Apricot Marmalade

Fresh apricots, particularly good if tree-ripened, are one of my favorite fruits. My backyard tree hasn't produced even one cot yet but I've been enjoying some really good ones my daughter brought to me from a local organic food co-op. So-o-o good!

Years ago when I lived in Ogden, Utah, there was a mature tree growing in a neighbor's yard next to our apartment. It produced heavily one season. A couple of weighted down branches hung over the fence close to my back door. The first sun of the morning warmed and ripened each fruit to perfection. I was in apricot heaven. Many went to waste on the ground on the neighbor's side. They didn't mind that I sampled some of those hanging just within my reach. I'm sure I asked if it was okay. It would be out of character for me not to have asked. Oh my. I don't know if I asked. Something to put on my "So Sorry" list!

Evelyn, my brother's wife, made apricot marmalade each canning season. My job was to crack the nuts--the pits or stones inside--with a hammer. The nuts were mixed with the fruit. When I left home for the big city, tucked into my meager belongings was a jar of my favorite apricot marmalade. A parting gift at the end of each visit to the farm as a young bride and then a mother was a jar of the marmalade. There isn't any store-bought spread that tastes like my old favorite. Freezer jam comes close. My son-in-law's son brought me boxes of cots some years ago. M-m-m, small and sweet. so easy to pop one in my mouth while making the jam. Fresh apricots are still a treat. When I eat them, as I did for breakfast this morning, I think of Evelyn's marmalade spread thick on fresh, homemade bread that has been slathered with real butter and settles so wonderfully on the tongue.

There were no apricot trees on the farm. My parents grew several kinds of apples. The orchard grew at the corner where the barnyard became a lane leading to the public road that passed by our house. There was an irrigation ditch at that spot. Beside it grew the most beautiful wild, golden-yellow roses. The bees loved their intoxicating fragrance and were only too happy to pollinate the orchard and the gardens in return. I ate lots of green apples, as a kid, with salt on the really green ones that were barely big enough to pick and had to be wrestled off the lowest branches. There was one tree that Mother called a Yellow Transparent that produced the first fruit of the season. I must have eaten bushels of those, so good--tart-sweet-- with peel so thin it was almost see-through. Mother dried lots of the apples--washed, de-wormed and sliced--in flour sacks pinned to the clothes line. She also dried fresh corn cut from the cob, shelled peas, and raspberry leaves in the same way, the vegetables for soup and the leaves for medicinal tea.

Raspberry canes grew all along the clothesline on the west side of the house. Also, red and black currents and gooseberry bushes. Our neighbors, the Maughns, shared their plums--Pottawatomie, Greengage, Italian Prune. Mother volunteered me to be the one to crawl on my belly through the thickets to glean the ripest fruit for jam.

One taste of the pancake syrup or jelly Mother made from wild Chokecherries that grew along the road up Weston Canyon made the work to get them well worth it! I think she had the most fun picking wild blackberries along the side of the road in Renton or Seattle when she visited MerLyn despite the gouges, cuts, and scratches from the heavy-duty thorns on those bushes.

Savoring apricots, fresh from the tree or cooked into a marmalade, is a part of who I am.

Can't Keep Her Down on the Farm

For a farm girl, I've been a lotsa places my dad would have loved to see, I think. Perhaps, Mother, too. She loved to go for a car ride now and then. Daddy was tied to the farm, his crops and twice-a-day milking. Mother's asthma and the expense of it may have been prohibitive factors. Daddy did manage to leave the farm once to drive us to Nyssa, Oregon to see my sister, MerLyn and her family. During my years of knowing him, he mostly enjoyed 'travel' in simple ways closer to home, checking out farms and crops as he drove, making time to enjoy the view and the journey.

It may have been Mother's first time on a train when she and I rode the rails to visit MerLyn in Seattle. I remember a very long ride, no food, and nothing to drink along the way. I suspect that Mother either didn't know how to use the dining car or she didn't have money for nice-to-haves.

My brother, Marion, was running the farm in Weston. He had been named my legal guardian when Daddy died. I'm guessing that the purpose for me and Mother spending summertime with family away from the farm might have been to give Marion and Evelyn a rest. Some travel took us through parts of Wyoming, Montana, Northern Idaho and to Oregon's beautiful Rogue River and Crater Lake. I saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time and took my first step outside the U.S. across Canada's Northwestern border. Although I couldn't understand a word of Shakespeare's play performed at Ashland's famous outdoor theater, I loved the costumes, the staging, the whole event. Return trips home to Weston sometimes took us through the famous Redwoods of California and the bright lights of Reno, Nevada. Seems a crazy, random, happenstance that I ended up living in Reno, as an adult--Sparks, Nevada actually, right next door to Reno and just a short drive to the Nevada/California jewel, Lake Tahoe.

