A Test of Virtue

When my new friend Jerry tells me about the wooden head, I giggle. He says it's on a reclining statue of Saint Francis Xavier at the San Xavier Mission on the Tohono O'otham Nation in Tucson.

The statue looks like the long-dead Jesuit is lying in state, like his death occurred yesterday and we're here today to pay our respects. A blue cloth drapes over his  "body" and that wooden head sticks out from one end.  Jerry warns me to watch for the men who walk right up to that statue, slide a hand under that wooden head, then heft it three times. Smile. Turn and walk away.

Legend has it that only a virtuous man, a man of high moral standing, can lift that head. If a cheating man tries, the head turns to solid lead.

Jerry, laughing so his chests hops up and down, tells me to watch for the women who drag in their men to lift that head.

So I'm at the mission, and inside I find the sanctuary shaped like a cross and adorned with more than 300 painted or sculpted angels, 100 images of saints and a dozen portrayals of Mary, Christ's mother.

Straight ahead is the altar. To the left,  I spy my saint, stretched out just as Jerry described.

I walk over and notice a number of people in prayer. Candle shadows flicker across their faces.  Some nod as they pray, others stare. Men hold their hats in their hands.  When it's my turn to stand next to the saint, I see pictures pinned to that blue cloth, pictures of children, an ultrasound, families. There are a lot of Jesus-shaped charms pinned to the cloth, too. 

I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I understand faith.  My own, my faith in Jesus, is quite deep. So even though I don't know what these tokens mean, I know those who placed them here did so out of great faith.

So when a man slips past me, slides his hand under that wooden head, I smile, but I do not giggle. I smile because I know what he's here for. But I do not giggle. Because he's a man of faith, a man who believes.

And I'd like to think he's a virtuous man, because he lifts that head, once. Twice. Three times. Never does it turn to lead.

Scraps For The Poor

I'm standing at the cash register at the Community Health Foundation's thrift store in Truth or Consequences, NM.

Today's find is my "new" toaster, a white Sunbeam, tremendously clean inside and, yes, it works. I plugged it in to test it out. 

While waiting for the clerk I notice a sign on her cash register: "We're looking for people to drive bags to Mexico and to the reservation."

"Bags of what?" I ask the clerk.

"Clothes," she says, while counting my change. "We send all of the clothes that are ripped or stained to Mexico. Anything we can't sell, we send down there."

So, I think to myself, we toss them our scraps.

And she continues: "They, well the men especially, don't seem to mind wearing stained clothing."

I think I'm staring, wide-eyed at her. Then I just walk away. Ashamed.

First, that someone in my thrift store community (I LOVE thrift stores) gives unfit clothes  to the poor and considers it generous.

And second, for my  silence, which endorses the discrimination.

Chloride: A Gem of a Ghost Town

Chloride, a long-dead silver mining town in New Mexico, might strike it rich again, as a ghost town.

Its mother lode is no precious ore; it's the people preserving it.

They live there. They roll up their sleeves and get dirty to preserve, protect it and show it off.

And so far, there are only three of them: Don and Donna Edmund (in their 70s) and their daughter, Linda (40s, maybe 50s). The trio's standing in the middle of the main road when we drive up. They welcome us with laughter (for blocking the main road of a ghost town) and we fold right into their conversation, as if they were expecting us.

And, basically, they were. They say they get about 10 visitors a day (we are numbers seven and eight), and oh, about 250 a month. How?

It's amazing anyone finds this place. It's tucked inside the New Mexico mountains off desolate Route 52, a beautiful drive with stunning vistas, a funny little town called Cuchilla, where a speed trap is manned by a police car with a cardboard cop and a mannequin inside,  and where multiple ranchers raise cattle, which crisscross right in front of you. So, slow down.

We're visiting today because I read about Chloride on a travel blog.

"So how do 250 people find out about Chloride?" I ask Donna, a patient, slight woman, who tames her bits of gray hair with a baseball cap.

Oh, she says, "Word of mouth. The Internet. Ghost Town enthusiasts."

So this is my word of mouth, on the Internet: Check out these few pictures, then visit Chloride. And soon.

It's when we catch up with Donna later that I learn she's as much a treasure as Chloride is.

She's giving the tour of the Pioneer Store museum (mostly a 1923 general store) that she and her husband restored in the 1990s. And she smiles, caresses things and lovingly cups them in her hands as shares her stories with us.  She has intimate knowledge of every item in the store, every tin of food, every piece of clothing. She knows how and why they were used.

Not because she studied the stuff somewhere.

But because she spent three years scrubbing decay and rot away from yesterday so we can enjoy it today. And because she learned from the now-dead old-timers in town who grew up with this stuff.

And now, she turns around daily and tells us what they said, for free.

In brief, when she and her husband bought the boarded-up general store in 1989, they found the 1920s general store inside. Intact. But, covered with bat guano, rat droppings and animal damage. They cleaned it up so it shines.

Their accomplishments exceed amateur status. Everything's professionally installed. Don and Donna and Linda did this. Not a hired team of Merry Maids or guys from "This Old House" or historians from the Smithsonian. They did it. Don and Donna and Linda. A couple of retired 70-somethings and their daughter.

And they give the tours. So I'm standing next to and listening to one of the very people who scrubbed and cleaned and identified each item in this store.

My head swirls. What happens with Don and Donna are gone? Their daughter plans to carry on, but then what? Can she achieve her parent's dreams?

Most of the charm of this place is with Donna. Would the tour be as  rewarding with a paid guide? Or a volunteer?

I hope so. What a treasure this is and what a loss it would be if it fails.

So before I leave, I dig into my pockets and find $9 to leave behind as a donation. It's a paltry sum in light of what needs to be done to rebuild this place. But I leave it behind anyway, as a good investment. Because the people in charge are dreamers, who roll up their sleeves. And I want to see them succeed.

So, why the fence?

My past meets my present today.

We head east across southern Arizona on I-10 when the desert landscape changes, dramatically.

Everywhere we look are boulders, huge, round boulders defying gravity, balancing on mountaintops, on other rocks, on ledges, just ready to roll. But they don't. They just hang in there.

Up ahead, a rest stop. Great! It makes it easy for us to grab a few pictures, read a bit of history, soak in the views. And find out where we are: Texas Canyon, AZ.

We walk around the gravel and sandy undulating landscape dotted with these boulders, very aware of the warning signs concerning scorpions and poisonous snakes.

What we aren't prepared for is the fence.

The rest stop is surrounded by a fortified metal chain-link fence reinforced with barbed wire, many rows of it, along the top.

Why, I wonder? To keep me out or keep me in?

We head back up the hill and find a weathered metal memorial to the Chiricahua Apache Chief Cochise and his surrender at Council Rock, just four miles up the road.

Council Rock. Here's my past. I did a report on Council Rock in elementary school, probably fourth grade. And, finally, here I am, more than 45 years later.

I remember lots of sadness about Council Rock. It was here in 1872 that Cochise signed the Broken Arrow Peace Treaty with the U.S. Government, which gave the Apaches the right to live on their own land. Four years later (two years after Cochise died), the government broke the treaty and kicked the Apaches out.

Shameful.

So back to the barbed wire. I think I'm being kept out.

Art in the Mule Mountains

We're riding higher and higher into the mile-high Mule Mountains, heading to Bisbee, a dried-up old copper mine town, I'm told, where old miners' shacks now house artists. Quaint, I think. A curiosity. Art in all this dust (it's still desert here.)

The drive from Tombsonte, AZ, goes southeast toward Mexico and take about 45 minutes. All uphill.

And in that 45 minutes, WOW! We enter a different world, but is it Italy? France? Maybe Mexico? I don't know, but I now know the meaning of Old World Charm.

This is not quaint. It's spectacular. It's no curiosity. It's serious living by creative artists, playwrights, singers, musicians. They've morphed this dried-up old copper mine town into a must-see gem of Southern Arizona.

To see it, we hold our breaths as we navigate up and down and around narrow lanes that meander over, around and through these mountains.

