Piecing the Story Together: Doc Macomber

A Visit With Doc Macomber at Dunn School

Bruce Edkins Macomber (1930-2021) affectionately known as Doc, was a living legend at Dunn School. Born in Illinois, Doc grew up during World War II and discovered a love of learning early on. He became a geologist and worked for several years with the Shell Oil Company. Fortunately for all of us, Doc found his true calling and became a teacher in the early 1970s. Doc's life and the history of Dunn School had been intertwined for three decades when a few of our middle school students interviewed him as part of our oral history elective in the early 2000s. Doc arrived for this interview carrying scrapbooks of photos and clippings to share with the kids. He was gracious and kind, as always. I heard only recently of his passing, and I decided it was important to honor him by posting his reminiscences here on The Living Stories Collective website.

In his own words:

I was born in Evanston, Illinois and lived most of my life until college in a town called Winnetka.

I went to a public high school, and then I went to Princeton, and after that, I got a master's degree at Northwestern, and I got my last degree at Rutgers -- always in the subject of geology. After getting my doctorate, I spent eleven years with the Shell Oil Company as a production geologist.I went out in old oil fields to find new places to put wells and get more oil out of the ground. After eleven years of that, I decided I wanted to try teaching, and so I came to Southern California.

My first year of teaching, I taught at the Howard School in Montecito, and after one year there, I heard that Bill Webb was looking for a math tutor at Dunn to go with his learning skills program, which was the first learning skills program in Southern California. Mrs. Roome started the reading and writing side of the program and they realized they needed someone to teach math, too, so I became a math tutor. Next year, the science teacher quit, so I got that job teaching chemistry and physics. I did that until I retired, which was about 1996.

I started at Dunn in the school year of 1974-75. The school was very different then than it is now, and the difference is due to the efforts of an enormous number of people. It's very impressive to realize what human effort it takes to change a small school or a small business. I think one of the nicest things about my teaching career has been watching Dunn grow from this little converted farm with dirt roads to what it is today. There was one soccer field where the old grandstand used to be - I remember there was one grounds keeper who worked all the time trying to fill in gopher holes. Then several headmasters went by, and when Ed Simmons became headmaster, he began to raise money, and the first thing he did was build a new science lab, and that was a real surprise for me. Up until then, I taught in an old Quonset hut from Vandenberg Air Force Base that Tony Dunn had bought to use as a science building. He had two of them, one for biology, and the other for physical sciences, and I figured that'd be where I'd spend my career.

It was dirty. Every day at exactly the same time, a garbage truck would come by the entrance to my labs, and the door was always open for ventilation, and all these clouds of dust would come in. It was always very dusty and dirty. Usually when we were having meals in the dining hall, a huge truck would roll by and then all this dust would come in. It was dust all the time.

One thing about the school's growth has been the effort to cover all that dirt with grass. You might take that grass for granted nowadays, but to put all those grassy fields in there, it takes an awful lot of work on the part of more than one fellow. I suppose Mike has five or six men working with him and they work on keeping the place beautiful all the time. That's what all the alumni remark about the first time when they come back. "Boy, has this place changed!

I got my nickname "Doc" from Ed Simmons, who was headmaster here for about ten years in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was because I have a doctorate degree in geology. I never had a nickname before in my life and he started calling me that in assembly, and the students picked up on it. I've been Doc ever since. It certainly is easier than pronouncing my last name.

The main reason I retired from teaching was - well, I was too old to continue teaching. For one thing, my hearing was beginning to go, and I now have hearing aids. But they still needed someone to drive the buses, so I drive the two buses now. And even there, we're getting bigger, because we have an assistant bus driver now. I hope we never have to have more than that! Driving the buses is a lot of fun. Beautiful countryside...

And one story that I've written about for the Dunn Journal is on the subject of team screaming. It involves girls. What happened was that Midland girls came down here for the first of two games for the Munger cup. And they beat our JV and tied our Varsity. And apparently they hadn't had a terribly good season, so that got them very excited. Well, when they have a game down there, they usually ask me to come up with a big bus and bring their teams down, 'cause they only have vans and they'd have to do a shuttle, and so I brought them down. They piled aboard all excited, and when they got to the driveway, they said, "Doc, please beep the horn."

I'd done that before - it's the same tradition we have here, beating the horn when you have a victory. So I got to the Midland driveway and started beeping the horn. It was cold outside. All the windows of the bus were shut. And these thirty-five girls swelled up their chests and let out the loudest noise I have ever heard.

When I was in the Navy, after my first four years of college, my position in a combat drill was right next to a pair of 40 millimeter anti-aircraft guns, automatic machine cannons. That noise is incredible if you have to stand next to it. The gunners all wear ear plugs. I figure that's where my hearing got damaged the first time.

Anyway, here I am driving along the Midland driveway, and they let out this unbelievable team scream. The windows are all closed, and so the sound is confined, and I can't take my hands off the steering wheel to turn off my hearing aids. They kept it up until we crossed the little bridge. The next day my ears were still ringing.

So this last game on Wednesday, I told the Dunn girls, "If you guys win, as we come back, you can see if you can scream louder than the Midland girls did." Well, they didn't win, but they tied, which meant that we keep the Munger cup. And so when we got behind the gym up here I started beeping the horn, and they made just as much noise as the Midland girls, but they kept it up longer. So they were really kind of the winners of the team-screaming contest.

The name of the trophy is the Munger cup, and it was given by our headmaster Jim Munger. For that game, his parents were there. Jim grew up on the Midland campus and the two schools are really tied quite closely together. His father and mother, who were headmaster and headmistress when I first came to teach here, were there for this game. When the game was about to start, the Midland girls lined up in a row, and all thirty of them gave Mrs. Munger a big hug and a kiss on her cheek. It's not something you see at an ordinary high school soccer game!

So that's the other side of my life. Driving the buses. It really is fun. In the old days, I had to sit at a game after driving the kids to the opposing school, and a lot of the time I didn't watch the game because I had a stack of lab notebooks this high that I was scoring. So there I'd be correcting these with all this yelling going on. Now I don't have to do that. I sit there and enjoy the game.

When I first started at Dunn, we had about twenty day girls and a few day boys, and about ninety boarding boys. We were just a little larger than Midland, not much. There's been quite an expansion with the dormitories built, and now we have boarding girls. I think that the quality of the students at Dunn improved as the school got bigger and started looking better.

One reason we wanted girls is because we were missing out on half of the good minds, and there were some boys who wouldn't come to a school without girls. And the boys mainly worked on their pecking order all the time. It was very aggravating. There was a certain amount of hazing. They'd wake someone in the middle of the night, spray shaving cream all over him, throw him into the swimming pool. If you reacted positively, you were okay. If you resisted or told, the seniors would make life miserable for you. A lot of that element.

When the girls came, the boys looked around and concentrated on making points with girls instead of being the big man in the pecking order. It always reminds me of fighting bulls. The steers calm the bulls down. So after we got some money to build girls' dorm, it became much more pleasant to teach here.

I do remember students in the earlier days as being a little tougher, maybe because the conditions were much rougher, so much dirt and dust. The fields were not as nice. And the food in the dining hall was very plain. Pam has worked miracles! One year we had a guy who fried everything and wasn't even very good at that. Mr. Simmons loved ice cream, so every night we had ice cream in the dining hall.

I come in the morning with some kids from Santa Maria. Then I have all day long. I live in Lompoc, and I used to go back and have lunch with my wife, but she got very busy selling houses, and it was kind of tiring to drive back and forth, so I started staying here, and one year I tutored a couple of kids who were being home-schooled by their parents. I tutored them in chemistry. We did the lab exercises right on the kitchen table. I stopped doing that when they moved on.

I enjoy walking. I go back and forth to Los Olivos by the back road, Park Avenue, or I do the circle. In high school I was a distance runner. I ran cross-country and track.. Eventually I started to get a pain in my hips. I stopped running, but I kept up walking. You have to walk pretty fast, not just a stroll. It beats running on a treadmill in your garage.

And in the last several years, I've been putting together a history of the school. It really involves gathering all the papers - the journals, the student newspapers, the photographs that are left over after the making of the yearbook.I've got several places marked off here about the middle school. For instance, in winter of 1979, there was an article - Ed Simmons invited anybody in the valley who had middle school age children who were interested to come to a meeting and they would talk about what parents expected in a school. So this little article is about the first step in the building of the middle school.

And here's a picture of house coming up a driveway. It became the third building in the middle school. The caption describes it as "Old Man Block's former home that stood at Mission Drive and Atterdag in Solvang since 1912."

At first it was a faculty home. Don Daves, the history teacher, lived in it his first year. Then we got some more faculty homes and the middle school was expanding and needed more room.I have a similar picture of the music building coming up the same driveway, missing its bell tower, 'cause that had to be taken off to get under the telephone wires.

This picture is Mr. Simmons addressing the student body of the first middle school, and here is the interior of the first building. I'm pretty sure this is the building we are in right now. I'm not sure you could recognize it now. This was twenty-two years ago.

Here - this is what Dunn Middle School looked like. There were two buildings -- the office, and the one we're in.

Look. There are the swings. And here they are having a Roman Festival. Bicycling trips were very popular, also.

And this happens to be a picture of my own wedding. My wife and I got married outdoors at an Arab horse ranch in Santa Ynez.

Anyway, that's what I do. I'm taking an awful lot of time with this, but I just wanted to show you what I'm doing as school historian so alumni can come back, thumb through this, and see what it was like. What was frustrating at the beginning was that the school yearbooks were collections of photographs, and some were very good, but if you wanted to know who was in the photo, it was very difficult to find out. There were no captions. So now there are boxes of photographs, and I take the yearbook, and the class list, and sometimes I consult with teachers and try to figure out who the people are. It's like piecing together a story.

For my own education, I went to public schools, and by some quirk of fortune, I grew up in a community that really wanted the best education they could get for their children, so we had schools that were always warm in the wintertime, with excellent teachers, good books. I lived in a place where I could walk to my grade school and the junior high and the high school, all kind of a circle not far from where I lived. It was near Chicago, and sometimes the snow was kind of deep, but it was fun. I didn't go away to school until I finished high school and then I went to college.

There were differences, of course. I think you would have laughed at the clothes we wore. We dressed up a little more. Not with coat and tie, but in lower grades we always wore shorts until we were forced by the cold to put on longer pants. When I first started school, it was the era when boys wore knickers, and then you had heavy socks that covered your calves. But that soon passed, and we got to blue jeans. In high school the boys wore lumberjack shirts and khaki trousers or blue jeans, and the girls - it was the era in which they wore sweaters, skirts, and bobby sox with loafers, The girls wore loafers, and you put a penny or a dime in your loafer. As for the teaching, you would probably think it was a little more like lecturing. But all teachers love to talk. They need brakes to slow themselves down.

The reason I am here now is probably because of a woman named Louise Mohr. She was my advisor when I was your age. Like most female teachers in those days, she was not married. There was nothing in the school regulations that said they could not marry, but it was something most of them never got around to. Anyway, back to Louise Mohr - I took a home economics course in the 7th grade. You made brownies and learned to sew. But my cousin and kind of sparked off each other and I didn't behave very well, so I had to be moved. Miss Mohr said, " I know just where you're gonna go. You're going into my public speaking class."

It gave me the chills to think about it. To stand up and give a talk in the seventh grade! For the last half of the year, I took this public speaking class, and it was a sweat every time I stood up to talk , but at the end of it, I had shown enough progress that she said, "Okay. There's no second year of public speaking, but I want you to be in my play."

I didn't enjoy this very much at the beginning, but once I got my lines memorized and we began to act, it was a lot of fun. And I always think that taking that public speaking class and being in that play - later in high school, I was in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta - may have had a lot to do with my becoming a teacher later on.

I was in school during World War II. My older brother fought in the war. He got killed. I don't think anyone at home can really claim to have suffered during World War II unless they lost somebody. When my brother got killed, it was terrible. I don't think my parents ever really got over it. They lived for a long time after that, but they never got over it.

But until that time, the war at home basically meant that my dad had to do with less gasoline in his car. You had a ration card that was stuck to the window of your car and you presented that every time you went to get gas. Our diet was circumscribed a little bit. I happened to be a banana lover. I remember when my older brother graduated from junior high school, the family took him down to the drug store and bought him a banana split. Well, when my turn came, they took me down there, too, and woe is me, there were no bananas. The bananas all came from Central America, and German submarines had sunk all the banana boats, and so there were no bananas. We did without 'em. And we didn't eat quite as much meat, either.

It wasn't until 1949 - four years after the end of World War II - that the English gave up meat rationing and could eat as much as they wanted. The English really suffered. Great deprivations. But I don't think Americans really did. There were no bombing raids here. The Germans tried to land spies on our East coast but never succeeded. The spies were caught right away. And a Japanese submarine came up at California and scared everyone to death. In fact, a friend of mine had neighbors who moved from California back to the Midwest because they were so scared of the Japanese army landing on the Pacific coast. The Japanese had no plans to do that. Once they had bombed our fleet, they wanted the war to go away so they could enjoy their empire, but we didn't let them. So the Japanese subs scared Californians, put a leak into a couple of oil tanks, and that was it. I don't think we underwent any serious deprivation.

My brother was in Europe, in Patton's third army. It was terribly sad because he had survived the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign just before that, with Patton's army, and then I looked it up in the 87th Infantry Division record, and it showed that he was the last man in his battalion to get killed. Very soon after he got killed, the German army fell apart, and it was just a matter of getting into trucks and driving down the road in occupied Germany. He was the last man in his company even to be injured. He had survived an awful lot.

But discussion of war's impact would be incomplete without some mention of the way it changed the role of women. In the 1930's, our family included from two to five domestics, most of them young women for whom life on the family farm had become isolated and unappealing. They weren't paid much, but the got room and board while biding their time for better jobs and enjoying the social life of a town not far from Chicago. When war came, they quickly departed to jobs in factories or enlisted in the WACS or become nurses, and my mother found herself having to do much of the work of running a household. (Of course, I was old enough to help. My job was to fill the stoking machine in the basement with coal twice a day to keep the house warm.) At any rate, the war showed women they could do men's work, and they have never looked back.

Because of my older brother's tragedy, my father made me take ROTC when I went to Princeton. The Navy would pay me a small salary and you take one course a semester in Naval science or Naval engineering, you took a midshipmen cruise, then after you graduated, you were commissioned as an ensign in the US Navy and you were assigned for two years to a ship or shore station. Then you were free to continue in the Navy or leave the service in the reserve. I did my two years during the Korean war, a war that was fought mainly by the Army, and the Air Force to a lesser extent. But the soldiers are the guys that had to fight the Koreans and later the Chinese. And it was just as brutal as any war ever fought. But I think unlike Vietnam, we all believed it was the right thing to do. We were quite patriotic. World War II was only a few years back. The North Koreans had invaded South Korea and it looked like a giant beating up on some poor fellow. The government felt it was a ploy on the part of Stalin and his Communist regime to extend the Communist system all over the world. We felt we had to stop it.

Anyway, I was in Navy for two years. The Navy was not really involved in combat. The closest I got was when we were made the station ship for a town on the West coast of Korea. Soon after our ship came back from the Far East, I was sent back to the reserves, no longer part of the Navy. But the Navy was a very good place to be in that war, cause you got close to what was happening, but you didn't have to participate. We went through all kinds of exercises, but fortunately we never had to do any of it in actual combat. It was always exciting, riding in little boats to the beach, but not getting shot at.

I know that in growing up myself I was very shy and not a particularly good athlete, one of these bookish types. I always felt a little inferior because of that. You are bound to be hit by disappointment at one time or another. But the memories of the bad times begin to fade, and what sticks in your memory are the good times. Your problems look monstrous when you're growing up, but you look back and wonder why you were so upset. It's educational, or a mild ripple in your lifetime.

Talk to people about something that's worrying you. That's one of the greatest problems with boys. Girls do like to talk. They settle problems by talking. Boys tend to settle things physically or put things away without telling people - they sort of gunnysack things. Don't gunnysack. Talk to your friend first, or tell a teacher.

Come and visit. I'm in the library almost every day. Come and ask questions about school history. I'd be happy to see you.

Ol' Van: Legendary Teacher Frank Van Schaick

Trying to capture the essence of Frank Van Schaick on a few sheets of paper is depressingly futile; he was too many things and so influential to countless people, especially the generations of children he taught.

Room 10 at Wilson School was no ordinary place; it was Van’s Room. We had our regular studies, of course, but they occurred in a room full of wildlife captured on many trips, a room adorned with Greek statues and horse pistols. Navajo sand paintings and prints of the great masters hung beside our own works. Across the hall was a large closet allegedly for coats and lunches, but it contained tools and work benches on which we manufactured all manner of projects. Everyone had to make an ash baton and “conduct” the class music lessons. Best of all, we made bows and arrows from scratch and took them on our camping trips. Room 10 had no regular pencil sharpener; we used our knives, just as Van did. Van had us in noon league sports and after school we practiced for the Saturday games against other schools, where winning was good, but sportsmanship was paramount. We agonized over a class Constitution, then we lived by it. Van was a great one for democracy; he taught it and lived it.

Van had a calm forcefulness and a strong will never imposed; he simply set clear examples easily followed. Even today, 50 years later, former Room 10 students will ask themselves what Van would have thought before settling on their own course of action. His keen intellect was obvious, and as we grew older we appreciated his abiding wisdom. Van’s character and personality were perfect for the classroom, but more so for the wilderness, which, I think, Van assumed was another classroom more suited to higher learning. Love for his family was intense, but I doubt he was ever more content than deep in the woods or high in the Sierra, especially with a group of kids “doing all that neat stuff,” as he would put it, “learning to take care of themselves.”

I recall once, years after Room 10, stopping by his place for a visit. Van had yet another group of children down in his woods —Van had yet another group of children down in his woods —cooking, camping, tying knots, and studying wildlife — and I asked his wife Lois how he could put up with all of us over so many years. She replied, “He never met a kid he wouldn’t bring home.”

He was the recipient of countless accolades and awards, all graciously accepted, then never mentioned again. Humble legitimately describes Van, as does Man of the People, but he was by no means common. I once chanced upon a retired Stanford professor and mentioned that my sixth-grade teacher was a graduate of her institution. On hearing his name, she became excited and said, “Frank Van Schaick! He was the most gifted student I ever had.”

Van was ever a man of words and good literature, surrounded to his last days by stacks of books, especially of the West, Native Americans, natural history, and biographies. He wrote the “Nature Walks” column for the News-Press for many years, and co-authored two volumes with his good friend Dick Smith. After retiring, he wrote a memoir of sorts, Home of the Wilson Wildcats: Life and Death of an American Elementary School. He showed me a card he received from education guru Mem Fox; its essence was simple: “Mr. Van Schaick, this is the best book on education I’ve ever read.”

Van said teachers were buying it, then laughed, and said, “But not administrators, damned fools,” an epithet seldom heard by him and usually reserved for Congress.

Van topped off his literary excursions during our backpack trips. The last night out we’d build a fire along some quiet stretch of river and Van would tell us a story, usually something obscure from the fringes of Western literature. We’d lie there beneath the stars, mesmerized, wrapped in a special magic until the tale ended and the fire died.

The last pack trip of the summer was special because he’d bring his wife Lois and his daughters Susan and Mimi. Lois was every bit his equal and toted around more personality than ten normal folks could handle. When Lois showed up as a young teacher at Wilson School, Van was knocked off his feet. They both loved jazz and danced to favorite records before school in Room 10, a magical place in every sense. They lost Susan far too young and raised her children John, Vicki, and Jamal. And Mimi, that cute little imp and tease of so long ago — now a grandmother herself and mother of Jessica — sat beside her father the night of June 20; Van spent 94 years on this Earth and is gone too soon.

Bruce Brownell, the author of this tribute, followed the example of his mentor and himself became a beloved and unforgettable teacher. You can read an in-depth interview with Mr. Brownell at this link on The Living Stories Collective website.

