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3 Lessons and a Grizzly Bear

August 25, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

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1967. Badlands. The little girl on the left dressed meticulously in her favorite colors: pale blue with matching shorts. She was between Fifth Grade and Sixth Grade and the summer was the only pleasant part of those years.

She weighed 64 tons that summer. Yes, I wrote 64 tons. She bragged about it in the car as the family traveled from Winnemucca, Nevada, to Durand, Wisconsin, for the oldest cousin’s high school graduation (and first Melrose Family Reunion). No amount of crying “No, no, no, no! I meant pounds!” (through fits of giggles) would ever change that weight. It was recorded by the kid in the middle. 64 tons.

That little girl got out of the Worst Year in School (so she thought) early. Family vacation. Trip to Wisconsin. “We’ll make it educational.” Her cousins wouldn’t know that she peed her pants in the 5th Grade because the teacher wouldn’t let anyone, no matter how desperate, use the bathroom during classroom time. (That teacher was lucky to keep her job after the little girl’s parents found out that their daughter had been humiliated in front of the entire 5th grade.)

Lesson #1: how to advocate for your child. Notes taken.

Her girlfriends at school got their ears pierced (YUCK!), started dating (double YUCK!), and some girls even started wearing nylons. Not panty-hose – those hadn’t been invented yet: you had to wear a garter belt to hold up the nylons. She still wanted to grow up to be a wild horse and her best friend was two years younger than her.

Vacation was wonderful. We pulled a camp trailer to Wisconsin, but we also stayed in motels and swam in motel pools. When we got to Wisconsin, all the cousins had gathered. Cheryl was the Belle of the Ball, graduating from High School (she was SO Old). Pegi was almost too old to be bothered with us little ones and at one point, she locked us all out of the house. Patti and Terry conspired to torment the rest of us. Janis and I were close. Valerie and Deni. Then the little ones who got locked inside the house with Pegi: Wendy and the Holy Terror, Vicky, who ran around saying “Shit!” and “HAHAHA that’s MY — (insert name of item)”.

We ran next door to the Dairy Queen and scored on free Dilly Bars. Make mine lime.

The trip home was a denouement. The car started over-heating with the trailer. We couldn’t go to St. Louis to see the Budweiser horses. The Black Hills were out of the question, with the visages of four presidents. We managed the Badlands and the memorial for Custer’s Last Stand. I was already a nerd: I knew how the battle happened, that the united Sioux Nation was retaliating for earlier murders, and the only survivor of the U.S. Cavalry was a horse named “Comanche” (ironic, eh?). I was fascinated to see the lay of the battle – Custer wasn’t on top of the hill, but his men were spread out on the side of the hill. The Indians came over the top and swarmed them. Mutilations were mere retaliations for earlier mutilations committed by the 7th. I was only interested in the horse that survived, and we drove by his museum without stopping.

In Yellowstone, Dad embarrassed the entire family by pulling up behind someone feeding the bears and laying on the horn. Other people just stopped and took photos or drove around the bear feeders, but not Dad. He had to make a scene out of it. “Gee, Dad, why’s that guy waving at you with his middle finger?”

We had magazines at home like “Sports Illustrated”, “Field and Stream”, and “Outdoor Life”. Recent articles on grizzly bear attacks in Yellowstone dominated the articles. DON’T FEED THE BEARS was a huge campaign. Dad was a federal Officer on vacation and he used his clout (the horn) to save many a tourist from an unprovoked bear attack. Yay Dad.

The 1964 earthquake shook up the geysers, Old Faithful was off schedule and only rose to a mere twenty or thirty feet in the air. Bust. (Years later, when we revisited Yellowstone, the geyser was back to herself – impressive!)

We camped in Yellowstone. There was this bear. It was huge, cinnamon colored, and hump-backed. It dragged a bag full of trash behind it as it ambled through the camp ground and people took photos.

Remember the little girl in the photo? She was a budding environmentalist. She happily followed the bear, picking up the trash, humming to herself about what a good little environmentalist she was. When the bear settled in a small grove of trees and started to munch on its treasures, the little girl continued to blissfully pick up the detritus. Cameras clicked.

Out of nowhere – and I mean NOWHERE – the vacationing Forest Ranger appeared. He was moving at speeds that would put Superman to shame. He grabbed that little girl by the waist and tucked her under his arm before retreating – quickly – back to the camper. He didn’t say a word, didn’t spank her, didn’t have the breath to speak. She cried because she picked up on the fear.

That night, the family lay snug inside the camp trailer, listening to the same grizzly bear toy with the huge logging chain on the garbage can that was buried in concrete and locked down. In the morning, the garbage can, lid, and chain had all been pulled out of the ground.

Lesson#2. Grizzly Bears are real. Grizzly Bears are superhuman. Dads are faster.

The family returned to Winnemucca, unscathed. The little girl was disappointed about all the missed horses (Clydesdales and Comanche). She called her school friend, Trudi, to tell her all about the trip. And that was when she found out about the rest of the school year that she’d missed – fortunately.

