Paper Dolls--Redux

I know I have mentioned my hobby of making paper dolls several times, the latest in my January 12 post, Memoir Essay--Coloring.  I have been doing a lot of sorting of mismatched and jumbled souvenir type stuff and came across a few samples which I just scanned in this evening. Since I am lazy about writing, I will just pop a few in here with short notes so you know I was not pulling anyone's leg!

This first picture is my take on the "Kewpie Doll" style that Mrs Goodding (the wife of the renowned botanist and desert flora expert, the late Leslie N Goodding who I probably mentioned in notes on my trip to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum last October.)  She was one of the very few people who ever 'baby sat' me as my parents were admittedly overprotective when I was little.


The next two are clothes I made for them and one of the gift wrap dresses she made for me.  The broomstick skirts were for a wedding party and I can't recall why the cowgirl outfits!

The final shot is two of the couples I made later on--these were actually done for  my granddaughters in about 2003 but were based on those I did as a teenager. I had a huge batch of clothes and about four couples which I sold to a collector on eBay for a sum that astounded me. I had no idea that paper dolls were now a major hobby with conventions and shows and a fandom! A few people do make them, too, but most just collect old ones from the 1920s through their peak in about the sixties. I've about given it up.

Checking In

Yes, I know it has been quiet here for a few days. Those of you who may also visit Deirdre Dares (Gwynn and Deirdre's shared site about their books) know that Amber Quill is closing their doors the end of March and so Deirdre has been working down through her long back list to try to drum up a few more sales before all those titles are out of print. Hmm, when an e-book is gone is it still out of print? Anyway, no longer available! Gwynn had four books there also.

Then I've been wrapped up as teh winter seld dog racing season gets revved up. January is a month of shorter races, mostly 2-300 miles and most are qualifiers for the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest, the two big ones. There is a lot of excitement as most of these races now have web sites, Facebook pages and trackers to let fans follow the action.

There have also been two less joyful things effecting mushers. Last weekend one of the two sons of renowned musher Martin Buser was nearly killed in a terrible auto accident in Seattle. He is still in critical ICU condition and undergoing many surgeries to put him back together. It was nearly a Humpty Dumpty situation. Of course Martin, his wife Kathy and the other son, Rohn, who is also a musher, flew to Seattle and are camping at the hospital while this crisis goes on. Since I met them all in August 2014, I am honestly concerned and feeling their pain at least a little bit. I doubt Martin will be racing any more this year.

Then my special heroine and friend, Deedee Jonrowe, is struggling to get the finances together to actually run the Iditarod this year. As you know she lost everything except her truck and dogs in the terrible wildfire last June. Then she lost her primary sponsor when Shell Oil, due to environmental protests and collapsing oil prices, pulled out of Alaska completely. Trying to reassemble all the gear required and pay for the food and supplies, transportation for the dogs and so forth is a very costly matter--especially while you are trying to rebuild your home and replace all your possessions and household goods. She has a go fund me site--Deedeetonome and I have pitched in all I could.

Martin and Deedee are such icons and fixtures--both with over thirty Iditarod completions, Deedee with several second place finishes and Martin with four wins. It would just not be the same if neither of them are there! I know everyone is shocked and concerned, at least all the sled dog racing fans, of which I am a very avid one!

Those two issues have pretty well occupied my time, energy and attention for several days. Meanwhile the weather here is bouncing like a kid on a Pogo stick and we hardly know what we will see and feel when we get up each day. That tends to sap one's vitality and keep the minor ailments like allergies and arthritis feeling worse than usual. On the warm days it is spring fever time--I just want to sit and soak up the sun. And on the others, I would like to pull the covers over my head and make like a bear.

So cut me a bit of slack and I will be back with my usual chatter very soon.  In the process of cleaning out a big batch of my files, I found the hard copies of some essays I wrote a long time ago. They are not in a computer or even on a disk (yeah, they are that old or older!) that I know of so I will have to retype them before I can share--but I will, and soon. A couple are worth it, I think.

Meanwhile maybe spare a prayer for Nikolai Buser and a few dollars for Deedee's 33rd big race if you can.

