When Neighbors Were The News

 

          When Neighbors Were The News

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Back when I was in high school, and, yes, that was an eye-rolling long time ago, I eagerly awaited the day when the weekly Harlem News was delivered to the mailbox, a mile down our driveway. We also received the daily GF Trib, but that was not as fun to read as the local.

Based on my own self, I’m confident that Everybody read Every Article, front headlines to back page sales ads. I might modify that to Almost Everybody read Every Article, since, after all, I read cereal boxes if nothing else was available. (Books were not allowed at the meal table.)

Of course, we read every scribble. The news was all about our neighbors, and what is more fascinating than our neighbors.

Each week, prior to press deadline, women sat down in front of their telephone with a list of reliable informants, other women, because back then, men were out in the fields or were  running the hardware store or insurance office and such, and dialed down the list, querying what was happening within the family and the area, jotting down every tidbit of gossip, I mean, news, which then made it into print, perhaps with judicious editing.

This homey style news reporting went on for years. When did such neighborly news quit being gathered? I knew that everyone in Harlem heard when Paul Ashton’s daughter, Sondra, living in Great Falls or Santa Cruz or Denver or Chicago or Missoula or Poulsbo, Washington, visited.

I suppose social media, in all its forms, replaced the neighborly news. It’s not the same. We do not all indulge.

I enjoyed knowing that relatives visited, that friends gathered for Sunday fried-chicken dinner after church, that somebody hosted cards Saturday evening, that neighbors gathered to harvest a crop when the owner broke a leg or was otherwise incapacitated. It’s small news, but important when our neighbor’s son or daughter at an out-of-state University wins a accolade of some sort. We need to know who might need a casserole delivered during tough times.

In the spirit of old-timey news, I report the following from my own back yard neighborhood:

It’s been a rainy, wet, week at Rancho Esperanza, but the daily storms did not curtail neighborly visiting, card playing, quick visits back and forth or over the fence.

Last Tuesday, Nancie, with her daughter, Julie, and Julie’s husband, Dan, arrived to spend a week at Nancie’s Rancho casita. Nancie is my cousin, so I have been doubly delighted to spend time with relatives.

Thursday Janet, from next door to me, invited those few of us here, for homemade ice cream. With her new-fangled modern ice-cream mixer, Janet can be dubbed our ice cream lady. Janet served a choice of vanilla with mango sauce or butter pecan. Several guests enjoyed a scoop of each. Those attending were the hostess, Janet, Lani and Ariel, Leo, Nancie, Julie and Dan, and my own self.

Sunday afternoon, following yet another storm, the above group, along with Leo’s two young nieces, met in town at the Mi Casa Restaurante for a bon voyage feast of traditional area foods. On Monday morning, Nancie, Dan, Julie and Lani fly off to homes in Washington State. The group table was soon cluttered with plates and bowls, empty of pozole, tostados, flautas and enchiladas. A good time was had by all.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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When South Moves North

 

When South Moves North

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The other day I found a moth clinging above my screen doorknob. I was in and out the door frequently. The moth hung out all day, swinging with the door. The thing was huge, the size of my palm. It was the most beautiful moth I’ve ever seen and one I’d never seen previously. Ms. Moth was plum colored and when her wings were widespread, she displayed a coral/orange oval on the inside spread.

Toward the end of the afternoon, Leo dropped by to see if I needed anything from town. I showed him the moth. He took a photo and sent it to my grandson, who is very much a bug person. Tyler sent the photo to an identification app or site or whatchacallit.

Ms. Moth is Autermeris Illustris, a type of silkworm resident in Argentina, found as far north as Brazil. My moth is the second moth of this kind to be identified in Jalisco. She fled to the greenery climbing my patio wall. I’ve not seen her since. Maybe she’s doing the moth thing with reproduction, and I’ll eventually host a flock. Maybe the resident roof iguana ate her.

Well, that was a cheerful thought. It’s hard to be cheerful when your friends and the country you love is being char-broiled under a heat dome. The highest temperature I’ve experienced in Montana was 109 F, one day when I was young and stupid. When we had our own heat dome here a couple years ago, we had one day when we hit 109 F and it was brutal.

I cannot even imagine the danger, with the thermometer blasting into the teens, that you are experiencing. Please, please, be careful in all that you do and stay hydrated. If it’s wet, drink it. That’s my advice.

Granted, my advice is worthless. I awoke a few mornings ago from a vivid dream with these words ringing in my head. “Everything you think you know is not so. You don’t know anything.” I take that as a given.

