Memoir Monday: Talking of Towers

Talking of Towers

I’m not sure what tweaked my memory but I recently found myself thinking about a couple of icons of the past that figured quite a bit in my early years. These were both tower structures, mostly sited in remote places in the southwest. Both did exist in other locales as well, actually probably in all the original 48 states as well as Alaska. I’m not sure about Hawaii. However the ones I recall now were in Arizona.

The first of these were structures called Airway Beacons. From the 1920s into the 1960s, most transcontinental flights were not equipped with radar and other modern tracking and navigational devices which seem quite commonplace today. When commercial flights began to take place at night as well as by daylight, the pilots needed some help to find their way!

This problem was addressed by the placement of Airway Beacons along the major routes. Most of these were metal towers of several stories in height which supported a rotating white light near the top and just below that stationary red and green lights which provided some code as they blinked in the dots and dashes of Morse Code familiar at that time to railroaders, telegraphers and pilots.

Example of Airway Beacon
from a fan FB page 

I went searching on line and found there is a lot of interest in these although most of them were decommissioned and many were torn down or salvaged decades ago. There are folks mapping the sites, getting photos of those still standing or even in operation, buying and trying to rebuild them and so on. As a child I did not think to wonder but I do now. How did they power these remote sites? Those white lights were huge and bright enough to shine for many miles and they sat in a cradle that rotated a full 360 degrees over the course of several minutes. I have not found this information yet but I will keep searching!

I particularly recall one that sat on Woodchute Mountain, the northernmost massif of the Black Hills Range that borders the western side of the Verde Valley. It was north of Jerome by a few miles and visible from the hill where we lived. It was also visible from many places we traveled around the north central part of the state on various expeditions. I would look for it eagerly when we found ourselves coming home from such a trip late in the evening. Of course there were others and we saw them at times as well but the ‘home’ one was my favorite.

The other towers were the Fire Lookout Towers which the Forest Service built on most of the nation’s mountain ranges from the early 1900s on. Many were built by the CCC, President Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, and manned during fire season with seasonal employees trained in using the transits and similar devices to spot and locate those first tell-tale plumes of smoke that indicated a forest or wildland fire had started.

These too were frequently several stories high to be well above the tallest trees although some were situated on a bare peak or cliff where they did not need added elevation. For most of such sites, the personnel lived in a small primitive cabin or tent near the foot of the tower and basically camped out during their stay.

In the summer of 1951, my parents took such a job for the summer between the two school years Dad taught out at Camp Wood. Of course eight year old me went along. This tower was the Big Springs Lookout, located in the North Kaibab Forest on the north rim of the Grand Canyon. Although it was outside the boundaries of the national park, it was not far and we were able to go out to various view points and see the canyon well that summer.

I had already seen one tower up on Mingus Mountain, the area just south of the Woodchute Mountain I mentioned above. Highway 89A still goes through a pass between the two mountains in route from the Verde Valley to Prescott. That tower was operated by a couple who were friends with my parents at the time and we visited the site several times. I even had the picnic part of my sixth birthday party at the small campground near the location. Therefore I had an idea what to expect when we headed north for the summer.

We lived in a tent which had a wooden floor raised a bit off the ground and wood sides up about three

feet. It had a wood burning stove that served for both heat and cooking. The necessary facilities were in a small green structure behind the tent and a few yards out toward the woods. I think the Forest Service hauled in water to fill a fair sized tank and we used propane for light. It was a tall tower, I’d guess about 110-120 feet high. I was not allowed to go all the way up alone but could go at least to the first landing of the zigzagging stairs and all the way if I went with Mom or Dad.

I know they did spot and report some fires but as far as I know none that summer got to be large and serious. Perhaps it was a good summer rainy season as it was before the current severe drought period really hit although the early 1950s were very dry in Arizona and New Mexico. Not too many details of the work stick with me now as I probably did not understand the technical part too well but I do remember having a wonderful time and later looking back on that period as one of my favorite summers.

There are still a few fire lookouts in operation and a few of the old sites which are no longer in use are rented out for vacationers and camping by the Forest Service. It might be a fun thing to do someday. If I were a few years younger I might even want to operate one still working.

Sadly most of these special structures are now gone, both the airway beacons and the fire lookouts. None of the former are really used now except for a very few in rugged parts of Montana and only a few fire lookouts are still operated although they seem to be coming back a bit. With the last few years of catastrophic wildfires, we need one more tool in the arsenal to find and locate fires quickly and control them before they become infernos. At any rate, I feel privileged to have experienced both at near their heyday.  

