FOOD MEMORIES
Although we didn’t have much money, we found a way to buy what was important to us. Food was important. My family always relished eating from near the top of the food chain, at least our definition of that gustatory summit. Everywhere we lived or traveled, food purchase, preparation and consumption were vital, interesting and even instructional. Dad brought to the table his Mexican preferences and heritage, come by honestly in the Mormon colonies in Mexico. Mother brought a certain elegance and taste for quality and variety. We children brought little but hunger, a pinch of obedience, and a naive willingness to try things. Some fare memories pucker my lips like too much garlic or lemon juice. Other recollections like Mom’s creamy hollandaise or Dad’s piquant vinaigrette continue to have a pavlovian effect on my salivary glands.
Favorites
None of us can forget Mother’s potato sausage casserole. There were two variations on this cholesterol laden succulence. One called for small, peeled potatoes, onions, sausage patties broken into smaller pieces, salt, pepper, and an hour. After baking, the fusion consisted of wonderfully flavored potato and sausage chunks swimming in a saucy sea of an onion/sausage-flavored broth ridden by glimmering, translucent pork globules. Variation 2 of this favorite required more work with the same effect on the taste buds, was made with link sausages and cored potatoes. Mom cored the potato and inserted the link sausage. It was simply a matter of presentation. All the other ingredients were the same as was the result. Short term – delicious! Long term – coronary disease! We were not visionaries.
We often were served corn nibblets resurrected from their dried and stored state of previous harvests. The corn was reconstituted by simmering it in whole milk. Another favorite was Hubbard squash, drawn and quartered in the time honored and proven way - with an axe. Each serving resembled a small, squarish section of the Hubbard globe. Pieces were baked after being laden with ample butter, brown sugar and just a touch of salt. Half the joy was breaking through the sugar and butter crisped crust to scoop out steaming, orange squash meat.
I loved leftovers. Two- or three-day old salads were favorites. Everybody loved Mom’s spaghetti. But I was the only one who loved it more on the second day than on the first. All the flavors seemed to have integrated and intermingled. For me, one plus one really did make three in terms of day old food. Mother’s original effort made the offering tasty. Properly aged, it became delicious.
I remember vacationing as a boy with the family in San Francisco. We had driven there in our 1948 grey Ford 2-Door Coupe, so I suspect there were only five of us, Mom and Dad, Mikey, Wendy and me. Of course, while there we rode the cable cars and walked past the hundreds of bobbing fishing boats docked at the wharf. We drove over the famed bridges. We saw the seals. We went to Golden Gate Park. Nothing compared however with the only meal I remember eating there. Mother and Dad bought as much fresh cracked crab, cocktail sauce and sourdough bread as their wallets would allow and heaven would condone. We selected the specific live crab to be quickly steamed and cracked for us. It was my first experience with crab and certainly not my last. We simply parked by the fisheries near the bay and splintered, sucked, smacked and savored away the afternoon. We didn’t even leave the car. I think the real purpose of our going to the Coast was to get the crab.
And then there were artichoke hearts. We bought, boiled and consumed, all on the same day. My youngest sister had a particularly interesting habit. Stripping off a single leaf, she would dip it first into the melted butter and then into the mayonnaise. She would then lick off both condiments, leaving the artichoke meat untouched. She viewed the leaf as a spoon for butter and mayonnaise. One doesn’t eat spoons. Properly refrigerated and cared for, a single artichoke would last her for years.
Kathryn and I had an artichoke-related experience in Boulder Colorado. We went to dinner at a new place called “The Cork and Cleaver.” Their specialty was steak and artichokes. We had ordered our meal and watched with interest as a young couple, obviously on a first date, were seated next to us. He was properly observant of her needs and she fluttered at the appropriate times. We overheard their order and knew that it was much like ours.
Artichokes were the appetizer, so ours was tabled at about the same time as theirs. They each looked with suspicion at the olive drab appetizer, which looked more like a huge green pine cone that something to eat. They each stripped off a leaf, dunked it in mayonnaise and put the entire leaf in their mouths. They chewed and chewed and grimaced. They looked for a way to get rid of the masticated pulp. Nothing seemed available so they both swallowed with difficulty. You could see their Adam’s Apples plunging up and down to send the unseemly mass to the next stage of the digestion process. She then looked at him and said, “These are kind of tough tonight, don’t you think?” To which he replied, “Oh, that’s the way they’re supposed to be!” Ah, the innocence of youth!
Other family food favorites were home made chili sauce, home made mustard pickles, home made jams and jellies, home made pickled beets, homemade pickled cherries, homemade pickled cucumber chips, canned peaches, canned pears, tossed salads lightly graced with Dad’s vinaigrette, hamburger steaks slathered in grilled onions, T-bone slabs subtly sprinkled with garlic, and finally milk toast on a Sunday evening. This last item was immensely popular in winter. Preparation was simple. Toast your favorite bread (white in those days and homemade whole wheat now.) Spread on ample butter and a bit of honey or favorite jam. Flavor whole milk with a drop of Mexican vanilla and/or ginger and heat until there was a skin on the surface. Cube the toast. Place the cubes in your favorite bowl (we each had one.) Add hot milk and enjoy.
Every gustatory experience was not perfect. Stewed tomatoes were a trial for me, even though they were prepared from home grown fruit, onions, salt and pepper. Mom and Dad loved them so they (the tomatoes) appeared often at the dinner table. Their appearance made me giggle. They looked like terribly sunburned butts in a punch bowl! Their texture made me gag. The tomatoes were often stringy and the onion/pepper chunks distinct but malleable. It was like trying to swallow the internal waste of a pumpkin. Mom also loved to fix diced toast, and then ladle a tuna-and-canned-green-peas cream sauce over it. I could down it, but I never asked for seconds.
Spam was invented to help the country through World War II. I guess it was meat, but where it really came from, I can only guess. Were a squeegee and the butcher room floor involved? It was an organic emulsion created to resemble animal flesh. Anyway, Hormel gave us Spam. We diced it, fried it, sliced it, ground it, baked it, boiled it, broiled it, and sometimes ate it. It was a bit rubbery, always packed in a square can. The top had to be taken off with a key. The sealed lid had a little metal flap on it, which fit through a hole in the key. To open the can, one simply rolled the key across the top of the can. The top simply twisted up around the key. The spam was invariably packed in a clear gelatinous slurry, not intended to invite. When a slab of Spam was fried, it curled up like an old dried out piece of shoe leather, seared on the edges.
My worst experience with this ersatz stuff consisted of fried spam, fried eggs flavored with sugar, and pieces of soggy toast. Once in a while, we got sandwiches made of wonder bread, mayonnaise, spam and velveeta cheese. Velveeta was another of those WWII emulsions given us by the miracle of modern science to win the war. I suppose thoughts of velveeta and spam caused guys to stay on the front lines and fight rather than go back to the chow line to eat that stuff. I want to try it again to see what it really was like. On the other hand….
Ejection Reflection
One meal could induce the gag reflex in me like yanking the release trigger on a catapult. Periodically, Mother bought a ham from Savage’s Market three doors down the street. Eventually, the porcine roast was reduced to a bone stump, scraps of fatty meat, and gristle. She cut the meat and gristle from the stump, mixing these harvested remains with Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup. Warning odors arose from this gray, lumpy paste like dank, swirling mists from an ancient swamp. The glistening mushroom cubes shimmied and wiggled like bits of brindle colored jello. When stirred, the mire reminded me of those nauseating gas bubbles rising and bursting around you, displaced with each labored step when you’re slogging through a salt slough.
Dad’s two-fingered whistle, piercing from two blocks away and hated by every dog in our neighborhood, signaled dinner time. In ham season, I resisted his summons to this recurrent last supper with every ruse I could create. But, ignoring his siren was as unthinkable as the impending meal was inedible.
We usually ate dinner together around a large, rectangular table in the dining room. My back was to the window. Dad, stern on my left, presided. My brother and oldest sister sat across the table from me, programming their avoidance systems for incoming ordinance, and practicing their ducking motions. Mother was on the west end of the table, sinfully proud of her creation. Her pride “wenteth” before my fall. My next younger sister burped and drooled in a high chair to my right. I longed to trade my expected pasty entrée’ for her pabulum. A third sister avoided the meal altogether by refusing to be born yet.
We often used mealtime as an occasion to give thanks for and bless the food. Dad would ask one of us to offer a simple prayer. Although I am a believer in the power of prayer, I considered these utterances particularly hypocritical and thus ineffective. I was never thankful for what lay before me, nor did I ever see or sense any improvement in the taste, smell, or look of the concoction as a result of the blessing. This tested my childlike faith.
The menu and my reaction never varied. There, marshaled before us, was the triggering, shimmering, grey sludge, white rice on which it was to be ladled, milk to choke down every bite, and a green salad. Dad served us. I sought to avoid the inevitable. I pleaded with him for a tiny portion. “I’m still full from lunch!” “I’m too tired to eat!” “Let’s save mine for Grammie!” It would not have been wise to suggest that the dog hadn’t eaten yet. Besides, I really liked our dog. No response to my petition. Dad was either deaf or cruel. Perhaps he had whistled shrilly too often. However, I knew his credo; “Real men ate big portions and never gagged!”
All too soon, the stuff was placed before me. I squirmed. I sulked. I slumped. I succumbed. Finally, I maneuvered as long as possible before reluctantly, cautiously, grimly edging two or three gigantic, slime-covered rice grains onto my fork. Slowly, I winched the noxious freight upwards. Up to the lips, over the tongue, watch out stomach, here she comes. “Fire in the hole!” Gag! Wretch!! Rejection!!! I never hit anyone, but my ejection always fouled table cloths and disrupted family meals. I shed tears and endured contempt. “You ungrateful baby! Think of the starving children in China!” I thought of them. I saw them in their millions trying to eat that gelatinous ham gruel. It made me gag, again.
After others had consumed their meal, they left the table. I slumped, alone, sullen and tearful, sentenced to the dark, dining room table as if manacled by ham, rice and mushroom soup. “You will stay here until it is finished, or I’ll know the reason why!” I dared not tell them the reason why. Each bite convulsed me.
Years later, Mother described her best recipes, touting her mushroom, ham and rice muck as one of her children’s favorites. Excuse me?!! She had no memory of my revulsion and rewarded us one day with the cherished recipe. Kathryn even made it once. I had not come home from work soon enough to prevent it. There was that old, familiar odor. I warned her about the likely response. I reminded myself where to find the mops and sponges. But, she and the kids loved the stuff! Frankly, I now kind of like it myself. Truly! Well, sort of.
Just Ducky
My cousins, the Rideouts, were duck hunters. They were not duck consumers. Most weekends during duck season, Uncle Joe and his three boys, Dave, Steve, and Danny, hunkered down in duck blinds at the Harrison Duck Club west of the Salt Lake airport. They sported waders, shotguns and camouflaged vests, coats and hats. Each shooter was wrapped in various duck calls, decoys and ammunition belts, with sufficient 12-guage shotgun shells to keep the invading duck flights in firm control. My cousins should have been at Pearl Harbor! Always in their party was the faithful Rowdie, a finely trained, smart German short hair bird dog. Rowdie was willing without hesitation to leap on command into that stinking, frigid marsh water to retrieve the latest duck casualty.
