HOME

Remember this little stranded alien that those great kids befriended back in 1982?  And what is the one word you remember him repeating over and over?  Yeah.  Me too.

Home.

Where would you like to go?   Home.    Please.

Ah, yes: Home, sweet home.   Home on the range?     Carry me back to Old Virginny?    Big D.?    O-k-l-a-h-o-m-a!   Mars?

So where is home to you?  Not your address although, on second thought, it could be.  Down deep in your psyche, what is home to you?

Americans change addresses on an average of every four years.    So where is Home?  Where you hang your hat?  I don’t think so.

I have a little story (of course, I always do) about this word. It started with a little game we played in the car, our little family of five.  It was a spontaneous response, for want of a better description, game.  Here’s how it goes:  Take round-robin turns as leader.  Leader says a word and the rest of the players, without thinking or hesitation, call out the word that comes into their consciousness when they hear the word.  It always ended in laughter.

Now back to circa 1982. We had spent a long business day in San Francisco,  and there was a two hour drive home. The back seat was empty,  the kids had left the nest.  But we decided to play the game, the two of us, because we were so sleepy.  A big seafood dinner on Fishermen’s Wharf will do that.

We knew each other so well after years of marriage,that  the game had little zest to it. Then the eye-opener.

“Lovely,”  I offered.

“Martha!” my husband spontaneously replied.   Huh? (My name is not Martha.)

Now we were both awake.   “I don’t know where that came from,”  he lamely  said with his eyebrows arched up to  his hairline.   And that was the only explanation he could offer.  Hmmm.

Flash forward three months.  We had ended another foggy day in San Francisco and were back at our favorite table in our favorite restaurant. We’d timed it just right, so we could watch the commercial fishermen unload their catch.

Suddenly my handsome husband covered his face with his hands and his shoulders shook.  Crying?  No, laughing.

What?

He could only point.  The boat hitched up to the dock outside our window was  The Lovely Martha!   Case closed.

Recently I was playing that old game with my grandchildren when the word “home” was offered.  “Colorado” my true self responded.  Wha? Hadn’t Lived there for fifty years.  But my heart knew.  Colorado is my true home, the place I spent my formative years.

So I had to try that word on the old guy who sits across the breakfast table.  And he came through.  “Home!”  I said with gestures to hurry. He dithered for a mili-second, and called the best one ever.

“Heart.”

MADE YOU LOOK!

Miss Manners (or was it Heloise?) says that when one cuts one’s nails, one should put one’s hands inside a plastic bag.  (The bag in which you brought the radishes home from Safeway will do.)  This method protects others from both seeing and stepping on clippings.  A tip for the tidy.

I’ve been doing a little obsessing about fingernails as of late. Ever since that ten-year-old kid insulted a lady at Taco Bell. I think the kid didn’t mean it as an insult, he  merely said something aloud without running it through that little editor that grown-ups have in their heads.

He was wearing those ubiquitous roller shoes and did a fancy glide up to the table next to me, looked a little beyond me and  made face like he was going gag.

“Gross!” he bellowed.

The diner at the next table had three inch curving nails extending from her fingertips. How could anyone not look?  Middle aged, and well groomed ,  this lady was eating a taco held between her knuckles.  She smiled at the attention.

“Freddie Krueger”, the kid mumbled.

“This is the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” flashed through my consciousness.  She was free to decorate herself any way she pleased, and she was brave enough to do it.  Case closed.

But I couldn’t leave it alone.  How did she tie her shoes?  Zip her pants? Dial a phone? A few other grooming chores……

I decided I needed a professional manicure, stopped in at Cozy Nails and got an excellent short-as-possible nail clean-up and polish.  I asked my friendly manicurist if she had any customers that want the ultra long nails.  She’d had a couple. She applies false nails and does not cut the nails as they grow out.  The fake nails protect tips from breaking and nature does the rest.

Then I checked the Guinness Book of World Records.  Are there any stats for this?  Yep.

Up until February ,2009, Lee Redmond held the world record for the longest nails.  The combined total length was 28 feet. Her left thumbnail measured 2 feet, 11 inches.  She had not cut her nails since 1979.  Then she lost her title when she was ejected from the SUV in which she was riding  and broke all ten nails.  No other serious injuries.  Here she is in her heyday.

I caught some other photos of nails too, both hands and feet, male and female!  This is not a criticism on my part, live and let live.  I just find it interesting.