That 5th Grade Teacher was so strict and so mean, but she made one mistake. She allowed the students to “grade” each others’ workbooks. Workbooks were passed front to back or back to front, where a friend usually sat. And said friend would “miss” some of the mistakes on a test, thus ensuring a higher grade. Of course, if it was an enemy who sat before or behind you, all bets were off.

Said teacher discovered the cheating during the last week of school and a riot act was read. Hearts sank into stomachs. Grades couldn’t be changed, but a loss of trust was just as devastating to some of us. We actually idolized that teacher (for reasons still unknown to me, except she was pretty and young, and she had her nice moments). Caught red-handed (or not, because I couldn’t bring myself to succumb to the cheating), we all felt this huge wave of guilt…

Funny – as an adult, I think it was her just desserts, but at the time… I just felt shame and more embarrassment than when I peed my pants in class. Maybe it was because the teacher really tried to make that up to me after she nearly lost her job over it. Maybe it was because it was her first year teaching and she didn’t know what to expect out of a class of 5th graders. Maybe it was because she was pretty and young and my school friend, Trudi, adored her.

Lesson #3 – Cheating never pays. Even when the teacher brought it on herself.

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A Day Off

August 14, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Present Day.

I took today off, in part because I wanted to spend the day wandering all the yard sales that go with the big McLoughlin Neighborhood annual yard sale, and, in part, because I just wanted a day off. Don was home, but he wasn’t interested in the yard sales, so it truly was a day off – all by myself.

I had high hopes – the annual even has never failed to provide me with some treasures. Sadly, this year was just ho-hum and I spent a total of $13.50, five of which went toward my lunch. I walked the entire McLoughlin Neighborhood on the south side of 7th Street, and drove to a few yard sales on the north side.

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My first treasure was a set of earrings (only one in the photo, but there are two). Something to wear to work.

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I picked up this truly funky, fuzzy, zebra-striped light jacket. I think it could be used for costumes.

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Feather earrings to go with the funky zebra jacket. Or some other cosplay outfit. They’re not my style for work.

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This was a find: a new pair of flats that fit, are comfy, and are cute. Never worn.

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A magazine rack. It’s dusty & needs to be revarnished. It is not an antique by any means. It’s just cute. Make Offer – I paid a whole dollar for it.

I paid about $1.41 per item by the end of the day.

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This was my last find – a barely used Pampered Chef baking stone. People buy these and then forget how to use them.

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The black one in the foreground is my well-used Pampered Chef stone, slightly smaller than the one I bought for two bucks today. It’s supposed to be black after so many uses – that’s the natural seasoning of a fine baking stone, much like the fine seasoning of a good set of cast iron pans.

Disappointing in that I found so little to impress me, but… I had a lovely day by myself, wandering the streets of historic Oregon City, admiring gardens, and I only spent a little bit of money. Sometimes, a soul just needs that kind of quiet day.

And I kind of like that funky, fuzzy, zebra-striped jacket thing.

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Butchy

August 10, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Jaci n Butchy

Terry says that Butch had a home before he came to live with us. I was much to young to remember – we still had Mom’s ankle-biter, Squeaky. Butch was all black except for a white streak on his breast. He was some sort of accident between a big dog and a little dog – part Lab, part Cocker Spaniel, part Gordon Setter, part — well, we never knew. He was just an odd-looking dog close up.

He moved in with us when we still lived in Elko and his owners soon ceded him over to us, as he obviously preferred the company of three rowdy children to whatever their household offered. He had a number of bad habits and I sincerely doubt he was neutered – people didn’t go around neutering their pets in those days. Dogs and cats were lucky to get rabies vaccines, let alone distemper. There were no laws requiring licensing of pets until later, and no dog leash laws until Butch was already an established roamer.

No one worried that he’d wander off. He was devoted to us kids. Where we went, he went. If the Coffey’s brought their loose dog along, Sox, we’d have to keep them from fighting (Sox had it in for Butch), but that was the biggest worry we had about Butch.

That, and the fact that he chased cars. He hated cars. He devoted his life to catching a car.

We moved from Elko to Paradise Valley to Lay Street in Winnemucca, and finally, to Minor Street. Butch made every move with us. He tolerated the invasion of Jacob, the cat. He permitted us to dress up the stray red tabby that would come visit. Cats weren’t Butch’s thing.

Snakes were.

He killed snakes. Bull snakes, rubber boas, rattlesnakes, garter snakes. If it was a snake and Butch got wind of it, it was as good as dead. If he ever got bit, we never knew. Terry theorizes that the long hair protected Butch from the fangs of many a rattlesnake, and he might be right. Whatever the case, snakes were always on the losing end with him.

Rocks. Never was a dog so enthralled with playing “fetch”. but “fetch” had to be done with the rock of his choosing. he wasn’t interested in balls or sticks. He always came back with the same rock you threw, even if you threw it into the Humboldt River. Sometimes, he’d be under water for so long, you’d think he had drowned – but then he’d pop back up to the surface, rock in his jaws, and swim back to shore. We tested him on it. We memorized the rock we’d throw: how many jagged edges, the color, the size, the texture.

He always returned with the same rock.