In His Own Words: The Remarkable Story of Lieutenant Theodore Lauterbach

The headline of the 1944 newspaper clipping reads:

Lt. Ted Lauterbach Reported Missing In Action In Italy

Mr. and Mrs. P.A. Kauterbach of Sac City, Iowa received the sad news the first of the week that their eldest son, Lieutenant Theordore G. Lauterbach is reported missing in action over Italy since March 18. Ted was a co-pilot on a large plane and for a time was with General Doolittle in Africa. He had been in the service of his country for nearly two years, having been in the Army Air Corps during all that time. He went overseas in August of 1943. The message which informed his parents that he is missing stated that a letter would follow at a later period. It is hoped that better news will be forthcoming soon and although he is now missing, that he may have been forced down in friendly territory, or at least that he is still alive.

Better news, as it turns out, did arrive. Now, nearly eighty years later, his daughter Teresa has shared a typed manuscript with The Living Stories Collective that describes the experience of this brave young man.

B-17 bomber pilots; Lt. Lauterbach is third from left

In his own words….

March 18, 1944

The mission scheduled for this day was to target the group of Nazi fighter bases situated at the head of the Adriatic Sea, including Udine and the auxiliary fields surrounding it. A very successful raid had been executed January 31st, with our support fighters, P38s and P47s, flying the length of the Adriatic from near Foggia to the northernmost part of the sea at approximately ten-feet elevation. This strategy enabled us to elude the enemy’s radar and at that time effected quite complete surprise, catching the Messerschmitts and Fooke-Wulfes yet on the ground. A very brief period of time after our fighters had raised their havoc and departed, the heavy bombers of the 15th Air Force started dropping their bombs on these fields. Well over a hundred enemy fighters were destroyed.

The strategy of the January 31st raid was to be repeated on March 18th. In addition, the heavy bombers were to feint east, over Yugoslavia, to make it appear that they were heading towards Vienna, which had been the target the previous day. At the proper time, they would then turn left and approach the target from the north. Each group would then head for the particular air strip designated as its target.

The mission, while not exactly a milk run, was not felt by most to be a particularly hazardous one. I had been to Udine on two other occasions, and these had both been relatively easy missions.

We were awakened about four-thirty by the usual method of a whistle outside our tents. Starting the gas stove and dressing by candlelight in our tent was routine, as was the long jog to the mess hall for powdered eggs and coffee. Then came another jog in the still-dark, cold air to the group briefing room. The briefing room was actually part of a large house which had been requisitioned by the Air Force as headquarters.

During the briefing, the officers of the crew obtain information as to timing: time to start motors, time to taxi, take-off, and rendezvous with other groups, time over target, and time of return. There are pictures of the target, and a very complete description of the weather above, to, and from it. This weather information will have been obtained during the night by sending a fighter plane at high altitude over the target. Also, intelligence reports on the number of anti-aircraft guns to be expected, the likely number of fighters, and any other bits of pertinent information.

Then comes the ride by GI truck to the airport, which was about four miles away. The enlisted personnel are briefed on the airplane. On this particular mission, we had a bombardier and navigator in the group who had just arrived, and this was to be their first mission.

When I think back about whether there was anything peculiar or unusual about this sortie, I remember nothing in particular about the routine of grouping, or of leaving the coast of Italy.

We crossed the Adriatic on a northeast diagonal, and soon after crossing, in complete contrast to what intelligence had led us to expect, we were met by a number of fighters. Our position was neither unfavorable nor favorable as far as the formation was concerned, but the last ship in a formation is usually considered to be a sitting duck for fighters. I adjusted my assessment of the hazardousness of the mission immediately upon seeing fighters so early. I glanced at the clock. It was 9:45, exactly.

We were not supposed to be over any especially heavily guarded territory, and I was very surprised to see what looked like heavy flak bursts off our wing.

Then it came with a roar. It was a rocket shell fired from a Messserschmitt. It blew away the partition between the bombay and the cockpit, throwing our upper turret gunner on the floor. Also, it apparently hit our oxygen and oill valves, for a tremendous explosion and flame reached up into the cockpit. With an order to bail out, and after waiting to pull the crash buttons (IFF radar set, and bell-ringing apparatus) I started reaching into the flames to grab my parachute, which was tied to the back of my seat.

Seeing that it would be impossible to emerge by the instructed way, i.e., the bombay, I made my way below to the bombardier’s and navigator’s hatch. The turret gunner was already ahead of me. The parachute was of the snap-on type, and I had already gone through the motions in my sleep of how I would foul everything up if the split seconds were really ticking against me, but everything came in fine due order, and there was no foul-up here.

The fire was so hot and an explosion so imminent, that there was no choice but to jump immediately. I can see that a pondered thought on this might persuade one that maybe after all you better ride it out, but there was no time for pondering here.

And so…out.

It is just a matter of discipline to make yourself fall a long way. I had talked to boys that had been shot at while falling in parachutes, and I was sure I wanted none of that. At the same time, I was not sure of my judgment as to how far the ground was from me, and so eventually I pulled the cord. I don’t particularly recall my sensations while falling, but somehow I must have been able to think rationally, because I was conscious of these decisions being reached.

It is a damned well mean blow that the parachute gives you, as graceful as photographs tend to show it from a distance. But finally it tamed down and the oscillating ceased except for an occasional wind gust. I could count eight parachutes, but could not completely turn around. Also, I could watch our ship, the Sad Sack, come lower in its smoking dive. At that time, it seemed that I was actually being carried upwards by the air currents. Then the group of our planes following us came over.

This was a grandstand seat to a big air show. The Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts diving and climbing around the B-17s, machine gun and cannon bursts. I had free fallen about two-and-a-half miles, so I was not too concerned that they would come down on me.

And then you suddenly got a glimpse of the terrain below, and the thought struck you that you had better learn something about it, because this view was extremely temporary. Before I could make a time study, I could see that I was gaining on it at a helluva rate. Moreover, I seemed to be drifting into a sheer cliff. I tried what I remembered reading about guiding parachutes by pulling at one side of the rigging, but it seemed to do no good.

From 300 feet up, it was just a plunge, and then I was in snow up to my hips, and my parachute was rigged in a tree. Exhausted, winded, and emotionally numb, I pulled the parachute from the tree. Then I pulled out a cigarette.

It seemed hopeless and perhaps foolish to look for the others. None were within a mile of me, and this was heavy snow in the Alps. I should seek cover.

Below me, perhaps a half mile distant, was a house in the valley. As I smoked and studied everything about me, I could make out the figure of a man cutting outside of his house. He was busily engaged, and I had to assume that he did not know I was here, an assumption that was not easy for me to make. I looked at my watch. It was exactly 10:00. It had taken fifteen minutes for this whole thing to happen.

I was clothed in a regulation flying suit af a brown color, and I thought I would be better hidden below the snow line, so burying my parachute in the snow, I started climbing down from the mountain.

Quite a way down, I fell into a thicket of trees and bushes, which occurred to me as being a place to hide, at least temporarily. I unwrapped my escape kit, finding $48 in American money, a compass, some chewing gum, tow or three cloth maps, some benzedrine, some water purifier, some hard chocolate, and some medical tape.

Now I started to hurt. The flames had caught my face for long enough to raise blisters over most of it, burning off all my eyelashes and eyebrows in the process. It had also burnt the leg off my flying suit. In addition, a couple of ribs felt as if they were broken from the tug the parachute had given me.

Surprisingly enough, one of the emotions I felt was relief. This was the last combat mission I would be ordered out on, regardless of how things turned out later on.

Editor’s note: There seems to be a gap here in Lt. Lauterbach’s manuscript. From this point on, he is with another member of the group who, like him, has escaped the attack, but there is no explanation of how they met up.

March 19, 1944

The dugout was filled with snow. In line with the theory that it is utterly foolish to do anything in the first 48 hours after being down, we did not start a fire. I had a lighter which promised to be a source of fire for some time. (The lighter had been purchased by Zeb Jackson, who had been sent to Capri for a rest cure.) It was also enough to light the thirty or forty cigarettes that I had left. We talked about starting a fire, but I ruled against it. The smoke would be a tattle-tale to any searchers who might be out. So we huddled together like sheep, full of desperately cold shivers the whole night.

The decision, from a strictly safety standpoint, was to remain in this cove for two days. After that length of time, the hue and cry would likely have faded. Then we would have a greater chance of facing what open spaces were necessary to find someone who might be able to help.

During the night there was an intermittent repetition of machine gun bursts distinct enough to place them, I suspected, within one or two miles of us. It was difficult problem to figure out the reason for these, and the only two things I could attribute them to would be local partisan activity agains the Germans, or the training of German troops.

At about the first sign of dawn, church bells commenced ringing, and you had to know that in the valley the very old, the very young, and the women who had been spared the call of war, were being called to the Catholic church.

By this time, we were both so cold that we understood that if we stayed in this hole in the ground throughout the day and night, we should either commence to freezing to death, or would be so sick that it would be against all probabilities to make any progress. At any rate, capture, which might be expected in more cases than not, however we worked it, would be preferable to freezing to death.

So in the two hours after sunup, we pondered our course. The difficult fact was that we had more or less been dumped in the open, and outside of the knowledge that we were within the borders of Austria, Italy, or the Balkans, we had but two things that would allow us to approximate our position. One was our intended route. Another, the compass that was included in our escape kits.

We also had a map and a view of the outstanding mountains of these Julian Alps. There was one particular peak to the southeast that was especially impressive—snowcapped, and peaked. With the aid of the compass and cloth map, and with knowledge in my mind of the intended route of the group, I was able to spot our position quite closely. It did turn out that this position estimate was surprisingly accurate, considering the vague facts that induced the positioning.

So we crept stealthily from our hideout and over the hill on the other side of it. There was a brief valley…and then we commenced our first climb over mountains. This one had about two feet of snow on it and was heavily wooded with tall fir trees. It made for hard and slow going. About noon, we reached a ridge on top. This we followed for several hours, at length coming to a crest which either led to the left or to a valley straight ahead. On this crest there were several boulders twelve or fifteen feet high. We went to the sunny south side of these and lay down to rest, for our physical condition was none too good.

Now the 15th Air Force appeared in the sky. I don’t know where they were going, but I do know that we were joined later by several who were on this mission, for it turned out to be another costly sortie.

One odd thought that occurred to me to talk about someday was that they should make parachutes that were capable of soaring from the ground to airplanes as they were doing their usual stint.

We could catch a vast expanse of valley below and to the right of us. In the middle of the plain at the right and running parallel to our morning walk another plain intersected, and at this place there was a small village, containing about 25 dwellings, and complete with a tall Catholic spire from the church. The village was in the open, and it appeared quite impossible to approach it in any direction during sunup without being seen and recognized. The entire valley appeared green, and with spring approaching, it looked very lush to us; there was still a considerable amount of snow on the mountain.

Directly below us was a road running from our left (which we took to be the road to Yugoslavia) and to the right where the village was located. At various times during the afternoon we could see either a cart with animal and driver, or a soldier patrolling the road.

From our calculations we concluded that this road must eventually reach Yugoslavia, so we made our decision to walk it by night. Because we had been unable to sleep the previous night, we lay down in the sun, hoping to sleep, and intending to head right as soon as night fell. But sleep would not come, so later in the afternoon, we crept down the mountain, which was mainly bare of cover, to within a few yards of the road.

We had noticed signs reading “Forreste Militiare” and that, plus our experience in finding a dugout cave, convinced us that this was a training ground for troops, and we were more convinced when we composed ourselves beside this road, for my companion lay down on a hand grenade. I don’t know whether it was alive and good, but I do remember getting rid of it very cautiously.

We waited until dark. With no sleep, and with a damnable nervous tension, we waited. Now we had used all of our escape kit chocolate. There was some water purifier left, some gum, our maps, and our compasses. And benzedrine.

Now was the logical time for the benzedrine, so we took enough to keep us awake for the night, plus more.

When it commenced darkness, we took to the road. We walked nervously for an hour or two, without incident. At a crook of the road, we scouted stealthily and both believed we could see lights, as if from a station inordinately close to the road. With safety in mind, we decided to skirt this, leaving the road and taking to the hills at the left. We climbed high.

We both saw the campfire. We dove. It was actually far enough for us to have escaped their most watchful eyes and vigilant ears, but there we lay.

I don’t know whether it was the pressure of no sleep, the benzedrine, or the built-up tensions of months of combat flying and losses, but I have since resolved that the sounds we heard in the wood, and the figures we saw in the dark, were imaginary...though they were real enough that night.

We decided that we didn’t really know where we were going. that we were not going to be able to explain ourselves to anyone who would ask, and above that, would not be able to choose our time and place unless we operated during daylight with a great deal of caution.

So, being very chilly, we skirted the road with the idea in mind of climbing the mountain we had descended that afternoon, finding the large rocks, and building a fire behind them.

But the way up the mountain was so much more difficult than coming down had been! Finally, it became so difficult that we would force ourselves to take thirty steps up, then lie down and rest. Eventually it became apparent that we wouldn’t make it at all.

Now some wild animals started rushing in our vicinity. I have since decided that they must have been wild boars. These did not frighten us much, and as soon as we left their vicinity, we lay down, about halfway up the mountain.

March 20, 1944

We were again unable to sleep, due perhaps to the benzedrine we had taken earlier on the previous evening. As soon as the darkness faded sufficiently we moved down by the road so as to reconnoiter it before crossing it.

As this side of the mountain was the south side, there were only patches of snow, and when we were forced to walk through them, we walked backwards, thinking it might pay in case anyone tried to trail us.

We sat by the side of the road in a clump of bushes for perhaps half an hour and as nothing seemed to be moving around then, we got to our feet and dashed across the road into another clump of bushes on the other side. We had just gotten settled there when, from around a bend in the road about a hundred yards east, there came a German soldier, obviously on a patrol of the road. He came down the road and passed but a few feet from us. We held our breath, for we had forgotten to walk across the road backwards, and we were only too conscious of the mud tracks our flying boots had made. However, he passed us without taking notice. Then we observed that he was meeting another soldier coming in the opposite direction on the road. They met, stopped, smoked a cigarette, and we could hear them talking in guttural German. But what really aroused our fears was that the second solder was accompanied by a large dog.

While we lay frozen, they eventually parted, and the second soldier continued his way up the road in our direction. When he reached the tracks we had left on the road, he stopped and looked in our direction, scanning very closely. Our flying suits were an olive drab and blended with our cover almost to perfection.. The dog took no notice and eventually the soldier turned and continued his patrol.

I am certain that the reason for the patrol was to detect and capture U.S. flyers. That they did not succeed was only due to our good fortune.

We removed ourselves from the vicinity of that road by a series of jumps, running from one group of bushes to the next, diving into them, then waiting until we had checked that all was clear, picking our next objective, and repeating the operation again.

We passed quite near a farmhouse on one occasion and were nearly discovered there. The farmer was sawing wood in his yard and came after a timber just a few feet from our hideout. However, he did not see us.

By noon, we were almost exhausted. Also, we were very hungry. Neither of us was feeling well, and we were worried about catching pneumonia if we continued to expose ourselves to the elements at night. We noticed a small village only a few miles away and decided to find a place of shelter on the outskirts of that village, in a barn perhaps.

Our frame of mind now permitted us to take a more direct and vulnerable route than we would have considered before. We would follow hedgerows and fences if possible, but would also expose ourselves in the open if we thought it necessary to reach our objective, which was a place some distance from the village, where we could observe the village before nightfall The odds were so overwhelmingly against our escaping capture that all we were really doing was attempting to forestall this as long as possible.

We finally reached a spot that was in the proximate vicinity we had decided upon. There was a garden there, and we hoped that perhaps some kind of winter vegetables might be in the ground, but we had no luck in finding any.

After we had been in this spot for half an hour or so, we noticed a man with a team of horses and a cart leaving the village, and a wagon track sort of road led to a patch of ground some distance away. We watched him unload his cargo, then retrace his route back to the village. Some time later, he reappeared again and repeated the operation. He did this perhaps four or five times, and we decided that come dusk and his last load, we would approach him for assistance.

We crept up to the ground that he was treating. It was manure that he had been hauling to a garden. When he returned and had his load about half unloaded, we walked up to him.

He appeared quite frightened at first. Since neither of us could speak Italian more than enough to barter for eggs or vino, we did not attempt to explain our complicated situation to him in Italian. We repeated, “American flyers”, flapped our arms, and pointed to the sky. Also, we made motions to show him we were hungry.

He was still frightened. He shook his head, meaning, I guess, that he could do nothing for us. We stuck around. When he had completed unloading his cart, he turned around and headed for the village, and we followed him. Then he took hold of our arms and led us around the cart so it was between us and the village. We were both figuring that the odds were that he would turn us over to the Nazis once we got into the village, but now it looked like there was at least a chance that he might be trying to help us.

It was now quite dark. We went down a narrow street, still on the outskirts of the village. He stopped, went into a house, and presently returned with a woman. She pointed to a door and led us down into a basement. She lit a lamp and made signs that she would return, and she did, bringing with her a bottle of wine.

She poured us a glass full and made signs as if asking if we were hungry. We signed back, quite avidly, in the affirmative. She went upstairs again. It seemed to us that we had been very fortunate to find this place, and with the effects of the wine on our empty stomachs, we felt good for the first time. It seemed apparent that this woman would not turn us over to the Germans. At length, she reappeared with bacon and two eggs, which didn’t look like nearly enough for us, as glad as were were to get anything. But we were quite surprised to realize that this was all we were able to eat.

Before we were finished with the meal, two men entered the room. One could speak English brokenly. He said that he and some others would try to help us. They would find a place for us to sleep tonight. He told us there was a German patrol in the town right now, but that we would stay here until they had left. The other man had, in the meantime, left, and while we were still engrossed in what our English-speaking friend was telling us, he returned with four or five others. The lady whose house we were in also sent her children down. Others arrived. More wine was served. I remember a little girl pinned a stickpin on my flying suit. By the time the English-speaking friend had signaled that it was time to go, I made a count of the Italians in the room and there were 19! Our feelings of admiration and gratitude went to these brave people who had the fortitude to defy the Germans who held their country. And they did so even though we were still at war with this part of Italy, and that we ourselves had, just a few days prior, been bombing their cities.

There was quite a party that left the village. About ten of us, including two or three women. We had not yet been told where we were going, but at any rate it was a good two-hour jaunt. We suspected that we were going to some outlying farmhouse. Then we started climbing mountains. Eventually, the man in the lead stopped before some heavy bushes, turned, and pointed at them. A couple of men pulled the bushes aside and gestured for us to go in. We were astounded to see that behind these bushes was a large cave. We could see the outlines of its mouth, and we stepped in. I lit my lighter, and we saw the extent of it. The dimensions were roughly twenty by thirty feet, and straw covered the floor.

As soon as everyone was in, there was no time wasted getting ready for bed. We just picked a spot, gathered enough straw for a pillow and cover, and went to sleep. We now had our first sleep since Saturday morning.

March 21, 1944

We were awakened quite unwillingly, though we did not show it, shortly after dawn. Our man took us outside. The others were still sleeping when we left.

We started climbing higher in the mountains, climbing for a way, then descending, but always netting a higher altitude after each cycle. Now we found what sort of condition we were in. Our guide did not seem to tire at all, but he would patiently wait for us when we decided we had to rest.

We continued this all morning, and about midday we came upon a tent about the size of the U.S. Army’s perimeter tents. Outside, on the snow, lay a freshly killed deer.

Inside, we got our first look at the Partisans. They were seated around on their bunks. I would estimate that there were about 25 of them. In the center of the tent was a fire with a large iron kettle full of meat and vegetables. Rifles and machine guns were scattered about the tent.

They motioned for us to sit down. Our man, however, declined and stated that he had to leave. We shook his hand and thanked him profusely. They gave him a bowl of food and he departed.

No one of that group could spak English. However, as we were there for some time, we did indulge in quite a bit of sign language, most of which was meaningless to the other party. I remember that I would answer “buono” to about anything they would try to convey to me, and one of them, in a humorous mood, pointed to me and said “buono” and they all laughed.