My second big vice?

Most who know me now are well aware I am a huge, die-hard coffee addict. I suppose one could have worse vices. My romance addiction is older and probably greater, but a good shot of caffeine has helped me survive a lot of long, cold or otherwise taxing days.

My Mom was a coffeeholic too. Dad would drink a cup most mornings but never seemed to be terribly hooked on the stuff. Although she mostly used instant when I was growing up, Mom did have coffee pots at times, first the old stove-top percolators and later some electric ones. I am sure Charlie and I gave her several of the latter over the years. I can still see her, often the first one up until I became the early-rising stock feeder and chore girl. She'd be sitting quietly with a cup of coffee before breakfast and often breaking a graham cracker into strips and dipping them in the cup. History repeats for I now do the same, but that is a later development.

I am not sure when I first tasted the brew. For years when I was a kid, I was told coffee was grown up stuff and would stunt my growth or have other bad effects. But then when we were outdoors a lot in bad weather such as those wood cutting expeditions and long hours of livestock care, Mom started to add a wee smidgen of coffee to the hot cocoa we kids had to warm up while she and dad had coffee or more rarely tea. By the time I was in my late teens and Charlie was edging into the double digit ages, it became half and half. We liked it! Of course baby Alex was still either not born or very small so he did not get it but it was part of our coming-of-age bonding.

By the time I was really into my cowboy girl days, I'd fix my own and it got to be more coffee than cocoa, kind of a mocha I guess. Then when I would have headaches, a frequent issue, or severe monthly cramps but still had work to do, a couple of aspirin and a cup of strong coffee became my go to remedy to keep the pain to a tolerable level I could work through. It still was not a daily habit but I had acquired a taste for the stuff although I did usually sweeten it with some cocoa mix or even sugar at times.

Then I began to associate with working cowboys, truck drivers and construction workers on a semi-regular basis and there were darn few of them that did not drink coffee. Aspiring to be one of the guys, I did too. And I remember several times when I ended up in my first serious love's home-on-the-road, usually very distraught about some current crises such as a sick animal or one of Dad's increasingly difficult spells,  Dusty's sovereign remedy was a cup of strong coffee.  He seemed always to have a pot made. Mine was served in the Monday cup; a big white mug with the one word enameled on it in dark green. That's when I learned to drink it straight, unpolluted with any whitener or sweetener! I soon learned to like the slightly bitter flavor and knew the caffeine kicked in quickest that way.

Off to college and my early work years I imbibed on occasion but not regularly or at least not daily, again mostly instant--which is really nasty once you get used to the brewed! Then I met my future husband who was a former Marine and a cop at that time. Both of those classes are pretty-much coffee fueled so I soon got on the band wagon. When we had only been married a short time, brother Charlie had a huge dust-up with our Dad and came to stay with us. By then he was a big coffee drinker too so I got a large pot and kept it going just about all the time.

We moved to Colorado and got active in a volunteer fire department out at Falcon, east of Colorado Springs, where we lived. Then Jim's job investigating accidents involving Air Force vehicles often called him out at night. By then, my middle stepson was in his teens and started to be a coffee person too. I got a 32 cup cafe or party sized machine and kept it running 24/7. We ran through at least one pot a day and sometimes more. Jim and I also got a steel thermos, about a half gallon size, which stood on the headboard of our bed every night. If there was a call-out he took it along; if not we had a cup in bed every morning!

That habit stuck through several years in California, back to Arizona and even through my retirement. Finally in 2004 after Jim had passed away, I let it lapse, but I still had a 12 cup electric machine in the kitchen. It shut off after an hour or so but I could take a cup whenever I wanted one and 'nuke' it to the right temperature in the microwave.

When Charlie and I joined forces back in 2009 and I moved up to Colorado Springs for a couple of years, I learned how to use the Mr Coffee type machine he had. We had a loose rule that whoever got the last cup or left less than a full cup in the carafe would make a new pot. Again the microwave served to reheat. That routine came along with us when we moved down to New Mexico in 2011 and continues to this day. We have not gone to the K-Cup style yet and probably won't. Given the extent of our habit it would be pretty expensive! We use two batches in the 12 cup carafe most days.

And in the manner of history repeats itself, I am often the first one up. I let dogs out and back in if it is wet or cold while I heat a cup of coffee in the microwave before I settle in my recliner at the front room's big window to watch the day begin. That quiet time is almost essential and I can understand why Mom did it so much, most of her adult/married life anyway. You can wake up, plan your day and watch the magic brush of sunrise paint the sky.