The move to the house on Minor Street happened at about the same time that the city council decided that dogs needed to be licensed and restrained. A new leash law went into effect. We could collar Butch and license him, but he quickly scaled the 8′ high chain-link fence and trotted off on his daily errands.

There were a few dogs that were “grandfathered in” on the new leash law – dogs known to be reliable, friendly, and unrestrainable. Bidart’s collie. Thompson’s Norwegian Elkhound (Nipper, who was an old friend of mine). Lawrence’s Gordon Setter. The extremely dumb black lab, Kelly, who loved to run out and bark at kids, but if you bent over as if to pick up a rock, retreated quickly, tail between his legs. Butchy. I used to know all of their names, but can only recall a few of them now.

Once upon a time, there was a Hoover Vacuum Salesman who cornered my mom. He came by once and she entertained him, but she didn’t want to buy a Hoover from him. He kept coming back. She kept hiding from him. At one point, I recall him walking up to the house and mom ducked behind the picture window. “I’m not here!” she hissed to us kids.

We answered the door and told him our mother wasn’t home. He didn’t believe us: the car was in the drive. We insisted, trying not to look sideways and giggle at the sight of Mom curled up in the fetal position under the window, hissing at us to “get rid of him!”

We didn’t have to get rid of him. He walked back into the driveway in time for Butchy to see him. Butch must have known how Mom felt about him, because Butch laid his chops into the salesman’s ankles. The salesman roared that he’d sue, but us kids were laughing so hard (and Mom was rolling on the floor). Butchy chased that salesman out of the driveway and out of our lives forever.

1965, February. I was 9 years old and in the 4th Grade. Sunday. We went to church – all of us except Dad, who never went. Home again, and a usual Sunday day – except that Butch didn’t come around. By Monday, we kids were beginning to get worried. Butch roamed, but he never spent days or even a night away from home.

How many days did we wait before we began to ask the questions? How Mom took each one of us into her bedroom, separately, to tell us the tale. How many tears?

Dad heard the yelp, heard the brakes. He got up, looked out, and there was Butch – killed by his favorite hobby: car chasing. We were at church, Dad had time. He loaded him up, drove him into the desert, and buried him – tears streaming, a show of emotion Dad would never acknowledge in front of us kids.

We all cried, but I cried so hard that I got the worst case of tonsilitis I had ever had. It was time, Doc Hartoch said, for me to have my tonsils out. So I was off to the hospital where I breathed in that awful elixir of ether (“10-9-8-” out) and my tonsils were removed. I puked blood upon my recovery. I was sent home with a prescription for an ice cream diet (lime sorbet, as I recall).

I think it hurt Terry more as he was older and remembered more, but that didn’t diminsh my pain. Dad never spoke of it. It was an awful month.

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I Hope She Still Loves Me

August 10, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Jaci Dawn's avatarJaci Dawn

This one falls under Stupid Things I have Done. It is a classic tale told around the world by different authors and, unfortunately, in this tale, I am the author.

We lived in a little trailer park with a gravel road. Seven trailers, all small children about the same age. I was the stay-at-home mom to several of the working mothers. This did not involve babysitting in so many words and I want to quantify this with my opinion on leaving young children at home alone.

I was a latch-key child in the 1960’s, before “latch-key child” was a buzz phrase. It was not cool for mothers to work outside the home and nearly all of my friends had stay-at-home mothers. My parents agreed that my mother could work outside the home. She was light years ahead of her time and probably one of Gloria Steinem’s most ardent supporters (sans…

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Jackie and Jaci

August 9, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

I succumbed to a weak and unwise purchase when I was out yard-saling this weekend. It had everything to do with November of 1963. I had just turned 7 years old and was in the 2nd Grade. Mrs. Butts was my teacher. She came into the class after a brief absence, ashen-faced and red-eyed. We were being sent home.

I don’t know if I grasped the gravity of the situation at school or not. We left quietly, that I remember. There was none of the usual happy celebration of an unexpected holiday, only a somber feeling in the air as our young minds tried to take in what had just happened.

The strangest part of the day was that Dad was already home when we got there. Dad was never home in the middle of the day, and on a Friday. The television was on and the somber tone of the newscasters as they replayed the day’s events over and over and over again was unmistakeable. Something horrid had happened.

We were young, but we zeroed in on the heroine of the times, the woman who refused to ride in a bullet-proof car but who chose, instead, to walk along behind the hearse with her young children. She would not bow to terrorism. She would not give a terrorist the satisfaction of making her afraid. She was Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, wife of the late President, mother of his children.

I am not a Jacqueline. My name is Jackie, after my father, John (aka Jack). I am almost a year older than Caroline Kennedy. I have a life-long fascination with the lady who walked out of the White House in November and into the hearts of the American people. I know she was flawed, blind in some respects, and extremely private. She was betrayed, disparaged, and the subject of many a tabloid – yet she remained a lady, always. She had grace.

So it was when I found this porcelain doll for $5, that I thought I couldn’t live without her. Well, I could, but I would regret it.

