The Winter of, The Summer of, My Disillusionments

 

The Winter of, The Summer of, My Disillusionments

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My friend Jim from Glasgow sent me a short video clip of the Little Rockies, Three Buttes, Snake Butte and the Bear Paws. Immediately, I yearned, homesick. I shared the video with friends. “This is my beautiful country.” Their response, not unexpected, “Ah, yes. Uh huh. Beautiful,” as they looked for an exit. Which brought on this following chain of thought.

To some this will sound as though I am describing two foreign countries, and I am. Both countries have disappeared.

My earliest years were spent in Indiana, not far from the Ohio River, a mile wide, where often we sat on a bank and watched tugs push three, four and five barges laden with coal or ore or other goods.

Uncle Jim came to visit. He and Dad talked late into the night. Not long after my Uncle left, Dad came upstairs and sat on the edge of my bed one night. “How would you like to go to Montana?”

“Where Uncle Jim lives? Oh, yes!” I thought Dad meant a visit, a vacation. By the time I figured out we were moving, I was horrified. Not that I had any voice in the matter. I was ten.

During the Great Depression, Uncle Jim had gone to work on a family friend’s wheat ranch south of Chinook. He never looked back. Dad had worked for the same man, before the War. Montana had burrowed under his skin, into his heart.

By the time we moved, Jim owned a Valley farm and a partnership in an implement dealership in Harlem. Dad was going to buy the farm.

We had our farm sale on a sunshine April Fools’ Day, green grass, daffodils waving their silly heads. The following day, our car already packed, we left for Montana, in the rain, an omen if ever there was one.

I left an entire family of aunts and uncles with cousins my own age. (Uncle Jim’s children were older.) I left an excellent school which encouraged students to find ways to illustrate lessons, left all my friends, and everything I knew. I left my rock collection, the geodes, all my toys, yes, toys. When I was ten, we were still children. I was allowed to take one ‘toy’. I chose my books.

On a cold afternoon, April 5, we drove into Harlem on the old highway, along a deeply rutted dirt street, icy and banked with drifts of dirty snow. I’d never seen a more desolate, ugly town, although we had been driving through the same towns all day. Thaw was a couple weeks away.

On my birthday I climbed on the school bus for my first day at Harlem Elementary, terrified. At lunch, a girl grabbed my hand, "Come with us. Sally and Sylvia (classmates) are going to fight in the park.” Now I was terrified and horrified.

Fight, they did, actual fisticuffs with blood. Girls!  In my country, boys wrestled in play but I’d never seen a real fight.

By the end of the first week in my new school, my classmates hated me. Nobody told me you weren’t supposed to have ideas.

I was yet to discover gumbo mud which stole rubber boots from my feet, mosquitoes so thick they covered my skin. Drought. Wind. Temperatures over 100 degrees and minus 40. A different country, harsh, a different culture, hard.

I cried myself to sleep every night that first year, remembering a softer, gentle life.

When I was thirteen, my Dad put us on the Empire Builder and sent us home to Indiana for the summer, a truly wonderful summer, with cousins and school friends.

Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.

There were all the remembered friends, flowers and fruit. Along with red clay dirt. And chiggers. (At least mosquitoes are visible and don’t burrow.) Copperheads in the weeds and slithering through the blackberries. Humidity which made 75 seem 105. I had to reconnect with friends. Or not. Nothing was recognizable. People I had idolized grew pimples. Or warts. (Metaphorical.) Depending on age. On our old farm, house, barn and my swing tree had been razed to the ground to make way for a sprawling brick “ranch-style” house.

At summer’s end, we climbed aboard the Monon, transferred to the Empire Builder in Chicago, and returned home. Home. Home to Harlem, where the streets were still dirt, but home.

Nothing had changed but me. I could see with different eyes, could measure on a scale more balanced. I never lost my love for Indiana, but I knew my home. 

I’ve learned to make my home in many different places. But Home will always be that harsh, hard country I love.  

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November—yikes--middle

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There is a hole in our lives.

