The Rooster and the Congressman

Let there be no doubt, finding funding for new park buildings is difficult, in recessionary times especially. So it was time for glee when the city of Tacoma voted in a bond issue that allowed Ft. Nisqually, a living history site, to build a replica of a warehouse and a laborer’s dwelling.  The replica of the warehouse would be modern inside and used as a meeting place, artifact storage, research library and offices.  The laborer’s dwelling would also be modern inside and used as a reception area with displays, the gift shop, an office and storage.  It took a long time to build as the outside of the buildings had to have a historically accurate look to them.

For months and months the muddy mess progressed through all kinds of weather.  The specially cut beams had a hand hewn look to them.  The museum staff could not wait to move into their new offices.  No one cried about getting rid of the ugly trailer parked out front that had served for years as a teensy gift shop.

Grand opening day came.  There would be ribbon cutting, dignitaries, tours and refreshments.  The reenactors came bedecked in top hats, swishing skirts, Hudson’s Bay Co workman garb, or as an occasional mountain man. A congressman was slated to give a speech.  He was a longtime friend of the fort.

When speech time came, a few of the mountain men moved toward the refreshment table and received an arched eyebrow from Mrs. Dr. Tolmie.  With schoolboy sheepishness they moved back to the polite audience.

The children tried to get at the cookies and were taken away to their toys at the back.

No one could correct the corseted ladies when they felt they needed to sit in the shade and fan themselves, pulling out knitting and other amusements. 

The top hatted gents rocked back and forth from heel to toe, heel to toe, cleared their throat and looked at their watches.

The congressman went on.  It wasn’t a bad speech, as I recall, but speeches are speeches.

The site’s reenacting rooster, of a proud historic breed called Speckled Sussex, fancied himself a better orator, and decided at that moment to enter politics.  He crowed.  Loudly.  The crowd laughed, and he did it again.  Every time laughter died and the congressman re-started, the rooster let out a bellowing squawk. 

“What is this, Meet the Press?” asked the congressman.

Guffaws from the crowd.  The cook looked murderous, the mountain men fingered their muzzleloaders, and would-be rooster wranglers tried to grab the offender’s luxuriously feathered neck.

“Your constituents are about to vote you out of office,” quipped the congressman.

The rooster flew to the top of the hutch and crowed some more.

There was more chest puffing from each party, but finally the congressman raised his hands and surrendered.

Both strutted off, the rooster to his hens and the congressman to the refreshments.  When the votes were tallied, we knew who won.

But the congressman gave a gracious concession speech. “Can’t say much for his content, and his tone was a little harsh, but he was, after all, much prettier.”

If roosters could talk, I'm sure he'd say, "At least we agree on one thing."

The Day Mom Cooked Dinner for a King

My mom never liked camping.  Too much dirt to dispel.  Too much work.  Why go camping when cooking and housecleaning was so much easier at home?

My husband and I can’t resist making ourselves at home when in a tent.  There’s something about the beauty of the outdoors that I love, whether the silky lakes and the crackling campfire.  Wood smoke is positively rapture-inducing.  We love to figure out ways to make our tent comfortable, to set up our Coleman stove and create a little kitchen full of comforts.  Mom says hers is already set up, thank you.  Her kitchen had all sorts of comforts, like running water and electricity. 

We moved around a lot since Dad was in the Navy, so she barely got the drawers organized before we upped stakes and moved on, so getting a kitchen just the way she wanted it was a race. In those days, ladies liked to use shelf paper and line everything.  Cute kitschy curtains were a must, and I’ve often wondered if the word kitschy had something to do with kitchens.

Mom delighted in entertaining, and collected cookbooks and recipes in wild hopes of giving the “party of the season.” She knew she had the best crab dip and the cutest little shells to serve it in, laid out on perfectly ironed lace tablecloths.  Being a florist’s daughter as well as an artist in her own right, there were always the beautiful flower arrangements and artistic centerpieces.

In fact, all three of her sisters were adept at dinner parties.  The sisters lived in Pasadena. Once, between moves, our family wound up being distributed among the homes of the three sisters.  My mom and dad stayed with mom’s sister Robin in her condo.  Being unmarried, Robin liked things simple, and her teeny condo kitchen might have been a challenge to Mom who was used to a family of five and a big house.  I suppose it was like camping to her. 