They spent quite some time singing, and it was good music. Then we ate, and they insisted on filling us up, which we needed badly, and we appreciated it as only truly hungry people can.

We were assigned a guide, and in the afternoon took off for another unknown destination. He made us understand that we would cross the frontier between Italy and Yugoslavia that afternoon. The snow was quite deep, making walking difficult.

As we approached the boundary fence, our guide left us to reconnoiter. He returned, and we followed him. We made the actual crossing through a wooden pillbox on the boundary fence by climbing into the pillbox and down on the other side.

We arrived at another village about dark and were assigned to a house. Then we were taken to an inn and fed. A man there asked for our identification papers. We gave him all we had, and he typed up passes for us. We never had any use for these after the next day. Then this man took us to the back room of the inn and asked us if we recognized the guns on the floor.

They were US 50-caliber machine guns of the same type as were on our B-17. He said that our aircraft had crashed near this village and the Partisans had recovered the guns and ammunition from it. We asked if he knew anything about other members of our crew. He said that two had been here yesterday. He said they were going to try to get us together. He told us that the Partisans held this village now, but the Germans could take it any time they wanted to, and the Partisans would just move into the hills and attack the Nazis whenever they had them outnumbered.

As to what happened to the rest of our crew, he did not know.

We returned to the house that we were to sleep in that night and went to bed.

March 22, 1944

We slept late this morning, and when we did arise, we thanked our hostess, and returned to the inn where we had eaten the night before. There we had a good breakfast.

An elderly woman approached us and told us that she had lived in the U.S. and had a daughter there. She gave me a letter to post if we ever got to the states. She said that they had been unable to communicate for several years now. She gave us a pound of butter.

About noon, a horse drawing a sleigh appeared outside the inn. The driver placed us in the rear of the sleigh, covered us with blankets, and we were off on another leg of our journey.

During the early part of the afternoon, we saw many Nazi planes circling the territory. At about two o’clock, we reached another small village. Two Partisan soldiers took us from the sleigh and into a large office room. Here we were interrogated, I guess in order to establish without doubt that we were not German spies traveling as downed airmen in order to learn the details of the underground. We were asked by a man who described himself proudly as an intelligence officer questions such as what bombing mission we had been on, what type of aircraft we flew, the bomb load capacity of our airplane, etc.

Then we re-boarded the sleigh and continued. My cigarette inventory was just about depleted, but at one small village, our driver told me cigarettes could be purchased at one of the inns. I brought three packs.

Around four o’cock, we came to another small village where a large group of men came out to meet us. They said that in the building, I could meet the German pilot who had shot me down. This seemed to me utter nonsense, but when they asked if I would like to see him, I said I would.

We entered a large room, and they brought forth this captive. He was very short and his face looked like a caricature of the typical kraut. An interpreter was furnished, and we talked for about half an hour. He showed me snapshots of his brother fighter pilots at their base sunning themselves in beach chairs surrounded by ME 109 fighters. He described the time, our place in the formation, and the location near enough that it could easily be true that he was the one that had shot us down He said he had been shot down about ten minutes afterwards.

He told the interpreter on the side that he was surprised by our looks. U.S. flyers were being described as gangsters who resembled apes, and I think he was also genuinely surprised that we could act civil towards him. He gave me his German pilot’s wings, which I still have, and he said he was lucky, because the war was over for him.

I later found out how lucky he actually was.

The driver of the sleigh had reached his destination here. Another guide was furnished and we again took to the mountains. We ate at a small farmhouse, and after walking until about eight p.m., came to a large house situated by itself at the top of a mountain.

We walked in, and there was Cliff Magnusson and Smitty. My God, we were glad to see them, and they us! They had been there for a whole day before we arrived.

Of course we rehashed all of our individual stories, and they were quite similar. When I told Magnusson about the German pilot who claimed to be the one who had shot us down, he said that he had been told that this man was being held captive, but they had not seen him.

They told us that this was a way station of the underground system, that they had stayed here alone the night before, and the only man who seemed to have anything to do with the place was a part-time Partisan. This fellow soon appeared. He was a powerfully built blonde, and he could speak a little English. He told us about some of the projects that the Partisans were engaged in locally, such as the blowing up of railroads, and the ambush of small numbers of German troops. We asked about the large numbers of villages that were apparently “safe” in this vicinity. He said that the activity of the Partisans made it safe for the Germans to occupy any village unless they occupied it in large numbers. Their practice was to “capture” these villages temporarily, about every six months, loot them of food, livestock, poultry, and valuables, and then withdraw, taking all able-bodied males with them.

I told him about seeing the German pilot. He said he knew about that, and that they planned on killing him tomorrow. I must have registered repulsion at the idea, for he stated that neither the Germans nor the Partisans took each other’s prisoners, and there was no place to keep them anyway. Also, they had killed their own badly wounded men rather than letting them fall into the hands of the Germans.

This was a two-story house, and we later climbed upstairs and went to bed.

Editor’s note: The narrative ends abruptly here, and I am left with many questions about Lt. Lauterbach’s life and events that followed. But I am grateful to his daughter, my dear friend Teresa Ann Lauterbach, for sharing this with us. His attention to details makes the experience tangible in ways I would never have thought about. I believe it haunted him for the remainder of his days, but he and his wife June raised a beautiful family, and I also understand that he was recognized as a hero, and he surely knew he had made a difference. I’ll try to learn more and add to this, but in the meantime, I am honored to host it on our website as a tribute to him and all the brave men and women who fought for democracy. We must never forget that we dwell in the light of their sacrifices.

What I Saw by Christine Beebe

I'm driving along the rugged California coast on my way to visit my friend Cynthia.  She's a talented writer whose dedication to her craft and enthusiasm for life has again beckoned the Gaviota Writers to come together for a morning of sharing, connection, and rejuvenation.  

We are a small but varied group and as we arrive, we'll exchange greetings and mingle.  Some will hug and others might be introduced as newcomers, then we'll settle in under the sheltering sprawl of a gnarled oak tree.  We'll take turns reading aloud the words we've each crafted into a story, an essay, a memoir or a song, and time will begin to slow.  There will be trust, appreciation and acceptance, as we listen closely to stories that are often deeply personal, exposing vulnerable bits of our humanity, reminding us that we're not alone on this conflicted planet.

A moody gray sky is hovering low this morning over a steely sea, and I slowly navigate the twisty road as it dips in and out of small canyons.  I veer around potholes and pass a sign that cautions:  "Cattle on Road."  Thick tendrils of fog reach up the cliffs from the ocean below and drift slowly across the road.  I ease through a sharp blind turn, and suddenly I'm upon them.

Three hulking black steers fill my windshield, and the sight of them causes me to inhale and brake sharply.  They are plodding deliberately in single file along the edge of the pavement, and they appear identical.  Their mud-caked hooves move in unison and their lowered blocky heads swing from side to side, as if choreographed.  Steam rises from their hairy hides and disappears into the fog. 

I don't stop, yet each detail remains inked into my vision.  It's not that I'd come close to hitting them, or even that I'd been unprepared. It's something else . . . it feels like an omen.  Three.  Not two, not one, but three.  In a perfect line, head to tail, as black as obsidian.  

I glance repeatedly into my rearview mirror even after they're out of sight, but by the time I turn onto Cynthia's road, I've forgotten them.  

Hours later, when the last of our group's written words has been spoken aloud and our gathering has ended, I head for home.  I brake at the stop sign where the road T-bones into the 101 Freeway.  I focus on my left turn across two lanes of speeding southbound traffic as it approaches from around a bend, then visualize where I will merge into the lanes of speeding northbound traffic.  

And now I'm moving north in tandem with cars and big rigs and horse trailers, away from the ocean and through the abrupt dark blink of the Gaviota Tunnel.  The freeway climbs over the pass and descends into the valley, between undulating hills of stubborn chapparal and ancient oaks.  

I'm driving fast in the slow lane, feeling light and blissful and a little more hopeful about everything in general.  It was a delightful morning, the sun has just emerged, and the afternoon seems full of possibilities.  

***

In my reverie, gaze fixed on the horizon, I don't register what I see until I've already passed it.  A dark shape in the dirt, in the weedy stubble at the very edge of the asphalt.  At first, I'm not sure what I've just seen.  But now my mind is reconstructing it, and I begin to see an image appearing and sharpening - like my black and white photos emerged many years ago when I swirled them in a bath of chemical developer.

And now I know it was a human being, a man, sitting hunched low to the ground, a grayish-black hoodie pulled down over most of his face.  He was motionless, facing the traffic, close enough to feel a slipstream slap from every passing car. 

I hurriedly voice-dial 911, but the operator begins to sound bored as soon as I describe the man and his location.  He's homeless, she tells me, and they've received calls about him before.  I find myself breathlessly repeating to her how dangerously close he's sitting to the edge of the freeway, but she remains unimpressed.  She'll send an officer out to check on him, she says.

As I continue my journey home, I can't stop thinking about the man.  How did he get out there in the open countryside in the first place?  What was his story?  

And then I have an unplanned mental segue, and find myself revisiting my African safari from several years ago.  My Tanzanian guide Isaac noticed how much time I was spending behind the viewfinder of my fancy new camera.  "Just LOOK at the animals," he whispered to me.  "Don't take so many pictures!  Use your eyes!"

When I took his advice, a large family of elephants materialized before me there in the shade of a monstrous baobab tree.  I could hear them, smell them, and see their trunks swinging, ears fanning, mothers nurturing their fragile babies.  They were wild and free.  I was witnessing a scene as timeless as Africa itself, and I wept from the intensity of emotion that swept over me like a tsunami.

As Mary Oliver wrote: "Pay attention.  Be astonished.  Tell about it." 

That man beside the freeway.  What was he looking at?  Did his view of the world ever give him joy or cause him to catch his breath in amazement? Could he tell someone about it?  Would anyone ever listen?

And then I inexplicably find myself remembering those three black steers, focusing on the path directly ahead of them, lumbering into a future they could never anticipate.

Spoken Word, Performed by Roderick Wright

I recently had the pleasure of meeting former California State Senator Roderick Wright, who seemed a kind of Renaissance man. An astute political analyst, an insightful cultural observer and commentator, and a gifted storyteller, he is someone I hope to interview in the future for this website. In the meantime, however, he gave me permission to share this cell phone video of his recitation of a touching and powerful poem about homelessness. The poem was written by Oscar Brown Jr. (1926 – 2005) an American singer, songwriter, actor, playwright, poet, and civil rights activist. Senator Wright’s compelling delivery brings the poem to life, and its topic is as relevant as ever. We are honored to share it here.

Swimming With Audrey Sutherland

Author’s Note: The remarkable Audrey Sutherland (February 11, 1921 – February 23, 2015) was an American solo adventure traveler, kayaker, teacher, and author. I met her in 2010, when she was nearing her ninetieth birthday, and wrote this article about the experience.

“I like being solo in the wilderness,” says Audrey Sutherland, and it’s as simple as that. She sits on the wooden deck of her house on Hawaii’s North Shore, a six-foot inflatable kayak at her feet, the sea within view. In a few months she will be 90 years old, but she’s still sharp and capable, and her smile is dazzling. Having read her book, Paddling My Own Canoe, about her solo adventures paddling in that kayak beside the ocean cliffs of the Molokai coast on 12-foot seas and giant waves, I feel as though I am meeting a legend, but she couldn’t possibly be more welcoming and friendly. I love her even more when I notice that she is wearing a bit of eyeliner and pink lipstick, a charmingly feminine touch of vanity in a woman who has led an epic life in the great outdoors.

So here I am on my quest to say yes, approaching 60 with a desire to live life more fully and be a little braver – how could I not be in awe of this woman? And I hadn’t even known there was a sequel to Molokai. It turns out that when Audrey was 60, she became intrigued with the “total wilderness” of Alaska’s Inside Passage and decided to retire early and explore it in her trusty little kayak. Alone. Little by little, in the course of two decades, right up to her early 80s, she managed to cover 8,000 miles of Alaskan and British Columbian coastline. Her dining room tabletop is a glass-covered map of Alaska with the portion she kayaked meticulously outlined in black felt-tipped pen.  On the shelves behind it are sharks’ teeth, shells, journals, and books.

“You’re an inspiration,” I tell her, though I know she’s heard that before.

“You just have to know what you want,” she says. She has no fear of being alone, none whatever.  She tells us that she saw thirty-one bears in the course of her Alaska travels, all close, within a hundred yards.

“Bears judge by smell,” she explains. “They know I am a female without cubs. Not a threat. But they're curious, and wary. I’d tell them, ‘I’m just a harmless Caucasian female, nothing of interest to you.’ One time I was writing in my journal and I heard a sound and there was a bear just thirty feet away. ‘What are you doing so close?’ I asked the bear. We were both curious and wary.”

She points to her famous kayak and offers Linette and me a chance to go out and paddle in it. And here I must confess to Audrey that I cannot swim, and that I’m afraid of the water.“

It makes sense to be afraid of the water,” she says, and I immediately feel a little smarter. “But I can teach you how to swim. It’s really very simple. Three steps: the kick, the arm stroke, the breathing. The breathing’s the hardest. But we’ll break it down. You don’t have to do it all at once. We’ll go down to the quiet water, and we’ll start where you can keep your hands on the bottom and kick, and then we’ll go to where it’s waist-deep. Come back tomorrow. I can teach you.”

What do you say when Audrey Sutherland offers to teach you how to swim? It’s like wanting to get started in Buddhism and the Dalai Lama says he’ll give you a few tips.

She chose a mask that I could wear for the lesson and said she'd find a bicycle tube to wrap around my middle. (There was some comfort in the thought of that bicycle tube when she mentioned it, but I didn't even end up using it.) She reiterated the three steps we would cover and asked us to meet her at around 10.

"Are you sure?" I asked

.And she said yes.

"Okay. I'll do it. I'll try. But if you change your mind in the morning, it's okay. I'll understand."

And she said, "I won't change my mind."

There was no turning back. I was so nervous, I called Jeanne, and I know exactly what Jeanne told me because it was so poetic, I wrote it down: "Just remember you came from water. The water will embrace you. The water will hold you."

That night Linette called Audrey's son Jock just to make sure everything was set. "Did you guys find that bicycle tube?" she asked.

"I've got a motorcycle tube," he said.

"Should we go to the temple and pray?" she asked.

"We've already done that," he said.

I did not sleep well that night.

My swimming lesson with Audrey was well-documented; Linette stood on the shore and took 127 digital images of the proceedings.  Most of the time there isn't much to see, and often it just looks like some sort of baptism is taking place, with a white-haired priestess standing above a woman who is prone in the water and partially submerged, but I thought you deserved at least a glimpse or two after all this build-up. So there we are above, at the quiet water, and I am still vertical at this point, but in well over my knees. Are you impressed?

Audrey was very systematic in her approach. First step involved me lying face-down in the white fringe of surf with my face in the water, hands on the bottom, getting used to things, learning to turn my face, hold my breath, breathe. I know -- it sounds so ridiculously basic. Soon I had to forfeit the security of touching the ground; we moved out to slightly deeper water and practiced kicks and strokes, and just as Audrey said, the breathing was the hardest. At one point I swallowed a big gulp of salt water that reminded me of the stuff they make you drink the night before your colonoscopy, and I didn't like that very much, but I was trying to be a good sport, very cognizant of the fact that not only was my instructor 89 years old, she was also Audrey Sutherland!

We went out further. Well, actually, when I look at the pictures, we weren't very far from shore, but it was deep and distant enough for me.  And then there came the business of leaning back and trusting the water to hold me up.  And not just any water -- this was ocean. I was, in a word, scared. But as you can see, I did it.  Yes, that's me. Floating.

Briefly, ever so briefly, I was buoyant. The sounds of the world receded and I felt myself suspended in a watery realm, separate and solitary. I did not feel embraced, but I was lightly held, and happy not to be sinking, although the possibility of sinking was never entirely banished from my mind.

It has been proven, however, that I float.

And I did go out to sea.

And I felt a special bond with Audrey. We are thirty years apart in age, almost exactly, and I'll never be as brave as her, that's for sure, but she is proof that there are different ways of moving through the decades.

"Three more lessons," she told Linette afterwards, "and she'd be swimming."

The Immensity

I have often felt there is a lack of ceremony in my life, that rites of passage to mark transitions are missing. Difficult events exert their crushing weight without the emotional release some kind of ritual might have provided, and the procession of years moves forward without pause or punctuation. I was therefore especially intrigued when a friend invited me to go with him for a hike that would mark his symbolic entry into elder-hood. We would be accompanied by three other companions, one of them a wise and gentle Chumash elder who would serve as our guide.  But whether it involved a ceremony or not, an opportunity to walk in the backcountry with people who know where they are going sounded wonderful to me, and yes is what I said.

It was a long drive and we started out early, winding along mountain roads to a campground at the edge of a wilderness area where we met our Chumash guide. We walked along a gently rising trail through oak woodland, stands of pine and fir trees, and fragrant chaparral. Along the way there were thickets of vibrant green grass and bursts of colorful wildflowers, and we soon descended into a sandy creek bed, which we followed for some time. The wonders of the wilderness unfolded before us, and every now and then our guide would stop to call our attention to a shift of environment and a different and palpable energy field, instructing us to acknowledge it and to enter with a spirit of attentiveness and gratitude.

Occasionally he paused to adjust the leg brace he was wearing to support his dodgy knee, but these too were teachable moments. "Getting older slows us down," he said, "but when we slow down, we notice things. That's one of the gifts of being an elder...we are allowed to slow down and notice. And when we notice, we acknowledge the spirits. We say thank you. We approach with the right attitude: humble, appreciative, and mindful."

He further explained that it is our responsibility as elders to become the best versions of ourselves that we can be. We must be good examples to others, and we must pass along what we have learned. One of the perks, apparently, is that elders have the right to scold. But scolding is not just venting and expressing disapproval; it is a means of correcting and teaching. We should make it count.

Also, "cherished ancestral wounds" do not justify bad behavior. That's the phrase he used, and I like it, because I think we all have wounds we sort of cherish rather than heal, and we masochistically dwell on them when we should be moving on. Forgiveness is the remedy, including forgiveness of self, although this certainly isn't easy to implement.

It happened to be Good Friday, which someone mentioned in passing. "It sure is a good Friday," said our guide. He had some thoughts about the Catholic church, too: "There's an emphasis on the birth of Christ, the death of Christ, and the resurrection of Christ, but not enough on the life of Christ, on really what it means to live a life of genuine kindness, forgiveness, and love."

And here we were, surrounded by beauty in the church of the outdoors, and this was our sermon for the day. Forgiveness again. And love.

"Everyone needs to feel that they have a purpose," he added. "And everyone does have a purpose, but they don't always see it. One of the best things we can do for someone is to help them find their purpose." He told us a story (one of many stories he shared along the way) about how he had helped bring peace of mind to a hardcore criminal regretfully nearing the end of his days by showing the man that his life had not been wasted, that in fact he had provided the crucial service of being a bad example to others.

"Everything in the universe has its purpose," he continued. "Every insect, every pebble, every snowflake...and each is part of the greater whole. All things are connected. We belong to this vast and wondrous universe, and it belongs to us."

"We must recognize the immensity of our being," he said.  The immensity of it. (It's a concept I am still pondering.)

He spoke too of his belief that we are at a hopeful moment in time, a hugely transformative moment. Opportunities exist that we could not have imagined. Changes are even now happening, good ones. And why not? I allowed his lofty optimism to displace my usual anxiety for the time being.

We walked further. We stopped at a bush of white sage, touched its leaves, smelled its aroma on our fingertips, said thank you, and continued. Sometimes there were fragments of conversation in the air, sometimes just the sound of our steps on good ground.

I heard a canyon wren. We saw a hummingbird darting about the flowers, a dragonfly hovering near, butterflies and red-tail hawks, the distinctive paw prints of a mountain lion, and bees setting their example of cooperative industry for the common good, just by bee-ing.

