Monday Memoir: Photography

I grew up with a house full of cameras. My dad had been a photojournalist for a time in Kansas City before meeting my mother. After they married and we ended up in Arizona, he continued to write and to illustrate many of his articles and features. So taking pictures, even using a darkroom to develop the film and make prints was rather commonplace to me. Although I ended up in a lot of photos, in time I knew I wanted a camera of my own to take pictures of what I wanted  to remember or feature. That took quite awhile.

Mom with a Lieca

I finally got my own camera, I think it was the Christmas I was a senior in high school. In a house full of the likes of a Leica, a Rolleiflex, a Speed Graphic and  others of similar quality and capacity, my first camera was a lowly Kodak "Brownie" snapshot camera but I was thrilled silly! It took eight shots on a roll of film--I cannot even recall the size now (126?) but it was a bit over an inch wide and the negatives were roughly 1" x 2".  I could not say what was on the very first roll of pictures I took but a shot of me the last day at school and one I took of the friend who snapped me were among the early ones. After that it was mostly horses.

Dad with Speed Graphic

A bit later, about the time I started college, I got a slightly more sophisticated model, one that used "flash cubes" and could take pictures inside or in dimmer light. With it I got photos of roommates and friends, the dorms I lived in and then the apartment where I lived off campus the last two years. I still had that camera when I graduated and headed off to my first job -- with the US Army at Fort Huachuca. I then took pictures of various places I went, of my new car, the 1971 Ford Pinto I got that fall, and when I moved to Bisbee to live in a cheaper residence!

Last day of school

Probably the first Christmas after my marriage, one of my gifts was an Olympus SLR (single lens reflex) camera. It was small and light but a good step up from the snapshot type  cameras I had used up to that point. My husband had an older camera he had gotten at a PX while in the military and we took a lot of scenic pictures on the many weekend trips we took the first two or three years.  Those two cameras went from Bisbee, AZ to Falcon, CO with us and then on to Olivehurst, CA. We had returned to Arizona some years later when we both got Pentax type cameras which could use a variety of lenses and were near professional quality. I have many boxes of slides we took with all of these cameras and will try to scan my favorites "one of these days."
Coming from a family of avid photographers and becoming the "archivist" by virtue of being now the matriarch of the clan, more or less, I still have boxes and albums full of photos to be scanned if I live that long!

After my dad had passed away and then my youngest brother, the only one of us three kids who seriously pursued photography along with his other  endeavors, I fell heir to the stash of family cameras. Most of them I have gotten rid of  although I still have my little Olympus and one of the Nikons that Dad had ended up with  But some few years back I discovered digital and jumped right in. It is soooo convenient to look over your results, simply hit 'delete' to get rid of those that did not come out just right and to snap away with abandon because you are not wasting expensive film. What freedom!

These days I take a lot of photos of trains, sunsets, scenery, my dogs, and on some of my trips.  No scanning required; I just link the camera by a USB cable to the computer and with a couple of clicks, voila, there they are. And no, I have not gotten into taking them with my phone or tablet--maybe someday but most of mine I want to edit/crop/study before they go out to the world!  Two fairly recent efforts below. I expect to be taking photos as long as I live. It is kind of in the genes, I guess. and certainly in the nurture I grew up with.

Monday Memoir--Quilts

I missed last week being totally caught up in the season's first major sled dog race, the Copper Basin 300 in which several of my favorite mushers were competing. However, although the race season will continue through mid-March when the Iditarod will be over, I'll try to keep going here *almost* every week! This time I want to talk about quilts, another hobby and passion of mine.

Quilts

            I grew up with quilts. My maternal grandmother was an old time quilter. Like generations before her in the Kentucky hill country, she grew up with a waste not, want not philosophy. Her era was long before our disposable economy came to be when the women of the family, and that included girls barely past toddler age, made sure nothing was wasted. They grew much of the family food in a garden and sewed clothing for the whole family, rough Lindsey Woolsey and canvas pants and work clothes for the men folk, shirts and simple garments for the little ones and more elaborate dresses for the older girls and women.

