Sorting out the past

Folks, I'd like to introduce you to Uncle Biddley. That's him in the picture to the right. He of course is not my biological uncle. As you can probably see, he's a plastic toy. According to the legend, I got him in a McDonald's Happy Meal featuring Playmobil toys when I was not quite 2 years old, and for whatever reason, I started calling him Uncle Biddley. Somewhere, as I recall, there is a recording of me as a young child naming my uncles, and Uncle Biddley was on my list.

Last weekend, I had a little reunion with Uncle Biddley. We didn't have a lot of one-on-one time, because the weekend reunion also included hundreds of other toys, clothes, collector pins, watches, coloring books, shoelaces, novelty keepsakes and random pieces of paper. You see, my parents had lovingly invited me home to Green Bay to sort through the absolutely ridiculous amount of stuff I had amassed while growing up. They have a big re-carpeting and painting project on tap next month, and they only have so much room to store this stuff in the basement.

Throughout my life, I have been a saver. A keeper. A collector. A pack rat. An idiot. Whatever you want to call it. I have had an extraordinarily difficult time throwing things away, and because I was an only child with no competition for space, I didn't have to throw things away. And because my parents loved me a lot and hated to see me cry, they let me get away with it and joked that someday, someone would put it in The Andy Behrendt Museum. I got so attached to my toys and other belongings that I sometimes considered them friends — or, in extreme cases, relatives.

I pretty much kept on keeping until I met my wife, Tracy, who since then has become a museum curator and collections manager. Part of her job is to figure out which things in a given collection have a certain value and which things should be "deaccessioned" or thrown away. She is really good at this. And as it turned out, the curator of The Andy Behrendt Museum didn't have much interest in most of the collection. The frequent collision of the "keep it"/"throw it away" philosophies has caused some of the biggest arguments that Tracy and I have ever had. But over time, she has won me over to her side to a degree that my parents can't believe. I actually throw away some Happy Meal boxes now.

I mentioned in my last entry how much I like to collect stories in hopes of preserving the past. There seem to be obvious parallels with my collection of old stuff. While I fanatically sorted things out over the weekend, I realized that I had kept so many of these things not simply because I had connected with them emotionally but also because I connected them to memories, as if I needed to hold onto them in order to hold onto the happy moments of my past. Now, I may have been onto something: After spending much of the 1 a.m. hour on a box loaded with stuff from eighth grade, I'll be darned if I wasn't a bit disoriented upon realizing that the year was 2007 and that I was married and on my way to becoming a pastor. But who has that much time to go back in time? Or that much space? I don't. Not anymore. And I like my life now.

Over the weekend (in which I also ended up reprising my role as drummer at my home church's polka service for Pulaski Polka Days, as shown here in a photo kindly taken by my high school English teacher, Mrs. Nickerson), I threw out a lot of really silly junk. Even better, I set aside a bunch of things to give away — there's no reason that I needed to keep all that stuff for so long when some other kid could put it to good use. I was glad I had a digital camera so I could keep photos of my old stuff that I got so attached to. It got pretty emotional at times, but it was also a lot of fun, not only reliving old times but also finding a certain freedom from all that stuff.

And I have at least started to come to grips with what Tracy has long emphasized: that I don't need to keep the stuff to hold onto the memories. After all, as I looked through the old toys and birthday cards and goofy notes that my dad put in my lunches, it really struck me: It wasn't the stuff itself that made it valuable or that made the happy memories I connected with it ... but rather the love that someone put into it. Most often, that someone was one or both of my parents, who were way better friends to me than any of my toys. I had a tougher time saying goodbye to my folks on Monday than I have in a long time.

I still have a lot of things to sort out — ever since I left Green Bay, I've been plotting out all the items I need to tackle the next time I'm at home. And I have to admit that I still kept a lot of my stuff. Given their true value, some of those things still mean a lot to me.

And I sure as heck am not going to throw away my uncle.

A hero in any language

My wife, Tracy, is a museum curator and collections manager. Her job is basically to preserve the past and bring it to life in a new context. Whereas I've gone down some different career paths, one of my favorite parts of both journalism and the ministry is the opportunity to collect and share stories from different times and circumstances. With that, I recently asked my three living grandparents to write some memoirs. I know that they have great stories to tell, many of which I've never heard. My Grandpa Dick, who died in 2000, was an especially great storyteller, and I'm really thankful that, at the request of my cousins, he and my Grandma Alice recorded some of his war memories shortly before my died. Both of my grandfathers served in World War II, and their stories of those times and circumstances are particularly amazing.

This week, I got a chance to listen to the stories of another soldier, granted I could understand hardly a word he said. His name is Chia Long. I met him in January, during my Luther Seminary cross-cultural course on Hmong culture in St. Paul, at a local day program for Hmong elders. On Wednesday, I finally returned to hear more of his stories, thanks to William, a local Lutheran pastor and my instructor from January, who graciously came along to translate.

William and I were so interested to hear more of what Chia Long had to say because he served both his Hmong people and the United States in the Vietnam War. As I explained in a past blog entry, the Hmong people in 1960 secretly joined forces with the United States to fight communism in their home country of Laos. Through the Vietnam War, Hmong soldiers were instrumental in blocking transport of communist supplies to South Vietnam and rescuing downed pilots. But when the United States backed out in 1975, the Hmong were left to face the communists on their own, and many fled to Thailand and later America to save their lives and preserve their freedom.

