Like a pantry full of exotic seasonings our lives were laced with orchestras and bands, Mariachi's and musicals. The Philco floor model radio brought us background music for the day's work and the hymns at church music for worship. In Sunday School came the songs about Jesus and little children, building our faith. There was singing in school, Brownies, and Girl Scouts. Happy songs, and sad songs, and songs of romance and far-away places. When was it, I have to wonder, that people first began to sing?
The first orchestrated singing I remember came the day that Daddy appeared in our living room on Josephine Street with a guitar. We gathered around him when we started hearing him tune it. Then he began to first strum through several chords before picking out a tune. The day before, we had no knowledge of our father's musical capabilities, and now we were hearing and seeing someone with a fair mastery of at least basic principles of music.
The next thing we knew, he was first singing and then having us sing back the words to a cowboy song, The Maple on the Hill. He taught us the beautiful, reassuring hymn, "Whispering Hope", which we loved to sing and later learned to play ourselves. We already knew Down in the Valley, and we expanded our repertoire from there. The songs were portable, and went on to fill hours on long road trips to New Mexico and Texas.
Daddy's new boss moved us from Denver to Colorado Springs, and finally to Pueblo. One day in Colorado Springs Daddy announced one Saturday that we were going to hear a Mariachi band. We had no idea what that meant, but by the look on his face, it was going to be better than Disney Land. He drove us to the Antlers Hotel where some kind of festival--probably Cinco de Mayo--was going on, and we were thrilled to be able to feel the polka rhythms reverberate through the ground and into our bones. The impressive Mariachis wore white rhinestone and sequined suits with gold braid accents and large matching sombreros. It was an unforgettable introduction to Mexican music, and curiously about the same time, Daddy began to listen to Mexican radio while in the car. Or while outside working on the car, turned up a little too loud while confused school acquaintances said within my earshot, "Well, Juanita doesn't look like a Mexican."
Although he always had his fiddle I first heard Daddy play Ragged Bill after we moved to Pueblo, in 1960. He said he used to play in a band when he was younger. We drew the mental picture of him fiddling at a string of barn dances, his laughing eyes and grin in place. But the instrument that most changed our lives was the player piano that appeared one day in our Pueblo living room soon after we moved in. Mary, it turns out, had been given lessons through the public schools in Denver and was already "fluent" in piano. One of her best friends was the daughter of a piano teacher so I was set up for lessons immediately.
Meanwhile, Daddy brought out the paper rolls and hooked the beautiful mahogany monster up to the vacuum in blow instead of suck, bypassing the pedals to make it electric. And he added tacks to the hammers to give it the tinny sound of a honky-tonk while Mother rolled her eyes. Not a lot of time went by before the tacks were gone and Mary Beth and I were vying for time to practice our scales.
Naturally, Mary Beth was a much more disciplined pianist than I was, and in a short while she was accompanying the girl's glee club at school. I continued to practice but deferred to her. Fortunately for us, she had access to some great Broadway music, and we always had the old blue Baptist Hymn Book that included great key-pounders like Flee as a Bird to Your Mountain, and Master the Tempest is Raging. I could play these as well as my sister if I worked long and hard, but my fingers could not really span an octave at 10 years of age. So while she played, I belted out Climb Every Mountain, Flee as a Bird, and On the Street where you live. Daddy and Mother must have been Very Satisfied with their investment.
Daddy, restless soul that he was, had to have something new now and then, so while the grand piano sat upright against the east wall of the Living Room, leaned against the south wall was a banjo. Daddy prowled the hock-shops and junk stores for treasures like this, and he was soon picking at the round and tinny-sounding oddity with some success. Next came the Mandolin, from which Daddy could immediately coax the sweetest sounds ever. The banjo went but the mandolin stayed. Finally, he brought home a blue box with a handle and latch that slightly resembled an over-sized suitcase. When unlatched and opened fully it was a field organ, complete with foot pumps. It was there a little while but didn't hold a candle to the player piano where we worshiped the keys and tenderly polished the finish.
In the summers we would often lay quilts on the grass and lay looking up at the stars while we listened to the Symphony Orchestra concerts amplified from the Art Deco rainbow shell in the park just a few blocks away. The elementary schools still taught classic Christmas Carols in the 1950's and 1960's, so we sang, sometimes in harmony, as snow fell to make our long walk home from school shorter. Even the junior high schools put on a completely costumed and staged musical each year so we participated eagerly, and sang in the church choirs regularly. It was reassuring to have our parents in their Sunday best attending a performance, whether we were performing or watching seated beside them.
The seasonings of beautiful and enjoyable music still permeate our lives. Although the piano didn't make the move to New Mexico, the fiddle and mandolin did and and both now belong to one of my brothers. Mary Beth and I still play the piano a little, and the boys play the guitar. I have a similar piano in less than beautiful condition that my children learned to play "a little". One chose choir, two of went on to study violin, and all enjoy a variety of music. When they were little, like my dad, I made them sing. Everyone sings.
Two (c) Nita Walker Boles
Curls Courtesy of Plastic Turtles
Monday, May 31, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Quiet Endurance: The Story of a Very Determined Woman named Anna
I cannot tell you about our mother without saying that if Daddy was fun, she was mainly all business. If he was sometimes a little rough around the edges, she was grace and dignity. Both of them were unafraid of work, and I was an adult before I knew what unrelenting challenges they faced. They were typical of that Greatest Generation who survived the Great Depression and then threw themselves into a national machine that helped win WWII.
Both sets of our grandparents were born in the last two decades of the 1800's and witnessed the advent of electricity, the telephone, radio, and automobile. Our maternal grandmother nearly blew off the head of her future husband when he chose the wrong direction to approach the house as she took a shot at a fox that had invaded the chicken yard. Children growing up on the Texas prairie were likely to encounter rattle snakes and carried pistols as a matter or course when crossing the ranches. Yet our Great Grandfather and his boys ranched and farmed in suits, his a 3-piece, and they had fine furniture and china until unfortunate times overtook them--but that's another story. The perspective of these hard-working, church-going people was rather fixed, but they were far from being isolated or bogged in the 19th Century.
Even on the farm, our mother was a Fashionista, and a talented seamstress. Somehow in her youth, the railroads had brought enough catalogs and magazines for her to get a taste for great clothing and coiffures. She was 13 when she got her first flapper dress, while living in Spur, Texas. (Her mother's youngest sister, who bought the dress for Mother was, during the same time period, writing notes to her girlfriends about certain young men who were "Some Sheiks!" and asking who had a car at his disposal so they could go Kodaking.) The movies brought far-away places close, and you could take a snapshot and have it developed into a post card to circulate to friends and family.
