Your Story Matters Chapters 37 & 38 Plus Jo's Notes

 

 

37

“This Was a Real Nice Clam Bake” *

 

"This was a real nice clam bake

We're mighty glad we came

 The vittles we et

 We're good; you bet

 The company was the same

 Our hearts are warm, our bellies are full

 And we are feeling prime

 This was a really nice clambake

 And we all had a real good time."

 *--Public domain: "Published in the United States between 1928 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice." *Rodgers and Hammerstein (Carousel)

 

What if life is a party, but we're standing around with a bunch of drunk people?

Instead, let's go to the beach, where a great body of water rolls in and out, and on the outward swing, we can imagine all our concerns are washed away. 

My folks rented a beach house the first year Neil and I were married. It was uncommon for my folks to rent a house, and I don't know the occasion, however we were invited so we drove up from McMinnville where Neil attended college, and I worked for a dentist, to Long Beach, Washington—quite a distance for my folks from The Dalles.

The Beach house was a simple structure, with exposed 2 x 4's on the inside walls. It had a kitchen and three bedrooms, one for my mom and Mike, one for Neil and me, and one for the kids.

 It was the first and only time I had ever dug for clams.

You walk along the beach, looking for bubbles percolating through the sand. It must be after the tide rolls out and the clam begins burrowing in the sand again. When you see bubbles percolating at the beach's surface, you frantically dig to get to the clam before it out races you.

We had so many clams that we fried more than we could eat, and Mike made a huge pot of clam chowder.

 My brothers and sister were little then, and Bill was a baby born seven months after Neil and I were married. Jan and Mikie ran around as kids do while Mike and I stood cleaning clams at the outside counter that had a sink built into it. A perfect seaside spot for preparing dinner.

I have often dreamed of a house sitting on the sand, no yard work, just sand up to the door. The sea is ahead; I can see it from my window, but out the back, there are trees, for I love trees and want them in my life.

At my little dream house, I can write all day and party with friends at night. Nobody cares if the house is perfectly manicured, or the table is set according to lofty standards.  You drink wine, eat great food all of us prepared, have great conversation, and laugh a lot. 

After hearing the play Carousel rehearsed, with Neil singing in it, and then attending the performance by the Linfield College thespians and choir, the lyrics to This Was a Real Nine Clambake stand out in bold relief in my mind.

Neil's and my first official date was a fraternity party at the beach, where we ate food wrapped in foil and buried in the sand, so I guess I could call it a clam bake. I don't remember any clams, though. I remember steak and baked potatoes. Our food was whatever you dug up from the sand.

Neil and I had been acquainted for years as we went to the same church, but we dated other people during high school and didn't connect until he was in college.

After he had broken up with his girlfriend—and don't tell, but I had not yet officially broken up with my boyfriend, Neil was home from college, and after the church service, he invited me to have lunch with him and his family. (I knew his mother already from church. She was fun, and I liked her, so we had an easy conversation.)

After lunch, Neil and I drove up the Columbia River Highway to become better acquainted. He then invited me to his upcoming fraternity gathering at the beach.

Neil and I walked the beach, and I remember thinking, "I hope Neil is a good kisser."

 He passed the test.

 I broke up with my boyfriend, and Neil and I have been together ever since.

 

 

38

A Six-Foot Rattlesnake

About 12 or 15 kids walked along a California country road searching for desert wildflowers—with the girls wearing pants. Field trips were the only time we could wear pants to school. Suddenly, everyone stopped. 

There, stretched out in all his glory, was the largest rattlesnake I had ever seen. It was about six feet long and six inches at its girth. We all stood agape as the snake slowly crawled off the road.

 Nobody suggested killing it.

 On yet another University of California Botany field trip, we saw a small herd of cattle. Someone commented on how curious they were, cocking their heads and looking at us. They were alert, engaged with each other, and curious about us. There they were on spring grass, away from confinement and the filth of being crowded in small spaces. Their brains responded to a new event like the Aboriginals approach a new day—at the wonder of it. For some of my classmates, this was a revolutionary experience.

 Animals behave as farm animals when you treat them as such, and as pets, when you treat them that way.

 Both of the field trips were to the California desert where we searched for flowering plants. We carried a Taxonomy textbook with us, for we were keying the names of plants by examining their flowers.

 I still remember Stenstimen's spectacular, but that's the end of it. 

 

“The author and the reader know each other: they meet on the bridge of words.”—Madeleine L’Engle.

 

Supposedly the following quote came from a Native American elder, “You can look at the events ahead as a hole or a door. A hole will suck you in. A door will open to new possibilities."

Let us choose the door.

And from Dr. Terry Cole Whittiker:

“It takes a daring person to give up sickness and give up living from doom and gloom. It takes daring to actually give from joy and to change your work so that you are doing nothing but adding to peoples’ greatness.”