Homes, many of them small and dating back a century or so,  stepladder up and down steep mountainsides. How do they not fall down?  Most of the homes display some form of architectural or artistic creativity. It is, after all, an artist colony, not just a place where artists live.

I see tiles decorating lampposts, walking bridges, door frames. Hand railings of polished curved wood. Bells and birdhouses dangling from trees. Welded sculptures hanging out on rooftops, in side yards, atop fences and at front doors.

And the colors! Purples. Greens. Reds. Visually superb.

There are numerous fine art galleries in town and an excellent historical museum about the town's copper mining past (well worthy of its affiliation with the Smithsonian).

But to consume art, to absorb it, to savor its rewards, there's no need to park.

Bisbee is art.

(Go here to see the picture above by Elizabeth R. Mitchell and other photographs from Bisbee.)

The Most Famous Boothill

What a hoot.

I'm in Booothill Graveyard (link to more pics), Tombstone, AZ, and all hail cuts lose. Literally. Hail a little bit smaller than pea gravel shoots down on us, scattershot. It's like God's picking us off with shotguns.

How appropriate. Most of the 250 to 300 people buried in Boothill died because of a gun, or knife or some kind of  weapon or trauma.

I duck (how do you duck hail?) then run for the wooden structure that separates this historical treasure from the rest of the wild West town.

And it is a treasure. Not just a tourist trap. But it exists because of tourists. 

Nature reclaimed most of the original cemetery after its closing in 1884. In the 1920s, a group of locals spiffed it up in hopes of attracting tourists.  That "spiffing" continues  nearly a century later, but the people involved no longer aim to please tourists.

Their passion is history. And it shows.

Remember the hailstorm? Well, after a ceasefire, the clouds depart and I return outside and visit my first grave.

The freshly painted marker says "Unknown." (All original markers were pinched or disentigrated.) I check my Directory to Graves and learn that this unknown fellow was found in 1882 at the bottom of an abandoned  mine shaft. And, because he was well-dressed, it's assumed he was no miner. 

Cool.

Then there's Chas. Helm  shot in 1882 in an argument over how best to drive cattle, slow or fast. Kansas Kid was a cowboy killed in a stampede. Geo. Johnson was hanged by mistake (he innocently bought a stolen horse and suffered the consequences.) Delia William, an African American proprietor of a lodging house on Toughnuts Street, killed herself by taking arsenic in 1881.

The stories go on and on.

Each grave is numbered and the numbers refer to a listing in the directory that's handed out to all visitors. In compiling the list, the historians interviewed family members, old town residents and Arizona Historical Society records. 

All of the graves listed are documented as Tombstone residents, as the outlaws and their victims, infants, housewives, painted ladies, people who killed themselves, people who were hanged, legal or otherwise. The three men who died in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral are buried here, side by side. Some people even died of natural causes.

Morbid? Not at all. The graveyard is neat, tidy. Almost Disney-like. Each grave is dressed in a cairn, those piles of rocks that make it hard for coyotes and other predators to scavenge the remains.  Some graves are landscaped with cacti. All have markers, either simple crosses or more elaborate epitaphs, such as this well-known verse:

Here lies Lester Moore

Four slugs from a .44

No Les, no more.

Tombstone: Tired, Dated or What?

Maybe it's the chill in the air, or the sideways wind carrying grit and gravel. Or the rain. I don't know. I'm just not loving my time in Tombstone, AZ.

How could I NOT love Tombstone? Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Johnny Ringo, Bat Masterson (I was in LOVE with Gene Barry in the '60s when he played Bat Masterson on TV.)

The O.K. Corral. Cowboys. Indians. Stagecoaches. It's all here. And original. Not a recreation.

While more than 40 movies feature Tombstone, it's not a Hollywood town. It's an original. It's not a re-creation of the Wild West, it IS the Wild West,  renovated, with an acceptable amount of  modern-day thrown in for comfort.

But I'm not loving it.

I take the dogs for a walk and a REAL stagecoach passes by. How cool! The driver's a cowboy toting a sidearm, talking into a mic inside his vest (out of the wind) giving a history lesson to the only rider inside. The cowboy looks, well, bored. (Maybe he's just cold.)

We walk into town on dirt roads, down wooden sidewalks, passing by real saloons. Men in 10-gallon hats and leather chaps pass us by. They ignore us. (Maybe they're hurrying to work.)

An elderly cowboy, his face deeply creased by the southwestern sun, sells trolley tickets, but he's tired. So he sits and stares. At what? (Maybe he's just trying to remember the answer to a question a tourist just asked.)

I'm not loving Tombstone because it's tired today. Its  people weary. That's my guess, anyway.

We push on, touch adobe structures built back in the day, when a Chinese woman named China Mary was queen of the laundries and bordellos. We tour the original newspaper presses and see pictures of Geronimo taken by the famed Camillus S. Fry.

We dine in an honest-to-goodness saloon,  named after  Doc Holliday's woman, Big Nose Kate (surely Doc didn't call her that!).

Two of the saloon waitresses, in period garb,  dance around to entertain us.  One smiles and laughs.  The other, our waitress, looks, well,  bored. (She could be just embarrassed, you know, a little stage fright.)

We attend an amateur theatrical reenactment of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral ALMOST at the site of the real O.K. Corral. The actors compete with screaming winds winds and rattling roofs.

The actual site of the famed fight is fenced off. Inside the fence, very tired looking, life-sized mannequins in period garb face off in a slightly animated version of the fray. Press a button and a commentator discusses the fight. And the animatronics begin. A little bit. Not a lot. A head turns, an arm raises, gun in hand.

It's so old. All of their shoes bend upwards, so they look like magic slippers. The mannequins appear tired of dying all the time.

Next door, at the "Historama," Vincent Price narrates a 50-year-old story about the town in a 50-year-old way. Very tired. (The ticket-taker is a bright spot. He's funny, engaging,  informed. And, not tired at all.)

But I'm still not loving Tombstone

Maybe I'm the one's who's tired. Or maybe I'm spoiled, looking for the cowboys and waitresses to entertain, to dance or sing or at least say "Howdy" enthusiastically. Like Disneyland.

Or maybe I'm ignorant.

A girlfriend wrote to me of her love for Tombstone, of how she grew up watching the movies and when SHE got here, she felt those movies come to life.

I never watched those movies. When I got here, I knew nothing about Tombstone.

So maybe I'm not loving it because I didn't do my homework. So I don't know where to look for all the fun.

It's like going to Dealey Plaza and knowing only that Kennedy was shot there.

How bored would you be if you didn't know about the grassy knoll, or the Book Depository window where the gun was fired from, or the spot where Jackie climbed onto the back of the convertible ... well, you'd be very bored.

Kinda like I am in Tombstone.

But now I know more. I've toured the town. Watched the reenactment. Listened to Vincent Price. Had saloon girls dance for me. So today I'll give it another shot, and go to the famous Boot Hill Cemetery and try have a GREAT time.

Exposing An Ignorant Foodie

I'm at the Sistine Chapel of the New World, the White Dove of the Desert. And all I can think about is food.

It's not that I'm hungry. It's that I love to explore a new place through its food, its people and its history.

And some of its people already told me that THE PLACE to get GREAT fry bread was at the Mission San Xavier del Bac, a place steeped in 300 years of histories of many peoples, of Americans, Native Americans, Mexicans, Spaniards, Jesuits and Franciscans.

I'll absorb the history later, I think to myself. Show me the food!

Now, I really don't know what fry bread is, except it's a food found in Native American culture. And I imagine it's bread, maybe a whole grain or multi-grain bread, that's been fried. I don't know. I just want to eat some.

So I go in search of this food. I visually scout out the grounds of this impressive  working Catholic mission near Tucson, AZ, where people still pray and children go to school. To my left, I hear Mexican cantina music from a loud speaker. Ahead of me is the church itself, an impressive white beacon of faith, a source of comfort to thousands of Catholic pilgrims.

And then, to my right, there she is. A Tohono O'odham grandmother working under a hut with a thatched cactus roof, selling fresh fry bread. I'm so close, I'm giddy.

