January 21, 2003"He came up short on beef."---------------------
We drove to Marquette this afternoon for the twin's snowboarding class. I've been wanting to get a picture of Beef-A-Roo for some time now, and today was the day. Beef-A-Roo offers a full breakfast menu in addition to sundaes, cones, flurries, shakes, malts, salads, fries, burgers, and assorted beef sandwiches. To my utter dismay, they do not offer hot dogs.
-------------------- There is a specific melancholy to hardship that accrues later as a collection of gestures, glances, and dire events. I don't remember anyone ever saying life is hard but it was hard to a child in other puzzling ways, say at Great-uncle Nelse's shack when we joined him in eating possum, beaver, and raccoon, and I asked my dad why Nelse ate such strange things and he said, "He came up short on beef." I do remember Nelse embracing the keg of herring we bought him for Christmas, the salt brine soaking through the slats enough so that the wood was grainy with crystals to the touch. Nelse had been unhappily in love, rejected in his twenties, and retreated to the woods forever.
Jim Harrison,
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