The silence of the Kool-Aid stand: the Rock Fight

Of that ingenious heroine who travelled to the end of the street and ruined the Kool-Aid of David J. and his sibs, sing Heavenly Muse. Sing, O Muse, also of the one who ended the fight, the one who did not throw like a girl but like Achilles hurling the arrows of death from his silver bow.

In fifteen minutes, David J. and his minions had assembled at the south end of the dirt service road behind our houses. We ourselves gathered near the water tank. The rules were clear: get the rocks, continue the name-calling, and then start throwing. Silence reigned in the woods as both sides gathered rocks in preparation for the battle to come. After a few minutes we had our piles of rocks at the ready.

Because Bobbie had done our bidding with the dog-doo, she was allowed the honor of the first epithet.

"Fart face!"

The silence of the woods was immediately rent by the bitter, malicious names we hurled at each other.

"Poop head!"

"Booger brain!"

"Puppy breath!"

"Wait!" Beth turned to the kid. "You can't call them 'puppy breath.' Puppy breath is nice. It smells really cute, like the puppies. You've been over to see Lulu's puppies at the Jennings's, haven't you? Didn't you smell their breath? It's nice!"

"Hey, you wanna go over to the Jennings's and see the puppies? We could smell their breath! Hey, Kenny, can we go pet Lulu's puppies and smell their breath?"

"Pay attention, you guys! Get some rocks! You can see the puppies after the battle."

"Well, what can I call those creeps? They just called me 'booger brain.' What are my options for a retort?"

"Anything but 'puppy breath.' How about 'fatty' or some other term that describes what they look like?"

"Yeah! FATTY!"

"Potty mouth!"

"Snotslinger!"

"Pooter scooter!"

Someone from David J.'s side threw a piece of tuff. The battle was joined.

Throwing tuff is a lot like throwing potato chips: you can do it, but the rock lacks sufficient heft to go very far or inflict much damage. After five minutes, a cairn began to grow between the two armies. We continued to hurl tuff and insults. It was easy to dodge the rocks that did make it to our lines, because they fluttered and whiffled and piffed like dying knuckleballs. At this rate, the rock fight could go on for days and not injure a soul.

I had to take action. I left the lines and ran behind the water tank. Hiding myself behind the trees and circling through the woods, I was soon even with David J.'s line. From behind a tree I picked up a heavy piece of rhyolite, stepped out, and let it fly. It bounced off Paul's head. He started crying, and David and his minions raced toward home. We won! We marched in triumph down the road from the water tank to the street.

Someone decided that we should rub a little salt in David J.'s wounds, so we headed down the street to gloat. When we got just past the Kirkpatricks' house, we saw David and his sibs standing in the front yard. They saw us. Paul immediately fell to the grass, and Jackie began pouring water on his head. "You knocked him out!" she bellowed in her deep, guttural voice. David looked around for an avenue of escape. The fir tree! He'd climb up and hide in it. Assuming a position like the Russian letter Ж, he leaped up and grabbed a low branch. He swung for a moment and then dropped to the grass beside his brother.

It was pitiful, just pitiful. They weren't worth gloating over. They were a pack of sissies. We turned and went back up the street. Kenny said, "You wanna go see the puppies? We can smell their breath!"

The silence of the Kool-Aid stand: the Catalog of Epithets

We watched as Bobbie trotted down the street with David J.'s paper cup in hand. David and his sibs seemed to be relieved that they were getting their cup back and stepped forward to receive it with thanks. But when she got back to the punch bowl, she announced, "Your lemon Kool-Aid tastes like potty. In fact, your Kool-Aid looks like potty." And she upended the cup, which contained a large piece of fresh dog doo, into the punch bowl.

The J siblings looked in horror at the turd floating in the Kool-Aid. Paul, the youngest, began to gag. Bobbie laughed, and she was off! David and Jackie ran after her, leaving Paul to guard the punch bowl from further violation, apparently by sitting on the front steps and gasping with his head between his knees.

Jackie and David skidded to a halt as soon as Bobbie crossed the demilitarized zone. The air became blue as we hurled vitriolic epithets at each other.

"Gunky!"

"Doo-doo head!"

"Booger brain!"

"Toe jam eater!"

"I'm gonna kick you in your B-U-T!"

"Zoo breath!"

"I know you are, but what am I?"

"Piddle pants!"

"Snot!"

"Poot toot!"

"I'm rubber and you're glue! Whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you!"