"Hi," I say, nearly breathless after hurrying up to see her. And I'm sure my grin looks stupid. "One fry bread with, um," I quick read the handwritten menu nailed to the hut support, "beans and cheese, please."

She nods, then turns away from me and washes her hands. She then picks up a ball of fresh dough and slaps it back and forth in her hands, working it like a small pizza crust. She then drops it into a vat of sizzling vegetable oil.

While the dough sizzles, I laugh to myself.  How naive I can be! It's just Fried Dough, the decadent State Fair dessert. Fry bread. Fried dough. Fry bread. Fried dough. Same, same. Only the State Fair delicacy NEVER wears beans and cheese, right? Only yummy sugars (which, by the way, is also on the menu here).

After the dough fries crispy, grandma puts in on a paper plate, ladles a generous helping of pinto beans on top, and sprinkles it with cheese. She then folds it over like a taco, only a huge taco.

That's my prize. My fry bread.

I savor the dish, then head to the church to feed on the history inside.

When You Walk Through a Storm

We limp out of Quartzsite, AZ. Our shoulders slumped. Our heads low. The wind kicking us twice as we leave.

We spent the past day and a half  looking for needles in a haystack (our friends in the desert) and too many hours driving blindly (also in the desert, in Bouse, maybe Parker?) looking for a store to buy a new one. 

 You see, our motor home's not charging its batteries so we need a fix. A fix a friend can manage even in the middle of the desert. If we can find him. But we can't.

And we can't call him because our phone's broken. So we depend on the Internet. Which we  use only sparingly because our batteries are weak because the motor home's not doing its job of charging them.

We finally find a  phone store up the road in Blythe, CA., where we also find a  couple who live in the Quartzsite desert. Their knowledge combined with e-mails from our friends lead us to the right desert door. But our friends have moved on because there's a storm brewing and everyone knows you don't stick around in the desert when a storm comes to town.

We drive away, too, with a new phone but the same sick battery problem. So we head to Yuma, down on the Mexico/Arizona/California border for a repair shop, where they've left the gate open for us to pull in and park for the night.

We get there. We sleep. In the morning, we go, in our car, away for the day while the repairmen tend to the motor home.

We walk along the Colorado River, enjoy lunch and grocery shop, all the while we watch the sky darken, feel the wind pick up speed. Another storm. In the desert.

We're told to expect flash floods with those high winds.

Time to get out of this town, too.

We pick up the motor home and leave, aiming for Tucson. The wind and rain follow. A sprinkle at first, then a deluge. Blinding rain. Belting wind. It looks foggy.  But it's not fog. It's dust and sand and pebbles. Whacking us. Smacking us.

The night turns black black black, The wind pushes and shoves and jostles us. Kicks us again and again. We're hurled left and right. Relentless. Overpowering. Lightening. Rain. Wind. Immense sustainable power.

Now we know why naming a war operation Desert Storm was a fierce move. A line in the sand, A powerful message.

Now we know.

Cell Phone Culture

I wake up this morning to find our cell phone drowned. Yes, drowned.

We left it overnight on the counter in our motor home near the sink
faucet. Which sprung a leak. And drowned our phone.

Now that I don't have a cell (for what, all of five hours?), I think
about how cell-phone culture offends me. About how some people live
on their cells and miss the world around them. About how teens text
instead of talk. About how you don't know if people are talking to
you or their cells.

And about how my cell-phone arrogance that came back to smack me a few
weeks ago.

Here's the story.

I'm in Fresno, CA., eating lunch at a Cheesecake Factory. I know, it's
a chain, and we should seek out a local eatery to support the local
marketplace. But we've never eaten at a Cheesecake Factory and I want
the experience (OK, I really want cheesecake, too.).

We're escorted to our seats by a smiling young woman with white white
teeth. She introduces us to our server, another young woman with
those teeth. Everyone is smiling.

All around us people smile, talk and enjoy themselves as they dine on
sumptuous, freshly prepared fare (I savor my veggie dish in a spicy
peanut sauce.)

And then there's the fellow in the booth next to us. I'll call him
Fred, because he looks like Fred Flintstone. He's not smiling; he's on
his cell, repeatedly. It rings (like an old-fashioned wall phone) and
he answers "Royers Hauling Service. (I made up the name, but it was a
hauling service). And he does business between bites. Between my
bites, too.

The man's business is booming and ruining my lunch. Because it annoys
me. Geesh!

And then there's his 5-year-old son, who has nothing to do because his
dad's on the phone so much, so he's standing up in the booth, playing
peek-a-boo with me.

But I love it. Now I'm having a great time because I love kids. I'm
thinking, though, that any minute, this man, who's rude enough to
invade my lunch-time space with his work-place phone calls, is going
to tell his son to "SIT DOWN AND DON'T BOTHER THE LADY." HA! I think
to myself. What a dichotomy. He's the one being rude, not his son.
But it doesn't happen.

The man, still on the phone, makes eye contact with me and raises
his eyebrows and nods his head, as if to say, "Hey, lady, it is OK
for my son to play with you?" HOW KIND!

I nod YES! And the kid and I giggle.

And here's the rest of the story. As we pack up to leave, we learn
it's winter break for the kids (even kindergardeners) and this dad
has to take care of his son all week.

This was their lunch break.

So what's a working dad to do? Well, I think, I guess you just keep
your cell phone turned on to do business when you can, even during
lunch.

Get Out and Hike!

When in Death Valley, you have to hike.

Even when you are miserably out of shape, you have to hike.

So we turn left just past Stovepipe Wells and start our long journey
UP to the mouth of Mosaic Canyon, where our two-mile hike is to begin.

Inside this canyon, I'm told, we can touch 800 million-year-old
dolomite that's been pushed up out of the ground by perennial seismic
activity. Give dolomite long enough and it turns into marble.

So up we go (still in the motor home), driving on a pathway dug into
an alluvial fan (lots of gravel and silt washed out of the mountains
by ancient rivers). Rumble. Rumble. Rumble.

The man-made road is a washboard and rattles my jaw for what I thought
was a few hundred yards. It turns out to be maybe two miles before we
reach the parking lot at the canyon's mouth.

Distance is deceptive when everything's so big, and in Death Valley,
everything is big.  (Pictures.)

As we begin our hike I realize we're still heading UP. We're walking
UP the canyon into the mountains. There is no DOWN until we head back
down. Did I mention I was out of shape?

We're walking UP for about 20 minutes when I realize I'm no loner
struggling against myself to enjoy this hike. I'm more limber, my
muscles settle in for the ride and I can enjoy the scenery. I pause to
see the different kinds of rocks under foot and inspect the thorny
plant life clinging to the sides of the canyon walls.

And then we come to the first of what turns out to be many places we
can no longer walk; we have to climb. On dolomite. That's the stuff
that turns into marble. And it's smooth already, just like marble.

Did I tell you it's smooth? Which means no toeholds. Allen leaps from
side to side, using his feet to somehow suction onto the smooth
dolomite and lift himself upward. Effortlessly.

I stand and stare. Dumbfounded. How can I, a very out-of-shape woman,
CLIMB up this pass? I can't LEAP like Allen just did.

I stare at this geological structure that looks like a vanilla caramel
sundae. Can you visualize that? THAT'S what I'm supposed to climb up.
An ice cream sundae.

What inspires me to at least try is not my adventuresome nature. It's
my pride. I cannot let the other people hiking behind me see this out-
of-shape woman fail.

And fail, I do not. I take a hundred baby steps and climb this way and
that and get to the top. Ta Da!

Allen beckons me on (what? We're not done?). And we walk some more,
then climb some more.

I scale other dolomite sundaes along the way with ease, even the ones
demanding I step waist high to clear them. After all, I'm experienced
now.

At the big clearing, we rest, catch out breaths, and consume the
beauty of the mountain's canyon. We're tired. And why not? We must
have climbed a mile or more up into the sky to reach this breathtaking
spot.