After a near-daily walk with my dogs, I have another cup when we get back and on these cool, gray or wet days, a further cup now and then keeps me from seeking solace in something sweet and caloric. I still take it black mostly and cannot abide sweetening--tastes like cough syrup to me now--but I do use a flavored creamer on occasion, usually hazelnut. By the fourth or fifth cup, that eases the jolt to my stomach by the acid in the brew. And I do dip graham strips often, too, but not early in the day.

So, as vices go, I could have worse! It has not wrecked my health yet. I currently use only one prescription med, my dry eye drops, and my blood pressure, lab reports and such are generally pretty good for one of my age. It might even be healthy, who knows?  Darn, no pictures. Should I do a selfie with cup in hand? No, I hate selfies!! So it's an essay without illustrations. It is what it is.

Cold Weather Memories

As a child I do not think I noticed cold, heat, wet or wind. Most kids do not. We were living in Jerome in a very lightly insulated “company house” rented from Phelps Dodge and had only a coal oil stove for heat. It sat in the living room and did not really heat the whole house. Mom did close off some rooms and sometimes used the oven in the range early in the day. Even out at Camp Wood where it snowed quite a lot and we lived in a teeny camp trailer, I don’t recall being very troubled, no matter what the weather. But I was not even ten years old.

Winter Corrals

Along in my teens that changed, especially once I had livestock chores to take care of. Tramping out to distribute hay and crack ice on water troughs really made one aware of the winter. Then as I began to have to ride daily to visit and care for animals in several locations, it really hit me upside the head. I came to hate cold and wet days and also to dislike the wind that often came with such weather. Wind made the critters nervous and often a bit more difficult to handle and from the height of a critter’s back, I’d be chilled to the bone. 

By then we lived in a little brick house where we had an old ‘box wood’ stove in the living room and a propane heater in the kitchen which we ran at times. Feeding that old stove became a task almost as demanding as the hungry horses, mules and burros. We made many treks up to Mingus Mountain where Dad had taken out some mining claims and once planned to set up a hunting cabin and possible summer hang-out place. When we took the ‘short cut’ which was an unpaved mountain road that went up the mountain’s east side, we had a few scary times negotiating the twisted and often partly washed out track with a truck and trailer. A time or two we got stuck in mud or snow, too.

After the big fire tore through that area in 1956, we harvested a lot of dead pines and some oak and juniper as well. I can remember many a day spent hearing the chain saw roar and hustling logs and poles down to the pickup and trailer or later to the old flatbed Ford that was our stock truck. Once you got it home and unloaded there was more work to cut logs into stove length pieces—about 12-15 inches as I recall-- and split the bigger ones to smaller sizes which fit in the stove and burned better.

Reluctant Snow Bunny

When I was riding a lot, daily after I finished school, I’d often come in at dusk when the chores were done and get back in the corner behind the stove. The plastered walls reflected the heat back but it still took a long time until the cold was finally driven from my bones. I would sit until my jeans were nearly smoking! Before I got too cold again, I’d crawl into bed and curl up tight under so many blankets I felt like I was going through the wringer on Mom’s old Maytag washer.  Very slowly as my body heat spread to a larger area, I might partly uncurl but rarely showed much more than my nose out of the blankets.

Snowy Flagstaff

Of course I spent four years in Flagstaff after that, two years living in dorms on the NAU campus and two more in an apartment off campus where I had to walk several blocks to get to classes. I had adequate clothes and good boots so it was tolerable but not always pleasant. In good southwest fashion the weather could change quickly. I recall one birthday (near the end of April) when I went down to campus in a new dress and nice pumps in a sunny morning only to come home that afternoon, soaked in snizzle (snow+drizzle) and almost blue with cold!

Add to that winters in Colorado from 1973 to 1977 and again from 2009-2011 and any snow bunny tendencies were totally erased. Actually there were not many to begin with. My parents had enjoyed skiing in New England the two years my dad worked at Raytheon near Boston during the war so they put me on skis a time or two at Camp Wood. No way! I did not enjoy dumping onto my bottom in cold wet stuff a lot since since I did not catch on to balancing on two slick sticks very well. I did not care for snow balls or even making a snow man.

To this day I am not fond of wet, cold and/or windy days. As I got older I recognized a worsening case of SAD that starts to bother me not long after the fall equinox and digs in ever deeper until about mid February. There are days I would much prefer to stay under the covers or at best snuggle in a comfy chair and keep coffee, cocoa or hot cider by my side while I read a good warming book!