Our Mother, Anna, was a modern woman, the first Southern Baptist woman on record, as far as her new mother-in-law was concerned, to get a divorce. Mother's divorce was coincidental with the tragic death of Daddy's first wife, Modena. Each of them was alone with two children and working at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico when they met during WWII. They were married within two years of becoming single.
They bought land where the Holiday Inn was later built, and built a little house of mainly salvaged materials. And they brought all four of their children together: Son, whose first name was really James, and Jack, from Daddy's first marriage, Nina and Doyle from mother's.
Jack once told me that when he first met our Mother that he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A more quiet version of Doris Day, she was tall and Teutonic, with blond hair that carried a slight hint of strawberry, a shade some people referred to as "Champagne Blond" I have seen only on one other person. Our father, who worked with Boeing before coming to Roswell, was a handsome man who would remind you of Humphrey Bogart both in mannerism and looks.
Their first baby was born with Hyaline Membrane Disease. The baby, whose name was Alma Jean, never came home from the hospital. I was a young mother with children of my own when I asked Mother about this time. She said she was inconsolable, unable to stop crying for days at a time. Finally, she dreamed of her own grandmother, who said, "Why are you crying? She is here, with me!" Mother said her grandmother was holding the small baby, but beside her was another baby, just a little older. She was comforted, but she also knew that she would have this experience again.
There was no time to even ponder that, because The War was winding down, and no job awaited. Since they were both civilians, they would have to wait to be hired behind a veteran for any job. Perhaps it was one of the other mechanics who told Daddy about the farm in the Ozarks of Missouri, but somehow life began again not only for the older children, but for Daddy's parents and his sister and her family, who followed us to their own farms, our grandparents just across the pasture from us. As though they had always belonged there, a clan of Walkers now lived near Exeter, Missouri.
As the second born and first daughter in a family of nine children, Mother would not have considered four children a handful at all. But Son, as James Frank, the eldest was still troubled after his mother's long illness and death. There were several years between him and Jack, and now he had two additional siblings with Mother expecting another baby.
And our eldest sister hotly reported that our grandmother took pot-shots about divorced women repeatedly within our mother's hearing. I would not have known though, because Mother had long since won her over by the time I was old enough to remember. There was peace and mutual respect between them as I grew up, but I was separated in years, nearly a decade, from these situations.
Betty Ann was born in 1947, a blue baby. Her struggle to survive of course took in the whole family. Mother told me that Papaw, our grandfather, often drove her with Betty Ann to see the doctor. They hoped that someday, when she was strong enough, he could do surgery to correct the hole in her heart. But after eight months Betty Ann was in heart failure and had to be held on a pillow. Mother said she could not stand to see her suffer any longer. She said that every breath seemed to hurt,so she silently prayed that the Lord would take her, and He did. She said that Daddy came and sat beside her while they held her, surrendering her at last to God. It was Son who ran across the pasture to tell our grandparents. No wonder it was hard for him to get close to us!
The day following Betty Ann's funeral, the older children were sent back to school. Clouds were gathering, rain forecast, and hay was in the field. Daddy had to help his father bring in the hay. Mother was alone.
For some reason, Joyce Lacy, who taught at the one-room school house, asked one of the older kids if anyone was with their mother. When Mrs. Lacy learned that Mother was by herself, she left the class, drove to the farm, and took Mother the short distance to our grandparents home. Our grandmother had gone into town (Cassville) with one of the family who had come for the funeral for something she needed. When I asked what she did, since she was still very much alone, Mother simply said, "I just sat in the kitchen and waited until the men came in from haying."
When Mary Beth was born a few months later she lived, but did not tolerate milk of any kind. So desperate was her condition that our aunt sent a dress for Mother to bury her in. Thankfully, someone thought to try goat milk, and it saved her life. When I was born about 2 years later, and didn't give anyone reason to dread and fear for my life, they must have joyfully fed me and fed me. I look quite plump at about a year and a half.
Once I was an adult, I looked with a heavy heart at the fracture that had taken place between the older and younger offspring of our parents. Tentatively I would ask when the moments seemed right, and gradually the story came from mother, one of our brothers, and from our sister. Daddy was unable to speak at all about it.
Around the time of my birth, the drought in Missouri had taken a serious economic toll. Daddy was selling Watkins products in addition to farming. It was inevitable that the farm would fail when a herd of pigs that was sold to Daddy all died of hog cholera. He and his brother-in-law decided they would try to sell televisions in Kansas City.
About the same time, Mother's family came to take Doyle and Nina to "visit" with their father in Ft. Worth, whom they had neither seen nor spoken with during the 6 year interval in Missouri. It seemed as though he had a good job with General Dynamics, and could provide comfortably for them. Mother told me she had felt defeated and as though there was no other choice. Son completed high school and joined the military. We lived briefly in Kansas City--maybe 5 or 6 months, before going on to Denver to pursue the hope of better work as an airplane mechanic at Stapleton Airport. Jack went with us to Denver for a brief time, and then on to New Mexico to join some of the extended family there, where he finished school.
After 6 years together, this big Missouri farm family had in a matter of months shrunken to a family of four with two small children and a baby on the way, who lived in Denver. I was so small the memory of the older kids faded right away, and I was only conscious of the here and now. Both of our parents were undoubtedly filled with worry about the unseen future and anxious about the separation from their children, but we did not know it for many years.
The Airport job didn't work out since so many veterans were well-qualified, but, undaunted, Daddy began his life as a salesman of Filter Queen vacuum cleaners and ultimately, life insurance. Mother was used to working, so she balanced work and three young children somehow without me ever remembering day care of any kind.
Mother seemed ever looking for an opportunity to make life better. Denver was so rich in culture it really did not matter what you didn't have. All around were museums and the library, zoo, and parks to take us to. The Little Mermaid and Wynken, Blinken, & Nodd were our playmates at Washington Park's fountains, bringing our adventures in books to life.
She became involved with "The Opportunity Club" which provided entrepreneurs with support for their own micro business. Of course sewing was Mother's forte. Mother worked at May D & F demonstrating sewing machines and producing glorious dresses for us that began as model garments for the store. For herself, some spider-web silk was the expression of loveliness in two different dresses--one of wine and the other royal blue.
During the Depression, mother had learned to shop ready made clothes stores to see what she liked, buy different material, and cut a similar pattern from newspaper. She sniffed, "Who would want to wear a dress just like everyone else had on?" Mother's hands were never still, constantly crocheting borders around towels or washcloths. She kept a light bulb to darn my father's socks, and a basket of mending for the evening hours when we gathered either around the radio or, later, the television.
Our hair was carefully curled around soft plastic spools that inverted to become what looked like little turtle shells. The end result was a head full of tamed curls to top the beautiful garments she produced for us. We made our television debut representing her sewing club with bright lights blinding us as she hissed from the curtain on the side, "Turn around! Turn around!" We turned around.