But remember I said distance is deceptive when everything's so big? A
fellow hiker ambles by and mentions, casually, that's we've climbed .6
of a mile. Not 1.6 miles. Just six-tenths of a mile.

There's still nearly half a mile to go. UP. We hesitate briefly,
smile, then turn and head back DOWN.

Remember all those 800 million-year-old sundaes I climbed to get UP, I
now slide DOWN to get down. What fun.

And we still stop along the way to marvel at God's handiwork. Stuff
we would never have seen if we hadn't gotten out of the car to hike.

An Unexpected Visitor

After being away from home for nearly a month, we're finally camping:
10 days (or so) in Death valley.

The thermometer this Jan. 10 day reads 75. In the shade. I keep moving my reading chair around to find that shade, because in the sun it's pretty hot.

Allen and the boys (our two Standard Poodles) go back inside the motor home for a nap. A lunch-time nap, leaving me with my book, cup of cold coffee and, hot, dry air.

I'm alone. Reading.

A flitting off to my left catches my eye. Oh, look. I think this to myself because there's no one here but me. A bird, drinking out of the dog's water bowl. I watch, casually, as she drinks. Oh, isn't that cute. She's bathing in the water!

THEN WOW! LOOK! About 20 birds come in for a landing, all arguing over who gets to drink next. I settle the score a little by (shame on me) tossing out some crushed graham crackers. They scittle around, grabbing the crumbs farthest away from me, first, then gain courage to
steel closer.

They are all pretty familiar birds to me. I don't know what they are, but I see them a lot at the coast. Big, black birds with yellow rings around their eyes. Others are multi-tan colored birds. They are big, about the height of a parrot, but slender, with long tails. A few morning doves visit as do a dozen or so little black birds (robin-sized) with yellow eyes.

Something else then catches my eye. Coming straight-arrow at me from
across the desert. Speedy. Is it kicking up puffs of dust? What is it?

It arrives, about three feet in front of me and halts, nearly
wobbling itself in its sudden stop.

Oh, My Goodness! A Road Runner! And she's looking up at me with puppy-dog eyes. She's come running over to say, "Hey, I see your serving lunch!"

Look are her! She walks with her neck outstretched, her head feathers
erect, her tail feathers parallel to the ground, pecking at the crumbs
right under my chair. When she stops, her feathers retreat, her tail
turns upwards and her neck goes perpendicular. Walk, she outstretched.
Stop, she's a touch rounded.

But she's never stopped for long. She's in constant motion, eating (shame on me) bits of graham cracker.

 I notice her arrival scatters the other birds, who I see hiding up in the mesquite trees (yes, there are trees in the desert, near an oasis, which I am, I guess).

When Speedy leaves, I feel like Wile E. Coyote, dumfounded by her speed. And those sweet eyes. And her whirlwind feet and legs, that, when stopped, look like chicken legs. When in motion, a blur.

She follows a straight-arrow path, back into the desert. In a puff, she's gone. The other birds return and resume.

When in Portland, Soak It Up

We're back in Portland, OR, to continue needed (and planned) repairs to our motor home.

And, of course, it's raining.

We've been in the Pacific Northwest since Dec. 22 and so has the rain. I suspect the rain lives here. We're just visiting. And, apparently, I announced our visitor status when I popped open my umbrella. Or so I've been told.

Here's what happened.

While our motor home was in the shop for repairs, we spring a leak, then a flat on our toad. A toad is a car that's TOWED behind a motor home.

Anyway, our toad (in real life our Kia Soul), has a flat tire, so we stop in at Goodyear for a fix. Goodyear, while very friendly, is not pet friendly, so we unload our dogs and walk them around and around the block, in the rain that never stops.

The rain doesn't pour here. It spits and spittles, drips and fizzes. Sometimes, it drizzles. A lot of times, it comes sideways. It lets up for a few minutes, then starts again.

During one of these drizzles, I pull out my TOURIST BULLHORN (um, the umbrella). Within minutes, the drizzle fizzles to a spit and a pop and I drop my umbrella.

 Well, shoot. The rain picks up and I open my umbrella again, then the rain spits into drips. Close umbrella.

Oops. Here's the rain again. Open. Oh. Rain ends. Close. Repeat ad infinitum. So frustrating.

I end up pumping my umbrella like a bellows before a dying fire.

That's when I notice no other umbrellas. I see lots of people -- walkers, shoppers and delivery people, but no umbrellas.

Later, at the dog park, I also see NO UMBRELLAS. Amazingly, to me anyway, lots of doggies and people prance and play around the dog park IN the rain with no worry ABOUT the rain as it continues to spit and spittle, drip and fizzle.

I give up and stash the tourist symbol in the back of the car. Later, when we pick up the motor home, I mention this interesting absence to the storekeeper. She's not surprised. Portland people use two things against the rain, she says: their fortitude and their hoodies.

Only tourists, she winks, use umbrellas.

Banish the Bully!

A gazillion dogs pack the fairly small dog park in Aloha, OR.

Good? No. Not good. Because one or both of my two Standard Poodles, Joshua and
Jacob, inevitably misbehaves in a crowd. Both boys play sheriff --
they insist on nosing into other dogs' rows. And Jacob picks out the
youngest pup on the lot to bully. Shame on you, Jacob!

I stop several yards from the gate. And assess. There are Pits,
Boxers, Labs (one a puppy), two big furry things, a little barkie
thing, some bird dogs, Huskies and lots of happy guys (one a puppy).
They play at the front of the lot.

OK. My guys last saw freedom a week ago. They need to run.

Against all logic, we go in. And walk away from the crowd toward the
back of the lot.

Everything's great, smooth, no problem. Oh, a few riffs here and
there beckon my sheriffs, who do little more than bark before the
quarrel's settled. I relax. Even enjoy a little social time with the
dog park's people.

But no. Oh, no. Jacob catches sight of the happy puppy, a little red
guy wearing a tan halter. Jacob lunges, and Happy Puppy instantly goes
down and rolls over. Jacob dances in a circle around the pup, his nose
to the baby's belly, his barking incessant.

"Jacob, Jacob!" I probably sound as awful as he does. "Stop it! Stop
it!" Was I shrill?

I grab Jacob's collar and haul him away; all the while he continues
to bark bark bark.

I'm so embarrassed.

"Jacob is a good dog." I turn toward these wonderful, almost
whispered words. I see a Hispanic man, sort of rotund, kinda tall,
with gentle eyes and that peaceful voice. "Some dogs just like to
teach the younger ones how to behave."

But, but, I say. Teaching is one thing. Bullying is another. Jacob
won't give up once he's targeted a puppy, for whatever reason,
teaching or tormenting. He won't give up so I have to yank him away.

But, no, this peaceful man speaks softly: "Do not yank him. Be
peaceful, yet stern with him.

"I learned when I was a security guard, that if I was rough with
people, I'd get decked." To demonstrate, he pinches my shirtsleeve,
jerks it and barks "LET'S GO." Startles me; angers me.

"But if I was calm, people were cooperative." He pokes my shoulder
gently, only once, and suggests "Come on."

Nicer, much nicer.

But, but but. I'm a person. Jacob's a dog.

"How can I STOP Jacob when he insists on bullying this dog?"

"You body block him. And if he tries to break through the block, you
poke him gently and say 'No.' Calmly."

OK. I can see it now. Me poking Jacob all afternoon. But, I'll give
it a try.

I situate myself between Jacob and Happy Puppy. Jacob tries to pass
me. I poke and say, calmly, "No." Jake tries to go the other way. I
body block, he tries to pass, I poke. He's confused.

He makes eye contact with me, questioningly. He cocks his head.
He goes for a third pass. Block, Poke. He gets it. And goes on to
play with someone else.

No more bully!

This man is a miracle worker. A dog trainer extraordinaire.

My husband Allen strolls by and I pull him in to meet the man who
helped turn Jacob around.

"Honey, I'd like you to meet, um, um," I turn to this magical man.
"What's you name?"

"Cesar," he says.

No. Not Cesar Millan, THE Dog Whisperer.