Another Memoir--Chores

I've been busy following two different sled dogs races over the weekend. As most of you know, that is one of my later-in-life passions. Had fate been different, my dad might have chosen to relocate to Alaska instead of Arizona at the end of World War II as did Joe Redington, the Father of the Iditarod and many other folks, Dad too was unemployed and looking to follow some new adventures. But it was Arizona where we landed. Otherwise I might have gotten into mushing instead of mules. Oh well, that was not to be and the latter had many good points too. Maybe next incarnation I can be a sled dog driver!

Anyway here is another of my essays, going into some events and experiences that shaped the person I grew to be. Looking back, it surprises me to trace down some of these threads and see how much of the distant past is still woven into the adult I became and now the older person I have come to be!

Chores

            My parents obviously believed in kids doing chores. From the time I was barely more than a toddler, I had small tasks to do. One of the earliest I recall was picking up off the floor the paper dots left by a hole punch. I cannot remember what they came from, only that there were all these little circular bits. They were about a quarter of an inch in diameter as I picture them now. It was easier for me to squat on a small person’s short legs than for an adult, and I often hunkered down in that posture when playing. Dad tried to make a game of it and called the exercise, “chicken picking up corn.” I must have been pretty young and very naïve to consider this a game but maybe I did. I am sure there were some other little jobs I learned to accomplish but they do not come to mind.

            By the time I had started school, I began to do some real tasks. When we went out to the rural community of Camp Wood where my father taught in the one room school, we lived in a tiny mobile with not electricity or running water. To keep from having to go out to the outhouse at night, the family used a chamber pot. My job was to empty it first thing each morning. I carried the bucket to the outhouse and dumped it faithfully, always trying to do it long before the other kids arrived for school. I would have been mortified to have the boys see me although I doubt they would have thought much of it or said anything at all!

            As a digression, when I moved much later to the upper Sacramento Valley in California, I was stopped in my tracks at the way the locals pronounced the name of the common nut widely grown in the area. I was like, “What the blazes is this pee-can you are talking about?” How  chamber pots could grow in an orchard boggled me. I soon learned to understand the accent of the locals, mostly dustbowl refugees who had fled the drought stricken Midwest in the 1930s and the word no longer grated but at first it was a shock!

            Also while at Camp Wood, I began to wash dishes. My dad terrorized me with horrible stories about the sickness caused by leaving soap on the dishes. I know this was a genuine problem in military mess halls until some years later but I am pretty sure we were using detergent by then which did not have the drastic emetic effects. Still, I did my best to ensure the dishes were all rinsed very well.

            About the same time, I graduated to other complicated and serious tasks. In the early nineteen fifties, the main mining operations in Jerome, Arizona were shut down. Phelps Dodge, the mining company, started selling off all kinds of old and surplus items, too worn or not economical to move to use elsewhere. Dad began to collect a lot of “stuff” with the idea of using the materials to build facilities on a patch of land he had acquired down near the Verde River. Among the things we acquired were a couple of sheet metal sheds used as garages in one section of the “company” town. As we dismantled them, the job I learned was how to pull nails out of the boards that had been the structure’s frames. I often straightened the nails, too. I got quite adapt at those tasks and learned how to slip a small block of wood under the hammer or crow bar to get more leverage when the nail was reluctant to pull free. I still do that sometimes!

            I had learned early to pick up my playthings before bedtime each night. Anything left out was likely to disappear and probably be lost for a long time if not forever. Moving on from that,  around age ten or so I began the habit that stays with me to this day. At least a time or two a year, I get into a kind of cleaning and sorting frenzy. I try to get rid of as much of the “overburden” we tend to accumulate as possible and to make sure the rest is structured into tidy collections, neat piles, boxed, tagged or otherwise organized. I hate to see windblown trash in my yard—a real fight at times both in my old Arizona homes and here when we get the spring winds. I still pick up that kind of mess regularly. No one ever told me to do it or made me; I just took that on myself.

            For most of the years from age ten until I left home at twenty three, we burned wood for heat. Another chore! We cut and brought home many pickup loads of pine, juniper, oak or whatever else we could get. Although dad cut the larger stuff with a chain saw, at least to truck length, my brother and I did a lot of hand sawing with an old camp style buck saw to get the wood to stove size.  Sometimes we also had big circles from larger trees which had to be split. We used old axe heads as wedges and pounded them down with a single jack or smaller one-handed sledge hammer until chunks broke free.  And there were also ashes to carry out and dump in a safe place. We were truly warmed more than once in those processes.           