Each length of fabric was precious, so after a garment was cut out, the scraps were shaped and stitched into quilts. To use all the bits and pieces, many of the designs were elaborate and utilized very small pieces. The end results were things of beauty even if hand made and often of patterns the main seamstress invented. During the Depression years, this habit continued. By then chicken feed, flour and other commodities came in cotton bags many of which were printed with floral and other patterns so they could be recycled into dish towels, aprons and other clothing. Still, the smallest scraps were put to use!

I was a mere toddler when I can first recall sleeping under the small quilt Grandma Witt made for me. I was not yet able to appreciate the fine little stitches to piece the top and the elaborate patterns also stitched to secure the layers of top, filling or batting and the back. That was the actual quilting and was often done by a group of women who came together for “quilting bees” to gossip and visit, drink coffee, tea or other things and sew on the quilt, stretched in a frame, probably set up in the largest room of the house. I could not tell you the pattern of that quilt face but even then might recognize a piece here and there as in a dress or apron my mom had and soon dresses made for me. Many more of her quilts came to our family and were both used and cherished. I still have a couple, fragile now and put safely away.

By the time I was in my late teens, Grandma was starting to lose her keen eyesight and arthritis was taking its toll on her hands. However, she and her younger sister still sewed and I was kept in clothes through high school by their work although by then I began to take up sewing myself. I kept myself in clothes most of my college and working days and also made many things for my daughter and western shirts for the family menfolk.

The first time I fell in love, I decided I should begin to accumulate a “hope chest” of things for my future home. I shocked my paternal aunts when I told them not to start me on a collection of silver tableware for it was too hard to take care of so I preferred stainless steel! About that time, since I had sewed enough to have a big stash of pieces and scraps, I decided to start a quilt. My nine-square patches were not perfect and not exactly sized so when I tried to put them together, they were not coming out well and I gave up, putting the parts away for many years. They accompanied me through many moves and travels.

First quilt-top half front

Actually it was not until after my husband had passed away in 2003 that I dug out the old  efforts with the idea of trying

to make the quilt for real. I found I did not have enough for a full bed sized quilt. First I took apart, adjusted and reassembled the many squares so they would be fairly uniform and then made lots more. I cut narrow strips and smaller squares to put the nine-patch squares together. It took some time and I would pause now and then to remember the history of this or that piece of cotton—a dress I had made while in college, something I had made for my daughter. The work went

First quilt- lower half front

slowly and I spent quite a lot of that summer, 2004, on the project, watched by the two dogs I had then.

Finally the top was done. I bought the batting and then decided to make the back somewhat decorative also although not with small pieces. Still it was not too plain or dull! It all went together and I started to use it on my bed. I had received some quilts from a dear friend including one she made in memory of my husband—he’d befriended her too—in the style of the memorial robes the Plains Indians had crafted. From those I got some ideas to delve into new methods and designs for my work.

Technically my projects have never been “quilts” for instead of the patterns of binding stitches, I just tie through them in many places with compatible or complimentary colors of yarn. I’ve never had a frame or a circle of friends to quilt with me! So they are patchwork comforters, I guess.

The second quilt or coverlet I attempted was almost too big a project. My brother, then living in Colorado while I was yet in Arizona, was a life long railroad fan as well as being employed with that industry all his adult life. I was going to make him a train-themed quilt for his California King sized bed. Do you know how humongous they are!?

part of the train quilt

I discovered a wonderful on-line fabric store called eQuilter.com and was delighted to find they had lots of cotton fabric with train themed prints. The pieces I put together ranged from about 18 x 24 inches down to roughly inch wide strips in track patterns. This one is fully reversible and decorative on both sides. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift but took me longer than I had planned! Still I was not displeased with the results and Charlie liked it. He still uses it at times and it is not in bad shape.