On one such trip to fetch us, Keith brought his oldest daughter along for the ride. We stopped for breakfast on our trek to Eugene, Oregon. Anna Kare wanted a tuna sandwich. "Sorry, we don't have any." There was no talking her out of it. Keith suggested Mother have an egg. She refused to let him spend "good money" paying such a price for one egg! We were back in the car in no time at all!

Our first air flight took me and Mother from Medford to Seattle. As we waited to board a small, puddle jumper, Keith began rehearsing with Mother what she was to do if the wings fell off the plane. "Listen to those engines, too", he said, "You want to be sure they're still going!" "And hold your feet up off the floor when the plane's trying to take off!" Mother surely knew Keith was pullin' her leg but as soon as we boarded, she had an asthma attack.

Mother and I tried flying again some years later. I surprised her with tickets to visit my sister. Mother often voiced a yearning to see her more often. Our tickets did not put us in 1st class but the stewardess did when the smoker fumes got to Mother. We had that section all to ourselves, right up front, just behind the cockpit. During the flight, the cabin door opened. The captain asked if we'd like to see the view. It was breathtaking, a bit of heaven right before our very eyes! The captain pointed to things in the night sky and shared with us why he loved piloting. Mother's wheezing calmed, each breath came a little easier. Barbara Streisand sang it true, "On a clear night, you can see forever".

Seattle to Salem, Oregon by Greyhound bus, an organ recital on State Capitol grounds synchronized with dancing water fountains. Never seen that before! Next stop, Pocatello, Idaho to visit my baby brother. Sylvan's almost 10 years older than me but he's the youngest of five brothers.

The disclaimer included in notes made in previous writings describing some of my high school road trips, says, "I'm writing these details for my kids so they will know that I was not always an old woman." There were trips to attend the Idaho FHA Conventions in Burley and Boise, Farm Bureau for Youth Power Congress, also in Boise, the latter won by me writing an essay! The 'Mr. MacDreamy' of high school music at West Side High that year, sent me and a classmate to Walla Walla, Washington to compete for a music scholarship, then sent me to sing with an 'All-State' choir in Blackfoot. The fourth year Seminary class took a trip to Salt Lake City, Utah. For some, this was their first time out of Cache Valley. We took the city tour, then met with Alexander Schriener, Tabernacle organist at the time, for our own private recital. He called me from our group, to sit on this famous organ's bench amidst the multiple keyboards and foot pedals, and the many stops. Big thrill! Some of the most fun I had while on the road traveling in high school was to away team sport's games with Ruth Ann. She and I were in the Pep Club, rode the bus to wherever, cheered ourselves hoarse, and ate junk food going and coming.

Lorraine had a car. She, Ruth Ann and I shared an apartment in Salt Lake. We drove to Vernal, Utah one weekend. "Where?" Planning the trip and the act of driving out of town, reading a map, staying in a motel and taking pictures felt like high excitement to us, at the time. We had to admit that once we'd seen a few old dinosaur bones and replicas of dinos, shared a pizza, and bowled a game, there wasn't much more to do in Vernal. The trip home got a little more exciting detouring around road construction. We ended up in the middle of nowhere, across the Montana state line.

Lorraine and I took in all the tourist sights we could pack into the week days before Ruth Ann and my cousin, Leone, joined us for a long weekend. San Francisco, Carmel, and Monterey. Lorraine and I made stops at the Mission Delores, Candlestick Park, Telegraph Hill, Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate Bridge and Park, Cliff House, Seal Rock, The Japanese Tea Gardens and the Aquarium. We couldn't read the menu at Omar Kahian's. Our cute waiter ordered the meal for us. Delicious! There was nothing I could afford in Gumps but found a store selling 17 kinds of licorice, imported even! We got lost on city buses, took cable cars to the Warf, played barefoot on white, sandy beaches. The four of us were on board for the Bay cruise and the picturesque 17-mile drive. Leone signed us up for a night club tour, something she said was necessary for our maturity and sophistication. The tour included a lovely dinner in one of San Fran's famous, old hotels (the name escapes me), a set at the Purple Onion where some then-famous entertainers got their start and a performance at Phenochios. I was getting so sophisticated, what with all that 7-Up and maraschino cherries, I fell asleep during the show!

A honeymoon, the draft notice final hurrah involving Grand Canyon, a summer in Europe, sight seeing business trips--Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, New York plus a day South of the border, travel through the eyes of kids and grandkids--kaleidoscopic for all senses. What's nice about traveling? Coming home! That's a part of who I am.

Doolittle's Farm?

Our fifty-something acreage was not referred to as the Doolittle Farm but there was some special communication going on at times.