            At times I had household chores too. I usually helped mom with the laundry every week to ten days. We ran several loads of clothes, towels and bedding through the old Maytag washer, pushing them through the rollers of the wringer to get the excess water out and then hanging them on the clotheslines to dry. I never got my hand or even a finger caught in the wringer but I know some kids did and it was a frightful hazard. After the wash dried and was brought back inside, there was also ironing to do. It was a somewhat tedious task but one I did not mind if I could listen to the radio or later my little record player and sing along while I worked. I also composed poems and stories in my mind while I ironed.

            By my mid teens I had learned some cooking. I enjoyed making cookies and was always coming up with a new recipe or blending contents from two or three recipes to make my own variations. Cookies are really easy to make, since exacting measurements and the precise demands of cakes or pies were not required. I also made biscuits. Although I could and did roll the dough out at times and use a cutter to make neat rounds, I really preferred to do drop biscuits which I called “porcupine biscuits” since they had pointy bumps on them. I learned to make several hamburger based dishes and of course things like beans and wieners or macaroni and cheese. We ate a simple and economical diet most of the time but always had veggies too and some salads.

            With all these experiences behind me, I had no problem with work as I became an adult out on my own. I’d been working since I was about ten, doing variously a cowboy and ranch hand, handy man or jill-of-all-trades job from mid teens on. Now I had to learned to do desk jobs, starting with my university studies and moving on to civil service positions, but I never forgot how to get dirty and use my hands and muscles to accomplish things. It does not bother me to wear old clothes and engage in the “trudgery*” of packing and loading boxes to move, preparing and maintaining a garden, taking care of animals, or doing the heavier cleaning that sometimes is necessary to keep one’s home space livable. I might have resented some of my chores at times, but the legacy I got from them has served me well and will for all my days.

     *Trudgery is a word coined by my late brother Alex when we were busy 

     cleaning out the mobile our mom and dad had lived in after mom passed 

     away. He had the quirky Celtic humor too and skill in words which he mostly 

     applied to legal writing after he finished his schooling and workjed as an attorney.

     We made many slow trips carrying things back and forth for yard sales, trips 

     to the dump or moving—drudgery at a trudge—which became known as trudgery.

 A friend and I sitting on the sawbuck used
to cut firewood described above!

     

Another memoir essay--an odd experience

I keep thinking I have posted this one but I cannot find it so here goes. Do I "believe in ghosts?" I have never actually seen one and cannot point to any other mysterious encounters, but there is this:

Challenged By A Ghost

     In June 1971 I had been keeping company with my future husband for a few weeks.  We had met because I rented a place next door to his a few months earlier. As I moved in, his six year old daughter had come to meet me and my roommate, wearing her cat. Jennifer frequently carried that feline draped across her shoulders like a fur stole. For some reason, the cat didn’t seem to mind.

A few weeks after that initial meeting, her mother died suddenly and tragically, leaving her then-husband with three kids from six to seventeen. That was a major reason why our courtship proceeded faster than the local gossips and mavens approved. I didn’t care and he didn’t really either; we did what we felt was right for us.

     Anyway, that Sunday afternoon we were sitting in my living room listening to music, having found we both had eclectic tastes and shared some favorites. It was peaceful and lazy for the kids were off somewhere as was my roommate. We could enjoy some rare quiet time. He worked mostly nights as a sergeant on the small town police department and I was employed by the Army as a trainee in Human Resources, called Personnel Management at that time. It was a treat to have some free alone time to share.

     Suddenly the room turned very cold. It was a warm day but the air felt almost frigid. Jim was lying on the couch with his head in my lap. He jolted out of a near-doze, as startled as I was by the sudden drop in temperature.  Very shortly I felt an almost tangible sense that he was being tugged and dragged although there was no physical motion. He did go somewhat stiff and seemed to fall into a near-trance. It took me only a short while to sense what was going on.