Mother was the stalwart who made sure we went to church and to Sunday School each week, and to Bible School each summer. She usually always went with us, but Daddy held out for the rare Easter or Christmas service, protesting, "But I haven't been bad enough!" She took it in good humor and plodded on. In the pew beside us we could hear her clear soprano voice singing not too loud.
Around the house Mother hummed to the music on our radio. She taught us to enjoy keeping a home, standing in a chair at the sink to do the dishes, scrubbing the woodwork clean from our own little hand prints, feeding the starched white shirts as she cranked them through the roller atop the old Maytag washer out in the yard.
Whenever we moved Mother found a church home for us to belong to and insured we learned our Bible verses. We attended Brownies and Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts for our brothers. As we got older she made sure we went to youth activities at church. She was not a cuddly Mother--and neither she nor Daddy learned to express their love for us until we taught them to from our own adulthood. But Mother spent her whole life making do, going forward, and anticipating and providing for most of our needs and many of our wants, usually under less-than-ideal circumstances.
What were her gifts to us? To seize the opportunity to find something good. To get all you can from your education, whether it be spiritual or secular. To get over it, whatever it is, and move forward optimistically. To bite your tongue and bide your time while you wait for your adversaries to become allies. To have good manners, and grace in the face of crudity. To trust in the Lord, and expect His plan for you to work out well. In so many ways she was the quietly working heart of our home. I would like to think I could manage that well, but it would be hard follow an act like that. Instead, for me, it is something to strive for.
Both sets of our grandparents were born in the last two decades of the 1800's and witnessed the advent of electricity, the telephone, radio, and automobile. Our maternal grandmother nearly blew off the head of her future husband when he chose the wrong direction to approach the house as she took a shot at a fox that had invaded the chicken yard. Children growing up on the Texas prairie were likely to encounter rattle snakes and carried pistols as a matter or course when crossing the ranches. Yet our Great Grandfather and his boys ranched and farmed in suits, his a 3-piece, and they had fine furniture and china until unfortunate times overtook them--but that's another story. The perspective of these hard-working, church-going people was rather fixed, but they were far from being isolated or bogged in the 19th Century.
Even on the farm, our mother was a Fashionista, and a talented seamstress. Somehow in her youth, the railroads had brought enough catalogs and magazines for her to get a taste for great clothing and coiffures. She was 13 when she got her first flapper dress, while living in Spur, Texas. (Her mother's youngest sister, who bought the dress for Mother was, during the same time period, writing notes to her girlfriends about certain young men who were "Some Sheiks!" and asking who had a car at his disposal so they could go Kodaking.) The movies brought far-away places close, and you could take a snapshot and have it developed into a post card to circulate to friends and family.
Our Mother, Anna, was a modern woman, the first Southern Baptist woman on record, as far as her new mother-in-law was concerned, to get a divorce. Mother's divorce was coincidental with the tragic death of Daddy's first wife, Modena. Each of them was alone with two children and working at Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico when they met during WWII. They were married within two years of becoming single.
They bought land where the Holiday Inn was later built, and built a little house of mainly salvaged materials. And they brought all four of their children together: Son, whose first name was really James, and Jack, from Daddy's first marriage, Nina and Doyle from mother's.
Jack once told me that when he first met our Mother that he thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. A more quiet version of Doris Day, she was tall and Teutonic, with blond hair that carried a slight hint of strawberry, a shade some people referred to as "Champagne Blond" I have seen only on one other person. Our father, who worked with Boeing before coming to Roswell, was a handsome man who would remind you of Humphrey Bogart both in mannerism and looks.
Their first baby was born with Hyaline Membrane Disease. The baby, whose name was Alma Jean, never came home from the hospital. I was a young mother with children of my own when I asked Mother about this time. She said she was inconsolable, unable to stop crying for days at a time. Finally, she dreamed of her own grandmother, who said, "Why are you crying? She is here, with me!" Mother said her grandmother was holding the small baby, but beside her was another baby, just a little older. She was comforted, but she also knew that she would have this experience again.
There was no time to even ponder that, because The War was winding down, and no job awaited. Since they were both civilians, they would have to wait to be hired behind a veteran for any job. Perhaps it was one of the other mechanics who told Daddy about the farm in the Ozarks of Missouri, but somehow life began again not only for the older children, but for Daddy's parents and his sister and her family, who followed us to their own farms, our grandparents just across the pasture from us. As though they had always belonged there, a clan of Walkers now lived near Exeter, Missouri.
As the second born and first daughter in a family of nine children, Mother would not have considered four children a handful at all. But Son, as James Frank, the eldest was still troubled after his mother's long illness and death. There were several years between him and Jack, and now he had two additional siblings with Mother expecting another baby.
And our eldest sister hotly reported that our grandmother took pot-shots about divorced women repeatedly within our mother's hearing. I would not have known though, because Mother had long since won her over by the time I was old enough to remember. There was peace and mutual respect between them as I grew up, but I was separated in years, nearly a decade, from these situations.
Betty Ann was born in 1947, a blue baby. Her struggle to survive of course took in the whole family. Mother told me that Papaw, our grandfather, often drove her with Betty Ann to see the doctor. They hoped that someday, when she was strong enough, he could do surgery to correct the hole in her heart. But after eight months Betty Ann was in heart failure and had to be held on a pillow. Mother said she could not stand to see her suffer any longer. She said that every breath seemed to hurt,so she silently prayed that the Lord would take her, and He did. She said that Daddy came and sat beside her while they held her, surrendering her at last to God. It was Son who ran across the pasture to tell our grandparents. No wonder it was hard for him to get close to us!
The day following Betty Ann's funeral, the older children were sent back to school. Clouds were gathering, rain forecast, and hay was in the field. Daddy had to help his father bring in the hay. Mother was alone.
For some reason, Joyce Lacy, who taught at the one-room school house, asked one of the older kids if anyone was with their mother. When Mrs. Lacy learned that Mother was by herself, she left the class, drove to the farm, and took Mother the short distance to our grandparents home. Our grandmother had gone into town (Cassville) with one of the family who had come for the funeral for something she needed. When I asked what she did, since she was still very much alone, Mother simply said, "I just sat in the kitchen and waited until the men came in from haying."
When Mary Beth was born a few months later she lived, but did not tolerate milk of any kind. So desperate was her condition that our aunt sent a dress for Mother to bury her in. Thankfully, someone thought to try goat milk, and it saved her life. When I was born about 2 years later, and didn't give anyone reason to dread and fear for my life, they must have joyfully fed me and fed me. I look quite plump at about a year and a half.