SHARE AND TELL

Don’t do it, Pandora.

It’s just a myth you say?  Okay, I don’t believe it either.  But aren’t the paintings great?

And what is Guinevere saying to Lancelot as he rides off to the Crusades?  (Do I have my time-line right here?  Oh, well.) She is giving him her scarf, marking him as her Champion.  We all know that he was more than her Champion; this wife of King Arthur was over the moon for the guy.  So write your own dialogue for this beautifully illustrated moment.

Now to modern photography.  Not today-modern, digital, enhanced, etc.,etc.   This photo is worth a  few hundred words, right?   When these girls turned down the local  yokel with the words “I can’t see you, I have to wash my hair tonight”, they meant it.

Could this be  is that old trio, The Singing Harris Sisters, Harriet and Tressa, and  their mother, Rapunzel?

Step right in,

Sit right down,

Baby, let your hair hang down.

Here’s another photo taken on Mothers’ Day, 1937.   These mothers posed on the hospital steps with their babies born that year.  What is amazing to me is the age and dress of the moms.

Don’t they look like grandmothers? Look closely, thirty four mothers and only six could smile.  There must be a message here someplace.

Back to a painting. A New Testament Bible allegory by James Christensen.   Food for thought.

Moonflower Magic

Aaahh, Moonflowers.  They are ladies of the evening, perfumed and and glowing in the moonlight.  They sleep during the day.

The variety that I have on my rose trellis is a trailing vine with huge heart-shaped leaves. One plant can reach 20 feet in length and needs very little care, just water and an admirer.

Why do they bloom only at night?  I have been told that they are pollinated by nocturnal moths.  The real answer is:  I don’t know.

The husk on the seed is very hard.  So if you are going to run out to the garden and plant a few today,let me give you a hint.  If you want them to come up through the soil in the next couple of weeks you’ll have to help  the seed get  undressed. I take my fingernail clippers and nip a little off the husk then drop them in a cup of warm water for a day or more. Then plant and keep damp.

They’ll need something to cling to as they make their upward climb, even a string will do.  And herein lies the sweet mystery of clinging vines.  One of my moonflower babies came up over a  foot away from the trellis, probably washed there by a too-strong burst of water.  I have watched it inch toward the trellis, and now a tendril has grasped it and it‘s starting its round-and-round embrace. Beautiful to watch. One of God’s little miracles .

The sun has dropped over the horizon and the pale moon glows in the summer night. Fragrance floats on the air.  Moonflowers.

SCARY STUFF

Today my granddaughter made it to Kindergarten Boot Camp!  Today Madelyn  did it!  Yesterday she stayed under her bed.

This same girl can frolic in the pool like a little seal.  Swimming the length of the pool under water.  Floats and kicks and then dives under to emerge laughing and paddling.

She will climb to the top of a slippery-slide and jump into air, landing half-way down with a scream of delight.

Me?  I’m afraid of water.  School was my element.  I was/am a coward in all things physical.

Guess we all have our own personal brand of fear. I must confess a ridiculous phobia of mine.  Then you may say “ that’s silly, they can’t hurt you.”

Birds.

Say it.

The sound of the wings, the little claws on their feet, their menacing beaks, their beady eyes…. I’m under the bed.  I’m not coming out until that creature is back in its cage….has been shooed out of the house with a broom….or put back in the chicken pen.  Shudder.

You know the feeling, you fearers-of snakes, airplanes, or spiders.

I have a friend who is afraid of clowns, another nearly wrecked her car when a moth  hitched a ride, and beaucoup folks can’t look over the edge of the canyon .  So what is your scary-bear?

LITTLE BRAVE HEART

Almost a hundred years ago a little girl was born to two mountain people.  He was educated and loved to teach, she was once his pupil.He married the beautiful girl with the dark curls and bright blue eyes, in her sixteenth year.  Not acceptable now, but okay then.

They had a baby every other year after this little girl was born, for eight years.  Then the strong red-haired father was killed in an accident.  His young wife took to her bed with depression, and the little girl became the parent of all her siblings.  She got a job! She hoed sugar beets alongside other desperate people.  She learned from the world around her. She peeled potatoes and boiled them, and fed her brothers and sisters.

Then she learned from another little girl field laborer that every night her family had beans, so they worked a trade.  Then she traded another for salt.  Their menu improved.