     This seemed like a classic “ghost” or restless spirit situation. A woman who had been dead for less than six months was very upset that a new and younger person was stepping into her life with her children and spouse. She was going to take him back if she possibly could and probably the children later.

     I am not sure why something moved me to start singing along with the operetta and musical comedy tunes playing on the stereo. I almost literally sang my heart out—mostly familiar old songs of love and happiness. At the same time, I sent silent waves of thought and energy to the strong but invisible entity.

     The gist of those thoughts ran a bit like this. You have to go now. There is no way you can come back. Life is for the living and those you left cannot go to you or with you at this time. I promise I will take the best care I can of them and love them to the greatest of my ability. Your children and your life-long love are hurting, grieving and missing you. They always will but they have to keep living. I cannot and will not actually take your place. I do not even want to. I promise they will not forget you or cease to love you but you have gone beyond and you must allow your spirit to leave now. Please go because there is nothing else that any of us can do.

     I continued to sing for an hour or more. Gradually the strange chill eased until the day’s normal warmth again filled the room. The final record in a stack of several played and the machine shut off.

Finally Jim stirred as if awaking. “I had such a strange dream,” he murmured. “It seemed very real but it’s fading now…  I can hardly remember but it seemed like Rosemary was here… Wanting or asking me to get up and go with her.”

     Later I learned the day was her birthday. Perhaps that was why she chose it to come back and try to connect again with those she had left behind. I will never know and there is no way I can prove it, but to this day I believe I convinced a ghost to go on to the spirit world where she now belonged and leave her former husband and two youngest children in my care. Jim and I were married early in September that year and remained together until his death by a massive heart attack on November 10, 2003.

     I never told the three kids about this but as time passed they all seemed to come to accept me as at least a substitute mother. We became and remain friends. I am closest to Jennifer, the youngest, who was fifty one this past Monday, a mother herself now, and still a cat lover. Jim has of course rejoined his first love on the other side but has come back to give me a subtle sign a time or two since his passing.

     A friend once told me there are no husbands and wives in heaven. I am not sure if I believe that or not but I think kindred spirits do recognize and connect with each other in many places, times and ways. Perhaps when my day comes to cross over, one spirit will be moved to thank me for caring for her loved ones and for convincing her to go on and leave life to the living as was necessary.

An Evening of Silence

A friend passed away this morning and in her honor I will post a moment of silence here.



Her death was caused by ovarian cancer, a terrible disease that also took my mother. If you have lost a friend or relative to it, perhaps you might make a small donation to the American Cancer Society in memory of Daneal Cantor and your loved one as I shall be doing. Go in peace and harmony, my friend. You are missed.

This dark sunset from a few nights ago is in my friend's memory and honor.

Melting Pot--Or Not?

Western mining towns were very diverse and those of us who grew up in them during the first half of the twentieth century had a lot of opportunities to learn about other cultures and ethnic groups. I will not say there was no prejudice or discrimination but for the most part we did learn a lot of tolerance and acceptance of people who might speak a different language, observe different customs or follow a different religion. Here is a glimpse into my memory of this augmented by that of my husband, who lived in Bisbee from his adoption as an infant in 1930 until he moved away to join the military and follow his career and education although he did return many times

Melting Pot—Or Not?

I came to awareness of an outside world between ages three and four, in the latter part of 1946. At that time my small family, which was my parents and myself, lived in Jerome, Arizona. Jerome was a mining town, a company town of Phelps Dodge, then king of copper in the still-young state of Arizona. 

We lived in a region called Sunshine Hill, which sat to the north and east of the main town of Jerome, that perched on the side of a red mountain called Cleopatra Hill. Between that area and our home on a prominent ridge, a large area of overburden, oreless stone removed to reach the mineral deposits, had created a wide terrace where some of the shops for the small open pit mine and a baseball field stood. The road to our area wound along just safely in from the outer edge.

