Jaci Dawn

Other than I am going to post a photo I took of the second August full moon, this post probably has nothing to do with blue moons.

Well, other than it was one of my mother’s favorite expressions. She usually said it with an expletive or two thrown in, as in “God-dammit, my dog runs away once in a blue moon and the neighbor is calling the cops?” (She really said that once. She had the leash in her hand and she was headed out the door to retrieve Mr. Tack – aka “Tacky” – from someone’s front yard. I really felt sorry for whatever neighbor it was who threatened to call the cops because you did not ever want to cross my mom. Never.)

My mom very rarely got angry. That was my dad’s job. But when my mom did get angry, everyone within reach blanched and the whole world seemed to suck in its breath.

Except when she was mad at my father. Then she just left the house with car keys in her hand and went out on some back road where she could push the car to it’s limit. It’s been told that she pushed the Dodge station wagon up to 120 miles per hour. I have no idea why she was mad at Dad that night but speed helped her calm down and she returned home a much calmer woman than when she left the house.

I never saw or heard my parents fight. The first clue I had of a disagreement between them was when she walked out the door, alone, with the car keys and the tires on whatever car we owned squealed a little as she pulled out of the driveway.

But I did see my mother angry a time or two.

My most vivid memory of her being angry was set in the sand dunes north of Winnemucca, Nevada. We were part of a four-wheel drive club that hosted sand races. The dunes north of Winnemucca are reminiscent of the Sahara or some exotic place: white-hot sand rising in dunes and dropping off suddenly, fluctuating in the winds, pushing the sagebrush and cheat grass back, always changing, moving, shifting.

There were designated areas for the dune buggies and jeeps that came to compete, and a designated safe place for small children to play in the sand. We checked our tennis shoes for scorpions before we put them back on. We got sun-burned and we ran like wild horses between “our” dune and the concessions stand where our mothers alternated their volunteer time. That was a big old school bus converted into a concession bus.

What I remember of the moment was that I was not on the designated dune, but was somewhere between the concessions stand and the kids’ dune and the area where the rigs were prepped and raced. I didn’t really care much for the races, I just wanted to be a wild horse.

My brother, however, was in the middle of the oil and grease and gears and exhaust and roar of engines. My dad raced. And my sister was too little still to care, so she played on the dune with the rest of the little kids who didn’t care.

Enter the laws of physics and a negligent (and most likely drunk) driver. There were no DUI laws in place in those days that put blood-alcohol limits at .08. Driving drunk was… common. Unregulated, for the most part.

This driver had a passenger. She was one of the mothers of the young kids playing on the hill and one of the mothers who volunteered in the concessions stand.

They drove up the sand dune where the kids were playing and they turned broadside to the kids as they attempted to arc around the kids and on over to the racing area. The problem with this is: the hill was steep. Dune buggies and jeeps roll over. They were broadside to a number of small and clueless children. And they stalled.

And my mother saw them. While everyone else who was looking on sucked in their breath and hoped against hope that the dune buggy would not roll and crush the children below, my mother was hot-footing it from the concession stand to a position between said children and the stalled rig. She moved so fast that no one actually saw her move from the stand to the spot on the dune below the rig, but everyone – I mean EVERYONE – heard her.

She was 5’1″ and weighed 95 pounds. The kids on the sand dune scattered. The driver in the stalled vehicle might have opened his mouth to protest or argue with my mom, but she had the upper hand. And she reamed him out. And his passenger. When she was finished with her verbal assault on their lack of intelligence, common sense, and his driving skills, even the racers on the track had stopped to listen. The jack rabbits, scorpions, rattlesnakes and horned toads pulled their heads back into their shady places and blinked out at this tiny woman in red-and-white striped capris pants in fear. The vultures cleared the heavens.

It was the most awesome, wonderful, powerful display of grizzly bear mama on the sand dunes in the late 1960’s.

It was a once-in-a-blue-moon show of righteous anger and everyone ducked. And when she was finished, the spectators applauded. The jerk that was stuck on the hill meekly backed back down. He didn’t have it in him to argue with the 5’1″ woman who just charged up the hill faster than Superwoman could fly.

So when my mom headed out the door with Tacky’s leash in her hand, swearing at the neighbor who was upset that the stupid Schnauzer had just planted some brown logs on his lawn… well, I stayed home. I didn’t want to see (or hear) what my mother was going to unleash on the neighbor.

After all, Tacky only escaped once in a Blue Moon.