Rejected By the Only Group In Town

Rejected By the Only Group In Town

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            I’ve moved often enough to know there are certain mathematical realities. Generally it takes two years until I have an acquaintance or two, someone with whom I can attend the opera or go to a play reading, both of which I can find here in Mazatlan.  In five years I shall have acquired a friend or two, not necessarily the same first two people. That is just the way it is. Sure, I can go places by myself, and do. But it is more fun to share the experience.

            I can goose the program forward a bit in two ways, by joining a group of like-minded people and/or by volunteer work. The other day I set off to find information about a group of writers. Where better to discover writers than at a bookstore. Writers are readers. Half a block over and a dozen or more blocks up the street the Mazatlan Book and Coffee Company sits snug back in a small plaza behind a bank and a laundry.

            This bookstore, which I found the first year I vacationed in Mazatlan, is filled with used books, books in English, overwhelmingly of the beach-read variety. But by diligent probing, plucking and piddling through the stacks I can always find a few gems of literary fiction and the occasional non-fiction book that grabs my attention. Not that I’m a snob. I read trash too.

            When I left Harlem, I walked away from a 4,500 volume personal library. I brought with me a mere five boxes of books. One box contained my two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, my indispensible Strunk and White on style, which I read annually for fun, and a couple other books on style and grammar which I should consult more frequently. The rest are old favorites. I’m reduced to maybe a hundred books. I have no intention of re-creating a vast library. But I am a reader. Eventually I’ll own an e-book. But I’ll never lose my love of the heft of a book and the tactile experience of turning paper.

            Within ten minutes at the Mazatlan Book and Coffee Company, I had chosen a book on basketball (think Chicago Bulls in the ‘90’s) by Phil Jackson, a book by Coetzee and one by Achebe, not exactly beach reads, and a bag of coffee beans. Coffee and books go together like, well, like books and coffee.

            Given another ten minutes, I had swapped yarns with Jerry, a snowbird whose uncle is a beekeeper in Power, Montana and whose wife is a writer.  Then Twila came around a corner of the stacks to tell me her husband was a McPherson from Chinook, class of ’59. She lives in Glendive and knows people I know.  

            In half an hour I had gathered three books, coffee beans, stories, smiles and the name with email address of the contact person for the writers group.

            I have been known to embarrass my friends by how easily I insert myself into conversations with complete strangers. But it took two days to gather my courage and email Mike to ask about the writers group. I threw out a feeler. I’m a writer. It is a solitary life. I would like to join a group of writers. That is the gist of what I said.

            Mike replied that the group met once a week and in order to join, a writer must be committed to the group and serious about writing “fiction stories” and seeking publication of the same.

            My heart broke and sank to the soles of my sandals. I am a poet and essayist. I don’t have a single plot, story line, or fiction character cluttering up the back passages of my brain. I have been outright scorned and rejected. This group does not want me.

            I wrote back and said that if a fiction came to visit me, I’d contact him again, blah, blah, blah, making nice. Mike wrote back with more blah, blah, blah, making nice.

            So for the present I’ll hang out more often at the Mazatlan Book store. I’ll volunteer to dust the stacks at the English Book Library.  I’ll keep writing poetry and essays. Sooner or later I’ll rub up against another poet, another essayist or two.

            In a few days maybe I’ll quit plotting the murder(s) of the despicable antagonist Mike and his twisted band of followers by the rejected and lovable protagonist (heroine) who commits the perfect crime(s) and lives to tell the story.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 20, 2014

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Floundering Through the Crevasse

Another chapter in our never-ending winter!
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Floundering Through the Crevasse

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A few days ago I was dragging a sack of garbage across my backyard snowfield to the alley for pick up, when I fell into a crevasse.



That sounds melodramatic. But there have been weeks this winter when I could not get to the alley. When our daytime temperature rose above freezing for several days, the snow drifts had settled somewhat. In fact, there were indications that soon I would be able to see benches, flower pots, rocks and currant bushes which have been buried since November.



So I laced up my Sorels , grabbed my walking stick, shoved the snow away from the back door, and eased over the icy embankment and up, up onto the snowfield. Carefully, I probed my way with my walking stick, testing the depth of the mounded snow, dragging my garbage sack behind me. When I came to where my “path” skirted the cabin, I faced a quandary.



My house is centered on the front of my lot. At the back, in a corner, sits an old cabin, the original home of the family who once lived here. The snow, which had melted off the cabin roof, had formed a small pond. During the night the pond had frozen, creating a skating rink of some size. The skating rink blocked several feet of my path.



Rather than risk the rink, I ventured out into the garden on the other side of the path. I use the term “garden” loosely. In this area I cultivate volunteer lettuce, onions, Canada thistle, pig weed and kosha. But I digress. I ventured further up onto the snowy plateau which hid all but the memory of a garden. I found the mound to be quite solid.



I also saw my little world from an unexpected perspective. In ordinary times my yard is flat, with nary a distinguishing vertical feature. Never had I viewed the roof of the cabin, my neighbor’s houses and the full reach of the alley from this heady elevation. I looked out over a brave new world. I took another step and plunged into a crevasse. With one leg. My other leg stayed on top of the drift. My buried leg was tightly encased with crusted snow all the way past mid-thigh. I could not move either leg. I could not get purchase to lift myself from my icy prison. I could not go forward. I could not go backward.