People in their town gave them used clothing.  She became an excellent seamstress by altering coats, pants, and dresses.

She learned to read and educated herself.  Her father would have been proud of her choices. Later in life she could converse on most any subject.

She never smiled or had time for play.  Life was serious.  She determined that she would never have children of her own.  Raising her siblings was far too much.

As a teenager she signed on as cook’s helper with a wheat-harvesting crew.  She could afford a new dress for her two younger sisters now and then.  She learned to cook from a master.(Everyone remembers her table to this day.)

Then one day when she came home exhausted there was a very tall man at their house.  He was wearing his old WWI khakis and laced up boots.  He took his pipe from his mouth and said “Little Minnie, your working days are over, I’m going to take care of your family from now on.”  Her mother was smiling.

The next day she went to high school.  She was sixteen.  Her self-education placed her in the sophomore class.  She was ashamed of her appearance, and went home and altered some clothes for herself.

She loved learning, but could not socialize.  Summer came and she went back to the fields. Her cousin, Carl, determined that she should have some fun, took her to a Saturday night dance at the Grange Hall.

He was teaching her to fox trot when a smiling teenager cut in on them.  This handsome young man was very popular with the local girls and they watched jealously as he danced with this shabby country girl.

For him it was love at first sight.  She could never say the same.  He was nineteen and dreamed of sunny California where oranges grew on trees.  He saw her every day for the next six weeks, always dreaming aloud of California.  Then with a big smile, he proposed:  “Let’s get married and hitch hike out there.”

The next day they were in Grand Junction and were married, Minnie’s cousin and his girlfriend stood up with them.   And they were off to California.  Seventeen and nineteen.

Ben’s father who’d left the family years before lived in Needles.  So they made that their destination, not anybody’s dream-place.

And that’s how I came to be.  A red-haired baby girl born nine months later. Next year, another red-head, David.  The year after that another red-head, Bruce.

Minnie, who was 4’10” weighed 80 pounds  was hit by appendicitis.  The surgeon was appalled at her poor health.  He removed her appendix and told her she would not have to worry about babies anymore he’d fixed that too!  She didn’t understand, but was happy about it.  He’d tied her tubes.

Ben went away to war in WWII, and Minnie fell into depression just as her mother had.  Life did not get a lot better for her when Ben returned four years later.  She suspected him of infidelity.  Their life was thorny through the years.  But Ben never quit expressing his love for his little wife.

Dad died on his 72^nd birthday and Mother came to live with me.  I understood her and gave her privacy and a few luxuries that she protested, but deserved.  She went blind, became crippled with arthritis, had a colostomy as a result of cancer, and lived on.  She died at 87.

One day in my backyard I remembered Mama and her love of a garden. If you look up the expression “green thumb” in any dictionary you’ll find her picture.

That’s when I decided to plant a memory garden and dedicate it to my little mother.

One thing it had to have was succulents that she called hens and chicks.  I plunked one down and told it to grow for my mother.  The rest of the garden is in gorgeous bloom this spring.

Then I saw it for what it was. I am awestruck.  My cup runneth over.

Planted in the memory of a mother who could not hug, who could not say “I love you”.  There it was.

A valentine from my mother, or mine to her?

Putting on the Dog

_

Okay, the lady in the drug store didn’t quite look like this photo of Joan Crawford all vamped out in some movie, but I didn’t get a photo of the subject of my  story.  And a visual beats a thousand words.

When I say fox fur can you imagine this fashion nightmare?  No?   Joan has it slung over her shoulder but the more uptown lady of the 1930-40’s wore it around her neck, the fox’s head  meeting it’s nether end right in front.  Looked, in fact, as if it was biting its own tail.  Worn over a slim tailored suit, hat and gloves equaled Chic.

My two brothers and I were born in a three year period, so when I say ‘little brother’ it is a figure of speech only.  But being the eldest I still pulled rank.

We’d slicked up and gone to town with a list from our mother.  Little kids could do that back then, we didn’t know about crimes against children, and our town was about ten businesses all on one street.  Thinking back, we were  so naïve and innocent.  Was it because television had never entered our lives?  And we had never seen a lady like the one in the drug store.  She was dressed to the nines in the aforementioned ensemble.

She may have been passing through our little town or just descended from a different planet.  We three stared  at her like she was a museum exhibit.  I gripped both my brothers hands.   (Remember, I was the boss.)  Each processing the experience in our individual way.  I was memorizing the suit and ten years later I would be wearing one just like it, minus about six inches on the hem.

