Postcards from the Road - Stories (update)

Friends,

            Acknowledging up front the shameless self-promotion, I nonetheless want to celebrate the terrific reception "Postcards from the Road - Stories" has gotten. From the well-attended launch of the book in November to the recent delivery of a third print-run, it's been enjoyable and humbling at the same time.

            Briefly then, I'd like simply to remind folks that copies are on the shelves at Village Books in Bellingham, and also in my possession.

            Ordering from Village Books couldn't be easier or quicker. Go to the website (http://www.villagebooks.com/), enter the title, and voila! Or email me, and I'll send a copy pronto.

            Thanks for your wonderful readership.

                Dick

P.S. If you've already bought a book, please forgive the repetition . . .  and thank you!

The Bee

 

            Before telling about crossing the Big River, I will report that the unwelcome exposure to insects in the Ozarks was in fact the second event of its type on the trip.

            There are things you learn about each other on a journey such as the one we took. Not necessarily new things, but character quirks that are brought into more visible relief over long hours in X cubic feet of necessary confinement. We all know this when we weigh whether or not to take such a trip with a companion no matter how good a friend he or she may be.

            Cherie and I have enjoyed a long and happy marriage - two kids, two careers, two home remodels, wallpapering.  But now, in early retirement and in each other's company more often, perhaps feelings that hibernate below the surface would percolate to the top through mile after mile of silence on this the longest road trip we'd undertaken.  We travel well together as a rule, but over the years we've also enjoyed solitary time.  Made a point of it, in fact. Put simply, we're independent people who love each other. We make joint decisions; unless we don't.  My lovely wife's patience is legendary; I work at it.  Driving directions, map queries, restaurant and motel choices, potty stops might be fertile ground for disagreement.  Nothing as routine as that happened, but there were some surprises.

 

            I knew Cherie hated bugs - from the most harmless of moths and gangly crane flies to the B-52 houseflies that thrive in the Pacific Northwest. Don't even start about spiders. If an arachnid had been the subject of this brief episode, I likely would not be here to write about it.  Her tolerance for flying, buzzing critters is close to nonexistent. She comes by her aversion honestly: she grew up on the East Coast where some insects are the size of small birds - cockroaches in particular. Ugly, huge, Carboniferous Era, corner-lurking, night-crawling omnivores that roam in the dark, snacking on smudges of left-over pizza stuck to the box. The overhead light flashes on and the miscreants scatter, skittering into nooks and crannies too small for you to get at and sent it to the lower reaches of Hell.

            Clearly, I'm not fond of the little beasties either. And there's undoubtedly an important place for cockroaches in the ecosystem.  Maybe there's a Save The Roaches Society somewhere - t-shirts, monthly meetings, marches on Black Flag headquarters. The Franz Kafka Chapter in lower Manhattan, say.

            But, I digress.

 

            These vermin, are not the subject of this narrative.  Rather, members of the wonderful entomological order hymenoptera, consisting of bees, wasps, yellow jackets, and hornets. These industrious denizens of spring, summer, and fall perform wonders. Colonies live in beautifully constructed villages with intricate passages.  They protect and pay homage to a monarch, provide childcare, guards and workers, and roam far and wide to find food, yet make their way home. They band together and defend against enemies.  Bees even provide us food, however grudgingly.

            But they sting. Or bite.

            Like the one that flew in the driver's-side window, Cherie at the wheel, narrowly missing her head before disappearing somewhere in the car.  There aren't a lot of options when this happens in a vehicle traveling seventy-five miles an hour.  Skilled driver that she is - and screaming like she'd been shot - Cherie came as close as she's likely to come to a NASCAR sideways slide and pulled into a fortuitously wide driveway and jammed the brake.

            Where was the bee? Or wasp. Whatever.

            "It flew down there," she shrieked, pointing down beside her left leg, where, probably dazed by its collision with the window post, it was coming to its senses and assessing the wide cuff opening of Cherie's slacks.  Out the door she flew as fast as her tormentor had flown in.

            "So do something," she yelled from a good fifteen feet away.

            I got out of the car, stretched, and walked around the front. It was a bright sunny Utah afternoon, brown desert scrub to one side, distant green foothills in the other.  At the end of the curving driveway sat a small pair of buildings surrounded by a chain-link fence.  Then I noticed the sign. Terrific! The Carbon County Humane Society! I would commit brutal insecticide of one of God's elegant creations, whose only mistake it was to fly at an inopportune moment through airspace it had far more right to than we did, in full view of a humane society.