Pete and Kelly were included in some of my earliest childhood photos. Daddy could stand at the back door, call for Pete, give a brief instruction and that Collie could run to the far end of our property, herd grazing cows into a group and move them back to the barn for milking.  Kelly, a Cocker Spaniel, had a beautiful, deep red coat.  Cats by the dozens, too wild to pet, were in residence to keep the mouse and rat populations down. How the cats loved milking time!  Daddy often directed a few squirts of milk right at the cat's faces as he 'stripped' each teat of the cow's bag before moving on to the next Hereford. While one group of felines cleaned their faces and whiskers, savoring every drop, another group would line up at the open barn door in anticipation of being next to get that welcome treat.

My job, as a child, was to close the chicken coop door once the hens had roosted for the night. It wasn't silent in the barnyard after dark--cows chewing their cud, others in the yard getting comfortable, the occasional brief outburst, maybe a hoot from an owl. Crickets were very loud. Frogs joined in. Dogs barked at the rising moon.  I was used to the sounds as dusk became night but still I'd wait by the back door until the last second.  Then, gathering up the courage to do the task at hand, I eventually left the security of the back step, not looking this way or that, walking steadily past the watering trough, the barn and haystacks, the makeshift corrals for horses, and pigs now and then, straight towards the orchard and the hen house, working to keep a normal pace, trying to ignore or overcome any fear.  I had to shut the coop door, then turn the stick of wood nailed to the door frame that held the door shut. The minute that door was secure, I whirled around on one foot and ran as hard as I could all the way to the back door of the house, forgetting any attempt at being brave in the dark!

When I rode my trike, one of the chickens or perhaps it was a rooster, chased me, hopped up on my back and pecked me repeatedly on the back of my neck. I cried. Someone shooed the bird away. This happened several times until someone saw it happen, grabbed that bird who became chicken for dinner that night! Problem solved. Next day, I rode my trike, another bird chased me, hopped on my back and pecked away at my neck! More chicken for dinner, I suspect.

Dad didn't allow me around the horses, much.  Holding the reins of his work team, Pat and Mike, riding along side Daddy on the flat-bed wagon was about the extent of it.  With someone in the saddle, I had ridden behind on the pony's rump, along the lane to herd cows back to the barn, a lone string of electrified barbed wire touching my ankle each time the horse swished its hind end in that direction. One of my brothers came to take the water turn one day. I'd been playing in the sprinkler and was still wearing a swim suit and was barefoot. He hoisted me into the saddle, slapped his pony on the rear and off I went, ready or not. I rode the horse quite a while, carrying whatever was needed from field to field as my brother tended water. At day's end, I had saddle sores on my bare legs and the worst sunburn of my life on my shoulders and back. The horse seemed to know when we were finished in the field. She took off running for the barn, jumped a ditch, and never let up her galloping pace until she reached the watering trough and food!

I had a similar experience years later, as a newly engaged bride-to-be attending a South family weekender in Island Park. The groom-to-be must have said something about me growing up on a farm. A horse appeared. I was asked if I'd like to take a ride. If this was a prank, I couldn't let them get the best of me even though I had little riding experience.  I climbed into the saddle, trying to look graceful and appear like I knew what I was doing. I was barely seated, gripping that horse's belly with my knees, my feet in the stirrups, reins in my hands, when the horse took off like it had been shot out of a cannon, galloping across the fields, jumping a couple of ditches. Then just as quickly, it turned on a dime and raced back to where the ride had begun. I calmly climbed out of the saddle and so far as I know, those gathered around were left to think that I could actually ride a horse. In that race through the field, with me hanging on to the saddle horn for dear life, my back was to the family crowd. I was wearing a fringed faux leather jacket so they also couldn't see how much space there was between my butt and the saddle with each gallop!

Mickey was my black and white terrier. When Mother and I moved from the farm to downtown Weston, Mickey would not stay but instead, would return to the farm, repeatedly. Then he simply disappeared. After days of calling his name and getting no response, I came home from school one day to find Mickey's replacement--a parakeet! Smelly, dirty, noisy. A mighty poor replacement, I thought. Fortunately, they don't live long!