The two enemy camps faced each other in front of the Kirkpatricks' house. Only the width of a sidewalk square was between us. Only the width of a sidewalk square stood between a peaceful summer day filled with the innocent laughter of children and an entire neighborhood going up in flames. "You owe us for a whole bowl of Kool-Aid!" David screamed.

"Yeah, well, come get your money then," someone on our side taunted.

"Give us the money!" Jackie roared. She had a deeper voice than David did, and she meant business.

"Come and get," we repeated. "If you want it, meet us on the service road in five minutes."

"We need more time to get more people," David explained.

"Fifteen minutes," we said.

"Fifteen minutes," David said

It was on.

The silence of the Kool-Aid stand: the Opening Salvo

There's a lot to be said for cherry Kool-Aid: everyone loves it; you can eat the powder plain at recess; it's red, my favorite color; it's refreshing in the summer; you can color your hair with it; you can buy from the neighborhood kids on a hot day and realize too late that they've sweetened it to Kid Taste, and then feel the enamel sliding right off your teeth.

When we were kids, about the only way to earn a little money was by selling Kool-Aid. We'd pester our mom ("Who's going to pay for all the supplies? Sugar isn't free, you know!") until she finally relented. We'd dump a 5-cent packet of cherry Kool-Aid into a pitcher, add a scant 3/4 cup of sugar, add water and ice, and mix. Mmmmm! Then we'd set up in front of the house with a metal can from frozen juice concentrate to drink from, and a pan of water to rinse it in when our customer was finished. (Even back then we were good stewards of resources.)

"Kool-Aid for sale! Five cents a glaa-aaa-aaassss! Three cents a half a glass!" Usually the neighborhood kids and Seferino the letter carrier would come buy from us. But one day business was down. Did I say down? I should have said nonexistent. What was the problem?

The problem, as it was so often in the neighborhood, was David J. He and his sibs were selling Kool-Aid on the same day! The little jerk was taking all our business! But why? How? What made his Kool-Aid so special? We had to find out. We needed reconnaissance.

When you need somebody to do something without question, to follow instructions exactly, to risk life, limb, and being grounded in perpetuity in pursuit of another crack-brained scheme, and to keep her mouth shut afterward, you get Bobbie.

We gave her a nickel and told her to go buy some Kool-Aid from David J. and his sister Jackie and brother Paul. She was to learn as much as she could about the operation while she slowly sipped her Kool-Aid. When she was finished, she was head back to the house.

We watched her as she completed the transaction at the end of the street. Suddenly she turned and ran, a paper cup in hand, with David, Jackie, and Paul in hot pursuit. Bobbie beat it past the Kirkpatricks' house, which marked the demilitarized zone between the south side of 48th Street, where the losers lived, and the north side, where all the cool kids lived. David and his sibs screeched to a halt.

"Give us back our cup!" they screamed.

"You want it? Come and get it," we sneered. Bobbie waved the cup to taunt them. They took a step toward us. Our friends Lynn, Kenny, Ralph, John, Susie, Doug, Mike, and Gail closed ranks around us, and we took a threatening step toward the interlopers. David and his posse high-tailed it back to their house like the pale, rabbity little cowards they were.

Bobbie reported that David was selling the new lemon-flavored Kool-Aid. He presented it in a punch bowl with a ring of ice and had a stack of paper cups. David would daintily ladle out a cup of the brand-new flavor and present it to customers with a flourish.

Son of a—

We needed a plan. We conferred for several minutes and agreed on our next step. We called Bobbie over and whispered the plan to her.

"Okay, Bobbie, here's what you do. Go back to their Kool-Aid stand with the cup. Only this time, wspppsh shssh spshwhsp whsp shhspwhsp."

"AH-hahahahaha!"

"Be quiet! And when you get there, wspppsh shssh spshwhsp whsp shhspwhsp, then wspppshshssh spsh whspwhsp shhspwhsp really fast, okay?"

"Got it." She went into the back yard with the cup for a minute, then set out toward David's Kool-Aid stand.

The escape of Prince the Bulldog

When we were kids, a family (let's call them the Smiths) moved into the quad across the street. Rumor had it that they chose the unit because it was next to the canyon, where they could let their vicious German Shepherd dogs run loose. The rumor proved groundless, and the dogs remained in the yard.

There were three kids, all of playmate age, so that was cool. The father was a mostly quiet man. The mother was more flamboyant, wearing a down parka even in the summer, sporting a hairstyle that should have been hanging from an Indian's belt, and favoring virulent shades of lipstick, which she applied by the impasto technique so that her lips always looked like a crimson sectional sofa.