Since then I have made a few more bed-sized quilts and Alaska and the other is in pink patterns to honor the fact she is a breast cancer survivor. Each one of my quilts is always created so either side can be displayed.

sled dog face

many crib or lap robe sized ones as well as some pictorial wall hangings and other decorative or useful pieced items such as place mats and coasters. In fact I do a lot more fabric art and household or decorative items now than clothes. Many friends and family members have one or more of my smaller items. Most of them are themed as in the two sided lap robe quilt I made for lady musher Deedee Jonrowe after she lost her home and possessions to an Alaskan  wildfire in 2014. One side of it is about sled dogs and Alaska and the other is in pink patterns to honor the fact she is a breast cancer survivor. Each one of my quilts is always created so either side can be displayed.

Breast cancer pink side

Right now I have my original quilt on my bed but sadly it is mostly hidden from view with a protective dust cover since I now have two dogs who insist on sleeping on ‘my’ bed—or maybe letting me sleep on their bed if the truth be known. Since they are both inside and outdoor dogs, they do bring in dust, dry grass and other debris which would not be good for my special first quilt. I think their company and love is worth more than seeing those bits of fabric all the time…but I still treasure it and try to keep it from to much wear and tear. I have not made one for a time and the itch is starting, especially when I get the emails from eQuilter and look at the fabulous fabrics and patterns they have! Some are too complex for my skill but they give me ideas. 

Memoir Monday: Recollections of Hunting

First let me explain a few things so my readers do not condemn me out of hand! Back in the era I am writing about (1950-65 mainly) hunting in the southwest and many parts of the country was totally acceptable by most of the society. My family did not ever "trophy hunt" because our purpose for hunting big game was for food. When "any deer/elk/pronghorn" permits became common, we never killed females although that was allowed. Like with domestic livestock, one male can breed several females so taking one or two males from a herd will not jeopardize its continuity. And finally,on our ranch we raised horses, mules and burros--and they are not meat animals! We might have done well to raise some chickens, rabbits, a pig or fatten a calf but did not for a variety of reasons. Thus meat in the freezer was a high priority for our family's welfare.

Okay that sets the stage. I first hunted in 1955 after turning twelve the spring of that year. I shot a

small buck and helpd my dd field dress it, load it onto one of our mules and bring it home. It was fairly young and the meat was very good. Over the next several years I shot a deer most seasons. Dad went elk hunting more and also sometimes pronghorns (called "antelope" incorrectly) but I seldom did.

A couple of times we brought down a good sized mule deer (this is a southwestern species of deer with long 'mulish' ears that is also called Blacktails.) They are frequently found not in timber country but the chaparral vegetation zone of brush and very small trees like juniper and pinon pine. At least twice we could not pick it up and get the whole carcass onto a horse or mule so cut it in half and put half on each of two of our mounts. That usually meant a long walk

down the hills to where we had left the horse trailer and Jeep truck or even clear home if we had ridden out from there.

There were some scary times. Once, Dad's shot broke a deer's hind leg. Sometimes you get a bullet deflected by a limb or bush or maybe just make a bad shot. Anyway, we trailed this deer for quite a ways as we were very adamant about not leaving an animal to suffer and die. Finally we saw it down in a canyon and headed down to finish it off.  While Dad kept his rifle on the deer--which appeared to be dead or exhausted, I hiked over on foot with just my handgun. I came up under the deer at the start of the upslope. All at once it got up and charged at me! By now I was too close to being between Dad and the deer and he did not dare to shoot. I pulled out my handgun--I think it was an old .32 revolver at that time--and emptied it at the deer, aiming for the head! A final shot did penetrate right between the eyes and it fell with an antler barely touching the toe of my boot!That was about the scariest thing that ever happened to me while hunting.

I have a lot of good memories of those adventures. As the oldest kid in the family I went with my dad for several years before my first brother was old enough and even before the second one was born! Do I miss it? Yes and no, mostly no. Now I would never go out with the specific goal of shooting and killing an animal unless there was a real need to do so for food. That's not likely. So I 'hunt" with a camera or just my two eyes to enjoy seeing wildlife.