The Big Nickel advertised a free puppy, just what my son needed at the time, I thought. It was a stormy, starless evening when I drove out of town North towards the 'Villes'--Susanville, Janesville--looking for the address listed in the ad. Off the main road, it was muddy and slippery and very dark but finally, I came upon a trailer out in the middle of nowhere. I knocked. The door swung open. In the light, there stood a man--a character, really--right out of a scary movie. Instead of backing away, I went inside. There was the adorable pup we named Digit. When my neighbor saw the dog, he was sure there was something wrong with his hind legs. "Free or not, take it back before your kids get attached!" Attached? Too late! We were already attached to this ball of fur. A few days, a couple of weeks and Digit had run off some puppy fat so his back legs appeared normal and he walked just fine. The son of a papered Golden Retriever mother, Digit appeared to have features other than those common to Goldens so he hadn't been sold.   He didn't like it much when I vacuumed up his tail accidently but he loved it when I drove him through Wendy's for a treat--hamburger patties--after behaving at the vet's . Or Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone after his annual shots. He was dainty, this big dog with huge paws, licking the ice cream below the rim, then taking little bites from the cone. He also had a craving for an entire bag of Hershey's Chocolate Kisses, something that went undiscovered until the following spring when the snow melted exposing lots of colored foil littering areas of the back yard!

Before Digit joined the family, my daughter's friend gave her a tiny kitten as a birthday present. I was unprepared to have an animal in the house, particularly one so small that it had to be fed drops of milk off the end of a straw through the night for the first few. Given his beautiful color, we named the cat, Caramello, but rarely used his full name, unless he was in trouble! Digit and Carmel became fast friends, eating from the same bowl, keeping each other company, getting into trouble as a team. I came home from work one day to red blotches on the carpet. Once I knew both kids were okay, the detective in me figured out that the cat, who normally kept both feet on the ground, had jumped to the counter, pushed the roast I had defrosting there still wrapped in layers of butcher paper, to the edge. Digit retrieved it from the counter's edge and between them, they had ripped the paper off and feasted as the meat thawed, dragging the prize onto my once upon a time lovely wheat colored carpet. Said cat also jumped from floor to counter to refrigerator top where he licked all the chocolate frosting off a covered plate of donuts and helped himself, though neatly so, to my stash of chocolate originally destined to become trim for gingerbread and chocolate cottages. This sweet, old cat redeemed himself in his later years. When my mother passed, I made a quick trip to Weston for the funeral. At home again, I wasn't ready to return to work. I'd had no time to grieve. I rented a carpet scrubber and went to work, cleaning carpets.  I scrubbed for a time, then, overcome with memories and emotion, I sat to cry, then scrubbed some more. Carmel was watching my strange behavior. When I sat to cry again, he climbed into my lap and positioned himself until his nose rested under my chin. Then, as my tears fell, he wiped them away, each one, gently with one paw and then the other, nuzzling my chin with his nose and softly purring.

While I'm not a Doolittle, I have felt a sort of shared communication with animals I have known and loved.  Those times are a part of who I am.

The Merc and I

She almost 'kicked the bucket' that hot, summer day in 1958. My dad had been putting me behind the wheel of his '51 Mercury before he got sick, to practice driving along the lane from the house, past the barn and apple orchard and out to the main road. Many farm kids drove farm equipment before they were old enough for even a daytime-driving-only license. Finally, here I was, fourteen, licensed and excited to be driving the car legal and on my own! I was not yet a mile from home when the car just stopped, right there at the corner by the old pea vinery in Weston. I knew the car had gas. I had paid 25 cents a gallon at the lone pump on main street in front of Frank Olsen's blacksmith shop. Marion, my brother, happened upon me stalled there on the road, the car hot and smoking. Yes, he was about as hot as the Merc, once he sized up the situation. Who knew the car needed oil? No one told me about that!

Mother was as good a driver as anyone, ... from the backseat. She was a tomboy in her youth, handling horses with her dad, and had her own fringed surrey and pony as a young mother but she never learned to drive a car. Now with Daddy gone, she depended on me to be her driver. She had an appointment in Preston one dreary day. A wet winter storm had blown in while she waited for the doctor, making the roads icy. The snow was coming down hard when she and I started home. Only the one lane of highway coming into town had been sanded. I began to inch my way down the hill, leaving Preston, heading South. My only choice was the lane not yet sanded. As the car began to slide off the road, Mother was pushing on the floorboard as hard as she could as though she had the brakes beneath her feet while hitting the dashboard with her hands and yelling, "Whoa, dammit!", and again, "Whoa, dammit!" I was thinking of all those ditches I'd cleaned with my dad and what he had taught me about getting the tractor unstuck from the mud. I gave the car a little gas--not enough to dig the tires in but just enough and then braked a little, repeating this until I got the car to rock a bit. It was enough to shoot us up and out of that snow-filled barrow-pit, across the first lane and onto the second lane of the highway. There was no traffic coming towards me so I crept down the wrong side--the sanded side--the rest of the way down the hill.

