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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Don’t Believe Everything You Think

 

               Don’t Believe Everything You Think

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In passing by, I saw a book title, “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” and I thought, that’s the truth. Pun intended.

I have a little, bitty story, which I’ll entitle, “Hair Today and Gone Tomorrow”, also not an original thought.

Several weeks ago, I was visiting John and Carol when a man showed up with clippers and scissors. Alfredo, or Freddy, as John called him, made house calls. I asked if I could get a trim also, since I was beyond shaggy and had been cutting my own hair, never a good idea, but I keep trying.

When Freddy finished my trim, I was pleased, especially given the impossibility which I had presented him while saying, “Make me beautiful.”

John and Carol are back in Duluth. I’m getting shaggy again. Lani walked over to visit me, said she feels desperate for a cut. So, she and I began the search to find Alfredo.

There are, no doubt, a hundred hair-cutters in town, but Lani and I both perked up at the thought of someone to come to us. We simply do not want to go to town and if someone is willing to make a house call, we want to be first on the list.

We had Alfredo’s phone number from John. We asked Leo to help because of language, which on the phone, with no visual clues, is difficult. After a week of unanswered calls and texts, the phone number we had vanished into the land of no existence, as has Freddy.

I remembered that John had told me, “Freddy knows Bonnie.” Leo said, “Bonnie knows every hair cutter in town, Sondrita, that won’t help.” “Oh.”

After several conversations, individually, among John, Lani, Leo and me, Leo finally had gathered enough clues to say, “I know who Freddy is. He probably is a trained barber, but, this man is not reliable. He has a problems.” I’ll jump in and paraphrase the rest of Leo’s conversation with a euphemism, “substance abuse”.

“Oh. That explains a lot.” In John’s defense, I’ll explain that John is a man, large in body, large in spirit, open and accepting of all people. Everybody John meets becomes John’s new best friend.

For a moment my heart sank. Freddy is a good barber. I’m a woman on my own and while I have nothing that Freddy would want and I’d willingly hand over my money, I don’t like the idea of feeling uncomfortable, unsure. 

We had spent a whole week thinking we needed to find Freddy. We are resigned (mostly resigned) to going to town. There is a woman I’ve gone to before, but she wants to be friendly with a thousand questions, which given the language difficulties, is off-putting to me. I always leave exhausted. I just want a haircut.

Lani and I will search out a different barber. We’ll find one among the hundred options. No doubt, we’ll compare the results to Freddy’s trim. We may even get a better cut, but in a perverse way that my mind often works, it will never measure up to Freddy’s superb haircut.

Meanwhile, if Freddy showed up outside my gate, I’d sigh with relief. I know that he would show up sober, with or without a working cell phone. I would say, “Hush, Lola. Let the man inside. He is here to cut my hair.”

I wonder if he would trim my dog too. Okay, so I’m well entrenched in the land of fantasy.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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If I Were A Car

 

If I Were A Car

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 If I were a car, I’d choose to be a 1945 Pontiac sedan, green. Why a Pontiac. Because the first family car I remember was a Pontiac, an older model than a ’45, pretty sure. I don’t remember my Dad ever buying a new car, but when he worked for Ford Motor in Louisville, he might have. Memory is a funny, fluid thing.

Somewhere in a box I have a photo of me as a little girl standing in front of our Pontiac, gray, holding my Dad’s hand. Since I’m not a car and this is my imagination, I can choose the year of my birth and the model and color I want.

In my real life, I like going to classic car shows, to ooh and aah over restored beauties. However, neither the real me nor the ’45 Pontiac sedan me, have been restored. I’ve always been a “what you see is what you get” kind of gal.

I’m amazed, daily, that I’m still running. Running, not as in marathon but running as in the motor still turns over. Not every part is original. I’ve been sanded down, hammered out and Bondo-ed in patches.  I’m rusty, faded and jaded. The thingy that registers milage quit working a long time ago. Every day that I back out of my garage is a gift.

This morning I cruised my back yard garden to check out my fruit trees. The first papaya from one of my new trees fell into my hand with only a little tug to help falling. If I left it another day, the birds would find it and begin boring holes into its flesh. I don’t mind sharing with birds, but not my first fruit.

My mangos are not ripe yet but the larger ones are beginning to glow, from green to yellow. I’ll have a fine crop of key limes. The limes go into a couple months of sleepy time once a year and bear fruit in profusion the rest of the year. I have learned to use a lot of limes.

The Black-bellied Whistling Ducks have been flying regularly through my yard, taking R & R breaks on the boughs of my Jacaranda. Across the lane is a variety of a Pine tree, very tall, very sappy. My tracking ability is not great but the ducks might be nesting in the Pine.

Yesterday I saw the strangest sight. One of the ducks, just hanging out on a branch of my Jacaranda, lifted his leg at a 90-degree angle, straight out perpendicular to his body, not to the front nor to the back, but straight out sideways. I’ve not seen any kind of critter be able to do that trick.