 

There is a hole in our lives.

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There aren’t many of us here on the rancho. Not all of our houses have their people. But the last several days, we  who are here, me, Nancie, Julie, Lani and Ariel, Tom and Janet, frequently found ourselves running up against, no, not a wall, but a hole.

This hole has a specific size and shape, exactly the size and shape of Leo. Leo helps all of us with gardening, planting, pruning, mowing, cutting, watering. But Leo is more than a gardener. He has helped all of us, at one time or another, with translating, with information, with getting necessary services, with business, with appointments, with shopping. He can be kind of a catch-all.

For most of us, he has become even more. He’s a friend, a son, may I say, a grandson?

Leo was out with Covid. We all ask, “How did he catch it?” I’d say it caught him.

The last ten days of October are the annual Festival, a time of celebrations, parades, community dinners, all manner of festivities. Everybody in town has relatives who work in the States. There is a lot of travel back and forth, especially during Festival, followed by The Day of the Dead. Many residents work in Guadalajara, back and forth daily. Opportunities to cart around viruses abound.

In addition, last week Leo took care of his nieces while his sister worked. They were home from school, sick with flu. What kind of flu? Nobody went to the doctor to ask, “Is this Coronavirus?” When school kids are sick, and whatever the flu, and, it laid out the entire class, the mothers did what we all know to do. Tuck them in bed, plenty of fluids, a basin, warm water and wash cloths nearby.

Where he got it or where it got him matters not. He got it.

Out came our masks, our polite distances, our test kits. We all had had contact. Out came our anxiety.

By the second day of Leo’s absence, we were learning how much we depended on him, in ways we didn’t think about often. By the forth and fifth day, the hole left in the shape of Leo, had become distorted to giant-sized.

For me, gardening is only part of the picture. Even I can do enough to keep the whole mess from outright dying. Mostly. No, it was more the little things. Leo stopped by most of our houses daily, “Need anything?” or just, “How are you doing?” He’d sit, drink a glass of water, eat a cookie, chat a while, catch us up on the news in town.

Meanwhile, underlying our dependence, is a strange current of dichotomy. We tell him, “You are young, you have a university education, you are smart, you have skills way beyond pruning plants, valuable skills. You need to be thinking about your future.”

Then we follow that with, “But, we would miss you. What would we do without you? We couldn’t cope. We love you, our dear Leo.”

We talk out of both sides of our mouths, sincerely.

We want to see this young man do more with his life, get ahead, whatever that means. At the same time we don’t want to lose him.

Consider this: maybe, just maybe, it is we who have grasped the wrong end of the stick.

When Leo decided he didn’t want to teach school, that he wanted to work outdoors, with plants, with people, maybe our young friend, has found his life’s work.

Maybe he is smarter than we are. Maybe his genius, his gift, is in working with elders. Maybe we should be going to Leo for advice. Maybe pruning and planting are merely his tools, disguising his real work. Maybe.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November here we are!

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Life is not a bowl of tortillas.

 

Life is not a bowl of tortillas. 

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Last week a registered historic hotel in Glendive burned. The night the fire was started was also the night of the first winter blizzard. Firemen from a hundred-mile radius came to fight the fire which razed the hotel and a neighboring building.

My daughter’s office is in the upper floor of a building adjacent to the hotel. Firemen battled the blaze all night and the following day to keep her building from burning. For three days the hotel fire smoldered and flared. For three days Dee Dee was not allowed into her building. From necessity she slipped through the back entrance with a big flashlight to retrieve her computer, noting extensive smoke and water damage.

Do you ever look at your kids and wonder from where they came? Found beneath a cabbage leaf? Flown in by a stork? Delivered by an alien space ship from Planet X? Sometimes I think, “That child is no relation to me.” I haven’t the backbone of steel, the determination, the pure heart to carry on under circumstances that would break many of us. She has them all. That woman is my teacher.

With the retrieval of her computer, she is back in business, seeing some clients by video. With the restoration of electric power and the okay by the safety inspectors, she is back in her smoky, leaking offices, seeing clients strong enough to brave the stairway and the conditions.