Someone even better: OUR Dog Whisperer.

There's Comfort in Familiar

We're stranded for the day in chilly, drizzly Portland, OR, while our
motor home gets buff at the spa (transmission work, new brakes, etc.)

And instead of treating ourselves to an excellent museum, a movie or
even a day at our own spa, we go to the dog park.

We have awfully lucky dogs.

Or perhaps we're just tired after 11 days on the road and can't think
much past what's familiar. And dog parks are familiar. We can breathe
at dog parks.

This one, Hazledale, is in a suburb of Portland called Beaverton,
where all the neighboring residents kick in a dollar or two or 10 a
year to maintain the park. And, thank you, they let us play for free.
So nice, because we need to play, where it's familiar.

But play really doesn't happen. The only other dog at the park today
is Bella, an 8-month-old chocolate lab whom Jacob (my Standard
Poodle) devils and bullies. When she sees him coming, Bella's not sure
what to do, so she crunches to a crawl position, then rolls over.
Jacob gleefully thrusts his nose into her belly and barks. Hops up and
down and barks. Bella rolls back over slowly and, with her ears
flattened against her head, slinks away.

Why do you do that, Jacob!

I call him to quit and apologize to Esther, Bella's owner.

She shrugs. Bella's young, she says. All this is new to her.

While Bella slinks and crawls, Esther tells me about her own life,


About how she's moving to Atlanta, GA, soon from Portland, the land of
her birth, her schooling, her boyfriend. She's leaving behind
everything familiar.

Esther is 20-something and about to plop herself down in a brave new
world. I'll bet on many occasions she crunches to a crawl and flattens
her own ears and slinks away.

Sally forth, I tell her. And, at first, just look for what's
familiar. Take Bella to a dog park.

A Sliver of Sunshine

We're cold. And tired.

We've spent the morning in battle with a snow storm high in Oregon's mountains and are now at a truck stop, well, stuck at a truck stop because a truck has broken down. A tow company busily connects the dots to get the truck towed out.

But for now, we're stuck, blocked by the broken-down truck. And cold. But, the dogs need to stretch a bit, so we leash them up and head out to where it's even colder.

And, then it begins to rain.

We are not smiling.

What's there to smile about?

And then we see her. A reason to smile. Shadow. A pretty and perky black standard poodle, staring in disbelief at what she sees: our two black standard poodles. Her tail bobs then circulates. She's so excited.

Our boys notice her, and their tails begin to bob, and circulate.

Shadow, we learn, is a trucker's cab dog. She 2, loves chasing cattle and riding the ocean's waves. And, she's stubborn, smart and perky.

The three circle round and round, in and out. Their tails a constant flutter.

And then it begins to rain harder. A lot harder. All three of the dogs drip with wet poodle ringlets. We and the truckers bid farewell and climb back into our own lives.

Even though the cold is now really wet, too, we smile some doggie brought-on smiles.

THANK GOODNESS it takes a village

A truck driver ratted us out. And blessed us, too.

Allen pulls into a Bakersfield, CA, truck stop and parks outside the box. What he did was pull up alongside a grassy area so we could extend our slideout safely.

Our move triggers the truck driver's anger.

He rages at another motor-home driver (not at us, but about us), who then comes over to warn us, with a grin, about this man who's out to get us. He tips a non-existent hat, then lets us know, with that grin, that the truck driver was spittin' mad and was headed to the main
office to report our immense offense.

We pull up stakes and move around to fill a regular spot.

Then, a different truck driver comes over, one who hauls for Walmart, and lets us know how sorry HE is that a truck driver would act that way. Soon, the truck driver's wife stops by because she sees our dogs and wants to say hi.

There's just too little courtesy and respect in the world, we all lament. After all, had the angry truck driver aproached us, we would have just apologized and moved. Instead, a village gets involved.

We all chat for a while. No one from the main office joins in.

 The pleasant truck driver and his wife wish us a Merry Christmas. We bid them one in return.

Such nice people.

Do We Look THAT Gullible?

We're surrounded by the desert that spills from Arizona into
California, as we do in search of a fill up.

We stop in Needles, CA, and find the price of a gallon of diesel has
leaped from $2.59 cents to nearly $4.

Well, we think, this is the desert. Things are hard to come by here.
We pull up to the pump and a man on a scooter scoots around and around
our outfit. We're kinda used to this because you don't often see a
Navion pulling a Kia Soul. People, especially car people, are curious.

Allen hops out and begins pumping the liquid gold into our tank when a
young man pulling on a candy bar hollers out: "Mister, hey mister."
Allen turns and sees the man pointing to our left front tire.

"You've got a problem here."

Allen stops fueling and walks over to see what's what.

Another man joins in. This one is much older.

"Yes, yes. I've been in the business 36 years and I can see an
accident just waiting to happen. That's what you have here."

"And over here!" The young man with the candy points to our other
front tire.

I look up and past these men to a row of brand-new tires awaiting
their new holiday homes.

Allen examines each tire and assures the men he's comfortable with the
level of wear and tear.

He finishes fueling and hops in.

We drive away.

No tires sold today.

A Chance Meeting

I think dogs talk to each other. Out loud and silently.

I'm standing inside a dog park in Kingman, Az, surrounded by unusual dogs. There's a Silken Windhound, a Rez Dog, a  American Indian Dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback and a Chinese Shar Pei. And, of course, my two Royal Standard Poodles.

Usually, a dog park provides more common fare: lots of mixes, Boxers, Schnauzers, Pit Bulls, many Labs and Lab mixes.

The kinds of dogs we meet today differ by their pedigrees, but the result's the same: a whirlwind of activity, chasing, leaping, sniffing and more chasing. And, barking. Lots of barking. Happy barking. They all speak the same language.

And while they all talk to each other, I talk to their people.

Like Alona. She creates landscapes in oils and watercolors and owns the Windhound (pic below with Allen and Joshua; notice she's airborne), whose lineage reaches back into the long-haired Borzois and Whippets.

And  Louisa, a high school librarian. She owns Patches (no pic, sorry), the Rez Dog, who was hit by a car when she was 5 months old and survived only because Louisa came along.

While Louisa unfolds Patches' life story for me, I'm distracted by what looks like the Pillsbury Dough Boy spilling out of a car in the parking lot. The dog is so big and fat, it takes a while for the all of it to collect together as one dog on solid ground.

I soon discover this big dog has one big pedigree.

Her name is Addison. She's 3-years-old and is an American Bulldog with direct lineage to the dog who played Chance in the movie "Homeward Bound." He's her great-great-great granddaddy, says Ralph, her owner, a very big man, quite like his very big dog.

Addison was a gift from his daughter three years ago when his Great Dane died. His Dane, he says, was so tall, she'd snatch stuff off the top of his refrigerator. Addison can't do that. She's big, but she's fat, mostly because she's heavily medicated for a laundry-list of allergies.

Her weight slows her down. Noticeably. Even though she's unleashed and free to roam, she stays right with Ralph, alternately standing, then sitting. I look around and notice none of the other dogs, not even my own, stop by to play.

 And the other people in the park have spread out, giving this monstrous dog and her owner space, lots of space.

And a still overcomes the park. I hear no barking. There's no chase.

After a while, Addison and Ralph lumber away. He stuffs her back into the car, like a down pillow into a duffle bag.

With Addison gone, the still breaks; chaotic dog play resumes.

Hmmm. I wonder. Did Addison order the quiet?  Did she tell the other dogs to stay away? And they all then obeyed?


.

An Unusual Safety Net

     We're rested and walked (more than a mile this morning with the dogs in Elk City, OK), so we don't really need to stop at this Texas rest stop.

     But how can we not? The sign outside says it's a tornado shelter. And we've never been to a tornado shelter, so we stop (way in the middle of nowhere, about 150 miles east of Amarillo on Route 66). We snoop around looking for this protected place, one we imagine to be an underground bunker, perhaps as grand as the one hidden away for Congress at the former five-star Greenbriar Hotel in West Virginia.

    No. I think not. Too expensive.