After a few years they got a bulldog, which they named Prince. Prince used the front yard, because, Mrs. Smith said, he would attack the other dogs in the back yard and slaughter them. In addition to his purported killer instinct, Prince had another quirk: he would not, as Mom used to say, "do him's numbers" unless someone were there with him to encourage him while he piddled.

It was no trouble to attend to Prince when the family was home, but what with jobs and school, the family was away from home for six or eight hours at a time. We read the stories of John Wayne and Elvis Presley having 40-60 pounds of impacted fecal matter in their colons at their deaths. Although these stories are only rumors, they are nevertheless cautionary tales: colorectal health is as important to dogs as it is to humans. And so Mrs. Smith's father was enlisted to doggysit Prince during the day and make sure he did him's numbers.

Thus it was that on the afternoon of September 29, 1981, while I was living with Mom and searching for a job, I heard a thin, high voice crying, ^{"Pree-ince! Pree-ince!"} Perhaps the grandfather left the gate open. Perhaps the screen didn't close securely. Maybe the grandfather looked the other way. But the truth was inescapable: Prince had hightailed it.

I went outside to pretend to read.

Soon Mrs. Smith roared to the curb in a spray of gravel and raced into the house. From the lawn, where I was "reading," I could hear her muffled sobs. And then the screen door slammed, and Mrs. Smith strode up the service road toward Burnt Mountain, followed by her father, who called, ^{"Pree-ince! Pree-ince!"} Mrs. Smith's sobs were no longer muffled but deep, throaty, throbbing, like "Vesti la giubba" sung by a Russian liturgical bass. "We have to find him before nightfall," she wept. "Oh, I feel so helpless!" ^{"Pree-ince! Pree-ince!"}

After a brief, fruitless search of the woods, she cantered back down the service road, plunged into the house and called the cops. Then she slammed back outside, and she and her father continued calling the dog. "Here, Baby Bull! Come here, baby!" ^{"Pree-ince! Pree-ince!"}

The phone rang! Mrs. Smith hurled herself back into the house. Apparently she had some good tidings from Los Alamos's Finest. She and her father jumped into the car and drove down the street calling the dog. "Here, Baby Bull! Come here, baby!" ^{"Pree-ince! Pree-ince!"}

After a few minutes, they pulled onto the parking pad. Prince, who had apparently been visiting a friend down on 47th Street, was in the back seat. From inside the car, the guilt and recrimination began. What if Prince had been hit by a car? What if he were stolen? What if he attacked someone? What if he killed that dog he was playing with? What if Pete from the Pound had caught him? What if, God forbid, the coyotes or bears— No. It was too horrible to contemplate.

Mrs. Smith and her father got out of the car, and she began crying again. "I'm sick about all this! I'm just sick! I could have had a heart attack if anything happened to Baby Bull," she told her father. "Oh, this was a near-terrible tragedy!"

Her father offered a solution to prevent another near-terrible tragedy: ^{"Let's lock Pree-ince in the bedroom whenever I have to leave the house. It's better to have a messy floor than a missing dog."}

Mrs. Smith agreed. But it was time to get Prince back into the house. "Make sure his collar is tight," she told her father. "We don't want it to slip off." The father reached into the back seat to extract the dog. ^{"He won't come out! Pree-ince! Pree-ince! Come out!"}

Mrs. Smith roared, "Well, grab his collar and drag the little son-of-a-bitch out!"

Sunset, moonrise, and alpenglow

Back in the summer of 1980, P and I went to Oregon to visit his brother and sister-in-law. We took several day trips with them, including a drive to one of the state's rocky beaches in the south. We stayed for the sunset there, and scores of other folks sat on the rocks or stood on the shore watching as the sun set. The only sound was that of the waters of the Pacific. And as "the last lights off the black West went," the people dispersed in utter silence.

Another time P and I were driving back on US 64 from Cimarron after an evening of high-school basketball. The moon was rising over the plains, and the conditions that night made the moon appear red. We pulled over to watch. As we stood on the side of the road, other cars pulled over, and the occupants got out to watch. No one spoke or exclaimed.

The afternoon of New Year's Day, Michele and I took our cameras to the Anderson Overlook. It had snowed on the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and alpenglow was the draw for us. As we stood taking photographs, about six other carloads of folks stopped, and they took pictures too, or just stood looking at the spectacular view.

Here are some of my images. Click to enlarge.

I really like this one.

I cherish these times when I and people I love and perfect strangers stand together in silence to appreciate the beauty around us.

