Among the Brew Crew

Truth be told, I could not have named a single member of the Brewers ball team last night before the game. I had decided to watch it--potentially, the last game of the 2026 World Series, because it was, potentially, the very last game of the 2026 and my wife was gone to Omaha for her seasonal dose of musical theater. So I did. I was born and reared in Wisconsin, after all.

But don't let me suggest that I was or am a Brewers fan. I happened to be in southeastern Wisconsin the night the Brewers knocked off LA to claim the Division crown and go on to the Series. Saw little more than the final out, but enough to know that all around me right then, there were mega-thousands of fans singing a dozen versions of Hallelujah! 

Just to let you know  how out of it I was right then, I asked our host whether or not County Stadium, where the Milwaukee Braves used to play, had a roof, thinking that it could be a cold Series. "'County Stadium' is no more," he told me, but I've forgot the name of the stadium the Brewers call home.

I had a radio just above my bed when I was a little feller growing up in Wisconsin. I used to fall asleep to the Braves games. Dad would reach for little knob beside the yellow-lit dial to turn it off for me when he and Mom went to bed. I knew every player, even the subs. In fact, I could probably go around the horn and name every one of the starters yet today. When I got my very first real Rawlings baseball mitt, it was signed by Eddie Matthews, who played third base and hit clean-up in the order. I wanted to be him. A trip to a ball game at County Stadium was doubtlessly a highlight of the year. I remember those trips in our '52 Mercury, a thrill beyond any other.

So when, late last night, the second baseman (I don't know his name) handily threw out the last of Ray hitters, when a few minutes later the field was full of Brewers teammates and their thousands of fans were screaming and waving their Brew Crew hankies, I was more than tickled--I was thrilled.

When the announcer turned the mike toward Jacob Misiorowski (what a perfect Milwaukee name!), the tall, young, and geeky flame-thrower who'd already won the Cy Young Award, and young Jacob was barely able to hold back tears amid the celebration, so was I. When Cooper Pratt, the kid (literally, a rookie shortstop, who set a Series record with six consecutive hits) just didn't know what to say or how to say it, I couldn't help thinking he sounded pretty much like the rookie he was. 

When I thought about friends and family who were overjoyed last night as they watched the celebration, when the agony of defeat is entirely drowned out by the thrill of victory, even this idiot witness to the game, way out here on the edge of the Plains, caught a bit of the fever amid the gaity and became at least something of a fan. 

I loved it, just loved it.  There's nothing like it, especially today in America's Dairyland. But tell me, and what's the name of the stadium where they play again?

Audio version now available

  

Sixteen stories in this collection, drawn from fifty years of writing. What the book does that's unique is offer the story of each story--what events or ideas pushed or prodded me to sit down and try to fashion something fictional. "Where did you get that idea?" some readers ask. Stories and their Stories answers that question sixteen times. 

For those of you who enjoy reading on Kindle, the Kindle version is available as of today at just $3.99, from these sources:

iUniverse – https://www.iuniverse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/878153-stories-and-their-stories

 

Amazon – https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781663282651&crid=L6I1FXX1509Y&sprefix=9781663282651%2Caps%2C328&ref=nb_sb_noss

 

Barnes and Noble - https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stories-james-calvin-schaap/1151631223?ean=9781663282651

 

 

Our Ruby-redness

It's almost futile to go to battle with the powers-that-be in this county because those powers are unmistakably conservative. When Gov. Kim Reynolds won the last gubernatorial race in 2018, she did so on the immense strength of what Iowa politicians call "the Ruby-red Fourth District," where Republicans outnumber Democrats the way hogs outnumber people in this corner of the state. Her margin of victory was just less than three percent; her margin of victory here in northwest Iowa was overwhelming, proving once again that if the region's mighty conservatives show up at the polls, the libs have to win big in other parts of the state to negate the tally here. 

Sioux County, Iowa, where I live is unhesitatingly the most most ruby-red of any of Iowa's 99, and therefore right there among the most politically conservative counties of the entire nation. Much has been made this time around of the two big races, both of which could go Democratic--Rob Sand for Gov, Josh Turek for the Senate, both good candidates. But if they lose, the loss will be attributable, in part, to a crimson voting block in Sioux County and the rest of Iowa's bright red northwestern corner.

My baptism into northwest Iowa politics began soon after I married into a northwest Iowa family, who reunion-ed at an Orange City park in 1972 just a few months after the wedding. Once the family divvied itself up by gender--the women around one picnic table, the men around another, the political talk started up. McGovern, of course, was from South Dakota--Mitchell, in fact, just down the road. 

