I Am A Plaid Flannel Shirt

 

            I Am A Plaid Flannel Shirt

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My friend Jerry wrote me this week. Skipping the personal stuff, he asked, “Is it possible for you to create a 501 3C to raise money in U.S. to help people in need in Etzatlan?”

Once I picked myself off the floor still hooting, I wrote back something like the following.

A 501 3C? Oh, Jerry, I thought you knew me better than that! You ask me to do a suit job. I am not a suit. I am a well-worn flannel shirt.  I am a lot of things, my friend. I am an artist, an inventor, a mechanic, a poet, a farmer, a dreamer, a leader. I am a friend. But I am not a suit. I am not even one sleeve of a suit. Oh, how I wish I were. My life would be so different.

Let me interject that I’ve known Jerry since school days. Jerry helped me with Algebra and I wrote his term papers to his specifications. He’d say, “Give me a C+ this time. I think Mrs. Hunter was suspicious of that last B.”

Jerry is a suit. We both went to school in little Harlem, Montana. Jerry got further away than most of us, not geographically, but in other directions. Jerry is still one of us. He just cleans up really, really well. Jerry knows which fork to use. Jerry is a financial investor for a major bank.

When I sold my house in Harlem, and compared to housing values throughout the country, we don’t even ping the scale, I asked Jerry if he would invest my wee landfall for me. Jerry kindly explained the smallest investment he handles, and he named an amount that I cannot even count that high. I was mortified, humiliated, wanted to crawl into a cave. I survived. We are friends.

Jerry and his wife visited me when I’d lived here in Etzatlan only a couple years. And they returned every year until the Pandemic. I don’t know if he fell in love with Etzatlan but he definitely has an affinity for our town. Every year he sends me a generous amount of money for the old-people’s home which is run totally on donations and always in need. Leo and I scurry around town and buy food supplies and personal items for the people. The store owners always generously adjust the costs downward when they learn where our purchases are going.

So you can understand why Jerry thought I’d want to help. I had to decline the job. I said, Jerry, I have neither the experience nor the expertise to do such a job. Numbers and money are beyond my ken. (Sigh.)

In my former life, I was leader of a group that built a theatre, from nothing, after paying off a huge debt left by the former administration. One of our first priorities was to obtain a 501 3C. It took a lot of doing and would have been impossible without Kathleen. And without Al, our bean counter and the man who made sure our feet stayed on the ground, and without David who described himself as general dog’s body but we couldn’t have done without him and without the handful of other volunteers, all extremely important, all adding their bits of experience and passion.

Emphasis on “group”. We were a small, emphasis on small, handful of volunteers and from a near ten thousand dollar debt, we emerged and built a one-hundred seat black box theatre. We did what couldn’t be done. We.

When our theatre became successful enough to fill the seats every weekend, I was smart enough to step down and seek someone with suit skills to carry it forward. I am very proud to say that the Jewel Box still puts on plays, still serves the community and is thriving.

I blathered on to Jerry a good bit about my own personal stuff and ended my missive with “much love from the plaid flannel shirt”.

This morning I had coffee in town with a friend and told her about Jerry’s request and how I had had to turn him down. Her eyes lit up. “Let me think about this. I do know how to go about obtaining a 501 3C and this sounds right up my alley.”

I wrote Jerry back and told him that his idea did not die on my vine. We need to get together. I envision much dialogue. Who knows but the impossible might be possible, not with me, but with we.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January, spring side, more or less

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Scratching the Seven-Year Itch

 

                        Scratching the Seven-Year Itch

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I have lost three entire nights of sleep this week, misplaced where there will be no finding, scratching the seven-year itch.

You could also name my malady the Grass Is Greener Syndrome.

The grass is never greener. It just looks that way from across the fence.

This is not an unusual occurrence for me. Something within me likes the challenge of new experiences. Frequently over the years while I’ve lived out on my little chunk of quiet, peaceful Paradise, I’ve cast my eyes around town and had the thought that I’d like to live in town, smack dab in the middle of noisy things happening.

I think about getting increasingly less mobile with age. Living in town would be easier in some ways. Cheaper, too.

My neighbor is negotiating to sell her little bit of Paradise. She won’t be moving far, a half hour drive to the village of her husband. These last few years the couple has split their time between here, La Mesata and her home in Minnesota. She talks with me about these changes, her fears and her excitements.

That was all the trigger I needed. I can justify any move, any change. If I moved to a wee rental in town, I wouldn’t have the constant upkeep I have here. I ain’t gettin’ any younger. And so on  and so on, my mind goes gadding about.

All in the comfort of my bed, eyes refusing to stay closed, I located a casita, fronting the sidewalk, like every other house on the block, warmer with every casa sharing walls on each side. In back, just enough room for a clothesline and my few herb pots.

I packed. I discarded, made piles, gave away, saved, and made arrangements for all to be dispensed, disposed or moved, all with my head on my pillow, all while telling myself to shut up and go to sleep.

My Lola The Dog had to learn to become a house dog, content to lie on a rug. When we walked the neighborhood, she had to learn the leash again, no more roaming free. She got pudgy, more rounded.