     So maybe we'll find something as rustic as the WWII pillbox bunkers seen along England's coast.

     No. I think not. Tornado shelters must be underground because tornadoes tear up stuff above ground.

     Then I remember Dorothy, clutching Toto as she kicks helplessly on the doors to her tornado shelter. So I turn my eyes groundward (ahh, a new word), looking for a door, an entrance, a
ladder even. I see an artful brick enclosure; no, it hides a series of solar panels. I see a series of poles holding a teepee-like roof. No, it's a picnic place.

     I see a woman in a uniform. Her name is Jaque (pronounced Jackie). "Where are the tornado shelters?" I ask.

     Inside, she says, pointing to the visitor's center, a grand concrete structure with The Lone Star of Texas cut through on three sides (picture above). The earth mounds up all around, making
it look like it's exploding from the ground. Kinda like a bomb shelter. Aha!

     But inside, I already know, is a  little museum, a tourist information desk and the bathrooms. No tornado shelter.

     I go in anyway because maybe I'll find a secret elevator or ladder that escorts people out of harm's way.

     What I find startles me.

     The tornado shelters are the bathrooms.

     Not BEHIND or BELOW or JUST PAST the bathrooms. They ARE the bathrooms.

     Seriously. Here's a picture.

     The same rooms that house the toilets, sinks and stalls serve as tornado shelters. But they are just bathrooms. Little tiles cover the walls and floors where now and then drains serve to aid in cleaning. There are no cots or couches or chairs. No life-sustaining provisions. Just toilets, stalls and sinks.

     But they are lifesaving, nonetheless, Jaque says. Just two years ago, about 75 people hid out in these bathrooms while a storm cut through the countryside less than a hundred yards away. The winds tore through the roadway, too.

     Another time, Jaque herded a few dozen people inside to wait out a storm.

     She giggles as I take a picture of the bathrooms.

     "It just seems odd to me," I say.

     She grins. "You're not the first."

Jacob, Stop Whining!

     Jacob (one of my French Poodles) has thousands of miles under his belt (collar?) so I don't understand why he's so fussy. But fuss, he does.

     He's whining through the night. He leans up against me when I sit at the dinette, and lays his head on my chest and moans under his breath. Then he raises his paw and plops it over my knee. And looks up at me,  wistfully. Pathetic! 

     I know he's not sick. He just wants to play. With rabbits, squirrels, gophers and groundhogs. He's what I call squirrelly. He just wants to get out of the motor home and run and chase and jump and play.

     So, he whines incessantly. Gee, Jacob. Stop.

     So, I look for a dog park sooner than I thought we'd need one.

     But what do I find? Snobs. And a lot of 'em.

     I find one dog park in Terre Haute and several in St. Louis, but none willing to let a traveling family come in and play unless we bow to extortion. One wants us to pay $10, per dog, then a $10 deposit for the special key that opens the golden gates. For 30 minutes?

     Another wants $25. Per dog. Still another asks $80 for the first dog, then $25 for the second.

     These outrageous fees scream one thing: Keep out. These private-member doggie clubs shun riffraff like us. They serve their own.  Snubbed. We've been snubbed. By big city doggie parks. Hrumpf.

     But wait. What's this I see, tucked outside big-city limits in the sprawling countryside of Troy, MO. A caring veterinary called Troy Hawthorne Animal Clinic, its tidy grounds surrounded by a fence and littered with doggie toys and jumps and tunnels. The Troy Dog Sports Park.

     Jacob squeals.

     And we are welcome to come in and play. No fees required. Just a verbal promise about adequate vaccines and non-aggressive attitudes.

    See the pictures (not many and not great, but it was cold) and you'll see this little park's loads of fun.

    Go to their Web site and you'll see this as one or their core values: "Be guided by the highest level of integrity in our daily work."

    Nothing pathetic about that.

A Little McHumor

        I'm standing at the counter of a McDonald's in Terre Haute when I
notice only one of the workers is younger than 30. In fact, most are
over 40 with a few 50- or 60-somethings sprinkled in.
  
    A sign of the times, I think to myself. Flipping hamburgers counters
joblessness.

    Good for them, I think. I wonder if there's a journalist back there
squirting mustard on a McDouble. Or an auto worker deep-frying hash
browns.
  
    "They're here!" my cashier squeaks, jolting me back to my breakfast
order. I follow her twinkling gaze to a box of shoes her boss sets on
the counter.

    She tilts her head toward me: "If I wear these shoes with special
treads and fall, then McDonald's will pay for the medical
bill." (She's so willing to share!)
  
    She's thrilled.
  
    "I'm 5 months pregnant and I find myself falling a lot."

    She needs the insurance. In this economy, we all need what help we can
get.

    While she giggles about her new shoes, I move on down the line to pick
up my feast from a lively and lovely 30-something, who encourages me
to enjoy my meal, have a nice day and enjoy this Christmas season.

    I'm lovin' this place. Which is good, because I get to come back.

    I grab my bag of food and scramble back to Otto. As I unpack
breakfast, I notice the McMuffin is lighter these days. Alas, I think,
also a sign of the times. Joblessness and the economy. Cutbacks.

    I shake my head.

    I unwrap the skinny treasure to find the McMuffin isn't just thin. It
has NOTHING inside. It's not the economy, I laugh. It's a mistake!

    I scramble back inside. "What'd I forget?" asks the lively and lovely
30-something. I unwrap my McMuffin and she hoots! "JUST THE MUFFIN!"

    "My fault, my fault," she assures the rest of the crew, peaking out
from behind fryers and heat lamps to see the naked sandwich.

    I get a new one. And a story to tell.

On the road again ...

Today is Day One of another adventure.

We're heading to Seattle from Syracuse for Christmas, New Year's and a
few birthdays, then on to Death Valley, CA, maybe Quartzite, AZ, then
Padre Island in southeastern Texas. We also plan to touch base with
family in Florida at some point.

What this means is there's a lot of driving. Well, I do lots of
riding. So, unlike for adventures of the past, I lined up a few things
to do while I ride.

Today is Day One and I've done them all.

Well, I haven't completed them all. Just DONE them all.

I've finished off a few crossword puzzles, read a few pages of my
book, pulled out my needlework (cross-stitching two pillow cases),
napped, snacked on apples, grapes and cheese, and listened to "City of
Gold," a fabulous Christmas present from our friend, Tom. Thank you,
Tom.

I've played a few online games and read through the news. I tried and
failed to install a map on my blog that I found on another blog. So I
spent time reading other blogs.

Now I'm playing more games.

OK. Only about 3,600 miles to go to Seattle.

Envy Strikes At Midnight

It's midnight and I can't sleep.

Not because I'm over-tired, not tired enough or drank copious amounts
of coffee. No, I can't sleep because there's a raucous party going on
next door to us at Adventure Bound campground in North Truro, Mass.

They're whooping and hollering, laughing and belting out songs from
the '60s. I now see 1 a.m.

I met some of the partiers earlier in the evening when we pulled into
our campsite.

"We walk through there," a very slender, very tanned mid-50s woman
said to me, nodding to the land behind our motor home. With each nod,
silver earrings jingle jangle just beneath her bobbed, blackened hair.
She's carrying a beer snug inside a coozie. We're just about to block
HER pathway so we can hook up our essentials (the power, water, TV,
and sewer).

I'm taken aback. Shocked, in fact, at her nerve. My mind smokes:
"We're paying $52 a night to stay here. YOUR walkway cuts through MY
lot." Instead I say, politely, "I don't think our electric line will
reach if we don't back up more."

"Then use an extension cord," she smiles. Actually smiles at me. Cocks
her little head. Twinkles her eyes. Then takes a sip of her beer.

I fume. Fume!!

Instead of blurting out what I thought (HOW DARE YOU!!!), I offer a
closed-mouth smile of my own and shrug my shoulders. By that time,
Allen rescues me. He's pulled our electric cord and water hose around
and proves each can reach, no problem, without us having to block HER
walkway.