We, at the rancho, are still stormed every afternoon or evening. Ah, rain, lovely rain, in various amounts, always enough to keep me from riding my trusty tricycle. I’m not fond of splashing through puddles and sliding through mud slicks. When I was six, that was fun. Rain is not forever, but, what do I know, see above. I can confidently tell you that I’ve not seen this much rain, this consistently, in the summers, now the eleventh, that I’ve lived in Etzatlan.  

July is the month of the Fly where I live. I doubt it is much different up north. While I’m doing my house chores it seems like I have a fly swatter semi-attached to my hand. Vets in town are frantic, trying to keep the screwworm from becoming epidemic. Along with cows and horses and burros, they also are seeing increasing numbers of infected domestic animals. Once infected, the animals must be put down.

If a cat or dog can be infected, it is hard for me to believe that I could not be attacked also. I hope I’m wrong. See paragraph six.

Today I’m not an umbrella of joy. I sincerely apologize for being a bucket of cold water. Maybe it is something I ate. Yesterday, a fruitful day, I downed six fresh figs and one whole passion fruit along with several slices of mango. The passion fruit is from further south. I think.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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In the Twilight Zone

 

In the Twilight Zone

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I’ve become an early morning person. I don’t know if I’ve always been one. Most years of my life I simply rolled out of bed to do what needed doing without question. Now I’m a woman of leisure. I’ve not had a clock in my bedroom for years. I wake to the light.

To the light and to the ever-loud, greet-the-sunrise, bird-cricket-frog-donkey-chicken chorus. The birds sing full-throat through the half-hour of pre-dawn light followed by a silence as the sun rises. Then they go about their birdy business-as-usual, noisily.

One morning last week I awoke to the light—and—to silence. No chorus. The sun rose. We don’t do silence here. We do birdsong. I lay in bed and listened hard. My old ears heard—nothing.

I went out for my morning walk. My dog Lola went to the gate with me, stepped out, said, “Not today. Nothing doing.” Uncharacteristically, she turned and went back to her doghouse. That was spooky.

Nothing moved. Nothing sang or whistled or chirped or crowed. Not the mourning doves. Not the partridge doves. Not the hummingbirds. Not the twenty or fifty brands of colorful songsters. Not the neighbor’s chickens. Not even the peacocks or the donkey across the arroyo.

I want to tell you, that was frightening. For two more hours I sat and watched my silent and unmoving back yard, wondering what was wrong. Something was wrong. Tension weighted the air.

Not only were there no ever-present birds, not even a sparrow, I saw no butterflies, dragonflies, ubiquitous bees, bugs of unknown name, lizards (no lizards!) or iguanas.

This was the morning of the big earthquake between La Paz and Culiacan. There isn’t exactly a direct shot from there to here, from the water to the coast, and south, up over mountains. Maybe there was no connection. Maybe. (Cue eerie background music.)

Morning rolled close to noon before the mourning doves began to flutter through the trees, followed by a few hummingbirds. One by one, seemingly cautiously, life came back to my yard.

Not only was I faced with the mystery of no birdsong, no birds, a reluctant dog, but when I mixed my bread, my dough refused to rise. Maybe there was no connection. Maybe. I saved the dough by patting out slabs of cowboy bread.

Speaking of bread, does anyone have Blue’s fry bread recipe. I used it for years. Lost in the move to Mexico. I’d love to have it again. If we survive the barrage of quakes, when my snowbird friends return, I’ve promised a feast of Indian tacos with fry bread. I can use my own best recipe. But I’d rather have Blue’s.

You all have a good day now. I’m going out to the back yard to sit under the jacaranda tree, listen to the birds and watch grass grow. Because I can.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

July, 2026

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Being a Human Bean

 

Being a Human Bean

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Yesterday, after an entire week of vertigo, in which my main task was to keep myself and my head as immobilized as possible, was the first day I felt halfway like a human bean. That is not a misprint. I figure a “bean” is a step closer to “being”.  “Being” is not something I felt much during the dizzy week.

Vertigo seems to run in my family, an inner ear malfunction, maybe, so I figure to deal with it best as I can and pretend my head is in a vise. I had one “interesting” moment. I had just stood up and felt like I was easing into nothingness. I had a flash of fear followed by a deep peace. My thoughts were not coherent, not a real thought, but more of a knowing that I’ve had a fantastic run at life.