I learned something new the other day. Cane harvest is over as of last week. The cane trucks, over-loaded, every one, no longer rip up and down the highway to the factory in Tala. Yet I saw a truck loaded like a mobile haystack with cane stalks. So, I asked, what and why.

Those canes destined  back to the field for a new planting. The stalks are laid down in furrows, lengthwise, covered, and from the nodules, new plants spring out of the ground. I’ve lived here all this time and didn’t know that because I never asked.

I’m feeling like it’s time to refuel so I guess I’m not ready for the Final Junkyard today. I just made the best yoghurt, and, with fresh strawberries, that should keep me going.

Wait. Food will wait. I hear somebody moving cows out on the highway. I like to go out and watch them, nostalgia on the hoof. Toot. Toot.

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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We Come Borrowed

 

        We Come Borrowed

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If I were to find myself in front of the Great Judgement Seat, in which I don’t believe, I’m pretty sure the first question (Picture black robe, powdered wig, furrowed brow, huge eyebrows, glaring eyes.) she would ask, would be, “What did you do to enjoy yourself today?”

I have an answer. “I rode my tricycle. Wah-hoo!”

My morning starts early with a chorus of birdsong, which pretty much goes on all day, with the accompaniment of roosters, peacocks and a donkey, except for that strange moment of silence as the sun peeks over the horizon. Once birdsong resumes, I’m out of bed, dressed and out the door for a trike ride with my dog Lola running alongside.  

I’m old. My trike is a simple, one-speed, three-wheeled joy machine. If, after sixty years of not riding, I were to try to ride a bicycle, I’d be a danger to myself and a danger to you. Once I find my center of balance on my trike, it balances me.

This makes me feel happy. Actually, I’ve a better word. I feel joy, deep inside, simply from riding my tricycle up and down and around our lanes, Lola trotting alongside or racing to explore scents along the edges, breeze fluttering my hair, birds swooping around me.

“Venimos prestados”, “we come borrowed”, a Spanish phrase I recently heard, or as I prefer, “our lives are lent to us”. My friend Bob often said, “We are here to experience, to experience, all that life gives us.” I like that.

So, why worry so much. We all worry. I worry too, always about something over which I have no power, but I’ll worry it to a frazzle until I can come to acceptance.

A friend told me about a fundraising event held in her town last week. The weather was windy, stormy, nasty. There was a flurry of complaint in social media, the chief question (complaint) to the organizers being, “Why did you pick such a horrible time to hold this event?”

Really? Think about that question a minute. If that makes sense to you, I’m sorry. But, what do I know? That may be your pleasure and not for me to judge.

Now that my Jacaranda tree in the northwest corner of my yard is full and leafy again, I’ve moved my chairs from beneath the mango tree, back to the Jacaranda tree for my afternoon sit-and-read. The mango is still shady but as the fruit grows big, I grow uncomfortable, picturing a full, pointy fruit, falling on my head. See, I worry.

I experience my full share of fear and disgust and apprehension and all the so-called negativities. I experience them just as fully as the joys. Then I let them go or put them on the back shelf in a closet of my mind, if they need to be dealt with later.

The experiences I choose to give most attention are the joys, hedonist that I’ve learned to be. I’ve had a lot of years and experience in which to learn which is what and how.

This afternoon, I’ll lounge beneath the shady Jacaranda. I’ll read a little, swat mosquitoes, pick ants off my legs, watch the mangos and the papayas begin to glow with color, ripening before my eyes. I’ll try again to track that bird I hear but never see. More pleasure.

I’ll bookend my day with swallows. We’ve always had swallows when the mosquito season comes in its fullness. This year I see swallows in great numbers. I love to go out in the evenings and simply watch them, fifty or sixty or seventy swallows swooping and arcing overhead, flying along criss-cross lanes invisible to me, their pleasure giving me pleasure.

Maybe it’s kind of like riding tricycles through the sky lanes. It’s hard to be bad, mad, or sad when one is experiencing pleasure. But, what do I know!

Sondra Ashton

Looking out my back door

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Air, Water, Earth and Fire

 

Air, Water, Earth and Fire

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Now and then it behooves us to think about the Elements. Usually when we hit a crisis.

For the past several days our air quality has been extremely poor. Our neighboring city of Magdalena, 26.4 kilometers by highway, about a half-hour drive on a winding highway, is beset round and about with wildfires. The mountains of Magdalena are famous for quality opals. Fire opals?

This morning I woke up knowing that there had been no progress in controlling the fires. How did I know. My breathing when I awoke was quick and shallow, unusual enough for me to be immediately aware.

I wrote to my friend Carol around the corner, “Move over. I’m coming to share oxygen.” I was not gasping but gasping was not far away. The morning smelled heavy with burn.

When I went to bed last night, the last thing I did was watch the light against the heavy smoke clouds. The morning colors shone gorgeous but tragic.