Our old neighbor David Jones passed away

David Jones, who lived across the street from us next to the Black Path, died recently. I used to babysit him, and he was a little scamp. Later he was on my team at LANL, and he was a little scamp then, too. Here is the article from the Los Alamos Monitor.

David Lance Jones of Pipersville, Pennsylvania, died peacefully at his residence on Sunday, November 7, 2010 following a two year battle with Melanoma. He was born October 10, 1956, in Los Alamos, N.M. where he was raised.

He is survived by two children, Mary-Carol Jones and Cody Jones, both of Denver, C.O. He is also survived by his two sisters Sandra Worth and Phyllis Mcloed and brother Clifford Craig Jones.

David, a dedicated security professional who has devoted his life towards the protection and preservation of National Security interests, most recently worked for URS Washington Division in Princeton, N.J. where he was employed as the Deputy Director of Corporate Security. Throughout his life and career, Dave had held numerous positions in security and intelligence where his talents and expertise had proven most beneficial in securing both domestic and international interests in the private and governmental sectors. Prior to joining URS, Dave had also worked with the Los Alamos National Laboratory where he was instrumental in safeguarding nuclear materials and projects of concern for a number of years. He was also an honorably discharged U.S. Veteran from the United States Army and National Guard, having served as a security specialist and as a Russian linguist and translator. He was a member in good standing of numerous professional security and intelligence societies and organizations and will truly be missed amongst the league of specialists. Dave’s devotion towards his profession was second only to his commitment as a father, however, as his true adoration was for his loving children.

He enjoyed many outdoor sports as hobbies, including hunting, fishing, and sport shooting. He also enjoyed motorcycles, cars, billiards, and reading.

Memorial services will be held at Fuller Lodge in Los Alamos, NM on Saturday, December 18th, 2010 starting at 2:00 PM with food and drinks following.

Absolute-LEE!

Thanks, BobBIE, for posting the Dickey Lee tune.

When I was little, I thought the singers on the radio were singing live down at KRSN. Normally as tranquil as a September morn, I remember going to pieces one day when I heard Peggy Lee singing, because if we didn't get downtown really fast, she'd be gone.

Years later, P and I went to Opryland and saw Brenda Lee. I remember seeing her on TV and being enchanted by her voice and the fact that she was only a few years older than I. Her show in Opryland was fabulous.



And who can forget Eugene "Porky" Lee of the Little Rascals?

A rockin' day trip

Friday I drove over to Maxwell to take Jean M. to lunch in Raton and to catch up on all the news. I decided to go through Taos Canyon to the Moreno Valley and through Cimarron Canyon instead of going up I-25.

There's still a lot of snow in Taos Canyon on the north-facing slopes. Some of the homes were still snowbound. Here's a fence in Taos Canyon.

I drove into Angel Fire, which is a bit of Aspen in northern New Mexico. It seems to have lost the funky charm it had when I lived in Maxwell and is now upscale and sort of precious. The ground throughout the Moreno Valley was saturated, as you can see from this image, which I took just north of Angel Fire.

I drove into Eagle Nest, which is still the way it's always been: a place to rent skis and gear for a lot less money than you'd pay in Angel Fire, get an inexpensive lunch, and poke around in little shops for tchotchkes and antiques. Izzy, I found that set of The Children's Hour in Eagle Nest.

Here are Eagle Nest Lake, which is beginning to thaw, and Wheeler Peak, which isn't. You can see the abandoned Eagle Nest Lodge at the lower right.

From Eagle Nest, you drop down into Cimarron Canyon. In the summer it's full of fishermen and campers, but Friday I met only one guy who was fishing. I stopped at the Palisades.

Here's the information marker for the geology geeks among us.

Maxwell continues to linger. Only 75 kids are in the whole school, kindergarten through 12th grade. My nemesis from my last year there, who was the office administrator and the superintendent's niece and who strutted around like a little cadet, is now the mayor. Many of my former students are grandparents. I drove by Fidel's Barber Shop, which is an 8 x 10 Morgan building. Fidel was sitting in there with the door open. When I drove by last year, he was sitting in there with the door open. When he asks you how you want your hair cut, he means, "Do you want it cut fast or slow?"

If you want good northern New Mexican food, Raton isn't the place to get it. There's nothing like a good chicken burrito, and what I had was nothing like a good chicken burrito.

The good news is that NM 505 is paved all the way to Colfax.

View Larger Map

Mr. Spence passed away

Our junior-high-school principal, Edward Spence, passed away. He was strict and brooked no nonsense. Here is the obituary from the Monitor.