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“Any particular reason she is $5?” I asked the people at the yard sale. They looked suspicious. Should she be more? I admitted that I had no clue: I was only interested because of my age when her first husband was assassinated.

I brought her home, confessed to my husband, and then we debated her actual monetary worth. We decided it was around $30. She’s not an antique – there are bar codes on the box she came in.

I did look her up. She was sold by Publisher’s Clearing House and can be found on eBay and other auction sites for $37. One Goodwill site lists her at $10 (but with some damage). I’m confident that $30 is close to her actual worth – now.

I will keep her in the original box (or – if I find such a thing – inside a plastic tube to keep the dust off). I’m not interested in displaying her. She doesn’t actually look like Jackie O., anyway. I’ll put her in a carton with all the newspapers about the assassination – true, vintage newspapers. I kept everything from that day.

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Royalton Collection 1960’s Bride Jacqueline

I have followed her, cut out articles about her, mourned her when she died, and read her biographies. She was an enigma, a lady in the face of the most trying moments, and a lady in the face of the paparazzi.

I don’t really mind having spent $5 on her.

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Stray Cats and the Dad Factor (a Tale of Buddie J and Jassy)

August 9, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Jasper came into our lives the spring I was 11 (going on 12). My friend, Trudi, lived on the very outskirts of Winnemucca. Their yard backed up to miles of sagebrush, dusty dirt roads, and Mt. Winnemucca. She could watch wild horses from her bedroom window.

The downside to that location was that people dumped unwanted animals along the dirt roads. Such was the case of the starving, blind, newborn kittens that Trudi and her brother rescued. The kittens’ eyes were caked over and they were much too young for anything besides a thin gruel of baby cereal and warm water. They couldn’t even eat from eye-droppers because there were four or five of them and no one had the patience to try to feed them that way. They lapped the gruel from a bowl, caking it in their fur, on their faces, and on their paws. One by one, they opened their eyes – and one by one, they succumbed to death.

It took everything in me to present my case to my mother, and then wait with bated breath while she presented my case to my father. To my surprise, he said I could have one of the kittens. I think he thought it would die.

She came home with me, then – the only tabby kitty in the litter, and ultimately, the only one to live longer than that summer. She was a tortoiseshell tabby, red-brown, grey, and stripped. I named her Jasper.

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She bulled her way into our hearts and even the schnauzer put up with her.

We moved the following autumn, just before my 13th birthday, and Jasper came along with us.

004She loved our new home: close to the sagebrush hills and a peak that rose stiffly above the ore train tracks. She used a culvert to travel from the back yard to the sagebrush to hunt. She even fended off the next door German Shepherd and the Gordon Setter mix. Jasper was in heaven.

She had three lives, not nine. Her first life as a kitten that ended in a dump along a dusty road, her second life with us that ended when she was hit by a car – rolled, really, but it did some internal damage and she wasn’t quite herself for months, and her third life which rolled into the summer before I turned 15.

I had a day job as a babysitter (the cute little girls next door who belonged to the big dogs), but I had to sub-let my job to my sister when I traveled to Reno for Rainbow Grand Assembly. The little girls greeted me when I came home with an announcement about my cat.

My family was waiting for the right time to tell me; the little girls spilled the beans. Jasper, still reeling from the car accident, had wandered up the hill and across the tracks. Only – she didn’t make it across the tracks. The ore train came. My sister and brother buried the two halves of Jassy Cat under a sagebrush, and built a rock cairn to mark her grave. I was crushed.

A few months later, a little black kitten wandered in to our lives. My brother coerced Mom to let him stay in the garage until Terry had built up his nerve to broach the subject with dad. Dad noticed that Mom wasn’t parking in the garage, however, and the subject came up after only three days of hiding. Dad knew he’d been had, but it didn’t make him happy. Speckos was allowed, BUT NO MORE CATS DAMMIT.

Specks had a few white hairs on his chest, but “Speckles” was just not quite the right name for him, hence “Speckos”.

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November 2, 1972. I rode to school with my brother, in his pink Willys Jeep. I met my best friend, Janet, outside the school. It was my fifteenth birthday, cold, and there was this adorable little black kitten mewling around. I wanted to put him inside the Jeep and keep him, but my brother put his foot down. Dad would kill us.

The kitty was gone after school and I returned home, a little sad that I couldn’t have a kitten for my 15th birthday.

MEANWHILE, the kitten was picked up by a group of grade school kids and carried off to the nearby grade school. My mother worked as a receptionist for an engineering firm next to the grade school, and my sister attended the grade school. What happened next was typical of my sister. She wasn’t very big, just a mite of a girl in the 7th grade.

A group of mean little children were tormenting the kitten and devising ways to torture it when my sister waded into the middle of them, arms flailing, voice raised, black eyes burned over. They would NOT torment any kitten on her watch!

She hauled the rescue over to Mom’s work and tearily told Mom what had happened. “Well, what do you plan to do with this kitten?” Mom asked.

“I’m going to give him to Jaci for her birthday.” Mom melted.

Dad hit the roof. I dug my heels in and moved outside. Alligator tears ran down my face as I hugged that dear little cat close. He was all black with amber eyes. Speckos had green eyes. I even named him: Buddie Jacopo.