Sunshine Hill held a bunch of identical little cottages owned by the company along with a few individually built houses sitting on leased land. I called them ‘the private houses’ as opposed to the company houses such as the one my parents rented. By then the mines were starting to slow down from the wartime rush and miners were leaving for other “PD” mines or even other firms so non-employees could rent and live there. It was an ethnically mixed neighborhood with people from a number of European countries in residence, reflecting of the diversity of the miners. However as far as I know there was not one African American family in town and the Hispanic/Latino/Mexican people mainly lived in the hollow below the main part of town and our home. That region was called “Mexican Town.” Remember, this was the 1940s and political correctness had not yet even been dreamed of. Probably not too many used the “N” word but other terms now called slurs were common.

Many of the miners came from southern Europe, formerly small nations that had been overrun by the Nazis and then smashed together haphazardly by the treaties ending the war. There were folks from Bosnia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Herzegovina etc. but they were generally lumped into the category of “Bohunks” (probably from Bohemian) in the vernacular of the time. These people were hard workers, good citizens and very determined to incorporate into their new homeland. To me, their differences only meant a few odd accents and some wonderful foods from each of their areas.

 I spent the first twenty some years of my life in Jerome and later Clarkdale, the ‘other’ Phelps Dodge (PD) town at the foot of the hills. I knew Mexican and Indian children in school and we didn’t think anything of that at all. My brother and I both had friends among them and in Clarkdale, neighbors of Mexican ancestry as well. Until probably about the mid 1950s, few to no Mexicans worked underground but that changed quickly. It was hard, dangerous work and the flow of miners from Europe had fallen off greatly after the war as well as those from the Wales and Cornwall areas of Great Britain which also had many mines.  That soon had Mexicans welcomed to work in all capacities in the hard rock mining industry.

I do not think I ever actually knew an African American person until I was in late middle school or high school. At that time a single mother and her son came to Clarkdale. Oddly, her surname was the same as ours, Morgan, and her son was between me and my brother in age. As far as I know she was accepted and more was made of the fact she was single than her race. She had a responsible job and was clearly educated but people in conservative small towns still tended to look askance on divorced women to say nothing of one who might have had a child out of wedlock!

My parents were not prejudiced for their time but if I had ever brought home a boyfriend of another race I would have probably gotten chewed out. They did not hold with mistreating anyone for their differences but felt everyone should stick to their own kind. From their point of view and the fact they both had Southern upbringing I expect that was understandable.

At any rate, after the Iron Curtain went down and many of the small ethnic groups in southern Europe began to squabble and want to set up their own countries, those of us who had grown up in western mining camps knew and understood their need and desire to be independent and not to have an ethnic group divided by an arbitrary border that some kings and politicians had created when they were “dividing the spoils” after the war. We might have called them all “Bohunks” and meant no disrespect or disparagement with the term but we were aware that they spoke different though often related languages, might have different religious beliefs and definitely differed in national dishes, costumes and traditions.

 So, in a way, my home region was a melting pot—in mining towns like Jerome, Bisbee and Ajo, where kids all went to school together, it was not long before a girl of Croation ancestry began to date a Czech boy and the parents had to accept it since the fathers might be partners in the mine. Then pretty soon there was dating between ‘gringo’ and Mexican teens or white and Native Americans and as African Americans began to join the populations, they were accepted and assimilated too.

 It often takes a few generations for this to work out but usually if there are no KKK fanatics or rabble rousing outside members of a minority group to “stir the pot” it does mix and melt very nicely out here in the rural and  small town west. Here people were much more often judged for their work ethic, honesty and similar real values than the color of their skin or what church—or none—that they attended. Underground, all men were equal and out in the cowboy camps, and similar dangerous environments the same held true. I consider myself fortunate to have been able to grow up in and witness true diversity and the American Way in action.  

 .

Memoir Meets Philosophy?

Now and then I do wax philosophical. Maybe this essay is at least somewhat in that direction. As usual I share it for what its worth. Readers can decide for themselves! BTW this is post number 294 on this blog. I will try to plan something special for the three hundredth since that feels like quite a milestone! And we will get there in just a few more days.

Growing Up on a Bridge

Those of us who came into this life in the middle of the twentieth century were blessed—or condemned—to live on a bridge between “the old days” and today. In 1940 something or the early 1950s, we thought ourselves very modern and fortunate to live in the wonderful twentieth century.