Ed died on March 22, 2010 at age 97 in Chandler, AZ, where he lived with his wife of 73 years, Leona. Born in Liverpool, Eng, Ed came to the U.S. as a child, grew up in South Dakota, and became an educator. He moved to Los Alamos, NM, where he taught and was a school administrator for 30 years. He was an accomplished musician, singing and playing brass instruments, serving as the director of the Youth choir of the United Church of Los Alamos, where they were charter members. He was active in the community and in professional organizations. Following retirement, he lived in Albuquerque, and more recently in Chandler. Leona, their 4 children, and many grand and great-grands survive him. A memorial service will be at Chandler Presbyterian, 1500 W. Germann Rd, Chandler, AZ 85286 on April 10. Memorial gifts may be given to the church for a youth scholarship in Ed’s name. Bueler Mortuary of Chandler is handling arrangements.

I think I get it now

Last night, Michele and I watched The Ten Commandments ("Mo-zhus! Mo-zhus!") up until the Israelites were set free, and then we got sleepy and turned it off.

The fifties classic put me in mind of other films, and I remembered reading, as a kid, the movie posters that said no one would be seated during the last 30 minutes of the film. I thought it was pretty odd that the audience would have to stand up for 30 minutes.

("Notice! No one seated during the last, lethal five minutes of the picture!")

And that thought led to another. I remember gumball machines placed by the Lions, and the label read "For needy children." I never bought a gumball from them, because I didn't want anyone to think that I was a needy child.

Ash Wednesday

On Ash Wednesday, the nuns would herd their catechism classes in double file--boys in one line and girls in the other, with at least a foot of space in between for the Holy Spirit--from the parish hall to the church so that we could get ashes daubed on our foreheads. "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return," Father Shuler would mutter as he made the Sign of the Cross on our foreheads with his thumb. After a few minutes of prayer and reflection--preferably an Act of Contrition but more likely "Oh, man, I am so happy I don't have to spend 40 days fasting in the desert"--we'd hit the road and go back to class.

Back at the parish hall, one of the smart-ass boys would invariably ask Sister Mary Europeandasia, "Is it true what Father Shuler said? That we are dust and to dust we shall return?" And Sister Mary Europeandasia would say that it was true. Then the smart-ass would say, "Well, there's somebody under my bed either comin' or goin'!"

To the sound of muffled but moist and explosive nose laughs, Sister would escort the offender to sit with the girls, leaving a foot of space for the Holy Spirit between the perp and the girl next to him.

Then we'd have to stand up and tell what we were giving up or doing for Lent, what we were sacrificing to make up for the other 325 days of sinfulness. "I'm giving up homework!" one of the boys would say, and, without being told, we girls would scoot down the row so the little felon and the Holy Spirit could sit with us.

The lamest sacrifices were things like "I'm going to say extra prayers for the poor souls in Purgatory" or "I'm going to study my catechism harder." How will people know when you've slipped up? Saying that you're giving up watermelon or persimmons was just asking for it. And, of course, Sister's pets would say things like, "I'm going to go to daily Mass" or "I'm going to visit the elderly neighbor with the colostomy bag every day after school."

When I was a freshman in college, my friend Kris and I did indeed go to daily Mass during Lent at the St. Paul Newman Center (that is, the Newman Center dedicated to St. Paul, not the center dedicated to the star of Hud and Cool Hand Luke, who really is a saint, if you ask me). Every day Kris would push me through the swinging doors so that I hurtled into the sanctuary and looked more eager to attend Mass than I actually was.

We kept it up, though, and didn't miss a day, and on Easter Sunday, we could feel those halos just a-shinin' on our heads.

Thanks, Ike

Ike was a smiley dog.

He liked being with kids in the Lunch Buddies Program . . .

. . . and in Reading to Dogs.

Lynn (center) showed him in three shows, and he took best of breed in all three.

He liked to hop on the bed and sit on Michele.

Bobbie and I stepped out in the Dog Jog with our pups.

And for one brief moment at the geographical center of the contiguous United States, he was the center of the country.

Ike. July 2, 1994-January 5, 2010

Childhood fears

Chuckbert's post reminded me of a childhood fear I had when we were living over on Alabama Avenue: I was afraid to sit down in the bathtub when I took a bath. I was afraid I'd fall backward and hit my head. The possibility of drowning always hung over me.

An image straight out of a Hitchcock movie

Helen Hanson passed away

Our longtime neighbor on 48th Street, Helen Hanson, passed away earlier this month. Here is the obituary from the Monitor.