Robin carpooled into work in downtown LA with another sister’s husband, Paul.  Paul was a lawyer for oil firms and did a good bit of business in Africa, so travelled extensively and knew a fascinating array of people. 

One afternoon Paul called Mom and explained that he had a visitor from Africa and would like to bring him home for dinner to entertain him, as that was the custom in Africa.  Unfortunately, Paul’s wife was out of town, and since Robin was still at work, could Mom possibly fix dinner for all of them?  By the way, the guest is a king.

“A king?”

“Well, more like a chieftain, I suppose, but we call him King Olowofuyayku.  I would consider him royalty.”

“Well, I’ll do my best.”

I’m sure that Mom was able to whip up some wonderful dinner in a teensy condo that she was not used to.  I was away at school, but she and my brothers told me that at the appointed time they saw a tall, be-robed, ebony man in a gigantic purple headdress walk past the window toward the front door.  Behind him was Paul, grinning at his guest.

So that was the day that Mom cooked dinner for the king.  But it was no doubt equal to the party of the season, or any season.  She could do it, anyplace or anytime.  She could have done it with a Coleman stove.  For that night she did not have had ironed lace tablecloths or crab dip in shell dishes, but what she had was the real star of all her parties—her charm and grace, her loving elegance.

Nobody remembers what she served that night, but I’m sure he felt like a king. 

As did all her guests.    

What TV Show From Your Childhood Would You Love To Live In?

There’s no question in my mind, it would be with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.  Didn’t they ride around catching the bad guys and solve all problems?  Wasn’t Trigger gorgeous?  Didn’t Bullet have more brains than most men?

I did wonder, though, why Dale’s horse Buttermilk was so ordinary when Roy’s horse Trigger was magnificent.  What would mine look like?  Would I get a cool saddle like that?  I sure would not want to be relegated to the role for girls popular at the time, though.

I am pretty sure I could help the Lone Ranger and Tonto, and I hope that the Lone Ranger wouldn’t mind if I rode Silver.

Or like to say what Sgt. Preston of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said to his husky each week, “Thanks to you, King, this case is closed.”

Fury was a great black horse, and Zorro had a very nice steed too. 

Are we seeing a trend here?  I wonder if all the little girls were ga-ga over horses.  How could you not be, when seeing that thrilling opening of The Lone Ranger. Ta da dump, ta da dump, ta da dump, dump, dump!

When my nephew was little, my brother took him to a children’s concert.  The conductor told the children in the audience that very few of them would recognize the next piece they were going to play, but every single one of their parents would.  Then they played the William Tell overture.  At the end, my brother, a normally quiet man, boomed out in his super low bass, “Hi-ho, Silver, away!”  The audience went wild, cheering and clapping.  Apologies to the orchestra, but how can you sit still when that is played?

What TV show would you like to live in?

  

Lessons Learned From Cleaning Out My Mom's Closet

I’ve been cleaning out my mom’s closet today.  I remember her wearing most of them.  Destined for charity is a big pile of clothes for which she paid a lot of money.  Fling, fling, into the charity pile.  I can’t help but think of the future when my daughters will be cleaning out my closet.  Trying things on, aghast at what I wore, and giggling over what I found stylish back in the day.  My stuff seems awfully important.  I can’t get rid of it.  Love it!  Hang on to it.  I find a place for it.  Yet, the next generation will haul it off, laughing. 

I also have been busy for the past week digitalizing my parents’ photo album.  I’ve got a nice little camera that takes good close ups. It has taken hours of concentration holding the shaky camera over the album, back aches be damned.  Why is it so easy to get rid of stuff, and photos are sacrosanct? 

What my children or grandchildren might cherish will be the photo I was horrified over.  You know the one, we all have them, where we thought we looked fat or silly or dumb.  Nope.  THAT’S what they cherish.  Preserve.  Label and store.  Shed a tear over, email to relatives, put in special folders.

So smile at the camera, make albums and label everything.  Forget about that table from Aunt Euphemia that you were saving for your children.  They won’t want it.  They want you.  In your dorky old fashioned clothes, your goofy hair, and your smiling face. 

They want you.

