Field of Dreams With Converse

Field of Dreams With Converse

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            “I love my night life.”

            “You don’t have a night life,” my cousin Nancie, in Mexico for a three-week vacation in her house across the road from mine, countered. “You’re in bed when the sun goes down. What do you mean, night life?”

            “My dreams. I dream marvelous stories. I usually wake up feeling happy and full of energy. Most of the time I don’t remember my dreams once I’m out of bed.  Most of my dreams are like playing solitaire with a pinochle deck, but, lately, I feel that in my dreams I’m solving problems or answering questions.”

            About that time Nancie parked her car and we took our “old-woman shopping trolleys” out of the back and set out to stock up on fruits and veggies and a few necessities at the tianguis in Etzatlan. 

            We have our favorite vendors but there are always new and different things to see, especially since we don’t go every week. I bought 15 kilos of mangoes for 10 pesos a kilo. When you go to the IGA check out mangoes. I bought mine to make jam. It’s mango season.

            I hiked my mangoes back to the car, emptied my cart, and rolled it back to the market to fill up with 6 potatoes, 3 onions, 2 peppers, a pineapple, 6 guavas, lettuce, 5 tomatoes, 2 avocados, etc. Groceries for one.

            While prepping mangoes for jam at my outdoor kitchen, I mused about the dream I had last night.

            Several classmates and I set off on a trip together. We met somewhere vague—this is a dream, remember—and traveled in a large vehicle. At times it seemed like a tour bus. Other times we were clowns in a VW Beetle. We crossed eastern Montana. I distinctly recall going through Malta, Saco, Hinsdale, Glasgow, some places, recognized, some places, unknown. Dreams are quirky that way. They don’t make sense in the awake world.

            Among those on the bus were Jerry and Lola, Karen, Jess and Sharon, Jane, Fred and Sandy, and Denise and Don. Jim climbed on the bus in Glasgow. We were on our way to a wedding in North Dakota. My dream wasn’t specific about who was getting married. Quirky dreams.  

            Half way across North Dakota, in the winter, I realized I’d forgotten to pack shoes to wear to the wedding. All I had were the sandals on my feet. Sandals, in winter snow, in North Dakota.

            I don’t usually recall my dreams in such detail. We drove into Rugby, (Yes, Virginia, there is a Rugby, ND) afternoon sun fading behind us, and I said, “Let’s go to a western-wear store. I’ll buy a pair of leather boots. Warm enough to keep my toes toasty yet dressy enough for the formal wedding.” I never claimed to be a fashion maven. 

            My friends milled throughout the small store and helped me pick winter boots, soft brown leather, exactly as I had imagined them to be, knee-high, lace-tie front, sheep’s wool lining, with fur trim around the top. Classy.

            Then a pair of classic Chuck Taylor Converse red high-tops jumped out and snared me. I had to have that pair of red Converse high-tops.

            While I tried on the shoes, Sharon sat down beside me. “How could you have forgotten to bring your shoes?”

            “Usually I travel alone. When I pack, I make a list and check it twice and then check it again. This trip we are traveling together. I had all of you with me so I didn’t need to worry.”

I woke up remembering all those details. When we have friends whom we are confident will be there for us, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Sondra Ashton

HDN: Looking out my back door

July 6, 2017

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Old Buildings

This is my heart.
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Old Buildings


I am a sucker for old buildings. I have love affairs, infatuations, with handsome old empty buildings. They have potential. Homestead shacks, abandoned houses with the wind whistling through the cracks, dusty warehouses or lovely brick commercial buildings, long ago boarded up. I am an incurable romantic. The phrase “fixer-upper” makes my breath go shallow, my knees weak, and my heart pound. Lovelorn lass that I am, I ache to restore their old bones to their former glory.

But the word “potential” sets off alarm bells and whistles. I have trained my mind to alert me to this danger. I hang onto my heart, compute the hundreds of thousands of dollars that each project would undoubtedly cost, then force myself to drive on down the road.

When I decided to return to Montana , after my long exile in the Seattle area, I remembered the first time I visited an artist friend’s loft in the city. What a romantic place to live, I thought. I searched high and low, east and west, for something similar here, a non-conventional living space. I checked out two store-fronts in Big Sandy. I spent hours mentally reconstructing a convenience store in Chinook. I drooled over a two-story brick in Chester .

Finally I bought my Dad’s old house in Harlem , a simple rambler, and renovated it to suit my needs. It was not the project I dreamed over. It lacked romance. But it is well-built and I did not have to fool with expensive re-wiring, heating, or plumbing.