Ordinarily, that sweet, ole' Merc was as dependable as could be, though she did have a tendency to flood or vapor lock now and again. On what appeared to be one such occasion, I was driving Mother to her sister's house. As I started to cross the railroad tracks a few miles from the farm, the car died. I tried to restart the ole' girl. No luck. A few seconds of waiting and I tried again. Nothing. I looked off in the distance where the tracks 'round a bend and sure enough, there was a train coming. Amazingly, it never occurred to me to get my mother and myself out of that car and run for our lives. The crossing warning bells announcing the approaching train were going off now. My mother was praying loudly. One more push on the starter button, with the train coming closer, and the motor turned over. I drove off the tracks and we were on our way again, in silence, all the way to Aunt Fern's.

In time, Mother loosened her grip a bit so I could use the car for more than just her means of transportation. I remember what a big deal it seemed to me to be able to drive girl friends somewhere out of town, out of Preston, even, to see a movie. I was the driver going home from an evening activity one night. My friends and I drove, asleep, until I hit the 'thrill hill' just outside of Dayton. The car was catching air when I opened my eyes, hands still on the wheel. I was wide awake for the rest of that drive!

I learned to change a tire on that dear, ole' car and spent lots of time detailing the interior and waxing her faded paint. When I left Weston for the big city, the Merc remained parked in an old, wooden shed at the back of the historically old, Olsen house Mother and I lived in when we left the farm. Home visits were infrequent that first year away but each time I returned, I'd spend some time sitting behind the wheel, listening to the radio. The ole' girl started up every time with the first press of the starter, no matter how long she had been sitting alone in that little shack of a garage. It was just such a night as this when I heard the news of the huge, early '60's Yellowstone Park earthquake.

Another brother used the Mercury for a time while I was in Salt Lake. After I married and needed a car to get to work, I bought her back for a dollar. Her paint was very faded by now. There was almost no sign of the two-toned soft green she had once been. Frank and I were renting the basement apartment in the house of a little, old lady. The rent was very cheap. Her only requests were that we take her garbage cans to the curb each week and, ... that I not park my faded car in front of her house. So I parked the Merc around the corner out of her sight. An elderly gentleman with a thick accent walked his dog each winter morning, as I cleared snow from the car. He would stop to ask, "Do you think she will start today?" He'd smile and give me a thumbs up when the Merc turned over on the first try, every time.

Such a good ole' car, she was. The lessons she taught me as we grew older together, shared some hair-raising moments, fun times, and made memories, became a part of who I am.

In Praise of Fathers

Excerpts from my submission to, 'A Single Issue', June 1989 - In Praise of Fathers

"Fathers!  I love 'em--seasoned ones, about-to-be ones, and hope-to-be ones!  Delightful is the tenderness of fathers with their children and the exuberance of children for their fathers.

President Benson has said, 'Home is the place where the Lord intended a father's greatest influence to be felt.'  My father's example of working, living honestly, loving the land and all it sustains while enduring with patience and determination continues to influence his children's lives.  He honored his priesthood, rendered temple service, and blessed lives, quietly.

Have you hugged a dad today?  Let them know we love 'em.  Help them feel our appreciation for the positive influence they bring to our lives."
                                         ________________________________


My father was 47 when I was born.  Seeing old pictures, I'd like to know more about him as a child and as a younger man and father from my siblings who knew him then.  I knew him for only a short time in his 50's.

I remember his beautiful, tenor singing voice and his two modes of dress--light grey striped overalls for working and a grey suit, white shirt, and striped tie for church.

He spoke when he had something to say but was otherwise, a quiet man.  Oh, he hollered when he got stepped on or kicked by his animals and he may have said plenty the time I was helping him sack grain in the barn loft.  Daddy needed cow feed.  That meant sacking up grain take to Preston to be rolled into oats.  He showed me how to hold the sack, the edge closest to me held taunt with slack around the rest of the opening making a space big enough to fit the shovel.  The sack was almost full.  Then I felt the tickling on my leg of tiny feet.  That mouse ran up one leg of my baggy pants, made the cross-over and ran down the other leg!  I shrieked, I jumped, I stomped my feet ... and ... I dropped the sack.  I didn't stop to hear what my dad had to say but climbed down the loft ladder in record time and ran to the house!

When I was about eight, Daddy had me drive his little, Ford tractor hooked to the derrick.  He had a team of work horses, Pat and Mike, still working the farm but I wasn't allowed to drive the team on my own or ride one as a derrick horse.  I'm the chubby child in pictures of my youth, but I wasn't heavy or strong enough to push the clutch all the way down so each time I had to shift gears to go forward or back up to raise or lower the derrick fork, I had to jump or stomp on that clutch.  The derrick job was a welcome change from tromping hay on a wagon moving through the field.  That was a sweaty, scratchy job.  Dad constantly reminded me to get the corners right to the edge.  I fell off the wagon when I did that.