At a few special points our guide gathered us together. "This is a portal," he said. "Can you sense it?" And indeed we did, for the world at these junctures subtly transformed itself, humming and vibrating at a deeper level, shining more brightly, revealing itself in spellbinding clarity and detail.

Eventually we saw a distinctive rock formation looming on the horizon ahead.  "What you are seeing," said our guide, "is a space ship to another dimension." Those with the right attitude and perspective are welcome to board, he explained.

We approached.  Our guide cautioned us that the rock has absorbed the sorrow of many ancestors, and sometimes it is painful to touch. He said he had seen a visitor unexpectedly break into sobs as he placed his hand on it.

We each spoke silently to the rock, touched it, and felt its ancient heat. At first I felt sad, which is still my default state, although  I couldn't tell if the sadness was personally mine or some residue of humanity's collective heartache. I didn't know what to say except how deeply sorry I am, and I meant it with all my heart, and how I wished there could be release from the suffering and a beautiful outcome, even if I can't see it.  

I also expressed my thanks, of course, and my hope that I might be worthy and wise in this latter section my life, finding and being light.

But then a kind of giddiness crept in, beginning with an overwhelming sense of gratitude about being there. It felt deliciously implausible, as indeed my whole life is, but all of that delicious implausibility seemed to crystallize in the moment. It was absurd and timeless and wonderful. It was a very good time for not-thinking.

I was content to go no further. I am not one of those agile, sure-footed people who climb rocks and ascend to great heights. I told my friends that I would happily wait below while they went up to the top of the rock formation. There followed a bit of gentle coercion, peer pressure, and physical force, in equal parts.  One companion tied a rope around my waist and another pulled me up the rock's steep surface.

There was a beautiful pool at the top, and pale grass, and more rock sculpture forming a sort of bowl within which we sat and felt the earth's embrace. We took off our shoes and socks and stood in the water, and there was talk about what it means to be an elder, and about navigating life, and how good it felt to be right where we were.  Our guide sang a song to us, a kind of chant that reverberated against the rocks.  We ate whatever snacks each of us had carried, took some pictures, felt the wind and the sun.I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I never set the rope down and I never entirely forgot that I would have to get back down, and getting down turned out to be even more terrifying than getting up. I wanted to face outward, but I was told to lean in facing the rock.

"Be a lizard!" our guide kept instructing me, which was not really that helpful, and I honestly couldn't figure out what to grab hold of or where to place my feet, and I froze. I finally saw that I had no choice but to either stay and die there or allow someone to yank me by the rope and catch me. I still don't quite know how the removal of me was achieved, but oh, the abandon it required! And the trust in someone else's strength!  I suppose this too was a lesson.

Somehow I was down, and I'll never do that again, but it was worth it. I will never forget the pleasure and beauty of that place on the rock, and the whole experience, including the challenge of getting up and the terror getting down. Apart from any ceremony, the journey was in its own way transformative. Maybe I am an elder now. Or almost.

Then came the hike back, long stretches of just quietly walking, the light shifting on the mountains, colorful wildflowers and grasses, the fragrance of sage and chaparral, the murmur of the creek in deep places, its water spilling over rocks, glistening in the sunlight.

I wonder what I have brought back with me, and what I will give back. I have been noting my surroundings more carefully and consciously since returning, recognizing changes in environment, acknowledging and thanking unseen forces. And I do like the idea of talking to the ancestors, of including the presence of passed souls in my life in a more positive and participatory way. (When I mentioned this to our guide he said, "Whether you do that or not, they're there.")

I also carry the knowledge that I am capable and strong and occasionally brave, not only because I keep trudging along, but because I can trust in the strength of another to help me when I am stuck. And I'm diligently aspiring to fulfill the role of an elder and be a good example. I'll try to scold selectively and with kindness, and I'll try to keep learning, because I still feel far from wisdom and peace, if indeed peace is attainable.

But my biggest insight has been a realization of how limited and secular my ways have become, how small my field of vision, how mundane and concrete I tend to be. I have emerged with a greater openness to the spiritual and non-rational aspects of existence. And there is a place in my head that wasn't there before...that I can return to at will.  Maybe I am beginning to sense what our guide means by the immensity.

A Man of Many Gifts: Rim Kaminskas

I recently heard about the passing of a remarkable man, Rim Kaminskas. He was a brilliant, creative, and generous soul, perhaps best known for a homebuilt single-engine, single-seat biplane called the Jungster, first flown in 1962. But there was so much more, and I’ll let the stories about him speak for themselves. I’ll start with a piece I wrote several years ago about a beautiful grandfather clock he made from the wood of a fallen oak tree and presented as a gift to the Ranch. Afterwards, I shall post in the reminiscences of one of his friends and kindred spirits, a man named Ken Vadnais.

The Gift of a Grandfather Clock

One Monday morning in April, Rim Kaminskas quietly brought a gift to the Hollister House: a grandfather clock that he lovingly built from the wood of a fallen Ranch oak. More than a timepiece, it is a work of art, a focal point in the room that is a gathering place for our community, and a symbol of the many unheralded expressions of creativity, care, and diligence that are happening around us as the hours of each day pass. It’s a thought that elevates.

Rim Kaminskas was born in Lithuania, as was his talented and dynamic wife Lili, but the two met in the United States, where both their families had emigrated. They have been married for nearly sixty years, traveled the world, had successful careers, and are the parents of three sons and a daughter. Rim is an engineer and a physicist, well known for his ability to solve problems. As his son Michael says, “He just gets interested in things. He sees how they work or finds a better way to do it.”

Rim’s father was a woodworker who built beautiful objects–including walnut clocks– to replace the things the family had left behind in Lithuania, and Rim learned the craft from him but soon found his own voice. A true Renaissance man, Rim has designed and built airplanes, biplanes, steam engines, furniture, lamps, toys, harps, cannons, candlesticks, teak bowls and boxes, gallery-worthy sculpture, and of course, grandfather clocks. “The clocks are probably a nod to my grandfather,” Michael says. “But the airplanes are totally my dad’s thing.”

Rim also makes kimchi, brews beer, propagates fig trees, sails, plays the accordion, swims daily, and is an aficionado of Dixieland jazz. His curiosity about the world is insatiable and his creativity unceasing. His pleasure comes purely from the process of figuring out how things work and building objects and contraptions that are both functional and beautiful. Ego and profit are not what motivate him, and he often gives his creations away.

Rim and Lili bought their parcel at the Ranch in 1989. Rim’s maternal grandparents had once owned a ranch in Lithuania that was lost to the Communists when the family fled, and much lore about it lingered. In a way, the Hollister Ranch property might be a replacement for the Kaminskas’ yearned-for Lithuanian ranch days.

“Well, for some of us, it was about the surf,” admits Michael. “But you’ll never see my dad at the beach…what really sold my dad on the ranch was that this house had a shop downstairs!”

It’s a shop that has been put to good use. And it’s a good example of what an interesting and versatile community we have here at the Ranch, this place where wonders abound and where, if we pay attention, we cannot help but be inspired.

“When that old oak came down, and my dad saw the beautiful sections that were revealed,” Michael says, “he knew he would use it somehow.”

Now it lives on as a grandfather clock. Come by the Hollister House and take a look at it.

And thank you, Rim, for your artistry and kindness.

Remembering Rim by Ken Vadnais

I got to know Rim when he joined us for sailing from time to time, and on one of those Thursday afternoon outings I mentioned I was interested in getting the plans for one of his airplane designs. He told me not to bother because he would give me an airplane if I wanted it. Of course I already had a Twin Commander, but I was intrigued. We made arrangements to meet at Chino airport where he owned a hangar. I flew down in my Commander and he drove from his home in Palos Verdes.

After landing we met at an agreed location on the ramp and he drove me to his hangar, one in a line of forlorn sheet metal buildings tinged with rust and secured by one of the oldest pad locks I have ever seen. The lock was balky but it finally opened with a creaky, screeching protest which reminded me of Jack Benny opening his basement vault in an old radio show. The hangar was stuffed full of flight hardware of various descriptions to the point that walking around was difficult and at times hazardous. Rim wanted to gift me a couple of experimental aircraft projects that he had built years before, each a unique Rim design and not the Jungster he was known for. In fact the two aircraft were obviously the product of thinking far beyond the Jungster, much refined and built for speed. One had gull wings, which gave it greater clearance off the ground so it could swing a bigger prop. I'm not sure when the aircraft were built and flown but he said they had both taken to the air at some point. They were now old projects that he had lost interest in, as his mind moved on to the next great idea, and they had thick coatings of dust on the wings. Both aircraft were a long way from flying condition (maybe an infinitely long way) and I declined his offer of them, thinking I was not up to the task of stepping into his large shoes. But we had a great time knocking around his hangar as he explained all the things he was working on and thinking about. He was one of those people that had thousands of ideas, all of them good ones, and not enough time or bandwidth to get them all out of his head.

Afterward we headed over to the legendary Flo's Café where over lunch I learned more about his life and career. On the way from the café back to my aircraft we drove by the Planes of Fame Museum, one of the best and biggest private air museums in the country. Out front, up on a pedestal, was a beautifully restored B17, our workhorse bomber of World War II. Rim told me he didn't like that airplane. I asked why, thinking he disliked some aerodynamic aspect of the design, but after a moment of hesitation he instead told me they didn't look as cool from the ground perspective when viewing the open bomb bay after releasing their load. He explained he had narrowly missed destruction a number of times during Allied air raids on the German towns where he and his refugee family were hunkered down at the end of the war. He described the over pressure from an exploding 500-pound blockbuster bomb as one of the most terrifying experiences of his life, and the consequent destruction it produced was horrific. To Rim, the B17 was an evil predator bent on killing him and his family, not a nostalgic symbol of victory.

Luckily for the rest of us that knew him as a friend, he survived the experience.

Rim was a self made man in every respect, having come to this country after the war with nothing of any value except a brilliant mind and a willingness to work hard. As it turns out, in America that is sufficient starting capital to accomplish extraordinary things. He loved this country and the many opportunities it offered a poor Lithuanian kid full of hopes and ideas. It gave him the possibility to find Lili, the love of his life, and raise his family, and to have an exciting, productive, rewarding career, make many friends, and live a happy life. Which he did.

He will be missed.

The Unclear Pool of Remember

Roma Lambert Mortensen is a retired nurse, teacher, and massage therapist. What refused to retire is her love of the written word. Starting in her late teens and ebbing and flowing between her childhood on the farm, her professions, and raising three children, her words streamed into poetry. Five years ago she joined the Otter Creek Poets and was encouraged to publish her first book: The Unclear Pool of Remember. Roma and her husband of over fifty years live in rural Vermont surrounded by fields and woods. For several years, they have been visiting elderly people in the community (currently via Zoom) to bring them music and song.

I was lucky to be given the gift of Roma’s book recently, and I was soon immersed in the fragments of her memories of growing up and growing old on a farm in Vermont. It’s a memoir in poems, and there is something dreamlike about the way details tumble forth, but our attentive Roma is present from childhood on, observing and documenting, viewing life with the wonder it is due. As the introduction states, “They [the poems] tell an incomplete story of people, places, and times that have fragmented into memories. But without these fragments, the people, places, and times would cease to exist at all.”

And that’s why I asked permission to share a couple of the poems here on the Living Stories Collective. It seemed so very consistent with what we strive to do: capturing stories before they vanish into forgetting, keeping alive the people we have known and loved, and seeking to retrieve wisdom from days gone by that might be useful now.

 Transformations

My Scottish grandmother fashioned

Intricate and colorful hand-sewn quilts

In patterns like baskets and butterfly wings. The

Cloth scraps were gleaned from Mom’s sewing

Sprees of blouses and skirts to lure sister and me

Out of comfortable farm clothes.

On sunny-summer Monday mornings Mom

Arranged wet laundry on the lawn to bleach.

Limp, worn towels and sullen washcloths,

grayish barn-socks and kitchen dish-towels

spotted with blueberry, grape and tomato were

stretched out on the grass forming

a patchwork pattern bordered by green.

By afternoon I was sent to the backyard

To fetch the sun-dry items.

Surprised, I paused. On the grass

under the kitchen window was a flock

of cloth butterflies with wings, showing

faded food-pattern tidbits and bodies, formerly

gray, now sunbathed toward dazzle.

My young hands folded cloth butterflies

And took sweet-smelling summer into our home.

Inspired, I picked up notebook, pen, sat at

my German grandmother’s tiny desk searching

for verse to create poetic wings.

Olfactory Ocean

Like Mom’s delicious beef-bone soup

gathered leftover vegetables,

Our family’s farm kitchen gathered odors.

Barn, cow, and faded manure scent wafted

from a waterfall of well-used jackets,

shirts, and hats which casually cascaded

from a line of steel coat hooks stretching from

behind the back door to the captain’s chair with

its worn-to-shiny seat and arms.

Floor cradled dry and drying footwear which

gathered around two coal-furnace vents,

who merrily broadcast like ocean spray

smells from all items within heat reach.

Harvest weeks added dusky-sweet perfume

from hay-chaff or fresh-cut corn stocks,

or later the worked tang of corn silage.

Clean-up days had the sharp alert of Pine-Sol

on wet linoleum or the bite of bleach

lingering around Mom’s gray wringer-washer.

Rolling in from the daily wave of meals

was the aroma of Mom’s creations:

fresh spareribs in her secret BBQ sauce, mouth-

watering clover-leaf cinnamon buns, or salt

pork caressed by spicy bubbling yellow-eye

beans baked on low all day, witness to many

covert taste tests.

Older, I ride with friends past a farm

And listen to derisive remarks about the smell

Coming from behind a spreader and tractor.

I smile. A beloved vision floats in:

Our farm, Mom’s fragrant kitchen, and

Our family gathered around the dinner table.

A slice of warm, savory homemade bread

is in my hand, and Mom with shining eyes

passes me her wild strawberry jam.

Get It Done

Get the hay in before it rains.

Get barn chores done before breakfast.

Get the cows. Milking starts at 5 p.m. sharp.

Barefoot I gallop from the barn

on my pretend horse,

gitty up, gitty up,

down the farm-field road,

dip under the one rail gate,

and ride past the prickly bushes.

At the top of the hill I stop.

below me cow paths wind between rock,

stone, daisies, buttercups,

and occasional anthill.

Come booooss,

I walk halfway down the hill.

Come booooss. Come booooss.

Down by the swamp two, three

Black and white heads lift.

Come booooss.

The old Holstein with the broken horn

starts toward the hill. The rest

follow in ragged columns of cow.

They plod up the worn paths.

Behind, I urge them faster.

A frisky trouble-maker breaks rank.

I dash across the hill after her

and trip, fall, pain, tears.

My reddening toe bends in,

starts to swell. More tears.

Finally I’m up, limp after the cows.

They’re milling at the gate. I open it.

They file into the barnyard and then barn.

I stumble in, see Dad,

white grain-store hat brim

Work-brown and wet-rimmed.

Sweat drips from his chin onto his

bare chest, hair flecked with dirt, chaff.

He looks up, brow furrowed. You’re late.

Readers who would like to order a copy of The Unclear Pool of Remember can do so here. 

One Shoe Boys

A Story by Jim Brady

Prologue

Helloooo. Anyone over there? 

Can anyone hear me? 

I can hear and see you. But you can’t. Maybe ya’ll are going deaf or blind.

Well, I was once, too, in those final years, before I became dead.

But now I’m a would have been a one-hundred-years-old spirit today. Yessiree you young still-alive whippersnappers, I may be gone, but I’m still here.

_______________________

Introduction

In case someone’s hearing, I’ll pretend someone is. Or maybe I’ll just talk to myself, which is pretty much the same thing.

You see, I’ve got some out loud thinking to do, so just bear with me. 

1

First of all, what a load of horse shit it is that as we grow older we grow wiser and have more answers to the big questions about life. Questions like, Why? How come? Says who? What gives? What if? What’s up?  WTF?

Trust me on that: I’ve been there and come out here on the other side, and all that search for answers and meaning of Life, with a couple of wanderings in the wilderness seeking wisdom….well, life sent me back a lot of questions with postage due, ‘addressee no longer lives here’ type of responses. Return to sender.

2

So, where was I?  Not having to deal with a decrepit body on the corporal plane of existence sure gives an old timer a boost of energy, but it doesn’t seem to help with memory.

Oh yeah. Questions.

My Main Question for pondering recently is…..

I wonder what happened to the two boys with one shoe? 

3

That might not make sense without some context.

You see, there was a  time when the former me returned to South Africa during the end of apartheid with some educators to meet and advise the new ministry of education people, and then I went by myself next door to Mozambique for a visit. The dust hadn’t quite settled yet from their twenty-five years of post-Colonial revolution and complicated series of civil wars. What a mess. Not to mention AIDs arriving and decimating the population. 

Whoops, sorry about that mental memory meandering. 

So, back in Mozambique, there’s land mines.  Blown-up and upside-down tanks and Toyotas and airplanes here and there, and a lot of likewise blown-up amputees on crutches. (My most memorable quote from a local resident:   “While we’re walking on this path, just be sure to step on someone else’s footprints; if they were ok, you probably will be, too.”)

4

So, I’m down along the shoreline of Lake Malawi dropping off a couple of large sacks of maize seeds and wheat flour for a community living around a mostly roofless church, a church lacking in pews and crucifixes, but with plenty of mortar holes and gunfire pockmarks in the walls. 

Two young boys appear in ragged shorts and t-shirts to help carry the 50kg bags from truck to church. The boys are smiling, from an inner-distance, with eyes that look too far beyond their years. And they’re barefoot. Sort of, mostly barefoot. Three of their four feet are bare at any given moment. What they do have is one shoe, which they share back and forth, each to the other, right to left,  One kid wears the shoe for a few minutes, then the other guy gets it. 

 5

 Back to the Question: 

The Question with no answer is: whatever happened to those two boys and their one shoe? 

Bigger Question:  why did what happened to them in their lives, happen to them? 

I got no answer for that, and I’ve even asked around this post-life spirit world to see if those two boys are around anywhere, so I can ask them.

But nope, no boys, no answers.

____________________

Epilogue

Shit. It seems we don’t even get answers to Life’s Big Questions on this side of the afterlife.

But I’ll keep asking.

She Ran Past Mystic Lake (by Christine Elizabeth Beebe)

My Great-Grandmother Elizabeth Schlador was born in 1881 on a ranch in Bittercreek, Texas.  She was the first of Samuel and Maria Schlador’s ten children.  The ranch was located along the route of the great Texas cattle drives, and cattle ranching was her father’s business.  The family home was a large two-story adobe with verandas on all sides, mulberry trees, and a fireplace outside where the family would shuck and cook corn.  I remember hearing Elizabeth describe these details with clarity even though she left Texas when she was a child. 

She lived for 102 years, a wise and stalwart family matriarch, and she often told me tales from her long-ago past.  There was one story in particular that she told many times, although her words would falter and catch with each telling.  She usually started by closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. 

“I ran as fast as I could,” she’d begin, with a slow shake of her head.  But as I would listen to her, I could hardly imagine this well-padded ancient woman, who could barely rise from her wingback chair unassisted, ever having run anywhere.  Had she really ever been young?  As long as I could remember, she’d always been old.

“It was ten miles to town and I ran the whole way,” she’d continue, and I would sometimes glimpse a brief mirage image of a wisp of a girl in long skirts, legs propelling her down the road.  And then the young girl’s face in my imagination would be replaced with the old woman’s deeply crevassed dumpling visage, the girl’s slim legs morphing back into the swollen blue-veined pillars in support stockings before me.

“I ran till I had no more breath left in me,” she would say, “and still I ran.”

When Elizabeth was five years old, she moved with her family from Texas to the sleepy pueblo town of Los Angeles. Her father built a hotel on Broadway, near the terminus of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Station. When trains arrived, he met visitors from the East and drove them to his hotel in a horse-drawn carriage. He reportedly enjoyed being a “man about town” in his black top hat and tuxedo, but her mother didn’t appreciate having to stay behind at the hotel, scrubbing floors and managing the children. Elizabeth was called upon regularly to help her mother clean hotel rooms and care for her younger siblings.