I decided that my morning trike ride was not a great idea but went out and waylaid my neighbor Josue, on his way to work, knowing he would have news of the fire. He told me that the Army helicopters were out with their giant buckets, aiding firefighters from all around the area, but that the fire was nowhere near being controlled.

I’m aware that you, having had years of experience with smoke while Montana and Alberta burned, know exactly what I am describing. Granted, the Smoke I’m smoking is on a smaller scale. However, there is no school. Everybody has been alerted to stay indoors if possible.

When Leo came to water my plants, he assured me that the town of Magdalena was safe. So far, the fires were just beyond town, to the northeast, in forest and brushy country. Oh, for rain, any rain. Rain down the flames. Rain up the aquifers.

Dry, we cry, dry. Our city of Etzatlan has begun water restrictions. Yesterday we got no water. Today we had water in the morning hours. People in some sections of town, especially higher up the mountain, have not had city water for weeks.

I figured it might be a good day to mop and shared my muddy mop water with two papaya trees. Waste nary a drop.

We don’t drink city water, heavy and often stinky with minerals. We buy purified water for drinking and cooking. Our water is from aquifers fed by mountain streams. The mountain streams have been affected by centuries of mining.

Etzatlan is older than Guadalajara. When the Spanish came through Jalisco, they immediately discovered that “there’s gold in them thar hills”. That was in the early 1500s. I’ve been told Guadalajara was built as a waystation for shipping our gold back to Spain.

The gold and silver mines operated until the 1930s or ‘50s or 70s, depending on who tells the story. Three or four years ago, somebody reopened the mines with Big-Gulp Machines. Most of you know that mining and water don’t play nicely.

We are fortunate to have some water, most days. At times, given ancient infrastructure, water simply doesn’t flow. Last year the City instituted every-other-day restrictions for several months. One learns to live with that and be grateful. This week the city began restrictions again.

Rain, please. The earth is parched by drought and afternoon temperatures which hit the high 90s. Rain might be a month away for us. Magdalena, in a rainier pathway, gets a lot of rain in comparison to us. I don’t begrudge them a drop. There is hope. There is always hope.

Sondra Ashton  

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Recipe for Those Puffy-Fluffy Things

 

Recipe for Those Puffy-Fluffy Things

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 I’m a decently good cook using simple, good ingredients. I am not a gourmet cook. I leave that to Kathy, an honor she deserves. I like to have guests to share meals. I’m past cooking for large groups. I’ll leave that to Nancie; that’s her forte. Some things I won’t attempt, much as I love them. Lani makes the most delicious chicken livers, which I savor.

A long, long time ago I learned to leave specialties to special people. Rose made raised doughnuts that floated off the plate. I watched her make them, took notes, followed precise instructions. I failed.

 Back then we had an old shepherd heeler, Mike. I tossed my final batch of failures out in the yard for Mike. Poor Mike. He tried. Tears ran down his face as he looked at me as if to say, “Doorstops?”

I make excellent cake donuts of all sorts. I’ve never tried raised doughnuts again in all these years. I love baking bread of all kinds. Anything yeasty, bready, biscuity, sconish, I’m all over it.

All that is background. John and Carol are leaving for Duluth soon, so I invited them over for breakfast. Whatever possessed me to offer a menu from which to choose, I don’t know. ”I’ll make pancakes with fresh strawberries and cream, or scones with jam, or beignets. You choose.” I’ll make café de olla. I’ve aced café de olla.

Carol phoned me, “Let’s have scones. Oh, wait, wait. John is waving his arms in the background. He asked if you would make those puffy-fluffy things that you sent over a few weeks ago.”

“Beignets?” “Yeah, whatever they are.” Beignets are small bites of fried dough.

I began making beignets when a friend brought me a box of mix from the Café du Monde in New Orleans. I might have gotten the recipe from the back of the box. I don’t recall.

While we stuffed our faces that morning, Carol looked at John and said, “Why don’t you make these?” John is the chief cook at their house. So, John, here you go.

Dissolve 1 packet yeast in a cup and a half warm water. Stir in 1 cup evaporated milk, 1 t vanilla, 2/3 cup sugar, 2 eggs, room temperature,  and 1 t salt. Add 4 cups flour and beat with spoon until smooth. Mix in 5 T shortening, and 3 more cups flour. This will make a sticky dough. Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours. Overnight is better.

Roll a portion of dough on floured surface to ¼ inch thick. I know. Believe me, ¼ inch. Cut into small squares.

Up here at high altitude, I heat oil to 380 degrees. At sea level, 360. So adjust as needed.

Fry in small batches until browned and puffed, drain on paper towels. Shake powdered sugar over hot beignets and serve immediately with your best coffee.

Call them what you want, these puffy-fluffy things are addictive. Make sure you invite friends to share.

Like Rose’s doughnuts, these little morsels float off the plate, into your mouth. The difference between beignets and doughnuts: Doughnuts are dense all the way through. Beignets are air with a skin of fried dough.

If you want Rose’s doughnut recipe, let me know. Good luck.

Sondra Ashton

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