Once I was an adult, I looked with a heavy heart at the fracture that had taken place between the older and younger offspring of our parents. Tentatively I would ask when the moments seemed right, and gradually the story came from mother, one of our brothers, and from our sister. Daddy was unable to speak at all about it.
Around the time of my birth, the drought in Missouri had taken a serious economic toll. Daddy was selling Watkins products in addition to farming. It was inevitable that the farm would fail when a herd of pigs that was sold to Daddy all died of hog cholera. He and his brother-in-law decided they would try to sell televisions in Kansas City.
About the same time, Mother's family came to take Doyle and Nina to "visit" with their father in Ft. Worth, whom they had neither seen nor spoken with during the 6 year interval in Missouri. It seemed as though he had a good job with General Dynamics, and could provide comfortably for them. Mother told me she had felt defeated and as though there was no other choice. Son completed high school and joined the military. We lived briefly in Kansas City--maybe 5 or 6 months, before going on to Denver to pursue the hope of better work as an airplane mechanic at Stapleton Airport. Jack went with us to Denver for a brief time, and then on to New Mexico to join some of the extended family there, where he finished school.
After 6 years together, this big Missouri farm family had in a matter of months shrunken to a family of four with two small children and a baby on the way, who lived in Denver. I was so small the memory of the older kids faded right away, and I was only conscious of the here and now. Both of our parents were undoubtedly filled with worry about the unseen future and anxious about the separation from their children, but we did not know it for many years.
The Airport job didn't work out since so many veterans were well-qualified, but, undaunted, Daddy began his life as a salesman of Filter Queen vacuum cleaners and ultimately, life insurance. Mother was used to working, so she balanced work and three young children somehow without me ever remembering day care of any kind.
Mother seemed ever looking for an opportunity to make life better. Denver was so rich in culture it really did not matter what you didn't have. All around were museums and the library, zoo, and parks to take us to. The Little Mermaid and Wynken, Blinken, & Nodd were our playmates at Washington Park's fountains, bringing our adventures in books to life.
She became involved with "The Opportunity Club" which provided entrepreneurs with support for their own micro business. Of course sewing was Mother's forte. Mother worked at May D & F demonstrating sewing machines and producing glorious dresses for us that began as model garments for the store. For herself, some spider-web silk was the expression of loveliness in two different dresses--one of wine and the other royal blue.
During the Depression, mother had learned to shop ready made clothes stores to see what she liked, buy different material, and cut a similar pattern from newspaper. She sniffed, "Who would want to wear a dress just like everyone else had on?" Mother's hands were never still, constantly crocheting borders around towels or washcloths. She kept a light bulb to darn my father's socks, and a basket of mending for the evening hours when we gathered either around the radio or, later, the television.
Our hair was carefully curled around soft plastic spools that inverted to become what looked like little turtle shells. The end result was a head full of tamed curls to top the beautiful garments she produced for us. We made our television debut representing her sewing club with bright lights blinding us as she hissed from the curtain on the side, "Turn around! Turn around!" We turned around.
Mother was the stalwart who made sure we went to church and to Sunday School each week, and to Bible School each summer. She usually always went with us, but Daddy held out for the rare Easter or Christmas service, protesting, "But I haven't been bad enough!" She took it in good humor and plodded on. In the pew beside us we could hear her clear soprano voice singing not too loud.
Around the house Mother hummed to the music on our radio. She taught us to enjoy keeping a home, standing in a chair at the sink to do the dishes, scrubbing the woodwork clean from our own little hand prints, feeding the starched white shirts as she cranked them through the roller atop the old Maytag washer out in the yard.
Whenever we moved Mother found a church home for us to belong to and insured we learned our Bible verses. We attended Brownies and Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts for our brothers. As we got older she made sure we went to youth activities at church. She was not a cuddly Mother--and neither she nor Daddy learned to express their love for us until we taught them to from our own adulthood. But Mother spent her whole life making do, going forward, and anticipating and providing for most of our needs and many of our wants, usually under less-than-ideal circumstances.
What were her gifts to us? To seize the opportunity to find something good. To get all you can from your education, whether it be spiritual or secular. To get over it, whatever it is, and move forward optimistically. To bite your tongue and bide your time while you wait for your adversaries to become allies. To have good manners, and grace in the face of crudity. To trust in the Lord, and expect His plan for you to work out well. In so many ways she was the quietly working heart of our home. I would like to think I could manage that well, but it would be hard follow an act like that. Instead, for me, it is something to strive for.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Why life was beautiful, or the Wit and Wisdom of a Man Named Clifford (c) Nita Walker Boles
Laughter was a staple at our house. Our father enjoyed coming home to his children and apeing around. He would swing one arm , his knuckles grazing the floor, assume a hunch back, drop his jaw and become a wild-eyed and pursuing gorilla from whom we would flee, shrieking. Mother would chuckle and sputter as he chased us around but continue with her crocheting, cooking, or sewing, a reserved smile escaping now and then from the corners of her mouth.
That he delighted in us was self-evident, but we were as exasperating and annoying at times as any other kids. Still, he had a wry way of handling us that delivered the message without diminishing our worth. When I was found with scissors, cutting out paper dolls, he would shake his head as if amazed and describe me as "always cutting up little giblets of paper," meaning I'd better clean it up when I was done.
From our earliest memories, any car trip of consequence also included a narrative of our father's experiences in a parallel world where he once roamed with tribes of Indians (that was before we knew about political correctness) and Jim Bridger or Paul Bunyan. He was there personally to assist as Babe, the Blue Ox dug the Grand Canyon alongside Paul Bunyan. He and Jim Bridger once got caught in a Blue Norther and had to shoot a Buffalo, crawling inside the hide to keep warm. They later took the meat home to the Tribe. When banter erupted between him and our mother, she often got the best of him. Not to be outdone, he would remind us that "We used to drown squaws for less than that!"
Of course we knew Indians never drowned their wives, and that Daddy was only kidding, and that nothing he said when spinning these elaborate tales was entirely true, but his lore sent us to the library for books to read. Mark Twain and Tennyson were regular sources for quotes. And Daddy was seriously fascinated by Native Americans.
The National Geographic was well cared for in our home, and read by all. Books that included all the Indian Tribes and their locations were standard. Speculation on the origins of the cultures of the Incas and the Mayas, along with the Cliff Dwellers was regular conversation in the evenings and at supper. It was our father who first told us about the reception Cortez received as the Native Peoples assumed to their doom that he was their Bearded White God, returning as he had said he would. History was not boring for us in school with Daddy to put it into context for us.