 

Yesterday, I stumbled upon an old blog site that I no longer use, and I was struck by Terry’s quote. I was taken back to the first time I walked into Terry’s Science of the Mind Church in San Diego, California—and walked out a different person.

Maybe I didn’t change so much in the hour or so I spent there, but it changed my focus; I found a home where others thought similarly to me. They came together in joy and celebration.

Those memories sent me back to reading some of the material I knew long ago, but it dimmed of late when I got caught up in world conditions. Zig Zigler was correct when he said, “People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.”

Neville Goddard (1905-1972) wrote, “A nation can exhibit no greater wisdom in the mass than it generates in its units. For this reason, I have always preached self- help.”

Some say you are selfish in going for self-help. No, if everyone was whole, if they knew they were divine beings in love with life and the world, we would live in paradise. Until that day, we must have laws, preserve the rights of individuals, feed the hungry, and protect the weak and innocent. That’s society. We’d have a hard time without traffic laws. Can you imagine setting up the stop light system? I am amazed.

 

Your Story Matters 35 & 36 / Renaissance / Whew

 

 

 35

 

On Davis Mountain

How often had I mentally walked through our log home before we began excavation? Three thousand six hundred and eighty. (I exaggerate, but not on the critical issues.)

Isn't that what daydreams and visualizations are? First, you have a thought, ask for it, and then take action.

I loved living in the forest, building our log home, and living in the completed house. Our loft served as my office and a guest bedroom. My computer and desk sat in front of a window (of course), where I could look out over the forest below. After I got my horse, Duchess, we had a temporary fence below my window, and I could watch her from my window.

Neil and I contended with beavers for a time. Those cute, gnawing, flat-tailed creatures caused the road to flood, for they had jammed saplings and debris into the culvert that carried the stream under our road. 

When we had the road excavated and culvert installed, we thought the stream would gurgle through and go on its merry way. The beavers thought differently. They would gnaw down a few saplings, jam them in a culvert along with debris to chink the cracks then sleep undisturbed from the sound of rushing water.

Apparently, the sound of rushing water is to them, like a dripping faucet is for us.

Their job is to quiet it. The people removed the plug. The beavers put it back in.

I don’t know how many times we that that, until our son-in-law came to our rescue!

 He built a beaver baffle (his term), a fence a foot or so out from the culvert into the water. That freed us from standing atop the culvert and leaning over while pushing a long swimming pool-hooked pole into the culvert and pulling out the saplings and debris. I said it was like doing a hysterectomy through the birth canal. Eventually, the beavers disappeared. However, I believe the neighbors had a hand with that.

We had sold our house in town, bought a fifth wheel, and lived on-site for two years. I casually mentioned at the Battery Exchange that I needed someone to move a fifth wheel, and a man there volunteered.

 There it was, the grapevine effect again, and state-side this time.

 During our time in the fifth wheel, I oversaw almost every aspect of the construction.

 Neil had emergency surgery while living in the fifth wheel, lost a cancerous kidney, and 20 years later, that one kidney is still going strong.

During those construction years, I would drive into town in the morning and pick up a kid, a helper. He told me his dreams as I drove us to the house. He spoke Spanish, and I didn't. (Two years of college Spanish had vanished unless you want me to count to ten or ask for your name.) However, the kid and I muddled through. He was strong and could carry couches and solid oak furniture, and we rented a tuxedo for him when he agreed to serve at Lisa’s wedding. 

I praise every person who worked on that house. I was the director, and every artist there contributed to the whole. They created a home better than I had imagined. I drew the floor plans, and the log builder set a perfect hipped roof on it and created the blueprints. A structural engineer ensured the house was adequately supported with rebar. A log home settles, so it must be built to accommodate that. The owner can tighten huge nuts on blots and thus tighten down the house every few years. It had a full daylight basement, where the necessary tightening could be accomplished at the ceiling space. Our logs were well-dried before construction, so there was slight shrinkage.

There was room in that basement for a two-car garage, storage for hay, a bathroom, and another bedroom, which later DD turned into an apartment for herself and her baby.

I called it "The House that Dave Built," for we had four independent contractors named Dave. The finish carpenter, Dave, was an artist par excellence. If you are building with logs, hire a mountain climber, for they know how to use ropes and pulleys. Dave installed a twelve-foot header log over a strip of sun room windows without help. He built a stained-glass window for the loft bathroom, cut logs (a mistake on a log cannot be spackled back together), and built cabinets. Many people have complained that building a house is wrought with pain and stress, yet I enjoyed the process. We even served Thanksgiving dinner at the fifth wheel with turkey cooked overnight on an outside grill. 

Ramtha said once that we do everything for the experience of it. We could argue that point. However, I decided to take on this job for the experience. 

Sweet Marie, our log designer's mammoth crane, remained parked in the driveway, ready when a truck of numbered logs arrived from Eastern Oregon. 

 The structure had been assembled on a lot, each log numbered, and then disassembled and trucked to our site. The log builder followed them in his camper and lived on the property for a few days while his crew assembled the logs. Then, he would be off working on another house until the next round of logs came. 