Like the Native Americans who thanked the Great Spirit and the spirit of the animal they had slain, I gave thanks for the creatures who gave their life so we could eat healthy meat. but I do not have that need now.  I get meat at the super market--but contrary to one clearly naive person's notion--that meat is not created by some mysterious cloning or duplication process but comes from animals that were once alive and were raised and then killed for that purpose!  I could hardly believe this was for real!!

Monday's Memoir: A Cowboy Girl's Big Mentor

Even in the late 1950s, the Old West was a memory,
not a reality, but for a young woman who was

Charley Bryant and me about 1958.

determined to immerse herself in the western life, there were still mentors who had lived the real deal. One of my most significant among these was an old gentleman who had never learned to drive and still rode a horse or a mule wherever he went.  He was really not a cowboy but a horse trainer by trade, among the best as far as training the traditional cow pony and the range raised horses who had not been 'socialized' since the first day they stood on wobbly stilt legs!

When I first came to know him, Charley Bryant was probably in his mid sixties. He was a big man, about 6'2" and at  least 200#. I doubt that he had ever been handsome but he had a face full of character and that inner strength was revealed in everything he did. He was not a person of many words and often gave rather oblique or minimal advice, even if you asked him a direct question. He also had a repertoire of  "malapropisms" that probably came from mishearing words and not being very literate. A favorite of mine was when he described a dubious character as "traveling under a consumed name." While I realize the correct word is assumed,  his version worked very well! If you took an alias, in time you used it up!!

One of his claims to fame was the ability to teach almost every animal he trained how to do a gait commonly called a "running walk." While it resembles the natural gait of Tennessee Walkers and some American Standardbreds, it lacks the high knee action and tendency to lower the rear end that such horses exhibit in shows. It is midway between a walk and a trot but once a steed masters the gait, it is both faster than a walk and much easier to ride than a trot.  As such it is a sought-after gait for a cowpony or a horse/mule for trail riding.When asked how he did this, Charley usually said, "You do it with the bit and the spur."

As I rode many miles with him and observed, I discovered that was indeed true although a very simplified version. By a deft combination of gently urging the animal on with a tap of the spur, you then checked it, with a light tug on the reins, from going into a trot. Some picked it up very fast while others required lengthy patient repetitions but somehow, I never saw a steed that Charley failed to teach this gait. And if future riders enforced it with an occasional bit and spur reminder, the animal kept the skill for a long time.

The photo at left is crossing the Verde River. Charley is on Stormy, a fine cowpony he owned for some time that I was occasionally privileged to ride. He was leading a mule being gentled prior to riding and I was on my little Indian pony Tonalea that Charley and my Dad had bought up on the Navajo reservation. Charley helped me a lot in training my fine mare Tina, my all time favorite horse that I got as a yearling and raised and trained with help from Charley and my dad. Charley said she was one of the finest he'd ever seen, and that was high praise indeed! He definitely knew horses.


That was just one example of Mr Bryant's expertise. He had a huge bag of tricks, compiled over half a century and more as he followed this trade. He occasionally would share stories of the old west as he had lived it, before and after the turn of the last century. One concerned crawling out of a hall where a dance was being held--I think a school house--where outlaws had shot the lights out and the bullets had left the floor slippery with blood! Now that sounds like something out of a dime dreadful by the likes of Ned Buntline, but knowing Charley, who read and wrote very minimally, I doubt that it was.

His wife, who was his second spouse, was kin to a family who lived near us. The youngest girl of that family was and still is a dear friend of mine.  Elvie Bryant drove and they always had an old car of some kind that she drove to get them to town for supplies or feed and such. I never saw her in anything but an old cotton house dress, usually with an apron. She was a good cook in a simple ranch and farm way and usually had a few chickens and maybe rabbits, a goat or even a calf being fed up. Although not a cowboy girl herself, she  had all the skills of a frontier country woman. She was a very admirable person in her own quiet way.