His adherence to both Alley Oop and L'il Abner provided fodder for the unique vocabulary of our lives. A visitor in our home could easily be confused by asides and references in conversation. You sort of needed to be in the loop to get it all. We were entertained and educated by his close personal friendships with Pappy Yokum and Foozy. (For the last 20 years of his life, he was known affectionately as "Foozy" by certain family members.) For breakfast we often had Pterodactyl eggs with a rehearsal of the story of how Daddy and Alley Oop witnessed one drop an egg on a volcano. (This story was actually combined at times with a similar Popeye cartoon in which Popeye takes out a vulture who keeps company with Sinbad the Sailor.)
Even with all this media to stimulate political (both comic strips were highly political) and social commentary, and to provide euphemisms galore, Daddy had his own vernacular that we all still faithfully employ. If he thought what we were doing was funny or peculiar to the extreme, or that a demand was particularly challenging, he often exclaimed, "Oh, my right eyeball!"
Daddy would also invoke assistance from Deity in coping with the travails of a parent: "Lord, help the sick and the afflicted and them whose got kids." (Mother adopted it but shortened the plea to "Lord Help!")
He calmly deflected our attempts to involve him in our frequent searches for lost items by looking over his newspaper and directing us to "Look for it until you find it and when you find it, say, 'Whoopee, I found it!'"
When we came home with an astonishing account of some encounter or event in our day he would remark, "Well, I've been to two goat ropin's and a county fair and I ain't ever seen anything like it."
Fun and good humor permeated nearly every communication with our father, and when he was serious we hung on every word. Although he seldom darkened the doors of a church, Daddy was deeply religious. The big family Bible is so worn from his use that I have had to put a temporary binding tape on until I can get it repaired. Any of us in recalling what we would see when we entered our home after school would reply, "Daddy bent over the Bible, marking his place with a finger to greet you."
Although he was never preachy, when we had questions about doctrine being bandied about at church, he consistently had the reference close at hand and could quote what the Savior or Isaiah said about it. The most profound experience I had relative to this was when I was about 6 and a "Revival" was taking place at the church we attended.
Already so shaken by the threat of hell and damnation dished out from the pulpit I had asked to be baptized at the ripe old age of 5. Believing me to be too young the preacher had asked me if I knew the 23rd Psalm. Of course I didn't, and he didn't think I could read. So he hedged and postponed my baptism until I could recite the 23rd Psalm. Several weeks later I was baptized.
Now the guest preacher was asserting that if we didn't give more to the mission fund that thousands of individuals in the jungles of Africa would perish and go straight to hell because of their ignorance of Jesus Christ. I was stunned. I hardly had any money at the age of 6 and didn't believe my parents were especially wealthy, much less my friends and neighbors. How could God be so mean when those poor people in Africa could not help what they didn't know?
I went home to Daddy and explained the situation. I knew he had the answer, and in my heart I knew what it was, but I needed to hear the confirmation from Daddy. He looked steadily and tenderly at me over his open Bible and said, "Nonnie, God got blamed for a lot of things He never said." Then he looked down at his Bible and back up at me and said, "You know, Jesus said,'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.'"
The time of day, the look of the room, the sound of his voice, the redemption of the moment are all so familiar still to me. I had just been given permission to think and believe for myself by the person I most respected in this life. In fact I had just been given the keys to personal revelation. In the Scriptures I would always find the truth and in my heart I could trust the Holy Spirit to verify it.
Life was beautiful.
(c) Nita Walker Boles
That he delighted in us was self-evident, but we were as exasperating and annoying at times as any other kids. Still, he had a wry way of handling us that delivered the message without diminishing our worth. When I was found with scissors, cutting out paper dolls, he would shake his head as if amazed and describe me as "always cutting up little giblets of paper," meaning I'd better clean it up when I was done.
Of course we knew Indians never drowned their wives, and that Daddy was only kidding, and that nothing he said when spinning these elaborate tales was entirely true, but his lore sent us to the library for books to read. Mark Twain and Tennyson were regular sources for quotes. And Daddy was seriously fascinated by Native Americans.
The National Geographic was well cared for in our home, and read by all. Books that included all the Indian Tribes and their locations were standard. Speculation on the origins of the cultures of the Incas and the Mayas, along with the Cliff Dwellers was regular conversation in the evenings and at supper. It was our father who first told us about the reception Cortez received as the Native Peoples assumed to their doom that he was their Bearded White God, returning as he had said he would. History was not boring for us in school with Daddy to put it into context for us.
His adherence to both Alley Oop and L'il Abner provided fodder for the unique vocabulary of our lives. A visitor in our home could easily be confused by asides and references in conversation. You sort of needed to be in the loop to get it all. We were entertained and educated by his close personal friendships with Pappy Yokum and Foozy. (For the last 20 years of his life, he was known affectionately as "Foozy" by certain family members.) For breakfast we often had Pterodactyl eggs with a rehearsal of the story of how Daddy and Alley Oop witnessed one drop an egg on a volcano. (This story was actually combined at times with a similar Popeye cartoon in which Popeye takes out a vulture who keeps company with Sinbad the Sailor.)
Even with all this media to stimulate political (both comic strips were highly political) and social commentary, and to provide euphemisms galore, Daddy had his own vernacular that we all still faithfully employ. If he thought what we were doing was funny or peculiar to the extreme, or that a demand was particularly challenging, he often exclaimed, "Oh, my right eyeball!"
Daddy would also invoke assistance from Deity in coping with the travails of a parent: "Lord, help the sick and the afflicted and them whose got kids." (Mother adopted it but shortened the plea to "Lord Help!")
He calmly deflected our attempts to involve him in our frequent searches for lost items by looking over his newspaper and directing us to "Look for it until you find it and when you find it, say, 'Whoopee, I found it!'"
When we came home with an astonishing account of some encounter or event in our day he would remark, "Well, I've been to two goat ropin's and a county fair and I ain't ever seen anything like it."
Fun and good humor permeated nearly every communication with our father, and when he was serious we hung on every word. Although he seldom darkened the doors of a church, Daddy was deeply religious. The big family Bible is so worn from his use that I have had to put a temporary binding tape on until I can get it repaired. Any of us in recalling what we would see when we entered our home after school would reply, "Daddy bent over the Bible, marking his place with a finger to greet you."
Although he was never preachy, when we had questions about doctrine being bandied about at church, he consistently had the reference close at hand and could quote what the Savior or Isaiah said about it. The most profound experience I had relative to this was when I was about 6 and a "Revival" was taking place at the church we attended.
Already so shaken by the threat of hell and damnation dished out from the pulpit I had asked to be baptized at the ripe old age of 5. Believing me to be too young the preacher had asked me if I knew the 23rd Psalm. Of course I didn't, and he didn't think I could read. So he hedged and postponed my baptism until I could recite the 23rd Psalm. Several weeks later I was baptized.