As small kids we might not yet have had television in our homes, but we had a radio that brought us the magic of words, news, wonderful and varied music and drama from the vast world. We had electric lights and refrigerators and automobiles that were getting faster and more luxurious every year. And there was even air travel as well as trains and busses. What a life!

Then as we began to grow up, the days of TV sitcoms with the perfect family, parents who slept in twin beds, the picket fence, two-point-five kids and a spotty dog morphed into the turbulent 1960s. It was the time of hippies, protests, Vietnam, Woodstock, the Black Panthers, women’s lib and acid rock. By now TV was everywhere, in color even, and our cars got faster and higher powered each year. Zero to sixty five in… And our music became louder, more strident and very much tied to electronics. We had crossed the first bridge in our coming of age.

Then more decades came and went, bringing more changes. We put satellites into orbit, a man on the moon, more and faster communications. The Berlin wall came down and Cosmopolitan magazine had nude male centerfolds! Cuss words became a feature in movies and song lyrics. We watched our kids begin to grow up, much more wild and rebellious than we ever were, of course. No one chanted, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Susie with the baby carriage,” any more. That order was often transposed. Some were shocked and others said, “high time.”

Finally we burst through into a new century, surviving Y2K only to be jolted hard by 9-11. There seems an odd irony in the fact those same three digits are also the near-universal code to seek help in an emergency. Just dial 9-1-1. That day it would not have helped much.

In a couple of decades we went from “computers” which filled a warehouse sized space to an equivalent amount of power and capability in the palm of our hands. We came through talking on cell phones and doing email to texting, tweeting and twerking—no, wait; that is some kind of a dance but I guess communicating in a way, too.

So here we are, aging “baby boomers” who have lived our lives on a bridge between “ancient history” and the future. Changes came in increasing numbers, sometimes in almost the blink of an eye. Change and progress—yes, progress requires change but I assert that all change is not progress—sweep past at a geometrically accelerating pace. Where do we go from here?

Do you sometimes feel you’ve been left behind in this mad dash? Maybe I am the only one but I suspect there are more of us. My maternal grandfather, who was born in the late 1800s and passed away in the late 1900s at 100 years and 10 months of age, had gone from horse and buggy to space ships, telegraph along the railroads to wireless phones. He coped as every generation must, but it seems each new group of us has to witness more change and faster change.

Perhaps I am almost ready to step off the bridge and let the rush go on without me. I am not sure how much more and new I can comprehend and adapt to. In my case, growing up in a rural part of the southwest US, I saw the tail end of the ‘old west’ in then elderly men who had been cowboys, gunfighters, mountain men, cavalry who fought Indians or like my late father–in-law commanded a troop of Buffalo Soldiers along the Mexican border during World War I. I only experienced their lives vicariously but it still seemed real and vital, not remote bookish history.

The only way to keep their stories was to write them down or use a big, cumbersome tape recorder so my recollections are not perfect. Even my own early days seem so distant now, veiled in shadowy almost-dream-like vagueness, back at the start of this bridge.

The years pass very quickly as we become mired in the daily trivia of living so that we lose so much, even while we are still here and semi-sane. It feels as if the cord of our rosary has broken and beads have slipped off and fallen away without our notice. You can’t go home again, they say. Anymore not even in memory. That tends to make me sad.

The next bridge or span will be perhaps the scariest or most marvelous yet. I am more curious than fearful and in many ways I am eager to talk again to those who have crossed ahead of me. Maybe their recollections will now be crystalline and perfect. Maybe mine will be too, once I join them. But then perhaps from that new viewpoint we will no longer feel the need or desire to look back.

Someone once said that heaven and hell might be no more than watching a ‘video’ of your life play out on a sort of screen where you must watch it, over and over…. There might be a kind of poetic justice in seeing your highs and lows, your good deeds and the harm you caused and perhaps the most cruel, having to realize how mediocre most of us really are. Already I am wishing I might have another chance to relive my three score and some, fix some of my worst boo-boos and undo some damage. But life has no rewind button, no go back arrow or delete key. It is what it is. Time only moves in one direction and we have no choice but to go along on a strange rolling walkway until it is time to step off this bridge…

 

Mom holding me in Boston
by the family car.

Me at the Inn of the
Mountain Gods, near
Ruidoso, NM