Charley himself often wore not Levis but bib overalls, long johns at all seasons and  lace up "packer boots," instead of typical cowboy boots. They had enough heel to be safe in a stirrup but perhaps were easier on and off or otherwise more practical to him. He could rope ad brand and do all the regular cowboy tasks and did take care of the small cattle herds of several residents in the Verde Valley who had a "day job" that kept them from this daily work.

I count myself blessed to have been able to tag along with this wonderful old fellow for the better part of ten years. He slowly grew a bit more stiff and somewhat more cautious about getting on a rank horse or mule but he was still riding and working when I had to leave that life and move into a new phase of mine. An aspiring cowboy girl could not have asked for a better teacher!

Monday Memoir--Sort Of...

Monday’s Memoir

I’ve spent a good part of the afternoon trying to organize and separate a mess of papers pertaining to my family history and memoir writing projects. I have a terrible habit of scribbling things on pages of steno notebooks I carry around. They are each supposed to be for a specific project, like one for my Alaska Sled Dog stuff and another for my serious socio-political essays and diatribes, one for current to-do lists and projects, goals etc. and still another for odd tidbits that pop into my quirky memory and may trigger an essay or vignette, an entry into the life-calendar or the register of livestock I worked with and so on.  Even worse, I may find things on line or in reading old journals etc. and scribble them on some errant scrap of paper that just happens to be within reach. The result of course is a scrambled mess!

I’ve always made lists and notes and reminders, written pages of goals and resolutions (in earlier years I did them whereas I now do goals) and dissertations of philosophy and such. I laugh to read some dating back into the mid 1960s and seeing how much is still the same and where the changes occurred. I really make a fetish about trying to stay organized but I think I am a natural born slob, not to mention a packrat, a squirreler-awayer, and at times just plain lazy or rushed into throwing things into folders, boxes or a handy draw haphazardly. Of course that creates its own special punishment, for eventually you have to fix it. You are looking desperately for something you know you saw, wrote, found, or suddenly need and it has to be in that folder, this box or the third drawer there.

Out it comes. Piles all over the floor of like stuff—until you forget which goes where. Or you get distracted stopping to read something that looks utterly fascinating though you have no recollection of ever reading or even seeing it before! There are days I have the attention span of a kindergarten level gnat and anything can distract me, especially from a tedious and tiresome chore. I’ve fought that today and I actually did make some headway. Papers, notebook pages and haphazard jottings are roughly sorted into several categories which make sense to me although they would probably blow anyone else’s mind. And each is stowed in its own labeled file folder. Brave for me—for now!

The next step is to find several partial drafts of three related but dissimilar projects in my computer—probably on my main document storage flash drive-- and begin the task of putting these notes into digital form. Some will go on existing lists and tables, appendices of a sort to one or more of those three big projects.

You might ask: what are they? Well, one is a family history with quite a bit of genealogy and anecdotes that have come down through both sides of my family. There I keep finding new marriages and begats and property acquired and moves made, an occasional perhaps true story about something some ancestor or distant relative did and so on. That one doesn’t have a title. I began it the winter after my husband died, working on what I knew of his family first for the kids and grandkids and then picking up a start I had made for my two brothers and me after our mother had passed. I had a loose leaf binder for each of us with photos, documents and a fairly short narrative. I’ve had  my youngest brother’s since his death and looking through it realize the whole thing needs updates and additions.

The decision to write my own life story came along sometime during those processes. I have not gotten too far but it’s inching along. I’m about ready to get through high school in that narrative. For now it is called Shoving Smoke and Herding Cats which pretty well portrays the way I always seemed to have gone about life!

Then when I was participating in the Older Writer’s League (our self chosen moniker) at the Senior Center and involved with a memoir-based vignette and essay project there, I saw a different approach to sharing my memories. I have several friends who have written some humorous and poignant short tales from their life experiences and published them in collections and the idea has a lot of appeal. It would be a kind of prose companion to my poetry book, Walking Down My Shadows. For now the working title for that is Memoirs of a Rawhide Butterfly.