Now the guest preacher was asserting that if we didn't give more to the mission fund that thousands of individuals in the jungles of Africa would perish and go straight to hell because of their ignorance of Jesus Christ. I was stunned. I hardly had any money at the age of 6 and didn't believe my parents were especially wealthy, much less my friends and neighbors. How could God be so mean when those poor people in Africa could not help what they didn't know?
I went home to Daddy and explained the situation. I knew he had the answer, and in my heart I knew what it was, but I needed to hear the confirmation from Daddy. He looked steadily and tenderly at me over his open Bible and said, "Nonnie, God got blamed for a lot of things He never said." Then he looked down at his Bible and back up at me and said, "You know, Jesus said,'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.'"
The time of day, the look of the room, the sound of his voice, the redemption of the moment are all so familiar still to me. I had just been given permission to think and believe for myself by the person I most respected in this life. In fact I had just been given the keys to personal revelation. In the Scriptures I would always find the truth and in my heart I could trust the Holy Spirit to verify it.
Life was beautiful.
(c) Nita Walker Boles
Monday, May 10, 2010
Two Ladies: A memory in collaboration with my brother, David Walker (c) Nita Walker Boles
Perhaps it was at the Capitol Building in Denver that I first learned there were differences between the races. Our Brownie troop was there in 1957 to climb the stairs to the dome, some three-hundred if I remember correctly. We came in on the basement level and my eyes saw the label above a pristine white ceramic drinking fountain: Negro.*
Before I could ask the question forming in my mind, we were ushered toward the monumental task ahead. The climb did not obscure the thought, though, and I went home to ask what it meant. There, I received a simple answer. Negro people had to drink from that fountain because some white people didn’t want to drink from the same fountain.
Oh.
In those days we often took the bus that ran in front of our house at 311 Josephine. My older sister, Mary Beth, took it to tap-dancing lessons because she was big enough to ride alone. My younger brother, David and I rode it to the library with our tall, beautiful Mother for “Story Time”. And in the summers, we all boarded it for the swimming pool at Congress Park.
Whenever we got on the bus we were seldom lucky enough to make it to the back bench before the Negro people beat us to it. They were usually older people, gardeners and maids who worked in the lovely mansions around Capitol Hill. Their quiet laughter belied some private joke having to do with our attempts to run from the front door to the bench before the best seats were taken. We would snap our fingers and sink down into a side seat, about two-thirds of the way back when we saw our efforts were hopeless.
It was a cold autumn day when the dark lady came to our front door. She had well-coiffed hair and her sturdy brown working shoes were neatly polished beneath the thin herring-bone coat she wore. Mother answered the door, and in rich, southern tones, the lady explained that she had stood waiting for some time for the bus to come.
The cadences of her voice were familiar. Our family often visited friends and relatives in Texas, where our parents had been reared. It was always interesting to hear how different the same words could sound from one person to another.
The lady said she could hardly wait any longer. The cold wind had made it necessary for her to ask, “Could I please use your bathroom?” Mother said, “Well, of course!” and ushered her toward the back of the house. We sort of paraded behind and in front of Mother and the lady, David leading the way. Mother shooed us away, saying, "Go mind your own business!" and trying to allow the lady some privacy.
I knew the way, still know the way, though the house was demolished years ago. You walked past wallpapered living room, through the dining room where oak woodwork arched the passage into the kitchen. Just to the right were the attic stairwell, and the door with a glass knob to the bathroom. But we had been pointed to the quiet of the living room to be out of the way.
It was unusual to have a stranger come to the door and ask to use the bathroom. That she was dark skinned was not unusual at all to us. Our parents worked with a couple who had a beautiful daughter, Cleo who was less dark than her Negro father, and a contrast to her blond, German mother. Like our parents, they had met during WWII. Negro,we had been told, was Spanish for Black.
Cleo’s father played with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, making him a more elite musician than our father, who just played the guitar and the fiddle. Cleo and her siblings were sometimes over for supper with their parents. Afterwards, the grownups usually had a hot game of forty-two while we all played together.
The visitor was darker skinned than Cleo, but lighter than Cleo’s father. But whatever her skin tones, she was clearly one of those people who always got to sit at the back of the bus and drink from a reserved water fountain.
When the lady emerged from the back of the house, we stood, seven and five years of age, our backs pressed against the green and white gardenia wallpaper. The lady thanked Mother heartily for her kindness, and Mother assured her it was no bother at all. The lady wrapped her coat tightly against the autumn wind, and Mother shut the door.
For a moment she stood looking at our blank faces. We were mute, but we sensed we had just seen something out of the ordinary. Kindness to others was one of the main lessons of our rearing, but we couldn’t have known how difficult this moment was in 1958. Although David and I assumed this was a courtesy extended to anyone, Mother was not sure how to feel about it.
“Well, I had to let her use the bathroom!” she insisted, defensively.
We walked silently away to find things to read, toys to play with. But there was no question in our minds. It was perfectly logical. The lady needed to use the bathroom. We had one. She used it.
The people on the back bench of the bus have faded into history, and we have long since figured out the joke of institutionalized bigotry. There is no longer any evidence that there were ever separate drinking fountains as far North as Denver. And the house, as I said, is gone with the era we witnessed passing.
Still, the moment remains frozen, no, concrete. It will never melt away from us, since my brother remembers it as vividly as I do. We know the weather that day, and the time of day, and the color of the wallpaper. We have visited this scene many times as a frame of reference for our own conduct.
“It seemed like a privilege to show her the way,” David told me when we discussed our perceptions of the event. David had intended to lead the way to the bathroom. But he was a little boy, and it was ultimately Mother who claimed the privilege, with a kind of discretion only women show one another in time of need.
In each of our lives there must be hallowed moments of which we are completely unaware. Although we, her children, have placed the dark lady’s visit next to such monuments to the Civil Rights movement as Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” oration, Mother remembered it not at all.
* I contacted the historian at the Capitol in Denver several years ago to verify my memory of the drinking fountain. During the civil rights movement, many pictures were shown of drinking fountains labeled "For Negroes Only" or some similar thing.
He stated there was no record of white ceramic drinking fountains, but that it was possible there was such a thing. He also could not confirm or deny there were separate drinking fountains. It is possible associations have made this particular part of this memory. One of the people who rode at the back of the bus could tell you. I did see those fountains somewhere in my childhood firsthand.
Before I could ask the question forming in my mind, we were ushered toward the monumental task ahead. The climb did not obscure the thought, though, and I went home to ask what it meant. There, I received a simple answer. Negro people had to drink from that fountain because some white people didn’t want to drink from the same fountain.
Oh.