            Maybe I wouldn't find him. Maybe he, or it, had expired. Maybe . . . nope, there it was, crawling its sextipedal way over the door jam. From whence it harmlessly flew away without so much as a fare-thee-well.

            Am I overstating the drama? Grizzlies in Yellowstone?  I'll let the reader ask Cherie who shakily resumed her place behind the wheel and drove on, mumbling, while I resumed my place in the reclined passenger seat and fell back asleep.

            At this point, fairness compels me to add, speaking of character tics (not ticks!) that become more noticeable on such a long drive, I snore.  "Vigorously," it must be said.  Cherie didn't say a word about that over thousands of miles.

 

A Sense of Place

[Published in the Journal of the Santa Fe Writers Project - http://www.sfwp.com/a-sense-of-place-by-richard-little/ ]

A Sense of Place:  Echo Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado

    …round apples glowing red in the orchard and the rustle of the leaves make me pause to think how many other than human forces affect us . . . . I respond - how?

        Virginia Woolf - "A Sketch of the Past"

   

 

            There has to be an end to this hellish descent. Six miles so far in first gear over washboards and gullies, sometimes careening, then skidding to a stop and sending a cloud of dust and rocks over into an abyss.  Next, an open stretch across a bench several acres wide.  Maybe there will be an easy down grade from now on, but no, the road narrows and plunges into a funnel yet again, and the creeping and tumbling and inching down begins anew.  My uncomplaining truck clutches and shifts and brakes and wants to test its tipping point, so on we go.

 

            The worst patch of impossible road I can recall, and another six or seven miles to go and another thousand feet down.  I’m in northwest Colorado – Dinosaur National Monument -- high on the Uinta plateau above the confluence of the Yampa and Green Rivers.  I was told this would be worth it, a descent into Echo Park, the Center of the Universe; that the veil between earthbound reality and the eternal world of spiritual truth is thinner there than anywhere.

Truman Horton

 

 

Truman Horton

1922 - 2014

My friend Truman Horton liked poems.

 

            "A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute Saloon,
            The kid that handles the music box was hitting a jag-time tune . . . ."

            "When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the                                       glare,
            There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty and loaded for                                               bear."*

Or,

            "There are strange things done 'neath the midnight sun
            By the men who moil for gold.
            The arctic trails have their secret tales
            That would make your blood run cold."**

            I had occasion to re-read these great Robert Service works while preparing for Truman's funeral.  They've stuck in my mind off and on ever since the time I listened to him recite them - the time he asked me to tickle the ivories in the background while he read. 

            "Jag-time"?  Do people "moil" for gold?

 
Indeed they do.  For most of his ninety-one trips around the sun, Truman loved poems -- and reading and good writing -- because he loved words.

            Truman would say, "So and so's as happy as a sand boy."
            Me, after hearing this many times:  "Ok, Tru, so what's a sand boy?"
            Truman, thoughtfully:  "Don't really know.  Somebody that's happy."

I looked it up this week: It means exactly that, and it's been around since the eighteenth century!  Once, he bought me the collected works of Walt Whitman.

            The other day we were talking about dogs.

            Truman:  "We had a dog growing up.  His name was Slick."
             Me: "Slick?"
             Tru: "Yeah. We got him from Slick Willis."
             Me: "Wait a minute.  You named the dog after the guy you got him from?
             Tru: "Yep."

You can't make up dialogue like that! 

            We'd arrive at his and Mary's house and find him up in the woods above the creek weed-whacking and cutting brush.  Later, he'd put the usable branches against a big granite rock black with soot, split some logs, and start a fire where we'd roast hot dogs and make s'mores -- the smoke disappearing up into the trees. 

            Maybe he never outgrew the teenaged boy who hopped freight cars going west during the Depression, slept in hobo camps, and scrounged a piece of fresh pie when he could.  This was before he got himself educated and eventually retired after an engineering career on the Pacific Coast. 

            Truman wanted to build a boat, so he did.  From scratch.  He wanted to sail it to Hawaii,  so he and Mary did.  Twice.  They built their own house.  For twenty-five years he was the go-to guy at his church every time something went "clunk," from the belfry to the basement.  He wrote his memoir.  He was married to the wonderful Mary. 