But a building in Chinook still tugs at my heartstrings. Like a love-sick puppy, I often drive into town, park in front of it and mourn. I envision my expansive apartment up on the top floor, an open space large enough for a ball room, which I would turn into an art studio, a gallery. The floor to ceiling windows would trap all the light of the big sky. I would line the room with book shelves, throw old Kilim rugs onto the scuffed hardwood floors which I would sand only enough to take down the rough spots but would leave their aged character. I would hold a salon with my favorite recovered couches and chairs grouped to create conversation islands. To support the building, the main floor could be renovated into apartments or business spaces. I could see it clearly. I walked through that building four times, trying to make it work for me. I could have bought the building but I did not have the thousands of dollars to bring it up to code plus the thousands of dollars to bring out its true potential. So I had to let it go.

Recently I had an affair with another historical brick building, this one in Harlem , the old New England Hotel. It is truly a grand structure, complete with a curved staircase up to the second floor. The staircase is not quite up to Scarlett O’Hara standards, but I could see a bride slowly descending to the music of the grand piano and the hushed admiration of the wedding guests. One trip through the hotel and I had mentally knocked out walls and created a rustic bed and breakfast. Each spacious room would paint a homespun picture, complete with iron bedsteads, maple dressers, rag rugs, patch quilts, muslin curtains at the long tall windows and claw-foot tubs behind tri-fold screens. This time I would place my personal apartment on the ground floor, right in the middle of all the action. But it was the same story, same unhappy ending. No way did I have enough money for code and cosmetics to make over the grand old dame.

Last week a local businessman told me that the old derelict should be torn down. “You could put up a nice new steel building in that spot for a hundred-fifty thou,” he said. I cringed at the thought. My heart dropped into my stomach. He’s right, of course. But our town would lose half a block of architecture and a major portion of its history.

I think too much with my heart and not enough with my wallet. I can see the shadows of the craftsmen who built with pride and then added the touches that made the New England Hotel unique. I can see the ghosts of former occupants roaming the halls. A man shuffles into one room and sits down at an oak desk piled high with business papers. He removes a flask from his vest pocket and swigs a hearty slug of rye whiskey to ease the pain of a deal gone bad. In another room, I watch a worried mother rock a fretful baby, feverish with colic. This venerable building has weathered storms, meteorological and monetary, political and personal. I soak up its stories as though I lived them. I sigh, turn my head, and then see the finished project as I would re-design it, a place to welcome new people with new stories of their own.

I have other loves; one in Big Sandy, a handsome beauty in Ritzville , Washington , and a sweetie in Bonners Ferry, Idaho . They all have real potential, honest they do, and I know if I could just love them enough, they would be wonderful.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door.
May 6, 2010
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Riding the Rails

Riding the Rails
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I love trains. And that is a good thing because my home is plunk across the street from the tracks. I never did figure out why my Dad built his house here, where the trains practically run through the living room. He never did say. Maybe Dad liked trains too. I remember summer times when, out in the fields, we would hear the whistle and stop our work to watch the Empire Builder roll by. To this day, when I hear that lonesome whistle blow, I bless Hank Williams and fight off a hankering to hit the rails.

Back in high school my friend Charlotte and I day-dreamed of adventures, long bicycle trips, heading down the highway. We had no money, but we each had a bicycle. Bikes were different in those days. They had one speed and only went as fast as one could push the pedals. We planned elaborate trips to Chicago or Denver or San Francisco , our luggage a change of clothes and a bar of soap wrapped in canvas, tied on the rack in back. We planned to stop in small towns along the way. We imagined ourselves sauntering into the local café and offering to wait tables (Her) and wash dishes (Me) in exchange for food and maybe a cot in the back pantry. Then we would head down the road again in a few days. In our minds she and I criss-crossed the entire continental United States. We never once considered any risk or danger to ourselves. Our dreams never came to fruition. Once we graduated high school, we both got married, an altogether different adventure, much more risky and dangerous.

So I have never hitch-hiked or biked around the country, but I ride the trains when I get a chance. Living where I live, trains are ever present. Each train has a different whistle tone. Often when the Empire Builder halts on the tracks right outside my front door, I stand on my porch, lean on the railing, and wave to the passengers. In the middle of the night a 2:30 freight rumbles through town. For some reason, I always hear its whistle and it is a comfort to me. Much of the train traffic, though, is just wallpaper, background scenery.

Yesterday afternoon while I took a break from my work and sipped a cup of tea, I opened the door to watch a westbound freight slow nearly to a stop as it rolled through town on its trek toward the sea. Two men with a shepherd dog on a leash jumped from a boxcar. “Hoboes” I thought.

