Piecing a Partial Picture Patchwork Past

Piecing a Partial Picture Patchwork Past 

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            DNA and ancestry search sites are the latest greatest. I’m not sure I want unknown relatives crawling out of the woodwork. The relatives I know are scary enough.

Of my background, I know I am predominately British American (English, Welsh, Scotch, Irish) with added German from Dad’s side and French (Brittany) and a secret on Mom’s side. That is to say, mongrel.

            Cousin Nancie and I have spent the last two weeks talking about our shared maternal family.  Nancie and I did not meet until I showed up unannounced at her mother’s funeral.  Strange family? Yes.

            Our mothers were raised in Indiana, sisters in a family of eight children. Anne, Nancie’s mother, was the only child to finish high school and go on to what was called Normal School, where she gained certification to teach.

            Job in hand, Anne, along with older sister Lucille, fled to Port Angeles, Washington, pioneers searching for a better, different life. Looking on a map, Port Angeles is about as far from New Middletown, Indiana as she could run and she never returned. Instead, Anne reinvented herself.

            Nancie’s best guess is that she was ashamed of her family. My guess is that in school, she met children whose families provided a huge contrast to ours. We all have such experience, don’t we? But some take it to heart more than others.

            I spent my first eleven years of life in Indiana, near both maternal and paternal relatives. While my perspective is flawed by youth, it is also balanced with adult visits to Indiana plus Aunt Joanne’s answers to my questions.

            Our moms’ family is straight-from-Li’l Abner-type hillbilly people. Our great, great-grandparents migrated from England to West Virginia, then crossed the mountains to Tennessee, share croppers with small plots of their own corn and tobacco. Not satisfied, our grandparents managed to buy a hard-scrabble farm west of Indianapolis.

            Our folks were not dumb but they were ignorant, poor, talked funny, not highly educated, kept old-country folk-ways and mannerisms.

Uncle George, the family patriarch, eventually owned and farmed the largest acreage in the county. He was a brilliant mechanic, could fix anything, and if he needed a specialty tool, he invented it.

Uncle Henry was mild mannered, and shall we say, less ambitious. In his later years he took his own life and nobody would talk about why.

Twins, Roy and Ray, courted tragedy in a Model A Ford, Ray behind the wheel, Roy balanced on the running board, hit a rut in the road and landed in a tree. They were well lubricated but Roy never made it, and in his own way, neither did Uncle Ray, my favorite, the sweetest, gentlest man I’ve ever known. 

I was four, 1949, when my mom, Jean, went to the State Hospital in Madison, Indiana. I swear I remember an ambulance and men in white coats but that is probably a false memory. Certainly my Dad drove her there in our gray Pontiac.

Aunt Joanne said Jean was always strange. Years later, we learned she was severely depressed and in modern times, treatment would have been different. 

            I lived in terror that I would be just like my mom. I dreaded Mother’s Day. I was the only person in class without a mother and teachers always had us make gifts to take home.

            Aunt Joanne got a job building chairs in a furniture factory in Indianapolis when she was sixteen. She married a man who owned an apartment building on Park Avenue, ended up with the building. She took me under wing and taught me basic woman stuff and later, became one of my best friends.

            Oh, I nearly forgot. The secret. My Aunt Jo sent me reproduction photos of my ancestors. A great, not sure how many greats, grandmother shows undeniable American Indian features, right down to the braids. I asked Jo; she immediately and defensively denied the possibility and would say no more. Nancie said that’s no surprise. That fit what little she’d heard of a family secret.

            The men, including my male cousins, all shared a wicked sense of humor, keen insight, and were never mean spirited. Stories I’ve heard, they were all hell raisers in their youth.

            The family women, I would describe as slower to open up, but generous and warm hearted once they accept you.

            My Dad’s family is a story for a different time.

            If you come visit me some day and I’m sitting on the porch in patched bib overalls, clutching my corncob pipe, feet propped on a cream can, ceramic jug marked with XXX within arm’s reach, I guess you will know I’ve reverted to type.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 25, 2019

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bats in My Belfry

                        Bats in My Belfry

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            I was sitting on my front patio talking with my gardener, Leo, when a velvety brown bat fluttered between us and landed in a hollow metal rafter supporting the patio roof.

