Here on the ridge we like to make sure that the sun sets in its appointed place on each equinox and solstice, but another feature of life on the ridge is the strong likelihood of being “socked in”. So when Saturday was a total sock in all day rainy day, we mourned that we would not see the sacred sunset.

Another feature of life here on the ridge is that we are easily confused. So we were mourning the lost sunset on Saturday, September 21 while the date of the Autumnal Equinox here near Asheville was really September 22, at 4:44 PM. Well there we go again.

The real story here is that late in the afternoon of the almost equinox while we were accepting our loss of the sunset, we were stunned when the clouds and mist that obscured our view of the Headwaters Valley from the porch suddenly exploded into an aurora-like profusion of bright yellow that filled the valley. All of that thin mist and thin fog was back-lit by the yellow sun breaking through under the clouds to the West and it was breathtaking. It was also singularly un-photographable. We lived in it and through it for about a minute and it was amazing. Then the sun began to set and the following photos were among 48 that were taken during the next 30 minutes or so.

Another day confused in paradise.

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That is not to say that what happens in North Dakota stays in North Dakota. Zimmer referred to the “best things” as being those things that transcend understanding. My recent time on the Little Missouri National Grasslands and Shade Ranch was colored by some of those things, and so my writing will be colored as well, and so there will not be a start to finish travelogue in one season. It will come as it will.

Fresh Mowed Hay

The rallying cry was “More Hay!”

Pushing “buck piles” at sundown

Ca 1970s John Deere 3010 and Farm Hand loader pushing buck piles. The buck piles are left for a day or so to settle and then stacked in 12 ton hay stacks which are stored outside. The low annual rainfall and snow cover keeps the hay quality safe.

An almost complete 12 ton loose hay stack - after it settles for a few days, it will be topped off with a few more buck piles.

Blue Duck, the 1971 International Harvester truck (for fuel and tool support) with 6 year old South Dakota tags. The road surface material is a clay rock called Scoria which is mined locally. It is similar to the material from which clay pots and terra cotta tile are made.

The visitors see Blue Duck coming down these roads and they say “here comes the real deal”; and so we are. - Kim Shade

Jay and Kim gathering last year’s yearling steers for a drive to another pasture.

The steers veer off of the road to play in an exposed coal seam.

Hey guys let’s check this out over here on the left.

Almost there

Done

Classic Rock, a 6 year old Longhorn steer with a story and a part to play - one of the trappings of Shade Ranch.

Kim and his straight man Banjo, a Queensland Red Healer named for Banjo Patterson who wrote Waltzing Matilda and The Man from Snowy River.

Being a friend of Kim Shade is always a great adventure, but it ain’t free. - Dick Taylor, Artist and Musician

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A reader asked what made the Alamo Springs Cafe hamburger better than all the rest. That comment will inform my future writing about food. It caused me to realize that I had not, in all cases, done more than to say “just take my word for it”. This post will combine my reply to reader Bill with my “rules of travel” for food — and some future plans for “The Best I Ever Had”.

When I wrote about Charlene’s Seafood Chowder there was no room for doubt as to why it was better than any other I had eaten, but I missed that mark when writing about the Alamo Springs hamburger. Hamburgers are a little different because, more than other foods, I think they tend to be much the same. Here we are talking about so-called gourmet hamburgers and that lets the fast food joints out, although Fuddruckers probably considers theirs to be a gourmet hamburger – the couple of times I tried them I thought them to be just giant hamburgers. But I am not a big fan of hamburgers and don’t order them unless I have a compelling reason based on reported excellence, or there is nothing else on the menu that is as attractive. When I was still a teen farm boy I had the hamburger at Stan Musial and Biggie’s Restaurant because I couldn’t afford anything else and not even that. It was very good and certainly a memorable experience but I never felt the slightest urge to go back and do it again. In Brevard I have had decent Black Angus burgers at Big Mike’s and at Dugan’s Irish Pub, and The Falls Landing has an honest gourmet Black Angus burger (prepared by a chef) that is the best I have had in the Carolinas and possibly the best I’ve had outside of Texas but I don’t have an urge to pop in and have one.