Me, I was a wreck for a full five days, from 2500 miles away. My girl is still recovering from radical surgery, from the removal of a cancerous tumor. She stands strong in her community, still helping others.

One of my good friends said, “Oh, no, she doesn’t need this.” No, she doesn’t. Neither does Acapulco need Hurricane Otis. Most of us can look at our own lives and find our own personal fires and hurricanes. We didn’t need them but they came. Like my daughter, we dealt with them the best we could, hopefully with help.

Let me tell you about tortillas. In the mid-70s I lived in California and began making my own Mexican food. Tortillas were always a challenge. I had a tortilla press. One can buy masa harina in any grocery.

My tortillas would be sticky. Or they would fall apart in the middle. Or the edges would crumble. Seldom did I make what I would call a really fine batch. I didn’t try often. The tortilla press would gather dust in the back of a corner cupboard. It is too easy to buy a bag of tortillas, all perfect, in any grocery. They never fall apart or leak.

However, periodically I would drag out the press and try again. Dough too wet, too dry, and the press went back to the cupboard. Living here in Mexico, I keep masa harina on hand for a lot of thing, cornbread, gorditas, or sopes. And I have a dandy-fine press.

Sometimes I buy a handful of masa from one of the women in the market who process and grind their own corn and with their delicious masa, I make better tortillas.

On a whim, just because I was hungry for breakfast tacos, I wiped off my press, grabbed my masa harina and made tortillas. I aced it. I made the best yummy flat rounds with plain ol’ masa.

It all had to do with intention.

Tortillas take masa flour and water. That’s all, Folks. I drizzled warm water into the flour, took my time, gave it my full attention. Then I worked it and worked it and worked it, with my hands. When the dough felt ready, it told me, because I listened. I made small balls with my dough, pushing and pressing them in my hands, with love, keeping the works covered with a wet cloth.

Instead of the usual 6 inch tortillas, I made 4 inch, like almost everybody in town makes. Cooked them on my comal (griddle), medium heat, 30 seconds on one side,  40 on the other, plopped them into a towel lined covered bowl. 

They were perfect, my tortillas, tender and fluffy, and I claim bragging rights. I already had my taco ingredients chopped and ready. Ate too many but I didn’t care.

Life, Folks, is not a bowl of perfect, bendable, scooper tortillas. Life is more like my hurried tortillas, the ones I used to make, which would split in the middle, or crumble around the edges. Messy.

When Life gives us those perfect little tortilla moments, I say, brag, shout, eat the goodness and enjoy the whole experience. My daughter taught me that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

November already!

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When we get back

 

When we get back 

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My friends, Nancie and Julie were touring Italy for two weeks. Their husbands showed no interest in Italy. The women said, “That’s okay. We will go by ourselves. Keep the home fires burning. When we get back we will have so much to tell you.”

If I went to Italy, I’d choose a small village, maybe near Lake Como, and stay for the duration, get to know that area, maybe even get to know some of the people. Same plan if I wanted a city immersion.

However, for an overview to hit the high spots, tours are a great way to see a lot of country quickly.

We all knew that the women would be too busy, too much on the go, to send reports. Nancie is her family photographer, so she sent photos almost daily, photos of famous palaces and cathedrals and statues, pictures of hotel rooms, shots of food, of restaurants, of streets, of stores.

Based on their photos and my own tours or tour-ship watching, I have taken liberties and extrapolated their trip.

On only two days, her photos included a picture of herself and of Julie. Each time, sitting at plates of food. Looking glad. Or, looking exhausted. One of them seemed to be thinking, “This is it? This is all?” Or, maybe her feet hurt.

When the women returned, they said, “Oh, it was marvelous.” “We saw so much.”  “Would you like more coffee?” “This weather is ruinous. I can’t believe the garden looks so—ragged.”

They don’t tell us about the other people on the tour. No mention is made of lumpy beds, welcome nonetheless, at the end of a day tromping through museums, churches, up streets, down streets.