The Rideouts usually returned from the marshes with legal limits of limp widgeons, teals, and mallards. These carcasses were taken to a local butcher to be skinned, gutted, cleaned and wrapped in waxed paper, body bags. They were archived after each hunt in a freezer in my cousins’ garage. When there was not room enough in one freezer to bury another duck corpse, they bought a new chest or upright appliance. When my cousins moved to Holladay from their home across the street from us on 5th South in Salt Lake City, they bought a huge garage with an attached house. To their new storage barn, they hauled seven freezers stuffed with dead ducks, the mounting yield of who knows how many years of harvesting the fowl users of the Western Migratory Bird Flyway. Core drilling those freezers could have revealed the history of duck hunting in Northern Utah for the past quarter century. Shooting, wrapping and freezing continued unabated until Uncle Joe died. Dave, the oldest son, continues the tradition to this day.
Annually, Aunt Virginia prepared a duck feast to relieve the burden warehoused by those overworked, overflowing freezers. The recipe called for much wine and spice. For some, the roasted fowl were as unwelcome as meringue and sugar Easter chicks in April, zucchini in August, venison in October or fruit cake in December. But I relished roasted duck breast. I loved those little, hockey puck sized slabs of dark gaminess, marinating in a rich, red wine sauce. Consequently, I often found them in my school lunch sack, packed between two slices of homemade wheat bread, or slipped as finger food into a small plastic bag. I was the envy of some friends who labored on less exotic fare. Others were repelled.
During lunch at Roosevelt Junior High one spring day, I was thrilled to find two fillets of duck breast in my lunch fare. I bit hugely into the first and was rewarded with chewy, succulent duck. However, another bite hit something hard, like half of a piece of Chiclets gum. I shuddered as if someone had just grated their fingernails across the blackboard. I spit out the contents. The cap of a front tooth, broken and repaired years before, had broken off during the vigorous first bite. I crunched it on the second. Replacing the cap was expensive and painful.
A few weeks later at another school lunch, I was sitting near the football field with friends. California gulls, habituated to noontime strafing runs of the lunch area, flew by, screeching for a scrap of something. They had long since been weaned of Mormon crickets and were now partial to hostess cupcakes, wonder bread and peanut butter, probably crunchy style. Once again, I had breast of late duck. The experience with the broken tooth cap had made me a little more timid now. Just as I was about to bite, one of seagulls released a fecal bomb exactly on the slab of his roasted bird relative I was about to devour. I convulsed and threw the smeared carcass to the birds. Several unknowingly became cannibals. That was it! No more duck! No more help for the cousins! They must solve the duck corpse population explosion on their own. In the end, the eater could not keep up with the shooters.
I Smell Trouble
I suffered from a lack of coordination between my spoken words, my thoughts, and my physical senses, such as hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. These skills may be finely honed in me, but often they seem to operate independently. They don’t work together. They don’t help one another. They don’t learn from each other. For example, just because something tastes odd or unpleasant, that doesn’t seem to be sufficient to guide or construct properly crafted, sensitive sentences about the thing being tasted. In other words, objectionable odors sensed by nose and interpreted by brain did not prevent mouth from uttering something stupid. I often suffered for these lapses.
Mother loved to try new recipes. Dad loved to taste them. I loved to watch her prepare them. Dad and Mother loved each other deeply and he would brook no disrespect for her. One night, Mother decided to make Chinese food, which was entirely unfamiliar to me. I could only imagine the Chinese unwillingly eating my rejected ham, mushroom soup and rice gruel. On this particular evening, I entered the kitchen in the middle of the meal’s preparation. Strange, not altogether pleasant odors slowed my entry. I must have frowned or wrinkled my nose. Dad’s protective instincts for mother surged. I edged toward the large pot on the stove and watched the bubbling mixture. I took a giant whiff. “Does that stuff taste like it smells?” I frowned. I guess that was disrespectful. The next thing I remember is getting up off the floor and stumbling, weeping to my room. No Chinese food for me. I really don’t remember being disrespectful. My father’s open handed blow, however, seemed to reconnect my senses, at least with regard to Mother’s experiments.
Chef Dad
Dad’s had his own recipes. One morning, we asked for French toast. What appeared before us was army SOS, “s--- on a shingle;” creamed, chipped-beef gravy on toast. Our fear of him helped us down it without comment. He was quite volatile, and took rejections personally. To frown at food was to reject him. Part of his parenting style had to do with strength and volume. One of his favorite jokes had to do with the kids who had developed terrible language habits. According to the story, a baby sitter one morning asked the first child what he wanted for breakfast. “I’ll have some of those @#$% Cheerios,” was the response. The babysitter cuffed the youngster into silence. She then asked the next what he wanted. “Well, I’m sure not going to have any of those @#$% Cheerios!!!” Well, we sure weren’t ordering that @#$% French toast again.
Breakfasts from Dad rarely turned out well. There was a small, green linoleum-covered bar or counter at one end of our kitchen. We sat there, awaiting what was to be served. We were unfamiliar with the Charles Dickens character, Oliver. “Please sir, may I have some more?” was never uttered. The room was dark and warm, even though it was early morning. A few sunbeams had penetrated the hedge outside our back door and highlighted the speckled, linoleum floor. Dad whistled as he sweated over the stove at our backs. We could hear the spatter of bacon grease as it curled and browned the edges of fried eggs, sunny side up. I pictured each dip of toast into the broken, golden yolk. Usually, our anticipation for a tasty breakfast had already disappeared, fleeing like hot grease escaping water.
However, on this day, Hope’s smiling face peeked from behind the clouds of experience. The eggs were served us, two each. Flecks of black and white speckled each egg. One of us blessed the food and we attacked. Yyuuuckk!! Hope squeezed tight her eyes and fled. The salt had lost its savor! In fact, Dad had sprinkled the fried eggs with sugar. We finished them anyway. That was smarter. I’ll admit the sugar was probably a mistake. At least, I hope it was.
The nadir of Dad’s noontime menus was one school lunch he prepared for me. At Roosevelt Junior High one spring day, I opened the lunch sack. I had been anticipating something like peanut butter or bologna or tuna fish on soft, white bread, maybe a few Cloverleaf potato chips, an apple, and perhaps a little brownie. Nope! Inside the bag, I found an old, Wonder Bread hamburger bun, stuffed into a waxed paper sandwich bag, like plentitude crammed into a girdle designed for someone of more normal proportions. As I extracted the partially crushed bun, I noticed that small parts of the crust had crumbled away, liked the spalled concrete on a sidewalk. Creases lined its brown surface. I wondered if these cracks signaled to a skilled interpreter of such things, the bun’s tragic, short life line I guess we were breadless and Dad had found a lonesome old bun at the bottom back of the bread bin. Morbid curiosity, driven by hunger, forced me to carefully pry apart the two sides of the bun. Smashed on one half was a blotch of cold spaghetti and congealed meat sauce, garnished with dill pickle chips. Smeared thickly on the other was mayonnaise, partially covered by a limp leaf of lettuce, a little dark around the edges. I was just hungry enough to try it. It wasn’t at all bad.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Le Boeuf has its Bourguignon
Buenos Aires has its bozos (read Mark Sanford). Boston has its beans. Basel has banks and Berlin has brews. The Bronx has bombers and bagels. Bangkok has its brothels while Brighton brags beaches. Brooklyn has a bridge, unless it’s been sold, but Basin Street has the blues. Bombay, Bern, and Buffalo have their buildings, books, and the Bills. Battle Mountain bets while Barcelona baits bulls. Bastogne braved its battles. The Bolshoi boasts its ballerinas. There are banquets, bigots, basketballs, bagpipes, bars, beans, babes, baklavas and, in the end, countless bozos in their diversity. The list of things to distract and deter and derail and beckon is endless. Our Lonely Planet, the travel guide, recommends visits to over 70 major B locations in Europe. However, for me Belgium and Brussels proffer the incomparable enticement.
If I wanted to practice my passion incognito, if I wanted to mislead my staff (I don’t have a staff, by the way), if I wanted to deceive my beloved spouse, I would head for neither the Appalachian Trail nor Argentina. I would lose myself in the gustatory brothels of Brussels. Belgium chocolate is not the draw. It may be for others, but not for me. Belgian chocolate in the vastness of its selections is wonderful, but in this lust I am easily sated. I can’t taste it. I don’t have a sense of smell and thus am devoid of taste. (As soon as you finish with the obvious, timeworn, snide side comments, I’ll go on.) Sugar highs and lows quickly put limits on my desire to overdo. To the extent that I enjoy Belgian chocolate, it is because I feel it, not savor it. Hence, chocolate’s delights would not entice me away from the straight and narrow, from the iron rod. For me, the lady of the siren list is baked. Brussels has its bread. Brussels has its boulangeries. Again, I can’t taste their wares; but I can feel them in their infinite diversity.
The varieties available in Brussels’ boulangeries threaten to stretch the imagination’s elasticity beyond its limits of recoverability. Like many places in Europe, at least in the parts of Europe I’ve visited, such as Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, Belgium neighborhoods are laced together with “boulangeries,” offering breads and pastries to passersby and the loyal, daily shopper as well. They seem to be as ubiquitous here as are McDonalds and Pizza Hut beyond the western reaches of the Atlantic.
Some of these bread purveyors are but mere closets open to the sidewalk. Somehow, they are able to stock the favorite selections of folks in the immediate neighborhood and usually sell out their supply by the end of each day. And they have stunning selections of white, whole wheat, multi-grain rolls and loaves and pies and tarts. Other stores are of the walk-in variety, offering an array of ready to eat or take home pastries, and virtually countless combinations of all sorts of flour and additives for breads, rolls, buns, and in some cases, baked scraps from the dough leftover from a particular batch of bread. At the top of the bread store continuum are the shops offering all of the above but also a place, either inside or skirting the store on the sidewalk outside, to savor the pastry or bread of choice with a cup of coffee, cocoa, tea or maybe some wine. We eat ours on the way to meetings. Resistance goes only so far. You might even order a ready made or deftly prepared sandwich created from the many choices of sandwich-suitable samples.
The bakers delight in adding delectables such as cracked wheat, sun flower seeds, millet, walnuts, spelt, flax, rye, oats, barley, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, pine-nuts, almonds, yellow raisins, dark raisins, chocolate bits (dark and/or milk and/or white), dates, dried figs, chunks of other dried fruits or even corn. Some master bakers pride themselves in offering the finest, freshest, airiest, lightest batons. Others specialize in achieving bread density and weight rivaling lead or maybe uranium. To say that their breads are chewy is to say that lemon juice is sour, honey is sugary or the universe is large. Inadequate adjectives!! Chewy? What these breads are is intense, compressed, and challenging. A favorite saying is, “Every virtue at the testing point, takes the form of courage.” Patience, which takes the form of courage, is required for some of these breads. Like galactic black holes, these goods are small but extremely weighty. Eating them is a physical workout, complete with sweat, exhaustion and a sense of accomplishment. Buy two of the heaviest loaves and you will need help to carry them home. Remember Garrison Keillor’s cereal on Prairie Home Companion? It consisted of Oat Hulls and Wheat Chaff. It had such an immediate purgative effect, the consumer was advised to be near a relief facility when he was eating the stuff. The buyer needed recommendations from 3 trusted, experienced compatriots to vouch for her suitability before she could buy it. That is what some of these breads are like. I love to feel them starting through the system.