Avoiding Used Car Scams

Lots of little towns have impromptu car lots where locals might park their vehicles and offer them for sale.  Ours did, and so did the neighboring town.  We happened to be in the neighboring town and drove past a lot where a pretty little thing caught our eye.

It was a great little car, pretty much everything we had been looking for and the price was attractive.  The owner introduced himself as Oleg.  The more we looked it over, the better we liked it.  It was exceedingly clean and had surprisingly low miles.  That’s when I opened the glove box and took out the registration, only to find that it was a re-issued title as a “salvage title”.  What this means was that the car has undergone some catastrophic damage, either accident, flooding, or damage that would cause the insurance company to designate the vehicle as totaled.

“What’s this Oleg?” I asked. “A salvage title?”

“Oh, that is nothing, she was in an small accident to the right rear fender.  See, come look, she’s excellent.”

“Why are the miles so low?”

“My uncle, he have her in the shop for a long time.  He is an artist, my uncle, he fix her slow and good.  Here, take a look.  See, she’s fine.”

We passed up the opportunity to buy something from the snake oil salesman, but further down the road was another lot and we stopped there too, hoping to have better luck.

The guy selling the nice looking little red car introduced himself as Ivan.

“You got a brother named Oleg?” I muttered.

We immediately looked in the glove box and found a re-issued title.

“What’s this Ivan?  A salvage title?”

“Oh, the car was in a small accident to the right rear fender.”

“Why are the miles so low?”

The slick horse trader told us the same story about an uncle who had a body shop who didn’t have time to fix the car for a few years and it sat around until he did, thus for the age of the car, there were low miles.

We got in the car and drove home, deciding to buy a car on Craig’s List.

We found a beauty with very low miles but it was in Arizona.  When we emailed the owner, he said he was a Major in the Air Force about to be deployed and he was selling his car as his wife was going home to live with her parents and they didn’t need it.  He would ship us the car for our inspection.  All transactions would be via PayPal. 

I can’t state that I knew this was a scam, but as they say, when something is too good to be true…

My husband said that the owner did not need to ship the car, he would fly down to Phoenix and look at it.  Not to worry, declared the buyer, I’ll ship it.  When we persisted in wanting to look at the car, he disappeared.  There was no car.  This is called the “Escrow Scam” where a buyer is asked to put money in a “safe” account like eBay or PayPal, and the funds will not be released until both parties are satisfied.  Once the money is transferred, contact is broken (or sometimes additional funds are requested to cover “unforeseen” events). In any case, the legitimate buyer never receives a car and loses their money.  PayPal does not guarantee that the people using their services are legitimate.

Here are some tips to avoid being the victim of car buying scams.

1.      Get the VIN and run a history report.

2.      Know the blue book price of the car make and model you are interested in.  If the price is too low, run, no matter what sort of hardship story you are told.

3.      Never wire money or use bank-to-bank transfer. 

4.      Try to buy a car locally where you inspect it, meet the seller, look at the title, and get the VIN.

5.      Beware of exceedingly low miles.  There are ways of turning back the odometer.

6.      If you feel you or someone you know has been a victim of a car-buying scam, report the scam to NCL’s Fraud Center at www.fraud.org.

C'mon Down to Wide Track Town

I had been married less than a week when we moved from California into our duplex out in the woods of Milton, Florida.  Here I was, a recent college graduate, ready to start my career, staring at four walls of cheap wood paneling.

Time to get a job.  I drove around town and there was slim pickin’s at the Piggly Wiggly and Miss Erma’s dress shop.  Most of the town consisted of car lots, because the new Ensigns at the nearby Navy base were young men eager to buy something their fathers didn’t have.

OK, so this was my life now?  Staring at rural route delivery mailboxes? Far different from my busy college days, where I lived in a crowded sorority with 3 and 4 to a room, where I worked at the television studio, and studied far into the night.

My sympathetic groom had a suggestion.  If Milton was full of car lots, go sell cars.  The new Ensigns would far rather buy a car from a cute chick (his words, not mine) than some old fart (also his words).  I knew nothing about selling cars.