We cultivated sugar beets, our own and other's.  Designed to be horse-drawn, Dad hitched his cultivator to the Ford with me driving while he rode the cultivator, operating its hand and foot controls, maneuvering the pairs of small plow or hoe-like blades.  I was to straddle a row with tractor tires on either side, then drive a straight line down the rows.  As the crop grew, beet thinning and weeding were done by hand.  Dad could reach rows on either side of the one he was walking with his long-handled hoe and move through the field faster than most who helped him.  My job was to follow him, pulling out the doubles he couldn't get with his hoe blade.  I'd get tired and sit down in a row.  He'd bring me the old canvas water bag--just plain awful tasting.  The summer I was eleven, I thinned a quarter acre of beets by myself.  Dad paid me $8.00!

The worst job was cleaning irrigation ditches.  I had to put one side of the tractor's tires in the ditch about two-thirds down with tires of the other side up on the ditch bank.  Dad would walk behind the tractor, a hand or horse-drawn plow tongue hitched to the Ford, the plow itself tied to his waist, and his hands on the plow handles.  Sometimes the plow would get stuck.  I was terrified of tipping that tractor over and killing us both!  I cried a lot.  I don't remember that he raised his voice but he often carried a treat in his pocket for me--fruit-flavored candy sticks or black licorice.

I think of Daddy changing on the back porch from work clothes to clean overalls before coming into the house and of him standing at the kitchen sink, scrubbing clean his pails and milkers.  I wish I could still hear his voice the way I used to hear it as we laid on the flat bed wagon after dark waiting for help to arrive to harvest green peas.  He sang, in a beautiful tenor range, while we waited.  He loved a bowl of homemade bread broken into chunks, soaked in cold milk with a drizzle of honey on Sunday night after church.  He made homemade, hand-cranked ice cream just about every week-end.  After our mid-day meal on a hot day, he'd lay on the grass in the shade of two big old trees on the west side of the house.  Dad had beautiful penmanship and always used a fountain pen.  He supported Mother in her enthusiasm for pioneer celebrations by braiding his team's mane and tail, sometimes adding ribbons, and driving his team and wagon in town parades.  He relished the first watercress picking and found it hard to wait for garden tomatoes to ripen.  He would cut out the center of a home-grown watermelon--the sweetest part--to eat and feed the rest to the pigs or slice open a cantaloupe from the garden, remove the seeds, salt it, and fill the center with vanilla ice cream.  He was timely, often standing on the church steps waiting to greet Brother Olsen when he came to open up.  I've heard it said of Dad's reputation that a handshake was all that was needed from him to make an agreement or seal deal.

We shared 12 years and some months.  Whether long or short the time, he's a part of who I am.

Hair Today-Gone Tomorrow

My blog title--Silver Threads in the Red--means what, exactly?  I could give the short answer... but there's more to tell.

It was June 7, 1962.  High school friends, Ruth Ann and Lorraine, and I settled into an apartment on the 'Avenues' in Salt Lake City, Utah.  My goal:  To train for a Cosmetology license at Ex-Cel-Cis Beauty College.

The College had a clean, professional atmosphere with lots of opportunity, particularly if a student showed signs of promise and was willing to put in the hours.  I finished the one-year course, and the 2000 hours required, in ten months, close to the time of the next Utah State Board Licensing Exam.  Instruction days were set up with theory classes in the early a.m., physiology of the upper body, chemistry, electrical currents; rudiments of cutting, perming, coloring, styling, class participants using each other to practice on; the remainder of the day spent 'on the floor'--yes, REAL people, from the beginning!

You know how soothing it feels to have someone work with your hair and scalp.  I was so embarrassed my first day of being the one in the chair.  I fell fast asleep in the first few minutes!  We experimented on each other, too.  That's how Red became a welcome part of my life.

I remember the patron who was addicted to over-processed bleached hair.  She requested a perm.  She signed a waiver.  I was told to wrap for a perm.  Done.  Timed.  Ready to rinse and remove the rods.  That was made much easier than I expected when her hair broke off near the roots and the rods, with the lovely overly bleached-blond curls still attached, fell into the sink.

One of my first perm patrons was a smoker.  She was informed of the dangers of such while strong chemicals were present.  Still she continued.  As I leaned her head back into the sink to rinse the perm solution off, the woman flicked hot ash into the sink, missing her hair but igniting the solution or its fumes.  Talk about Snap, Crackle, Pop!  She got a nasty burn blister on her neck.

I loved cutting hair but the day a mom sat her pre-teen in my chair was difficult.  The child had very long, thick hair, beautiful but thinning, even balding.  Brushing through it was actually pulling hair out.  Keeping it pulled into a tight pony tail or braided had only made matters worse.  Cutting it to a much shorter length seemed the solution.  The mom would say, "Cut".  And with every snip, the girl would cry and scream, "No"!