In those days we often took the bus that ran in front of our house at 311 Josephine. My older sister, Mary Beth, took it to tap-dancing lessons because she was big enough to ride alone. My younger brother, David and I rode it to the library with our tall, beautiful Mother for “Story Time”. And in the summers, we all boarded it for the swimming pool at Congress Park.
Whenever we got on the bus we were seldom lucky enough to make it to the back bench before the Negro people beat us to it. They were usually older people, gardeners and maids who worked in the lovely mansions around Capitol Hill. Their quiet laughter belied some private joke having to do with our attempts to run from the front door to the bench before the best seats were taken. We would snap our fingers and sink down into a side seat, about two-thirds of the way back when we saw our efforts were hopeless.
It was a cold autumn day when the dark lady came to our front door. She had well-coiffed hair and her sturdy brown working shoes were neatly polished beneath the thin herring-bone coat she wore. Mother answered the door, and in rich, southern tones, the lady explained that she had stood waiting for some time for the bus to come.
The cadences of her voice were familiar. Our family often visited friends and relatives in Texas, where our parents had been reared. It was always interesting to hear how different the same words could sound from one person to another.
The lady said she could hardly wait any longer. The cold wind had made it necessary for her to ask, “Could I please use your bathroom?” Mother said, “Well, of course!” and ushered her toward the back of the house. We sort of paraded behind and in front of Mother and the lady, David leading the way. Mother shooed us away, saying, "Go mind your own business!" and trying to allow the lady some privacy.
I knew the way, still know the way, though the house was demolished years ago. You walked past wallpapered living room, through the dining room where oak woodwork arched the passage into the kitchen. Just to the right were the attic stairwell, and the door with a glass knob to the bathroom. But we had been pointed to the quiet of the living room to be out of the way.
It was unusual to have a stranger come to the door and ask to use the bathroom. That she was dark skinned was not unusual at all to us. Our parents worked with a couple who had a beautiful daughter, Cleo who was less dark than her Negro father, and a contrast to her blond, German mother. Like our parents, they had met during WWII. Negro,we had been told, was Spanish for Black.
Cleo’s father played with the Denver Symphony Orchestra, making him a more elite musician than our father, who just played the guitar and the fiddle. Cleo and her siblings were sometimes over for supper with their parents. Afterwards, the grownups usually had a hot game of forty-two while we all played together.
The visitor was darker skinned than Cleo, but lighter than Cleo’s father. But whatever her skin tones, she was clearly one of those people who always got to sit at the back of the bus and drink from a reserved water fountain.
When the lady emerged from the back of the house, we stood, seven and five years of age, our backs pressed against the green and white gardenia wallpaper. The lady thanked Mother heartily for her kindness, and Mother assured her it was no bother at all. The lady wrapped her coat tightly against the autumn wind, and Mother shut the door.
For a moment she stood looking at our blank faces. We were mute, but we sensed we had just seen something out of the ordinary. Kindness to others was one of the main lessons of our rearing, but we couldn’t have known how difficult this moment was in 1958. Although David and I assumed this was a courtesy extended to anyone, Mother was not sure how to feel about it.
“Well, I had to let her use the bathroom!” she insisted, defensively.
We walked silently away to find things to read, toys to play with. But there was no question in our minds. It was perfectly logical. The lady needed to use the bathroom. We had one. She used it.
The people on the back bench of the bus have faded into history, and we have long since figured out the joke of institutionalized bigotry. There is no longer any evidence that there were ever separate drinking fountains as far North as Denver. And the house, as I said, is gone with the era we witnessed passing.
Still, the moment remains frozen, no, concrete. It will never melt away from us, since my brother remembers it as vividly as I do. We know the weather that day, and the time of day, and the color of the wallpaper. We have visited this scene many times as a frame of reference for our own conduct.
“It seemed like a privilege to show her the way,” David told me when we discussed our perceptions of the event. David had intended to lead the way to the bathroom. But he was a little boy, and it was ultimately Mother who claimed the privilege, with a kind of discretion only women show one another in time of need.
In each of our lives there must be hallowed moments of which we are completely unaware. Although we, her children, have placed the dark lady’s visit next to such monuments to the Civil Rights movement as Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” oration, Mother remembered it not at all.
* I contacted the historian at the Capitol in Denver several years ago to verify my memory of the drinking fountain. During the civil rights movement, many pictures were shown of drinking fountains labeled "For Negroes Only" or some similar thing.
He stated there was no record of white ceramic drinking fountains, but that it was possible there was such a thing. He also could not confirm or deny there were separate drinking fountains. It is possible associations have made this particular part of this memory. One of the people who rode at the back of the bus could tell you. I did see those fountains somewhere in my childhood firsthand.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Going to the Mountains (c) Nita Walker Boles
Other than an Ansel Adams, have you ever seen a black and white that really looked like the landscape enough to call it beautiful? We didn't have anything but a brownie camera anyway, when we did have one, and if the relatives took pictures of us in the mountains in the 50's and 60's we didn't get any copies. In the early 90's we went back and shot a few pictures of Evergreen. The visuals were the same but it was disturbing to hear what sounded like urban traffic bouncing off the canyon walls and see houses glistening with satellite dishes where it had been National Forest. Even more disappointing was to go to Red Rocks Amphitheater and lean over to look out on the prairie only to find you were looking into someone's back yard. Times 500. There was no prairie left-just an ocean of houses.
So you see, I have to tell you how it was in its' glory or no one will remember. Our car was cream colored in those days, a beetle sort of shape with a visor over the front windshield. The seats were horsehair and smelled heavily of my father's chain smoking. We would sometimes just find ourselves in the car before dawn headed toward the shelters at Evergreen, a few miles up in the mountains. A bed made over the picnic baskets and cooler was cushioned by quilts made of wool and corduroy. We would doze back off to sleep, still in pajamas and under heavy covers until we arrived and mother woke us to bathroom and dress in the frosty morning air as the sun lightened the sky a little.
The bathrooms were permanent structures, a slightly nicer-than-an-outhouse small log cabin with a painted concrete floor and a metal lidded toilet. I was always afraid of falling into the seemingly endless hole to stinky nowhere. We washed hands at the water pump just outside.
The shelter was a different story. Rock with heavy log frames on a slab, wooden benches built in, and a picnic table. No wonder they got us up early to ensure we got one. There was a fire pit and a grill. I never remember the grill being used but it might have been so. Building a fire was an art both parents were adept at. Within moments of our arrival they had embers flaming and a coffee pot percolating. A dutch oven held the biscuits and an iron skillet sizzled with bacon. When it was done there would be scrambled eggs followed by gravy, the drippings for the bacon having been saved in a jar or can. We had milk from the cooler to drink as the sun came up and we huddled beneath our quilts. When we could see the sun over the tops of the gentle foothills of the Rockies, we would be warm enough to run and play, but first our bellies were filled with the unequaled biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs.