A gray car drove by on Fourth Street . The people did not see me. I pondered tying my garbage sack onto the end of my walking stick and waving it in the air, a distress signal. I also considered that my garbage weighed at least forty pounds. My neighbors across the alley hurried out of their house, jumped into their car and drove away. I waved. They did not see me. Or they pretended they did not see me. Well, what would you have done?



First of all, I looked pretty funny, anchored in my snow bank. It is not polite to laugh at someone in distress. I know my neighbors to be very polite. Besides, they were on the way to work, probably already five minutes late and they wanted to stop at the new coffee shop in town to order caramel mocha-rocas, venti, three shots, skinny, extra hot, whipped cream, coco powder, a chocolate covered coffee bean and no straw, please.



So I sat down. I was mostly sitting down anyway, with my leg stuck in the ice. Very slowly, on my bottom, I scooched myself backwards out of the jaws of the icy trap. Still sitting, I dragged me and my garbage bag over the snow field several feet to the distant edge of the bank. There I swung my legs over and jumped to the “ground,” grateful that we do not live in avalanche country.



Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

February 24, 2011
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Yard Sale

True story, eh?
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Yard Sale

At Easter Sunday dinner Pearl and I decided to have a yard sale. My closets were cluttered and the basement was stuffed. Pearl had equal excess. We had things we had not seen in years. We figured the middle of July would be a great time to hold the sale. We chose Wednesday, July 21. We decided to hold it at my house, situated as it is on a main street, with a wide concrete driveway.

Pearl tacked up flyers around town. We checked the weather oracle. Sunny with a few clouds. Temperatures in the high seventies. Precipitation zero. Utter perfection! A delightful forecast.

On Tuesday, the day before the sale, Ted and Pearl and their grandson Justin arrived with a pick-up load and a tent. The tent was a welcome surprise. It would expand our sale area, provide shade, and protect things overnight from the elements, should there be any elements raining down.

Setting up a tent is always great fun. I remember one family outing at a campground on the Elwha River in Washington . My husband and I laid the tent and all its parts out on the ground. I stood with the directions insisting that part A could not possibly interface with part D. I noticed our eight year old son Ben had disappeared. I figured he went scouting down to the river. After several failed attempts to raise the tent we were glaring at each other, sweaty with frustration. At that point a couple carrying camp chairs showed up and sat down to watch. That seemed strange, but we were consumed with trying to unravel the puzzle of tent construction. The next time I looked, at least a dozen people were circled around our little campsite. One family was passing out popcorn. Ben had gone from campsite to campsite and sold admission tickets to our comedy. He clutched a fistful of dollars. When it looked like we were destined for failure, a kind man with a similar tent stepped forward to save the day. In minutes our tent was erected. Everybody applauded.

In contrast, Ted and Pearl ’s tent was a wonder of engineering. Some genius had color coded all the parts. Blue fit into blue and red into red and so on. In no time at all Ted and Justin raised the tent. Pearl and I looked it over and saw that it was good. Ted noticed he had forgotten the tent stakes so he and Justin went back to get the pegs and another load of stuff for the sale. Pearl and I went down to my basement to find my large coffee urn. We planned to make coffee for the hordes of people who would come swarming through in the morning.

We stepped outside just as Ted and Justin drove in. We all stood stunned. The tent was gone. Gone. Really gone. Not there. Not where it was. Not where we had left it. The spot where we had put it was empty. A breeze had come up so I looked east to see if the tent was flying toward Dodson. I scanned the sky for an unidentified flying object. Then Justin yelled from the neighbor’s yard, “Here it is!” A gust of wind had swooped up the tent, sent it somersaulting over a twelve-foot high caragana hedge and landed it sitting perfectly upright in the neighbor’s yard. We each grabbed a corner post and walked it back into my yard. Justin immediately pegged it into the ground.

Sale day arrived. At seven o’clock Pearl and I were making final preparations when a dozen state highway department trucks rumbled around the corner. One man parked in front of my house. He jumped out of his rig and set up cones to block off my street. We ran over to him. “What are you doing?”

“We’re paving your street today.” Who would believe this? Pearl and I could only laugh. We’d picked the perfect day, picked the perfect street, and look. Soon dump trucks full of hot mix and machines to spread and tamp it thumped and clanged in front of my house. The noise was intense. Pearl and I sat out front watching the road show and drinking coffee from our sixty-cup urn. Finally a few people parked on the side streets and walked over to the sale. We urged each of them to have a cup of coffee. We offered seconds. They left full of coffee with arm loads of treasures. The highway crew wandered over at break time. They picked through our stuff. I poured them coffee.

In minutes clouds swooped in and chased away the sun. Rain pounded the ground. We hastily shoved the remainder of our goods under the wide overhang of my roof and into the tent. The highway men milled around and then quit for the day. Soaked to the skin, we drank more coffee and watched the rain. It rained hard. It rained steadily. It rained for hours. At noon, as the rain continued, I suggested, “ Pearl , go on home. Tomorrow is bound to be better.”

The next day the highway crew returned. The rain followed. Pearl and I shrugged and called Ted to come take down the tent. We’ll try again next year, on another perfect day.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
July 29, 2010
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