But woe be unto those who would say he was "one of us." It didn't take long, as I remember, for the whole gang to get to slaying him right there in the park.

Let me just say that such talk no more unexpected than unfamiliar. My dad would have fit right in at the branding. The arguments were neither fresh nor silly. I was the family's newest member; we were still newlyweds. 

I spoke up--McGovern was anti-war, of course, and I got hammered, really hammered, despite the fact that I knew at least two of the gang shared my views of things--a medical doctor from Michigan and a high school guidance counselor from LA, both of whom wisely kept their mouths shut.

I was left bleeding profusely when the food was ready. I hoped I hadn't reflected poorly on my wife's marital choices and probably did. I asked the Michigan doctor why he hadn't come to my aid. 

The answer made all kinds of sense. "We knew better." The safe place in a political discussion is simply to keep your mouth shut. 

In early fall, I willfully attended the meeting of the Sioux County Republicans. Why? Because I assumed by DNA I was. 

I wasn't. I never went back.

That was more than a half-century ago, and it's been all uphill ever since.

I'm hoping the Dems will catch a break from the almost universal distaste for our famously bigoted President. I'm hoping the county's struggling minority will take a big bite out of the usual political tallies. I can't hope for a leftie win, but I can hope for a tally that doesn't offer the cushion we've given conservative candidates for as long as I've lived here. 

A decade ago, my wife joined the Dems and got an award--with her Sioux County Democrats--for going into battle with Goliath. They didn't win any races here, but they'd inflicted some blows on the ruby-red body politic. 

Won't be long and we'll know the score this time around.

Sunday Morning Meds from Psalm 32

“For evil men will be cut off, 

but those who hope in the LORD will inherit the land.”

 

I don’t know that this line sounds right out here in farm country.

           

My father-in-law was what used to be called a “small farmer,” in the days when there was such a thing.  My wife grew up on a farm like Old McDonalds—little of this, little of that. 

 

Well, I got news.  Out here, those kinds of farms simply don’t exist.  Farming has become agri-business, and everything has changed. 

 

My father-in-law bought some land when he was farming, nowhere near enough for a young farmer today.  But he owns the land, enough of it that my wife’s inheritance is significant.  We could come heir to it, but then he might just give it away, to church or school. 

 

But let’s say his land comes to us.  Let’s say we keep it, and even though we don’t live on it, we might just drive by once in a while.  We’d likely rent it out to the cousin who now farms it.  Eventually however, we’d likely pass land ownership on to our children. 

 

Now there is a possibility that our children will live in the neighborhood someday, but that certainly isn’t a given.  So it’s possible that eventually the land her father bought as he slowly built his own farm will end up in the hands of absentee landlords. 

           

That phenomenon is happening all over the rural Midwest, prompting people to ask whether so much “absentee landlordism” is going to be good for the health of communities.  That question goes to the very heart of the quality of life out here on the far western edge of the cornbelt.  What exactly is our future if people in faraway cities own the land we live on?

 

To promise, as the NIV does, that those who hope in the Lord will inherit the land sounds, in this region, like a pipe dream—and it is.  Good people don’t inevitably win in the quest for land ownership.  The mid-80s’ “farm crisis” made that perfectly clear.  More often than not, good, hard-working people got flattened.  Sorry, David—maybe that was true in old Israel, but it’s not true—nor should anyone promise it—in the rural areas of the Upper Midwest.

           

The KJV says, more metaphorically perhaps, that the righteous will inherit the earth.  In our present context, I much prefer earth to land.  If I lived in Toronto or New York or Los Angeles, I wouldn’t much care which word is used; but here, where the future of rural life is dependent upon land ownership, I much prefer “the earth.”

 

Earth spiritualizes richly.  It suggests that those who hope in God inherit the concept of earth; they inherit the true (which is to say, spiritual) riches of this earth, not the ground itself, not the back forty, the neighbor’s thousand acres.  Cold hard cash is not at issue here and neither is good black dirt. 

 

Calvin says that what David means with this line is that those who hope in the Lord “shall live in such a manner as that the blessing of God shall follow them, even to the grave.”  That blessing may well include a thousand acres, but you can’t take that promise to the bank. 

 

It probably goes without saying that what David is promising is a far site better than the flattest, blackest land in all of Sioux County, Iowa. But out here, where land ownership is so important, it probably needs to be said.

 

Eventually, my wife will inherit the land. More importantly, and by grace alone, she—and her husband and our children and all of those we love--those who hope in the Lord--will inherit the earth.    