Amen and onward. I’ve never been one for a bucket list. I can’t think of a thing I need to hurry to get done, including places to go, for me to complete myself. Over the years, and it’s been a high-grade sandpaper struggle, I’ve come to like the woman living in my wrinkled skin. I still keep the sandpaper close. I doubt that scratching work ever gets finished.

I’m fortunate. Growing up, my world was formed by writers such as Robert Lewis Stevenson, who taught me that “the world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings”. I figured out long ago that kings might not be so happy, but I still buy the intent and meaning and spend a bit of each day in awe.

Last night we had a bing-boom-bangdown storm which delivered a good inch of rain in one hour. It was a dizzy doozer, much like my head, as I cheered the storm onward. Consequently, when my pooch Lola and I took our sun-up walk, the world around us was so clean and beautiful it squeaked, along with constant birdsong and the donkey’s bray from across the arroyo.

Eight of us gals who graduated from Harlem High School in ’63, that’s 1963, not 1863, are in an ongoing conversational email group. Yesterday Cheryl reminisced about her family visiting Karen’s house for Sunday dinner, afterward sprawling on the floor reading the GF Tribune funnies together.

All of that’s in the long-gone past. None of us willingly dare sprawl on the floor and does the Trib still put out a paper paper? I learned to read before school, on my own floor, Pogo, Little Lulu, Dagwood, and such. I suppose they contributed to my worldview as much as RLS, just not as poetically.

This is enough foolishness from me this morning. I’m going to drain the whey from my fresh yogurt and use the whey to bake a batch of honey wholewheat bread. I intend to slather a slice of warm fresh bread with real butter from the cremeria in town, sourced from a local farm. A couple of ripe mangos from my own tree and a slice of bread from my oven. Life doesn’t get much richer than that.

It’s true for me. The world is full of a number of things, including vertigo, storms, the funnies, friends and fresh bread. As the youngers said, maybe in the 90s, cool beans.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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My Farm Crisis

 

My Farm Crisis

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You can take the girl out of the farm but you can’t take the farmer out of the girl. Okay, so I don’t really have a farm, but I have a lovely mango tree in my back yard, and therein, my farm crisis.

I’m standing at my window looking into my back yard at my mango tree, so loaded with fruit that we had to make stilts to keep the branches from breaking and to hold the fruit off the ground.

Today the reason I’m standing in my house looking out is that the rain, has not let up, cycling, ‘round and ‘round, through drizzle, mizzle and pizzle to light, moderate and unrelenting pounding, heavy on the pounding, all night and all day.

I love rain. You know I love rain. Every year I await our rainy season with fear and trepidation that after eight months dry, dry, dry, it will never rain again. Every year it rains again. Every year I love the rain all over again.

This year the rain came, daily, three weeks early. During sizzling heat of April and May I watched my tree form lovely mango fruits and grow them to size, almost ripe. With the rains, it seemed the green globes, which now should be yellow, quit changing. Quit growing. Quit coloring. Quit ripening.

Why? What’s wrong? Me, being who I am, I think I need to know why.

During lulls in rain, I moved around my tree, branch to branch, fondling the fruit. Any that felt almost ready to eat, emphasis on almost, I brought into the house to finish ripening. In that manner, one day I ate one mango, the next day two or three.

As a farmer facing an apparent bumper crop, forgive my mixing cliché and metaphor, I had been counting my chickens before they laid eggs. In my mind, I could see jars of yellow jam on my cupboard shelf, had gifted jars to all my neighbors, had filled bags of mango fruit in the freezer for future pies at community gatherings. Mango mania in my mind.

When I peeled my first basket of mangos, enough for a pie, I discovered that half were mushy and brown inside, despite feeling firm and looking perfect. Oops, no pie. Same disappointment the following day but with two days harvest, I had enough fruit for a pie to share with my neighbors. We love mango pie.

What I didn’t count on was that our early, daily, rain with cloudy skies, which brought on a lot of hallelujah and hoopla from me, also meant a 20-30 degree daily drop in temperature along with a serious drop in hours of sunshine and a halt in the ripening process of my mango fruit.

That’s my theory of why my mangos quit ripening. No worms. No bugs. Fruits are beautiful. Outside. Brown inside. My reasoning may be wrong, blaming the exuberant rain and lack of sun, but, my reasoning works for me.

I will not be totally bereft. I forced myself to lower my expectations. I’ll not make jam this year. Oh, I’ll have some mangos for the freezer. I’ll have a couple pies to take to community gatherings.  

You can truthfully tell me that I’m not having a real farm crisis. I’ll nod my head in agreement. But, dang it, it feels like a real crisis to me.

