Transit Tidbits

Here now gone again,

Sand and sea polish

This stone flung upon the coast

Rolling in the surf

 

Feet scamper out

Into ice cold water

Because of one small shining stone

Glimpsed from afar

 

Shining stone, wet sand

Eager fingers grab it up

Then running back to the group

Marvel at the find

 

Birds flew overhead

Wind whipped the hair

Focus was on the rocks in hand

Translucent color there

 

Glistening rock in the light

Beauty at the coast

Eyes marvel at variety seen

In the jumbled heap

 

These orbs of colored quartz,

Pulled from cliff and beach

By winters stormy day

To this sandy place

 

Pelicans fly the tidal waters

Seagulls cry above

The time and place had magic

Treasure was found today!

I have a jar of stones upon a shelf.  It is a remembrance of the time I discovered hidden treasure at the Oregon coast.

When our kids were young, my husband and I bought a motor home. We took many weekend trips during all seasons of the year to various locations, enjoying the travels within the comfort of our steel constructed cabin on wheels.

One such outing was to the Oregon coast during the winter.  Without the RV, we would not have ever considered going camping in the cold, rainy months.  And then we had the freedom to discover one of winter’s best kept secrets.  What was buried treasure during the summer months, was laid open and plentiful during winter.

At our campsite that weekend, we drank up the sight and smell of sand and sea.  The rocky shore and burble of a nearby stream were music to our ears.  How lovely to be there at the coast without the crowded beaches that often occurred in the summer months!

We debated the pros and cons of taking a walk in the rain.  Was it worth it to get wet and cold, just to stroll along the shore?   After all, we surmise, there would likely only be wet sand and black rock.

Then came a break in the storm, so believing like all optimists that even if it were to begin raining again, it can’t be that bad.  After all, we did have a change of clothes at the RV if the rains came harder or drenched us.

Fully decked out with warm coats, hats and gloves and the mental picture of hot chocolate as comfort food when returning,  I and our two kids set out to explore the shoreline, plastic bags tucked into pockets in case we found something interesting like seaweed or a shell to carry back.

My son was the first to notice a translucent gray rock on the beach.  It was about 1 inch in diameter.  What type of rock was it?  Could it be an agate?

The size, transparency and color were a delight to all of us!  Never in  summer  had we seen such variety of color and shape.  What a marvelous find!

As we kept walking,  we each began to discover more and more of those unique stones.  Some as small as a half an inch and some as large as 3 inches, they came in a variety of colors from gray to white to a bright orangey brown.  Glistening and glowing in the volcanic stream bed those beach rocks were a type of quartz.  The surf and creek water came together to tumble and turn them, polishing rock against rock.

During winter storms, when strong rains, wind and minus tides beat the coastline, the earth spilled out the agate that had been held fast inside cliffs and under sandy shores.  In winter, the sparkling glowing jewels of the earth were flung here and there among the rocks.  We reaped the bounty of the earth during our winter walk that day.

 

 

Written from the perspective of my 20-something daughter who had owned Lacey from 2008 – 2014

 

Like a ghost rising out of the foggy morning, her white mane flowed back as she cantered along the rise, hooves pounded to a sudden stop, she jumped on all fours at the sheer delight of life itself.  This was Lacey!  She could race around a field, roll in the mud, rise to her feet and then trot over for a nuzzle.  A strong, white Arabian.  We were buddies.  She was my gentle, affectionate friend.

 

Lacey died today.  She was loved and then lost.  I let the tears fall.  Could not stop.  My head ached.  Heaviness in my chest.  A yearning for things to be different, for her to be happy and sassy, alive and alert, active in mind and body.  But, here we were.  And things weren’t different.

 

Emotions ran deep as I sat with her in the field.  When I arrived, there were over a dozen deer grazing nearby, offering their own solace.  Repeated whinnying let me know that my sweet old girl was in pain and distress.  She knew something was wrong.  And yet, she didn’t want to leave me.  I did not want her leaving either!  At her advanced age of twenty nine years, though, I knew that just perhaps, it was Lacey’s time to go.

 

I’d bought her the summer before my senior year.  She needed to slim down. There was too much grass in her diet and not enough nutrients.  I changed and controlled what she was fed and got her to a reasonable weight.  That effort turned into my senior project and I was proud to say, she helped me graduate.

