Lessons Learned on Hollow Days with a Four-year Old

                Lessons Learned on Hollow Days with a Four-year Old

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A week and a day. I’m not counting, but if I were, there are only a few days left until Lexi’s Mommy and Daddy come home. I am in a suburb of Seattle babysitting my granddaughter, Alexandria. Lexi’s Mom and Dad are in Italy, so I get to stay and we get to play.

My granddaughters have permanent hooks into my heart. I tell the little darlings, “Anything your heart desires, Sweet Puss.”

They teach me new worlds. My formal re-education began the first Friday afternoon (day three). We headed out to visit cousin Toni and her family in Tulalip for the long weekend. I made forty-two trips to the car with clothing, necessities for every eventuality, toys to entertain during the trip and a tray of chocolate cup cakes, made (with Grandma’s help) and decorated by Lexi. I strapped Lexi into her Big Girl car seat for the trip of an hour and a bit from Issaquah. Lexi sang to while away the time and brighten the trip. I soon joined her. This is the song she taught me:

I used to be hot, hot, hot,

And now I’m not, not, not.

This from the sweet mouth of my beautiful four-year old. For an hour we sang. I thought about the meaning of those words. I thought about it a lot, lot, lot. Horrors! I was singing rap music. Her dad likes rap; he probably corrupted his own child. Finally I asked, “Where did you learn this song, Lexi?”

“From the Cat in the Hat.” My first conclusion—as usual—wrong.

Toni, now six, and Lexi played beautifully ninety-six percent of the time. In between their play and laughter we adults heard variations of “You’re not the boss of me,” “Quit following me,” and “Don’t touch me.”

On the way home after our first weekend visit, Lexi taught me another song, this one crowded with creative animals, all down by the bay, where the watermelons grow and bears comb their hair, mooses kiss gooses, bees sunburn their knees and whales have polka-dot tails.

Day six, Labor Day Monday, we walked to the ice cream store, down the hill in the shopping center, for a treat. This was our second visit to the ice cream store. I did not intend for us to go every day. I asked Lexi, “How often do you get to go to the ice cream store?”

“Only on Hollow Days,” her honest answer.

Day seven, Lexi bouncing like Tigger, started back to school. I learned the route with Lexi telling me where to turn. I entered the wrong street only once, when I failed to ask her first. She dutifully reported my error to the delight of Mom and Dad when they called.

Day eight began woefully. Mom and Dad made their daily visit via Skype. Lexi was not ready to blow kisses and say good-by. When they cut short the call, way too soon for her, Lexi had her first minor meltdown, curled on the couch, refused to put on her shoes and declared she would not go to school. I called school, said we might dawdle a bit and would be late. I left Lexi, generally a joyful child, alone for a while to feel her sadness. Then I wheedled her into her shoes and manipulated her out the door. After all, I am smarter than a four-year old.

I lost track of time. We spent weekends with cousin Toni. We picked blackberries. We went to a “Fifties-Sixties” dance, in costume. We baked bread. We canned sweet-potato butter. We celebrated an occasional Hollow Day at the ice-cream store. We took a jammie walk (not my idea), a stroll around the block after we brushed out teeth and wriggled into our jammies. The evening air was mild, neighbors were out grooming lawns. The big kids played ball or rolled past on scooters. Once one gets past the initial discomfort of walking around a suburban neighborhood in night wear, it is quite relaxing. Try it some time.

This much fun is hard work. If I were counting the days, I would tell you that I’ll be home none too soon, exhausted, my eyes like pinwheels, with my world greatly expanded. If I were counting.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

September 13, 2012

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Crazed With March Madness at Kennedy’s Bar

Crazed With March Madness at Kennedy’s Bar

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Ordinarily I don’t hang out at Kennedy’s. But the Civic Association served up a free dinner. Ordinarily I don’t bet money on anything. Even when I play poker I refuse to bet anything more than a pile of beans, especially after the time I lost my shirt. But it was for a worthy cause, a fund-raiser for the Civic Association which does good things for Harlem.