Often October is dry, mild and near-perfect down here in the border areas of Arizona and New Mexico but some falls flash by in a jiffy and winter arrives with a plethora of gray, cold and dismal days. I fear this is going to be one of those times. While I cannot really begrudge the rain which is always needed in this frequently drought stricken region or even the snow, though I wish it would stay up in both altitude and latitude, I do not have to like either. At least I can be properly thankful I have no livestock to care for and I am no longer in Colorado. Other than getting the dogs out a time or two to do their business, I can stay inside and pretty much ignore any weather I do not like. Old age has its privileges!

Fast Times at MUHS

I often say I was a ‘teenager’ for just one year, the 1960-61 school year.  That was my second run at the junior year of high school,  following the one in which I had dropped out in November after a fairly serious mule wreck and missing too much to catch up.

Once I got back up to speed I had become the head wrangler for my dad’s developing horse and mule business in which I was basically a major partner. Those months of doing an adult’s work and dealing with a lot of them as a semi-equal did change me. Still, when I went back to school the next fall, I fell into a total rebellious mode and skirted on the edge of many kinds of trouble. No booze or drugs but trying hard for the sex and rock n roll bit!

I simply could not get interested in ‘boys’ anymore. They seemed so juvenile and goofy, crude but also shy, in short b-o-r-i-n-g!! I was ready to go on a full fledged hunt for “Romance” (yes, that is romance with a capital R) to support what had become a genuine addiction fueled by pop and operetta music, novels and TV westerns. While I was out riding (training and ‘socializing’ many horses and mules) those several months, often alone, I had crossed paths with a lot of what I now call “the young and restless.” These were blue collar guys in the 20-30 age range who drove trucks, worked construction and similar things. Most were married and bored with the barefoot and pregnant “little woman” at home who was no longer the cute sexy chick they had married, generally in haste. Ooops! Yes, that is not a recipe for happily ever after, but how did I know?

All I really intended to do as flirt and talk a bit, perhaps gain a little of the masculine admiration and appreciation which I felt I lacked but needed. And really, that was all that ever happened. Still I did quite a few things that my parents, especially my dad, were dismayed and angered by. And of course I caught heck which simply threw more gas on the blaze of my rebellion.

For example, I cut off a pair of nearly new jeans to make shorts. Oh man, that was a huge sin! First I had wasted a perfectly good pair of work pants and second I had done it to try to look flashy and cute to male eyes!! Horrors! I  heard about that for days. Then I tended to hang out in spare moments at the Y-Not drive in up the hill, a place patronized by the aforementioned young and restless for lunch, snacks and such. It even had a jukebox on which I played the local hit by a local musician, Alvie Self, on whom I developed a kind of crush. I can still kind of hum "Nancy" all these years later.

Never met the guy although I knew all of his brothers; they were a wild lot like the Coleman boys and a few other local big families. I did not date through high school—no proms or sock hops or even many games. I was not allowed to go out with anyone I was willing to be seen with and was very rarely asked by any of my school mates who were believed to be ‘suitable.’ I do not know if I was deemed too weird or was simply intimidating, which I had no idea I could be, but that's now moot.

I never could quite understand the whys of  the boys versus men thing. In truth, I knew several girls who “got into trouble” while dating some of those 'nice' high school boys and one friend who went off one evening with her current teenage crush and a few of his buds and had to jump from the car and run for her chastity if not her life, probably to escape a gang rape!! Safe? Yeah, right! But then maybe I would not have been allowed to go off in a car with one--or more--since I never asked.

None of my flirtations actually went as far as a real date or even a tryst. I knew and I am sure most of the guys knew that I was still seventeen and definitely jail bait. That spring near the end of the year I turned eighteen and rather abruptly left most such silliness behind.  Oh, I still waved and occasionally chatted with various men, but it was no longer a big thrill.

I resurrected my briefly forgotten vow that I would be valedictorian when I graduated to best my long-term crush. He held a special place with me from sixth grade through my own graduation and even a bit past and had graduated in 1959 as co-salutatorian. So that next year I studied, worked hard at home, still at least a half-time cowboy girl, and minded my P’s and Q’s pretty well. I really did not expect I would make that goal but surprisingly I did. Not that it made any difference in my life in the long run although it might have been an added brownie point or two when I finally started college a few years later and was able to get scholarships and grants to pay my way.

For me fast times at Mingus Union was a very brief and somewhat odd time. I read my journals from those days and laugh, cringe and somewhat sympathize. So long ago and far away—it feels like reading one of those teenager novels of those days or a bit later with all the angst and roller-coaster emotions which in my case were compounded or amplified by my family’s ‘different’ lifestyle and my parent’s absurdly strict rules. Somehow I did survive and in time found that romance, perhaps not the prince charming I had imagined or the wonderful fairy tale vision but good, real and deep and authentic which in the end are better and more lasting.