The smiling petite beer drinker invites me to a tour of her
"neighborhood." Although I'm unhappy, I go, because, well, she smiles
a lot. It's contagious. I meet some of the people who use the pathway
behind our motor home as THEIR walkway. They all smile, too, and say
"Hi."

I count about six families, all who live here for the summer. They
have a community cook kitchen inside a tent (complete with hanging
pots, a Jenn-Aire, freezer and frige), landscaped gardens, and a
community dining room of about six picnic tables set up end to end and
all painted a brilliant blue. A tarp covers the tables. Along the
sides of the tarp Christmas lights twinkle.

They have fun all summer long, she says.

And at midnight.

As the party escalates, I pull the pillows over my ears and vow to
march down to the campground office at daybreak and demand my money
back.

I toss and turn and eventually sleep.

And then awaken in the morning.

As I lay here thinking about the party last night, I remember how
pleasantly the smiling petite woman conducted the tour of her little
neighborhood. And how nice all those people were. And I knew my
frustration last night was not because I could not sleep. It was
because there was a grand party going on and I wasn't a part of it.

And I know, FOR SURE, that had I thrown on some clothes and meandered
over there, they would have welcomed me to sing along. And in time, I,
too, would have been belting out a few songs.

What the heck. It's summer. The time for fun. For everyone to have
fun. I'll sleep some other night.

Sometimes, You Get What You Want

We're walking the streets of Boston and it's got to be 95 degrees.  

Sweltering.

The 100 percent humidity threatens to steal my breath, but instead, it cascades down my face and soaks my shirt.

The heat helps us decide to hop on a motorized tour of the city instead of taking the Freedom Trail, a walking tour I've wanted to do for years.

I'm sad, yes! The Freedom Tour immerses walkers in the American  Revolution, brings them alongside Paul Revere, Bunker Hill and the Boston Massacre. I want to brush up against history. But, it's too darn hot.

So, we hop on THE DUCK, and explore Bean Town through the eyes of a sarcastic 50-something who shouts out "Hey!" to all his buddies along the route and cracks sick jokes about bombing the Teletubbies and
failing to notice Jennifer Lopez's physique. Ergh.

OK. It's not that bad. We're in Boston, after all. And we've got a steady breeze in our faces to cool us down. We get to cruise on the Charles River and see a lot of the city from the back of that Duck. Then we enjoy a fantastic tour of Fenway Park, where we get to crawl through the entire stadium and watch workers prepare the field for the upcoming series against the Yankees.

At the end of the day, we're still too darn hot. The sun is relentless. There's no breeze. We return to the famous Quincy Market and Faneuil Hall, where I lose my battle with the heat. I'm wiped. I  seek shade, preferably from a seat.

Oh, look. Over there. Benches. Shaded benches. Thank you, God!

We head that way.

But wait.

Oh, no. There's a man sitting there. In odd clothes. Sipping a Pepsi.
In all this heat, he wears a three-corner cap, a multi-button vest
over a white shirt with long billowing sleeves, trousers, knee-high
tights. Wool/cotton clothing covers this man from head to toe.

I get it. He's not odd at all. He's wearing the clothes of a patriot
and, after all, this IS Boston.

I head his way because I have to ask: "Why are you dressed this way in
all this heat?"

Turns out this man, Cliff Odle, leads tours of the Freedom Trail
(yeah! The Freedom Trail!). He wears period clothing and portrays a
real patriot, Barzillai Lew, a musician and soldier who served in the
American Revolution.

It's the end of the day, a very hot day, so we can't take the tour. But Cliff engages us with  tales about Barzillai and himself (he's a playwright, actor and historian). And admits that he, too, is too darn hot.

On the way out of town, I consider the day's fortunes: the Duck, Fenway, my Boston patriot, and, oddly, the heat. Because without it (and my intense curiosity), I would not have met Cliff Odle and his character, the revolutionary Barzillai Lew.

Lots and Lots of the Same the Same

We're still in Montana ... man, oh man. Wheat fields, wheat fields,
antelope, antelope, deer, deer, wheat fields. Oh, look! What is that?
Oh. Farm machinery. Cows, cows, hay bales, hay bales.

We hitch our wagon to the WalMart in Havre for the night. The store
clerk says it gets to 40 below here.

In the morning, we drive into town for coffee. We find some California
dreaming instead: The Arctic Hamburger joint sits right next to the
Maui Nites Casino.

Seems like a few others are looking for something a little different,
too.

Artist Transforms Rez Wrecks

I'm looking up and out.

Because we're in Big Sky country and I've never seen anything like it.

Imagine you are a tiny, tiny dot inside a Montana snow globe, but it's
not snowing, and the sun's shining. Look ahead, to your left, right
and behind you. Seas of golden wheat flitter and wave. Now look up,
and around and around.

Sky. Sky. Sky. On my. Brilliant blue sky. Everywhere.

Now and then, a stupendous mountain range, called the Rockies, juts
into the endless sky.

Because of my up-and-out looking, I almost miss what occupies me for
the rest of the day. Two warriors. Metal warriors. Atop horses. Metal
horses.

It takes a minute for my brain to register what my eyes see. By the
time I get it, and decide I want to see more of it, we've zipped past
it. We're just about to enter the the town of Browning on Route 2 in
northwest Montana when I plead with Allen (who's driving), "Go back!
Go back!"

"WHY?" He missed it, too.

I explain, and we turn around. Nearly a mile later we find our life-
sized warriors silently welcoming visitors to the 1.4 million acre
Blackfeet Nation.

I stand; I stare. I sense power from these silent metal men riding
their welded steeds. Obviously, the artist used discarded pieces of
metal to craft this amazing work. Look at the pictures. See the way
discarded auto parts are transformed into arms, legs, bodies, eyes,
headdresses, staffs and armor?

But why?

The story is lost because there is no sign, no label, nothing that
speaks about why these sculptures are here and how they came to be.

I take pictures, then load myself back into the motor home and
continue into Browning.

We need fuel, so we stop at the nearest gas station, a Cenex. I go
inside and ask the clerk, "Do you know who made the warriors?"

"My cousin, Jay Laber" she say, casually. HER COUSIN??? "He lives over
in Polson."

What she didn't tell me and the Internet did is Jay Polite Laber, 47,
is a self-taught Blackfeet artist, art teacher and amazing reclamation
man. He turns old junk cars (he calls them Rez Wrecks) and barbed
wire into art (he calls it Trash Art) that defines the life of Native
Americans.

About five years ago, Laber was commissioned by the National Assembly
of State Art Assemblies to create his warriors. The idea was the art
would identify native lands to drivers otherwise consumed by the
magnificence of nature.

As we leave the Blackfeet Nation, about 35 miles later, we repeat the
drive-by process, only this time Allen sees the warriors and I miss
them. We still have to turn around.

It makes me wonder how many other drivers catch sight of these
treasures and know, therefore, that they've entered native lands.

And how many others drive right on by, because they are too busy
looking up and out.

Making Lemonade

Failing to make plans sometimes means plans fail.

Today we leap off the main highway and climb higher and higher into
the great expanse of Montana's northwest, aiming for Glacier National
Park.

What a glorious day, unbelievable vistas (I took no pictures ... can
you believe it?) and air so delicious it's lunch itself. An opaque
curtain of mist opens into rain showers, leaving behind that sweet
smell of ozone.

A huge lake, Lake Flathead, accompanies us on our right for more than
30 miles, Starving Horse, a painful name for a little town, titillates
tourists. Miles upon miles of ranch land feeds cattle, wild horses
and hares so big, we mistake one for a coyote. Or a fox. We aren't
sure. (It's roadkill, so I guess it really doesn't matter ...)

The ever-present Rockies loom large and luscious.

Finally, after six hours of this back-roads travel, we arrive at the
park, tired, but excited about the adventure to come. We see a deer.
Nice.

We then learn there's no room. All the campgrounds are filled (except
for one at the end of a 30-mile really dirty dirt road). And Otto, our
motor home, is three feet too long to travel the road that crosses the
park. And that road is under construction anyway with delays of up to
four hours, or did the sign say six?

