Moving away from Minnesota to Washington, DC has been required more than a bit of adjustment for me. As a kid, I was shuffled from place to place as my father moved from job to job, state to state, while he made his name in the gaming industry as a slot machine expert. Having lived in something like a dozen homes in 4 states by the time I hit high school, I was ready to put down some roots. Minnesota became my de facto home. I had lived there more than half my life, which qualifies as a very long time for a child of a vagrant professional.
There was no better place to land than back in Minnesota. My family had experienced very tough times during an extended period of unemployment for dad and things were no easier when we moved back there after his death in 1997. We didn’t move back to New Jersey because we wouldn’t be able to afford living on the east coast. In Minnesota, we could scrape by more easily and we had strong friendship ties, most paramount with a family of farmers in the conservative Catholic and rural enclave of St. Mathias just south of Brainerd—the Malinowskis. (Side note: the story of how our families came together is classic. My mom was driving me around so I could sell Christmas wreaths—I was about 9 or 10 years old—for my Cub Scout troop and we stopped at this farm. We went into the bar and found a big man named Ron, clad in flannel, who referred us to his wife in the house. When we knocked on the door and a woman, Sandy, came to the door my mother greeted her, confessionally, with “I was just in the barn with your husband!” Shock. Laughter. Instant friendship.)
When we came back to Minnesota during the very traumatic time following my father’s death, the Malinowskis put us up and helped us get our wits about us. It was then, I think, that my mother decided to move us back to Minnesota, which we accomplished that summer of ‘97.
My sister and I who had always feuded (the kind of reciprocal emotional abuse that only an older sister-younger brother relationship can foster) but we came together during this time. We also came to share the same a common set of friends, the core of which Erin played with in a band called Steve’s the Drummer.
The larger group of friends, which over time has become a(n) (inter-)national diaspora of sorts, gets together every year on the same weekend up near Hackensack, Minnesota, for a blowout party in the woods: Schazenblast.
Everyone plays their roles and we settle back into our old selves, as if we were back in high school. We just enjoy each others’ company and pretend, somewhat, that none of us have grown apart. It works pretty well. Brian, pictured above, is a brewer in Duluth; he played guitar and was the lead singer of Steve’s the Drummer. Randall mooches off his girlfriend in Portland; he played bass. Andrew became a soldier and spent years as a soldier in Korea; he also sand in the band. Erin, my sister, lives in Seattle; she played rhythm guitar. Jon, the artist, makes t-shirts and hoodies each year for the party, which turned 7 years old this summer. Karl is the hairy one, Sam’s the drunk, Wil’s got the moustache, and I’m the bureaucrat providing political incitement. Girlfriends and boyfriends and fiances and wives and husbands have joined the group over the years, and most people have enough t-shirts and hoodies from previous years to clothe themselves for the entire weekend.
Every year there’s some new accomplishment or occurrence that will be recalled every year after. This year, we introduced knifethrowing as a new sport to accompany extreme forrest bocce ball. For the first time, a plane flew in and landed on the lake, bringing two Schazenblasters from Wisconsin. No one went to the hospital, for once. And, as per usual, a neighbor came to complain about the noise. For me, I managed to 1) stay up to a ridiculous hour, 2) actually get intoxicated, and 3) use the portapotty (all personal firsts).
I know now that I have to go back every year. Regardless of where I am or what I am doing. I have to stay connected with this place and these people who became so much a part of who I am today—the only permanent friends I made before my college years.
It’s not about looking back or yearning for the good old days. It’s about getting together for fun, to reconnect, and to move forward with our own lives and to be okay with the fact that many of us don’t see or even speak to one another until we’re planning for Schazenblast, at Schazenblast, or on our way back from Schazenblast. It’s what keeps us together, when so many other things keep us apart. Schazenblast is an institution of summer, and the best reason possible to be pulled back to Minnesota at least once a year.