            Ah, I had wondered if bats might be moving in. This morning there were figs on the floor below the bat perch. (Figs in full, figs in processed form, but identifiable by seeds.)

Several neighbors have false fig trees which drop a nasty fruit, not a true fig. Bats haul these fruits to their perches but drop some along the way. Operative word, drop. The tree is majestic. The fruit is messy, squishy, and leaves a nasty stain.

That is not the worst thing, of course. Bat guano in any form is stinky. None of us want to provide a home for a colony of bats, who love nothing more than to perch beneath our patio roofs, dropping messes below.

Fortunately there is an easy solution. We leave a night light burning. Some of my neighbors have designated bat lights which are never turned off. I have discovered that three or four nights of light will deter the critters homesteading urge.

On the other side of my house, my mango tree is loaded with fruit ready to harvest. 

Previously, I have bought mangoes from roadside stands, even venturing as far as Tequila for the best fruits. I like the smaller yellow fruits, sweeter and juicier, original local fruits whose genetic structure has not been altered for size and shipping.

Four summers ago, I planted a small mango tree in my yard. This year, the first year to bear fruit, the branches bow almost to the ground, so heavily laden that Leo made teepee poles, like crutches, to support the weight. Every morning I fondle the fruit, urging it to ripen.

Time for me to sterilize jelly jars and stir pots of chopped mango and sugar until the simmering soup jells into glistening golden marmelada.

Cousin Nancie is here for two weeks respite from drizzling Washington gloom. Pat stayed home to tinker with his prize-winning vintage auto. Unlike ever-present drizzle in Washington, our rain falls mostly at night, leaving hours of glorious sunshine, a wonderful plan in my opinion.

Nancie said one reason she planned this trip is so she and I may spend time together. Though she and Pat are here for several months of winter, everyone else is also here. Consequently, it seems we seldom get to have privacy, just us.

Conversation is different when it is shared among several; it simply is different. So we have been making the most of these few days, often heading into town for intimate chats over breakfast. Communion.

Tonight I’ll leave my patio light off. I hope the bats have moved on, have found a place more to their liking, somewhere with a welcome mat.

            Remember Jimmy Durante? He ended his programs shrugging into his topcoat, hat on his head, throwing a kiss, wishing all a good night with a special, “Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”

            While I am not talented as Jimmy Durante, own neither the topcoat nor the hat, nor the schnozz, thank you, I wish to express “A special good night to Mrs. C. She knows where and who she is.” Inka dinka dinka dinka do.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 18, 2019

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

It Was A Dark and Stormy Night

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            Here in this high plateau valley surrounded by mountains, in the rainy season, roughly mid-June through mid-October, the sky bursts with pyrotechnic activity nearly every night.

            I like storms. I like the beauty of lightning skittering across night sky. I like the rumble of thunder. Storms do not scare me. I admit, there are times I’ve nearly jumped out of my skin at a sudden clap of thunder directly overhead but that is simply a startle reflex.  

            Rain pounding on the roof comforts me. I like when morning sunrise reveals a sparkling, fresh, newly washed world.  I admit it felt a bit daunting to me a few nights ago when the sky broke and all hail fell through. But that was a one-off.

            Last night was different. Oh, it began ordinarily enough. I climbed into bed to surround sound, comforting rumbles and grumbles overhead which often goes on for hours. Though early enough for ambient light, the night was extremely dark, except for panoramic lightning.

            Strangely, no night birds called across the trees. No crickets chirped. The night felt ominously still, devoid of life. Not a leaf quivered. I had not yet fallen asleep when I heard the noise, a roaring, almost a presence, moving across the valley.

            Some say it sounded like a train. Or a flight of airplanes. But it was more than noise. The blast of wind held a strangeness, almost like it had a mind and body. The closer it came, the louder it sounded, a monster of the dark.

            That wind scared me, nailed me to my bed, heart pounding, covers pulled snugly over my head, afraid to move the entire time it roared overhead, seemingly forever. I could hear the leaves screaming as they were ripped from tree branches.

            Iguanas and squirrels and birds and crickets and all manner of wildlife huddled in burrows and nests, heads tucked against danger.