We turn around and leave.

So now, we're parked overnight in a WalMart parking lot in Kalispell,
MT, after an hour of backtracking through back country roads. So
what? We might not be out in the wilds, but the Rockies loom large and
luscious here, too.

The air is crisp. The night is cool. What a glorious end to a
glorious day.

Whirligigs, Windmills, Teapots, Hard Hats and Me

Is this art?

My 11-year-old niece asked me this once about a pinball
machine sitting by itself in the center of a small, eclectic art
gallery.

I repeat the question today. To myself. I'm alone as I patrol the
chain-linked perimeter of a crowded, jumbled and decaying mish-mash of
aging whirligigs on Highway 155,  near Grand Coulee Dam in northeast Washington.

The signs say this is the Gehrke Windmill Garden. And, indeed, the
things are "planted" like a garden, inside a fence, in rows, close to
each other. Too close, however, to let each piece breath.
Can the wind even wind its way through?

Each "windmill" is stuck to a long pole that's "planted"
in a garish orange (it looks like plastic) tub. Some tubs have cheap plastic flowers "planted" around the poles. 

Weeds, neglect and disrepair overrun the whole "garden." It looks
awful.

I shake my head. Is this art?

I close my eyes. I want to see this work as intended, not as it ended
up, in a crowded square plot next to a dusty main highway.

So, I do a little research and open my mind to a time maybe 50 years
ago, when the artist, Emil Gehrke (1882-1979) and his wife, Veva,
(1902-1980) moved to this little corner of Washington from Nebraska,
where he was an ironworker. Together, however, they were artists.

They'd spend their weekends collecting items others tossed out (lots of kitchen goods, some auto parts, a few farm items).  Emil would craft them into whirligigs; Veva would paint them.

They "planted" the art on their hilly, treed lot  near Grand Coulee Dam,  and let people walk through to enjoy the results.

When Emil grew too old to care for the items, he offered them to the
city, hoping they'd be set up in a park for all to enjoy. Apparently,
the notion appalled the town leaders; they considered the whirligigs   
eyesores, not artwork and wanted to get rid of them, not display them.

What a shame. The Gehrkes, even after death, continue to enjoy
artistic renown in Seattle, where their wind sculptures decorate the
northwest corner of an electric substation (it's called public works
art). But in their own hometown, they have no fame.

So, friends, years ago, came to the rescue and had the works installed
on the land they now occupy.

I open my eyes, and LOOK! How lovely!

I now see a field of enigmatic windmills and can imagine a delicate clattering of tin against tin as the wind catches and moves the bowls, helmets, oil funnels, pie plates, funnel molds, tea cuts, saucers and sundry other lost-and- found items.

Perhaps the friends who started this project have been busy and plan
to return to straighten the tilting poles, plant real flowers not
plastic ones, replace weeds with grass and then open the gates to
let people like me mingle with the art.

And, yes, this is art.

The Ultimate in Customer Service

A simple kindness made my day today. And, it made me a fan of Safeway Inc., the third largest grocery store chain in North America.

A little history:
We don't have Safeway where I live, so I have no special customer
card, which means I'm not allowed to benefit from the in-store
advertised specials.
The other day while shopping at a Safeway near Seattle, WA, , I "forgot" my unfavored shopper status and fell for
one of those promotions -- buy two boxes of candy and get the third
one free (and save all of $1.59.) Gleefully, I pluck two Mike and Ikes
and one Hot Tamale from the shelf. At the cash register, reality
bites as I'm punished into paying full price because I'm not a card-
carrying shopper.
Rats! "Don't you have a guest card you can swipe for me?" I plead
with the cashier. "So I can get the special price?"
"Oh, NO!" she darn near roars. "Why, the other day," she says, "A man
who has worked here for 30 years nearly lost his job because he used
his card for one of the customers. Had to get the union involved to
save his neck."
What kind of company fires someone for good customer service?
Well, I thought to myself, I'll NEVER shop here again!

OK. I break my vow and run into the store today for pet food, bread
and doughnuts (always doughnuts). The cashier, a different one this
time, asks if I was one of those, you know, the special people who
carry Safeway ID cards.

No, I hang my head low. I live back East. There are no Safeways there.
Just hit me with the full price. Ca-Ching!

"Well then," Mr. Perky Cashier beams. "I'll bet this fellow right
behind you (a man I never met) will let you use his!"

And just like that, I save a few pennies and Safeway gains a new
customer.

Mr. Perky Wonderful Cashier praises his employer as he bags my
goodies, saying Safeway likes to keep its employees and its customers
happy.

So why, then, (I'm thinking this in my head, not out loud) did some
other guy almost get canned over the same discount card?

"And you both win," Mr. PWC continues, talking about me and the
anonymous customer behind me in line. "You get your discount and this
customer gets cheaper gasoline."

Oh, I get it. Courtesy card users get cents off at the pump when they
shop at Safeway.

The first cashier (whose job was on the line) probably faced an
insane accusation of theft ("stealing" those cents off at the pump)
for his good deed. Mr. PWC figured out how
to avoid getting slammed while making the customer happy with the
same cents-off promotion.

Either way, I'd say Safeway has good people working the cash
registers. People who go out of their way to make me happy.

And THAT'S why I'm a big fan.

When A Girl's Gotta Go

I'm grocery shopping in Monroe, WA,  and want (well, need) to visit the restroom.

I see the big sign and breathe. Because I'm close. I step up my step.

But wait. Why is there a teenage boy blocking the door? He's doing the
"Stop" thing with his hand.

"I HAVE to clean!" He says to me, without catching my eye. He doesn't
even smile. I do, though. Because I KNOW he's SO embarrassed he CAN'T
smile. Poor kid. I try to make it easier by not complaining. I walk
away, but I don't go far. Just up into the cereal aisle, where I can
see him leave when he's finished.

But he doesn't leave, and soon there's a line, well, just two others,
a teenage girl and an older women, maybe in her 70s, with a walker. I
know where there are two, there are two more. So I leave the cereal
boxes and go to stand in line.

Women become fast friends in familiar circumstances. And the three of
us become buddies immediately because the teenage boy is taking too
much time to clean.

The lady with the walker (she's second in line) says to the teen
(who's first in line), "Use the Men's room, it's empty."

The teen looks dubious.

I take the cue and say, "I'll watch the door. No one will come in."

She decides in an instant and scurries in.

"Reminds me of when I was in junior high," I say to the walker woman
as I block the door. "That's when I saw my first urinal."

The older woman smiles: "We have to pass the tradition on."

The teens finish as the same time, and both exit the bathrooms in
unison, he from the Women's room and she from the Men's.

They pass in the hall.

I say to the boy, "She couldn't wait."

That's when he finally smiled.

A Kiss and a Pool Cue

We're in a bar. Playing pool. 

The crowd is drinking coffee, a few cans of Coke and a beer or two. It's 2009, so the smokers spill outside now and then.

I bank the two ball perfectly (YEAH!) and it drains into the side pocket.  The pressure's on to make  another clever shot (well, not necessarily clever, just successful) when the jukebox brings B.J. Thomas into the room. He's Hooked on a Feelin', just like he was in 1969. 

I close my eyes and smile. Because a wish I had back in '69 is coming true.  I was 15 back then, and when B.J. sang that song,  I wished, oh I wished hard, that I had someone to sing it to. The lyrics, "I-I-I, I'm hooked on a feeling', I'm high on believin', that you're in love with me" meant that someone loved me and, at 15, that was oh, so important.

I'm not 15 anymore, but I do have someone who loves me (l love him, too). And he's playing pool with me in  bar in Monroe, WA, just north of Seattle. So I sashay over to my husband, Al, and I sing, "I-I-I, I'm hooked on a feeling', I'm high on believin', that you're in love with me." It feels oh, so important.

Soon, B.J. leaves and in walks Freddie Mercury, followed by Jim Morrison and soon Pink Floyd. Fankie Valli pays a visit as well.

It's a memorable night all round.