Most Brussels bakers express their creativity though new, untried flour combinations. They play with batches of dough. Dough is an art form. In addition to the diversity of flour types and additives, they create loaf designs, spanning the amorphous lump-to-artistic loaf continuum. There is the long thin baton, like a thick, stiff, straight, 3 foot snake. One of my favorite forms is from Paul, an upscale boulangerie situated conveniently on our route to Monday evening meetings. This entry is simply a kilogram plop of impenetrable dough, baked to deep brown, dense perfection. No two blobs are alike, except in weight, texture and pleasure. Then, there is the huge loaf resembling two end-to-end toasters. It is usually sliced so thin that individual pieces, held up to the sun, appear to be mere figments of imagined lace unable to filter out more than a few solar rays. Some offer square, puffy biscuits covered with pumpkin seeds or oats. Others sell baked objects shaped like eggs, but laced with millet and wheat kernels. Some wares are croissant-like, chocolate nibs bubbling from the surface. Others are like a large table napkin, rolled up and placed in a baked, bowed napkin holder. There are loaves resembling bricks of gold and weighing almost as much. There are huge oblong loaves posing as small, inland waterway, beached dolphins. (That may be an exaggeration. I’ll find out and get back to you.). One store we visited, a huge Smiths Marketplace sort of place, itself offered 12 different styles of batons, each unique it its length, color, consistency, additives, and cost. And that was just the batons.
In the end, I have the same problem. I can’t taste them. I can’t smell them. I can only feel them. But, they feel oh so good. These will keep me occupied for many months to come. I just hope to have some interstitial time sufficient for my ostensible purpose in being in Brussels. But enough of this. I drool. Et le boulangerie appele.
If I wanted to practice my passion incognito, if I wanted to mislead my staff (I don’t have a staff, by the way), if I wanted to deceive my beloved spouse, I would head for neither the Appalachian Trail nor Argentina. I would lose myself in the gustatory brothels of Brussels. Belgium chocolate is not the draw. It may be for others, but not for me. Belgian chocolate in the vastness of its selections is wonderful, but in this lust I am easily sated. I can’t taste it. I don’t have a sense of smell and thus am devoid of taste. (As soon as you finish with the obvious, timeworn, snide side comments, I’ll go on.) Sugar highs and lows quickly put limits on my desire to overdo. To the extent that I enjoy Belgian chocolate, it is because I feel it, not savor it. Hence, chocolate’s delights would not entice me away from the straight and narrow, from the iron rod. For me, the lady of the siren list is baked. Brussels has its bread. Brussels has its boulangeries. Again, I can’t taste their wares; but I can feel them in their infinite diversity.
The varieties available in Brussels’ boulangeries threaten to stretch the imagination’s elasticity beyond its limits of recoverability. Like many places in Europe, at least in the parts of Europe I’ve visited, such as Germany, France, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands, Belgium neighborhoods are laced together with “boulangeries,” offering breads and pastries to passersby and the loyal, daily shopper as well. They seem to be as ubiquitous here as are McDonalds and Pizza Hut beyond the western reaches of the Atlantic.
Some of these bread purveyors are but mere closets open to the sidewalk. Somehow, they are able to stock the favorite selections of folks in the immediate neighborhood and usually sell out their supply by the end of each day. And they have stunning selections of white, whole wheat, multi-grain rolls and loaves and pies and tarts. Other stores are of the walk-in variety, offering an array of ready to eat or take home pastries, and virtually countless combinations of all sorts of flour and additives for breads, rolls, buns, and in some cases, baked scraps from the dough leftover from a particular batch of bread. At the top of the bread store continuum are the shops offering all of the above but also a place, either inside or skirting the store on the sidewalk outside, to savor the pastry or bread of choice with a cup of coffee, cocoa, tea or maybe some wine. We eat ours on the way to meetings. Resistance goes only so far. You might even order a ready made or deftly prepared sandwich created from the many choices of sandwich-suitable samples.
The bakers delight in adding delectables such as cracked wheat, sun flower seeds, millet, walnuts, spelt, flax, rye, oats, barley, sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, pine-nuts, almonds, yellow raisins, dark raisins, chocolate bits (dark and/or milk and/or white), dates, dried figs, chunks of other dried fruits or even corn. Some master bakers pride themselves in offering the finest, freshest, airiest, lightest batons. Others specialize in achieving bread density and weight rivaling lead or maybe uranium. To say that their breads are chewy is to say that lemon juice is sour, honey is sugary or the universe is large. Inadequate adjectives!! Chewy? What these breads are is intense, compressed, and challenging. A favorite saying is, “Every virtue at the testing point, takes the form of courage.” Patience, which takes the form of courage, is required for some of these breads. Like galactic black holes, these goods are small but extremely weighty. Eating them is a physical workout, complete with sweat, exhaustion and a sense of accomplishment. Buy two of the heaviest loaves and you will need help to carry them home. Remember Garrison Keillor’s cereal on Prairie Home Companion? It consisted of Oat Hulls and Wheat Chaff. It had such an immediate purgative effect, the consumer was advised to be near a relief facility when he was eating the stuff. The buyer needed recommendations from 3 trusted, experienced compatriots to vouch for her suitability before she could buy it. That is what some of these breads are like. I love to feel them starting through the system.
Most Brussels bakers express their creativity though new, untried flour combinations. They play with batches of dough. Dough is an art form. In addition to the diversity of flour types and additives, they create loaf designs, spanning the amorphous lump-to-artistic loaf continuum. There is the long thin baton, like a thick, stiff, straight, 3 foot snake. One of my favorite forms is from Paul, an upscale boulangerie situated conveniently on our route to Monday evening meetings. This entry is simply a kilogram plop of impenetrable dough, baked to deep brown, dense perfection. No two blobs are alike, except in weight, texture and pleasure. Then, there is the huge loaf resembling two end-to-end toasters. It is usually sliced so thin that individual pieces, held up to the sun, appear to be mere figments of imagined lace unable to filter out more than a few solar rays. Some offer square, puffy biscuits covered with pumpkin seeds or oats. Others sell baked objects shaped like eggs, but laced with millet and wheat kernels. Some wares are croissant-like, chocolate nibs bubbling from the surface. Others are like a large table napkin, rolled up and placed in a baked, bowed napkin holder. There are loaves resembling bricks of gold and weighing almost as much. There are huge oblong loaves posing as small, inland waterway, beached dolphins. (That may be an exaggeration. I’ll find out and get back to you.). One store we visited, a huge Smiths Marketplace sort of place, itself offered 12 different styles of batons, each unique it its length, color, consistency, additives, and cost. And that was just the batons.
In the end, I have the same problem. I can’t taste them. I can’t smell them. I can only feel them. But, they feel oh so good. These will keep me occupied for many months to come. I just hope to have some interstitial time sufficient for my ostensible purpose in being in Brussels. But enough of this. I drool. Et le boulangerie appele.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Oxford in Early Summer 2009
This has been a fascinating month, characterized by events we’ll call “Baptizing the Dog” and “The Naughty Wenches of Oxford.”
The month started with a trip to Frankfurt to settle reporting relationships, responsibilities, assignments and expectations. These have not always been clear, since this assignment is still a fledgling, We and the couple in Geneva are but second generation in this task. Issues arise almost daily about who, what, where, how, when and why. The meetings in Frankfurt a few weeks ago settled most of those issues.. . During the meetings, we got much better acquainted with him who shall be our next “boss” or area legal counsel in Frankfurt, David Colton, a wonderful and able man, about 15 years our junior.
If we had to pinpoint two observations of these meetings, they would have to be Cole Durham’s unforgettable hands and the amount of food offered and consumed. Cole leads the International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) at BYU. We tout their business card. He is world famous, a much loved ambassador for the LDS church, the gospel, human rights, and religious freedom. He’s a kind, gentle, warm man who uses his hands to enclose others into his heart. His always moving hands are never clenched. The fingers never point. They include, beckon, invite. They are constantly, gently, revolving, up, out, down and in, like the wheel of a slow moving paddle boat. All this is accompanied by his deep, chocolaty, irresistible voice.
The other unimportant observation about Frankfurt was the food, arranged by folks accustomed to feeding people huge quantities. Lunch was a choice of too much salmon, too much steak or too much asparagus, called spargle. Germans are passionate about white, in-season spargle. We went for spargle, hold the hollandaise. The afternoon session was more like the darkened, wainscoated sitting room of an ancient men’s club frequently populated by those who are well past their productive years, which gently echoed with snorts, wheezes and snaps. No necks were broken. No tears were shed. No visitors were awakened.
We drove to Rotterdam for a-thirty-and-under (and over, too) fireside. We met with about 40 of these good folks. They had been lectured by many several times about getting married. So Leonard made up a story about how we met. He said we were in a meeting similar to this. A GA came in and said we needed to get married. He had pink numbers in one pocket for the sisters, blue numbers in another for the brethren. He told us to pick a number, find the matching number and go get married. He said and we did. That was L’s story. Then, he said we had been sent here by a GA. We have numbers in our pockets. After our talk, we will have a drawing. And you will find the matches and will all go get married. They loved it. It relaxed a tense situation. Sure they should get married. But pressure doesn’t help. It was a great evening about Russia and about life-guiding Aphorisms (Every virtue, at the testing point, takes the form of courage!)
We went to a Philippine reception, the 111th anniversary of their country’s founding. We talked WWII with a Philippine minister. At her request, we talked Mormonism with the wife of the Indian Ambassador to the EU and about the red spot on her forehead (it means she is married and her husband is alive). Cuts down on unnecessary conversation. She asked us about the LDS church and the chief difference from other churches (living prophet and revelation)
We went on a temple trip to The Hague and didn’t discover until we got there that we had both left our recommends at home. So, we spent a wonderful morning wandering the magnificent streets of a gorgeous little town on the outskirts of The Hague named Sweet Lake City. We strolled the cobblestone walkways, glancing in stores on both sides of this pedestrian boulevard. The “Bakkerie’s”, two of them, were crowded. We tried but couldn’t buy every wonderfully enticing thing. The cheese store held a wall cabinet displaying 2 and 3 foot rounds of every kind of cheese you can imagine and some you can’t, pepper laced gouda, and runny camembert’s. Did we buy some? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention. Soon we were headed back to Brussels. (Did I say Brussels? That can’t be right!)
One evening, four missionaries came over. Kathryn gave them a tour of the house while I told the mission fixer what needed fixing. How did he fix us? Let me count the ways: Now 1) all computers interface with the printer, 2) HP hard drive works, 3) scans store properly, 4) media player sound works, 5) strange computer messages interpreted 6) instructions for the laser printer available, 7) language program password problems solved, 8) dryer problems fixed, and 9) washing machine works; all this in 1 hour.
We attended a baptismal service. Everything went wrong. Messy place because of construction. Disorganized, late starting meeting, silent microphone, long winded speakers. We crowded around the small, windowed baptismal font. The candidate was stunning in her bright white baptismal suit, which contrasted beautifully with her brown skin. Icy water. She almost ejected herself out of the font. When she got acclimated, she asked for FIDO. He was a little, fuzzy terrier, leashed and shaking at the back of the basement room. He was dragged up to the window. We thought, no, please don’t. Please don’t ask for the dog to be baptized with you. Just, please no. Wasn’t! She just wanted to make sure that Woofie had a front row seat. Wonder what he thought?
One day, we went for a long walk to shake off the monitoring stupor and happened upon a little puzzle shop tucked into one side of a dilapidated building. A whole new world opened up to us, a room to the brim with 100’s of puzzles, simple to excruciating. The worst, by far, was 2500-piece puzzle of black and white Dalmatians. The starting place had to be the dangling, pink tongue of one pup slobbering happily in the center of the puzzle. Sound hard? Wait, there’s more. It’s a two sided puzzle. Sound hard? Wait again, our preciousnesses. The puzzle on the back is the same picture, black and white Dalmatians, with tongue of pink. Difficile, non? Wait. It’s rotated 90 degrees from the same picture printed on the front. Vicious! Cunning! Hazardous! Dangerous! Keep hands above table edge at all times. Must be visible? Clear?