Helen Virginia (Boardman) Hanson, 91, passed away peacefully on May 16, 2009, at her home at Kingston Residence Assisted Living-Memory Care in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The youngest of three children, she was born in Barron, Wisconsin on January 31, 1918, to Elisabeth “Bessie” Luella (Evans) and Raymond Coit Boardman. As a child, Helen loved school and dreamt of becoming a doctor.  After graduating from high school at the age of 16, she attended college and received her BSN and MSN from the University of Minnesota School of Nursing. She began her nursing career at Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.

Helen met Raymond Hanson when he moved into her boarding house and they were married on June 25, 1942. Ray went overseas shortly thereafter to serve as a photographer in the Army Air Corps during World War II. After the war, Ray returned to his position at Honeywell until he was stricken with Polio in 1948 along with daughter, Diane. With Helen’s background in nursing, they couldn’t have been in better hands.

In 1950, Helen and Ray moved their family from Minnesota to New Mexico after Ray accepted a position with the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL) in GMX-4.  Helen, who was afraid of heights, had a harrowing trip up the main road to Los Alamos and declared that once she got up there she was NEVER coming down! Together, Helen and Ray settled into a government duplex and raised their four children. The highlight of those years was when the family spent a month each summer traveling in their 1956 GMC Carryall; camping, kayaking, fishing, horseback riding and hiking in breathtaking areas of the western United States.

Helen returned to work in 1956 as the division secretary in Cryogenics at LASL.  In 1962, the family purchased a home on six acres in Ranchitos, north of Española. After many years of commuting to Los Alamos to work, Helen returned to her first love, nursing, and worked as an OB nurse at the local Española Hospital until her retirement.

The trip of a lifetime for Helen and Ray, as well as their two youngest children John and Susan, came in 1966 when Ray accepted an 18-month long teaching position in Kanpur, India at the Indian Institute of Technology.  Their travels to and from India took them around the world.

An avid duplicate bridge player, Helen also enjoyed her volunteer work with the American Red Cross and  Planned Parenthood. She was a voracious reader who especially enjoyed murder mysteries, an accomplished knitter, a huge baseball fan, and always had a special connection with dogs. The words “feisty” and “fiercely independent” will always be attached to Helen’s memory. The influence she had on her family and friends will be long remembered.

Helen is predeceased by her husband, Raymond Hanson in 1989; her daughter Maribeth Louise Prager in 1979; her parents; her brother Howard Coit Boardman; and her sister Marian Elisabeth Marx.

She is survived by her daughter Diane Elisabeth DeMillo-Boissevain (Jan) of Boulder, Colorado; son John Scott Hanson (Carol) of Albuquerque; and daughter Susan Ann Reynolds-Trivisonno (Nick) of Charlotte, North Carolina.  Helen is also survived by her grandchildren:  Mark Prager of Waco, Texas; Theodore Reynolds of Charlotte, North Carolina; Alan DeMillo of Boulder, Colorado; Gina DeMillo-Wagner (Kris) of Erie, Colorado; Andrew DeMillo (Hilary) of Little Rock, Arkansas; Julie Martin of  Los Gatos, California; Amanda Hanson of Gulfport, Florida; and David Hanson of Albuquerque; as well as her great-granddaughter: Bronwynn Elisabeth Wagner of Erie, Colorado.

To honor Helen’s wishes, there will be no service. Her ashes will be scattered in the Jemez Caldera at the same location she cast her husband’s ashes 20 years ago. Donations may be made in her memory to the Humane Society of your choice.

 

 

What day is like a command?

From third to seventh grade I was always in the same class with David J., who was the biggest teacher's pet who ever drew breath. 

In fourth grade he got up in front of the class with his book of questions and answers. When he asked, "Do monkeys cry?" he screwed up his face and asked the question as if he were crying. The rest of the class rolled their eyes, but Mrs. Singer was enchanted.

He won the speech contest in fifth grade with his recitation of "Casey at the Bat." Instead of a baseball cap, he wore his little round Cub Scout hat on the back of his head, which everyone thought was so cu-uuuu-uute. When he got to the line, "And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey's blow," he swung his little baseball bat with a downward chop. The teachers lapped it up because it was so cu-uuuu-uuu-uute. The boys in the class were ecstatic that he won, and they stood outside the classroom and chanted, "We want David! We want David!" at recess.

In seventh grade he got the award for best librarian's helper from Miss Ketola, and he beamed as he pranced up to the stage to receive his award.

The worst was in fourth grade, though. One day at show-n-tell, he asked, "What day is like a command? March fourth!" Then he marched forth with his chest thrown out and swinging his arms and lifting his knees up high. It was so cu-uuuu-uuute!