The reasons that the Alamo Springs Café burger is the best I ever had are as follows:

• Fresh high quality ingredients including the bun, lettuce, tomato, onions, slaw; and the hot just-made on the premises potato chips were also the best I ever had.

• The large course grind beef burger was done to luscious perfection. It was still pink but the juices were clear so it was not cooked a moment past “top dead center”.

• All of the above was hot and delicious, well ordered and presented with a flair. Psycho-Logical factors do contribute to the enjoyment of all things and those factors are abundant at Alamo Springs, but if their meal was served to me at Burger King in Brevard, it would still be the best I ever had.

• Travel adventure adrenaline heightens awareness, among other things, and would have had my taste buds operating at their best.

• And, like a real estate appraiser, I had a number of good “comps” to support my appraisal.

• I have had the Alamo Springs Café hamburger once in 2011 and again in 2012 and I would not hesitate to drive 150 miles out of my way to pop in and have one again. For whatever it’s worth it is the best I ever had, and I might see Hillary Swank.

I have written “The Best I Ever Had” eight times and in each case I have eaten a large sample of the featured “dish” over the years. There are others for which my experience is not wide enough to declare a winner, or the results for any one finalist have not been uniform enough to declare. In those cases the research (eating that requires travel) continues. My next research projects are 1) Chicken Fried Steak,

and 2) the cuisine of the Upper Rio Grande Valley.

Rancho de Chimayo Restaurante on the old Santa Fe - Taos high road,
      Chimayo, New Mexico

If any of you have a nominee or suggestions for the future projects please “Comment”.

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From the writings of Thomas Traywick, ca 1950s, found in his papers. Presented to a Parent Teacher Organization in the mid 1950s. He was born in 1909.

A father was heard recently to say, “When I was a boy I did what my father wanted me to, and now that I’m a father I do what my children want me to.” This illustrates perfectly the plight of the present-day parent. They are indeed the forgotten people. They have never known what it was to call their lives their own!

A birth used to be called a “Blessed Event.” We used to say that God has given us a son or a daughter. Now it would seem more appropriate to say that God has given us to our sons and daughters.

Oh, for the good old days when parents know they were right--and children knew it too! Nowadays you read a dozen books on child-rearing--and you still don’t know what to do.

The amazing thing is that, according to the experts, everyone who was born before World War I was raised wrong. I wonder how the world survived these thousands and millions of years of parental dictatorship. Surely everybody must have had warped personalities and been full of neuroses. There couldn’t have been any normal people, the way they were raised. Or maybe it was normal to be abnormal and nobody knew the difference.

I sometimes think the schools have joined this conspiracy to undermine the confidence of the parent. Someone has defined a modern school teacher as “A person who treats a child like an adult--and a parent like a child.” Some of them look on parents as being just the machinery through which children are produced for the schools! And of course, a mere parent knows nothing about what a child should learn in school, or how he should be taught.

Parents are partly to blame for the schools’ taking over the function of the home. In their confusion and bewilderment and frustration over what to do with their children, they are overjoyed when summer vacation is through. Also when bus time comes on a school morning. Their insoluble problems are in the hands of the school and they can relax again. The schools are glorified babysitters.

I call on parents to re-assert their old time authority. I still believe God gives these children into our care and that, until they reach maturity, they are our responsibility; and we have the duty, God helping us, to order their lives. It actually seems that, in recent years, we’ve had a guilty conscience about bringing children into the world, and haven’t felt that God had much to do with the process! That is especially true since we have found out how to limit the number of our children and space them properly. I would remind you, however, that the process hasn’t changed since God made man. And I believe that God approves of “planned parenthood” so long as the planning is done prayerfully and unselfishly.