Those men could use a chainsaw with such skill it looked as though they were cutting through butter. Every log fit together so tightly that not a strip of paper could be forced between them. The structure needed no chinking, for a V-groove cut in the top log created a saddle that sat astride the bottom one.

I can't imagine how much time and expense our log designer (Greg Steckler of Log Rhythms, Inc) saved us by leaving his crane parked at our house. It was there when the logs arrived, and it was there to install four of the skylight windows, which were the largest allowed.

When DD sold her property in Southern Oregon and moved in with us, after she worked on her apartment, and we added another bathroom, she and I flipped the house I mentioned earlier.

DD waited 12 painful months for artificial insemination to work and another 9 months for Baby Boy Darling to arrive. We experienced a housing decline and a drop in business. We decided to move to Hawaii, where the house cost a quarter of what our present one did.  

We rented the log house and moved.

 

  

36

A Star Fell on Junction City

 

I found a star in my backyard this morning.

 It was purple and made of mylar. Once, I'm sure it once was a fat, puffed-up balloon, but this morning, it was limp and crinkled.

It tickled me that it chose to settle in our yard. Especially after I wrote about stars falling on Illinois that 4th of July many years ago. Don't you wonder where a fallen balloon came from? Were they released by accident or on purpose? 

Usually I don't like Mylar balloons. They hang around the house like an unwelcome guest you can't get rid of. Compared to the original rubber ones, I consider them a travesty. Rubber ones are fragile globes of living color, beautiful when the sun lights them and disappointing when they pop.

One of our fun experiences at Disneyland involved a rubber balloon. Baby Darling was about two years old, and we were there without his older cousin, who was five and lived in Oregon. DD suggested we write a note to Casey, the cousin, and send it to Oregon on a balloon.

Excitedly we bought a balloon and with a black Magic Marker we wrote notes on the balloon. We enrolled Baby Darling to ceremoniously release it and watched as it winged itself, its tail, aka ribbon, swinging back and forth as it grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared. Baby Darling thought that was the most fun thing. "Up, up, up," he said.

The older grandson is now seventeen, and we occasionally ask him if his balloon has arrived. 

As I have said, Disneyland is DD's favorite spot on the planet. The many visits we had when she was growing up, with friends, with family, with just us, still rings in her soul.

And it's true, as Disney said, that the outside world doesn't exist when you are at Disneyland.

 One year, we saw a real mouse scampering along the sidewalk and carried home that image as the fun aspect of the day. They keep cats on the property to control the rodent situation, so I’ve read. Strange, I've never seen a cat there—maybe they stay hidden in the daytime.

For some families, going to Disneyland is a once-in-a-lifetime event, unique to the kids, and exhausting to the parents. When time is limited, visitors try to jam in as many experiences as possible—I've been there.

But when we lived in Southern California and could buy season tickets, we found that you didn't have to exhaust yourself but could save yourself to fight another day.

One day, I complained about the crowds. Daughter Dear said, "It's a party." And I got with the program.

What if life is a party?

 

Whew!

Don’t you love fresh and new?

I was feeling that life was wearing out, becoming dull and joyless.

And then Kamala Harris came roaring in like that lady from the Cavalia Horse Show who whooped into the arena at breakneck speed, standing atop two horses who seemed to be having the time of their lives.

Now, that was fresh.

I felt like I had jumped on a trampoline. I am so tired of griping and complaining and getting caught up in it is so easy. It’s perversive, like a brown blanket of doom descending on us. It sucks the joy out of living. I know I’m speaking for myself, but perhaps others feel as I do.

I was tired of people telling me the world was going to hell and that people were manipulating and lying to me. I was tired of people asking for money by giving me a teaser and then saying that I ought to upgrade.

The trouble is, living that way just makes it more true. (Yep, I mean true and more true. Some think truth is absolute, but I have found that everyone has their own "truth.")

Right out of the starting gate, Harris was criticized for her quick smile and laughter. I know, when you are in an emotional quagmire and some shiny, glad-faced person comes into the room laughing and joking--it's irritating.

But then, we see reality.

Hey, this is fun. Let’s join the program. Get up and dance.

So, we go outside and see the green, and we praise the plants that are thriving and the ones that are struggling. I thank their determination to grow and to provide Oxygen for us. They aren’t just for beauty and use; they are co-creators with us.

Is it not so green where you live? Well, The Midwest is fun, too; the rock formations and the cliff dwellings that tell us of long-lost civilizations who probably wanted what we want: food, shelter, security, friendship, and families, and who also wanted to believe in the goodness of life.

While we were so busy worrying, listening to the rabble in the marketplace, and contemplating our navels, we didn’t look out there to thank those who went before us and the freedoms they fought so hard to give us.

A few weeks ago, I was asking for a renaissance.

Maybe there is one on the horizon.