Chia Long guesses he was 16 when he became a soldier, originally fighting alongside the French. He figures he's now 95 years old and has long lived with wounds in his back and near his right eye from his roughly 30 years in battle. Chia Long recalled with some laughter how the United States' Central Intelligence Agency initially showed the Hmong soldiers a film promising that with the Americans on their side, they would never lose.

Chia Long lost a lot in what would follow. He saw many of his fellow soldiers die in many battles. He also had two of his children die of disease without medical care while he was away in combat, and he recalls being able only to cry. He would later lose two more children while fleeing to Thailand after the communists took control — in the flight, he was unable to take the time to bury them. But he is still astonished that he once survived two days on his own in the jungle with a fresh wound in his back before reaching aid — he believes God was helping him. And he's proud of his service in defense of his country.

Chia Long is also happy to be in America. On the lapel of his suit coat, he wore a pin of two American flags, which someone gave him for July 4. There have certainly been some difficulties here. Particularly frustrating is that he hasn't been able to learn the English language that so many people around him speak, yet his six surviving children have adjusted to English, and his grandchildren have difficulty communicating in the Hmong language. He told me that he wished he could speak to me directly. But after about three decades, he considers the United States his home. He said he would only want to return to Laos if the American people would go back with him.

With William's help, I told Chia Long how glad I was that in this case, at least, he had been able to share his story with an English-speaking American. I thanked him for his service to my country, which is now his home, too.

There are so many great lives that have been lived and so many great stories to be told by people around us. Sometimes there are barriers that keep us from hearing those stories, like a language barrier. More often, it's a matter of time. But if we take the time to learn about times gone by, it can be a blessing. I consider it a real blessing that Chia Long shared his time — and his times — with me.

More than meets the drive-in

Here's another quick blog entry to tell you about one of my favorite places in the Twin Cities: the Vali-Hi Drive-In in Lake Elmo.

Born in 1980, I kind of missed the whole drive-in movie phenomenon. I remember going to a drive-in once with my parents when I was growing up. I don't remember what the movies were. They didn't interest me, but I didn't care. The idea of watching a movie in your car was cool enough.

So imagine my delight last summer when Tracy and I moved to the Twin Cities and came across this drive-in theater a bit east of St. Paul on Interstate 94. Not only was there another chance to enjoy the whole movie-in-your-car thing (now with sound through the radio), but there were actually movies I wanted to see. Our first was "Superman Returns," a year ago, on Tracy's birthday. And since Vali-Hi offers a triple feature each night for $7.50, there are sometimes even two good movies in a row. The bonus movies (and the ability to bring your own food and soda) make it such a good value that it actually justified seeing "Snakes on a Plane" last summer. Well, almost.

You also find yourself in a great cross-section of society at the drive-in. To your right, you'll see somebody in a Lexus with all four windows rolled up. To your left, a beat-up utility van surrounded by people grilling out.

All this has made Vali-Hi our go-to movie theater during the warm-weather months. We actually haven't gone to an indoor movie in the Twin Cities since the drive-in season began.

So of course, when "Transformers" finally came out, we knew we were going to the drive-in. I used to be a "Transformers" fanatic, and we arranged weeks ago to see it under the stars with our Luther Seminary friends, Paula and David. Paula wasn't even that fired up about seeing the movie, but the drive-in novelty sold her. So Thursday night, we opened the hatchback to Tracy's Pontiac Vibe, cranked the speakers and set up our chairs behind it. (Tracy was so excited by all the transforming cars that she was hoping her Vibe would become a Transformer — if it did, though, it would probably be less of a fighting robot than one who serves coffee.)

We were not disappointed, certainly not by the drive-in experience. The movie, too, while just stupid ridiculous, was tons of fun. Even if it didn't quite match the brilliance of 1986's animated "The Transformers: The Movie," It was certainly better than "Snakes on a Plane."

Seven for 7/4

It was a small parade and a small crew of seminarians, but I figured it was worth a small blog entry.

This morning, Tracy and I got to be among the lucky seven to represent Luther Seminary in the Independence Day parade through the seminary's St. Anthony Park neighborhood. It was the community's 60th annual Fourth of July celebration and apparently the only parade today in St. Paul proper. What could make a gig like that any more prestigious? I'll tell you what: free Luther Seminary shirts. And we got those, too.

The others who were proudly coerced into parading down Como Avenue included fellow seminarians Linda, Rachel and my buddy, Chris, and Chris's wife, Heather, and their daughter, Ella, who a day earlier celebrated her third birthday.

We were positioned near the tail end of roughly 50 entries, between an old firetruck and a bunch of classic cars (some people who were walking star-spangled dogs cut in front of us for a while, too). We might have gotten more oohs and ahhs if we were riding in an antique vehicle or handing out copies of Martin Luther's Small Catechism, but we nonetheless got to wave our hands and flags at a few blocks worth of smiling faces. I especially appreciated it because I think it was my first parade in which I wasn't lugging around one or more drums.

Afterward, Tracy and I moved on to the most patriotic place anyone could spend a July 4 afternoon: the Mall of America.

Happy Independence Day, everybody!