I went through those short works today and got them into a loose leaf notebook. There is too much—damn, but I am a wordy creature! There is also duplication and redundancy among some of the individual pieces so that will take more work too. I may get brave and try to format it for an e-book myself and then get it up on Amazon or somewhere. I will have a long learning curve there, especially since I want to put photos into it as illustrations for many of the stories. Anyway, that is ‘where I’m at’ right now and the excuse for not having a new piece ready to go—with photos. Next week I will do my best to have one for you!

Sympathy for the "Snowflakes" --warning, a bit of a diatribe!

Sympathy for the “Snowflakes?” Not so much.

I have a very hard time finding any sympathy for the college students who have had hysterics and nervous breakdowns about the election.  They are, at least allegedly, in such a demolished state that they need “safe rooms” to go to, coloring books, puppies, teddy bears and many counselors to help them find their balance and the strength to carry on with their studies. Exams were waived and I imagine grading scales have been modified to accommodate a major dip in work completed and other normal factors. Goodness, we cannot expect these poor souls to work, can we? And we could not add to their tragedy by giving failing marks.

Why am I so hard hearted? Well, let me tell you a true story about a student I knew the 1960s. I know this person and every word that I am going to tell you is true. She came from an impoverished family and would not have been able to go to the state university nearest her home without the scholarship and grant she received. She had worked hard in high school and earned good grades which gave her this small foot up.

Just as she was ready to begin her second year, her family was evicted from their home and left essentially homeless. She was torn but knew if she did not return to continue her schooling the financial aid would be gone. Her parents and siblings bounced around in several substandard temporary dwellings for some weeks. Finally her father was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon after firing a shot at a car that drove slowly past where they were living. He was incarcerated until his trial and then sent to the State Hospital once it was determined his actions were the result of a nervous breakdown. He recovered at least enough to be back in society after awhile.

This student returned to her ‘home’ for a number of weekends that fall to help her mother and siblings store or get rid of the family’s remaining possessions and then sent them off to shelter with relatives in two different locations. During the same period, her fiancé lost his job and had to move to another state to work; they parted ways after realizing the long distance relationship would be difficult for them both although hoping to resume it later.

This student continued her classes, usually sixteen  or more hours each semester. She did earn the only grade of 3 or C received in her college experience during the next semester as she struggled to find her emotional and mental footing after the extended period of trauma. Otherwise it was all 1s and 2s or As and Bs with the higher grade most often.  She had no counseling, no ‘safe room’ other than her room in an older—less expensive—dorm on campus. She had no car and walked everywhere she needed to go, taking a bus when she had to leave the immediate area. I know she had no puppies to pet; as to color books or teddy bears, I really cannot say. But she pressed on and managed to turn in all required assignments and pass all exams that year and the next two as well.

She graduated in four years and five intervening summer sessions with not one but two degrees, just a percentage point or two below cum laud status. Part of the time she also worked about twenty hours a week. The week after completing requirements for her second degree, she reported for work at the opposite end of the state, moving with the help of a friend. That job was the start of a career she stayed with for twenty five years.

I would never call her a hero or anything exceptional. She just did what she had to do in order to reach the goals she had set for herself. I am sure it was a difficult and painful struggle much of the time but in that era, you were allowed to fail if you did not measure up; you got very little in the way of ‘slack’ no matter what went on in the rest of your life. Nobody was too concerned about feelings being hurt or anyone taking offense at much of anything. You got tough or you did not make it. 

So no, I’d tell these pitiful excuses for young adults to put on their big kid britches, pull up their socks and dig in!  One election is not the end of the world no matter how  troubling it is to many, myself included. The fact remains, it is what it is and if you cannot deal with setbacks and trauma, then you may as well just give up and commit suicide or go into a sanitarium and live out your days as an aging infant, taken care of by those more competent.  

Memoir Monday--All About Snow

I suppose when I was little, snow was not anything major, cold, sometimes fun, beautiful and  mostly just accepted as something that happened. Kids tend to be that way.