And then the rogue wind, carrying all it had gathered, was gone, blowing into the mountains of Nayarit, leaving silence. Not a drop of rain fell. The air felt like all the energy had been sucked out of the night and spirited away.

            The walls of my house stood solid. I had not been carried off to Oz. That wizard wind had come and gone. Lizards crawled out of rocks and tested the air with their tongues. I uncovered my head and we all waited for sunrise.

            Well, one’s world will look different in the morning. Maybe not better, not worse, but different.

            My world was carpeted, littered, thick with scraps of bougainvillea, bits of leaf and tree debris, a few small branches.  Buckets I use in gardening were strewn about.  We all, me and my lizards and such, held our breath until mid-morning. By noon the skies were filled with birdsong.

            A journey to Oz it was not. But like Dorothy and her cohorts, I probably already have all the heart, brains and courage I need, despite hiding my head under the covers in the dark night.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 11, 2019

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Nothing changed; everything different

                                                Nothing changed; everything different

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

            Jim picked me up at the airport in Guadalajara. Once we exited the labyrinth of parking and hit the straightaway, I requested, “Tell me all the news.”

            “There is no news,” Jim responded.  “Everything is the same as when you left.”

            I’d been gone a month, so I treated his statement with skepticism. And over the course of the trip home learned much.

            Among several small rains, two devastating storms deluged hit our town. Trees and branches down all around.

            We had driven a mere five kilometers down the road when the sky opened. At times one could barely see the lane markers, side view. I took the storm as a personal “welcome home”. Albeit a wet one.

            Jim is building a cabana for Bonnie and her daughter Samantha. So I heard the story of searching for elusive materials, the frustrations of building with language barriers, the cultural differences, learning that what works in Missouri maybe doesn’t work in Mexico.

            Jim is driven. When he undertakes a project, it is push, push, push until done! That’s Jim’s way. He is brutal with himself. He voiced his frustrations.

Culturally, the workers here go a steady pace, steady but not brutal. They take a mid-afternoon break for a meal and rest, generally two hours, then return and work until dark. They might talk and laugh, pause for a story along the way.  The job gets done just the same.

Next Jim told me that Bonnie’s mare broke through an old-style concrete septic tank, full of sludge. Getting her out required a backhoe and ropes, but that was last-resort effort, after EMTs and Bomberos (firemen) and other city officials showed up and shrugged.

Jim said it took hours to wash her down and she had open wounds from thrashing about, struggling to get out. Amazingly, she didn’t break any bones but she contracted tetanus. Two days later, despite heroic efforts by a school of veterinarians, Bonnie’s mare died leaving a colt motherless. A sadness sits over the rancho.

Next morning, Leo showed me a nest in my mango tree. A kiskadee or flycatcher, hard to tell them apart without binoculars, built a nest and hatched five little cheepers. Life does cycle.

The bamboos I recently planted outside my western and southern windows to shade me from summer sun have expanded to twice their girth in one month. I’m used to virtually living outdoors with open windows and now I am curtained in with soft green light. It’s different. I’m getting used to it.

My golden chain tree shot up a good meter higher than my mango. And it is plush with new leaves, a surprising shade tree. It’s always been a scrawny trunk with a few scrawny branches. How did that happen?

Reminds me of Antoinette, now taller than me, taller than her mother, since last I saw her.

My mango tree is so heavy with fruit that Leo had to build supports to hold the branches. I will harvest my tree’s very first mangoes in a couple weeks, my best guess.

This morning I checked my papaya and four lovely footballs of fruit fell into my hands. I gave one to Josue, one to Leo, one to Ariel, and put one in the refrigerator for myself. There is nobody else here, all have fled north. Jim left Monday.

First time, my “five-dead-trees” are all healthy and in full bloom. The ants have not kept them stripped, hence, “dead”. I’ve never seen so many lizards or so few ants. There might be a correlation.

I left at the end of the dusty dry season and returned for the rains. Every night I either sleep to the rumble-grumble of thunder or wake to an explosion of noise, lightning and rain. Every morning the sun blesses our world with such beauty it makes me want to cry, good tears.

Next time I complain nothing ever happens in my quiet little life, please remind me that I can go away for a month and when I return, maybe nothing changed but everything is different.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 4, 2019

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________