A high point was the FHE for the younger set, held in our home. It exceeded expectations. We want them to feel free to gather in our beautiful Belgian apartment for special occasions. Almost 40 attended. Christian taught and Denis translated. Denis served in Bordeaux about ten years ago, is from the Congo, the color of priceless ebony, slim, soft-spoken, well educated, successful and a wonderful translator. After the lesson, we drifted up to the dining room like hot-air balloons, where the soups were hot and the table was festooned with breads, soups, salads and cookies. KCR’s brownies were heavenly. We had to move folks out at 10:00 because of noise laws.
The highlight of the month was a just completed trip to an Oxford England conference, “New Legal Approaches to Religious Rights.” We took one of those incredibly fast trains from Brussels, through the chunnel and on to London. Getting through customs was fun. The agent asked why we were going. To attend conference. Where? Oxford. What’s it about? New legal approaches to religious rights. He rolled his eyes, and invited us to join him for a pint. Later, we said, after the conference. He smiled.
After a fast, smooth and comfortable 2 hour trip, we arrived in London and took the Tube to Paddington Station, where Kathryn found a nice display of Paddington Bears at Paddington Station. We didn’t BUY one. In Oxford, we walked and ogled the grand, historic city center, the sites of about 37 colleges which operate independently under the Oxford University umbrella. We found Balliol College in preparation for the meetings.
The ride to our hotel on the southern rim of the city reminded us of CS Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” a fanciful tale of the bus ride from the depths of hell to heaven, visitors welcome. Oxford’s center is beautiful, active, interesting, historic, captivating. Its expanding, Dickensian suburbs around Oxford, are places of rot and degradation.
Prior to the conference, we were allowed to walk about the manicured, shaped and loved grounds, One imagines young and old brilliance strolling by, begarbed in tilting mortar boards and flowing robes, discussing by two’s weighty matters of the mind. The grounds are surrounded by the Elizabethan-style, sand colored buildings rock with arched, iron clad windows. Everyone droll in their British correctness, don’t you know.
The conference was outstanding, divided into 4 1 ½ hour sessions with two or three speakers. Topics all related to human rights and new legal approaches but came at the subject from such diverse perspectives as transitional justice, terrorism, the workplace and Sacred Places. We were the only truly non-academic folks there, but our acceptance by all was warm and welcoming. We met many friends of Cole Durham and David Kirkham, both held in high esteem by these wonderful people. We have invites to come see them, to be taken on tours of important LDS sites (Copenhagen and the “Block” paintings, The Isle of Man). We even were sought out by a Religion Professor from Italy who had been teaching in Hertford College, Conn. He wanted to know about LDS church, Book of Mormon, genealogy, so we have arranged for him to pick up info and the book in Milan. Most importantly, we gained friends, real friends.
At 1 minute after midnight on 27 June, LCR awoke, realizing he had just turned 70. It occurred to him his mother passed away at age 73 and father at 77. He was now beginning his eighth decade, the same decade which neither of them finished. Did they feel the same at this age, fit and healthy (in spite of Dr. Dunson’s list of 25 health concerns), energetic, wanting to learn and experience and contribute?
Returning from the conference was as unbearable as it was unimaginable. Our full car on the train to London included 6 or 8 girls, age 16 to 25, and their 8 to 10 year old children, squawking loudly, rudely in an almost unintelligible cockney dialect about their experiences with their partner, beating partners, arguing with each other about how to beat their kids, talking about the things they were going to do in London (carousing, drinking, etc.) In relief, we got off in London to join a double-decked bus tour prior to the train to Brussels. Problem was that the tour guide sounded like one of the arrogant, partner and child beating partners of one of these 25 year old sl-----. He was incredibly full of himself (“I am the best tour guide in the world”), crude, loud, and obsessed with murder and slaughter in olde London town. We had no way to get off because of luggage.
We are finally back, ending a great month of monitoring, meeting, and masticating.
Love to all et toute est bien,
Leonard and Kathryn.
The month started with a trip to Frankfurt to settle reporting relationships, responsibilities, assignments and expectations. These have not always been clear, since this assignment is still a fledgling, We and the couple in Geneva are but second generation in this task. Issues arise almost daily about who, what, where, how, when and why. The meetings in Frankfurt a few weeks ago settled most of those issues.. . During the meetings, we got much better acquainted with him who shall be our next “boss” or area legal counsel in Frankfurt, David Colton, a wonderful and able man, about 15 years our junior.
If we had to pinpoint two observations of these meetings, they would have to be Cole Durham’s unforgettable hands and the amount of food offered and consumed. Cole leads the International Center for Law and Religion Studies (ICLRS) at BYU. We tout their business card. He is world famous, a much loved ambassador for the LDS church, the gospel, human rights, and religious freedom. He’s a kind, gentle, warm man who uses his hands to enclose others into his heart. His always moving hands are never clenched. The fingers never point. They include, beckon, invite. They are constantly, gently, revolving, up, out, down and in, like the wheel of a slow moving paddle boat. All this is accompanied by his deep, chocolaty, irresistible voice.
The other unimportant observation about Frankfurt was the food, arranged by folks accustomed to feeding people huge quantities. Lunch was a choice of too much salmon, too much steak or too much asparagus, called spargle. Germans are passionate about white, in-season spargle. We went for spargle, hold the hollandaise. The afternoon session was more like the darkened, wainscoated sitting room of an ancient men’s club frequently populated by those who are well past their productive years, which gently echoed with snorts, wheezes and snaps. No necks were broken. No tears were shed. No visitors were awakened.
We drove to Rotterdam for a-thirty-and-under (and over, too) fireside. We met with about 40 of these good folks. They had been lectured by many several times about getting married. So Leonard made up a story about how we met. He said we were in a meeting similar to this. A GA came in and said we needed to get married. He had pink numbers in one pocket for the sisters, blue numbers in another for the brethren. He told us to pick a number, find the matching number and go get married. He said and we did. That was L’s story. Then, he said we had been sent here by a GA. We have numbers in our pockets. After our talk, we will have a drawing. And you will find the matches and will all go get married. They loved it. It relaxed a tense situation. Sure they should get married. But pressure doesn’t help. It was a great evening about Russia and about life-guiding Aphorisms (Every virtue, at the testing point, takes the form of courage!)
We went to a Philippine reception, the 111th anniversary of their country’s founding. We talked WWII with a Philippine minister. At her request, we talked Mormonism with the wife of the Indian Ambassador to the EU and about the red spot on her forehead (it means she is married and her husband is alive). Cuts down on unnecessary conversation. She asked us about the LDS church and the chief difference from other churches (living prophet and revelation)
We went on a temple trip to The Hague and didn’t discover until we got there that we had both left our recommends at home. So, we spent a wonderful morning wandering the magnificent streets of a gorgeous little town on the outskirts of The Hague named Sweet Lake City. We strolled the cobblestone walkways, glancing in stores on both sides of this pedestrian boulevard. The “Bakkerie’s”, two of them, were crowded. We tried but couldn’t buy every wonderfully enticing thing. The cheese store held a wall cabinet displaying 2 and 3 foot rounds of every kind of cheese you can imagine and some you can’t, pepper laced gouda, and runny camembert’s. Did we buy some? Maybe you haven’t been paying attention. Soon we were headed back to Brussels. (Did I say Brussels? That can’t be right!)
One evening, four missionaries came over. Kathryn gave them a tour of the house while I told the mission fixer what needed fixing. How did he fix us? Let me count the ways: Now 1) all computers interface with the printer, 2) HP hard drive works, 3) scans store properly, 4) media player sound works, 5) strange computer messages interpreted 6) instructions for the laser printer available, 7) language program password problems solved, 8) dryer problems fixed, and 9) washing machine works; all this in 1 hour.
We attended a baptismal service. Everything went wrong. Messy place because of construction. Disorganized, late starting meeting, silent microphone, long winded speakers. We crowded around the small, windowed baptismal font. The candidate was stunning in her bright white baptismal suit, which contrasted beautifully with her brown skin. Icy water. She almost ejected herself out of the font. When she got acclimated, she asked for FIDO. He was a little, fuzzy terrier, leashed and shaking at the back of the basement room. He was dragged up to the window. We thought, no, please don’t. Please don’t ask for the dog to be baptized with you. Just, please no. Wasn’t! She just wanted to make sure that Woofie had a front row seat. Wonder what he thought?
One day, we went for a long walk to shake off the monitoring stupor and happened upon a little puzzle shop tucked into one side of a dilapidated building. A whole new world opened up to us, a room to the brim with 100’s of puzzles, simple to excruciating. The worst, by far, was 2500-piece puzzle of black and white Dalmatians. The starting place had to be the dangling, pink tongue of one pup slobbering happily in the center of the puzzle. Sound hard? Wait, there’s more. It’s a two sided puzzle. Sound hard? Wait again, our preciousnesses. The puzzle on the back is the same picture, black and white Dalmatians, with tongue of pink. Difficile, non? Wait. It’s rotated 90 degrees from the same picture printed on the front. Vicious! Cunning! Hazardous! Dangerous! Keep hands above table edge at all times. Must be visible? Clear?
A high point was the FHE for the younger set, held in our home. It exceeded expectations. We want them to feel free to gather in our beautiful Belgian apartment for special occasions. Almost 40 attended. Christian taught and Denis translated. Denis served in Bordeaux about ten years ago, is from the Congo, the color of priceless ebony, slim, soft-spoken, well educated, successful and a wonderful translator. After the lesson, we drifted up to the dining room like hot-air balloons, where the soups were hot and the table was festooned with breads, soups, salads and cookies. KCR’s brownies were heavenly. We had to move folks out at 10:00 because of noise laws.
The highlight of the month was a just completed trip to an Oxford England conference, “New Legal Approaches to Religious Rights.” We took one of those incredibly fast trains from Brussels, through the chunnel and on to London. Getting through customs was fun. The agent asked why we were going. To attend conference. Where? Oxford. What’s it about? New legal approaches to religious rights. He rolled his eyes, and invited us to join him for a pint. Later, we said, after the conference. He smiled.
After a fast, smooth and comfortable 2 hour trip, we arrived in London and took the Tube to Paddington Station, where Kathryn found a nice display of Paddington Bears at Paddington Station. We didn’t BUY one. In Oxford, we walked and ogled the grand, historic city center, the sites of about 37 colleges which operate independently under the Oxford University umbrella. We found Balliol College in preparation for the meetings.
The ride to our hotel on the southern rim of the city reminded us of CS Lewis’ “The Great Divorce,” a fanciful tale of the bus ride from the depths of hell to heaven, visitors welcome. Oxford’s center is beautiful, active, interesting, historic, captivating. Its expanding, Dickensian suburbs around Oxford, are places of rot and degradation.
Prior to the conference, we were allowed to walk about the manicured, shaped and loved grounds, One imagines young and old brilliance strolling by, begarbed in tilting mortar boards and flowing robes, discussing by two’s weighty matters of the mind. The grounds are surrounded by the Elizabethan-style, sand colored buildings rock with arched, iron clad windows. Everyone droll in their British correctness, don’t you know.