The first snow I saw and really do not remember, although the photos trick me into thinking I do, was in 1944-45 when my parents were living in Cambridge, MA,  a suburb of Boston and Dad worked at Raytheon for a season. That must have been a snowy year. I had a nice snowsuit and appeared bundled in it in several shots. Oddly that snowsuit went through all three of us kids even if it was pink. The boys were too young to protest wearing it. It was warm and kept us dry!



Then we came to Jerome, AZ. For the first few years, it seemed to snow a lot and be very cold. Our house sat next to four big water tanks that fed most of the town's municipal water system. At least a couple of them were wooden, little more than huge barrels, and they leaked. I can recall a number of times when the fence on the west side of our yard was an ice sculpture. It was pretty but the whole yard was slick as skating rink. I am sure the temperatures must have been down in the teens and not above freezing for several days for that to happen.

It was probably 1949 when there we got a very heavy snow. We had to drive up the highway, 89-A, to see how Mingus Mountain looked. Dad figured our new 4-wheel drive Universal Jeep could make it. It did but only because they had plowed the road! The walls of snow on either side were probably close to eight feet high! On the level it must have been two-three feet anyway.

Of course out at Camp Wood, the very remote community north and west of Prescott where Dad taught the one room school for two years, was in the mountains and got its share of white stuff. There was where my one and only experience with skis occurred. I decided that sitting on my derriere in cold wet stuff was not fun!

By the late 1950s, a drought was in full swing and perhaps the initial phase of the last half century or more of climate change had kicked in. There was a lot less snow in central Arizona. I saw some while we worked with the stock but it was occasional and only one big snow that I recall. And on December 16, 1965, it did not snow much in the valley but that night when my friend Dusty drove me to Flagstaff to catch the train to go to California--at the time I was not sure if it was just a visit or permanent, but I did come back in mid January--the trek up Oak Creek Canyon was a real feat. He was a good driver and made it without scaring me once.

However, when I lived in Flagstaff for four years while going to Northern Arizona University, I got to see plenty! It was cold but even when I lived off campus the last two years, I walked everywhere and it did not seem too bad. One year though it really snowed round Christmas and New Years. That would have been 1967-68. I was again catching the train for California to spend the winter break and we sat in the depot all night. The trains were slow but the only thing running as all the highways were closed. While I was gone, more snow fell. It totalled about nine-ten feet but did melt some and settle between storms so there was probably no more than six feet on the ground at any one time!

My next encounters with snow--often and lots of it--took place the four years we lived in Colorado, settling in what was then a small, rural community called Falcon, about fifteen miles east of Colorado Springs. We had our first blizzard just before Christmas 1973 which almost kept Santa from appearing for the two Walton kids still at home.  Our last blizzard hit in March of 1977. The highway was already closed when my boss finally dismissed us at the Chidlaw Building (NORAD/ADC Headquarters) down in the east-central part of the city but Jim and I thought we could get home via Marksheffel Rd. We didn't make it and spent about eighteen hours in my Ford Pinto while the storm raged. Then we waited another eighteen or so at a nearby little farmhouse before we finally caught a ride home.  Jim and I both got carbon monoxide poisoning to some degree since I idled the car all night. The lee-side window was cracked but funes still built up. A few people did die in this storm and I did not fight when my position was cut later that year by a reduction in force. We moved to central California that fall. No snow there but plenty of fog.

Since then I saw real snow only a few times in Whetstone, outside of Huachuca City, AZ where I lived for almost twenty five years and a bit in Hurley. NM, the winter of 2008-09. Back in Colorado for two years I saw some but no huge amounts and since we have been back in southern New Mexico, it has been only skiffs. We had to sweep off cars and clear the drive of ice once that I recall. Usually it is gone by noon except a few bits in the shade.

Since that storm in 1977, I have been very leary about driving in snow and will not unless it is a real emergency. I like to see the cold white stuff on the mountains and wish copious amounts for Alaska for the sled dogs to enjoy but otherwise, I consider S**W one of the uglier four letter words!