They don’t tell us how glad they were to kick their shoes off aching feet at the end of each day.

“Hurry, hurry,” the guide says, “We’ve so much to show you. Fifteen minutes here and meet back at the bus.”

We don’t hear about the strange foods, though many plates rated photos. The only meal with honorable mention was fish and chips in Sorrento. They neglect to say that some meals were merely bread and coffee, because the plate in front of them, “Well, we couldn’t eat ‘that’, could we?”

We know they walked through innumerable Cathedrals, each one breathtakingly beautiful, hurried, scurried through ‘because there is a schedule to keep so we can see everything’, until each Cathedral mushed together into one, like mashed potatoes.

Our friends don’t tell us about all the jewelry stores on the list (expensive) or the tourist trinket stores (cheap, imported from China).

They don’t mention the buff young men or dissolute middle-aged men who might have approached them, offering ‘private tours’, because all American women tourists are rich. And who can blame them for wanting to help themselves.

No mention is made of street vendors, in their faces, pushy, relentless, loud.

Neither woman mentions the smells. Venice, Rome, Florence, each has its own odor, even in the tourist areas, and nobody is encouraged to explore outside the designated tourist area.

The photos they show us are not equipped with sound. What is the street noise like? Every city sounds different.

They don’t talk about their companions in the tour group. About the giggly matron who is revealed to be so kind behind her provocative mask, dressed like she is fifteen. Or the man who drinks too much, always laughing, to ward away the tears. Or the couple, we know they are a couple, who never speak, never look at each other, don’t touch. Or the kind person who seems to know how to put everyone at ease. Or, the pair at the back of the bus, the back of every queue, content within themselves.

I made up the parts about other people. Details may vary, but I know from experience it is true enough.

They have so much to tell us, but they cannot, can they? How do you condense each day with thousands of new experiences into a conversation? Over the years, individual memories will pop up, in relation to something seen or something said. We will get a glimpse. Meanwhile . . .

“We have so much to tell you.”

But they don’t.

 

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

How can October be over? Boo!

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Instruction Manual: Care and Feeding of a Funk

 

Instruction Manual: Care and Feeding of a Funk

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The other day I found myself feeling a little low, a little down in the dumps. The problem is, I was enjoying the feeling, to some extent. The next problem is that I found it so dag gone hard to maintain the slump.

We don’t come with an instruction manual so I figure it is high time somebody writes one.

***This does not apply to real depression. Depression is a serious matter. For real depression, see your doctor. Please.

One of my friends said, “It’s your bio-rhythm. Wait a few days and you will cycle through it with a mood upswing.” I said, “You are so stuck in the ‘70s. Hmmm. I wonder whatever happened to my mood ring.”

Another friend told me, “Ah, yes. One of the planets is in retrograde.” She didn’t know which one and I wouldn’t know what that means anyway.

Two poets told me that feeling sad is the human condition. “Amen,” I said. “So is feeling joy.”

I figured my slump in the funky dump meant that on some level I wanted to wallow in a little self-pity. I think that feeling sorry for myself brings its own reward.  I also know that like the planets and bio-rhythm, this too will pass. After I drain my funk of all the pleasure I can squeeze out.

I don’t waste too much time figuring out what causes me to hit the low notes. They comes. They goes.

One of my long-ago friends used to tell me that when she really wanted to feel pain in her life, all she had to do was take the ferry to Seattle and visit her abusive mother. She said she always drove home thinking about driving into a bridge abutment at 90 mph. But.

But. But, she returned to her little home and her son grateful for life, grateful that she was alive and that she did not repeat her mother’s parenting pattern. She, a forever friend, always made me smile.         

My restlessness meant I didn’t want to do anything. I didn’t want to go anywhere. But, I couldn’t sit still. Several times a day I wandered out to my back yard to a little patio slab I had made beneath the jacaranda tree.