Then there was the woman who came in with a Beehived French Twist, ... lice and oozing sores all over her scalp, discovered only when I was getting her ready for the shampoo/set she'd requested.  State health laws were designed to protect us and our customers from contagious disease but despite all else, I was instructed to complete this service, then sterilize or discard everything in my station.  It took a lot more than formaldehyde to rid myself of the creepy, crawly feeling I had for days afterward.

For graduation, we planned a rollerskating party.  As student body vice president, I had to attend but I didn't know how to skate.  One of my classmates said he could teach me to skate in one, easy lesson.  I was looking pretty cute in those days and liked him quite a bit so I agreed to give skating a try.  The one thing he didn't teach me before he turned me loose was how to stop.  The railing at one side of the rink must have been designed just for this purpose but instead of stopping, I grabbed it with both hands, coming in full speed ahead, went under it and did a complete somersault before coming to rest on the rink floor.  We moved our party to a house for food and drinks.  There was an orchard at the side of the property and we were playing some chase-type game.  I collided head-on with a tree.  It was evening! And Dark!  He didn't ask me out.

The beauty about training with Ex-Cel-Cis was the job placement guarantee.  I went to work immediately after passing my boards and actually got to use almost everything I had been trained to do.  Helen showed me the ropes.  The way things worked at school and how things were done in a salon were two different things.  With Ross, salon breaks were often spent at Fernwood eating Burnt Almond Fudge parfaits.  If I worked late (12-hr. days were not unusual) he drove me home.  He and his partner raised orchids as a hobby, supplying local florists with fresh tropicals.  He gave me a huge white Catalaya orchid, my first, for my 20th birthday.

Ross had left the salon to work with Elwood Heiner.  The elderly owner of the Ex-Cel-Cis company was no longer in charge.  Ross said I had a job waiting for me at Heiner's if I wanted it.  And that was it.  No interview.  No customary audition.  I was hired on Ross' recommendation, alone.

Elwood Heiner and his wife, Lou, had a small shop located in a hotel that also housed permanent residents.  He paid his operators the highest commission in town.  He employed a manicurist, Ailene and a wig specialist whose name I can't remember but whose walk I can still imitate.  Eilene had been with Heiner's for years.  Karen and another operator were about my age.  There were a couple of patrons who were difficult so we passed them around.  Elwood used those opportunities to remind us that, "You asked for work when you came here."  And then he'd smile.

One of my memorable patrons was elderly and had but six hairs on her head yet came, requesting the works--perm, color rinse (Rose Beige), and a manicure.  Each time, at the end of her service, she told the same story about being accosted by a robber in the elevator on the way to the salon and couldn't pay her bill.

There was the professional bridge player who often appeared for her appointment dressed in "paw-jah-mahs" and wearing a full-length fur coat--winter, summer, spring, fall--that she refused to take off during her salon service.  Her roots were snow white but she demanded the blackest-black permanent dye for her hair and brows.  A little Cruella De Vil-ish.  Can you imagine if I'd gotten a speck of dye or water on that fur?  I sometimes had to use every towel in the salon.

One little lady tipped me a quarter each week but four weeks prior to Dec. 25, she withheld them so she could give me a whole dollar at her final appointment before the holiday, my Christmas bonus.  The elderly woman who couldn't hear shouted when she talked, more so it seemed when she learned I had gotten married and felt the need to give me advice about birth control, sex, and whatever came to mind.  The entire salon got an education!  Another patron could not show up on time so she was told her appointment was an hour earlier than it actually was.  I wanted to be right on time for the patron who, at every visit,  showed me the gun she carried in her boot.

One of my regulars, Mrs. Speros, came with stories about preparations for her oldest daughter's wedding.  She and her husband were dedicated members of their Greek Orthodox Church congregation.  For months, she baked and preserved all the food that would be needed for this grand affair that included a sit-down dinner for hundreds.  It helped that her husband owned a restaurant.  A reception on the Mezzanine at Hotel Utah would follow the lengthy, church ceremony and I was invited!  I was asked to be the coiffure for the bridal party.  Never had I entered such an elegant home, surrounded by gardens, fountains and statues.  The wedding party left the house for the church.  The bride, her father and I were the only ones still in the house.  I was given the honor putting on her veil, then watching her, dressed in a breathtaking, hand-beaded dress, the veil floating on air behind her, meet her father at the front entrance to be whisked off to her fairy-tale wedding.

Barely 20-something then, with the prettiest red hair Clairol had to offer.  It's a part of who I was.  Silvered hair, once in a distant future, is now ...a part of who I am.

Tell Me a Story

My 10-year-old grandson, Gage, often says, "Tell me a story about the olden days."  My 20-something grandkids still ask for stories.  I was sure they'd all been told but found one just this week that Zach, another grandson, had never heard.  Could there possibly be others?  Probably not but there are lots of them to be re-told, so let's get started.  This will have to be done in installments.

