A Final Romp in the Ice Box

“Beer makes you feel the way you ought to feel without beer.” Reads a T-shirt worn by an older woman in the Border Bar at Frostbite Falls. 

Old folks don’t move away from the coldest spot in the lower 48 states to retire in Pasadena or Miami, not even for the winter.  Some do, but you’d not suspect it at the Border Bar on Sunday evening.  

A man came and sat between me and a big bushy man at the bar.  That’s him in the red baseball cap.  

After a friendly brush with the big man, Ray, who knows almost everyone in the bar, opened a little chat with me.  Then he left and danced with half a dozen woman friends, greeting and chatting as he moved among the crowd, before returning to his beer at the bar beside me.  The woman in the white top, dancing with Ray is 93 years old. 

As we got acquainted, he started introducing me as his woman from California.  I smiled and gestured in agreement, playing along with his ruse.  And then he danced with me.  

Ray is 82 and dances with two artificial knees, two artificial hips and pacemaker for his heart.  He walks his dog two or three miles every morning no matter the temperature.

The entertainer, seen in the background of the previous pictures is Pat Porter, age 84.  He sings, plays piano and guitar, manages his back-up recordings and sound system without any help, and does it better than any country performer I know. 

I left Frostbit Falls this morning and drove southwesterly on country roads with falling snow.  As cars came in the opposite direction, they made small blizzards of the powder, but I met so few of them that it didn’t disturb the beauty of this Minnesota winter.  I wore that smile you see in the picture with Ray as I drove, because it seemed needed in the falling snow, and when the snow stopped, it seemed needed to compliment the open white fields and farmhouses where old people live.  I was a child in his arms as we danced.