We didn't have much to do with the clean-up since we weren't allowed near the fire.
Mother had an enameled pan full of sudsy water to wash and the rinsing was done at the pump before the dishes were put aside. We would stay all day. Three square meals worth.
Along with us frequently was our teenage brother, Doyle, our Great Uncle Rufus and Aunt Esther, and sometimes Great Aunt Jessie, and while he was living, Uncle Smitty.
But often it was just our little family. The rocks just a few feet from the shelter were red, rose quartz. The eons of time had created hollows in the sandstone tops where rain had pooled, just the right size for a child to sunbake on the warmth of the rock. We ran up and down the mountain sides. We laid on quilts or the rocks and declared to one another what the cloud shapes were. The wind rustled the trees, ebbing and flowing like an ocean that would start it's stir in a distant bend and work its' way toward and through you. The soft, cleansing breeze would pull at you dreamily, making you one with the trees and the birds and other creatures of the wild. An occasional deer would come near the camp, unafraid. We would sit still and watch until he ambled away.
Daddy would sometimes bring a book or newspaper to read, but often just lay under a tree to nap in the healing surroundings. Mother was busier, usually having something she wanted to get done for the next meal and always with an eye on us. But Daddy would make sure she had a little time under the tree as well, and take over chasing and teasing us.
So familiar were our surroundings over time that we could anticipate the next turn, depending on our destination. The road toward Estes Park was a maze of pink and gray granite that climbers frequented. There were several stop-offs where we would picnic and watch the chip monks eating our bread crumbs. Daddy was ever in search of a mountain stream to camp near. It was a ceremony with him to take off his shoes and put his feet in the icy water. The sounds of water over rock were calming and soothing. Every sound and sight testified of a Divine Creator blessing His children with unspeakable beauty. This was one of His sanctuaries.
We were so lucky, so happy, so blessed. Only on this side of life can I understand that while we were the recipients of this simple happiness, this was a great time of healing for a man and woman who had both suffered great and repeated losses, and who carried burdens we would take years to fathom. Ever in their minds with our presence were the four other older children, each entering their teen years and young adulthood elsewhere, with other family members.
For each of those children a separation from their family was its' own trial, and each of them also carried the memory of two infant sisters born and gone within the first few years of the family coming together--we couldn't know. We were too young to possibly understand.
It is good to remember those days with gratitude. For our parents and for our older brother,Doyle, when he could come, the much-needed respite was found in the cleansing beauty of the Rocky Mountains. For us, still very small, they were a foundation we would need to build on in a few years when beauty and peace were harder to find.
So you see, I have to tell you how it was in its' glory or no one will remember. Our car was cream colored in those days, a beetle sort of shape with a visor over the front windshield. The seats were horsehair and smelled heavily of my father's chain smoking. We would sometimes just find ourselves in the car before dawn headed toward the shelters at Evergreen, a few miles up in the mountains. A bed made over the picnic baskets and cooler was cushioned by quilts made of wool and corduroy. We would doze back off to sleep, still in pajamas and under heavy covers until we arrived and mother woke us to bathroom and dress in the frosty morning air as the sun lightened the sky a little.
The bathrooms were permanent structures, a slightly nicer-than-an-outhouse small log cabin with a painted concrete floor and a metal lidded toilet. I was always afraid of falling into the seemingly endless hole to stinky nowhere. We washed hands at the water pump just outside.
The shelter was a different story. Rock with heavy log frames on a slab, wooden benches built in, and a picnic table. No wonder they got us up early to ensure we got one. There was a fire pit and a grill. I never remember the grill being used but it might have been so. Building a fire was an art both parents were adept at. Within moments of our arrival they had embers flaming and a coffee pot percolating. A dutch oven held the biscuits and an iron skillet sizzled with bacon. When it was done there would be scrambled eggs followed by gravy, the drippings for the bacon having been saved in a jar or can. We had milk from the cooler to drink as the sun came up and we huddled beneath our quilts. When we could see the sun over the tops of the gentle foothills of the Rockies, we would be warm enough to run and play, but first our bellies were filled with the unequaled biscuits and gravy, bacon and eggs.
We didn't have much to do with the clean-up since we weren't allowed near the fire.
Mother had an enameled pan full of sudsy water to wash and the rinsing was done at the pump before the dishes were put aside. We would stay all day. Three square meals worth.
Along with us frequently was our teenage brother, Doyle, our Great Uncle Rufus and Aunt Esther, and sometimes Great Aunt Jessie, and while he was living, Uncle Smitty.
But often it was just our little family. The rocks just a few feet from the shelter were red, rose quartz. The eons of time had created hollows in the sandstone tops where rain had pooled, just the right size for a child to sunbake on the warmth of the rock. We ran up and down the mountain sides. We laid on quilts or the rocks and declared to one another what the cloud shapes were. The wind rustled the trees, ebbing and flowing like an ocean that would start it's stir in a distant bend and work its' way toward and through you. The soft, cleansing breeze would pull at you dreamily, making you one with the trees and the birds and other creatures of the wild. An occasional deer would come near the camp, unafraid. We would sit still and watch until he ambled away.
Daddy would sometimes bring a book or newspaper to read, but often just lay under a tree to nap in the healing surroundings. Mother was busier, usually having something she wanted to get done for the next meal and always with an eye on us. But Daddy would make sure she had a little time under the tree as well, and take over chasing and teasing us.
So familiar were our surroundings over time that we could anticipate the next turn, depending on our destination. The road toward Estes Park was a maze of pink and gray granite that climbers frequented. There were several stop-offs where we would picnic and watch the chip monks eating our bread crumbs. Daddy was ever in search of a mountain stream to camp near. It was a ceremony with him to take off his shoes and put his feet in the icy water. The sounds of water over rock were calming and soothing. Every sound and sight testified of a Divine Creator blessing His children with unspeakable beauty. This was one of His sanctuaries.
We were so lucky, so happy, so blessed. Only on this side of life can I understand that while we were the recipients of this simple happiness, this was a great time of healing for a man and woman who had both suffered great and repeated losses, and who carried burdens we would take years to fathom. Ever in their minds with our presence were the four other older children, each entering their teen years and young adulthood elsewhere, with other family members.
For each of those children a separation from their family was its' own trial, and each of them also carried the memory of two infant sisters born and gone within the first few years of the family coming together--we couldn't know. We were too young to possibly understand.
It is good to remember those days with gratitude. For our parents and for our older brother,Doyle, when he could come, the much-needed respite was found in the cleansing beauty of the Rocky Mountains. For us, still very small, they were a foundation we would need to build on in a few years when beauty and peace were harder to find.
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