The story of my birth is quite remarkable.  My parent's youngest child was nine years old and now in her 45th year, Mother was pregnant again.  Her doctor told her she couldn't possibly be pregnant; Menopausal complications or a tumor, perhaps.  In telling the story, Mother always credited Daddy with saying, "She's had six kids.  If she says she's pregnant, she ought to know!"  Well, she was Menopausal and I was no tumor but complications were expected, given Mother's age and her long struggle with asthma.  She had been a 'sturdy woman', a tom boy growing up but developed severe asthma following a car accident.  She'd given birth to two sons since that accident but the concern with this pregnancy was that both mother and baby could not, would not, be saved at the time of the birth.  I was her easiest delivery and her smallest baby at 8 lbs. 12 oz.  My one defect, a 'tied' tongue, was easily remedied.  The doctor said a girl who couldn't talk would never do.  Mother wrote of her birthing experience:

"A pain wracked body, intense suffering in soul and in mind.  The day crept onward to meet the night.  Evening shadows rode silently in and parked in corners, until the maternity home stood in the shroud of nights silence.  But for me there was neither silence nor rest, only the untiring efforts of doctor and nurse to give what comfort or ease they could.  My husband's hand closed tightly over mine.  He spoke no word, but somehow I knew he was giving to me that needed strength.  Long moments of uncertainty, and then, the sweetest cry.  Our baby girl was born."

     --Myrtle Whitney Morgan

In my memory, my dad always sang--in the barnyard, in the fields, in the car, and in the church choir.  My mother grew up singing with her siblings for their own enjoyment and performing for all kinds of church, family, and community functions and she sang at night instead of telling bedtime stories.  My brother, Keith, gave me a red toy piano.  I learned to plunk out recognizable melodies with two fingers.  I'm told I was often put on the stage to play and sing at MIA functions, though I have no memory of it.  I don't know the why or how of it but in September 1951 my dad bought a Koller & Campbell piano!  The salesman's pitch was, "Buy quality because you will, no doubt, give Christie the piano as a wedding present when she is grown."  I asked my dad,  "Will Kent and I get the piano when we get married?"  "Kent's dad can buy his kids their own piano."  "If I marry Michael, will I get the piano?"  "Frank Olsen makes more money than I do!"  "Then who do I have to marry?"

I put lots of miles on my red child's rocker.  Sometimes during a summer's rain, I'd take my rocker to the front porch, sit in it with a cooperative kitten or dog in my lap, and make a tent with a blanket or quilt to keep us dry.  Both of my children and some of my grandchildren used this little red rocker.  Keith made it in a shop class.  Mother told the story about the night the Weston High School burned and how Keith ran all the way from our house uphill about a mile and threw the rocker out a window in order to save it from the flames.

My sister-in-law, Evelyn, makes heavenly divinity and popcorn balls.  She did her holiday cooking early and stored everything in tins.  I spent lots of time with Marion and Evelyn.  Just before the Christmas holiday one year, I discovered her stash quite by accident.  There was so much of it that I helped myself.  Another piece the next time I was at their house.  And the next...  I had no previous criminal record.  I was an adult when I fessed up.  It takes only the mention of this to get us laughing.  She sent a care package to me for years so I wouldn't have to steal to get a mouth-watering, heavenly piece of homemade candy.

In July, 1959, Mother and I traveled to Oregon by car to spend some time with Keith and Inga and their family.  We took a detour through Yellowstone Park.  Mother had her hard-as-rocks oatmeal cookies in her huge, metal dishpan sitting in her lap in a middle seat of the station wagon, covered only with a clean dish towel.  Well, the clean part may not be true since she had been using it to wipe up little kid's fingers and I don't know what else!  We stopped in the park at "Little Grand Canyon."  Keith, with cameras hanging 'round his neck and small children in each arm, started toward the trail leading to Kodak Moment vantage spots.  Inga and I were just a bit ahead of him.  Before the car was out of sight, we turned back at the sound of much commotion and saw a bear reaching into the side window, almost able to reach Mother sitting there.  She was hitting the bear with her dish cloth!  This did discourage the bear a bit so it left that window and went to the tailgate window, not fully opened but cracked to give Mother some air.  Mother got up on her knees in her seat and beat at that poor bear with her dish cloth while we all stood motionless, watching, Keith not knowing whether to drop his cameras and kids and run to the car to save his mother or grab his family and run to safety.  "Give the bear the cookies!"  Someone in the campground began beating the ground with a broom and the bear finally gave up.

How many tellin's will this take?  Only the surface has been scratched.  The stories--they're a part of who I am.