One of the hopeful trends of the last ten or fifteen years is the increase in the size of the family. The most frustrated parent in the world is the parent of one child. When the first one comes you try to read up on everything and you are afraid you’ll “warp his personality.” By the time the third one comes along you know that it’s your own personality that’s in danger of being warped. And it will be if you don’t assert yourself!

Children are pretty tough, physically and mentally. They don’t warp easy. Twenty years of raising pigs, calves, mule colts and little boys have convinced me that they are born the way they are and there’s not much you can do about their basic traits. All these child rearing books were written by people who had studied the neurotic and mentally sick and they concluded that what happened to these people was bad. They didn’t study the brothers, sisters, friends and relatives who had the same upbringing and developed into well adjusted citizens.

George Bernard Shaw has said that youth was such a wonderful thing to be wasted on our children. That is another way of saying that wisdom is not possible without experience. We parents may be conscious of our lack of wisdom, but let us realize that to turn children loose to work out their own destinies is criminal folly. In all humility let us pray for guidance, love them, and, if necessary, spank them; but by all means teach them respect for us as parents and for their elders in general.

What the present age needs is fewer frustrated parents and MORE FRUSTRATED CHILDREN!

Besides, lack of guidance will produce insecurity and neurosis as often as parental tyranny.

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From the writings of Thomas Traywick, ca 1990, with pictures found in his papers and those of Lib Traywick. He was born in 1909.

The year 1939, of course, was the most important year of my life, for it marked the merger of my life with that of Mary Elisabeth Deaver, my beloved partner for the rest of my life and the mother of our great family. From my point of view ours was a story-book relationship, both from the stand point of personal attraction and a strong belief in family. Lib, from the beginning took me to meet her wide family relationship and that strengthened my attraction to her. I was struck by how effortlessly all of her family joyously greeted each other and reveled in the enjoyment of their times together. That she was taller than I am was a dividend and meeting her 6’ 3” brother sealed the deal. Our fine children bear out that we each made a good choice, and the boys are all taller than I. She brought into my life and my family an emphasis on things of the heart, an emphasis that was to strengthen as years passed.

Our marriage began the decade of the 40’s, which was different in that and many other respects from the 30’s. Domestically, married life and the births of the three boys dominated the picture. My being an only son and the head of a farming business kept me out of the war, which began in Europe with the invasion of Poland shortly after our wedding. It is hard to conceive the way that a beloved wife and three beloved young sons changed my life.

Before we were married, Lib, on learning that my father’s mother was named Susannah Barkley, had decided that we would have a daughter with that name. For a long while it seemed that we wouldn’t get to use the name, but on October 9, 1953, less than a year after our moving into our new house, Susannah joined us. Our cup was truly overflowing.

1941

1946

1954

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When I signed on to help with harvesting the 2013 hay crop at the Shade Ranch in the Little Missouri grasslands south of Medora, North Dakota, I knew that horse teams were used there and so I had visions that came straight from the pages of Ivan Doig’s 1979 memoir, “This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind,” and his novels about homesteading and ranching near the Rocky Mountain Front.

Although Kim Shade does use a horse team to feed hay in the winter, for the harvest he uses aging tractors and equipment to “put up” several hundred acres of hay for as many as 400 head of cows and yearlings. Kim claimed to not know how many acres it was but by time and motion I calculated the acres to be in excess of 400 and the two of us got it cut and baled or stacked in 18 consecutive days interrupted by three heavy storms and some mechanical failures. It is easy to see that it would have provided employment for many horses and people if it had been done with horse teams. I have posted earlier this year about the 2013 Shade Ranch hay harvest in “A Good Slow Rain On the Great American Outback” and “The Best Things Can’t Be Told.”

As I talked with Kim about haying with teams he said that the guru is a man named Buck Bucholz down in the Nebraska Sand Hills. When I started the research for this post, I discovered that there is not much out there on the subject. At the web site for Rural Heritage Magazine, I did find a post written by an “rdennis” about a horseman named Buck Bucholz or “Buck Buckles.” Here is the post quoted with permission from Rural Heritage Magazine.