Now, this is a real mood wrecker. Immediately I was surrounded with butterflies, eight, ten, a dozen, all sizes, all colors, the huge white bed-sheet butterflies, the colorful oranges and yellows and browns and purples and all combinations of colors, including a huge black moth, as large as a bat. And, they didn’t care. They didn’t care if I felt up or down. They didn’t care that I am human and dangerous. They simply are. And, they flitted all around and played tag in my face. 

I no more than sat down to become butterfly entertainment, than the silly little partridge doves were at my feet. Same story. They didn’t care. They didn’t care that I might be wondering how many dozen of them it would take to bake in a pie, more than four and twenty.

When a flock of my favorite black-bellied whistling ducks flew low overhead, I gave up. I went back to the house to make a pie. Apple pie. On my way to the house I pulled a juicy lime from my broom-stick tree. That lime smelled as good as I felt.

I’m sorry. I had failed again. This isn’t much of an instruction manual. I tried. You will just have to figure out what works best for you.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October, leaves, they are a turning

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Job Application for Sports Person

 

Job Application for Sports Person

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Dear Editor,

I recently spotted an opening for a sports person for the newspaper. I didn’t read the description closely but am confident I could quickly polish and perfect my qualifications for the position.

When I was nine or ten years old, before we moved to Montana, my Dad took me to a Cardinal’s game at the stadium in Louisville, Kentucky, a skip, a jump and a slide across the Ohio River from where we lived. The game was at night and the field was well lighted. I did wonder if the players had a hard time keeping an eye on the baseball when it flew through the shadows. I noticed that while sitting up in the bleachers. I am most observant.

The hot dog with mustard and relish was fantastic, as was the Ne-hi Orange soda. That was the first time I ate a hot dog in a bun. At home we had wieners cut up in a can of Van Camp’s Pork and Beans, which had very little pork. It is not the same thing. That is neither here nor there, but demonstrates that I can fluff up a piece when I need to do so. I still like a good hot dog.

In high school I attended a few football games on nights, badly lit, when the snow blew in circles and it was always bitter cold. We girls huddled in a cluster on the bleachers. We were there to watch boys, not a pigskin. In later life I watched one Rose Bowl Game on television. Same story with better snacks.

Basketball was more my speed. I will say the gym was always stinky and noisy. Always. Unfortunately, we did not have girls’ basketball back then. I found basketball more to my understanding.

My Dad used to referee girls’ basketball, back in our little community in Indiana. I suspect he refed with more of an eye for the girls than for the basketball, but what do I know. He did say that it was a hoot and that the girls fought harder than the guys.

In the spring, we had track. I have a rudimentary beginning knowledge of track events. In my youth, all sports were for boys. We did not have a baseball team.

We did not have girls’ sports of any kind back in our day. I still have residual bitterness that the boys had full seasons of sports and we had zero, zilch, nothing. I will be vigilant in reporting girl’s’ and women’s teams equally with boys’ and men’s teams.

I would have been good at baseball. I have read everything W.P. Kinsella wrote. Everything. I will say “Shoeless Joe” is better than “Field of Dreams”, but I confess to a book bias. Still, I enjoyed “Field of Dreams”.

Yep. I’m reckon I am fairly good at baseball. I assisted the director as well as played the role of Rose in “Bleacher Bums”. Go Cubbies.

 

 Of course, I must climb to the top of a steep learning curve. The world of sports no longer revolves around football, baseball and basketball. Now even in small communities we have wrestling, boxing, soccer, softball, swimming, dance, gymnastics, volleyball, hockey, curling, tennis, golf and even that strange sport where you either catch or throw (?) the ball from a funny basket on a stick.

I am up for the challenge. In every community, there is a café with a round table back in the corner in which around ten in the morning, several retired men gather for coffee and confab. These men know all there is to know about sports. They know the characteristics of every team and of every player. They know. Ask them. They know.

If I hang out at an adjacent table and take notes, in no time at all, I will be up to speed in sports.

In addition I would be able to address such often ignored but important things as sportswear, equipment, community support, snacks, and the spectators, without whom, sports would flounder.

When would you like me to start?

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

October, season changing quickly

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