I reasoned that I had done quite well at the City Shop morning coffee group’s football pool—a three time winner. So how challenging could a Calcutta Auction be? For me, basketball is much more fun than football. The coffee guys were all excited about it, so hey, I thought I’d go check it out. I called my cousin Shirley. “Have you ever gone to that basketball thing at Kennedy’s? Uh huh. No. Me neither. Wanna go?”

So that is how Shirley and I ended up at the NCAA Tournament Calcutta Auction at Kennedy’s on a Monday night. The guys said the way it works is you buy a team. I knew that some guys had bid as high as three and four hundred dollars. I kind of envisioned a small group of die-hard, gun-slinging Doc Holiday types, spit in their eyes, hunched over wads of dollar bills. Beyond that, I had no idea what to expect when I walked in the door.

Supper was scheduled at 6 PM, so Shirley and I sauntered in (I was trying to get in character) about 6:05. The place was packed. All the movers and shakers from Harlem sat around wolfing down stew and all the fussins. Every white-haired lady in town was there. Along with several young couples, tomorrow’s leaders.  I even spotted a local pastor in the crowd.

I no more than stepped foot over Kennedy’s threshold than I was tripped up by Gerald “Bear Shirt” Stiffarm, station manager for KGVA FM, which that evening broadcast pre-auction entertainment. I knew Gerald from the olden days, from school. I’m older but Gerald is smarter. He asked if he could interview me on the broadcast. So I said a word or two about how the City Council and the Civic Association worked together with common goals to make our little town the best it can be or something like that.

Shirley had worked her way to the back of the room and rounded up two empty chairs at the very last table. We filled our plates. As people finished eating they milled about the room greeting friends, placing side bets. Somehow, it didn’t feel like we were in a bar, certainly not a Gunsmoke-type bar. It felt more like a family reunion.

After we sang in celebration of Chuck’s birthday, his third twenty-second birthday (think about it), Joe Brown, another Harlem fixture, took over the mike and tossed the ball up to start the auction. Joe knew everyone in the room and where the bodies are buried. In his repartee nobody went unscathed, in a good-natured way, of course.

“What a kick!” I said to Shirley. It quickly became apparent that this year the action had heated up beyond that of former years. The higher ranked teams were nailed down for seven, eight hundred dollars and more. The highest bid came in around eleven hundred dollars. But there were sixty-eight teams, so some went low, even as affordable as twenty dollars.

Rich or poor, everybody could get in on the fun. Whole tables full of fans pooled their resources. At the table next to Shirley and me, five or six of our friends put their heads together and, with finesse, bought more than one team. Called “The Ladies”, they were well-known veterans at the game. Boss bid against employee. Neighbor bid against neighbor. Harlem bid against Chinook.

At one time auctioneer Joe Brown didn’t see a man’s arm raised to bid. Another man across the room raised his arm to point out his friend’s missed bid. “Sold,” yelled the auctioneer. The flustered friend bought a team, whether he wanted it or not.

Shirley and I watched closely. We talked it over. We decided we could afford to chip in twenty dollars apiece to buy one of the lower ranked teams. Who knows, in college basketball, anything can happen. We could even come out flush. But every time we were ready to jump into the fray, the bid went up to forty-five, fifty, sixty. Or a thousand! Finally, toward the end of the evening, we bought Pacific University for thirty dollars.

“Where’s Pacific,” I asked.

“Stockton, California,” somebody answered.

Miami, the team slated to play Pacific, was bid in at a thousand-seventy-five dollars. We got whomped, 78 to 49.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

March 28, 2013

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Super Bowl XLV

Super Bowl XLV

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I’m excited. I have been invited to a Super Bowl Party. So I called a friend (male) to get some basic information. He lives several states from here. I didn’t want to call somebody local and display my ignorance.



“That’s nice,” he said. “But why are you going? You don’t watch football. You don’t even have a television.”



“I haven’t been out of the house since it began snowing.”



He said, “I was just heading out the door to stock up on beer and chips for my own party. “Be prepared. The game will last at least four hours. Sure you can do this?”



