Home Sweet Home

If I had the time or the inclination, I would work a cross-stitch sampler and hang it on the wall of my cabin, my little grey home in the West. Built on the side of a draw, it clings for dear life to the four steps down to where the land eases off, and is poised towards the creek which runs year-round and circles the building about four feet away (and another three feet down). That extra space gives peace of mind during spring run-off. Once it came up to within six inches of the building, which gave "cliffhanger" a new meaning to us overnight, but then it subsided and the relief was palpable.

The noise of the water racing 2,500 feet down from the mountain, past the cabin, got attention and brought forth words like "roaring" and "thunder," not to mention "catastrophe," "did you leave the car running?" and "is that our dog on the other side of the creek?" But it all turned out alright.


When we bought it, there were no bedrooms, just a four foot dressing space opening into the bathroom. It had (still has) of all things, a pink tub, sink, and toilet, quite a surprise to find in the mountain west. Eventually the cabin got added on to, several times, and perched as it was on the incline, we used to joke that there were no plumb walls or square corners, and that I should answer the telephone "House of Shims."

The first summer we spent there we had five children, and since our double bed was squeezed into that four foot dressing space, during the night it was not unusual to have kids gingerly stepping between us, and on us, in order to get to the john. It was togetherness with a vengeance. They all slept in the living room. The boys were encouraged to find a bush, outside, but the girls insisted on using the indoor plumbing. We adapted. It was no big deal.

Now there are two bedrooms, a media room (small but oh so beautiful looking out over the waterfall), two baths, a utility room, and a spa room. All added one stick at a time whenever we had enough money scraped together to buy the 2x4s and nails. The setting was, is, a grove of aspen trees, but the first year I purchased 50 evergreen pines and spruces six inches tall from the Forest Service (at 50 cents apiece), and they have now reached maturity at 40 to 50 feet. The aspens are dying out, but provide firewood for the taking which includes a tremendous amount of effort. Wild lupine, penstemmon, fireweed and violets grew wild along the paths, and they live happily (well, no complaints) alongside of the introduced vincas, tulips, and daffodils that we planted.

The creek is about the same as it was 35 years ago -- no larger, no smaller. It bursts forth at the top of the mountain as a rivulet that collects spring outflows as it goes along, gathered together in a man-made slough. It then heydays down the 2,500 feet past the cabin and eventually ends up as irrigation water in orchards and alfalfa fields in the flatlands, then on to the Gunnison and Colorado River. Does any of it end up in Mexico? Doubtful. But it has done its job adding life, fruit, and oh yes, native trout to the environment in between.

I love to trout fish in the creek, because if you put your bait into the creek, and you wait a few minutes with no action, move on, there are no receptors in that particular location. I don't own a real fishing pole. I have an old cut off broken pole with a few of the eyes left to thread the line through, and I let myself have about 20 feet of it because I don't have a reel, either. When I get a bite, I furiously pull on the end of the line that is tied off by the broken handle, and flip the trout onto the bank and run over and cover him gently with my foot lest he flop back into the water. That is, I used to run over. Now I don't execute this part of the process as quickly. Come to think of it, I haven't caught any fish lately, either.

However, nothing tastes better than a trout, freshly caught, gutted, salted and peppered and floured, fried up in a bit of oil for breakfast. "We're living off the land!" I used to say enthusiastically. We also had chokecherry jelly for our toast -- it is an acquired taste which means it is good if strawberry is not available. But then, a gin martini is an acquired taste also, and I don't see anyone faulting it for that.

There was a time in Colorado when the Game and Fish Department let citzens over 65 have life-time fishing and small game licenses for the ridiculous sum of less than $5. It is a prized possession -- both Dick and I have one -- because once a year, in the fall, when the land-locked salmon run upstream from Blue Mesa to where they were implanted in the Roaring Judy, milked salmon are given away to Colorado fishing license holders. We went two years ago, and intend to repeat it this fall.

It runs like clockwork. You form a line at the fish hatchery, and it pokes along for about two or three miles until you come to the enclosures where the milked salmon are let back into the creek. Then there is a young man (just getting started, I'll wager, and literally getting his feet wet in the system) that is down in a pool. He dips his net into the water and brings it up wriggling and thrashing -- it is so full of fish he can't lift it over his head, and on the bank there is another strong young man who takes the net and dumps it out onto a slough where workers sort fish five into a sack, and bring it down to your car and put them into your ice chst. So we got ten fish (five to a license that year) -- Big Ones -- and brought them home and cleaned, fileted, and smoked them. It took almost an entire day for a couple of pounds of dry fish, but they were FREE! We were living off the land.

It is one of the few things that stay in place. They used to give away slabs cut off of the evergreen trees at the sawmill. We built a barn out of them. There may still be a few cattle drives that go past the cabin on the way up to the National Forest; I would clean the streets of manure after they had passed for my compost pile, but you can't put a value on the thrill of watching them go by and hoping they didn't stray off into the garden to make the deposit first hand. The cattleman's dogs saw to that.