My new neighborhood had a tiny grocery around the corner, easily located, as tiny groceries dot every block. The tortillaria was conveniently across the street. My neighbors included a few other elderly women as well as the usual young men with loud cars and louder parties. Boom, boom, boom went the Beat! I am realistic, even in my imaginations.

I watched a parade of things I miss by living out on the edge, in the countryside. Street vendors carrying buckets of tamales, trays of doughnuts, carts of hot sweet potatoes. Reluctantly I added the propane trucks slowly passing, loudspeaker announcing their coming and going; the cars with speakers over the roof, telling us of events in the Plaza, coming election news, specials at the new box stores, relentless.

All of this activity, all the energy expended, all night long, left me worn out by day. The next night, I hit rewind and played it again.

Reality is that nobody is queued up at my gate wanting to purchase my casita. Reality is that I have created a unique and beautiful haven. (Reality is that I do this wherever I go because that is who I am.) Shhh, I tell myself. Quiet. Breathe. All will be well.

Today I am sitting out in my back yard, in the sunshine, surrounded by greenery and flowers, and birds and butterflies, all manner of color and blossom and brilliance. After three nights of work, I fired myself from the job of relocating, no workmen’s comp coming to me except that I shall sleep tonight.

This is my today, my salve to comfort the itch. The grass may not be greener but it is my greener.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

January chilly, frost up the mountain

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Animal Stories

 

            Animal Stories

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It was a dark and stormy night. Oh, wait! Different story.

It was the day before New Year’s Eve. Leo and I were sitting in the sun chatting after he had mouse-proofed my washing machine with a length of screen and duct tape.

Mice are on the move every year during corn harvest when they temporarily are forced out of their home and well-stocked grocery. My washing machine sits tucked away in the back corner of my patio, outdoors. This is not the first time mice thought the machine makes a good dwelling place. It’s only a short scurry to the Dog Dish fast-food restaurant.

Take my word for it, you do not want mice to set up housekeeping inside your washing machine. Our solution isn’t pretty, but aesthetics don’t matter or is it that I make it oblivious to myself?

So we were sitting in the sun just chewing the fat, satisfied with outwitting a horde of stinky mice. (That sentence is technically wrong on so many levels but I’m an old woman and I no longer care.) Leo asked me if I had enough drinking water to last until Tuesday morning or did I want him to go fill my empty jug now.

That question was code for, “I’m a young man and this is New Year’s and all my friends and I will be partying and I won’t return before Tuesday.” Then he asked about my New Year plans.

I laughed. “Oh, Leo. I’m such a party animal. I will be kicking up my heels on Sunday night too. I will. In bed with a good book by 7:30, that is. Asleep by 9:00, no doubt. The noise of fireworks might wake me, but I’ll roll over and go back to sleep. I’m a bear-ish kind of party animal.”

Then Leo asked, “What age were you when you no longer wanted to party?” This was code for “I’m 36 and party life is no longer as fun as it used to be.”

I gave thought to his question. “Everyone’s different, Leo. Drinking and dancing and all that was fun, but, for me, partying always carried a cloud of fear. I’ve looked back a lot. Drinking and dancing, for me, was an excuse for the ‘all that’. I kept trying though. It was a relief when I could finally say, ‘I’m done.’”  I’d always had to be on guard from my own actions, always scared, afraid of what I might do or say or cause. Most people aren’t that way. Most people don’t count their drinks and wonder why stopping at two didn’t work.”

As an example, I told Leo about my first New Year’s Eve party, welcoming 1964, in the Cowboy Bar in Dodson. I was only 18 but it didn’t matter. This was ’63-’64 in Dodson. I was with my husband. The bar was packed. This bar served two kinds of drinks and I sure wasn’t drinking whiskey. I might have had two beers but that didn’t keep me from trouble.

I remember saying something horrible to a neighbor. Maybe nobody heard. He probably wouldn’t remember. But I do. I spent many nights awake in humiliation and self-loathing, reliving my actions. That may sound like a small thing but it was huge to me. I’ve spent time re-living every party.  I do not miss those nights afterward, swamped in guilt and fear and embarrassment.

If you want to know how to really party, watch the Partridge Doves. Those little feathery fluffs know how to have a good time. A whole flock has set up housekeeping in my Bottlebrush tree. They paint a Christmas card picture, sitting on branches in pairs in the early morning chill, huddled, preening, fussing, being worshipped by the rising sun.

One could do with a worse model. The night of New Year’s Eve, 2023-2024, sure enough, I was in bed before eight, snuggled in my Christmas bed jacket, my replacement addiction, a book in hand, Amazon my pusher, party animal that I am.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

Welcome to 2024

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My Magic Bed Jacket

 

My Magic Bed Jacket

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My bed jacket. It is a sign. A portent of things to come.

Christmas Eve I went to Oconahua for a traditional Mexican feast of tamales and hot chocolate with my friends. When I returned home, a gift bag stuffed tightly with something rather heavy, sat on my patio table. I reached in and pulled out . . . a jacket.