Monday morning I drove around town looking for the biggest and nicest car lot and settled on Wayne Gowin Dodge.  I walked in and announced I wanted a job.  The salesmen told me they already had enough office help.  When I said, as a salesperson, they arched their eyebrows and had me knock on Mr. Gowin’s office door.

Just so happened that Mr. Gowin had returned the day before from a Dodge convention in New Orleans, where the largest grossing salesperson of the nation’s Dodges was a woman.  Mighty radical for 1976.  Where was he going to find a woman in Milton, Florida that wanted to sell cars?  But Monday morning I happened to come walking through his door.  He hired me on the spot.

Before he officially hired me, Charlie Pace, the sales manager, called my Navy Ensign husband in order to ask if I had permission to do this.  Hans actually had to go in and sit in front of his desk and say it was okay that I might not be home to cook his supper.

The wives of the other salesmen got worried.  What was I doing there?  The men weren’t too sure either.  They needn’t worry, I was a happy newlywed to a man as handsome as the morning.

The first day Charlie Pace announced that we were rearranging all the cars on the lot so the ones facing the street would appear new.  I think he just wanted to see if I could use a stick shift, which I could. The salesmen seemed surprised that I left their gathering place and eagerly greeted customers.  Being friendly and outgoing I was not what I worried about.  What tripped me up, and I knew it, was if they had any questions about the cars.

The dealership had never put pictures of the salesmen in the paper before, but they took our pictures and featured me as someone to see.  The town flooded in to check out this anomaly.  Mr. Gowin sent me down to Pensacola to deliver a car to a different lot, just to show off that he had something they didn’t, a female salesperson. We started getting customers down from Georgia. 

The dealership gave the salesmen a printout of past customers, saying we should write postcards to prior customers offering them deals.  The printout stretched for yards.  None of the salesmen felt like writing postcards.  Ah, ha!  Something I could do.  I was well skilled in little notes, for I’d been writing wedding thank yous for weeks.  A tsunami of customers came pouring in and I sold a few, although I still didn’t know much about cars.

I had abysmally poor sales sense. When a teenage boy and his parents came in to buy him a truck, I showed him a simple one I thought affordable. 

Charlie Pace took me aside. “No, girl. Show him the big black one with the chrome wheels. They’ll buy it for him.”

They did.  The parents told Mr. Gowin they bought the truck because no other salesperson in any of the dealerships they’d gone to paid any attention to their boy. “That girl yonder, she did.”  But Charlie Pace and I knew it was because of the chrome wheels.  Charlie slapped me on the back when that grinning boy drove out in his new black truck.

A few of my woodsier customers wanted me to go with them to the local tavern to close the deal over a beer.  I may not have sales sense, but I knew when I was being sold a line.

The other salesmen, Bob, Larry, Les and Bill, and their wives turned out to be very welcoming indeed, asking me to go to the fair, to backwoods bonfires, and over for dinner.  They were full of hospitality and generosity.

My brothers back home in California were convinced I’d moved to Florida and turned into a cigar-chomping, spitting, fact-stretching used car salesman.  I can’t claim to spit with any accuracy, or smoke cigars.  But c’mon down to wide track town and you might land in a chromed black truck.

Fishy Tales

For some reason, my younger brother Scott, as a tyke mind you, latched on to the idea that fishing was an activity that he was going to love all his life.  Don't ask me ME why. Yuck.

When we moved to Illinois, he was a mere lad of ten. We had temporarily moved to a two room cottage on the shores of beautiful Lake Wauconda.  Lake = fish. The lack of fishing equipment was merely a minor inconvenience.  Our family motto was "Don't have one?  Make it!"  Sticks lay about on the ground under the trees, we could find string in the cottage, and maybe a hook somewhere.  We did wind up finding a cane pole behind the door of the porch, but lacked a hook.  The fact that I say "we" does not mean I was interested in fishing.  Noooo!  But we were pals, through thick and thin.  He played the stuff I thought was fun, I helped him fish.

Scott found a safety pin, and tied it on the end of the line.  We went down to the edge of the lake. 

"Think it will work?"  I asked.
"Of course it will."
"What are you going to do with it?  Eat it?"
"Naw.  Throw it back."