            I loved him.  Lots of folks did.  Sail on, Truman Horton!  If God wants to hear a good story, Truman's his guy.

* The Shooting of Dan McGrew

** The Cremation of Sam McGee

Pharma

Warfarin to keep my blood from thickenin',

Flecainide to keep my ticker tickerin'.

Losartan keeps my BP low,

Atenolol blocks betas, my pulse to slow. 

EmergenC and Cold Snap start my day.

Airborne later keeps colds at bay.

Acetaminophen, chlortrimeton,

Lunesta at night - I'm good 'til dawn! 

It's not I mind taking all these pills

For one or another assorted ills.

But I sometimes wonder as each is popped,

What would happen if I stopped! 

Would I start to exfoliate,

Perhaps explode, self-immolate?

We'll never know, it's safe to say,

'Cuz I live life the Pharma Way.

The Honest Truth

 

           Angela sat on the passenger side, grey sweatshirt spotted with rain, hood covering her head. She stared straight ahead into the dark night at nothing, looking less like my sixteen-year old daughter than the ten-year old I’d coached at soccer.

            “It’s not my fault he was driving fast,” she tried.
            I let my silence answer her as we watched the tow truck’s flashing lights mark its movements like a strobe. The red numbers on the dashboard read-out said one a.m. The rain continued A warm wind whipped through the roadside trees, but I shivered even in the car with the windows rolled up..
Boyfriend Ryan’s semi-upright Ford Bronco was in a miserable drainage ditch and would be a tough pull. Harnessed up, the rear wheels and axle made a sucking sound as they pulled free of the muck. Angela started crying.
            She really sobbed, her head rocking forward against the dash.
            “A little longer and we can go home, Honey.” I reached over and massaged her neck. The trooper came alongside and I rolled the window down. Rain dripped off his hat brim and into the car when he handed me the paperwork. Not a citation – she hadn’t been driving – but a notice to appear.
            “I’d still take her to Valley, Sir.” He referred to the hospital.
            “Maybe tomorrow. We’ll watch her tonight.”
            We drove off. Behind us, Ryan’s folks sat in their car, the boy in the backseat like a busted drunk in a squad car and the three of them backlit against the still laboring tow truck.

The Finger

           

             The ponderous green and white ferry crept slowly through gray fog that had covered us like a shroud since we'd driven aboard. Up on deck, chilly in windbreakers and scarves, my wife and I watched a seagull hover ahead of the bow, then disappear into the thick mist. We feared this would be a wet and dreary weekend. 

            Our goal was Lopez Island, one of the four in Washington state's San Juan Islands that are accessible via the state ferry system. The San Juans consist of four hundred islands (more or less, depending on the height of the tide), most of which are uninhabited and unnamed. They make up a gorgeous archipelago that lies in the Salish Sea between Washington and Vancouver Island. Granite scarps rise out of the sea, and evergreens, oaks and madrona trees climb down hillsides all the way to the water.

            Each of the four large islands is beautiful in its own way and has its own personality. Eponymous San Juan is the most populous; it boasts the picturesque town of Friday Harbor, the county seat. Despite summer crowds on busy streets and sidewalks, a visitor will look in vain for a stoplight.

            Orcas Island, larger by two square miles, considers itself a bit artier. It caters to folks who want to avoid tourists but who nonetheless don't mind frequenting fairly upscale shops and restaurants that only a healthy tourist trade can sustain.

            Shaw Island (population 240) is unique, too. For many years, Washington State Ferry passengers were charmed upon arrival by watching nuns (Franciscan Sisters of the Eucharist) wearing bright reflective safety vests over their brown habits, operate the dock - hauling ropes, lowering the off-ramp, and directing cars onto the island. (No longer do they perform these tasks, nor do they run the deli and store which is located at the landing.  In 2004, the three remaining sisters sadly decided it was time to move on.)

            Lopez Island is a favorite of bicyclists - relatively flat and not terribly crowded. The only commercial center, Lopez Village, consists of a market, three bookstores, a couple of real estate offices, a bakery, a few assorted shops, a community center, a latté stand, and three restaurants. That's about it. There's a church here or there on the island, a library, a motel, a school, and not much else. Approaching Lopez that foggy day we were prepared for quiet, and also for a degree of clubbiness on the part of year-round residents since the ratio of tourists to natives there is low. As it happened, this trip to Lopez did indeed make the point. We were given . . . the finger.