Holding On Loosely to What’s Left of Summer
Todd Swank's Diary Entry for August 16, 2026
Longtime readers may remember our strange history with albino squirrels. I’d never seen one until Luke and Avery were born, then they started appearing in our yard. We moved to another city and somehow they found us there too. For more than 25 years they’ve had a habit of showing up during stressful times, so we came to think of them as our little furry guardian angels. We hadn’t seen one at our house in years, until Miss Sheri spotted this guy on our back porch. I don’t pretend to know what the universe is trying to tell us, but I’m very happy it remembered our address.
I’d never been to Ohio before, but crossed that one off the list this week when work sent me to Columbus for a couple nights. Urban Meyer’s Pint House was right down the street from my hotel, so naturally I stopped in for supper. Meyer won a national championship at Ohio State, which I’m pretty sure means Columbus city code requires his name to appear on at least one building every three blocks. I had dinner there and briefly considered myself part of Buckeye Nation. Then I came to my senses.
We had dinner with several of the fine folks from Worthington Steel at Z Cucina, where I learned their CIO once pitched for the Cleveland Indians. Naturally, I geeked out and peppered him with questions. He appeared in 35 games and talked about striking out several future Hall of Famers, memories he still ranks among the best from that chapter of his life. I loved hearing the stories. Very few people ever get to stand on a Major League mound, let alone make legends swing and miss.
I flew home Friday, put in a regular workday, then Miss Sheri and I headed north to spend the weekend with our good friends Ron and Sue Korkowski. They’re always incredibly generous hosts, which means great food, plenty of laughs, and board games taken far too seriously. Luke came up just for Friday night and spent much of it giving me grief because I apparently lack the advanced motor skills required to roll two dice and keep both of them on the table.
It was rainy and muggy most of the weekend, so we stayed inside until deciding Riley the dog and Karl the cat needed some fresh air. I’d never walked a cat before and quickly learned it’s less “walking” and more “negotiating with a small furry sovereign nation.” Grace was primarily responsible for convincing Karl that the group had, in fact, chosen a direction. He had his own opinions about pace and participation, but stuck with us most of the way. Good kitty. Strong opinions.
Saturday night we headed to The Ledge Amphitheater in Waite Park for an outdoor concert, with the bonus of riding a school bus there. Sue decided we belonged in the back with the troublemakers and announced we were going to cause problems. The bus driver, completely serious, said, “Please don’t.” I loved that he seemed genuinely concerned, like Sue had a history of launching rocks out school bus windows.
The Ledge turned out to be one of the coolest concert venues I’ve seen. It’s built into an old granite quarry, with huge rock formations, water-filled pits and fountains surrounding the amphitheater. The whole place feels carved out of the landscape instead of dropped on top of it. It was just a really cool place to sit outside on a summer night and listen to some good music.
We kept one eye on the stage and the other on the radar because storms had been threatening us all day, and we have a long, distinguished history of getting absolutely drenched at outdoor concerts. The sky spit at us a little early, but then the clouds moved on and left behind one of those perfect summer evenings that makes you forget how close you came to sitting in wet underwear for three hours.
I’ve listened to Chris Hawkey on KFAN for years and have seen his band a few times. I don’t know a lot of his songs, but I’ve always liked the positive message behind them. His new song “Hard Things” is basically about getting off your ass, pushing through the rough stuff and doing something with your life, which is a message I can get behind. He and the band did a great job warming up the crowd for 38 Special.
38 Special was the perfect soundtrack to close out the weekend. Songs like “Caught Up in You” and “Hold On Loosely” took me straight back to roller rinks, high school dances and a version of myself with more hair and fewer orthopedic concerns. Funny how a song can collapse 40 years in about three minutes. We sang, laughed, remembered a few things we’d forgotten, and squeezed another great night out of a summer that’s disappearing way too fast.