It's been 50 years. I should let it go. See also Chuckbert's Simple Grudge Index.

Happy March 4th

Mardi Gras: laissez les jaunes d'œufs rouler!

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. During catechism on Ash Wednesday we'd troop down to the church to have our foreheads smudged with ashes. If the smudges wore off, we could always freshen them with ashes from dad's cigarette butts. 

Back in those days, when we were orthodox, we couldn't eat meat on Fridays. Here is my recipe for a Pueblo Junior High Tuna Sandwich.

First,  if you're not in a hurry, take a can of tuna, drain off the oil, and empty it into a bowl. Then add some diced celery, a little minced onion, and chopped hard-boiled egg whites. Save the yolk to roll down the aisle in Mr. Baldwin's social studies class. Maybe this time he'll send you out. Add salt, pepper, and mayonnaise, and spread the mixture on crisp toast.

If you are running late, just mix the undrained tuna with mayo and spread it on bread. Stick the sandwich in a recycled Baggie, whose clinging power has been reduced by repeated washings.

Put some potato chips in another gappy Baggie. Put the sandwich, chips, and an overripe banana in a brown paper bag. Or a sugar sack, better. A sugar sack is sturdier and has stuff written on it so you can read it at lunch if you have to sit alone. It's lunchtime's answer to the cereal box.

Put the lunch in your locker. Between classes, pitch your social studies book on top of the bag.

At lunch, open your locker. It smells like you're standing next to Moby-Dick. Fruit flies have formed a deep and abiding relationship with the banana. Take your oily, squashed bag to the cafeteria. Sit down at a table. Marlene, who always laughs with her mouth wide open after swallowing most of her milk or cottage cheese, sits down opposite. Gross. But it's better than eating alone. 

Take out the oil-dampened sandwich. Try to chew it, but the best you can probably do at this stage in the game is just sort of mush it around in your mouth. Dab up the minuscule bits of potato chips, the major casualty in the encounter with the social studies book, with your fingertips and lick them off. Marlene thinks your performance is hilarious and laughs. Wipe her milk off your face.

Lick the banana off the inside of the sugar sack. Throw the banana peel and the bag into the garbage can. Save the Baggies for Mom.

After lunch, everything you touch will smell like tuna. By the end of the day the whole school will smell like a whaling vessel ninety days out of New Bedford. Everyone knows it's you. 

Think of death by embarrassment as your Lenten sacrifice.

Jellied tuna: tasty Lenten fare

Wait! Who's driving the car!?

Yesterday Bobbie and I went to Bandelier. Most of the trails were closed because of ice and snow, so we walked the Ruins Trail and the Long House Trail, then had a little lunch at the snack bar. Not many visitors were there. On the way out of the park we saw some deer browsing and resting. Bobbie will probably post those images and others she took.

High on the cliff is this a petroglyph of the sun and a bird. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Frijoles Canyon from the scenic overlook.

Dead juniper.

Here is Bobbie.

In a tribute to family vacations, Bobbie took a picture of me through the windshield. Then I took a picture of her through the windshield. It's a good thing Jack Classic didn't use this technique.

AUGGGGHHHHH! Who's driving the car?!

Misty water-colored memories

Yesterday I went up to Maxwell to visit with my old friend Jean M. and to take her to lunch in Raton. Years ago, before a family reunion in Colorado Springs, Uncle Floyd had stopped in Maxwell. When I asked him what he thought of the village, he said, "It's a goddamned hole." 

I disagreed with him. When I lived there, the place was bright with gardens and well-kept lawns, and it was vibrant and alive. Or maybe my memories of it are misty and water-colored. Now, it's a goddamned hole.

Yesterday I saw that even more houses have been boarded up since I was there a year ago, and the Methodist church has since burned down. The general store is limping along. A house across the street from the school had been abandoned for years, and at Christmastime, some kids were partying inside, left a fire burning, and burned it out. The house next to the lot P and I used to live on is collapsing, and the place where we last lived is abandoned. Last year I opened the side door and peered in, and it was obvious from the musky smell that critters have taken it over. 

Jean said that the school is declining and that no one is particularly interested in saving it. Only one person filed for the three vacant seats on the school board, so they won't have an election. No one wants to teach in a rural school or administer one. Only 45 kids are in the junior high and high school; when we were there, we had about 80 kids. History teaches us that as the school goes, so goes the town. Gladstone, Folsom, Capulin, Kiowa, Quay, Trementina, Colmor, Dawson, Gallina, among others, had schools--now they are just wide spots on a road.