The hotel was a success and the family continued to grow, but within a few years, an old injury began to trouble her father. Back in Texas, he’d accidentally shot himself in the leg while herding cattle, and the wound had never fully healed. Doctors now wanted to amputate, but there were rumors of a valley called Moreno east of Los Angeles that was renowned for its therapeutic hot springs. In 1897, he decided to move his large family there, where he would return to his ranching roots and attempt to heal his infected leg in the curative waters.

He acquired 300 acres in Moreno Valley, land that had once been part of the major Spanish land grant called Rancho San Jacinto Nuevo, and the Schlador family journeyed there in a horse-drawn covered wagon loaded with their belongings. In addition to the hot springs, there was a large lake adjacent to where they settled, called Mystic Lake.

“The lake was so big,” Elizabeth would say, “I thought I would drown in it!” She recalled that they lived in tents when they first arrived, and that it was very primitive. In the early years, her father hunted ducks and rabbits for meat, and she remembered that one time he shot a crane for the family’s Christmas dinner. They raised cattle, chickens and other farm animals, planted grain, fruit and vegetables, and ate what they grew.

Her father built a framed ranch house and outbuildings in the low foothills of the badlands overlooking the San Jacinto Valley to the south. The main house was L-shaped and contained a living room and kitchen in one wing, the parents’ bedroom in the center, and a dormitory for the children in the other wing. Elizabeth said he also built an adobe “milk house” to keep milk, butter and eggs cool.

Many years after my great-grandmother’s death, I found myself researching my family history and came upon an archaeologist named Rachel, who was writing an extensive report on the history of the ranch. She was advocating for the curation and preservation of a unique adobe ruin along with some large farm equipment found on the site. The ruin turned out to be the only physical remnant of the Schlador Ranch that survives today, and it was once part of the milk house Elizabeth had described. I gazed at the photographs Rachel sent me: there it was, the weathered adobe-walled structure, and in the distance I could glimpse the ephemeral glitter of a shrinking Mystic Lake.

Rachel was eager to hear the stories my great-grandmother once told, remarking that it was exciting to know that the family had once lived in an adobe house in Texas. “It adds credence to the idea that the adobe ruin was part of your family’s ranch,” she said, “especially since we don’t see adobe structures elsewhere in the region.”

Rachel’s associates had interviewed a few of my distant relatives who’d remained in the Moreno area, and she revealed details I’d been unaware of. By the mid-1900’s, years of drought had created disastrous conditions for farmers in the area, but Elizabeth’s father had seen it coming. He created new opportunities by constructing a 2-story brick building in the center of the town of Moreno that housed a general store, soda fountain and pool hall. He built a gas station, restaurant, and post office, and became the town’s postmaster.

I then told Rachel some of the oral history my great grandmother had shared about her earlier years at the ranch. But as we began to review the names and birthdates of Elizabeth’s siblings, Rachel said: “Her mother must have had her hands full, with all those nine children.” I told her that there had been ten, but she was adamant that her census data had revealed only nine.

I reminded her that data didn’t always reveal every truth, and then I told her what happened that day on the Schlador Ranch, the day my great-grandmother could never forget.

The hot Santa Ana winds had begun to blow early that fall morning, and tumbleweeds careened across the dry fields. After breakfast, Elizabeth’s father and four of her brothers had headed out to a distant part of the ranch to mend fences. Her mother and four sisters had ridden into the town of Moreno by horse-drawn carriage to shop for provisions. Sixteen-year old Elizabeth was left behind at the ranch to do chores as she kept an eye on 3-year-old Albert, the youngest of the Schlador children. She remembered his mop of blond hair, blue eyes and boundless energy, and that she often had carried him around on her hip when he was a baby.

Elizabeth had been hanging wet linens on the clothesline when the child began jumping out of a barn window down onto a bale of hay, screaming with laughter. Then, as she paused to watch him, clothespins in hand, a smile frozen on her face, she saw him misjudge his landing and come down hard upon a broken wagon wheel, a bent spoke driving deep into his stomach.

“It was up to me to get help,” she would say. “Poor little tyke, he laid there all alone. And by the time I returned with Mama, it was too late.”

“You see,” I told Rachel, “I am certain there were ten children. I know because my great-grandmother told me.”

And in that moment, I could clearly picture my Great-Grandmother Elizabeth as a terrified teenager. Her brown pigtails were flying out behind her, unraveling in the wind as sweat poured down the back of her neck. Her face was flushed, her breath coming in gasping wheezes. She held up her long dark skirts as she ran, her racing feet furiously churning up dust down the rutted road, past Mystic Lake, and all the way to town.

She was running to get help for her little brother Albert. She was running as fast as she could.

Time Traveling In Guadalupe

Kam and I have decided it's time to turn our attention back to our Guadalupe project, so yesterday we headed west on 135 and north on 1, past ranches and fields and the scruffy old warehouses and industrial buildings and railroad tracks, past the cemetery and the Living Water Church and the now familiar storefronts and houses in the heart of town. The streets were deserted and the wind was howling. It was a good day for time travel.

Our focus was Dorothy (Dot) Smith Knotts, whom we’d first encountered in a delightful 1933 photograph of three young schoolteachers––Ruth, Thelma, and Dot––astride a painted deer of cast concrete, being silly and smiling prettily, their skirts hiked a bit to reveal rolled up stockings. We’d already talked to another Guadalupe resident named Shirley, who was a little girl in those days and whose father owned the small stucco dwelling that often served as residence for new teachers, but we needed more story to bring the image to life. Who really were these women, and what was going on in their world? It takes some anecdotal detail, an added dimension...one needs to harvest nouns and hear voices. And that's the fun of it for us.

Shirley  had been way too young then to remember much, but she told us that one of the three teachers, the one called Dot, eventually had a daughter who is still well and local, working in the tire shop, as a matter of fact,  just a few blocks away. So yesterday we headed over to see her.

Her name is Janet Glenn, and she had graciously brought in three photo albums for us to explore, dark crumbly covers, sepia-toned pictures mounted lovingly with names and captions carefully handwritten. It was so humbling to be entrusted with these, to turn the delicate pages and look into lives. It's always such an honor to be given access to the personal memories and history of a family. Kam and I sat and scrolled through quietly, occasionally interrupting Janet’s work with our questions, but she was patient with us.

Dot Smith was born in 1905 (and died in 1983) but we were seeing her now in her sun-dappled youth. We caught glimpses of her laughter and spirit, saw her holding her beloved cat Snookums, posing at picnics with friends. A native of Chico, she attended Chico State Teachers’ College and taught for a time in a one-room schoolhouse.  Having seen the photo of her sitting with her teacher friends on the deer statue, it was sobering to learn that her fiancé, Percy Little, had been killed in a plane crash less than a year before that picture was taken,  a tragedy that changed the course of her life. It was only after Percy's death that Dot accepted a teaching position at the Guadalupe Joint Union School, relocated, and began life anew in Guadalupe.

And it was a good life too, though not without its hardships. Dot taught for many years, mostly fourth grade, but also what we'd now call middle school. She was the enthusiastic and creative kind of teacher who loved to organize plays and costumes for the kids. She was always artistic, and did watercolor paintings. As for her cooking, we don't know, but when her biscuits came out hard, Janet told us, she gave them, in an act that was a mixture of mischief and mercy,  to the hoboes who were always passing through during the Depression years. She found a new love, George Knotts, married him, and had three children, one of whom died in infancy.

She had close and enduring friendships––Janet points out Adalyn Hanadel in one of the old photos, and says, “I remember her as Ad, and she and my mother remained friends well into old age, all their lives, really.”   

I sort of feel like I know Dot now. With a mere fifty years or so between our lives--which is nothing when you’re sliding around the decades as Kam and I do--she’s almost a contemporary, and I’m certain I would have liked her. Suddenly it's summer, 1932, and there she is hiking along volcanic rock at Lassen’s Chaos Crag...or posing on a pier in a smart hat and suit...or enjoying an expedition with friends at Feather River, Oroville. She was a schoolteacher, a wife and a mother, a woman who loved to laugh with her girlfriends. She endured great loss but kept on going.  She knew the playground sounds of children, the rolling fog and California light, this wind coming over the dunes. 

May 30, 2013

Just Doin' What's Right

Everyone who ever came to Dunn Middle School during the years when Lynne Castellanos worked there knew her as the amazing woman they encountered in the front office. No sense trying to describe her job -- she pretty much took care of everything and everyone, and she did it all with competence and love. It is impossible to exaggerate the affection and respect Lynne engenders. Most of the kids described her as their mother at school, and their love for her was evident. She has since moved on to other kinds of work, but everything she does is consistent with the values she has always espoused. It is an honor to be Lynne's friend. This interview was conducted about fifteen years ago, and I am happy to report that Lynne is still in my life, and still doin’ what’s right.

My full name is Lynne Charrisse Weston Castellanos, and I was born in Virginia on July 8, 1959. But when I was your age, I spent most of my time in Germany in little towns near the Czechoslovakian border, mostly. My father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force and a base commander a lot of the time. We had to move about every two or three years. I started first grade in Germany, and after about three years, we went back to the United States. Then we went back to Germany when I was in ninth grade. I became fluent in German. In fact, my sister, who started school in a German kindergarten, could only speak German. She was the only American in the kindergarten, and after about three months, she couldn't speak English anymore. She basically thought she was German. But when we came back to the United States, she couldn't continue studying the language, and so she's since forgotten it.

We did a lot of unusual things in Germany. My dad was the commander of the base, and we were always on small bases near the border, because he worked as a radar controller, so his job was to have his crew monitor the air space and make sure there was no enemy aircraft coming into the American-controlled part of Germany. So we were in small towns, and although we lived on base, we would always eat downtown and take advantage of the culture.

I didn't have a horse, but we went horseback riding. My dad knew that if we had a horse, we would insist on taking it home with us, and it would be very expensive to ship it. So we took riding lessons but we didn't get to buy a horse. We rode at an old castle that was kind of in ruins, and there was an indoor riding arena. It was really pretty. We were the only Americans who rode out there. Everyone assumed we would be cowboys, so we worked really hard to prove that wasn't all America was. I was about twelve then. It was in the early sixties.

Both of my parents were from the South: mom was born in North Carolina and my dad was born in Virginia. My mom went to a private girls' college and she was the youngest of four kids and the only girl in her family. At her college, you had to be very lady-like and wear white gloves and a hat when you went outside. If you did anything wrong, the punishment would be you had to polish all the brass railings in front of the school on a Saturday— when boys from other schools might be walking by. That was considered a huge embarrassment. Obviously, she grew up very differently from the way things are today.

My dad was at another college and they met while he was in R.O.T.C. My dad knew from the beginning he wanted to be an officer, so he did special training to become one. He went into officer training school right away after college. I think he was a Major the first time we went to Germany.

I was proud of my father, but I thought it was normal. It wasn't anything really special to me, but looking back at it, it was strange how I'd be walking down the street with my dad, and everybody saluted him. Everyone on the base worked for him, so walking even from here to the office, there might be fifteen people saluting him. It was a little weird.

And it was a little bit hard sometimes as a teen-ager, growing up with your dad as a base commander. All around were soldiers, G.I.s, younger guys, but we weren't officially at war, and things were pretty relaxed. So anything I did got reported to him immediately.

Christmas in Germany was wonderful. There was usually a lot of snow. We had two Christmas trees - one was the kids' tree, and the other was my mom's perfectly decorated tree -- and there were a lot of parties. My mother had to entertain because she was the base commander's wife, so she held parties, and there were dignitaries from foreign countries. They were just normal people.I want to go back someday. I don't know what it's like now, but when I was there, sometimes we would go places and we were not welcome because we were Americans. We were in somebody else's country and in a strong position—we meant well, but you don't want someone else running things in your country. And sometimes Americans aren't willing to change our own ways, and we don't adapt well to other cultures. So it took us a while to show the German people that we wanted to visit their homes, get to know their ways, and be like them. A lot of military people would stay on the base and never venture out into the rest of the country.

It was a military life. Every two or three years, everyone around me would move. Sometimes it was hard. My best friend stayed in Germany until two years ago. The last time we lived in the same place was when we were in eighth grade. We still see each other about every seven or eight years. She moved back to the United States two years ago and got married, and now she lives in Virginia.

We traveled all the time when we lived in Germany. You know how your parents come home and they might say, "What do you want to do this weekend?" Well, my dad would come home and say, "Do you want to go to France this weekend, or do you want to go to Spain, or Greece?" I thought that was normal. I thought that's how everyone grew up.

I liked Spain, although I don't remember it really well. I wasn't looking at it the way my parents wanted me to. They wanted me to see the culture, and we went to all the castles and art galleries and museums, but I didn't think it was anything special, so I treated it kind of like you would treat a trip to Santa Barbara. I just liked it.

I have one "real" sibling, my sister, and she's three years younger than me. But my parents are really open and their home is always open to people who don't have families or who are away from their families. So I have an unofficial brother named Tom who takes care of my parents when I'm not there, and another brother named Clyde who also takes care of them.

My sister lives in Sacramento and works for the youth authority. My parents live in Elk Grove, very close to Sacramento.

My parents are my heroes. They worked really hard to get where they are, and it's hard for them to see how the world is changing. Chantalle is their only grandchild, and they would spoil her if they could. But they see her snowboarding and doing judo, and doing so many things girls didn't do when they were young, and it makes them nervous. I admire them for supporting us and trying not to show their worries so much.

I was going to be a veterinarian. I made up my mind. I knew what school I wanted to go to, and didn't even apply to any other schools. If I had completed the whole thing, it would have been four years of college, and then vet school. But I realized along the way, that I didn't really want to be a veterinarian. I just wanted to work with horses, and they were telling me I had to take classes about pigs and cows (and I'm afraid of cows because they don't listen to you) so I decided that wasn't really what I wanted.

I was going to school at U.C. Davis, so I switched my major and was no longer pre-vet. Instead, I did Animal Science and Genetics, and I graduated from Davis, and I wanted to get a job on a horse farm, on a breeding ranch. So I graduated, but I didn't really know how to get a job. But because I graduated from a good school, I had a lot of offers from all over the country. One farm called me from New York and wanted me to come out for an interview. But I was only nineteen. (Don't hurry through school!) I didn't have the money for plane fare just to see if they liked me, and I was getting really discouraged, but two farms in the Santa Ynez Valley called me the same weekend and invited me for an interview. So I said, "I'll just take one of those jobs." And I got both of them, so I picked the one I wanted.

I got out of the horse business because it's really hard. It's twenty-four hours a day. And Chantalle was two and a half, and I was working all the time, and she never got to do anything with me. So I quit. My boss made me really mad one day, and I quit.

Then I had a store in town for a while. Kid Stuff. I dressed most of you when you were babies. I couldn't find clothes I liked for Chantalle, so I opened a store.I sold that business and retired for a while. I did some volunteer work at Los Olivos, and then Chantalle was coming to school here, and Ben asked me to take a job here. So I was a parent here before I worked here.

I met my husband, René, on a horse ranch. Remember, I came from a very traditional background. One day, this old beat up car drove onto the ranch, and these three guys got out who looked just horrible. They looked like they had just come in from downtown L.A. and robbed a store. Their car had run out of gas someplace on 101. They came to the ranch to do some odd jobs to get some money to put gas in their car and go up to San Francisco. The two guys who were with René spoke only Spanish, but Rene spoke English and Spanish, so they hired him right away, even though he didn't know a thing about horses. Once they drove up, everyone on the ranch thought it was time to start locking our doors at night. The other two took off, and René stayed, and he loves horses to this day. So he worked for me for a while.

I am a stubborn person, but I'm trying to get better. I'm persistent, I'm determined, and I have integrity. I try.

And I read a lot, but I don't have any hobbies. I'm so busy with Chantalle, and taking care of things at school. A perfect day? I guess it would be to wake up really early, have a good cup of coffee, go back to bed, and read some books. I like having nothing to do.But what makes me happy is seeing you guys every day.

My advice: Always do what you know is right, even when no one is looking. It's really hard sometimes. But you have to do the right thing no matter what.

And don't be mean. I try to follow this in my own life. I try not to do mean things to people, or be unfair, and then I never have to worry about being caught or about people saying things behind my back.

The children here are very forgiving. I've known a lot of these kids since they were little. Some of them came to my house for reading group. I used to do tutoring, too. In fact, I still have one student, who's in seventh grade now. To be honest, I don't think he needs a tutor anymore, but he thinks he does. He likes the cookies and the cheese bread.

Almost every day at work is a good one. And when I leave here, I want to do more to help kids. I think you guys are really fortunate to be here, but I want to help kids who are not as fortunate. I want to do something more with my life after I retire.

(And she did! Ten or fifteen years after this interview, Lynne and her daughter Chantalle started another meaningful endeavor together. You can read about it at this link.)

Quilts: Shared Stories and Expressions of Love

Early in 2019, I set out with Karen Jensen and Kam Jacoby to interview several Los Alamos residents about their experiences as quilters, or the stories connected to quilts that they owned. The quilts were then hung on display at the Los Alamos branch of the Santa Maria Public Library. But when we embarked upon this project, we did not anticipate that we would also be getting a glimpse into a vibrant culture, one through which run common threads of resourcefulness, creativity, and generosity. We discovered that the act of giving is implicit in quilting, and most of the quilts we saw had been made as gifts for others. There were quilts that celebrated weddings and births, quilts to comfort the sick or bereaved, and quilts to be passed along to future grandchildren. The quilting community seems to be characterized by big-heartedness, and everyone we met was welcoming and gracious, sharing their work and their stories with pride and affection. Even a quilt initially created to add color and comfort to its maker’s home is likely to live on in the hands of a descendant, for it is in the nature of a quilt to travel through time to embrace a subsequent generation.

Quilting is certainly a form of artistry and a traditional way to transform scraps and materials into something both useful and beautiful, but we had decided at the onset that this exhibit would be less about the technical aspects of quilting and more about the meaning of it. We were surprised nonetheless by how truly meaningful it is, and by how readily emotion and sentiment rose to the surface in the course of our visits. More than once, we hugged good-bye with tears in our eyes. “Every quilt tells a story,” said quilter Charlene Abeloe, “That’s the beauty of quilting.”

The stories these quilts tell are about remembering, about joy, about connection and comfort. They are about transcending a life span and making from fragments something beautiful and enduring and greater than the sum of its parts. But the word we most often heard was “love”. These quilts are labors of love, imbued with love, given to others as an act of love–and they speak of love to all who listen.

Charlene Abeloe

Charlene’s work demonstrates that the beauty of quilting is not only the stories the quilts contain, but also in the love and the giving. In her nearly thirty years of quilting, Charlene has created almost all of her quilts for others, donating them to children with cancer, ailing friends, or worthy organizations. Her husband Carl proudly tells us that she made a quilt every month for three years to raise money for the Parkinson’s Association. There is a quilt she made for her brother after his wife died, which includes images of her sister-in-law as a young woman and later in life, framed by rich dark tones of blue and brown and ivory-colored flowers. There is a Lewis and Clark quilt, each square based upon the drawings of schoolchildren, and a heart quilt she made as a raffle prize for her quilting group that her fellow quilters made sure she “won”.

On Charlene’s bed is a quilt her mother made for her from the skirts and blouses of her childhood, the faded cotton colors in each Dresden plate harvested from a favorite outfit. It was this quilt that awoke Charlene’s own artistic impulses, and when she retired, she taught herself the craft. Her first creation was a quilt of crows and sunflowers she made for her daughter in 1990, as sunny and bold as a bright fall morning. She enjoyed the process so much, she formed a quilting group at the First Presbyterian Church in San Luis Obispo, and she has been an avid quilter since. A binder of photographs is her only record of the scores of beautiful quilts she has lovingly given away, a testimonial not just to her artistry, but her generosity and kindness.