The mountain is still full of wild strawberries that bloom prolifically, but I hardly ever see any strawberries to pick. Once I did, and the kids and I spent two happy hours filling a cup -- they are so small, about as big as your little fingernail, but the taste, the taste -- is nectar. Dividing up one cup of heaven amongst one adult and three or four kids doesn't take long, but the memory outlasts social security, arthritis, homework duties, a root canal, or other losses too numerous and insignificant to mention.

One advantage that still exists is stalking the wild mushrooms. I think it was the year 1985 that there was a 100 year mushroom "bloom" on the Mesa. There was hardly a space where mushrooms didn't grow abundantly. Lately there have been a spate of the poisonous ones, the gorgeous red ones with white fly killer specks on top, but if you know not to try them, let them be and admire their beauty, is my motto. The ones you want to find are the boletus, the French call them Ceps, look them up in your handy mushroom book. They don't have gills, they have pores, but not every mushroom with pores is edible, so go the first time with someone who is knowledgeable. Sometimes the forest service has classes. In every locality there are mushroom experts to identify your treasures. Find out who they are and use them. Some people are allergic to fungus; it is best to try just a little if you are eating them the first time. Stay AWAY from any fungus with white gills, just to be sure they are not Death Angels. They can kill you. You don't want to die whilst living off the land.

I've never seen a poisonous snake at 10,000 feet, but Sidewinders are present down at the lower altitudes. Just so you know. They live off the land, too.

Like every location, there are good things and not so good things. The best thing about Colorado that is not spoken of often is the air. You forget how good the air smells after you have been gone for a while. Take a deep breath. Sleep with the windows open. If you are comfortable at sea level, take a little while to get used to the altitude. Carbon monoxide in the mountains is just as deadly as carbon monoxide on the coast. Find yourself a little place on the Western Slope, away from the Madding Crowd, use less electricity, plant something, build a fire in the fireplace to take the chill off at night, see how many stars there are that you can see in the sky, and watch yourself grow.

To grow makes living exquisite, and ends this piece on a positive note...

You made me what I am today (I hope you're satisfied)

fdsaf (space) jkl;j (space) (Remember?)

I have a lot of assistance. Not in the kitchen, where it is immediately apparent as soon as you walk in the house, but in this writing mode. I have a triumvir, kind of, except that all three of them are rolled up into one...

The first part of this three part helper, is my agent/financial advisor, who has an MBA from Fordham University. I have promised my agent 50% of the gross proceeds from sales of these articles (snicker, snicker, how much is 50% of 17 cents, the amount earned so far from Helium.com, payable when it reaches $25 in the year 2300 AD?) I guess the answer to that is $12.50 if we live that long, but please don 't think, "Do the Math" because math has nothing to do with it. Math is algebra, geometry, and calculus, and how many of your friends can do calculus, much less arrive at the square root of anything? We should say, do the Arithmetic. I know they all say Do the Math -- just check at Walmart. They used to have signs hanging from the ceiling saying just that -- it is because they can't spell arithmetic. I can help:

A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream

There. My Editor will be pleased that I made a difference in both Grammar and ciphering.

Speaking of which, the second part of the triumvir is my Editor, who has a Master's degree in English. Not very often does a typo, or a misplaced modifier escape the eagle eye of the Editor. I am going to double the Editor's salary. For budget purposes, how much would two times zero be? Do the arithmetic.

Perhaps the part of triumvir most important in this genre is the technical advisor, the techie, the one who puts all of this together, who understands the workings of outer space, the internet, the spiders, the googles, the digitals. Now listen, I have read Brave New World and I don't want to have any part of it. Sometimes, you can cut the exasperation of the technical advisor (who thinks I can do this as well as understand that) with a knife, but I think I have by reason of the application of heavy amounts of ennui outlasted this attitude. After all, I wasn't a part of the 300 at Thermopylae, or with Colonel Travis at the Alamo, but I understand being stubborn and not getting the message.

There are other kinds of outlets besides those in strip malls. To get yours, you must first live a long time, have educated children, and run with the ball when you are not throwing it to your dog.

CQ, CQ, CQ....or, Is Anybody Out There?

Dah didah dit... Dah dah didah

Such was the forerunner of chat rooms back in Amateur Radio days. You had to have a transmitter (with a transformer so heavy you had to grunt to lift it) and a receiver. You had to know Morse code with an efficiency of at least five words per minute. It was a lot more difficult than entering chat rooms today, though I never heard of sexual predators operating under these circmstances. I guess five words per minute was a little slow for those fast talkers.

When I was growing up during the thirties, my cousins and their friends all had these "ham" rigs, and in time I married a fighter pilot who entered his military career as a radio operator in the Signal Corps. Later on, as a Cub Scout Den Mother, I taught Morse Code to my den of six cub scouts for their merit badges, and one of them later entered the U.S. Navy and became a Signalman. I never mastered the flags or tried to, but I guess he did. Pinky, if you are still out there, I hope you are alive and well.