The conference was outstanding, divided into 4 1 ½ hour sessions with two or three speakers. Topics all related to human rights and new legal approaches but came at the subject from such diverse perspectives as transitional justice, terrorism, the workplace and Sacred Places. We were the only truly non-academic folks there, but our acceptance by all was warm and welcoming. We met many friends of Cole Durham and David Kirkham, both held in high esteem by these wonderful people. We have invites to come see them, to be taken on tours of important LDS sites (Copenhagen and the “Block” paintings, The Isle of Man). We even were sought out by a Religion Professor from Italy who had been teaching in Hertford College, Conn. He wanted to know about LDS church, Book of Mormon, genealogy, so we have arranged for him to pick up info and the book in Milan. Most importantly, we gained friends, real friends.
At 1 minute after midnight on 27 June, LCR awoke, realizing he had just turned 70. It occurred to him his mother passed away at age 73 and father at 77. He was now beginning his eighth decade, the same decade which neither of them finished. Did they feel the same at this age, fit and healthy (in spite of Dr. Dunson’s list of 25 health concerns), energetic, wanting to learn and experience and contribute?
Returning from the conference was as unbearable as it was unimaginable. Our full car on the train to London included 6 or 8 girls, age 16 to 25, and their 8 to 10 year old children, squawking loudly, rudely in an almost unintelligible cockney dialect about their experiences with their partner, beating partners, arguing with each other about how to beat their kids, talking about the things they were going to do in London (carousing, drinking, etc.) In relief, we got off in London to join a double-decked bus tour prior to the train to Brussels. Problem was that the tour guide sounded like one of the arrogant, partner and child beating partners of one of these 25 year old sl-----. He was incredibly full of himself (“I am the best tour guide in the world”), crude, loud, and obsessed with murder and slaughter in olde London town. We had no way to get off because of luggage.
We are finally back, ending a great month of monitoring, meeting, and masticating.
Love to all et toute est bien,
Leonard and Kathryn.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Where We Find Love
March 7, 2009
Driving down State Street, passing the used car lots on a dark night, you may see (what seems like) thousands of new and used cars waiting for the economic “downturn” to come to an end. It feels like the depression. If you’re going where we’re going, you will drive past Jenkins Soffe Mortuary, a second-hand bookstore and, across the street, The–Desert Star, a B-rated comedy show house. You’ll see a few on-street businesses boarded up, but the sight of these shabby establishments isn’t too bad, yet. The gas station is open, but patrons are few and far between. One of the commercial buildings has been turned into a recruiting center for people desperate enough to hand themselves over to the military.
As we approach Murray Arts Center, my dancing husband and I are hearing the hum of cars lazily dragging State Street. It is still a little dark here, and we see people in the crosswalks with small children bundled up like little hot dogs waiting supper in a coldish room. But our spirits are up because it is our night to dance! Or I should say, it’s one of the three or four nights a week for us to dance.
As we round the corner in our vintage Volvo, taking two sharp turns to the right, I find myself stuffing my purse under the mat. We make our way to the tawdry door of the Murray Arts Center – the largest public dance hall in the state of Utah. As we excitedly approach the dark door, we see a sign that reads, “Don’t leave your valuables in your car.” When we go in, we go in, we see the strings of blinking lights, almost like Christmas, cheerfully dancing around the room in a happy manner. We are warmed by other blinking lights marching around a sign announcing the name of which band will be serenading us tonight. On some nights there are eight to ten musicians all dressed in white jackets playing Glenn Miller favorites. We like to listen to Preston Lloyd and Tony Summerhays, but find rapture when a cowboy named “Kevin,” puts out his soaring, twangy tenor.
During the evening, we find ourselves falling in love even more as we dance close, listening to such favorites as: “String of Pearls,” “ Dancing in the Dark,” “Getting’ Sentimental,” “Lover Come Back to Me,” and “Moon River” Of course, when Glen Miller songs are played, we all have a chance to sing out, “Pennsylvania 6-500. Between dances people perch themselves on the long bench on the south side of the dance hall, waiting hopefully for someone to ask them to dance.
On the walls are hung large black metal motifs of the skyline of New York City, and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Other motifs depict a 50’s Band stand with strings of notes streaming out of the horn of trumpet, and other funky reminiscences of times gone by. Other metal sculptures include silhouettes of sleek men dancing in black tuxedos, whisking buxom girls with slim waists around the dance floor. These images look like they were just peeled from mud flaps of passing trailer trucks. But then you notice the flesh and blood women around the floor in their twirling, swinging skirts. The décor also includes floor-to-ceiling pilasters reminding us of Greek and Roman architecture. Other decorations include a bevy of VERY large satin roses above an overhang, which have never been touched with a feather duster.
But what a deal you get! It costs only seven dollars per person for admission to Murray Arts, and you can get dance lessons for free if you pay your seven dollars up front. To make things really special, there is a little glass candy dish where you can pick out a few baby-sized tootsie rolls to push around in your mouth while you wait to pay.
When you first go in, if it’s winter, Bill Wright turns on the huge heaters which blast hot air so we don’t freeze our hands or feet. After while, as people begin to relinquish their hard-earned bucks to Bill or Susan Wright, (the people who own the dancehall), the heat of all the bodies makes the need for blasted, gas-heated warm air unnecessary. Of course, there is a large revolving ball in the center of the room with little squares of mirrors for a sparkling effect.
When the band is tuning-up to play the first struggling notes of the trumpets and trombones, people have begun to saunter in. Some give a look around and leave. Others float over to the long bench where folks young and old sit between dances or perch themselves hopefully, awaiting someone to invite them to dance. The attire is varied – everything from jeans to formal ball gowns. The older set grabs tables so they can sit comfortably between dance numbers. These seasoned dancers have known each other for years, if not decades, and attend frequently. You may think that people are there to meet others, listen to the music, or to find the love of their lives. But in truth, most people there come simply to dance. The reality is that the big draw is the joy of dancing. The same people come over and over, night in and night out, never tiring of the same setting, the same kind of music, and meeting up with the same friends. Who are these people?
There is Marva – 85 years old. She is short, has rounded shoulders, a stout body with “permed” grey hair. She can jitterbug with gusto. She is such a “regular” that nobody nice would think of not twirling her around the floor a time or two. Irving is in his 70s or 80s and is so short and thin that that dancing with him is like dancing with a rickety, cowboy-boot-wearing stick. I often dance with him, but fear he will break. He does his own unique style, rocking back on his heels at the end of every cadence. Victor is a tall, dark man in his 50’s, 60’s or 70’s. (Who knows?) He is undoubtedly much younger than he appears because he dances by throwing his legs as high as his waist, as he makes his way around the room.
Craig’s story is sad. He is extremely tall and thin. He dodged the Vietnam War by being too thin to fight. His life now is made up of helping the dance teacher (Ed) with all the new dances. But his girlfriend left him because she wanted to be with her daughter in Denver. Craig looks so sad. At Christmas I asked him if he had any plans. He just said, “no.” He spent his working life at Kennecott Copper.
Most amazing is the very, very old, man and his lovely wife. I have it from a good authority that this very small wobbling man has over a hundred years to his credit. He is so bent that he can only see the floor. He is less than five feet by a long shot. His wife is somewhere in her late eighties, but is very proud of her legs. They dance. Well, not quite. He stands there with his fine clothes and coiffed white hair nodding while she holds his arm above his head and dances around him, smiling.
The people we are happiest to see each night are the Farnsworths. This couple creates both envy and admiration with their dancing talents. They Mambo, Rumba, Tango, Waltz, Swing, Jitterbug, and dance the Balboa! We try to copy them, be smooth like them, and make new dances like them. However, we are “poor cousins” indeed. However, they have become excellent friends, so we aren’t able to be jealous or covetous of their extravagant talents.
Refreshments at Murray Arts are nothing more than a little shelf with a small selection of non-alcoholic drinks from fruit juice to Coke. But Bill does put out about twelve butter mints at a time for people to take if they get an appetite for something sweet. On a good night he puts out a small handful of salted pretzels from a nearby grocery store.
To keep things exciting, there is always a drawing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays where dancers can win small (or sometimes large) amounts of cash. As legend has it, the jack pot once got up past $500.00! Friday nights there is a drawing for a small amount of cash – usually 20 dollars and sometimes some tawdry cut flowers from the flower shop across the parking lot. Every night, Bill draws to give away a couple of free passes He also gives some cash if you are lucky enough to be standing near a number painted on the dance floor.
Occasionally, Bill has the sad job of announcing the passing of one of the “regulars. This would be a person who filled his or her life with the joy of moving, shaking, twirling, and gliding across that gorgeous wooden floor in the state..
As time has gone on, we have grown accustomed to this strange and wonderful place. We love to watch the BYU dancers when they show up. They dance like dervishes as the pony tails whip around and slap some saucy girl in the face. We are in awe of Will and Janine - “The beautiful couple,” and have traded little gifts with other couples when they have traveled and wanted to leave us a souvenir. We love rumba, mambo, tango, swing, meringue, disco, fox trot and Cha-Cha. But….the greatest moments are when we waltz. We will interrupt whatever we are doing if the next piece is a waltz.
We usually get tired legs about 10:30 because we are always the first ones to be there when the doors open: Three hours is about enough dancing for us. We don’t actually know how long these other old people dance into the night. I heard that Bill closes it down at 11:30, but we are usually home much earlier. We like to drive home in our old Volvo on the empty streets and end up in front of our fireplace for a while, then sleepily descend to our cold basement bedroom and pile ourselves into the same single bed to get thoroughly warm.
May I Have This Dance for the rest of my Life…..
Driving down State Street, passing the used car lots on a dark night, you may see (what seems like) thousands of new and used cars waiting for the economic “downturn” to come to an end. It feels like the depression. If you’re going where we’re going, you will drive past Jenkins Soffe Mortuary, a second-hand bookstore and, across the street, The–Desert Star, a B-rated comedy show house. You’ll see a few on-street businesses boarded up, but the sight of these shabby establishments isn’t too bad, yet. The gas station is open, but patrons are few and far between. One of the commercial buildings has been turned into a recruiting center for people desperate enough to hand themselves over to the military.
As we approach Murray Arts Center, my dancing husband and I are hearing the hum of cars lazily dragging State Street. It is still a little dark here, and we see people in the crosswalks with small children bundled up like little hot dogs waiting supper in a coldish room. But our spirits are up because it is our night to dance! Or I should say, it’s one of the three or four nights a week for us to dance.
As we round the corner in our vintage Volvo, taking two sharp turns to the right, I find myself stuffing my purse under the mat. We make our way to the tawdry door of the Murray Arts Center – the largest public dance hall in the state of Utah. As we excitedly approach the dark door, we see a sign that reads, “Don’t leave your valuables in your car.” When we go in, we go in, we see the strings of blinking lights, almost like Christmas, cheerfully dancing around the room in a happy manner. We are warmed by other blinking lights marching around a sign announcing the name of which band will be serenading us tonight. On some nights there are eight to ten musicians all dressed in white jackets playing Glenn Miller favorites. We like to listen to Preston Lloyd and Tony Summerhays, but find rapture when a cowboy named “Kevin,” puts out his soaring, twangy tenor.
During the evening, we find ourselves falling in love even more as we dance close, listening to such favorites as: “String of Pearls,” “ Dancing in the Dark,” “Getting’ Sentimental,” “Lover Come Back to Me,” and “Moon River” Of course, when Glen Miller songs are played, we all have a chance to sing out, “Pennsylvania 6-500. Between dances people perch themselves on the long bench on the south side of the dance hall, waiting hopefully for someone to ask them to dance.