 

Some neighbors graciously allowed me to keep her in one of their fields.  She was just a few blocks away, so it was easy to care for my girl.  Sometimes after a long ride, I would give her a bath in the driveway.  She was the talk of the neighborhood as I led her along the road.  We would trek all over the nearby hills, on neighborhood streets and along the Springwater Trail.  Lacey was always up for exploring.  She would shoot up a steep trail as if she were fifteen. Other hikers would stop for a chat and a picture of Lacey, surprised to find a beautiful white horse when out walking in Gresham!

 

I let kids ride her, too.  My first few lesson kids came weekly.  They learned about horses and how to care for one.  Training sessions included how to muck the stall, clean out her hoofs and lead her around the field.  But the best part was teaching them to saddle her up and ride.  Oh, to be in the saddle, higher than the sky!  I loved sharing my love of horses with those young ones.  Sometimes, we played “pin the name on the horsey”. This was a guessing game of horse parts such as Tail, Mane, Back, Fetlock, Shoulder or Withers. Lacey was so tolerant of little kids running around her, taping horse part names on her, hugging her legs, patting her sides. It was clear she loved kids!  I have never known a more patient horse.

 

I could not let her go easily.  She was my confidante when life was hard.  She wove her magic in and around my life.  I kept her alive and she helped me live.

 

May you rest in peace, my dear friend.  Run free and jump high in the meadows of heaven.

 

Stan Freberg also did a parody of the song, Heartbreak Hotel a song made famous by Elvis Presley.  This song shared the story of a guy who was sad because his girl left him and he was ‘down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel’.  At the time, Elvis Presley was an up and coming star with good looks and a crooner voice. Stan made fun of Elvis’ fitted clothing, with a comment by the singer of “ripped my jeans! Third pair today!” and then finished with continual complaining about wanting more or less echo in the song to make it good.  It was exaggeration to the point of the ridiculous, and yet these features made it funny. Stan invited us not to take others too seriously but showed us there can be humor in everything if you just look for it.  In our family, we learned to look for the funny side to situations.

Another of his radio shows featured an interview with the Abominable Snowman that became a favorite character in our home.  In 1957, there was a British horror movie which heightened interest in the subject so it was natural for Stan Freberg to take up the topic.  This creature, otherwise known as Yeti, was seldom seen, but believed to be a gorilla like creature that lived in remote mountainous areas of the world.  Interestingly enough, people still search for him today including David Attenborough.

So, Stan Freberg created a radio show about this creature.  Stan played the part of a reporter going to interview the Abominable Snowman and in one of the memorable parts of this show, Stan asks the abominable snowman about his clothing choices, noting the snowman’s large feet.   Here’s an excerpt from that story.

STAN:  Dr Hugo Sponk of Cornell University who went high in the Himalayas to do research on the subject returned to tell us about him, but his only response was, “Aaaaaaah!” We felt that this was not too informative, and CBS Radio felt it was below standard as far as broadcast quality was concerned.  So I went up and got the interview myself.  It went something like this.  (scary music)

STAN:  This is Stan Freberg speaking high in the Himalayan Mountains in northern India.  I’m standing next to this ah, particular ah, ah gentlema… ah, creature, ah… just what is it you ah are there?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: A little of each, Stan, actually.

STAN:  A little of?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: A little of each.  That’s right.

STAN:  So you are the ah …the Abominable ah?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Snowman, that’s right.  I never cared for that word Abominable too much, Stan.  You don’t mind if I call you Stan?

STAN:  No, not at all.

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Well, I never cared for Abominable, but it’s the nearest word ah translated from the original Hindustani which was abominuyamayoo which means “the hairy one with the big feet”.

STAN:  Yeah, I can see it lost something in the translation.  I was noticing your ….

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: You are noticing my sneakers there, were you?

STAN:  Quite large. What are you there?  Size 12?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: What, are you kidding?  12?  They’re a size 23!

STAN: That’s pretty big.

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Well, it’s functional design, you know.  You ever tried to walk on snow in ballet slippers?  Or roller skates?

STAN:  Well, yeah.  Don’t you have a little bit of trouble buying them, ya know?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN:  Well, I can’t just walk into any old store and buy them, no.  I have them specially made up for me.

STAN:  Where do you get em?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Well, when I don’t have the chance to drop by Abercrombie and Fitch, I send up to Spaldings. They make them up for me.  I have them in four colors. I have the white, the red, uuh, the pink and the orange. I’m wearing the orange today.

STAN:  Aww, that’s very nice.

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN:  Well, that’s the particular ensemble I picked out today.