My imagination shifted into overdrive. The hoboes would see me standing in my open front door, cross the street, and say, “Ma’am, you got any work we can do for a bite to eat.” I would point to the snow shovel, the ice chipper, and my driveway, piled high with crusted snow.

While they worked I would go into my kitchen and make them thick, hearty sandwiches, brew a pot of coffee and carry it outside for them to eat. I would get a pail of water for the dog, Ralph. I would scrape together something for the dog to eat, perhaps the left-over meat loaf. In the stories that came out of the Great Depression the woman always carried the sandwiches outside for the hoboes to eat on the steps. I would ache to know who they were and where they were going, but I would not ask personal questions; the Code of the West, you know. Before they continued their journey, they would have chalked my door with the secret symbol, letting other travelers know I was an easy mark for a bite of food.

However, these two men did not cross the street. They did not clear my snow-filled driveway. I noticed that both men carried hiking packs that looked like state-of-the-art models. They wore insulated clothing and parkas, the kind you buy from LL Bean. There was nothing shabby about this duo. The men removed their parkas and stood alongside the tracks for several minutes in conversation. They had a relaxed look about them. The dog looked well fed and well groomed. I wondered why they taken to traveling in a boxcar. I know times are tough but these two did not appear destitute. They looked like they might have the rail fare along with a sheaf of credit cards tucked in their wallets. One man took a map from his backpack. After a few minutes, they tied their coats to their packs, slung the packs onto their backs and hiked down the street toward the highway and out of sight.

A part of me yearned to grab my own pack and hurry to catch up with them, to go wherever they were headed, to go beyond my everyday life. Oh, heck. I finished my tea, closed my front door, and went back to work.

Sondra Ashton
HDN: Looking out my back door
March 11, 2010
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Mourning the Death of the Cajun Cafe'

Some dreams never disappear completely.
Mourning the Death of the Cajun Café
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I came across the derelict when I was driving my van crammed with furniture and boxes on my move back home to Montana . The building had obviously been long abandoned. A corner of the roof threatened to collapse. Windows were broken and a door hung loose. A warped and peeling sign across the front announced that this heap of debris had once been the Cajun Café. A homemade “For Sale” sign stood in the yard. Long way from Louisiana , I thought.

I was on that scenic section of US Highway 2, half-way between Bonners Ferry and Troy . Neither place was a major population center. The only residents up here in the north woods appeared to be moose and lodge-pole pine. Who would have opened a Cajun café, definitely a niche restaurant, out in the middle of nowhere?

But the Café was once somebody’s dream. With that thought my imagination took over. I hate to see a dream die. I have a friend long retired from the restaurant business. We often talked about what made an eatery work, in that idle way of people who enjoy good food.

So that evening I phoned him. “Got a business opportunity for you, a little fixer-upper.” I described the place, left out several pertinent details, emphasized ‘potential’, talked fast past ‘location’ and tried to sell a bill of goods around ‘tourist’ and ‘seasonal’.

A few months later my friend drove this route with me. When I spotted the old Cajun Cafe I eased off the road into the driveway. “There she is. A business opportunity waiting to happen.” He laughed. “A fixer-upper, huh?” “Build it, they will come,” I replied. “Are you kidding? Who is here to come?”

That tumble-down structure along the highway entertained us for nearly four years. We imagined a Saturday night at the Cajun Café. The Gumbo Special. Live music. Elbow-to-elbow customers who rode snowmobiles from their cabins off the grid across the trackless wilderness. Plenty of good food and with beer to swill it down. Belches and scratches, music blaring, fights on the dance floor. Good honest fun.

After that, whenever I made the trip, I would report on the condition of the Cajun Café and assure my friend that nobody had slipped in and bought it out from under him, that it was still available.

Until last winter. A fire had severely razed the site. I felt too sad to report this tragic turn of events. But recently my friend drove out to see me and took the northern route. My phone rang, “It’s gone,” he said. “A fire. Still I wonder who the guy was who built a Cajun restaurant way out here.”

I’ll be driving that same route soon. I’ll leave flowers at the site, flowers to commemorate a dream gone, someone’s hopes and aspirations up in flames. But dang, I can still picture the fire roaring in the cast iron wood-stove in the corner, shrimp and catfish sizzling on the grill, my friend pulling nozzles and filling beer mugs, his wife carrying heaping plates of jambalaya to the customers sitting at trestle tables in their mukluks and Carhartts, snowmobiles clustered outside the door, zydeco on the jukebox; in short, a community center where neighbors meet, wild game is bartered for firewood, deals are made, disputes are settled and young folks fall in love. Let the good times roll.

Sondra Ashton
sondrajean@mtintouch.net
Havre Daily News: Home Again
November 12, 2009

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