By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
A "diehard Midwesterner" no matter how far he roams, return Dogwood Fine Arts Festival storyteller Dan Keding of Urbana, Ill., loves spinning yarns spawned by growing up in the identical houses of Chicago's South Side and being raised "painfully Catholic" in parochial schools.
Keding went to a Catholic university, too. He said he was in graduate school before he ever entered a classroom without a cross on the wall.
He joked that he banked so many hours in church that he need not go again until 2024.
Like any denizen produced by the politically-savvy "vote early, vote often" Windy City, Keding ponders running for political office - on the Largemouth Frog Platform.
Frogs he learned to form with his fingers from an Australian storyteller delight children. His frog crows like a rooster to avoid being eaten by a hippo. Talking "frog hands" are helpful if you happen to be stopped by the police, he said.
She also taught him to bake bread. Keding can keep her alive forever through her stories and the ballet she performed with her tiny, olive-oil-coated hands kneading the loaves, although he related the disastrous results when he measured her "handful" with his mitts, the size of a "lowlands gorilla's" and produced the oozing "Creature from the Black Oven."
His grandma would page through the Chicago Daily News looking for Croatian obituaries and drag him to funerals.
He painted a vivid picture of houses navigated by plastic floor runners, with Pine Sol wiped on plastic-covered furniture so much it was sanitized enough to perform heart surgery on the sofa.
Keding called his grandma the original mail-order bride because of their arranged marriage. She got off the boat never having seen her future husband. She was to recognize him by the white carnation in his lapel.
If that sounded romantic, she set her grandson straight.
The mayor joked that the pin would be worth $1.50 at a pawn shop, if Dowagiac had one, but Keding appreciated the sentiment.
His wife, an Indiana University graduate, works for the University of Illinois. He said he can't perform there because of a policy prohibiting the hiring of local acts. In retaliation, he said he's going to work his way through the rest of the Big 10, then reject its belated invitation.
A "handful" as a student, Keding said in eighth grade a vacant public school across the street was bought by the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, of which, by a show of hands, there were three in his audience.
He was more than familiar with the inside of that room.
Sister James Marie had Keding as a student three times.
"She hated me. She considered me her ticket to paradise. (The nun) was a very tall, elegant woman with eyes that could look through you."
She demanded to know, "Is it true that you and these other hooligans are going across the street and baptizing Lutheran children at lunch time?"
He shot back at the sister, "You told us that unless someone was baptized in the one true faith, they could not go to heaven. We're just trying to help these Lutheran kids find paradise.
Keding was introduced at Southwestern Michigan College's Dale A. Lyons Building by Union High School senior Keera Morton.
The only child's household happened to be female-run, with his grandma, mother and aunt, but he said his mother was "falsely in awe" of her mother, who seemed to make decisions by a combination of reading tea leaves and prayer.
Keding saw himself as "perfect for pet parenthood" and wanted a dog.
He was sure that puppy would be poking out of the Christmas present with holes in, but it contained a box turtle, which immediately sucked in its legs and made him the proud owner of a "big green rock."
To tempt the turtle to show its head, Keding dangled a red orb from a paddleball, which it grabbed in its beak. He thought he taught his turtle a trick until he realized "they can hold on for years."
Keding said he turned his turtle into an "armored personnel carrier" by gluing a toy machine gun to its shell. The "only living, breathing tank in the city" proved a hit with playmates while mowing down their soldiers.
High school students gave Linus his name after the Peanuts character because the mostly-unplayed instrument is Keding's onstage "security blanket" as he has traveled widely to such destinations as France, Italy, Spain and Japan, as well as annual forays to England and Ireland.
One of his favorite questions, as he leans against its battered case while waiting in the Orlando airport ticket line, is, "Do you play guitar? Ten people asked me in 15 minutes. The 10th person, a young man, I told no. I said the case is empty" to conceal toilet paper stolen from public restrooms.
Out of respect for his elders, he was kinder toward a black man who produced six silver teaspoons and taught him to play them outside the Art Institute of Chicago.
Keding grasps wooden spoons in his gorilla hands.
He even played "Yankee Doodle" on his cheek.
His stories reveal a fondness for dogs, including Rudy the roller-skating dachshund, pointed out by bus drivers as he body-surfed down hills and shot off slides.
Alley baseball on a T-shaped "diamond" was another passion.
Garages backed up to their playing field. Fielders perched on roofs and in trees and perched on fences to make daring catches which, if unsuccessful, meant bone-breaking falls.
Most yards were kid-friendly, except for Mrs. Kelly, the widow who lived with her incorrectly-named dog, Bobo, an Irish wolfhound which could rest its chin on the top of the head of the 6-foot-3 Keding.
When the boys finally summoned their courage to ask Mrs. Kelly to return them, she ordered them to report to her filthy garage on Saturday morning, though Davy was sure she intended to "feed us to the dog."
When she was under the weather, Mrs. Kelly even persuaded Dan and Davy to walk Bobo with two leashes lashed to their slender wrists.
Bobo "lulled us into a false sense of security" shattered when his "arch enemy" a cocker spaniel began barking at them. "He reared up on his hind legs like a stallion" and dragged them away across the cement. The dog rounded the corner and smacked Davy into a tree, delivering a black eye.
Keding moved away, went to college and became a high school English teacher before finding himself in his old neighborhood once more.
He knocked on Mrs. Kelly's door. She seemed smaller, thinner, but smiled broadly at him.
The Kedings are a "May family," with Dan and his wife and their two Australian shepherds celebrating birthdays this month.
He watches DVDs each day at lunchtime in brief snatches so that it takes a week to complete a movie. His dog watches with him, propped up like a person against the back of the couch, her head on his shoulder. If the plot lags, she's snoring. "She's just like a little person."
Jack is so intelligent that he learned how to operate the electric windows in their car so he could hang his head out. "We learned this in February," Keding said. "His paw was on the armrest. We're the only people we know who have to use the child lock-out system to keep the dog from playing with the windows."
Keding claimed to have won a liars contest at age 12 by claiming he had never stretched the truth.