Writing near 61

 

Caveat Lector: This column has slimmest relationships to Highway 61– (1) The Eastern Townships of Quebec are connected to Cook County by the Lake Superior Circle Route and the TransCanada Highway. (2) The Author’s ancestors stopped in those Townships for thirty-four years. (3) There are many writers in Cook County.

If you are distressed about the slimness, do remember the last column and wait ‘til next time like a good Brooklyn fan. Should you continue, I hope the column does not waste your time.

The 2020 census says we have 5,600 folks in Cook County, up about four percent and all dependent upon Highway 61. Informal estimates are that about half of us are writers and/ or artists. Because of those writers and the Superior Circle Route, we have this column celebrating gems of Louise Penny’s writing about Detective Armand Gamache, the wisest murder investigator ever. Just when we are about to whiz by to the next plot step, Penny arrests us with a gem of expression. Here are some examples from my library e-book of A Fatal Grace, her 2006 novel again set in the fictional town of Three Pines in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. Not all of them may be original to Penny:

–“CC Das, he said, you above all others know that when the chakras are in alignment, all is right. Saul wondered whether she was confusing an Indian mystic with a KKK member. Ironic, really, if she was.”

–“Gabri and I follow the way of Haagen Das. It’s occasionally a rocky road. ‘And one of your favorite movies is Das Boot,’ Clara said to Peter, ‘so you must be enlightened.’ ‘True, though that’s Das backward.’’

–“‘Silent night, holy night’ the congregation sang, with more gusto than talent. It actually sounded slightly like the old sea chanty, ‘What shall we do with the drunken sailor.’ Gabri’s beautiful tenor naturally led them, or at least made it clear they were wandering in a musical wilderness or lost at sea.”

–”The fire was lit, as were a few of the guests.”

–”So much more comforting to see bad in others; gives us all sorts of excuses for our own bad behavior. But good? No, only remarkable people see the good in others.”

–“You used to be able to electrocute someone in a bathtub but that was before most appliances had automatic shut-offs. Toss a toaster into your spouse’s bathtub these days and all you’ll get is a blown fuse, a ruined appliance, and a very pissed off sweetheart.

No, it was almost impossible to electrocute someone these days unless you were the governor of Texas.”

–“How did he know there was a but? Not for the first time Beauvoir hoped Gamache couldn’t actually read his mind. There was a lot of junk up there. As his grandfather used to say, ‘You don’t want to go into your head alone, mon petit. It’s a very scary place.”

–“The door was opened by a ramrod. Straight and scraggly, everything about her was thin. Her body, her arms, her lips, and her humor.”

–“For Ruth Zardo, dull was one of the greatest insults. It ranked right up there with kind and nice.”

–“’We listen really hard. Does that help? ‘Gamache grinned. ‘We listen ‘til it hurts.”

–”All the mistakes I’ve made have been because I’ve assumed something and then acted as though it was fact. Very dangerous, Agent Lemieux.”

–”He tried to let her know it would be all right. Eventually. Life wouldn’t always be this painful. The world wouldn’t always be this brutal. Give it another chance. Come back.”

–“It’s always good to be reminded, especially about my ego. Who was that character in Julius Caesar who described his job as standing behind the emperor and whispering, ‘You’re only a man.’”

–“Now Mother lay in bed, snug in her soft and warm flannel sheets, the duvet heavy around her plump body. She’s chosen God over her husband, but the truth was she’d have chosen a good eiderdown over him, too.”

A personal note: In 1820, after helping take Native American land in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, my Aldrich ancestors began farming in Huntingville, Quebec, south southeast of Sherbrooke and a few real miles from the fictional Three Pines. I have been charmed by that area and her novels ever since. Those Townships were settled first by Tories being rewarded for loyalty to the King, then by those who had avoided the Revolutionary War. It is an extension of New England geography with French names.

While visiting there, about 10 miles SE of Sherbrooke, we came across my 7th cousin on a farm and an 8th cousin at the museum in Sherbrooke. They had never met.

This personal note connects this column sufficiently to Highway 61, mayhaps?

P. S. Perhaps, like the author, you did not know the TransCanada Highway had multiple routes…

Steve Aldrich is a retired Hennepin County lawyer, mediator, and Judge, serving from 1997-2010. He and his wife moved here in 2016. He likes to remember that he was a Minnesota Super Lawyer before being elected to the bench. Now he is among the most vulnerable to viruses, even fully vaccinated. Steve really enjoys doing weddings, the one thing a retired judge can do without appointment by the Chief Justice. He officiated at a well-masked wedding this year where the “congregation” was in Grand Marais, Norway, and White Bear Lake. Address your brickbats to the Editor and plaudits to steveldrich41@gmail.com. Copyright Stephen C. Aldrich and the News-Herald, 2021.