ODE TO STEALING TIME

BY NATE BOOTS

One of the best things in the world is the anticipation leading up to a long-awaited date. Think about those days or weeks leading up to a long-awaited concert, a big ballgame, a vacation, a birthday, a graduation, a retirement, an anniversary, a holiday or sometimes just a random, made-up gathering. Just to have a date on the horizon often buoys our spirits. To talk about the upcoming date and the treasures it may hold—or even to simply and quietly keep the date in mind—can be that carrot at the end of the stick, that reason to keep hustling and bustling, that raison d’être or reason to be.

I’ll give you an example. A goodly number of years ago, one of my friends, T-Bone, was assigned his first doctorly post in Fargo, North Dakota. He had been studying to practice his profession for years and this was a long-awaited date for T-Bone. However, although living and working in Fargo was one of his three choices (he was reared in northeast South Dakota on the prairie-extreme and was therefore used to farflung places), it wasn’t his first choice of locale. Adding to the prospect of moving to Fargo was the development a recent breakup with his longtime girlfriend, a bonny lass whom many of his friends speculated he might marry. So, deep in debt and at his loneliest, T-Bone moved to the far reaches of Fargo and began his residency. And there he began to work... and work... and work.

After talking to T-Bone on the phone one evening it was clear that he needed something to look forward to. Talking to other friends led to a group decision: We would travel to Fargo and make merry! On the one weekend per month T-Bone was not scheduled for work or on call, we would get as many fellows together as possible, and we would eat and drink and josh and enliven the spirits of our sad and harried friend, T-Bone, thereby enlivening our own spirits. And we would do it in early November, possibly one of the bleakest times of the year when the Fall color is on the ground and faded to brown and all that is left on the windswept plain is to await, humbly, the true onset of Winter.

Sound a bit mad or depressing? It wasn’t.

Seven or eight of us drove the four or five or six hours— which may’ve been one of the best parts (anticipation)! We played touch football and watched it on TV. We played cards. We slept on T-Bone’s futons and floors. We cooked and ate and imbibed and got into discussions that were the deepest and funniest and most connective we’d had in years. And we had so much fun, we did it the next year and the next, and the next. I even wrote a song about our early November weekend in one of those first years, entitled, of course, “Fargo.”

Each fall we take leave of our families And migrate northwest from the Twin Cities Out in the arctic air, where the truth abides And the bonds of brotherhood are true and tried And the grass is dying out, but we feel alive... In Fargoooooooooooo!

Why was “Fargo Weekend” so fun? It wasn’t necessarily Fargo itself, though to tell it true I do believe Fargo has its charms. My theory: It was the gathering, the friends, and the fact that we had somehow stolen a small chunk of time and made it our own tiny holiday. And it was the fact that we kept it up and began to look forward to it. To anticipate it.

After seven or eight years, T-Bone was well-established in Fargo... and eventually married to a wonderful mademoiselle of sharp wit and tolerance. I became un-married in that time and so we shifted the gathering to North Mankato. I have introduced the fellows to live music at the Circle Inn and The Legion, pizza from Dino’s, beers at Spinner’s and Mankato Brewery, and Bloody Mary breakfasts at NaKato. My friends have walked along the bend of the Minnesota River. They have rubbed shoulders with other ‘Katoans. Our “Fargo Weekend” in North Mankato has been going a good five years now.

There are certain built-in dates to our annual calendars; Thanksgiving and Christmas are a couple of the biggest and boldest. Now I know that not everyone looks forward to these holidays—there have been years that I have counted myself in this group. But even those who don’t enjoy those holidays find themselves with a couple of free days on their hands. And what I’d like to say here is that the anticipation leading up to those free days—or the full-on holiday gatherings that make memories—is sometimes the best part.

Who among us in North Kato hasn’t enjoyed that Wednesday before Thanksgiving out and about at one of North Kato’s spots of local color? Who among us hasn’t stolen just a moment or two of time in merry anticipation and revelry? May you each find your own Fargo... in North Mankato.