Holy cow. I totally missed Thursday Blog Day, and I have no idea why. I knew it was Thursday, I had some notes written from earlier in the week to give me some starting points for subject matter, and yet as I sat down this morning to do some work on my new book project it finally sunk in that today is Friday! I had to go look at my blog page just to make sure I didn’t do it, and sure enough it was still last week’s installment. So, even at my advanced age, it’s not unlike falling asleep in high school math class and then waking up to find a whole new room of people around you, studying science. I swear I never did that, but I saw it happen to a few guys at St. Louis U. High.

I can tell you this about today’s blog: It won’t have any new scans of old photos. Why? I do have some more fun shots I found, but earlier this week I updated my laptop to a new Mac OS and now the scanner on my printer doesn’t want to communicate with my laptop. When I scan, I have the option of sending the photos directly to my Mac and then I edit and mess with them here. Since that’s not happening, I tried my second option on the printer control board, which is to send the scan to a memory device. I have a bunch of those drives in my top drawer, so I stuck one of those in the USB port and the printer gave me the message “Unable to proceed. The device is read-only.” So I tried another one, which was thumb drive I just bought a few months ago in order to save some work on it, and again my little friend HP 6830 told me it’s read-only. Except it’s not. Maybe it’s time for a new printer/scanner/copier.

And that’s the thing, these days. Printers are so cheap you can just go get a new one anytime the one you’re using acts up. I can’t see how the business model works in terms of the actual equipment, but I do know how the profit margin works in total. They get you with the ink! I can buy a totally new HP multi-purpose printer for $100. Run out of ink in two weeks and it will cost you $60 to put new cartridges in. See, they always get you at the drive-thru!

Here at the Wilber-Doyle ranch, it is a Friday (yeah, that again) at the end of January and it’s 47-degrees right now. Considering we had a legit blizzard just a few days ago, and still have mountains of snow along the sides of the roads and sidewalks, it’s a melt-a-palooza outside. And the city has the full army of plows out, on a 47-degree day without a cloud in the sky. Why? To get at some of the areas along the sides of the road where the snow had compacted into solid ice. Gotta get that ice broken up while you can.

And yes, the sound of a huge snow plow scraping across mostly bare asphalt is, to put it nicely, really horrible. It’s the worlds biggest set of fingernails on the world biggest chalkboard. How old do you currently have to be to even know what a chalkboard is? Asking for a friend.

I just went outside to the front of the garage to see if I could replicate the first photo with an updated one, and the sound of water steadily dripping out of the downspout struck me as something one does not expect to hear at the end of January in Minnesota

It’s really melting like crazy out there, and that’s a good thing for a couple of small trees we have at the back corner of our house. This big snow storm featured really heavy wet snow, which is nice and pretty but really tough on things with unsupported limbs. Like evergreen trees. I just happened to look out a bedroom window yesterday and noticed that the two little trees were not just weighed down by the snow, they were completely bent over to the ground! So I trudged out there with a shovel and knocked off as much snow as I could, but at dinner last night I had to break the news to Barbara that we probably will be replacing those trees in the spring. Right now, unbelievably, they have both completely straightened up. They’ve definitely lost some branches and aren’t out of the woods yet, but it’s amazing they could be that resilient.

And so here’s pretty much the same view as above, but on this Friday Blog Day (see what I did there!) We have some small rivers running down the streets right now. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get too cold tonight!

On the topic of the new book, I have some more exciting news to share. Dave St. Peter, who is not just the President of the Minnesota Twins but also one of the most gracious and accommodating people I’ve ever met, got back in touch yesterday with some great news. I had shared a lengthy list of former Twins players, coaches, and executives I was hoping to get contact information for, and Dave came through quickly and successfully. He also copied his reply to Bryan Donaldson, the team’s Senior Director of Community Relations. On Dave’s email were three groupings. The first was a list of five of the people on my list, with email addresses for each. The second was a shorter list of Twins legends, including Tony Oliva and Rod Carew, with instructions to work with Bryan to set up interviews in April or May. The final list was a group of guys who Bryan will contact on my behalf, to get us all connected. There were only three former players on my list who the team did not have info for.