Mingus-at-Clarkdale, 8th-10th grd

MUHS-Jerome; art bldg, May 1962

Why...or the rest of the story

Why …

Last week I decided to go on a Facebook fast. It was very hard not to be there to give little encouraging and hopefully supportive comments on the posts of many cherished friends, most of whom are also going through some trying times. But I recognized that if I did not take a break and decompress I was going to do a total meltdown. It was a very narrow edge I teetered on about last Thursday.

Where to start? Well, first I have had ‘issues’ about political things since I witnessed some dirty local politics that caused or at least added to huge problems for my family many years ago. Then I saw and was enthralled by Robert Kennedy speaking (at the Flagstaff, AZ airport) just weeks before he was killed. For years I avoided politics, voting in every election but nothing more. Then in the 90s I found myself becoming an activist. As long as I was in that with my late husband and some good friends, I could keep it in balance.

The last ten or twelve years I have become more and more disgusted and turned off as things got uglier, dirtier, nastier and a level of frustration and helplessness overtook me. Right now the foul and vicious ads on TV here in New Mexico make me want to puke and the national scene reflects the same hate-filled, divisive and blatantly destructive view. When  political ‘stuff’ began to pop up in some FB groups I had joined due to deep interests in their normal subjects, I felt betrayed; I still do to some extent but I think I can cope now.

Sexual abuse/harassment/discrimination: That is a trigger issue too. I rarely say anything about it but I have had my share of problems there. A date rape in college—not a party and no booze or drugs, just my bad decision to go out with a guy I did not really know. It was pretty ugly; I did not report it. Then in 25 years of working for the military (starting in 1970 when we were barely getting into race issues, much less gender ones) I got my share of 'passes', off color remarks etc. and hit a glass ceiling hard enough to leave bumps on my dense Irish Taurus skull.  I retired early in a reduction period, a bit bitter and very disillusioned.

Last, I’ve been wrestling for nearly two months with a complex and very stressful family and inheritance issue involving some property that had come to my late husband through his dad. We both forgot would not be under the community property laws since he acquired his share in it before our marriage, leaving it in limbo. It’s going through a mini-probate now but there are still some enormous things to be taken care of once I am declared the legal owner. That has been eating my lunch lately as I just keep finding more problems and costly ones at that.

So that’s the background. I am not sure what finally had me ready to apply head seriously to a brick wall—just the whole effed up mess, I suppose. Depression is a family trait, sad to say. My father was bi-polar (among other mental issues) as I am to some degree and all three of us kids have had life-long depression issues both from this genetic background and the difficult and sometimes abusive childhood and youth we endured.

The last few years as I struggled with a lot of vision problems and some other matters such as a lady my brother went with for two years who was very sneakily hateful and vicious to me although he did not see this for quite awhile, the loss of my former home in Arizona which I felt should have been avoidable but could not prevent during the real estate crash etc. the dirty old “D” really dug its claws into me.  Just normal life crap kind of stuff but there are times one just does not have the resilience to roll with it.  And suddenly I could not handle anything more.

Rather than block or unfriend people I like and respect  who had dived head first into activism on the current political cesspool—many issues about which I have very mixed feelings and opinions—I just stepped way back for a time. I’m about ready to  return but my wall be be a “NO Polytix Zone” and I will just check ‘no notifications’ on anything that threatens to be a trigger issue.  I'll focus on what I love and care about, what gives me pleasure and peace. I will take a page or cue from two loved and greatly respected friends, both named Julie, who never post anything except cheerful, inspiring and beautiful things that uplift me and I am sure other readers too. We all take pictures and share them--I cannot come close to the artistic work of one but that is okay! 

I'm resolved not to let this deluge of garbage force me to go on drugs (legal and prescribed or otherwise) or fall into a bottle! Life is too short and too precious to go blind to the sunrises, the sweet eager faces of my dogs when we are gearing up to go for a walk, the still exciting pursuit of knowledge about many things that have fascinated me most of my seventy-five years and so on.  I’ll pray for strength and courage and for my guardian angel and the Divine I rely on to be with me and help me go on. I trust they will as they always have, sometimes in unseen or unexpected ways, but I have lived to tell tales of things that could easily have turned off my light. Until it is my time to get off this train, I'll go on as cheerfully and positively as I can. Maybe I still have something important to do. Who knows.