My brothers looked aghast.  My middle, little brother turned to me and said in his surprisingly deep little-boy voice.  “Dot, (me-The Boss)….Dot, why does she have her dog around her neck?”

For a moment in time all sound and movement stopped.  The store proprietress, the fancy lady and me all  stunned by David’s question, which in all fairness was one that the rest of the world would ask at a later date. I telegraphed my answer by squeezing David’s hand and gritting my teeth.  Bruce The Innocent, the littlest Harcourt , obviously thought it all great fun and just grinned.

When the freeze-frame moment was over the fine lady huffed out of the store and Mrs. Flynn ,the druggist, educated us country bumpkins . “Fox ,F-O-X, not dog!” she said in a hoarse reprimand.

I silently presented our list, and we exited with our package.

I felt the giggle trying to get out and shook for a while with internal laughter, trying to be the righteous big sister.  No use.  We staggered and laughed like drunks.

Then that kid that grew up to question everything said:  “Hey Dot, really why’d she have her fox wrapped around her neck?”

114 Years and Still Smoldering

Some hot spots show up when the snow falls on Coal Ridge.

Today’s newspaper reports from Montcoal, West Virginia.   What does that bring to mind?   Me too.  I grew up in a coal mining town.

The headlines scream “Disaster”.  Why in 2010, when we have updated and improved technology; we have so many experts with solutions, this heart-breaking news?

Today 25 are counted as fatalities down deep in the mine.  Now to bring out the bodies.

The mourning has already begun.

Let me tell you a story, really two stories, about the day all the daddies died in my little hometown:

When the town was organized in 1888 coal, that rock that burns, was king.  By 1893 the Consolidated Mine on Ward’s Peak (today known as Burning Mountain) was in full gear, putting out a high grade bituminous coal.  The company that owned it also opened the Vulcan Mine across the Colorado River, then soon closed it when they found it too dangerous to operate.

The Colorado River, New Castle, Colorado.

A railroad company took the risk of starting up  the Vulcan and proclaiming that it could be managed.

On a cold morning, February 18, 1896, forty nine miners ferried across the deep Colorado River, went to work in the Vulcan, and lost their lives.

At noon that day a  thunderous blast blotted out every other sound in the world.  People rushed out of every house.  They knew where to turn their eyes. Black smoke and coal dust  marked tragedy across the river.

John French had decided that very day that he would not return to the Vulcan because of the smell of methane gas. He claimed he knew that it was about to blow.  He was right.

Townspeople and miners from the Consolidated rushed to the rescue. They reached Ed Welch, battered and dying.  He gasped out that he had been blown from about a quarter mile within the mine.  They raced to the mine entrance to find it blocked by collapsed timbers, and the strong smell of gas.

It took nearly a month before the bodies were brought out.  The whole town was in anguish. Many of the dead were the fathers of large families. One family lost all three sons.  Little boys, known as trappers, were victims too.

End of story?  No.  In 1912, a big fuel company. Started the Vulcan up again.   I don’t use the business names of these big companies because they are still dirty words in New Castle.  They put job-hungry miners in a life-threatening position, then gave only a pittance to their survivors.

The town perked  up with the paychecks from the new mine.  The miners were  paid by the ton, forty five cents.  Mining this thick vein gave the miners the opportunity to dig at least ten tons a day.  An unskilled laborer was earning  a dollar a day, so the risk seemed worthwhile. Many never even considered the risk, it just what a man did to take care of his family.

An air vent was dug  completely through the mountain. A ventilation system consisting of a small  fan that pumped fresh air into the mine and a larger fan that pumped gassy fumes out of the mine.  Water was pumped up from the river and the mine was sprinkled every other day to keep the coal dust down. In retrospect this was not nearly adequate.

Then in December 1912, another cold winter day, another Tuesday, disaster struck again.  Three days earlier the water pipes had frozen, even though they had been wrapped and insulated with hay.  The decision was made to reverse the fans, to keep the area warmer.  The smaller fan was now the exhaust, allowing methane gas to build up.

The miners should have been using the new enclosed-flame carbide lamps, but instead they were issued the outdated “naked” carbide lights for their hats.  A formula for death.

The concussion from the resulting blast killed the miners.  It was the flu season and only 37 miners had reported for work that day.  There are many tales about that day.  One wife was giving birth as her husband died.  One miner who was ill asked a high school boy if he’d like to earn his wages that day, so he skipped school and went to his death.