Part of our electronic experiment was to make crystal radios. Each Cub Scout had to bring an empty toilet paper roll, and we furnished the wire, the crystal feeler, and the headsets (we were in the radio business at the time). The toilet paper roll became the core we used to wrap the copper wire around, and the little "feeler" served as a tuning device placed gingerly along the coil until a signal was identified.

When the boys pulled an AM signal out of the empty air, you should have seen the looks on their faces. I suppose it can still be done, but the irony of using a toilet paper roll in order to "make" a radio was a novelty. No one was more surprised than I, but my husband, who masterminded the whole affair, just smiled. His Air Force uniform still hung in the closet, and we were trying to wring a business from out of nothing, but he had the time to share his knowledge and training with others -- some who became his competitors, and he did it with no reservations.

Amateur radio operators were active in those days as one of the first lines of civil defense when disaster (tornadoes, floods, and the like) struck. If you can imagine a world without cell phones, or the internet; still, we lived. Every now and then you can spot an automobile equipped with amateur radio by the antennas they carry, or by their license plate. The plates will be their call letters, like W5EJT, and their houses will look a bit like Cheyenne Mountain. The lower the radio band, the taller the antenna. That's where you may go when the electricity is out (they mostly have their own power supplies) and perhaps you want to know how your old parents are doing in Minneapolis. And he will call on his transmitter, CQ, CQ, CQ, Minnesota, is anybody out there? Come back.

I think he will still get an answer. I hope so. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is still alive and well. Google it!

Social commentaries

The opinions expressed are personal.

They are not even widely accepted.

Remember the old time radio programs?

Life With Luigi: Luigi was an Italian immigrant and his life was intertwined with Pasquale, who had assisted in providing passage for him to this country. Pasquale was an entrepreneur interested primarily in enriching himself, and was always scheming about how to take Luigi to the cleaners. He would approach Luigi with "Luigi, my friend," and everyone knew that Luigi was in for it. The story always came to a conclusion with Luigi escaping Pasquale's clutches by some miracle, or by Pasquale getting what was coming to him. It made you feel good for the villain to be outsmarted by the simple folks with a little help from karma. We need a lot more of that today.

Bob and Ray: They always signed off their program with "Write if you get work, or hang by your thumbs." Hmm. Not much of a choice there, but it aired during and after the Depression, when options (good or bad) were pretty scarce, and all options seemed reasonable.

Ring! Ring! Ring! "Hello, Duffy's Tavern, where the elite meet to eat, Archie the manager speaking, Duffy ain't here." Duffy was never there, but a parade of neighborhood characters were, including but not limited to Digger O'Dell, the friendly undertaker...

Then there was Yukon King, the dog, who had to console himself that without Sergeant Preston, the show wouldn't have been so successful. Dogs are like that. They do the work, and others get the credit. Not fair, but "dese are de conditions which prevail(ed)" (Jimmy Durante).

Amos and Andy: This show was considered racist, but I could never understand why. I guess a simple peasant girl can't be expected to understand everything. Stephen Fetchet played a laid back Black and made a good living at it in the early movies, but the part was scrapped as a poor character example. As if someone like William Warfield could be mistaken for a lazy, needed-to-be-prodded person of color. He was acting, not running for Congress. Yet today, vampires, monsters, scoundrels, floozies, and bankers are considered heroes. The bad guys were identifiable in Amos and Andy's day, while it seems bad guys are those in a position of trust today. No doubt this is progress.

Speaking of racist, when the Daughters of the American Revolution prohibited Marian Anderson from singing in Independence Hall, I promptly resigned my membership and told them why. I never did receive a response back from them, and I never did reinstate my membership.

Let's talk about women's styles. I've noticed that everyday housewives are aping the TV and movie stars. In the boob department, little is left to the imagination. No longer are we restricted to cleavage confrontation, we are seeing the east and west side of two slim hangy-downs. Both of them. All of them as a matter of fact. No man's land to the north has been available for a long time, but I never expected the image to widen that far. The only modesty still available is reserved for nipples, those end providers of preferred sustenance for new children, I suppose spared from public view because of their practical purpose(s). I applaud such visual reticence on the part of designers. How long do you think it will last?

I don't mind lusty, under the proper circumstances (candles, dinner, soft music). But in the grocery store? Please. Go home. Get some clothes on. Spare me. I am aware of how you are built and I don't need to see it displayed or even deployed next to the artichokes. (I am not talking about actually nursing a baby, get off your high horse.) But one can't help but wonder and be in awe of a sudden turn to starboard and having things fly into space, knocking down nearby pedestrians, and leaving the occupant-owner to scramble to retrieve 'em. Now that might be fun to watch.