Why someone would take all the time to catch something only to release it was a bit perplexing, but I did like the challenge.  Scott had snitched some bacon from the old rounded-edged refrigerator, stuck it on the pin and dropped his line in the water.  In a few moments he had a fish.  Unfortunately, the non-barbed safety pin didn't stick in fish lips and the fish slipped off the hook.  Hmmm.  He frowned.  This wasn't working.  He could catch them, but failed to land them. 

"I've an idea," he said.  "Watch this."

When the next one tugged on the string, he whipped the pole back and a little sunfish went flying over his head and onto the grass. 

"You did it!"  We looked at the surprised little fish.  "Quick, throw it back in before it drowns, or whatever is the opposite of drowning that fish do."

Throughout the steamy August afternoon of 1967, I sat on the lake's bank drawing a picture of my brother fishing.  Later my mom said it even kinda looked like him.  I showed him snapping the line back and the sunfish flying onto the grass.  He caught quite a few.  Or maybe it was the same fish (even though they call them sunfish, they aren't too bright). I can only imagine what it went off to tell the other fish that night. "You won't believe it, I flew through the air.  One minute I was grabbing the tastiest morsel I've ever had, and the next I was yanked out of the water and went soaring over some kid's head."  "No way!" all his admiring friends would say. 

In middle school, Scott taught himself how to tie flies and bought the equipment to do so.  He showed me too, and I enjoyed creating some, learning the knots and admiring the beautiful feathers.  When we moved back to California, we stopped in Colorado so that Scott, now entering eighth grade, could fish in some creeks there.  I stood on the shore and watched the water ouzels.

Scott remains an ardent fisherman and goes out with the men from his office on big time fishing trips to Montana and the Sierras.  A few years ago, Scott took my husband and me fishing at their cabin on Lake Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.  It was a pretty morning, and we took their boat down the shore away and sat 20 feet offshore.

He wore one of those fisherman's vests so loaded with tools that it was a wonder he didn't clank when he walked.  Pretty flies adorned his hat, and I knew if I was a fish, I would have bitten one of them.

"Are we using flies, or lures, or what?" I asked innocently.
"Worms."
"I simply can't skewer a live worm on a hook, Scott."
"I'll do it for you.  I want you to try fishing."

He baited my hook first, then started to put a worm on his hook, but I already had a bite.  I pulled in a decent sized fish.  Seven or eight inches, if I remember correctly, which I probably don't.  Can't tell you what it was.  Scott was obligingly complimentary about the size of it.  He got the hook out of it, let it go and put another worm on my hook before setting about putting a worm on his own hook.

This was repeated about five or six times.  My husband laughed at how quickly I was catching them, and suggested I take a break so poor Scott could at least put a hook in the water.  Scott said we were unlikely to catch anything big, as so many smaller fish indicated that they felt safe there and there were probably no big ones around. "And now that my sister has done so well, I probably won't get a thing."

Oh, but he did.  Wow!  In less than five minutes, he had a little tug on his line, then BAM, the rod bent double and nearly took him out of the boat.  A lunker!  Holy moley!  That thing must have been huge, Scott was fighting with him, playing him in and out, or whatever fishermen do to bring home the big one.  Scott was getting red and excited and we knew we were in for a show.

"This must be the biggest fish in the lake," I shouted.
"What do you suppose it is?" asked my husband. "A pike?"
"Where's the net, Dad?" asked Scott's son.

We tried to peer under the water to catch the first glimpe of the mighty fish.  Suddenly Scott's line went disappointingly limp. 

"Oh, no," I said.  "Did it get away?"
"No, there's something still there, but it just suddenly gave up."
"Well, reel it in and let's see it!"

He reeled it in and we burst into laughter.  On the end of his rod was a little 4-incher.

"What?" We died laughed. "How could such a little fish pull the rod nearly in two like that and fight so hard?


Around the dinner table, we dreamed up an explanation.  Scott had first hooked the little 4 inch fish.  Then, a largemouth bass, moments later, swallowed the little fish Scott had hooked.  It fought hard, but then opened its mouth and Scott pulled the little fish right out of his stomach.

Either that, or it was one VERY strong little fish.

At any rate, I wonder what the little guy told the other fish that night.  "You won't believe it!  I not only got caught, I got eaten.  And lived to tell."

Who says fishermen are the only ones with tall tales?  Those fish must tell some whoppers too.