So much grief for a tiny town.  The day their daddies died.

Today the miners’ names are engraved on a monument in the town park and each July residents and former residents celebrate Burning Mountain Days.

Every coal-mining family extends their sympathy, Montcoal, West Virginia.   And those of us who work at much more cushy jobs bow our heads too.

The Naked Truth

Then she rode forth, clothed only with chastity:

The deep air listen’d round her as she rode,

And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.

Alfred Lord Tennyson,  the poem GODIVA, 1842

My  mountain Granny would swaller her chaw of tobacco if this discovery had been made in her lifetime.  She  wouldn’t appreciate a fully-growed female traipsing through town in her birthday suit.

But here it was, thank you Ancestry.com, one of my Grandma Flossie’s  long ago grandmothers was Lady Godifu, wife  of Leofric, Earl of Mercia, commonly referred to as Lady Godiva of Coventry!  This will make me smile for a month.

Her story (or myth as some insist) is the tale of a nagging wife.  Her husband taxed nearly everything the peasants had.  The day he levied a tax on manure, she lit into him about giving the people a break.

Old Leofric. feeling safe that his beautiful, religious wife would not take him up on his offer, proposed that if she would ride  in the altogether through town he would take the taxes off everything but horses.

She asked if she had his permission.  He said “Goeth for it”.   And she did.

It is part of the myth-story that Leofric ordered all people inside with shutters closed as she rode through town.  This one good fellow, Thomas the Tailor, drilled a little peep-hole in the shutters so he could get an eyeful.  Recognize that guy?  Peeping Tom?

Lady Godiva arranged her very long hair like a veil over her body, so that only her legs were revealed.  She was accompanied by two lovely ladies on horses.  Must have been a sight.  But of course, old Tom, was the only one who could tell us. And he didn’t live to tell the tale.

Many artists and story tellers have relished this material.

Since my daughtger is blonde, and now we all can claim Grandma Godiva, I think I favor this painting by Leighton.  The red-haired version by Collier is the most often used to illustrate her story. Whatever.  Isn’t it a kick in the pants!

Here, Fishy, Fishy

No.

Not a trick photo.

Remember the old song “Summertime”: the fish are jumping and the cotton is high? Jumping like this?

Today’s Sacramento Bee newspaper reported that the Supreme Court refused to order the closure of Chicago area shipping locks to prevent these very fish, Asian Carp, from invading the Great Lakes

I needed to know more.  Why should we be worried by a fish invasion?  Martian invasion, yes.  But, fish? Here’s what  I Googled:

Bighead and silver carp are collectively known as Asian carp. These fish are very large, reaching up to 90 pounds. Because Asian carp are filter-feeders, scientists are concerned that the massive fish may deplete the Great Lake zooplankton populations. Zooplankton is the main food source for many native species, including mussels, larval fish, and some adult fish. The Asian carp’s niche may also overlap with salmon and perch, species with high recreational and commercial value, and may out-compete these species and endanger the fishery.

It is thought that the Asian carp escaped from catfish farms in the southern U.S.. They have spread throughout the Mississippi River system in less than a decade, and they have been caught less than 25 miles from the entrance to Lake Michigan in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. If they invade the Great Lakes, they will likely reproduce quickly and have immediate ecologic and economic effects.

Now these are not just your common pan-sized trout.  They can grow up to four feet and can jump into a boat and knock the fisherman over.  Stay-away -from -me.

This reminds me of the Kudzu vine, another escapee into our environment.  It is gorgeous and green, and covers everything in its path.  Trees, old barns, acres upon acres of our Southeast.   Brought here to prevent erosion, and went nuts.

See the house?

Don’t turn your back on this Wild Thing.

Another side to this story:  medical experimentation is testing the plant as cure for migraine headaches, vertigo,   stomach problems, alcohol addiction and even cancer prevention. If even one pans out, we have beaucoup raw material.

And how about the 24 rabbits brought to Australia about 1850 and multiplied to 10 billion, devastating crops and prompting Australians to build that miles-long rabbit-proof fence.

About the same time these bunnies were immigrating to Australia a different species was doing a “California Here I Come”. The snail.  Introduced  from Europe as escargot in the raw, and lived on to be a garden pest.

But back to those carp.

Let’s keep a level head here.