On the walls are hung large black metal motifs of the skyline of New York City, and San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Other motifs depict a 50’s Band stand with strings of notes streaming out of the horn of trumpet, and other funky reminiscences of times gone by. Other metal sculptures include silhouettes of sleek men dancing in black tuxedos, whisking buxom girls with slim waists around the dance floor. These images look like they were just peeled from mud flaps of passing trailer trucks. But then you notice the flesh and blood women around the floor in their twirling, swinging skirts. The décor also includes floor-to-ceiling pilasters reminding us of Greek and Roman architecture. Other decorations include a bevy of VERY large satin roses above an overhang, which have never been touched with a feather duster.
But what a deal you get! It costs only seven dollars per person for admission to Murray Arts, and you can get dance lessons for free if you pay your seven dollars up front. To make things really special, there is a little glass candy dish where you can pick out a few baby-sized tootsie rolls to push around in your mouth while you wait to pay.
When you first go in, if it’s winter, Bill Wright turns on the huge heaters which blast hot air so we don’t freeze our hands or feet. After while, as people begin to relinquish their hard-earned bucks to Bill or Susan Wright, (the people who own the dancehall), the heat of all the bodies makes the need for blasted, gas-heated warm air unnecessary. Of course, there is a large revolving ball in the center of the room with little squares of mirrors for a sparkling effect.
When the band is tuning-up to play the first struggling notes of the trumpets and trombones, people have begun to saunter in. Some give a look around and leave. Others float over to the long bench where folks young and old sit between dances or perch themselves hopefully, awaiting someone to invite them to dance. The attire is varied – everything from jeans to formal ball gowns. The older set grabs tables so they can sit comfortably between dance numbers. These seasoned dancers have known each other for years, if not decades, and attend frequently. You may think that people are there to meet others, listen to the music, or to find the love of their lives. But in truth, most people there come simply to dance. The reality is that the big draw is the joy of dancing. The same people come over and over, night in and night out, never tiring of the same setting, the same kind of music, and meeting up with the same friends. Who are these people?
There is Marva – 85 years old. She is short, has rounded shoulders, a stout body with “permed” grey hair. She can jitterbug with gusto. She is such a “regular” that nobody nice would think of not twirling her around the floor a time or two. Irving is in his 70s or 80s and is so short and thin that that dancing with him is like dancing with a rickety, cowboy-boot-wearing stick. I often dance with him, but fear he will break. He does his own unique style, rocking back on his heels at the end of every cadence. Victor is a tall, dark man in his 50’s, 60’s or 70’s. (Who knows?) He is undoubtedly much younger than he appears because he dances by throwing his legs as high as his waist, as he makes his way around the room.
Craig’s story is sad. He is extremely tall and thin. He dodged the Vietnam War by being too thin to fight. His life now is made up of helping the dance teacher (Ed) with all the new dances. But his girlfriend left him because she wanted to be with her daughter in Denver. Craig looks so sad. At Christmas I asked him if he had any plans. He just said, “no.” He spent his working life at Kennecott Copper.
Most amazing is the very, very old, man and his lovely wife. I have it from a good authority that this very small wobbling man has over a hundred years to his credit. He is so bent that he can only see the floor. He is less than five feet by a long shot. His wife is somewhere in her late eighties, but is very proud of her legs. They dance. Well, not quite. He stands there with his fine clothes and coiffed white hair nodding while she holds his arm above his head and dances around him, smiling.
The people we are happiest to see each night are the Farnsworths. This couple creates both envy and admiration with their dancing talents. They Mambo, Rumba, Tango, Waltz, Swing, Jitterbug, and dance the Balboa! We try to copy them, be smooth like them, and make new dances like them. However, we are “poor cousins” indeed. However, they have become excellent friends, so we aren’t able to be jealous or covetous of their extravagant talents.
Refreshments at Murray Arts are nothing more than a little shelf with a small selection of non-alcoholic drinks from fruit juice to Coke. But Bill does put out about twelve butter mints at a time for people to take if they get an appetite for something sweet. On a good night he puts out a small handful of salted pretzels from a nearby grocery store.
To keep things exciting, there is always a drawing on Tuesdays and Wednesdays where dancers can win small (or sometimes large) amounts of cash. As legend has it, the jack pot once got up past $500.00! Friday nights there is a drawing for a small amount of cash – usually 20 dollars and sometimes some tawdry cut flowers from the flower shop across the parking lot. Every night, Bill draws to give away a couple of free passes He also gives some cash if you are lucky enough to be standing near a number painted on the dance floor.
Occasionally, Bill has the sad job of announcing the passing of one of the “regulars. This would be a person who filled his or her life with the joy of moving, shaking, twirling, and gliding across that gorgeous wooden floor in the state..
As time has gone on, we have grown accustomed to this strange and wonderful place. We love to watch the BYU dancers when they show up. They dance like dervishes as the pony tails whip around and slap some saucy girl in the face. We are in awe of Will and Janine - “The beautiful couple,” and have traded little gifts with other couples when they have traveled and wanted to leave us a souvenir. We love rumba, mambo, tango, swing, meringue, disco, fox trot and Cha-Cha. But….the greatest moments are when we waltz. We will interrupt whatever we are doing if the next piece is a waltz.
We usually get tired legs about 10:30 because we are always the first ones to be there when the doors open: Three hours is about enough dancing for us. We don’t actually know how long these other old people dance into the night. I heard that Bill closes it down at 11:30, but we are usually home much earlier. We like to drive home in our old Volvo on the empty streets and end up in front of our fireplace for a while, then sleepily descend to our cold basement bedroom and pile ourselves into the same single bed to get thoroughly warm.
May I Have This Dance for the rest of my Life…..
Sunday, February 22, 2009
The Sunday of the Three Ruminations
So, it's been awhile since either of us has written or posted. I think we'll both try to make Sunday a day of contemplation and blogging. There is certainly much to record this day, including Facebook, the experiences and feelings of waiting for our travel plans to gel, and reactions to recent political discussions and their relations to today's toxic political climate.
Facebook
About a week ago, National Public Radio (NPR) aired a story on Facebook. They talked about its origins and destiny, its assets and liabilities, its uses both planned and unexpected. Those on the program concluded their discussion with a unanimous recommendation to sign-up, get-involved, use it, but avoid being captured by it. So, four days ago, we made the plunge. We started out with a mistake, unfortunately. I created separate accounts for each of us. As the volume of responses and friends began to increase almost exponentially on both pages, and from essentially the same folks, we quickly concluded that one account was the best use of Facebook for us.
Our intent has come to be communication with our family, our friends and also our missionaries whom we knew and loved while serving in Russia from 2000 to 2003. The lion's share of our Facebook friends are missionaries, many of whom we have not heard from since 2000 when we first arrived in Moscow. It has been a wonderful experience so far to just connect, regain contact, read their profiles and see where they have been, where they are now and indeed where they plan to go.
This week's edition of Newsweek online had a somewhat humorous article about 7 myths of Facebook. The author sought to debunk the excuses Facebook users proffer for spending inordinate amounts of time on the website. We can see how one could be swallowed by this technology, even by the urges of prurient interests to probe and pry into others lives. Nonetheless, we've discovered a wonderful tool for reconnecting and befriending. In spite of the fact that we are becoming "ancients of days," we are grasping and effectively (sort of) using this amazing technology.
Awaiting Travel Plans
May of 2008, call comes from dear friend and LDS Church leader Douglas Callister about an open assignment and would we be interested. Of course we would. June, informal call is extended. We go to meetings, begin to prepare ourselves by learning French and accessing European Union websites to become familiar with that organization. We are concerned that a scheduled trip to China may need to be canceled. No worry, we are told. We leave all of our church callings in order to prepare. It's now late February. We still don't have a departure date. We don't have visas and nothing of plans or permission has raising its head above the distant horizon. Last December, we agreed with Church Travel on a departure date in February. That got moved to mid-March. They are so far not forthcoming about whether we will make that date. In the meantime, folks in our neighborhood and at church keep asking when we will be going. Others, whom we haven't seen for some time, explain upon sighting us, "Wow! You're back already." It is painful and frustrating to wait and wonder. But, in lieu (note the use of a French word here) of anything else to do, we will continue to painfully and frustratingly wait and wonder (and maybe ballroom dance a "few" times each week until we embark.)
The Toxicity of Political Dialogue
I recently had another political discussion with someone who holds views quiet antithetical to my own. Our interactions were not too dissimilar from the heated, toxic interactions seeming to pervade our airways and hallways of late. These interactions and blatherings fowling the frequencies are too painful, much too painful, to listen to. Some folks spend hours and hours each week being propagandized and driven to rage and hate by these discussions. I find people who have taken such toxic stances on either side simply no longer listen to one another. They lie in wait, like cobras ready to strike, and wait their chance to spew their beloved venom. Arguments are typically laced with many time-worn, outdated canards, etched in stone about the views and groups on the opposite side. Steven Covey's rule, seek first to understand before you seek to be understood, is honored only in the breach. There are many, many political talk show hosts, on distant, far distant, sides of the political aisle who broadcast these "principles" with toxic rancor and bombast. Their views have intoxicated many and I fear our nation may well be past the point of no return where working together to solve problems, as did Lincoln, is no longer a possibility. We are floundering. Heaven help us.
About a week ago, National Public Radio (NPR) aired a story on Facebook. They talked about its origins and destiny, its assets and liabilities, its uses both planned and unexpected. Those on the program concluded their discussion with a unanimous recommendation to sign-up, get-involved, use it, but avoid being captured by it. So, four days ago, we made the plunge. We started out with a mistake, unfortunately. I created separate accounts for each of us. As the volume of responses and friends began to increase almost exponentially on both pages, and from essentially the same folks, we quickly concluded that one account was the best use of Facebook for us.
Our intent has come to be communication with our family, our friends and also our missionaries whom we knew and loved while serving in Russia from 2000 to 2003. The lion's share of our Facebook friends are missionaries, many of whom we have not heard from since 2000 when we first arrived in Moscow. It has been a wonderful experience so far to just connect, regain contact, read their profiles and see where they have been, where they are now and indeed where they plan to go.
This week's edition of Newsweek online had a somewhat humorous article about 7 myths of Facebook. The author sought to debunk the excuses Facebook users proffer for spending inordinate amounts of time on the website. We can see how one could be swallowed by this technology, even by the urges of prurient interests to probe and pry into others lives. Nonetheless, we've discovered a wonderful tool for reconnecting and befriending. In spite of the fact that we are becoming "ancients of days," we are grasping and effectively (sort of) using this amazing technology.
Awaiting Travel Plans
May of 2008, call comes from dear friend and LDS Church leader Douglas Callister about an open assignment and would we be interested. Of course we would. June, informal call is extended. We go to meetings, begin to prepare ourselves by learning French and accessing European Union websites to become familiar with that organization. We are concerned that a scheduled trip to China may need to be canceled. No worry, we are told. We leave all of our church callings in order to prepare. It's now late February. We still don't have a departure date. We don't have visas and nothing of plans or permission has raising its head above the distant horizon. Last December, we agreed with Church Travel on a departure date in February. That got moved to mid-March. They are so far not forthcoming about whether we will make that date. In the meantime, folks in our neighborhood and at church keep asking when we will be going. Others, whom we haven't seen for some time, explain upon sighting us, "Wow! You're back already." It is painful and frustrating to wait and wonder. But, in lieu (note the use of a French word here) of anything else to do, we will continue to painfully and frustratingly wait and wonder (and maybe ballroom dance a "few" times each week until we embark.)