Dad relented, and until my brother and I went away to college, we had two black cats.

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Buddie is on the left, a leaner cat with a long tail. Speckos was bulkier, with a shorter tail. They got along as if they were littler mates, although Speckos was older.

I don’t remember what happened to Speckos. Terry probably does. I think he just died of old age. I do know the rest of Buddie’s tale.

I went away to college and moved out on my own. Buddie took it upon himself to replace Jacob, and adopted Dad. Dad even taught him how to sit up and beg for treats. Buddie became the last cat Dad ever loved (although he tolerated Mom’s alley cat stray that he nick-named PITA). Buddie lived a full and normal cat life, dying of old age.

Footnote: Mom’s alleycat stray was never very tame and was originally named “Bob Cat” because of the bobbed tail. When Bob Cat had kittens, she became Roberta Cat. Dad just called her PITA (Pain In The Ass). Roberta disappeared shortly after Mom died in 1995.

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Chipper, the not-so-Rabid Ground Squirrel

August 3, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

Writing about the pets we had is not just about the animals. It’s about who I am and why I am this way. I was always hyper-sensitive (no one knew there was an actual personality or psychological portrait of a Highly Sensitive Person, and I didn’t even discover there was such a thing until I was in my 40’s). My brother, sister, and mother were all tender toward animals. Dad feigned indifference, always swearing off another pet when the last one died, or denying my sister and I our life-long dream of owning a horse.

The year was 1963. We’d moved from the rental on Lay Street into the haunted house on Minor Street, but the Game Warden was still Boyce Coffey. The Coffey kids were about the same age as the Wilcox kids: Matt, the oldest; Mark, my brother’s age; Crystal, a year older than me. (On a side note, my niece, Chrystal, was named after Crystal). We got into trouble that only Game Warden and Forest Service kids could get into, like the year my brother “rescued” a dozen or so barn swallows from under one of the bridges along the Humboldt River. (Another side note: I carry a scar on my face from that rescue, but the scar wasn’t my brother’s fault, or even the swallows’ fault. And we raised the swallows to adulthood, turning them loose with great big tosses into the air so they could catch the wind and fly away.)

Mr. Coffey, the Game Warden, killed some ground squirrels. This wasn’t – and is not – a crime. Ground squirrels can cause a lot of property damage, and they aren’t anywhere close to endangered (but don’t tell 8 year old me that).

I once shot a ground squirrel. My husband took me out rifle shooting and he convinced me it was OK to shoot at ground squirrels. I got a black eye from the recoil of the .7mm as I leaned across the hood of the car to shoot. The damn squirrel writhed on the ground and I began to cry. “I need to shoot it again and kill it. Would you please kill it?” My husband assured me that I’d hit the squirrel dead-on and that it was “just reflexes”. I refused to ever go squirrel hunting with him again even though I understood the terminology and that the squirrel was actually dead.

Mr. Coffey ended up with a nest of baby ground squirrels that his sympathetic children couldn’t quite bring themselves to kill. Mark sold one to me for a fifty-cent piece. (It must be noted that when our respective parents got wind of the financial transaction, the fifty cents was returned. However, the emotional damage done was permanent: I was now the proud owner of an orphaned baby ground squirrel.)

I named him “Chipper”. Dad built him a cage out of an old tin something and wire mesh (the same tin something that later housed the swallows and sliced my mouth open wide enough to receive stitches, hence the scar on my face). I was charged with keeping Chipper alive and healthy.

I was not a good wild animal mom. I’d go in spurts. I’d gather all the wild alfalfa from the ditch and deposit the fresh stuff in Chipper’s cage and he’d grow and thrive for a few days. Then I would forget about him and he’d near death.

Mom brought out the eye dropper and canned milk and she would nurse him back to life.

The cycle began again.

The summer waxed and waned and Chipper grew. He wasn’t exactly tame, but Mom could handle him when he was ill and I pretty much handled him when he was healthy.

My sister. Denny was…a liar. She was jealous of my pet squirrel, but she was also conniving. She went into the shop where Chip was kept, but not for the purpose of playing with him or feeding him. Instead, she got to playing with Dad’s tools. And she got hurt. Whatever tool she was playing with caused a cut on her hand that looked like two teeth grazed her skin. She bled. She cried. She claimed Chipper bit her.

Mom knew better, but the damage was done.

The damage? Denny turned Chipper loose in the shop and he disappeared. He was gone. Escaped. Winter was approaching and we soon lost all hope. The tin cage was set aside and I eventually forgot about him (as much as I could forget about him).

Years later, my mother told me the story.

Dad built a guest room on one end of the shop. Grandpa and Grandma Melrose stayed there one spring when they came to visit. One morning, a rabid ground squirrel appeared in the shop, chattering hungrily at them. Grandpa Melrose freaked out and killed the squirrel with the heel of his shoe wielded in his hand. Who wants to get rabies, anyway?

Then he told my parents about it, worried about how to dispose of the body. They looked at each other and then at him and said, “Don’t tell Jackie. That was her pet, Chipper. He wasn’t rabid – he just woke up from hibernation.”