I’ve sent out my batch of direct emails and am already hearing back from some of them just an hour later. For the record, Jim Kaat was the first to reply, and he’s eager to be a part of the book. He said, “I speak often about how much your dad helped me” and he said he had stories to tell from not just Triple-A Charleston, with my dad as his manager on the 1960 Charleston Senators, but also Florida Instructional League.

If you’ve read “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” you know that 1960 Charleston team from the first part of the first chapter. The book begins with me as a three year old, on my mother’s lap at Watt Powell Park in Charleston, watching the Senators play. Jim Kaat was one of those Senators.

I’ve got my formats for the interviews almost tweaked to finality, but I want to stick to my project plan and do this thing in large segments, just to keep it all straight. Phase 1 is what we’re currently in, and it includes finding the contact info for so many guys who knew my dad or played for him, and making contact with each of them to see if they want to be involved. Once we have as much of that as we’re going to get, Phase 2 will kick in. That will be the interviews themselves, whether they’re via email, phone, or in person. Phase three will be putting it all into words.

Meanwhile, there’s another completely separate project plan that has to happen concurrently with the one above. That’s the personal family side of things and completing the research for the many years of his life when I wasn’t around to keep track of what he was doing (how did the family even survive until 1956 when I was born?) That’s a lot of digging and research, dating back to my dad’s birth in February of 1919. There’s a lot of work still to do before I start writing a book about it all.

To that end, I have a lunch meeting set for next Wednesday with a guy named Doug Skipper. When my dad passed away, there were many wonderful obituaries written about Big Del, but the column written by Doug was, by far, the best-researched story about him I’d ever read. There was stuff (a lot of stuff) in his story that I’d never heard before or was only vaguely familiar with.

Since Doug lives here in the Twin Cities, we’re going to meet about halfway between our homes and he’s going to be gracious enough to give me some tips on research like that. In a lot of ways, I don’t know where to start. But it has struck me recently that I do know where to start. I’m starting with people like Dave St. Peter and Doug Skipper.

As you might be able to tell, I’m getting more and more excited about this project. The initial replies from former players and colleagues have been just as heartwarming as I had hoped they’d be.

On a totally different subject, there were a couple of additional NFL football games played last Sunday. A Minnesota team was in one of them. It did not end well, and many of the fans rooting for the opposing side (rhymes with Beagles) were not exactly model citizens when it came to interacting with the Vikings fans who were there. More than a little of it was disgraceful.

Many of our friends had been talking about having a party if the Vikings made it to the Super Bowl next weekend, which will be played at their home stadium in Minneapolis, but right after the game we all needed a couple of days to decompress. Finally, last night Barb and I composed a text message to the core group, whilst dining at Punch Pizza, letting our friends know that what we have in terms of our friendships is more important than any football game. So let’s gather at our house a week from Sunday and enjoy each other. We’ll have the game on, for sure, but we won’t be rooting for either team. We’re just using the game as another in a long list of excuses we have for getting together. And it will be the first such gathering at our new house here in Woodbury. Plus, there will be a betting pool for the score, quarter by quarter, so there’s that chance of going home with more money than you came with. It’s a blind pool, so it’s pure luck. Are ya feelin’ lucky?

Barb will be in Spokane all next week, so this guy will have a long list of chores to do. Usually, I’m not a big fan of household chores. I do them, because they have to get done, but you’ll never hear me say, “Awesome, I still have two more loads of laundry to do!” or “Boy, can’t wait to clean those hardwood floors.” This time, I’m looking forward to getting our home ready for our friends. It will be great to host so many of them here.

So, I better get this posted. After all, it’s just a day late.

Remember, boys and berries, if you read this blog installment and thought, “Hey, that wasn’t terrible” please click on the “Like” button at the top. The more likes the merrier.

I’ll be back next week.

Bob Wilber, at your service while we plow through Phase 1.