This jacket is made of that plush, fluffy stuff, like a baby blanket. Thank goodness it is not a pale pastel. I’d have to gift it onward. No, amazingly, the jacket is patterned in a boxy red and brown cowboy-type plaid. And, it has a hood. I love it.

When I first held the jacket, I pictured myself wearing it while walking Lola. I put it on for size. Nice fit. Hung my new jacket on the coat closet, which in my limited space, is a pole with prongs for six jackets or sweaters and a hat.

As I prepared for bed, somehow the jacket skewed its way into my thoughts. Hmmm, I said, removing it from the coat stand, and putting it on over my night shirt. A bed jacket. A perfect bed jacket. I climbed into bed with my book.

Understand, I’ve never had a bed jacket. Bed jackets appear in British novels and Hollywood movies from the 30s and 40s. Bed jackets are filmy, wafting, woven of air and a few silky threads, pastel and pretty, for the rich and privileged. Not that I would ever admit to being limited in my thinking. I certainly never imagined myself in a bed jacket. Not me.

I didn’t allow myself to realize until that very moment I put it on that I had actually wanted a bed jacket, perhaps subliminally I had always wanted a bed jacket, and that this plaid bed jacket was the perfect gift for me.

No matter how warm my main room is, my bedroom is always cool. On cold winter nights, while I read a few chapters, I carefully tuck the bedding around my shoulders and snake one hand outside the covers to hold the Kindle. That was then.

Now, I sit in bed, covers around my legs, my new bed jacket keeping my top half toasty warm. Ah, such comfort. Such luxury. Such privilege.

As this year comes to an ending (Thank you. I never thought you’d leave.) and the new year is born and toddles into January, it is fitting that I consider my new bed jacket a sign, a portent of changes to come.

I like signs and portents. Tea leaves. Chicken intestines. Clouds in the sky. Oracles. They are all good. They all work.

Several years ago I was complaining to a dear friend about a situation in which I need to make a choice. “I don’t know what I want to do. Either option looks good to me and I just can’t choose.”

This man, a Harvard Law graduate, mind you, not a woo-woo bone in his body, dug a coin out of his pocket. “Heads is Option A and tails for option B. You call it.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t believe in that kind of magic.”

“Just call it,” he replied.

“Tails.”

He flipped the coin, it landed on my choice. “Okay, does that make you feel happy with the decision or do you wish the coin had landed on heads?’  

Ah. I got it. Flipping a coin is just one way of letting my silly self see what I really want when I can’t make up my mind because both options look great and my head had gone into over-think.

That’s how I see my new bed jacket as a sign of changes to come. If I can jog my attitude toward a simple article of clothing out of the historical box into which I had locked it, what other attitudes might I be able to change in the year to come? Oh, the excitement! Oh, the anticipation.

Thank you, Dear Crinita, for the gift which is changing my winter life.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking Out My Backdoor

December 27, 2-23

The World Is My Apple

 

The World Is My Apple

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Or, one might say, this week, apples are my world.

Every year I put a lot of thought into my gift giving for Christmas. Grandchildren are easy. Gift certificates. They are of the age where money is the better choice. Gold, right? For the babies, my grandchildren, my daughter handles that chore for me. She knows best what they want, need, and enjoy.

The hard part is for us few who are here this holiday season in Gringolandia. We are old. We already have everything we want. If I never see another scented soap, special candle, or crocheted bookmark, I will be a happy woman. That’s me. I speak for myself only. Maybe for others, those items would satisfy their hearts’ desires.

My first thought was to make round tuits. Okay, so maybe I’m stuck in eight-year-old humor, but I think it would be fun to “get a round tuit”, artfully custom made, of course.

However, we are a multi-cultural community and I’m not sure the humor would translate.

So, as often, the solution to my quandary came down to something we all like and will use, with the added benefit that I enjoy making and baking . . . apple pies.

A trip to the market for extra flour, sugar, butter and a half-bushel of apples, on with my apron, and I’m ready to roll. Roll dough, that is.

Apples. This is not apple-growing country. Oh, for the crab apple tree that used to grow in the corner of the pig yard on our farm on the Milk River. Those apples took a lot of work, but fruit of any kind was precious in those days. Anybody who messes with choke cherries and huckleberries knows what I mean. Those crab apples made the best jelly and apple pies of any apple ever. Tart and juicy.

Trial and error led me to the ugly apples. They are grown in Mexico. They are not pretty. They are not always uniform. Look a little warty. But they are tasty and make a good pie. (Other apples are shipped in and the flavor is lost in refrigerated trucks. My opinion.) Most of us gringos call them, you know, those ugly apples. So ugly apples it is.

While peeling applies, rolling out the dough, I like to think I am pouring love into my pies along with sugar and spices and everything nices.

Tomorrow is delivery day and I have one more pie to bake. This one is for my own self. I get gifted too.

May you all have a most wonderful Christmas, whatever your beliefs, no matter how you celebrate, celebrate life and love.

Sondra Ashton

Looking Out My Backdoor

December 20, 2023