Renewal

 

For decades there stood in my library a copy of Sign of a Promise and Other Stories, my very first book, published in 1979 by something we called "Dordt College Press." Inside the cover, I scribbled "First Edition, First Copy" because that one was, in fact, the very first copy. It was very precious.

Was because it's gone. The library behind me still has three copies of that first book, but none of them bear that inscription because the one that did is long gone, drowned in our flood. Sad. If I had it, I'd show you right here, but it's history.

Yesterday I thought about missing that copy, but I did so without great pain because a new box showed up at our door (thank you, FedEx) filled with 30 copies of another book, my last (but maybe not my all-time last), Stories and their Stories, a book of my own short stories and comments about what set me on the path of each of their plotlines. 

So, pardon me for a moment while I put a copy of this brand new book into my library. I'm just as proud as I was 48 years ago.

Just older--lots older.

What are you doing?

What follows is the introduction to a new book, in my hands for the first time just today and available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble (although it's likely those places haven't seen one yet).

In the intro what I wanted to do was explain why I believed that this book deserved to see the light of day. I thought it would be helpful for my folks to read when and where and how any of these stories their son has written came to have their being--"where in the world did you get that idea?" they might have asked. But didn't.

I'm thinking that introducing the genesis of these stories would help them understand the stories, just as well as the writer I wanted to become.

________________________

They’ve been gone for a decade, which means there’s no chance at all of their seeing or reading this book. But, in a way, this disrobed collection of my stories is meant for them, for my parents.

Two of the stories are set in a cemetery, where the residents have more life than we’ve determined is there beneath the ground. Maybe ten years ago or so, I worked on Up the Hill, a collection of stories set in a graveyard. While haunting cemeteries myself, I developed a penchant for seeing things not supposedly there. If, for a time, you bend your mind and spirit to believe in something, it’s amazing how far down that road you can travel before you look back, if you do.

My parents are gone, but I can’t help thinking that they’re still somewhere behind me, even as I sit here in the desk chair, an entire day’s travel from the ground where their earthly remains lie interred. It’s as if they’re here; they don’t communicate with me directly, but that doesn’t mean I don’t hear their voices, and it also doesn’t mean their seats in the heavenly Mormon Tabernacle Choir, where I imagine they abide in the spirit world, won’t allow them occasional glimpses of this one. I can’t imagine they aren’t interested in the lives of their loved ones, and I always will be one of those.

My first novel, Home Free, featured a tough Dutch immigrant father whose stain of sin, years before, would not willingly resign the place it ranged in his soul. Wim Pietenpol had his prototypes, but none of them bore even the slightest resemblance to my own father.

Years after the publication of that novel, my mother told me—Dad had already passed away—that he really disliked that book because he was sure when others read Home Free, they’d come to believe somehow that Calvin Schaap, the writer’s father, was Wim’s prototype. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Honestly, it had never dawned on me that he might see himself in that story. My dad was not judgmental or ornery, not given to bouts of darkness created by the shadows of some great guilt-inducing event. He never once thought of his son as a means by which he could crawl into the good graces of a hard-core Calvinist God, as Wim has.

Ever since then I’ve wondered—and asked myself—whether my dad (and my mother) ever really understood the premise of fiction, the teasing nature of imaginative art. Neither of them was a reader; if they spent any time between the covers of a book, that book would be meditations of some sort--and orthodox, to be sure.

Both of them went to school after their high school years, mid-Depression. Mom went to County Normal for a year to prepare to be a teacher, Dad to a Milwaukee technical school, where he learned to be a draftsman. They may have read Shakespeare in high school, other English poetry maybe, but most literature in the curriculum, especially in little burgs without proud literary traditions, in all likelihood didn’t include Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald or other contemporaries, despite those writers’ prominence as proven members of an American culture that was increasingly well-read.

When, years later, my parents dropped me off at college, they were quite sure they were saying goodbye to a son who would smilingly find a job at some high school someday thereafter and become a coach--baseball or basketball, a son who was an athlete, a nice kid who would make a good teacher somewhere down the line.

They might have guessed I could become a Democrat, but they would have had no suspicion of their son becoming a writer.

For them this book was created, even though I can’t be sure their fingers will ever turn its pages. I’d like to try to explain the son who didn’t return from college, who somehow left their expectations behind in order to dream up stories that appeared very often to have nothing at all to do with their lives.

They were wrong about that, as I will try to show in telling them—and you—the stories that gave life to the stories I wrote.

I’d like them to understand.

 New book by an old guy--to be released soon. 

Amazon.com: Stories (and their stories): A Writer’s Life: 9781663282668: Schaap, James Calvin: Books