“The quilts let me express what I felt,” Charlene explains. “I’m very quiet. I don’t talk much. But I use the quilts. They speak for me.”

They speak eloquently.

Madeline Jex

It’s obvious to anyone who ever browsed at her old store, The Gentleman Farmer, or has stopped into her current location at Sisters on Bell Street: Madeline Jex has a great eye for treasures. The gorgeous 1920s quilt that she is sharing with us here had been left unfinished in a box in her mother’s closet, but Madeline recognized its potential immediately. It had been started by her paternal great-grandmother and abandoned.

“When I found it, I recognized it as special,” says Madeline. “I wanted to see that quilt finished, and I knew my mother could do it. She was an excellent seamstress, born in Belgium, and schooled in Brussels. I have all her diplomas. Everything she did was excellent. She made all of my clothes and she knitted too, with all the stitching meticulous and perfect.”

The great-grandmother who had started the quilt, Elizabeth Stammers, was from a wealthy family in England, but had run off to Canada to escape an arranged marriage that was not to her liking. Madeline’s mother, whose name was Reine Hastie, was initially reluctant to take on the task of completing the quilt – “It’s a lot of work!”– but Madeline beseeched and cajoled, and eventually Reine finished it as a reward to Madeline for a difficult accomplishment.

And so the stories of two spirited women, one from each side of Madeline’s family, are stitched into the fabric of this quilt. “I like knowing that my great-grandmother chose this pattern and those colors. And if she was anything like my grandparents, she was probably a lot of fun and had a great sense of humor.”

“It was the Roaring Twenties,” Madeline continues, “a gay and festive time, right after World War I but before the Depression. The quilt has so much life in it. All of those bright colors. I love the red! The polka dots! The pattern of fans!”

The quilt has been carefully packed away for decades and looks brand new. Madeline is letting it see the light of day for this exhibit, with hopes that visitors will enjoy its aesthetic beauty and the intrinsic optimism of it.

When it comes to quilts, there’s always a story. This one speaks of happiness.

Sandee Adams

You can feel the creative energy as soon as you enter the home of Sandee Adams and her husband Burton. Originally from Minnesota, they built their own house, lived on a shoe string, and learned how to do things themselves and make use of whatever they had. Quilting is a natural outgrowth of this inclination, where even scraps have value, and somehow the beautiful whole becomes more than the sum of its parts.

The original quilt in Sandee’s collection belonged to her Swedish grandmother. It’s summer light, with no batting, and its colors are pale. She also shows us a beautiful hand-stitched quilt she made during the building of her house, in which bright maple leaves and dark borders evoke both sturdiness and cheer, and a flower quilt, each panel a hand-painted work of art.

“I would love to see more young people learn to quilt,” she says. “Maybe as a community activity through the senior center, we could bring in kids and teach them, girls and boys, maybe at the summer program. I’d like to see more kids getting into it and knowing what it’s about. Quilting is an art. It’s a love. It’s a joy. It’s not something we should lose.”

Cathy Trawler

The first quilt Cathy made was in 1997 for the birth of her granddaughter Emily, and so began her quilting odyssey. One of her loveliest creations is a heart quilt–she calls it heartfelt–that hangs above her bed. “We moved into this house in 2003,” she tells us, “and I just needed something for that wall.” It’s an arrangement of soft colors and angular hearts, and it sets the mood of the room.

Cathy mostly machine quilts and relies on others to complete the batting and stippling. She modestly claims that pre-assembled kits make it easy to choose patterns and coordinate colors, but her taste and personality are stitched into all of her creations. A Christmas quilt on her bed is done in traditional red, white, and green, with a surprise band of blocks on the back, added when she ran out of backing. She shows us quilts in various stages of completion and brings out one in an old pattern called “Churn-dash”, done in warm tones, which we later contrast with an interpretation done in a cool bright batik print by her friend Marla. Fabric choice can change the whole look.

Most of Cathy’s quilts are destined for her grandchildren, but lately she has been keeping and enjoying them for herself. “I love the creative feel of quilting,” she tells us. “I used to paint and draw, and I wanted to do something different. This is another way of being artistic, but I can use it and keep it.”

Marla Gravitt

Marla began quilting after she quit work and wanted to find something different to do. She learned techniques in classes, participates in a quilting group that meets weekly at the senior center, and has become quite accomplished over the years, but as with most quilters, the majority of her creations end up in other hands.

One of her first efforts was a lap quilt in a log cabin pattern, all done by hand. She made a quilt for her granddaughter’s sixteenth birthday entirely of scraps, then used the same colors in a different pattern for a great-niece. She shows us an “attic window” quilt that gives the illusion of viewing outdoor scenes through panes of glass, and another quilt she refers to as “Jim’s Quilt” because her patient husband did all the cutting. She has a lap-sized version of the Christmas quilt we saw on her friend Cathy’s bed, but done in antique colors, as if infused with tea, and the Churn-Dash pattern interpreted in batik scraps she already had and wanted to use.

Almost all of Marla’s quilts were made and given away for milestone events such as weddings, graduations, and births. Now she is going through her fabric scrap stash to make quilts for future great-grandchildren. “No names, no dates,” she says. “Noni will be gone, but she left you this.”

We try to estimate the time it takes to complete a quilt, particularly in Marla’s tiny hand stitches, and can only conclude that it takes a lot of hours. “What it takes a lot of,” says Marla, “is love.”

Gary Mortholé

Gary’s three quilts are mysterious, although many clues and stories are stitched into them. Dated 1888, 1915, and one unknown, they belonged to his maternal great-grandmother from Chippewa, Ontario, near Niagara Falls, then to his mother, and were given to him by his father after his mother passed away.

All are done in redwork embroidery, a type of art needlework that gained popularity in the late nineteenth century, with a colorfast thread dye called Turkey Red. Like illustrations in a children’s book, there are whimsical birds and animals, flowers and scenes, and occasional names and messages. One wonders, who was Caroline, and why is her name adorned with peacock feathers? And why does Minnie have a frog on a toadstool? Aunt Emma, in a central panel above “Home Sweet Home” with her cleft chin and arched eyebrow, certainly looms large. One of the quilts is more like an overlay, but because it has no backing, we are able to see the perfection of the embroidery on the reverse. Another is an alphabet, with the name Rhea, which Gary recognizes as a family name.

The stories are hinted at, rather than told, and the quilts have prompted Gary to do some research into his family history.

Carolyn Mortholé

Carolyn’s mother made a quilt for each of her children from scraps of their baby clothes and the maternity clothes she wore, and Carolyn has her own and one of her sibling’s. The 1950s fabrics have faded to pastel, and time has softened the cloth and turned white to ivory, but the tidy stitching and symmetry still convey a fresh and cheerful look. It’s a mother’s tender legacy, a hug through time for each of her kids.

Suzanne Reed

Suzanne’s mother taught her how to sew, and as a little girl, she watched her maternal grandmother sew quilt tops together, but she is largely a self-taught quilter.

The first real quilt she made is a patchwork of memories, from remnants of her mother’s fabric stash to scraps of fabrics from clothes she made as a kid. It is imbued with her spirit, as its maker, but also that of her mother, who loved sewing, and her woodworker father. She hopes its bright colors will bring a smile to the face of whomever eventually acquires it.

Suzanne feels that every quilt is unique, because even if you use a pattern, fabric choices may vary, and the quality and style of sewing are individual.

“Quilting gives me a sense of purpose,” Suzanne says. Many of the quilts I make are gifts, and those that I keep fill a creative need. It also makes me feel connected to generations of not only my own family members, but to many generations of women who sewed and quilted before me.”

Jennifer Hooten

Jennifer’s gorgeous quilt is vaguely Escher-esque, its triangles shifting into parallelograms, diamonds, or intersecting bands of color depending on how one looks at them. “I loved the simplicity of working with solids, but also the complexity that came with the sheer number of triangles,” she says.

For Jennifer’s mother, who has been quilting for over thirty years, quilting is a “mental health activity”, and she made sure that Jennifer learned the craft. To this day, they get together annually on a North Carolina beach, along with a sister and two aunts, to work on projects. This particular quilt was begun on one of those trips. Jennifer, pregnant at the time, pieced a few rows together, then put it aside for a while after having her baby.

“The quilt is imbued with the spirit of my new self, as a mother. Motherhood has me longing for simplicity, and yet wanting a spark of vitality and brightness amidst the ordinary bits of daily life. The plain, solid triangles offered the simplicity, but the hexagonal quilting gives a hidden surprise for those curious enough to look closely. This now hangs in my living room and brings the brightness and liveliness I hoped for into each day.”

Karen Gearhart Jensen

Karen’s mother, Helen McCausland Gearhart, had a sewing room in the basement. “It was just her space,” says Karen. “I remember she would cut, then push the unused edges onto the floor, so there was always fabric all over the place.”

Karen, an artist, was influenced by her mother’s sense of design, inheriting her bold, graphic sensibility and eye for patterns and botanical shapes. She looks at her mother’s creations now with respect and admiration for their skill and artistry.

One of her mother’s creations is a sampler, in which the quilter chooses a certain number of patterns, and each block is a different one, as opposed to geometrical shapes sewn together. All of the piecework is appliqué in this quilt, so the flowers and butterflies have a three-dimensional look. There is also a small Amish style quilt, finished in about 1983, in bright clear reds and blues.

But Karen’s favorite is a stunning hand-quilted bed spread of bright flowers on a black background. “This definitely brings me closer to my mother,” says Karen. “Even though I didn’t see her make this quilt, I saw pieces of it in progress over the years. She put this one on her bed. She was proud of it. And it’s the one I really wanted.”

In the Studio with Patricia Chidlaw by Kit Boise-Cossart

This article, written by Kit Boise-Cossart and edited by Debra Herrick, first appeared in Lum Art Zine, a magazine of art and culture for Santa Barbara and Ventura: https://www.lumartzine.com/

To learn more about writer Kit, who is also an artist, go to his interview on this website: http://www.livingstoriescollective.com/interviews/2014/10/5/kit-cossart

Monday July 8, 2019 was the last day to view a collection of landscape painter Ray Strong’s work at the Wildling Museum in Santa Ynez Valley, the day coincidentally I sat with Patricia Chidlaw in her studio to talk about painting.

Patricia was an early member of the Santa Barbara based Oak Group of which Strong, who passed on at 100 years old (1905–2006), was a founding member.

The studio is a narrow sun porch full of light even on this dull overcast day. It’s attached to the back of a classic Craftsman-Mission style home. Her latest painting is about 28” x 36” and so far, it’s been three days in the making. It stood almost straight up attached to a sturdy paint splattered easel, the shelf below it full of Windsor Newton oils, under a large skylight. Outside through a bank of windows, the leafy green canopy of an over-productive avocado tree dominates. Trumpet flowers of red and yellow spilled over a fence from the neighbor’s yard.

Blue River (2019)

As a realist-oriented painter Patricia struggled with the conceptual and minimalist movements of her UCSB college (1969-1973). These two movements were the new king and queen of the art world, and “painting was dead”. It was a new world order. Fortunately, Irma Cavat (b. 1928), the only female professor in the Art Department at the time, recognized Patricia’s leanings and moved her beyond the current non-objective, cerebral trends.

After graduating, Patricia was motivated to gain some background in the technical aspects of painting that she didn’t get at the university and enrolled in Santa Barbara City College. “Mostly I had to teach myself. Just think how much better we would be as painters if we had had some training” - it was ironically, she noted, her “grad school”. 

The current painting under construction is an interior scene of the Berkeley City Pool, a natatorium designed by California architect Julia Morgan (1872–1957) whose work includes the stunning pools at San Simeon’s Hearst Castle.

On a side table by the easel, repurposed glass jars and old coffee cups are full of very clean, sharp, Connoisseur brand sable mix flat brushes, keeping company with a couple of spray cans of Grumbacher Damar varnish, “to make it shiny”.

Palm Springs Showroom, 24x30 (2008)

A handful of other unfinished canvases of different sizes lean against the short stem wall under the windows. “The scenes are all odd sizes. I stretch all my own canvasses”. If she gets “stuck” on “City Pool” there are others to get her going, she says.

Looking at an impressive assortment of fifty of Patricia’s paintings in the catalog to her 2014 solo show at the Nevada Museum of Art, it’s apparent she likes interiors. She’s mostly interested in architectural spaces with history, especially ones with all kinds and types of lighting: direct, reflected, diffused, satiny, polished, ambient, incandescent and neon.

How those lights illuminate an interior and reflect both inside and outside spaces make up the substance of her paintings - day and night visions of train and bus stations, diners, bars, motels, laundromats, movie theaters, restaurants, car dealerships and parking lots - the ubiquitous spaces of our time.

Girl with Cell Phone, Union Station, 24x48 (2013)

Edward Hopper’s influence on Patricia is clear. For example, Patricia’s “Night Shift” 2002 is a nod to Hopper’s famous 1942 “Night Hawks”, enshrined at the Chicago Art Institute. However, whereas Hopper used pencil and charcoal studies, Patricia prefers to piece together photographs taken at the scene, rather than Hopper’s approach of pencil and charcoal studies. She took several shots at the Berkeley location early in the day to get the calm reflected water before the pool filled up with swimmers. One lone figure on the canvas, pausing, appears in the shallow end. The actual photos show two.

A while back, some of her new friends at SBCC, later Oak Group members, began painting in the wide-open spaces far removed from studio work, and invited Patricia along. She discovered that street and urban scenes were more to her liking than her compatriots. “I like buildings better than nature.” A different take for an artist in the primarily landscape oriented group.

Nevertheless, Patricia enjoyed working outdoors and it improved her confidence. Passers-by on the street were supportive. It was good to be in the fresh air. Soon enough, though, she wanted to spend more time in a controlled environment, skipping the outdoor painting sessions and instead photographing the views, then working them into sketches on canvases indoors, re-jiggering the photo input directly into paint. Studio work now gave more time to ruminate on the compositions, colors, and technical effects rather than the hit-and-run nature of plein-air.

Vintage urban structures, interiors, and general out-of-the-way transportation corridors of highways and railroad sidings made their impressions, partly brought on by her upbringing  - road trips with her parents in the 50’s and 60’s, high school in the Netherlands - “I saw a lot of great paintings in Europe”.

Nile Theater, 36x24 (2012)

Patricia is not alone with an architectural painting obsession. “I’m not as obsessed as Davis Cone!” she happily objects, who is a like-minded friend more entrenched in the intensely detailed intricacies of photorealism. Someone closer to her camp would be the Santa Barbara painter Stephanie Jamgochian who shares a slightly more ‘painterly’ focus as a realist. All three could be included under the heading of “contemporary observation-based” paintings, a phrase lifted from the website of an LA gallery that closed in the 2009 economic downturn. That gallery carried PC’s work.

Keeping company in the studio are miscellaneous period memorabilia – a red and black with white bubbles “7Up” sign, a 50’s theme park “Lake Dolores Waterpark” emblem, and a white Mobil Oil coffee mug full of brushes with a red winged horse logo.

A few crowded shelves indicate some influences: Collections of poetry of Auden and Yeats; a crime mystery by S. Hodel, “Black Dahlia Avenger”; an architecture bio of Frank Lloyd Wright; a photography book “Small Town America” by D. Plowden; Edward Burtynsky’s “Oil”; James White’s “Paintings”, and J.R. Taylor’s “Exactitude: Hyperrealist Art Today”. “Roadside America – Guide to Uniquely Odd Tourist Attractions” is caught behind a hanging lantern that looks suspiciously like those in one of Patricia’s Chinese restaurant scenes.

When asked how much longer it will take to finish “Berkeley City Pool” she replies “three weeks”. It’s been three days and the composition, outlines, and infill washes are pretty far along.

Patricia is planning a February 2020 solo show at Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery in Santa Barbara. “I’ve got four started and need about fifteen. Yikes! It’s already July!”

Red Chairs, 26x30 (1997)

If You Can Walk, You Can Dance: A Visit With Ernie Pico

Ernest Pico was born in Santa Barbara on January 1, 1935, the son of Ernest Pico and Georgia Guevara Cota Pico. He served in the Navy, was a friar in the Franciscan Order of the Province of Saint Barbara, and taught dance for many years. I had the pleasure of meeting him at his residence in Santa Barbara on September 13, 2018. Also present was a mutual friend, Anne Hollister, and Michael Giorgi, who arranged the interview. We chatted casually for a while, and then I launched into a few of my standard questions.

“What is your source of strength?” I asked him.

“God,” he answered, simply and without hesitation.

“And what are you most proud of?” I asked.

“All of it,” he replied. “My life. All the things I’ve experienced.”

But the theme that seemed to run through his reminiscences most consistently was dance.

In the following audio-clip, you can hear Ernie talking about some of his experiences as a dancer and a teacher of dance.

And here’s a telling little vignette…when you need to dance, you dance! (And is it madness, or joyful defiance?)

Ernie grew up in an area of Santa Barbara called Sycamore Canyon. “There were Indian caves we used to play in, as children,” he told us. “My dad said that when he was a child, there were paintings in the caves, but someone scraped them off. I never got to see them.”

“But Sycamore Canyon is very unique,” adds Anne. “It has high walls, but it doesn’t feel enclosed. There’s an openness about it, and when Ernie took me back into that area, I felt that the vibes were really strong, positive people-vibes. It felt like they all respected the land and used it appropriately for a long time.”

“It’s kind of hidden,” says Ernie. “You can’t see it from the street because it’s set way back, and if you don’t know how to get there, you’d miss it. My great-grandfather’s house is still standing. That was the Flores side of the family."

“I had three sisters. My mother taught us to clean house wash dishes, cook, and bake. We picked plums, apricots, and peaches, and gathered what we found growing nearby. I used to make salads with mustard greens and wild spinach. We picked blackberries that grew near the creeks and made blackberry ice cream and pie. I still love to cook.”

“I played with my cousins as a kid. We did challenging stuff. We walked on stilts in the hills to see who could walk up or down the hill without falling. We had contests. We had go-carts. We’d go up or down the road. There was hardly any traffic, and we’d pick up momentum as we’d come down, but there weren’t any cars to worry about then.”

“My great-grandmother Concepcion Valencia, my father’s grandmother, was a full-blooded Chumash, born on the reservation in Santa Ynez. She died before I was born, but she loved to dance. Maybe that’s where the dancing comes from.”

In 1958, Ernie was part of a U.S. Naval unit stationed on Bikini Island in the Pacific during atomic bomb tests. “We were guinea pigs,” he told us matter-of-factly. “It was frightening. You couldn’t watch, or you’d go blind. We couldn’t even start the engines of the ship because the water was so contaminated afterwards, it would contaminate the ship. We had to sit, still as ducks, until the currents took it away. I later learned that a lot of Native Americans survived, and the rest had cancer.”

In the 1970s, while working for General Motors, Ernie started a program called Can-A-Month, to deliver and distribute canned goods to people who could not afford groceries. The “city fathers” were skeptical of it and sought to impose restrictions and regulations. They could not believe that anyone would run a program purely for the good of others without benefitting financially. “Anyone who says it is impossible to do something solely for others without personal gain reveals more about his own lack of character than anything else,” says Ernie. The program was eventually discontinued, but he is still proud of it.

In 1979, Ernie became a Franciscan Brother with the Franciscans of the Province of Saint Barbara, in Oakland, California. As a novice, he worked for a while with terminally ill patients and their families. In time, though, he found his way back to dance again, and through dance, he has made a difference in many lives. Even today, he is teaching seniors two days a week at Garden Court, a local residence, to “tone their muscles from their feet to their head”. It’s a prerequisite, he explains, for them to take a dance class with him.

He’s also skipping dinner once a week to take dance classes himself, because he wants to dance at the next Fiesta, and he intends to be in shape for it. “If I make it,” he says, “I’ll be the oldest performer on stage.”

Among my favorite stories that Ernie shared is this one, about teaching dance to the children at the Pala Indian Reservation, and taking them to see the ocean for the first time in their lives.

