that has been at the front of my mind ever since. “If you got time to lean, you got time to clean.”  Impressed by my work ethic, Dennis moved me onto the grill once I hit 16 and could work longer hours. I learned how to gauge the doneness of a steak, plan to get several dinners to the floor at the right time, and do a nightly cleaning of the grill and flattop. It was hard work, but the income allowed me to buy a 1967 Mustang and treat the future M...