“It’s not like I’ve never been to a Super Bowl Party before.” I thought about it a moment. It was back in the mid-80’s. “The last time I went to one I got married.”



That shocked him into silence. “Not at the party,” I explained. “Do you think he’d give up football for a wedding? It’s where I met him. We went together for a year before we got married.”



My friend on the phone wanted to know what teams had played that year. “Why would I remember that? That’s guy stuff. I want to know who’s playing this year. The Green Bay Packers? Yes, I know who they are. I spent two weeks in Wisconsin in the autumn, football season, 1973. I loved it. People there are all about the Packers. Who is the other team? Oh, Pittsburgh . Steelers, huh? So what are the colors of the uniforms? Green and gold for the Packers. I remember that. Black and gold, Steelers. That should be easy enough for me to keep straight.”



He went on to inform me that this was the forty-fifth Super Bowl, pretentiously spelled X—L—V, for those who flunked Latin. Oh, yeah, I remember that, I told him, rolling my eyes. He offered to look up Super Bowl trivia so I could dazzle everybody at my party. I declined, sensing the imminent danger in displaying too much information when I don’t know a goal post from a putting green.



“Hey, if you want to show up in person, you can still get tickets. I looked on-line. The cheaper seats are going for a mere $1,985.00 today. If you want to sit down front on the fifty-yard line, they are a bargain at only $23,729.00.” Again, I declined.



“I’m still not sure why you are going to a football party.”



“It’s about being with friends, talking and laughing, eating and drinking, isn’t it? I think I’ll make soft pretzels and hot mustard to take along.”



“Who are you rooting for?”



“ Green Bay , of course. I’ve never been to Pittsburgh .”





Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door
Feb. 3, 2011
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A Small Town Fourth

A Small Town Fourth
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I began my Fourth of July by watering pots of petunias and sighing over the ever-present dust. The previous evening we had a non-storm, the type I call ‘Big Hat and No Cattle’. The wind blew and blustered, black clouds gathered high above, thunder roared and lightning flashed. I stood on my front steps and hoped for rain to settle the dust, but the clouds rose even higher and briskly marched across the sky to a Sousa beat. Later I heard that in the mountains to the south of us and on the high plains to the north, some folks got more action than they had wanted from those same clouds, but here in our section of the Milk River Valley, we stayed dry and went to bed with a clear sky above and the waxing moon erasing the dark night.

In the early afternoon I had a surprise visit from Charlotte, an old friend from high school, up from Billings to visit one of her daughters. We reminisced until it was nearly time for the parade. It is only four blocks from my home to Main Street . I hurried off on foot, hoping I would not be late, and arrived just in time to watch the parade get underway, led by the Fire and Rescue vehicles. The parade had everything; vintage cars and trucks decorated with streamers, floats, marchers of all ages waving flags and carrying banners, young people zipping around on ATV’s, beautiful horses with stately riders bringing up the rear. The marchers waved and we waved back. They threw handfuls of candy and balloons. Small children scrambled for the goodies. We spectators along the sidewalks chatted with one another with smiles, hugs and handshakes.

When the parade ended, we walked from Main Street to the city park. There the Harlem Civic Organization had set up serving tables for the annual Potluck in the Park. On these tables were children’s wading pools filled with ice to keep pot luck dishes cool and electric roasting pans to keep the barbequed pork hot. There were long rows of tables and chairs set up for the hungry diners. One thoughtful community member had set up a huge bank of speakers where as DJ he played lively background music, just loud enough to listen to but soft enough to allow easy talk with neighbors. It was early yet. Children played on the new playground equipment and romped on the grass while their parents staked out a family area and visited from group to group, keeping a watchful eye on the kids. I meandered over to the playground to help with the games for the little guys. I sat in the shade of a tree and handed out prizes to the winners. What fun to watch the children run three-legged races, sack races, crab crawls, backwards races and tugs-of-war, to shout encouragement to the participants, and to cheer for all the children. After each race I was mobbed by kids for their prizes. All were winners in my eyes. I passed out handfuls of booty.