I asked Ernie what wisdom he would offer to a young person in need of advice. “You need to pursue what you want to pursue,” he told us. “If you’re not hurting anyone, go ahead.”

“How do you keep from getting discouraged?”

“Friendships,” he replied.

“And what is your current state of mind?” I asked.

“Lousy,” he admitted, with a laugh. “I have a lot of health problems. I have to have eye surgery. I’ve had a hip replacement, a pacemaker…I’m bionic. Now they want to do surgery for a pinched nerve. And I have leukemia. I’ll start next week at the cancer clinic. But I don’t dwell on the negatives. I try to stay busy.”

“And he keeps me laughing,” Anne was quick to point out. “He’s a very inspiring man, no matter what his health issues are.”

I can see that it’s true. Ernie Pico has a certain spirit and charisma, and I could not help but notice as we sat in the building’s spacious entry room, that everyone who passed through seemed to know him.

A sense of humor, a kind heart, and the ability to dance are pretty powerful attributes.

“How would you like to be remembered?” I asked him.

“As a dancer,” he replies.

A dancer it is. And a very good man.

Road Trip

Diane and I are driving east along Route 58 on our way to Las Vegas, but we’ll spend our first night in a place called Newberry Springs, where we’ve booked lodging in a caboose. The day is sometimes rainy but mostly gray and pending, and it feels like we are driving through a cloud, with bare trees etched against the sky, and green hills giving way to brown mountains. We are comfortably ensconced in our cozy little carapace…and the miles go by.

We talk about our childhoods and our families, not happy stories, but we laugh a lot, and we know that laughter, like tears, comes with vulnerability, a gift of being open. Now James Taylor is singing Fire and Rain, and although we’re several years apart in age, we are both remembering our younger days in cold and dreary places. My husband once remarked that James Taylor and Leonard Cohen were the record albums depressed college girls listened to in their dorms, and Diane says, “Exactly.” And what would he have known of those bleak northeastern winters? He was surfing in California then, but Diane and I grew up in  New York, and although it took some doing, we always knew we’d leave.

We talk about that urge to leave, the belief in its necessity, and finding an elsewhere that becomes a home but always carrying a residue of alien-ness too, and a permanent nostalgia for things that never were. But we’re good now, and consciously grateful, both of us retired from teaching and eager to learn new things.  Diane is taking a woodworking class, and I wish I were brave enough to try painting, but I know I’d be terrible, and it feels too late to start at almost seventy. “Seventy gives you permission to suck,” says Diane, and maybe she’s right. Anything is possible. The story is ours to write.

And we talk about what teaching taught us. For me, it’s still a jumble. I am grateful to know some former students in their current, grownup lives, and I hope that I was a worthy influence, but even after all this time, I haven’t quite figured out what it all meant. Diane has more clarity; she believes that the most important lesson is to try to respond, not react. “Losing my temper doesn’t work,” she says. “You have to keep the conversation open. You have to try to understand the source.” 

Understand the source…it’s a useful concept. And it occurs to me that this is part of what our road trip is about. We’re going to attend the Women’s March rally that will be held in Las Vegas on Sunday, an event intentionally based in a “purple” state that is racially, ethnically, and politically diverse, in some ways a microcosm of Western America. The theme of the rally is “power to the polls”, and it marks the launch of a monumental campaign to get the vote out.

But we’re also paying homage to the mountains and the sky, to the desert and its waters, to the foundation and the source of life. In a time when so many environmental protections are under assault, we are driving back roads through country that is quietly trying to be, through landscapes that many have viewed as nothing more than potential mines and quarries and industrial sites.  We are hoping to talk to a few people along the way too, maybe people who are a little different than the ones we meet at home. We'll see.

We stop by a railroad track for lunch and watch the freight trains going by. Long strands of cars, forever going by, a ubiquitous backdrop to our travels.

_____

We arrive before dark at Newberry Springs, a small community in the western Mojave Desert, and we find our way to Sarkasian Ranch on Route 66, where we’ve booked a caboose…words I never thought I’d say. The ranch is a sprawling property at the base of the mountains dotted here and there with old railroad cars, trailers, and a handful of houses.  The proprietor, Judi, comes out on a golf cart to greet us. She has a great mass of curly platinum blonde hair, and a megawatt smile, and she is made up like a movie star. (“I put on my make-up every morning,” she later tells us, “whether or not anyone is going to see me.”) She invites us to hop on board the golf cart and she takes us for a little tour of the premises before depositing us at our caboose.

There’s a fishing lake and koi pond, a tortoise preserve and a labyrinth. There are peacocks ambling by, a baffled looking emu, and a raven named Ralphie who seems to have the run of the place.  There are quirky sculptures and found treasures everywhere, and all the trees have some sort of adornment…glittery stars and owls, toy dinosaurs, and colorful plastic water pistols dangle from the branches… there’s no rhyme or reason to it, just pure delight.

Judi is undisputed queen of the domain. She describes herself as a psychologist, author, and storyteller. (I later looked her up online and discovered that she is also a producer, children’s entertainer, animal rescue worker, and designer of something called an “exer-chair”.)  She’s had three husbands, is a grandmother and a great-grandmother, and believes that if you want to do something, you just have to dive in and do it. She shows us her bookstore, complete with a metaphysical room and an antique sofa from an opium den, and she talks about her plans for art activities, parties, events, and retreats. Judi has created her own world here, and it’s wacky and tacky but also brave and magnificent.  She stands there in full make-up as the sun descends and the distant mountains darken, reminding me a little of the good witch Glenda. She smiles her movie star smile, and maybe there’s a flicker of sadness in her eyes, but she’s upright and undaunted.  Her advice: “Nurture that part of yourself that is important to you, dream your dreams and be your own fairy godmother.”

We sleep soundly in our red caboose, lulled by the mournful sound of distant freight trains passing in the night.

_____

In the morning, we drive just a little further along Route 66 and stop for breakfast at the Bagdad Café because it’s there, and who wouldn’t? It’s a vintage truck stop diner made famous by the 1987 movie of the same name, which, according to Roger Ebert’s review at the time of its release “walks its own strange and lovely path”. Outside of the café there’s a classic old motel sign, a lonely abandoned trailer, and an endless stretch of forlorn desert bleaching in the harsh glare of the sun, but within, the place is busy, cluttered with memorabilia, and noisy with talk and the clatter of plates. 

We walk beneath a framed picture of John Wayne to enter the rest room, then indulge in a greasy American breakfast of scrambled eggs and bacon, served by a gregarious fellow named George, who tells us that he came here decades earlier after losing his job at the Hector Mining Company.  We chat with a friendly blonde woman who is on her way to a conference in Santa Fe; it turns out she’s from Santa Barbara…we even have mutual friends.  She’s sorry she won’t be at the rally, but she wants to get involved for the long-term, and before you know it, we're standing in the Bagdad Café exchanging contact information. Meeting someone from home is not what we expected in this unlikely context, but we’re allies. And life is nothing if not implausible.

There are also a couple of bikers in here, some local kids having a birthday party in a side room, a German tourist taking serious photos with a big lens camera, and one woman in particular whose face is a deeply etched road map of hard times. She looks like someone who's had too much of some things and not enough of others, and she’s feeling kind of pissed about it all.

Fed and caffeinated, we hit the road.

_____

We’re about three hours from Vegas, and the highway stretches before us like a shimmering mirage. There are volcanic fields and white sand dunes, and various structures that we take to be refineries, mines, or processing plants, and above it all a breathtaking skyscape of utterly cinematic clouds.  We pull over at a place called Camp Cady Wildlife Area, 1900 acres of desert riparian habitat, and we read a sign about the River Bluff Ranch on the north bank of the Mojave River.  The river, which has been described as upside-down and backwards because its water generally flows below ground and inland from Silverwood Lake to Soda Dry Lake, was used by ancient indigenous people as a trade route to and from the Pacific Coast. In 1826, Jedediah Smith passed through here to become the first American to reach the California coast via an overland trail, and eventually the Mojave Road became a primary route from Los Angeles to the Arizona territory and points East.  

Right now there is no one in sight as far as the eye can see, and we run around under the crazy sky in the center of a two-lane highway...because we can...but we begin to understand that what seems like the middle of nowhere is in fact a place of great geological and historical significance.  We will encounter this kind of truth again and again as we travel.  Zoom in anywhere to find a universe. There are microcosms and ecosystems within seemingly irrelevant places, there are layers of history and stories in vast swaths of silence, there are remnants of lives lived, and there is nature in all its wondrous incarnations trying to survive.  

We are pilgrims. We are wonderstruck. 

We get back in the car for the drive to Las Vegas.

________

Las Vegas appears gradually…heralded by billboards and buildings and increasing traffic, it spreads across the desert in all its garish dissonance. Has there ever been a city more completely removed from the natural world? We use our phone to navigate to The Golden Nugget on Fremont Street, in the heart of the old downtown. It’s hard to miss. There’s an extravagant arched entryway, studded with chunky gold lights, and several towers and parking structures, instantly alienating. We’re staying here for convenience, and it has what we need, but we keep our heads down as we wend our way through the crowds and past maze after maze of slot machines and card tables. People seem remarkably eager to throw their money away, despite the odds, and everyone is seeking fun in a desperate sort of frenzy, but nobody looks happy.

After we check in, we go outside to take a walk, and it’s interesting to see the colorful old neon signs, but there's a sordid undercurrent to it all. The area is jam-packed with drunken revelers and street performers of varying degrees of talent, among them a young man adeptly drumming on plastic buckets, a couple of acrobatic dancers, and a shaggy looking fellow holding up a sign that says, simply, "Fuck You". It saddens me to see a pale, thin, almost-naked girl standing in the chilly air of dusk advertising lap dances; she has a blank expression, and looks to be younger than my daughter. Loud music is playing, and there's a lot of ambitious drinking, and I feel as if I've stepped into the midst of a frat house party gone awry, and when someone exhales a cloud of cloyingly sweet cigar smoke right into my face, I know I’ve had enough. I realize that for some this is a vacation destination, and I understand that the tourist, restaurant, and hospitality industries represent livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people, (and I must say most of the employees we interacted with were good-natured and patient) but I'm completely out of my element. We’ll go to the rally tomorrow and get out of here.

The Rally

We arrive at Sam Boyd Stadium early in the day and take seats high in the bleachers. There’s a festive air as women and men, young and old, drift in, many carrying colorful signs: Voting Is My Superpower. Karma is a Bitch, and She Votes. I Am No Longer Accepting the Things I Cannot Change; I Am Changing the Things I Cannot Accept. White is Just My Outside Color. Respect Existence or Expect Resistance. Grab ‘em by the Ballot Until They Turn Blue.

The first speaker is a Native American woman who reminds us that Las Vegas sits on native land, and that indigenous women face a disproportionately high rate of murder and many go missing, never to be found. There are tribal dancers on the stage––to dance is to pray.

Later, State Representative Paulette Jordan of Idaho, an indigenous woman running for governor of that state, urges other women…and immigrants, and LGBT people, and people with disabilities, and people of color…to run for office. First we marched, and now we run...and the real Women’s March will be to the polls on Election Day.

“Last year we dared to hope for a better, brighter, more inclusive world,” Planned Parenthood President Cecilie Richards tells us in her remarks. “This year, we’re gonna go out and build it.”

Voter registration and engagement is the strategy, and, as Linda Sarsour proclaims, “We will win. This is not an opinion, but a fact…we’re gonna win. But I don’t like to win small. We’re gonna win big! The women of the USA are gonna take back America.”

An earnest young immigrant woman talks movingly of how the government is toying with lives. A survivor of the deadly Las Vegas mass shooting speaks to us in a tremulous voice: “It’s hard being here and speaking in front of a large crowd, and also scary. But doing nothing is not an option…we have a a responsibility as women to register and vote on behalf of candidates who promote the issues we care about.”

Tamika Mallory has a message for white women in particular: “Don’t come to this rally today and sit here with your pink hat on saying that you’re with us, and you’re nowhere to be found when black people ask you to show up in the streets to defend our lives. Stand up for me, white women! You say you want to be my friend? I don’t want to hear it from your mouth. I want to see it when you go to the polls at the midterm election.”

“Saying thank you to black women is not a damn hashtag!” is how former MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry states it.

There are musical performances, and deeply moving song and spoken word by Jess Flo. We see sex workers holding up red umbrellas, restaurant workers, and teachers, locals, and people like us who have come from far away. There are earnest young volunteers with clipboards registering voters.

“We are on assignment,” Nina Turner declares. “We are called upon right now to be the change.”

For me, the most rousing speech of the day was that of Rev. William Barber. Here’s an excerpt, but you have to imagine his powerful voice and the African-American oratory tradition:

“I say to you today, we’ve been crying and whining long enough, talking about what happened in 2016, it’s time to get up. It’s time to get up and register everybody you know to vote. It’s time to get up and take the power to the polls. Instead of deporting immigrants, we need to deport some of these politicians. If we ever needed to vote, we sure do need to vote now…It’s time to get up and know that love can win. Justice can win. When we organize, black and white and brown and red and yellow and old and young and Jewish and Muslim and Christian and those who do not have a faith but they believe in a moral agenda. It’s time to get up…and no more fighting each other! Let’s fight racism, let’s fight sexism…it’s time to get up and demand justice for all. Because we are the people that know we can take a word like shit-hole and turn it into fertilizer…it’s time to get up and vote people out of office who do wrong…it’s time to get up and speak truth to power…”

But we didn’t just go to this event in Vegas for the theater of it. This was an informative and inspiring reaffirmation of our commitment, and a clear and persuasive call to come together and get out the vote, very focused on the midterm elections. We’ll learn more soon about tangible steps, and I know there’s a lot of work to do, but I intend to follow through to the best of my ability.

One of the speakers offered this quote from Maya Angelou: “Sometimes it’s necessary to encounter defeat just so we know who we are.”

Well, we know who we are now. And we’ve all been traumatized, but as Rev. Barber said, it’s time to get up. Amidst all that terrifies us and breaks our hearts, there are many things to inspire and encourage. I refuse to despair.

_________

We leave Las Vegas the next morning. Our destination is the Amargosa River Valley at the edge of Death Valley, about eighty miles to the west but a world away, and we soon arrive at Shoshone Village on California State Route 178. A decaying old automobile is parked alongside two obsolete gasoline pumps, and there is rusting antique farm equipment scattered about on the ground, each piece with a label, an in-the-field museum of agricultural machinery. We have lunch in a little café called The Crowbar.

Afterwards, we enter the Visitor’s Center. I'm very fond of little local museums, and this one is a fine haven, lovingly curated. We talk to a woman named Carla at the front desk, and she offers a wealth of knowledge about the history of the area as well as tourist information, and then we walk on wooden floors and peer into glass display cases filled with mining and railway relics, Native American artifacts, and geological displays. There are wildlife exhibits too: a coyote preserved in mid-howl, a handsome pair of ram horns, and most remarkably, there’s an excavated prehistoric mammoth fossil on display in the back, like a grand finale, or an astonishing clue to mysterious beginnings that go back further than imagined. Photos and documents tell the stories of the human characters who came to seek their fortunes and build a community here, among them Ralph Jacobus Fairbanks, who founded Shoshone in 1910 as a trading post, and Charles Brown, whose granddaughter, Susan Sorrells, inherited and still owns the town.

Just a stone’s throw from the museum there’s a wooden house painted green but faded into varying shades by the sun, and partially hidden by a large tamarisk tree. (We later learn that these trees, although pretty, are problematically thirsty and invasive.) We peer within and see that the house is open to visitors, and we enter to discover the office of the Amargosa Conservancy.  We browse in its sunlit front room, reading about the wild and scenic river, the many species of wildlife, and ongoing efforts to fund restoration and encourage ecotourism.

We're eager for a wander outdoors.

As we set out on our way, uncertain where to go, we see a young woman in a wool coat and a red bandana tied around her head, Rosie the Riveter style. We ask if she can suggest a good walking route, and indeed she can. It turns out she’s the head of the Conservancy, and a delightful person too. Her name is Tanya, and she’s “from the West” mostly, although she lived for a time in Iowa. Tanya gets us oriented and even walks with us to our turn-off. She’s dedicated to her work and has an enthusiastic and intelligent demeanor that reminds me of one of my former students, Elise, and she is instantly relatable. I guess Tanya recognizes something familiar in Diane and me too, and she suggests an organization called Great Old Broads of the Wilderness that we might consider joining. We thank her for tending to the environment, and she thanks us for going to the women’s rally. (She’s another ally, and she wishes she could have been there.) We like her so much that we hug her when we say good-bye, and take pictures, and say we’ll be in touch.

We walk past the cemetery first, a few humble graves marked only by rotting wooden crosses, others more substantial, and many decorated with bright plastic flowers. Soon we come to the old miners’ caves at Dublin Gulch, vacant but still remarkably intact, with smokestacks and wooden front doors and even bedsprings inside. From a distance, there’s an eerie kind of beauty in the broken glass glittering in the sunlight, and the old rusted cans strewn upon the ground, but it’s a desolate place. Carla had told us the story of a British prospector who had high tea daily in his cave, and a German bootlegger who hauled in a Victrola so he could listen to Wagner, but it’s hard to imagine now.

We follow a series of white poles and the contours of the rocky hills and a brushy wash, keeping sight of the oasis in the distance, and we gradually make our way back to the town. We stop and chat with a young man named Eddie from the Nevada Conservation Corps who's working on a restoration project by a creek. The crew is focusing on a pupfish refuge, but also improving the overall habitat to enable wetlands to return.

“Come back in five years and see what we’ve done,” Eddie tells us. I hope we will.

(There are good people out there, quietly doing good things.)

_______

And then there was The Amargosa Opera House...

I cannot believe I had never heard the story of Marta Becket and her opera house. A young dancer from New York, Marta was vacation camping in Death Valley with her husband in 1967, when they discovered their trailer had a flat tire. While her husband tended to repairs, Marta began to wander, drawn to group of old adobe buildings nearby that had been constructed in the 1920s by the Pacific Coast Borax Company as part of a complex for a company town.  The largest of the buildings was an abandoned theater, then called Corkhill Hall.  “I can dance here,” Marta thought.

"Peering through the tiny hole, I had the distinct feeling that I was looking at the other half of myself,” she later wrote. “The building seemed to be saying.....Take me.....do something with me...I offer you life."

Marta and her husband agreed to rent the theater for $45.00 a month, and began its transformation.  Her first performance was on February 10, 1968, when she danced for an audience of twelve. But although she performed regularly three nights a week, sometimes no one came at all. Her solution: paint an audience.

It’s a place of magic. Diane and I walk through the theater led by a young man named Jason who shows visitors around and works in the restaurant; he's originally from Indianapolis and  lived in Los Angeles for a while, but he found his way here and it felt right to him. We are astonished by the murals, which took four years to complete. There are kings and queens and knights, acrobats, dancers, and troubadours, angels and birds on the ceiling…a whimsical and sumptuous rendering of one woman’s beautiful,  madcap vision. There's something extravagantly defiant about it. 

Long after her husband was no longer on the scene, Marta continued to dance and paint, living on until her 90s. Her final show was February 12, 2012.

We visit the hotel, also, where Marta’s artistic touch is evident in every room: trompe l'oeil paintings, decorative parrots and clowns and peacock wings on the walls, dancers and angels galore. We meet Holly, who was Marta’s caregiver at the end of her life, but Holly tells us that it was Marta who cared for her. Standing beneath a mural of three cherubic angels, Holly shares a little about the rough times she has endured, most painfully the loss of two children; she was on the verge of giving up, but Marta had faith in her. “I think she’s still looking out for me,” says Holly.

I think she’s still looking out for all of us, in a way.  Her message is to be unafraid. Dream. Dance. Do.  (Even if no one is watching.)

And we go to Tecopa, of course. It's a high-energy vortex; you can sense it right away. Maybe it’s the therapeutic, geothermal heated, mineral-rich hot springs, or the way the chalky salty minerals make the ground look snow-dusted, or how the mountains glow orange at dusk and the night sky blazes with stars.