The Toxicity of Political Dialogue
I recently had another political discussion with someone who holds views quiet antithetical to my own. Our interactions were not too dissimilar from the heated, toxic interactions seeming to pervade our airways and hallways of late. These interactions and blatherings fowling the frequencies are too painful, much too painful, to listen to. Some folks spend hours and hours each week being propagandized and driven to rage and hate by these discussions. I find people who have taken such toxic stances on either side simply no longer listen to one another. They lie in wait, like cobras ready to strike, and wait their chance to spew their beloved venom. Arguments are typically laced with many time-worn, outdated canards, etched in stone about the views and groups on the opposite side. Steven Covey's rule, seek first to understand before you seek to be understood, is honored only in the breach. There are many, many political talk show hosts, on distant, far distant, sides of the political aisle who broadcast these "principles" with toxic rancor and bombast. Their views have intoxicated many and I fear our nation may well be past the point of no return where working together to solve problems, as did Lincoln, is no longer a possibility. We are floundering. Heaven help us.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Pat
Pat died.
I feel awful that I didn't take the chance to to see her, squeeze her bony hand and give her a kiss on the cheek before she slipped away. I had visited her about three months ago and we had had a quiet conversation then. Susan Creager had called me the week before and conveyed the message that Pat was only going to last a week, which was about right. But got so wrapped up in my own sense of importance and business that I forgot all about her until we saw her obituary in the paper today (Jan. 18).
"Patricia Faith Headlund 1929 ~ 2009 Our dear cousin, Patricia Faith Headlund, born 30th October 1929 to Wallace and Lydia Almstedt Headlund, passed away 13th January 2009. We grew up as a close knit group of cousins. Pat attended East High, SLC High, the U of U and LDS Business College. She worked at Manpower. Pat was a member and teacher in the LDS church. Patricia is survived by cousins, Phyllis McGrath, Edwin (Shirley) Almstedt, Virginia (Marshall) Dignam, and many other cousins. A memorial service will be held in the spring. The family would like to thank the staffs at the U of U Hospital and The Residence CareSource Hospice for their care of Patricia."
What a ride we had with Pat as our neighbor. I remember seeing her the first time when we had just purchased our home, on our in the lovely Yale-Harvard neighborhood in Salt Lake. when we were buying our home on Yale Avenue. She was standing in her blue, ragged and torn down jacket in the middle of summer, looking at us with secret curiosity, all the while trying to hide behind an untrimmed tree. She had "Kitty" by her side, as always. She was holding the garden hose in her hand, with water leaking out of the nozzle and dripping onto her bedroom slippers. The real estate agent said, "Dont' worry about Pat. She isn't going to last long. Little did we know that we would be Pat's across-the-street neighbors for twenty three years. During that yawn of time, she was part of our lives and we were part of hers.
The kids from blocks around knew about Pat. To themhe was that "creepy" witch with her tangled grey hair matted into something like a beaver's tail, tied with a shoelace. But the smelly clothes and grassless"yard" were only the beginning. Everybody from the neighborhood knew about her, but few dared to approach her. The neighborhood children often played "double dare" as they ran up to her front door to slap it quickly and run. Pat was our own neighbornood Boo Radley, mysterious and shy, but also able to hold her own when something displeased her. Late at night when it was summer-hot and all windows were open, you could hear Pat calling, "Here Kitty, kitty, kitty. The cat was black, and had long unkempt fur. They were a pair.
To look at Pat was hard. She had had not eaten well over the years and her skin was drawn and yellow. The few teeth she had were all brown and chipped. The worst sign of true neglect and lack of care was her legs. Ulcers on them had broken open and she had to wrap them when she took her trek to Emigration Market to buy food and supplies. But what people on our street noticed most was the black gargabe bags she wore like a dress. Of course, she was nick-named, "the bag lady."
The story goes that she had been a good student and a fine "temp" employe" for several businesses over the years. But after her father and her mother both passed away she let everything go. At this moment the house is in the "let it go" stage. For years people have knocked on our Yale Ave house door to inquire about the house - looks like a good deal for someone. However, I did go in the house once, and belive me, it's not a fixer-upper. Some wheeler-dealer builder is going to get it pretty soon and pull it over.
The first audible encounter with her was when she asked Leonard or one of the boys to straighten out her hose or to get an old plastic chair for her to sit on while she watered and watered. This was her recreation - watching people on the street while she watered and watered. After a few weeks in our house, she did make conversation with us. We offered to help her with some new clothes, but she refused. At first she wouldn't let us scrape her walks, but after about five years, she relented and let us and our kids keep ice off the sidewalk. after her parents both died and her health started to wind down, she was at a loss for upkeep. So entropy took over and the house and yard continued to deteriorate. In the summer, she would prop her door open for ventilation. Her favorite and only cleaning product was Lysol, which you could smell from around the corner. It seemed to be her only effort to be clean. Once, I knocked on her door so I could bring her a light bulb, sometimes she had only one, but she refused to let me anywhere near the door.
Sometimes we wandered over to visit Pat, who seemed nice enough, and I tried many times to buy her some new clothes. Of course, she refused. She was a proud lady. She was too stubborn and independent. But there was good blood between Pat's place and ours. We chatted with her in the summer time and helped her when she asked - which was almost never. She adored our children grandchildren - three little girls. She would relinquish candy canes at Christmas and gave wedding gifts to our kids when they married. But Pat was stubborn, but could be a little mean. She yelled at the neighborhood kids and chased them away.
She thought she owned the parking place in front of her house. Once, when some of our children parked there and carelessly tossed some paper cups into the gutter in front of her house after a night party. We all had heck to pay. Pat really blew up because she thought the place in front of her curb was "her" property. But she didn't stay mad very long.
The days came and went, and our children grew from elementary to high school, to missions, marriage, and beyond. Pat was still there in the summers watering from that leaky hose, her hair still tied up in a shoe lace with her beaver tail hanging down her back. Lots of water was wasted while we watched over Pat, still in the same blue down jacket, with more rips and tears.
There were many memorable moments. Our grandchildren loved to talk to her and they made friends. Once, when some of our grandchildren were living in our basement apartment, some naughty kids started tormenting Pat by kicking the door. Little Mary Grace - about four years old - marched endignently across the street and chewed out Pat's unwanted tormentors. Good for Mary Grace!
Then one disaster after another began to play out. The first awful thing was when Pat's garage burned. You might think that was good, but Pat refused to let anybody touch anything on her property, which made everybody on the street mad. There were stray cats and other unwanted creatures. This went on for a few years, until people on the street complained to the city.
Pat finally fell down in her house and broke her leg. This made it necessary for her to move. She lived in a room in some old hotel for a year. Then she had to be moved to one nursing home and then another, and another. She was there for several years. She was pretty happy, but she still liked to scold people who walked down her hallway. She actually sat in her wheel chair and gave pepople a bad time about one thing and another. But she had several friends who would still come to visit. Several of us visited her on a quarterly basis. One highlight of her life was when Daryl Hoole (a luminary figure in our neighborhood) came to visit Pat. Pat wanted to meet Daryl and they had a nice long visit, just as though they had been best friends their whole lives.
Our three years in Russia made it hard for us to stay abreast of Pat and her situation, and my visits to her became less frequent. Margaret's girls and myself got one of those skinny little fake little Christmas tree for her the last two or three years. The girls and I decorated it with primitive dolls out of handkerchiefs. She loved it and after the last Christmas she wanted me to leave it up for a few more months.
Pat's house is still there and looks about the same as the first day we moved in. Yesterday I drove past her crumbling property. All the windows are boarded up. Nobody has taken care of it but it is still standing. I did get a chance to see the inside of Pat's house once when a friend of Pat's had a key. Don't ever ask me what it was like.
But Pat was a lady in her own right. She always kept her dignity and wouldn't let anybody push her around. She never got confused or demented as far as I could tell . She always knew where she stood and held firm to her position.
Once, when I had her on the phone (she got so she felt free to call me, and I felt free to call her), she found out that I was going to the Shakespeare festival in Cedar City. Right there on the phone she quoted me an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet. "What light through yonder window breaks, it is the East and Juliet is the sun - arise fair sun and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid art is far more fair than she....."
I can still feel her tiny bones, her paper-thin skin, and her calling, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty." Here kitty.
I feel awful that I didn't take the chance to to see her, squeeze her bony hand and give her a kiss on the cheek before she slipped away. I had visited her about three months ago and we had had a quiet conversation then. Susan Creager had called me the week before and conveyed the message that Pat was only going to last a week, which was about right. But got so wrapped up in my own sense of importance and business that I forgot all about her until we saw her obituary in the paper today (Jan. 18).
"Patricia Faith Headlund 1929 ~ 2009 Our dear cousin, Patricia Faith Headlund, born 30th October 1929 to Wallace and Lydia Almstedt Headlund, passed away 13th January 2009. We grew up as a close knit group of cousins. Pat attended East High, SLC High, the U of U and LDS Business College. She worked at Manpower. Pat was a member and teacher in the LDS church. Patricia is survived by cousins, Phyllis McGrath, Edwin (Shirley) Almstedt, Virginia (Marshall) Dignam, and many other cousins. A memorial service will be held in the spring. The family would like to thank the staffs at the U of U Hospital and The Residence CareSource Hospice for their care of Patricia."
What a ride we had with Pat as our neighbor. I remember seeing her the first time when we had just purchased our home, on our in the lovely Yale-Harvard neighborhood in Salt Lake. when we were buying our home on Yale Avenue. She was standing in her blue, ragged and torn down jacket in the middle of summer, looking at us with secret curiosity, all the while trying to hide behind an untrimmed tree. She had "Kitty" by her side, as always. She was holding the garden hose in her hand, with water leaking out of the nozzle and dripping onto her bedroom slippers. The real estate agent said, "Dont' worry about Pat. She isn't going to last long. Little did we know that we would be Pat's across-the-street neighbors for twenty three years. During that yawn of time, she was part of our lives and we were part of hers.
The kids from blocks around knew about Pat. To themhe was that "creepy" witch with her tangled grey hair matted into something like a beaver's tail, tied with a shoelace. But the smelly clothes and grassless"yard" were only the beginning. Everybody from the neighborhood knew about her, but few dared to approach her. The neighborhood children often played "double dare" as they ran up to her front door to slap it quickly and run. Pat was our own neighbornood Boo Radley, mysterious and shy, but also able to hold her own when something displeased her. Late at night when it was summer-hot and all windows were open, you could hear Pat calling, "Here Kitty, kitty, kitty. The cat was black, and had long unkempt fur. They were a pair.
To look at Pat was hard. She had had not eaten well over the years and her skin was drawn and yellow. The few teeth she had were all brown and chipped. The worst sign of true neglect and lack of care was her legs. Ulcers on them had broken open and she had to wrap them when she took her trek to Emigration Market to buy food and supplies. But what people on our street noticed most was the black gargabe bags she wore like a dress. Of course, she was nick-named, "the bag lady."
The story goes that she had been a good student and a fine "temp" employe" for several businesses over the years. But after her father and her mother both passed away she let everything go. At this moment the house is in the "let it go" stage. For years people have knocked on our Yale Ave house door to inquire about the house - looks like a good deal for someone. However, I did go in the house once, and belive me, it's not a fixer-upper. Some wheeler-dealer builder is going to get it pretty soon and pull it over.