The Civic Organization had set up a tent with photo displays of our town, pictures of things we like about our community as well as things we would like to change. Harlem is taking part in the Horizons Project, a program designed to help revitalize a community. The project helps members of the community plan what they want and then put their plans into action. Everyone has input into the planning. One step in this process includes a survey. Citizens hovered over yellow survey sheets as they thoughtfully painted a word picture of their visions for Harlem . The Potluck in the Park was a perfect venue to gather a large cross-section of our people in one place for this survey.

At six o’clock the food was ready. We formed lines, heaped our plates, and filled the tables in the park to capacity. Friends, neighbors and guests feasted on good food and fellowship. There must have been nearly three hundred people at the dinner. In that magical loaves-and-fishes way of potlucks, everybody had plenty to eat. We laughed, told stories, and enjoyed one another’s company. Around eight o’clock everyone spontaneously began to gather up empty plates, to break down folding tables, to stack chairs and to carry supplies to the large Seed Show truck to be stored until the next community event.

I walked home to find an unexpected surprise on my doorstep, bare root chokecherry, sand cherry, Saskatoon berry, lilac, golden currant, and plum sprigs, gifts from a friend. The only thing that could top off this day would be the fireworks. I stood in my back door and watched the sky rockets explode color umbrellas in the night sky. What a complete day. A diverse community had come together to celebrate our nation’s independence. We had a wonderful time.
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Romancing the Dump

Romancing the Dump
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There was a knock on my door. I had been back in Harlem only a few weeks. It had been a long day, opening boxes, finding places for tools, putting supplies away. I was tired and dusty and not expecting company.

I opened the door and the man standing on the other side asked, “Want to go to the dump?”

“Is this a date?”

“I noticed your driveway is full of boxes and bags. I thought you might want to haul them to the dump,” he explained. “And I brought along a couple beers.”

“Umm, yes on hauling stuff away and no on the beer. Just let me change my shirt.”

The man is an old acquaintance from my high school days, one of few who have remained. Most of my classmates have moved on to greener pastures, so to speak, to other towns or out of state for better jobs. Tonight, surprisingly, he is all dressed up, combed and polished and ironed. I have seen him several times around town since I came home, wearing dingy jeans, mud boots, ripped jacket, and the ubiquitous stained farm-equipment or insurance-company cap. He used to dress pretty spiffy in high school. I remember that you could have sliced cheese with the crease in his jeans.

We never dated back then. He was a few classes ahead of me in school and I knew my Dad would never have approved. Besides, I was such a priss he never noticed me. What I remember most was his reputation. Partying and fighting, fast cars, ducktail hair cut, white tee shirt with pack of Camels rolled in the sleeve. He still has that hair cut.

We loaded up my trash. And off we roared, out of town, up the hill to the dump, left front fender flapping. We heaved the stuff into the transfer trailers, got back into the pick-up. He must have figured I was a modern woman so he let me open my own door. He eased over to the fence.

We sat there overlooking the vista, the Milk River Valley and the town beyond. It was a clear night and the lights of town melded into the lights of Fort Belknap across the river and the stars above dipped down a bit just to be part of the picture. It truly was beautiful.

We sat quietly for a while. Then talking about the old days came easy. We remembered the town when it bustled with commerce on Saturday afternoons, when we students crowded into the matinee at the Grand, then afterwards had cheeseburgers and milk shakes at the Confectionary. We talked about friends long gone and loves long past. Then he drove me home.

Since then the Harlem dump has become an integral part of my over-all tour package when I have visitors from out of state and want to show them a good time. The view from the dump is beautiful in all seasons and all times of the day. The scene is beautiful with snow covering each dip and fold of ground and the mountains beyond. It is beautiful with emerging greens of spring, or when clothed in the golden hues of autumn. My favorite time is when the 4:00 freight rolls through from the east with the grasses of summer providing the backdrop, both ranges of mountains purple in the distance, and a few cumulus clouds plumped in the sky.

And I love the priceless look on my friends’ faces when I ask, “Want to go to the dump?”

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