My herbs look good. The limes love the rain. The hibiscus, all colors, can hardly hold up their soggy heads but they keep trying. Those strange orange flowers, and the lantana and crepe myrtle, lilies and most other flowers are flourishing.

Silly me, to put all my hopes on my one mango tree. I know better. I should have bought a box when the truck from Tequila, where the yellow mangos I love ripen a month earlier than mine, sets up their stand along the highway.

What do all we farmers say when a crop fails? Oh, well. Shrug. Next year.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

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Remember when you were eighteen and dumber than a rock but thought you knew it all? Me, I wasn’t about to dedicate my life to being my Dad’s housekeeper, cook and bottle washer, so I showed him. I got married.

We newlyweds lived in a house made of three granaries knocked together, with no water, no bathroom, but, we had more than some. We had electricity. We had a good deep well with delicious water. Coming from a valley farm with soda water, that well water was fine stuff.

In a way, we had running water. I ran it into the house in ten-gallon buckets, one bucket in each hand, every blessed drop of it. I also ran it out in buckets. So, yeah, definitions are important. Running water, indeed.

Yesterday I turned on the spigot to wash mangos to peel and prep for a pie. Oh, first, fresh mango pie of the season from my very own tree. Nary a drop of water dripped from the faucet. Having a wealth of experience, I knew what to do.

I went outside and grabbed a bucket and went to the hose on the south side of the house. No water. Oh, right. Today’s an alternating no-water day from the city. I hiked the bucket to the hose at the north side, just in case. No water.

I phoned Leo, the man on whom we rely to solve all problems. No answer. No answer—no water. Leo does take one day off a week and rightly so.

The tinaco, the tank on the roof, is gravity flow with a float on top, simple and pretty fool-proof. So it will be a simple fix. Probably. The pipe, and filter, might both be plugged with sand and gravel. Or the float is stuck. Probably. What do I know?

Last fall I purchased a huge tinaco to be my stand-by-just-in-case reservoir, since water availability was becoming more chancy year by year. My reserve tank is lodged in a convenient southwest corner of my wall, before the steps up to the back yard.

This being the first time I’ve had to use this tank for water, I had to figure out which spout to turn on and chose the wrong one before I got the right one, of course. Well, it was a fifty-fifty chance.

Hauling buckets of water at eighty is a whole different proposition than hauling buckets of water at eighteen. Instead of ten gallons, I’m using maybe a three-gallon bucket. A bucket of water in one hand, cane in the other hand.

During the day I hauled five buckets of water, enough for dishes and flushing, the bare minimum. I set aside pie baking and other chores requiring water for another day.

Mother Nature, being of an ironic bent, sent down two heavy showers during the day and light rain most of the night. Ah, Mama.

Small problem, easily solved. Sand packed and plugged the filter. Leo came, looked, and flushed the sand out of the filter. The tinaco is full. Water freely flows from the spigots.

Today, I am not doomed back to pioneer beginnings.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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Glitter More Precious Than Diamonds

 

Glitter More Precious Than Diamonds

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With the turning of May into June, came the rains, slowly at first, testing the ground, daily, even if a mere smattering.

My friends think me obsessed with weather. I think I’m normal, for someone raised on a farm, one with many years in drought country. I know the meaning of water. Blame my Dad.

One memory I revisit often is standing out on the ditch bank with my Dad. We are kitted out in irrigation boots. Dad has a shovel in hand, not leaning it, holding it in place. A shovel, to my Dad, was a tool, not a prop.

It is June.  My Dad scans the big blue sky, pristine in emptiness. Both our necks swivel from horizon to horizon, hoping for a puff of white promise, to no avail. My Dad glances at me, smiles his little half-smile and shakes his head. At our hope? At our foolishness to even look for what we know is not there?

My Dad never wasted words. One of my gripes was that he didn’t talk to me. He would explain what he wanted done and how to do it, once only, and expect me to do it correctly. It was oh-so-many-years before I understood that Dad trusted me.

Dad, dependent on irrigation for crops, knew the value of water. Without a word spoken, my Dad transferred that knowledge to me.

Last night, early evening, five days into the month, the sky opened in a cloud burst for an hour, moderated into heavy rain for several hours, ending with light rain to close the night.

This morning, on my walk with Lola, I noticed the earth felt heavy with the weight of the all the water. A good heaviness, scented with green.

When the sun emerged from the smear of leftover clouds, every leaf, every blade of grass glittered, a gift better than diamonds.

Dad would have liked this new country of mine.

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