Poor Grandpa Melrose went to his grave with that on his conscience!!!

I’m glad they waited a few years to tell me. I could see the macabre humor in it by the time they told me. I still cried.

I forgave my sister long ago.

I look at ground squirrels differently now, pretty much the same as I view moles and Gary, the Gopher, who has invaded our back yard. It was probably a bad thing for my husband to name the gopher. Eventually, it comes to a stand off between my prized peonies and the creature. My peonies will win, but I will mourn the passing of the creature we should never have given a Christian name to.

I loved Chipper.

 

 

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Lost Cat? I Don’t Think So.

August 3, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

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We owned three dogs and four cats during my childhood years. One dog died early in my childhood (Terry says it died in the backyard in Elko – that was Squeaky the Chihuahua mix). Butch was a dog who came to us and just sort of moved in. He died in February of the year I turned 10 (1966) and he gets his own post. Then we had the rescue Schnauzer, Mr. Tack, shown here with his best friend, my mother. Tacky deserves his own post, too, if only because he managed to humiliate me in 4-H.

But tonight, it’s about the cats. MY cats, specifically.

We had four, beginning with the black-and-white Tuxedo cat that followed my sister home one school day in the mid 1960s. John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmitz Radar-ears Wilcox. He had nine names, but I only remember the first five and we called him Jacob or Jake.

I know we have photos of Jake sleeping in the bathroom sink, but I don’t personally have them. He came to us as a half-grown kitten that followed Denny the two blocks from school, across one busy street. Dad – who claimed to hate cats – did not believe Denny. In fact, he went into one of his really angry modes and we decided it was best to obey without question.

**Dad had these “black moods” and when he went into one, he wasn’t so much as physically abusive as he was intimidating. We kids were terrified of him, but I think the worst that ever happened was getting grounded for two weeks at a time to “hard labor”, which meant weeding the yard for two straight weeks in the summer while our friends played nearby. Still, we walked on eggs during his tempers and we made a wide berth around him. He wasn’t bi-polar as much as he just didn’t understand children. Each of us made our peace with him as he aged.**

He made us carry the kitten back to the school and run home.

The cat ran home with us.

We didn’t run fast enough (Dad declared), so the next trip was with our bicycles. We had specific instructions on where to set the kitten down and how fast to ride home.

The cat followed us.

Dad hit the roof and we were sent off once again, with instructions to ride “really fast” home. Dad even stood in the drive and watched. We were terrified of him and we obeyed. We rode, really, really fast and we prayed silently that the kitty wouldn’t get run over crossing Bridge Street.

The cat followed us home. Dad threw up his hands and said we could keep him until someone claimed him.

Mom then ran an ad for two weeks in the local newspaper but no one claimed him. It would seem that he had chosen us – or chosen Dad, in particular, because it was Dad’s lap that Jake migrated to. Jake slept in the bathroom sink, opened Christmas presents, and stomped across the tin roof so loudly that you could hear him in the house. He tolerated dogs and kids. Jacob loved the old grouch, and often curled up in Dad’s lap at night, purring loudly.

The next summer, when Jake was an adult cat, the lady in the station wagon drove up and cornered Denny.. She had a carload of little kids and she confronted my little sister on the sidewalk, accusing her of “stealing” their pet cat. Denny burst into tears: Jake was her cat, and she’d stolen nothing. Jake followed her home; no one claimed him!The woman was pure evil. I tried to talk to her (I was probably 11), but the woman was a witch and her kids were just as mean. So I ran and got mom. The Big Gun.

Mom looked at her crying daughter who was hugging Jake with all her heart. She looked into my big eyes. She leaned into the station wagon and asked what the problem was. She listened. She nodded. She assessed the faces of the little kids in the idling station wagon. She told the woman that we ran an ad for two weeks the prior year – why wasn’t the ad answered. Lady didn’t get the local newspaper, but that was *her* cat.

Mom had a stance she would take. It was pure Scots and it was scarier than any “black mood” Dad ever had because it didn’t come on very often. You really had to be in the wrong to get the Scots up in Mom. “O.K.,” she said, eyes narrowing. “If this if your cat, then he will stay with you. Fair?”

Lady in the idling car said, “Fair.” I think she even smiled, because everyone knew that Lassie would choose the rightful owner, and she was self-righteously right about who the cat belonged to.

Mom knew exactly what would happen before she flung poor Jacob into the open window of a running car. The other mother never saw it coming.

Mom reached over, snatched Jacob out of Denny’s hands and tossed him into the lap of the kid in the front seat of the running car. “Here he is, then. If he stays — Oh, my! He didn’t stay. Must be our cat then!”

Poor Jake! He hated cars. He went into that open window and came back out with all claws and a wild look in his eyes. I don’t know how badly the kid in the front seat got scratched, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t pretty. The lady in the station wagon had no choice but to put it in gear and drive away as Mom stood there with her hands on her hips. Denny chased after Jake to calm him down. I took notes.