The community got together in the late 1970s in Maxwell to build a ball field, dugout, and track. The current village administration planted grass on the field, but to protect the grass, they won't allow anybody to use the field.

The old sugar beet mill has been converted to a facility that chips up logs to make bedding for pets.

I took the camera along and practiced some more with the telephoto lens. I think I have to wear my reading glasses when I look through the viewfinder; otherwise, the images are blurry. I spent some time in Tecolote, and here are some of the better images.

Wire mesh in the dirt.

Down a road.

Two rock walls.

A rock wall and abandoned house.

The church.

Jack the Laff Riot

Thanks, Chuckbert, for posting the latest carousel o' slides. I remember when Jack took the picture below at Knott's Berry Farm. He asked me to pose with the burro, and I innocently complied. 

Afterwards he delighted in showing this slide to company. Every time the image appeared, he'd ask, "Now. . . which one is the jackass?" And everyone would laugh, and I'd try to make the best of it. But I felt that he was shaming me. See also Chuckbert's Simple Grudge Index.

I swear, if you don't get out of my driveway, I'm going to call the cops. Merry Christmas.

I've been listening to holiday pops on XM/Sirius radio on the way to and from work, and I usually enjoy the music very much. I do not like shrill little boy sopranos. Anthony Way, for example, makes me want to stick my fingers in my eyes and twirl them around. I also do not like to listen to Dame Joan Sutherland sing carols because her diction is so weird and phlegmy. It's not a carol, but if she sang it, it would sound like this:

Caddy me bok tew old Vuhjiddy

Deah's wheah deh coddod ahnd deh sweed bodadoes gr-rrrrr-ow!

Deah's wheah deh buhds waughble sweed in deh sprrr-rrringtahm . . . .

So I said to myself, "Oh, yeah? Think you can do better, P-doobie?" And I remembered the caroling parties we used to go to every Christmas eve.

Jim and Gracie, our neighbors for years and our friends since 1982, would host the caroling party. After several years of trial and error (amateurs, for example, can't sing "O Holy Night" without breaking down in so many ways--vocally, musically, spiritually), we finally whittled down our list of carols to "Joy to the World," "Jingle Bells," "Silent Night," and "O Come All Ye Faithful." They were in everybody's range. We knew the words.

It was traditional to start our caroling at the home of a family we knew was always out of town on Christmas Eve; singing to the empty porch was a warm-up to the debacles to come. No matter what we sang for folks, Gracie would jingle her jingle bells, so "Silent Night" always sounded like a reindeer convention. Uncle P would play his harmonica as an accompaniment. We'd be out for an hour or so--earnest, effortful, and always near the tune--and then we'd round up the people who took the wrong turn on Trinity Drive and were favoring the folks down on 43rd Street with "Jingle Bells" while the rest of the group was at the top of Sandia singing "Silent Night,"and adjourn to Jim and Gracie's for posole, hot cranberry punch, and other yummy holiday fare.

Several parties, however, remain etched in my memory. There was the time our hosts invited a couple of newbies, and we were warming up on "O Come All Ye Faithful." The wife said, "We should sing the first 'O come let us adore him' very quietly, then the next one a little louder, and then on the final one, we should sing out quite loudly." Everyone looked at her as if she were a bug in the wassail bowl.

"Um . . . you've never sung with us before, have you?"

"We don't worry about dynamics. We just want to get the words right."

"Some of us [meaningful look at me] aren't even singing the right song some of the time."

"Yeah, well, some of us [meaningful look at Eric] aren't even on the right street!"

There was the time the temperature was around zero with variable southwest winds at 15 to 20 mph, and we were all so happy because we thought we could stay inside and eat, drink, and be merry. But no. Jim herded us, crying and bleating, out into the arctic cold. We stayed out less than 30 minutes. Uncle P's frozen mustache whiskers occasionally snagged the harmonica, so our listeners heard, "Joy to the world! The Lord is come! Let--"

"OW! Son of a . . . ."

". . . King!"

And once we went caroling in a blizzard. We mushed up to the empty house, sang "Jingle Bells," then plowed over to a guy who shoveling his driveway in a futile effort against the rapidly accumulating snow. We surrounded him and sang, "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas / Just like the ones I used to know." Even through the driving snow we could see that his hands were gripping the shovel very tightly, much as one might grip a weapon. We could take a hint. We finished one chorus and slogged back to Jim and Gracie's, where we took turns shoveling each other's cars out.

Warming up for the venture into the cold on Christmas Eve.