Roseau Times-Region - Serving Roseau County for over 100 Years - The Official Roseau County Newspaper

Many years ago, my mother, the daughter of German immigrants, preached the importance of an education.

"You need a college degree," she said.

It was 1950 and already school was going badly.

I was in first grade and didn't always behave and got my ears pulled and pinched.

"For the love of Jesus," that nun said, "we'll straighten you out, you little bugger."

She was Irish and I thought a bugger must be her way of calling me a booger.

And here on Saturday, I was reading some quotes by the deceased Al McGuire, a Hall of Fame basketball coach, who made more sense than all these politicians wanting to be president.

They are the chumps!

You should be disqualified if you even aspire to this godforsaken job.

Pay heed to Al McGuire, the great Marquette men's basketball coach a half century ago.

I think everyone should go to college and get a degree and then spend six months as a bartender and six months as cab driver. Then they would really be educated.

Perfect!

Going to college doesn't make you any smarter, only specialized in a particular field.

Do you think Trump ever spent a single day doing manual labor or tending bar in some joint pouring tap beers and filling shot glasses for a buck and a quarter an hour?

Hell no!

And neither did DeSantis.

He's an Ivy Leaguer.

Toss him out.

He's too young.

He doesn't even want American history to be taught as it actually happened.

"Oh, these students will feel guilty if they are taught about slavery and slaughtering the Indians."

It's called our American History!

Here we have hack politicians who want to deny reality.

And it's time to go for Joe Biden and to toss out Donald Trump.

They're both too old.

Biden is wise and Trump isn't.

One trips a lot, the other lies a lot.

Pick somebody in their fifties to run for each major party.

Here's a dandy quote from Mr. McGuire:

Remember, half the doctors in this country graduated in the bottom half of their class.

Just my luck to get a bottom half performer before he performs delicate surgery removing an aneurysm.

"Doc, how'd you do in med school?"

He looks down and shakes his head.

"This is not the right time to bring that up."

I'm looking upwards and thinking, "Is it too flipping late, Sweet Jesus, to beg your forgiveness and ask to steady this bloke's hands. They look a little shaky."

Last week, I called Keon Mostofi, one of the many good guys in life, to check on things up in Alaska.

What's the temp in the Homer area on the Kenai Peninsula?

"Oh, maybe 50, probably 46 or 47."

You lucky guy!

Down in the Lower 48, meaning Minnesota, it's been pretty hot in the mid to upper 80s.

"I'm not jealous," he said, adding that his sister, Setareh, sent some photos from Fargo of her son beet red from the sun.

Keon is finishing up on his new house. He had been working construction but now has a new job.

"I am in a lab doing distillations at one of the marijuana dispensaries."

Smoking a joint has been legal in Alaska since about 2016.

"I heard you just legalized it there," he said, adding that he and his girlfriend, Kyra, will soon move up the hill to their new house.

"We're raising chickens, ducks, and pigs."

The 2008 Roseau High School grad graduated from UMD in Duluth in 2013 with a degree in outdoor education.

And now he's furthering his education in marijuana working for Cosmic Seaweed.

"I had a little bit of chemistry in college, and I use a little bit of that now. My dad was sure happy to have me in the lab," he said about Nima Mostofi, who ran the testing lab at LifeCare Medical Center in Roseau for several decades.

I wouldn't want to arm wrestle your old man. He's powerful.

Keon laughed.

Any mosquitoes up there?

"I haven't seen any and probably won't."

I might need to smoke a joint just to survive all these damn mosquitoes.

Fish any halibut?

"We just bought a boat, a 20-foot aluminum skiff with a 75 horse and 9.9 kicker on it and two downriggers."

Keon was immediately advised that Gary Przekwas and I might visit him next summer.

His lady friend, Kyra Harty, is from the Duluth area. She's an attractive lass from the photos I've seen in the past.

"She's originally from the Range."

You can't beat an Iron Ranger!

Especially a pretty one with all her teeth!

The Scamp

Always, Steve "Dawg" Furuseth comes at life like it is an adventure, which happens wherever he shows up.

He was recently fishing up at Dog Paw in Sioux Narrows in Ontario.

Here's his recent text:

The person at the place we parked and launched from was not there. So we did not pay because there was a very nasty dog chained so that it could guard the woman's door where we were supposed to pay. Nobody else was home except the nasty, aggressive dog.

If he can get something for free, Mr. Furuseth, a colorful rogue, is already ahead for the day unless he returned from that fishing excursion to find his vehicle sitting on cement blocks with the wheels missing.

He caught the biggest trout, he said. He looks the best ever. He was wearing a free shirt from Herb and Lynn Benz.

"I like free very much," he said.

Feedback

My good friend is not from here but is a faithful Roseau Times-Region digital subscriber.

I haven't asked permission to mention his name here, but he emails me on occasion.

He has an eye on the new columnist.

"Well Tovarish, just tell young Joseph Goebbels the words of Peggy Noonan, I'm sure you know her. She is the conservative columnist for the Wall Street Journal who once was a speech writer for Reagan. She wrote that DeSantis "carries a vibe that he might unplug your life support to recharge his cell phone."

I had to look up Tovarish, which is Russian for comrade,

My good friend is a free-spirited septuagenarian.

If I order a beer in public, I make it a Bud Light. It might be a terrible beer but sends a necessary political message to rednecks and crackers. I really prefer scotch anyway.

He is vastly smarter than DeSantis or Trump.

History in the new emerging order is what these enlightened people decide. We brought the savage Indians Christianity, civilization and civil service. The slaves were happy in their rural paradise free of lions and cobras and usually were found singing happily in the fields as they plucked cotton. Don't say gay for chrissakes. And my favorite, "if English was good enough for Jesus then it is good enough for me."

He never sends a dull email.

I'm sure my friend has heard of Al McGuire, who understood life's inequities.

He recruited black kids who lived in tenements with cracked sidewalks, not white rich kids from the suburbs with front yards and green grass, per Sports Illustrated.

When 6-foot-11 Jim Chones was talking about leaving school to turn pro, McGuire said, "I looked in my ice box and then I looked in Jim Chones' family ice box. I told him, 'Do whatever you think is best for you.'"

My old man always called it the ice box. That's an old fashioned saying for a refrigerator, and that's what I always said to my kids.

"Hey, grab me a cold beer from the ice box!"