Jacob contracted distemper one summer and wandered off into the desert to die alone. There were quite a few red eyes in our house after that and my father declared, “NO MORE CATS.”

If Only.

cat

(The photo is of Nimrod – Chrystal’s kitty – not Jacob. I don’t have a vintage photo of Jacob.)

Jacob at Christmas

P.S. – I forgot I had this photo. My brother took it and scanned it to me. You can see why he was named “Radar Ears”. Jacob, his first Christmas with us. 🙂

 

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Best Friends

July 30, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

My children – those for whom I am writing these memories – do not know much about Lisa. I think I’ve hidden her in my heart, much like keeping a Peculiar Child in one of Miss Peregrin’s “Loops” – timeless, protected, and – peculiar. I have not written much about Lisa on my blog because she is still living, and telling tales about the living is much more complicated than telling tales about the dead. The living can come back and be angry at you.

Not that I would ever say anything bad about Lisa, but some of the secrets we shared are… well, not so much “secrets”, but I don’t know how much she would like shared about her life. It’s sort of a judgment call. Do I write about inventing air guitar, writing plays for the librarian, or forcing our mothers – and her Nana – to sit through some inane play we put on in the apple tree? Our little world of “make-believe”? The dreaded “Blue Cape” (which will get a blog post all it’s own)?

Lisa is two years younger than I am. I was in 3rd grade and she was in 1st grade when we first played together. Her sister was a classmate of mine and my sister was a classmate of hers. In the 1960’s, there were social “rules” about playing with kids younger than you: it made you “immature”. It was a stupid social more. Lisa and I just had a bazillion things in common, more than any other person I have known in my entire life – including my beloved husband.

We drifted apart after I became a Christan, and more so after I got married. She traveled the world, read deeper books, and gained different friendships. I did a little traveling, was a free spirit, but ultimately, I married my soul mate and my focus turned to raising my children. I went without close girlfriends for a very long time.

I don’t know how to sort out and categorize and classify this friendship. Lisa is – and was. Together, we were strange kids. Apart, we were – what? Just as strange, but without each other. Ours was never a lesbian relationship, but I can see how it may have appeared to some – and how, given another set of circumstances (say, neither one of us liked men), we may have gone that path. We were both wired heterosexuals and that door never presented itself (although we were sometimes called other names).

Goddammit. We were GIRLFRIENDS. Best friends. Bosom buddies. We told each other our deepest secrets. We were the Divine Secrets best friends.

We played pretend, dress-up, air guitar, and hide-from-Jaci’s-little-sister. We wrote the weirdest plays. Our Breyer™ horses were in love with each other (actually, Blackie was/is a Hartford™ plastic horse; Kamie was a Breyer™. They were both Tennessee Walkers). We had a collection of little plastic animals we actually named (Jasper the cat was a green cat in the pile of toys; later I named my first cat after it). Lisa owned a grulla Shetland pony named Lollipop that we rode everywhere.

Lisa and I were sometimes bullies. There was a girl – MAL – who lived next to the Little Store and who was an idiot when it came to animals. When her German Shepherds were growling and wrestling, she thought they were fighting. Lisa and I berated her from the alley. MAL once showed us a very dead horny toad she’d caught and placed inside of a sealed coffee can. “YOU IDIOT!” we screamed at her, furious that she’d failed to think of air holes for the poor creature.

We took a 4-H class together for a few years: photography. We were the only members of the club and the local photography shop owner was our leader.

I lived at Lisa’s house, relishing in the Catholic rituals and the 6-o’clock on the nose dinner times. Lisa loved coming over to my house and playing until dark before my parents remembered anyone needed to eat.

Lisa was my Maid of Honor when I got married to Donald. I missed her wedding due to children, lack of cash, and a bazillion other stupid obligations.

It wasn’t just Lisa – but her entire family. I was part of them. Her dad was as much a father figure to me as my own. Her mother once looked at me and said, “Please call me Marie. You’re old enough that I don’t have to be Mrs. T.” Nana made me a quilt to take to college. I watched the Olympics – in color – at her house. (We had a black and white TV and I don’t remember my folks tuning in to the Olympics.)

Lisa had a running joke with my dad. There was a blackboard in the kitchen where Mom and Dad left us notes. To write on it was verbotten. One day, Lisa wrote a note – unbeknownst to me, or I might have stopped her: Krazy Kat was Here. My dad loved it and wrote her a note back. They wrote notes to each other during the years we lived in that house, much to the amusement of all of us.

Last story for the night – we were at the public swimming pool. Closing time. Everyone had been hustled out of the pool and we were in our separate changing rooms, trying to squeeze out of wet suits and into dry clothes. One of the lifeguards yelled down the hall, “Hurry up and change!!”

A tiny voice – Lisa’s – piped up. “Into what?”

001Lisa in 1966? with my mother’s Schnauzer, Mr. Tack.

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Indians

July 25, 2015 by Jaci Dawn

I write this some fifty years after the fact. I still do not understand all of the dynamics. I hope I never do. My eyes were innocent and I want them to always be.

