Childhood

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

“Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother’s house we go....” It took all of the verses of the song, sung several times through, to get us to Grandma and Grandpa’s house on Thanksgiving Day. Since my family often sang during car trips when I was young, I measured distance by the number of songs it took, not the number of miles. You are My Sunshine, The Bull Frog Song, Froggy Went A Courtin’ were regulars, as was 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall for longer trips. During the holidays, we included our seasonal favorites. “Hurrah for the fun; is the pudding done, Hurrah for the pumpkin pie!” Since timing was everything, we tried to finish the song as we pulled up to the gate. As we stepped onto the front porch, the sounds of laughter and wafts of roasting turkey and cornbread stuffing greeted us. Opening the…

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A Clock Needs a Voice and a Heartbeat

A Clock Needs a Voice and a Heartbeat

I am not a clock-watcher by nature, but I do like a house that “tick-tocks” and “bongs,” that has a heartbeat. I feel at home where household activities and conversations are punctuated with deep clangs, melodic chimes, and “cuckoos.” I rarely wear a watch, but when I do, I prefer one with a face and hands and a heart that ticks.As a child, staying overnight with friends and relatives, I realized that every home throbbed with some version of these audible announcements of the passage of time. These metronomes of our lives provided a certain rhythm to each home. Grandfather clocks often presided over household events with a slow steady beat; for homes short of space and money, mantel clocks or bedside clocks tick-tocked reassuringly through the days and nights.I especially loved to visit my aunt and uncle who had a cuckoo clock sitting on a small table next to…

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Dreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger

Dreams of a Four-Year-Old Forest Ranger

Not that it’s easy now, but being a forest ranger was hard work in the 1940’s.  Being four years old is always hard work.  Combining the two experiences was especially challenging—at least that was the way I saw it.My uncle was a forest ranger during the summers of the mid- to late-1940’s. My aunt was the “chief cook and bottle washer” for the dozen or so rangers stationed at the Big Smokey ranger camp/station in Idaho.Located north of Fairfield and upriver from Featherville, the camp was close to neither.  In fact, as with many ranger stations in those days, it was not easy to get to.  Always winding, the miles of narrow dusty gravel roads included steep mountain passes.  Each turn had its own surprises. Dodging wildlife or boulders, punctured tires from dead porcupines, vapor lock, steaming radiators, the infamous “red-ants-at-the-side-of-the-road” dance and getting carsick were considered normal, if not…

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A Cheep and Invaluable Experience

“Well, it’s just not easy to have a relationship with a chicken”, my friend concluded as we sat around the table comparing chicken stories. (Yes, we really were.) “I guess I will have to disagree,” I said, images surfacing from my own childhood. “I had a wonderful relationship with a little red rooster. His name was Red, of course. I was about six years old….” I had almost forgotten. The mailman had delivered the cardboard box while I was staying the weekend with my grandparents. And what a box it was! The whole box was bursting with ear-shattering shrill “cheeps”, and it was full of small holes through which tiny beaks frantically poked. Grandma’s batch of spring chicks had arrived! She carefully set the noisy box in the middle of the living room floor where I eagerly helped her open it. “Handle them gently now,” Grandma cautioned me as I…

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School’s Out!

“When I think about it, oh, I am really sad—for about 30 seconds,” a teacher recently confessed to me.  We were talking about the impending end of the school year. Actually, that pretty well sums up how most of the students feel about it too; at least, that’s how I remember it. From the elementary grades through high school, the end of the school year was always the same. I was sad about saying goodbye to my favorite school activities, like art, reading, music, recess, and the noon hour.  I would miss seeing my friends every day, and most years, I would even miss my teachers. But any feelings of sadness were quickly replaced with a welling up of anticipatory joy for being set FREE!  I could imagine what prisoners and indentured servants might feel when told that their shackles would be unlocked and their prison doors would be opened…

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Dandelions: Blessing or Curse

It’s happening again; it’s the same every spring and summer. I am confronted with the Great Dandelion Dilemma. I am reluctant to chase them from my lawn, these tiny replicas of the sun, small cushions of yellow and gold rising from the green. What if they are really a blessing instead of a curse, a feast instead of pestilence, like manna from heaven, an abundant harvest for which we have not sown? Each time I pick up my paring knife to dig them up, my intent is diverted by memories of past “dandelion days” of summer. Sometimes, on hot and lazy summer afternoons, my friends and I would spread an old blanket on the grass under a shade tree. Next, we carefully searched the fringe areas of the lawn, garden, and nearby ditch banks for our elusive treasures--dandelions with long stems! Giggling and gushing over each new find, we eventually…

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Climbers

Climbers

I hadn’t planned it at all. In fact, I was surprised when I looked down and realized how high I had climbed. It just sort of happened. I was visiting my son last week in Texas and I was admiring the magnificent old tree dominating his front yard. No one was around, so.....I took the first step. The tree had obviously been waiting for me, because its branches seemed to reach down and lift me up, foothold by foothold. In my tree-climbing days, I would have rated this one an easy climber. Now, I will use the category “geriatric climber”. I climbed to a suitable perch and carefully settled myself in. As I leaned against the trunk, I felt secure, at home among its branches, the texture of the rough bark and the woodsy smell, all subtly familiar. It had been a long time since I had actually climbed a…

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Finding the End of the Rainbow

(First Honorable Mention (fourth place) in “Published manuscript category in the Reader’s Digest Magazine contest, 1995 It was still early in the afternoon, and it already had been a long, rainy day. It had been raining for most of three days, which was unusual for this area. For my two sons, ages 3 and 6, all entertainment options had been worn out by the end of the first day. The novelty of saving drowning worms, stick and string puddle fishing, and rowing plastic tub boats had lost appeal. The “Rainy Day Olympics” had worn out even faster, due to the inevitable altercations that occurred after each son proclaimed himself the winner of every event. We hadn’t fared any better with indoor activities until we decided to bake cut-out cookies. As we were taking the last batch of dogs and stars out of the oven, things were looking up. Was that…

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Backyard Grape Arbor

There is a time portal in my back yard. It looks deceptively like an ordinary grape trellis arched over the wooden gate leading to my rose garden. However, it harbors the magic to transport me back through time and space to my grandmother’s grape arbor—the way it was when I was five years old. Grandma’s grape arbor was a mystical green tunnel. It spanned the distance between the bottom steps of her back porch and the gate that led to the vegetable garden. My childhood memory tells me that it went for at least a mile. I know now that it was about 15 feet long. Each year, I watched with awe its transformation from a wire archway lined with brown dead sticks to a green leafy passageway of graceful vines and grasping tendrils. And, when the clusters of tiny green pearls swelled into huge clusters of purple balls, it…

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Fair Time

I’ve only had it for two months and already it is dog-eared, highlighted, underlined, almost worn out. It is my Exhibitor Handbook for the Eastern Idaho State Fair. Each year, it arrives sometime between the middle of June and early July. By early August, I have studied and consulted it, daydreamed and made decisions over it, all of which helps me answer the question, “What shall I enter in the Fair this year?” Already, as I am packing my choice exhibits my excitement is growing. My eager anticipation will culminate in exuberant delight on opening day of the Fair—just like it always has. I love the Fair. I have always loved the Fair. My earliest memories of days and evenings spent at the Fair include eating hamburgers and cotton candy, “helping” my parents at the Chamber of Commerce booth, eating hamburgers and cotton candy, watching my uncle carry the flag…

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