STAN:  It’s not much of an ensemble, is it? … I mean, it’s just the shoes.

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN:  Well, it’s an ensemble to me!  Some of us aren’t too well off as others.

STAN:  I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN:   Oh, that’s all right.

STAN:  So what is it that you do for a living?  Do you terrorize the mountain climbers?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: That’s right, I terrorize the mountain climbers who come up here.  That is my trade, and I am proud of it.

STAN:  Is it hard work?  Do you have to do a lot of training?

ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN: Well, not everyone can do it. They don’t have the hair for it, for one thing.

(And the story goes on from there.)

 

Mom would often quote the lines, “It’s an ensemble to me”, or “It’s my trade and I am proud of it” straight from Stan Freberg’s Abominable Snowman story. She did not allow us to get too serious about ourselves. Yes, we could be intelligent and have good grades in school, but we needed to remember that laughing at oneself and making light of some things was a good way to cope with life.

She taught us that you could be proud of any job you chose to do.  Whether you worked in a gas station, taught school or did some other endeavor, you could have a sense of pride and well being just by doing your best. And that was enough.

One did not have to be serious all the time, and it was good to laugh at the hard times of life.

For a while, when I was in high school, Dad was out of work. We lived in a big old house on a noisy street. Mom found a job as a secretary at Standard Insurance, a local firm.  She eventually worked her way up to actuary, one of the key positions in an insurance company! The actuary deals with the financial impact of risk and uncertainty and basically sets the rate a person is charged when buying insurance. Like I said, she was really smart.  Dad finally got a job with PGE as a chemist. Mom kept advancing in hers, studying insurance in the evenings, taking frequent tests to move up.  She showed dedication to accomplish her goals.  She could have returned to homemaking, but she chose to keep working at what she did best.  We wished she could have been home more, but we were all impressed with her fortitude.

It became clear to me in high school, as I got to know the parents of my friends, that my parents were quite unique.  Most moms in the 1970’s did not work outside the home, but my mom did.  No one I knew went mountain climbing or back packing but we did. Almost no one else had heard of Stan Freberg.  Satirizing Elvis was unthinkable! Those other mothers did not sing around the house, nor did they see life in the humorous way that mine did.

My friends worried that the satirizing and making fun of others was not kind to the object of the joke.  I could see their point, but that was the home I grew up in.  I did begin to see that the Biblical admonition to love one another might not include making fun of them, but the pull of that home influence was strong. I felt sad that my friends did not see the world through the same funny lens that I did, though where I excelled in humor they excelled in love and kindness to each other.

Humor was a lot of what made life fun, but love was also a compelling factor, making a home a great place to be.  Since then, I have chosen love over humor as a way to cope with life. I still enjoy humor, but have chosen to not use humor as a way to put another person down.  It too easily can turn to sarcasm or put downs.  I find that many people in this world crave love more than they crave that bit of humor, though humor can certainly lighten a situation.

But, Mom used humor to help us kids cope with the challenges of growing up.  If I wanted to be reassured that a given outfit was appropriate for a situation, Mom would invariably say, “well, it’s an ensemble to me!”  She could break any tension with her exquisite timing by recalling The Abominable Snowman line, bringing her lightheartedness into the situation, and telling us in effect, just be yourself.

She taught us that whatever job we chose to do in life, we could choose to be proud of that work harkening back to the Abominable Snowman’s comment about his line of work with the line, “It’s my trade and I am proud of it”.  We did not have to be the smartest kids on the block to find a decent way to make a living.  Those influences from within and without the family structure greatly impacted a person as they reached adulthood.

In a way, my mom was hard to know especially due to the influence of her dad’s anger, and she kept her feelings to herself. But listening to her sing in the evening and make jokes about the difficult things of life, taught me to not take myself or other people too seriously.  I learned a way of coping that has stays with me to this day.  Life can be challenging, but love and humor can make the path ahead much smoother.

 

Thinking about the path each of us takes to reach adulthood, to be a functioning member of society, many factors come into play like personality type, place in birth order in the family, and the time period in history in which a person lived.  Other factors include the family of origin, siblings and parents, and what issues predominate in that home.

In my home, we did a lot of camping and backpacking. We also had a van and travelled a lot during the summer.

Each of my parents was an only child.  We had no aunts, nor uncles or even cousins.  Both parents were introverts, one a chemist and the other a math teacher.  These were disciplines that introverts could thrive in. Their home was a quiet place. But then a gradual change occurred as they had five children and that family of seven became its own microcosmic society.