One of my very early friends was a dark-skinned girl named Peggy Garfield. We walked to and from school together and played together in the Kindergarten playground. We always met somewhere on the trail to school that passed through the sagebrush. She usually took the western trail, the one we kids labeled “The Horny Toad Trail”, and I took the one just east of that. Somehow, we always hooked up together.

The Horny Toad trail was so-named because a person could always catch a horned lizard along the way. I didn’t know a single kid who had never caught a lizard: we all were adept at capturing the little flat creatures that resembled a triceratops in the most minute form possible. The Horny Toad Trail may have had it’s ending along the same trail I took to school, but it had it’s beginning in “The Indian Village”.

The Indian Village was a small parcel of dusty land that housed the Toms (a group of wild Shoshone boys that terrorized the rest of us school kids), the Garfields, and a number of other Paiute or Shoshone tribal members who chose – for work or other reasons – not to live on the McDermitt Reservation. I understood little of this. Peggy was my friend, everyone was afraid of the Toms, and noone talked about that little dusty section of town at the end of Bell Street and the beginning of the Horny Toad Trail.

Peggy once bragged to me that horny toads “would spit blood from their eyes”. I didn’t believe her and cited every evidence I could from my small, sheltered life. She was brazen and sure of herself, and she mocked my innocence. “You have to make them mad,” she told me.

Years later, as an adult, I witnessed a horned lizard “spitting blood” through its eyes. Damn! They really can do that!

Once, Peggy and I were both late for school. We hid behind a dust bank along the dry creek bed, debating what we should do. I was of the mind that we should curl up in a ball and just die. My parents would be mad and the principal would be mad – and Miss Smith or Mrs. Butts (First Grade teacher) would be mad. I couldn’t abide anyone being angry with me. Peggy, however, had a more pragmatic view of life. The adults would be angry, but we would survive. Therefore, we went on to school. And survived.

I asked her once or twice if I couldn’t just walk all the way home with her along the Horny Toad Trail. Both times, she looked at me like I was an alien. “You don’t know nothing,” she said. “You can’t come into the village. You’re white. I’m an Indian. That’s just how it is.”

I accepted that from her, but it didn’t stop me from wondering why. My 6th birthday was approaching and I asked my mother if I could invite Peggy to my birthday party.

My mother deliberately stopped whatever she was doing and looked hard at me. She seemed to understand what I wanted. Peggy was my friend, maybe my best first grade friend. But it was not possible. Even though Peggy only lived a block away on Bell Street, she lived a world away. She lived on the Reservation. I was white. Even if we were to bend the rules and invite her, her people would not reciprocate. Whites and Indians did not mix.

I cried. I did not understand.

Once, when I was walking home alone, along the streets instead of on the trails, I had the sense I was being followed. The Tom boys were behind me. I didn’t know their names. They were older than me, wore their hair in long braids, and they beat up white kids for no reason. I was alone. I was nearing the Dog Lady’s house – she had high red board fences that kept her wild dogs on the inside, but they always went crazy with barking when kids walked by. I never teased them – how cruel! – but she accused every kid on earth of teasing them. Tom kids approaching from behind and Dog Lady on the left.

Then they were beside me, around me, and laughing. One of them lightly slapped my back. They laughed. “Coup!”

Me? The slap was hardly a slap, more of a touch. Years later, I would understand they were merely counting coup. Young Shoshone braves trying to make sense of their world in an all-white world, counting coup on frightened white children. That light tap on my back erased every fear I had of the Tom boys. They weren’t so tough. They didn’t mean any harm.

Peggy and the Toms faded away after about 2nd or 3rd grade. I never saw any of them again, although my heart has searched for Peggy since. Maybe their families returned to McDermitt. I don’t know.

~~~

I was in 7th grade when Wanda Brown came to school. She was 16. She’d lived in McDermitt her entire life, and had dropped out of school after 3rd grade. She was as wide as she was tall. Shoshone or Paiute, she hated everyone who was white. Rumors flew. She kept a knife on her person.

She did, at that. She showed it to me. Strapped to her inner thigh. It was long and sharp, probably 4″ long. She kept it for “protection”. She knew how to use it, she assured me. I was 12. I was innocent. She liked me, for whatever reason. Maybe it was because I wasn’t afraid of her. I wasn’t afraid of her skin.

I let her know I wasn’t afraid of the knife. She wouldn’t use it on me.

She granted me that. I was too simple. Too innocent. She didn’t even try to taunt me, but she let me know that my innocence had a price – not now, but somewhere down the road.

~~~~

Virie. I’m not even sure I spelled her name right. She lived on the Duckwater Reservation and she was a poet. She received a scholarship from an Ivy League college. She was as wide as she was tall and she was beautiful. She was older than me and graduated in 1972? 1973?  I don’t remember. She liked me and I liked her. She had none of the hardness of Wanda or Peggy, but all of their wisdom. She was a Medicine Woman, if I were to guess.

~~~~

The end of this is that I wish I could have been real friends with Peggy and Wanda. 1960-1970 was not the right time for an innocent white kid like me to make friends with kids from the Res.  It still hurts my heart.

I wanted Peggy to come to my birthday party. I really did.

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