The first audible encounter with her was when she asked Leonard or one of the boys to straighten out her hose or to get an old plastic chair for her to sit on while she watered and watered. This was her recreation - watching people on the street while she watered and watered. After a few weeks in our house, she did make conversation with us. We offered to help her with some new clothes, but she refused. At first she wouldn't let us scrape her walks, but after about five years, she relented and let us and our kids keep ice off the sidewalk. after her parents both died and her health started to wind down, she was at a loss for upkeep. So entropy took over and the house and yard continued to deteriorate. In the summer, she would prop her door open for ventilation. Her favorite and only cleaning product was Lysol, which you could smell from around the corner. It seemed to be her only effort to be clean. Once, I knocked on her door so I could bring her a light bulb, sometimes she had only one, but she refused to let me anywhere near the door.
Sometimes we wandered over to visit Pat, who seemed nice enough, and I tried many times to buy her some new clothes. Of course, she refused. She was a proud lady. She was too stubborn and independent. But there was good blood between Pat's place and ours. We chatted with her in the summer time and helped her when she asked - which was almost never. She adored our children grandchildren - three little girls. She would relinquish candy canes at Christmas and gave wedding gifts to our kids when they married. But Pat was stubborn, but could be a little mean. She yelled at the neighborhood kids and chased them away.
She thought she owned the parking place in front of her house. Once, when some of our children parked there and carelessly tossed some paper cups into the gutter in front of her house after a night party. We all had heck to pay. Pat really blew up because she thought the place in front of her curb was "her" property. But she didn't stay mad very long.
The days came and went, and our children grew from elementary to high school, to missions, marriage, and beyond. Pat was still there in the summers watering from that leaky hose, her hair still tied up in a shoe lace with her beaver tail hanging down her back. Lots of water was wasted while we watched over Pat, still in the same blue down jacket, with more rips and tears.
There were many memorable moments. Our grandchildren loved to talk to her and they made friends. Once, when some of our grandchildren were living in our basement apartment, some naughty kids started tormenting Pat by kicking the door. Little Mary Grace - about four years old - marched endignently across the street and chewed out Pat's unwanted tormentors. Good for Mary Grace!
Then one disaster after another began to play out. The first awful thing was when Pat's garage burned. You might think that was good, but Pat refused to let anybody touch anything on her property, which made everybody on the street mad. There were stray cats and other unwanted creatures. This went on for a few years, until people on the street complained to the city.
Pat finally fell down in her house and broke her leg. This made it necessary for her to move. She lived in a room in some old hotel for a year. Then she had to be moved to one nursing home and then another, and another. She was there for several years. She was pretty happy, but she still liked to scold people who walked down her hallway. She actually sat in her wheel chair and gave pepople a bad time about one thing and another. But she had several friends who would still come to visit. Several of us visited her on a quarterly basis. One highlight of her life was when Daryl Hoole (a luminary figure in our neighborhood) came to visit Pat. Pat wanted to meet Daryl and they had a nice long visit, just as though they had been best friends their whole lives.
Our three years in Russia made it hard for us to stay abreast of Pat and her situation, and my visits to her became less frequent. Margaret's girls and myself got one of those skinny little fake little Christmas tree for her the last two or three years. The girls and I decorated it with primitive dolls out of handkerchiefs. She loved it and after the last Christmas she wanted me to leave it up for a few more months.
Pat's house is still there and looks about the same as the first day we moved in. Yesterday I drove past her crumbling property. All the windows are boarded up. Nobody has taken care of it but it is still standing. I did get a chance to see the inside of Pat's house once when a friend of Pat's had a key. Don't ever ask me what it was like.
But Pat was a lady in her own right. She always kept her dignity and wouldn't let anybody push her around. She never got confused or demented as far as I could tell . She always knew where she stood and held firm to her position.
Once, when I had her on the phone (she got so she felt free to call me, and I felt free to call her), she found out that I was going to the Shakespeare festival in Cedar City. Right there on the phone she quoted me an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet. "What light through yonder window breaks, it is the East and Juliet is the sun - arise fair sun and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou, her maid art is far more fair than she....."
I can still feel her tiny bones, her paper-thin skin, and her calling, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty." Here kitty.
Blog Content and an Obama Experience in China
As Kathryn and I have discussed our blog, trying to get our arms around its purposes as well as the capabilities of this technology, realizing that we both love to write and reminisce, we have come to a some conclusions. First, this is not a diary for either of us. It is a repository of ruminations, remembrances, recollections and the like. We each have assembled a small library of thoughts, memories and topics we want to record and capture, for ourselves, for our extending family, and for any interested in the lives of two happy, fortunate, blessed people. So we'll write and the reader, over time, will perhaps gain some familiarity with our lives and who we were, are, and are striving to become.
China
In late October through mid November 2008, we toured China with a local agency, Fun for Less Tours. If life does not afford us the opportunity to take another major trip, this one will surely suffice as the penultimate experience, life itself, from birth to death and to that which lies before and beyond, being the ultimate journey. There were many highlights and perhaps we can describe them in other posts. One stands out, however.
Our journey took our group to Chongqing, perhaps a 1000 miles inland from Shanghai and the China Sea. Chongqing is a village of 13 million people, located in the Yangtze river valley. It is a major river port, the location of historical sites, and a city less westernized than some of the large eastern Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. We spent 2 days there before boarding a small liner to cruise down the immense Yangtze for five days. Part of one day was devoted to wandering a Buddhist shrine, devoted to honoring Buddha, his teachings and resulting culture. The site is punctuated with statues and obelisk, carved intricately in marble and set in beautifully tended gardens. As we were concluding our meanderings, we stood near a large, cast iron sculpture, a place suitable for photographers to document their visitation.
As we were preparing to snap and thus prove our own presence, 8 black women gleefully captured the space in front of the sculpture. They needed a photographer. I volunteered. I love doing that. It is such a delightful way to meet new people. Often they will do the same for you. Usually they want to talk and share their insights about themselves, their experiences, their lives. This was one of those occasions. These 8 women were dressed, as the pictures below attest, in their finest, most expressive travel duds. They were loud as Americans usually are, but were obviously happy and enjoying their journey. After the first picture, I asked them from whence they hailed. "Chicago," they said all together. Had they voted before they came, I asked. It was at that time two days before the election in the US. They exuberantly shouted certainly, of course, yes, you bet. I asked had they voted for the right guy. The Buddhist park felt the power of their joint affirmation that they had indeed voted for the right guy. Then they turned the tables on whitey. Had I voted for the right guy? They focused their question on this pale, old lad, suspecting perhaps that I did not support their guy. I shouted indeed I had. I then felt compelled to share some family information with them. I asked them if they had ever heard of Mitt Romney. Of course they had. I told them of our first cousin relationship, our fathers having been brothers. I told them I would have voted for Mitt had he been the nominee but I had been an Obama fan from the beginning. His book, The Audacity of Hope, has greatly moved and impressed Kathryn and me. Then I told them that when it had become apparent that Mitt was not going to succeed in his aspirations, I decided to come out of the political closet, as it were, and declare my strong support for Barack. They were thrilled and tickled when I told them I had had a special pin made which said, "Romney for Obama." These beautiful ladies loved it. We talked for awhile about the reasons for our individual support for him, our hope for his impact on this country, and the potential he has for leading us forward to what we can be and back to the good parts of what we once were. When we all agreed that Colin Powell got it just right when he, in announcing his support for Obama, said he saw this new man on the political landscape as a truly transformative character, the ten of us became one in ways I have seldom felt in my life. At that moment, we were bonded in tears and knowing embraces. I will never forget it and perhaps neither will they. One of the pictures below captures us all at one point in our bonding.
There is an ugly postscript to this experience. Evidently, several of our tour group had been watching us. One fellow in particular said to me on the bus as we prepared to leave that site, "What were you doing with 'those women' "evidently feeling that talking with and embracing them as we did was somehow wrong and apparently offensive to him. Racism has deep roots in some folks. My biggest regret is that I failed to get a contact address from any of these eight great women so we could exchange feelings and experiences as Obama has been successful and now is deep in preparing to assume the presidency. We all hope, I am sure, that our hope has not been in vain.
China
In late October through mid November 2008, we toured China with a local agency, Fun for Less Tours. If life does not afford us the opportunity to take another major trip, this one will surely suffice as the penultimate experience, life itself, from birth to death and to that which lies before and beyond, being the ultimate journey. There were many highlights and perhaps we can describe them in other posts. One stands out, however.
Our journey took our group to Chongqing, perhaps a 1000 miles inland from Shanghai and the China Sea. Chongqing is a village of 13 million people, located in the Yangtze river valley. It is a major river port, the location of historical sites, and a city less westernized than some of the large eastern Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. We spent 2 days there before boarding a small liner to cruise down the immense Yangtze for five days. Part of one day was devoted to wandering a Buddhist shrine, devoted to honoring Buddha, his teachings and resulting culture. The site is punctuated with statues and obelisk, carved intricately in marble and set in beautifully tended gardens. As we were concluding our meanderings, we stood near a large, cast iron sculpture, a place suitable for photographers to document their visitation.
As we were preparing to snap and thus prove our own presence, 8 black women gleefully captured the space in front of the sculpture. They needed a photographer. I volunteered. I love doing that. It is such a delightful way to meet new people. Often they will do the same for you. Usually they want to talk and share their insights about themselves, their experiences, their lives. This was one of those occasions. These 8 women were dressed, as the pictures below attest, in their finest, most expressive travel duds. They were loud as Americans usually are, but were obviously happy and enjoying their journey. After the first picture, I asked them from whence they hailed. "Chicago," they said all together. Had they voted before they came, I asked. It was at that time two days before the election in the US. They exuberantly shouted certainly, of course, yes, you bet. I asked had they voted for the right guy. The Buddhist park felt the power of their joint affirmation that they had indeed voted for the right guy. Then they turned the tables on whitey. Had I voted for the right guy? They focused their question on this pale, old lad, suspecting perhaps that I did not support their guy. I shouted indeed I had. I then felt compelled to share some family information with them. I asked them if they had ever heard of Mitt Romney. Of course they had. I told them of our first cousin relationship, our fathers having been brothers. I told them I would have voted for Mitt had he been the nominee but I had been an Obama fan from the beginning. His book, The Audacity of Hope, has greatly moved and impressed Kathryn and me. Then I told them that when it had become apparent that Mitt was not going to succeed in his aspirations, I decided to come out of the political closet, as it were, and declare my strong support for Barack. They were thrilled and tickled when I told them I had had a special pin made which said, "Romney for Obama." These beautiful ladies loved it. We talked for awhile about the reasons for our individual support for him, our hope for his impact on this country, and the potential he has for leading us forward to what we can be and back to the good parts of what we once were. When we all agreed that Colin Powell got it just right when he, in announcing his support for Obama, said he saw this new man on the political landscape as a truly transformative character, the ten of us became one in ways I have seldom felt in my life. At that moment, we were bonded in tears and knowing embraces. I will never forget it and perhaps neither will they. One of the pictures below captures us all at one point in our bonding.
There is an ugly postscript to this experience. Evidently, several of our tour group had been watching us. One fellow in particular said to me on the bus as we prepared to leave that site, "What were you doing with 'those women' "evidently feeling that talking with and embracing them as we did was somehow wrong and apparently offensive to him. Racism has deep roots in some folks. My biggest regret is that I failed to get a contact address from any of these eight great women so we could exchange feelings and experiences as Obama has been successful and now is deep in preparing to assume the presidency. We all hope, I am sure, that our hope has not been in vain.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