In this place, Mom wielded great influence.

Her daddy was one of four big, tall men born of Irish blood.  Grandpa was an alcoholic who became angry easily, and there were times he came home and threw the dinner plate across the room.  He caused terror in that little home for mother and daughter. Grandma turned to sedatives to calm her down and was addicted for years, before the medical community realized that those drugs were addicting.

My grandparents made candy in their kitchen and sold it door to door to make a living during the Great Depression. They also sold cooking oil.  At that time, oil was only sold in large containers. So, they bought smaller jars, poured oil into them and sold the smaller containers door to door.  This made access to cooking oil financially easier for homemakers.  They did whatever it took to put food on the table.

Later, Grandpa got a job at Reynolds Metals and it provided a steady income. This was the home my mom grew up in.  Grandpa and Grandma loved to identify the birds that came to their feeder, and they greatly enjoyed this shared activity. He was known to us grandkids as a funny guy, ready with a joke or half a roll of Lifesavers whenever we would visit.  He died of tuberculosis, made worse because he was unable to give up drinking.

Grandma was the daughter of a Lutheran minister who himself died from the flu after going out in a snowstorm to baptize a recently dead newborn. The belief in that particular Lutheran sect was that a child would not go to heaven if it was not baptized.  Such was the dedication of Great Grandpa that he gave his life away for the sake of that baby.  He left a wife and four daughters in Great Falls, Montana. When Great Grandma died a few years later, her daughters moved to Portland, Oregon where they all got jobs at Lipman-Wolfe, a large department store, in the early 1900s.  Grandma got a job, because, while one sister was a good worker and well liked, she had a hard time waking up in the morning.  She would put an alarm clock inside a cooking pan in hopes that the morning rattle would be loud enough to wake her from a deep slumber, but it proved not to be. Grandma had no such trouble waking, so she got a job on the strength of her ability to get her sister to work on time.

Sometimes, good fortune comes in unusual ways.

My mom, Pat Pearson, was not only the chief, cook and bottle washer as she liked to say, she was also the humorist. She loved music, had a beautiful voice, and would sing around the house, while making dinner or doing the laundry.  She wore sneakers and slacks, or dresses and jackets. Her clothing choices had a quiet flair.  She was also an intelligent woman. Starting at Reed College six months early at age seventeen, she wowed them with her good looks, winning a beauty contest her first year. She also enjoyed mountain climbing.  My parents got better acquainted during their college years by going on climbs together.  When she graduated with a degree in math, she promptly married my dad who had graduated with a degree in chemistry.

I admired Mom greatly.  She often could make a difficult situation better with her wit and calm demeanor.  When a glass of milk would spill at the mealtime table, rather than give an admonishment of “you kids ought to be more careful!” like Daddy might, she would say, “There’s no use crying over spilled milk”.  Then, she would bring a wet rag to the table to clean it up and call the dog to lap up what was on the floor. She exuded such a casual calmness that made even mistakes fun!

Another thing I remember about her, besides the singing, was her dedication to keep up with the hand sewing, mending the clothes.  She never really loved cooking but in her opinion, it was a necessity to feed five hungry children.  She enjoyed the quiet work that was needed to do hand sewing.  I remember seeing her there almost every evening, sitting at one end of the couch darning Daddy’s socks or a worn shirt or dress. Clothes got worn out or torn from living every day, but, nothing got thrown away that had not been mended a few times first. The four daughters in our family wore hand me downs, though my brother as the only boy, was off the hook.  We could not be too concerned with staying perfectly in fashion because we did not have the money for it. But, with mom’s mending skills we could at least have neat, clean clothing to wear.

I remember my mother’s singing.  She often sang when making dinner. Among her favorite songs were those popularized by Elvis Presley. These included Please Release Me, Blue Suede Shoes and Heartbreak Hotel. Along with singing around the house, she shared her humor and view of life with her five kids.

One of the entertainers of the 1950’s that she liked was the satirist Stan Freberg, who had a radio show in 1957.  He had a great ability to poke fun at songs, characters and TV shows of the time.  You could have heard one of his more famous satires of soap operas called “John and Marsha”. In this piece, John and Marsha spoke passionately to each other using just the others name.  There was dramatic music in the background throughout and ended in a climactic way.  It was funny because it was over the top drama and drove the point home that though soap operas displayed a lot of passion, they were not realistic.  Since then, John –Marsha’s were popular in high school drama classes.

To be continued…..