But maybe it’s the flourishes of quirky creative humans: a purple-painted kiosk, an old truck rusted and peeling into multiple hues and abandoned in a field like an art installation, or in one place the twinkle of tiny red and green lights beamed  into the trees and in the air, so it’s like walking through a fairyland--and it isn’t even Christmas. 

The highlights of our too-brief stay in Tecopa are a dip in the silky waters of the hot spring pool at Delight’s bathhouse, and a fabulous meal at Eric Scott’s Steaks and Beer, a gourmet restaurant in the proverbial middle of nowhere. (Follow the yellow-lit path…) We sit at the counter, along with a local fellow who lives in a trailer nearby, and it's like eating in a friend's kitchen, but with better food.

And speaking of meals, I would be remiss if I didn't mention El Valle Restaurant in Amargosa Valley, where we stop for Mexican food the next day, including homemade tortillas, and it was top-notch. El Valle is run by a lovely lady named Ampara, whose Christmas tree is still standing in the entryway, but it's been redecorated as a New Year's tree, because 2018 is going to be a great year, and  in a couple of weeks she plans to turn it into a Valentine's Day tree, because, as Ampara is fond of saying, "Why not?"   

Is there a theme to our wanderings? Today I think it would be about daring to aspire and create, and having the freedom to do so.

There'd be something about resilience, too...and the spirit of why not. 

______

Our trip culminates at the Ash River Wilderness Preserve, and it’s the perfect place to be still and contemplate, the perfect place from which to return. We take the boardwalk path and look upon a crystal clear aquamarine stream. From the bottom, nearly fifteen feet down, 2800 gallons of fresh water is flowing to the surface and collecting in limestone bedrock. This aquifer has given life to fish, animals, and humans for eons. Ancient indigenous tribes saw this as the holy and sacred place it is, and they came from miles away and all directions to gather here.

In 1980, a corporation proposed turning this place into a development that would include hotels, strip malls, an airport, and over 30,000 homes. Why drive to Las Vegas, when you can bring Las Vegas here? Thankfully, vigilant citizens stood up and fought it, and today Ash Meadows is a wildlife refuge. 

We stood at the source. And today, as always, there was the water, and the wild heart of the desert, trying to be.  

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.  (T.S. Eliot)”

The Doll Doctor

There is a little shop in Paris on Rue Parmentier where for more than half a century self-taught master Henri Launay has been repairing dolls, particularly French porcelain poupées. I first glimpsed him through the storefront window in the dusty shadows within. He was wearing a white lab coat, and he held a celluloid baby doll in his hands that he was assessing with the bespectacled tenderness of an old-fashioned country doctor. All around him were piles of broken dolls and various parts: eyeballs, limbs, and torsos. Here and there was a well-loved stuffed animal too.

I walked by the shop a few times in the course of the days that followed, and finally I pre-composed a sentence or two in French, and steeled myself to enter. I wanted him to know that I respected and admired him, and that his work reminded me of a time when things were still deemed worthy of repairing rather than discarding, when craftsmanship had value, and work was done with care.

I understood, too, that the ancient dolls and Teddy bears come to him with names and stories, and in restoring them to life he is restoring memories and continuity, and providing a kind of comfort. Also, I think there is something truly beautiful about finding one’s passion, even an odd one like doll repair, and doing it well. It was clear to me that the man is a treasure–and he's ninety years old! I felt I must pay homage.

When I entered, Monsieur Launay was standing at the counter, wooden file drawers behind him, and shelves crammed helter-skelter with doll heads, spools of cord and thread and wire, a bit of wig and stuffing, a chubby leg with a pink knit bootie on its foot, a pair of tiny red shoes, and a few tools, like scissors, files, and pliers––although he has said that his favorite tool is simply his hands. From a boom box came the sounds of classical music, through the front window, sunlight slanted, and the busy street outside receded into unreality. Time seemed to have stopped inside this shop.

I stammered out my well-intentioned sentiments, and I’m sure he understood. He’s heard this sort of thing before, and I was just another fan. He pointed out a newspaper clipping from the New York Times published about decade ago…”en anglais”…and I learned some basic facts about him from that. He started out as a young man repairing umbrellas and belts, and gradually shifted to dolls, accumulating very specialized expertise. But the dolls he repairs are real ones, dolls of quality and character, dolls that have been cherished companions. (He is disdainful of the mass produced modern dolls–Barbies, for example–which he can do nothing to fix.)

He has amassed an inventory of doll parts over the years from defunct stores and factories, and can make eyes open, limbs move again, and broken shards whole. The dolls he repairs are so beloved to those who bring them in, he views his clinic as humanitarian. His skill and patience are breathtaking.

The journalist who interviewed him when he was eighty years old asked him if he thought about retirement. His response: "This is like an arm or a leg. If didn't have the boutique I would miss something, I would feel mutilated."

Ten years later, he's still here. 

Old Valley Days: Reminiscing With Dairy Farmer Howard Sahm

Howard Sahm lived in Los Olivos his entire life, and was one of the last dairy farmers in the Santa Ynez Valley. My Dunn Middle School students and I visited him, his wife Ruth, and their daughter Cathy in 2002. They welcomed us into their 19th century house, tucked away on a back street of Los Olivos, where time seemed to have paused, and Howard shared memories of the good old days in the Valley.

I was born on June 30, 1926, and I’ve lived here all my life. My mother was born in this house – it’s a hundred and sixteen years old. My grandfather, Frank Whitcher, built this house; he also built the main house at Midland School. And this was all our dairy property, operated by my father and me until 1964. We had prob’ly 65, maybe 75 cows. When we sold, we were milking 130, 135.

My father came here as a relief mail clerk on the old narrow gauge railroad. My mother and grandmother had a store and post office over where the deli now is, and Dad used to have to bring down registered mail, certified mail, and so forth. That’s how he met my mother. Then they moved to Nevada, and they were up there for a year until he contacted typhoid and had to come back. My uncle, Charlie Whitcher, was up at Midland School at the time, so Dad did R&R there for a spell and then worked with my uncle.

My wife Ruth is from Michigan. Her first husband, Nat, was the principal up at school. She used to come down and get milk, and I’d lock her in the ice box. Then, after Nat passed away, well, then she moved back to Santa Barbara for a couple of years. We got together and I brought her back to the Valley.

When I went to grammar school, there was four grades, first through fourth, in one room, and then sixth through eighth, in another, with two teachers. I don’t remember what the attendance was then, but maybe fifty or sixty. We used to walk to school, and up there on the corner near the school, why, we’d stop and have a marble game. We didn’t need anybody to tell us what time it was.

A certain time of the year, the kites came out, then the marbles. In the spring, it was the kites. To make kites, we’d use newspaper, some slats about yay wide, and some string -that’s what we did. You can get the slats at a store. Then get some little rags, and tie ’em in knots for the tail.

The school was up there across the street from the present school. It burned down. There was gravel roads for a number of years, and then in the 1930’s they put down the black top. That building where the art gallery is, next to the post office, that building was there. The corner store was there; it burnt down and was then rebuilt. Across the street, there’s a service station — that was there. Over on this side of the street, Uncle Tom Davis had a little one-room store, kids would go in there and get a penny jaw breaker and a five cent package of gum. Then there was another building that used to be a meat market, but it’s since been torn down. And there was a general mercantile store, and past that, there was the old theater building. The screen is now over at the historical society museum. In later years, if we wanted to go to a movie on a Saturday afternoon, we’d ride our bikes into Solvang. There was a theater there where the Bit O’ Denmark is. And there was a bowling alley too. 

The church was over on the corner, across the bridge. There was another church in Ballard, and there was the Mission in Solvang, and of course, the Danish church. There was also Mattei’s Tavern. We supplied milk for Mattei’s Tavern, Midland School, Dunn, the grammar school some…

Solvang used to be Nielson, Peterson, Rasmussen. You could go down there ten o’clock in the morning, to the corner of Alisal and Copenhagan, and all the people would be in the back room having coffee and Danish. Nobody’d be in the store. You’d walk back and join ’em. You’d see ’em in the afternoon, two thirty, three o’clock.

I delivered papers with my bicycle, when I was in sixth or seventh grade for a penny a paper. I went five, five and a half miles every day on my bicycle, out to the store, by the schools, up Figueroa Mountain Rd, down to Hollister — thirty-five cents.

During the Depression, everybody was in the same boat. They didn’t have any money. You could get a good hired man for a dollar a day and room and board. With World War II, the wages started going up, but up ’til then, a dollar a day was good money. There was a hobo camp up by the bridge at Mattei’s. The kids would go down there. There’d be four or five of us boys. We’d share their hobo stew with them. Road kill, whatever. They’d come here and ask my mother for a potato. She’d say, “Okay. If you wanna chop some wood.” They’d chop up a half a dozen pieces of wood, and she’d give ’em a potato, or whatever. I don’t think anybody ever got turned away from here. If they were willing to chop up three pieces of wood, they would get something. But she wouldn’t give it to them just for nothing. They had to earn it. The work gave them dignity.

I wish I had a video of some of the characters we used to have here in Los Olivos. At the post office, they had a big bench out there, and they called that the "spit ‘n argue" club. Those guys would come there in the morning, waitin’ for the mailman, sittin’ on the bench, and they’d tell stories: the biggest fish, or the biggest spread of horns on the deer. There was a fellow who lived up there, Frank Cooper – staunch Democrat – and George Harvey had this station across the street, and Mr. Galupin’s father-in-law was a little bantam rooster kinda guy. If he thought you were a Democrat, he’d argue Republican. If you were a Republican, he’d argue Democrat. He’d be struttin’ around, chest forward, rooster-style, arguing. Well, they were over at the station this one morning, and he made some crack about the Democrats, an’ old Frank Cooper, he says, “Well, if you weren’t such an old guy, I’d swatcha in the mouth.” He says, “Be my guest.” And he fought little Frank clear across the street.

When I was in high school, there were maybe a dozen cars on the campus. A few of the teachers had cars, and I had my brother’s car, a 1936 Ford coupe, but most of the time, we had to ride the bus. Later, when I got to driving, after I became sixteen, there’d be a dance every week. Usually, we’d go to the dance every Saturday night. They had an old time dance here at the grammar school or Santa Ynez, and then the regular dances down in the Vet’rans Hall in Solvang. As for dating, well, it was prob’ly no different than now. We listened to some of the Big Band type of music. Our band instructor was Bob MacDonald, and the principal, Hal Hamm, he played the clarinet, and then there was a man and a wife, Ivan and Ellen Sorenson, he played the fiddle and bass fiddle, and Ellen played the piano. And that was our music.

We had live music, not albums. For the dances up here, it was Edna Craig, Charlie Murray, Rosemary Hardwood … banjo, fiddle, piano….square dancing. We danced with everybody – two-step, fox trot, polka. Girls asked boys, too. We liked Melancholy Baby, Puttin’ on the Ritz, Let Me Call You Sweetheart…songs like that. Ruth and I used to dance, and we never missed a polka, but then I had the stroke a number of years ago, and my right foot just wouldn’t quite track. And now I wouldn’t have air enough to polka.

I was draft age during World War II. My brother was a Naval Air Corps. I had to stay home and help Dad milk the cows. We’d look out and down there by the creek, there’d be half a dozen or so jeeps, and the guys would be on maneuvers. They’d pull in there under the willows, some of them. You wouldn’t ever know when you’d see a bunch of those jeeps… We furnished milk to Camp Cooke and we furnished milk to the creamery in Santa Barbara, and they in turn furnished it to marine bases, hospitals…

Operatin’ the dairy was hard work. Nothin' was easy. We had registered Guernseys, so they all had names. In later years, we put in some Holsteins with them – a little more volume, less butter fat. They were all different. All of ’em had names: Bossy, Opal, Suzy, Fanny, Petunia…We had one that always had twins every year. It was easy to tell ’em apart. Even the Angus, when I worked over for Mr. Lushon – black as shoe leather, but every one of ’em was different.

Before we sold out, our contract was big enough for one man, but it wasn’t hardly big enough for two, yet it took two to operate. Then they closed the plant down in Santa Barbara and started shipping our milk to Los Angeles. That increase in the freight, and the contract and all that, was just economically hard for us. You see, at one time, it used to be twelve or fourteen dairies right here in the valley, and about 55 or 60 in Santa Maria. Now there’s one here in the Valley – Jacobsen’s out on Baseline Avenue – and one in Santa Maria.

So the late fifties, early sixties was time to think about selling. It wasn’t easy. One of the dairy men over in Buellton bought the cows. Yes… It wasn’t easy. You know, you’re born and raised with somethin’… Back when we was operatin’, my mother, you know, you had to cull a cow sometimes. It didn’t bother her; you’d come back, there’d always be one to take the place.

But that last day, it was…it wasn’t easy.

So you just work hard. My dad always had a philosophy – never ask a hired man to do something that you wouldn’t do. And it stands true.

An afterword from Cynthia: 

I recently came upon the following item in the online archives of the Santa Ynez Valley News:  SAHM SERVICE SET A graveside service for Howard Sahm of Los Olivos, who died July 2, is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday, July 22, 2011 at Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard. Sahm operated a dairy in Los Olivos for many years and had celebrated his 85th birthday on June 30. His daughter, Cathy Garley, said his heart gave out and he passed away peacefully at home. With his wife of 55 years, Ruth, he had five children, three girls and two boys. Sahm was a tireless volunteer for the Santa Ynez Valley Elks and Valley Youth Recreation. The Sahms’ home served many times as the Youth Rec campaign and ticket headquarters.

Reza Aslan: A Changing Religion, A Constant Faith

Reza Aslan has received a lot of attention in recent years as a religious scholar, commentator, author, and host of Believer, a documentary series on CNN that was abruptly canceled after he used a blunt (and well deserved) term to describe the current so-called President of the United States. But one February afternoon in 2006, long before his fame, Reza paid a visit to Dunn Middle School to talk to our students about Islam, the world's second-largest religion (after Christianity). Reza pointed out that Islam was undergoing great changes and he shared his belief that the real conflict today was not between Islam and the West, but rather between modernists and traditionalists within Islam.  Excerpts of the interview follow:

Reza: You already know a lot of things about Islam. Now the question is how do we make sense out of it, how do we put together these words we hear all the time to understand what Islam really is. There is a tendency in the United States to somehow think of Islam in a different way from other religions. We forget that the second largest religion in the world – and in the United States — is Islam, so the largest religious minority in this country are Muslim Americans. Islam is very much a part of the strong Biblical tradition that many of you are familiar with. In fact, the Qur’an thinks of itself as a continuation of the previous scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. So you know how the Bible is separated into the Old Testament and the New Testament? Well you can kind of think of the Qur’an as the new New Testament, or the newest testament, because they see it as the continuation of the story and that Muhammad was the end of that story. So that shows that there is this real connection, one giant faith separated into three different versions: the Jewish version, the Christian version, and the Muslim version. And when it comes down to the beliefs and ideas of the religion, they’re all pretty much the same. I mean there ARE differences, there’s no question, but they are very much a part of the same Biblical, prophetic tradition that a lot of us are already familiar with.

Student: How do you think Islam has changed through the years?

Reza: That’s an excellent question. Islam is no different from any other religion in that it is constantly changing. Most of us know, for instance, that Christianity today is a lot different than the way it was a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago. Religions change as people change, and the same thing is happening with Islam. At first it was a desert religion of mostly Arabs in the Middle East. Now, Arabs make up just a small group of the world’s Muslim population. Does anyone know how many Muslims there are in the world? It comes to about 1.2 billion Muslims. That’s a lot. And of course they all believe differently, they all behave differently, they have their own traditions, and they have their own ideas about what Islam means.

Student: Do you base your life on the Five Pillars?

Reza: I try to live by the Five Pillars. Most people try their best to follow their religion as well as they can. And we’re all going to fail. I could definitely be better. I could definitely give more money away. I don’t. I could definitely pray more. I don’t. And sometimes during Ramadan, I just get hungry. You know? And there are people who are better at it than I am and people who are worse at it than I am. It’s like anything else.

Student: Do you think Jews, Muslims, and Christians in particular are focusing too much on their holy scriptures and not on becoming a good person?

Reza: I think you’re absolutely right, and that really becomes the problem. You know what? It goes back to this question of what is religion. Have you ever thought about it? What is it? Are religion and faith the same thing? Can you have faith without having religion? Maybe you can’t have religion without faith but you can certainly have faith without religion, so faith must be bigger than religion. In a way, religion is a way to talk about faith. Right? You start with faith.

So I have faith in God. What does that mean? How do I describe it? How do I talk about it to other people? With religion! Religion becomes the tool that we use to talk about God, or like a language that we use. People may be talking about the same God; they may be talking about the same faith, but they’re talking about it in different ways.

But what happens if you forget that that religion is supposed to actually point you to faith? What happens when you think that that religion is everything, that there’s nothing beyond that religion, that religion is faith? What happens when you forget that religion is a tool in order to get something, not an end in itself? It’s like having a hammer. The purpose of a hammer is to hammer something in — right? But if you don’t hammer something in, what good is a hammer? Nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. You’re walking around with a useless hammer.

So I do think in that way what you’re saying is true. A lot of people really forget that religion is supposed to be the language that you use to express your faith, and the important thing is not religion, but faith. When people forget that, they think religion is all that matters. And if you think that religion is all that matters, then it’s very easy to start fighting with one another. My religion is right. Your religion is wrong. My religion is going to destroy your religion. You forget that these are both talking about the same exact thing.

Student: Were you raised as a child under the Muslim religion?

Reza: I was raised in it the way a lot of people are raised in a tradition. Maybe your parents go to church on Easter and Christmas, and so do you, and so you call yourself a Christian. I’m the same way. My parents went to mosque on Ramadan and on the Prophet’s birthday and we called ourselves Muslims. That’s all that mattered. It was only as an adult that I made a conscious decision to actually go back to my faith. My parents don’t really care; they’re not very religious. If you’re going to follow a religion, I think it’s important for you to make that decision for yourself. It can’t be your mom’s decision; it can’t be your dad’s decision. It has to be your decision; otherwise it doesn’t mean anything.

Student: What do you think about the drawings that came out in the paper in Denmark and the response of Muslims?

Reza: Some of you know there are these cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that came out in this newspaper in Denmark and it has sparked all of this rioting and anger among Muslims. Part of it is because in Islam there is a tradition that you’re not allowed to make any kind of picture or portrait of the Prophet. But that’s actually NOT why there is so much anger. If you look at these particular drawings, they were really, really offensive. Like in one of them Muhammad has a bomb for a turban, so he’s a terrorist. I think it’s important to understand that it’s not just that these drawings came out; it’s that they were so deliberately offensive. Even with freedom of the press, there must be some attempt made to not intentionally provoke people, to not try to fuel tensions that people are already struggling to contain. It also feeds right into the hands of extreme groups. So it makes me angry because I feel as though the purpose was to deliberately provoke Muslims. I’m angry about the motive; these were meant in no other way but to offend.

Student: Do you think terrorists automatically become non-Muslim by their actions?

Reza: Did Timothy McVeigh’s actions make him a non-Christian? He’s the guy responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City that killed a lot of innocent people. He was a Christian, or he thought of himself as a Christian. You can rationalize anything, whatever your religion or what you call yourself…

Sadly, our tape ran out, but in other talks Reza has referred to religion as a language that is subject to interpretation, pointing out that extremism is the loudest voice and the interpretation that gets our attention but it is not necessarily the most representative perspective. His views on this subject are reflected in his widely acclaimed book, No God but God in which he refers to those “who have replaced Muhammad’s original version of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord.” He has suggested that even the rise of fundamentalism may be a reaction to the greater rise of reform, rationalism, modernism, and progress. Reza believes that an Islamic Reformation has already begun, one in which peace, pluralism, and inclusion will overcome bigotry and hatred. “The tide of reform,” he says, “cannot be stopped.”