Buck Bucholz

Posted by rdennis at 2012-02-13 10:26:56

Got to thinking after my last post on here, I mentioned Buck Bucholz from down in the northwestern corner of Nebraska. He is one of the few who was still using teams to put up and feed hay. He is a legend in that area and around these part and a hero to many of us who know about him and his horsemanship. Maybe you folks have never heard of him.

I have a friend, who, years back, made an appointment to go see Buck and maybe buy a team from him. It was middle of the winter and Kim, my friend, got there a bit before daylight. Buck stepped out of the house and told him to come in and have a cup of coffee and maybe a bite to eat. They did. Then they walked out to the barn where 6 Percheron’s were standing, already harnessed, in their stalls as Buck had already been out before Kim had arrived.

Buck opened the big doors wide and then walked up and untied every horse in succession and they walked out the door by them selves. Kim said when they got to the last one, the turned him loose and then followed him outside and there were all of the horses standing in the yard, lined up as they would be for 6 abreast. Buck walked up and hooked all his lines and cross ties up and then drove to a hay sled and they went and fed cows.

Buck told of having a set of teams one time who were so good and well trained that he decided to see just how long he could drive them while feeding and not have to pick up a line. Just use voice commands alone. Someone asked how it worked out., He said, “Worked real good for about a month then I just had to pick up one line to help straighten out one horse.” I do not think he was lying or bragging. Just stating facts.

Yes, that is horsemanship.

Response by Uncle Joe at 2012-02-13 11:11:49

rdennis:

You are right. He is an amazing horseman. We have his name as Buck Buckles, however.

We have featured photos of Buck and his Percherons several times in our draft horse calendar. Here are two photos taken by his wife, Joan, so you can all see what rdennis is talking about.

Joe

Response by Keith at 2012-02-13 22:40:13

Nice pictures. What is the apparatus in the second photo?

Response by Bret4207 at 2012-02-14 07:35:05

Nice to see some drafty Percherons. No horses on stilts there.

Response by Marshall at 2012-02-14 08:14:58

Keith, In the second picture that is a knuckleboom with a claw on the end. He gets a claw full of hay and swings it around and drops it on the ground. That is the way he feeds his hay.

Response by Klaus Karbaumer at 2012-02-14 10:13:20

Joe, I have to confess that years ago, when I still lived in Bavaria, I used the second picture as one of the transparencies for the overhead projector in presentations I gave to local horse clubs about the amazing things that were going on in farming in the USA, since the reputation of US farming was that it was all tractorized and that horses had completely disappeared.

Response by rdennis at 2012-02-14 10:39:39

Keith, as Marshall said, that is how he feeds the hay. they call it a sled and pull the hay on using the team, with a chain or cable that goes from the far side of the bed of the sled, around the stack and back across the bed to the horses. As the horse move forward the hay moves on to the sled and the sled can kind of be drug under the load also, they tell me. I have never done it that way, tho’ I used to load lose hay from Haybuster stackers, with a needle and thread. The bed of the sled can be tipped to the ground, from side t side, so as to make it easier to load the hay. works good on them big flats they have in that country. Not so good up here, tho’ I think I could make one work. They did not use to use the hydro fork on the front, just drag forks or pitch forks. One man can feed a lot of cattle with this rig.

Sorry Uncle Joe, I wondered about my spelling of the last name. But knew if I spelled it that way most would understand the way it is pronounced. Never thought about you having pictures of him. Somewhere out there on the internet is a nice video a TV station made about him a year or so back.

Speaking of hydro forks. I had a friend who fed with teams in Northern Colorado. Wagons until the snow got too deep, which was soon in most winters. They put up and fed the big square bales. they had a hydro fork made and setting on a set of runners with a gas motor to run it. You pulled up next to the stack and then started the hydro fork and used it to load the big bales onto the bed. When you needed to move it, if it wasn’t frozen down, you could push and pull with the fork to slide the unit closer or farther away for ease of loading. Looked like a slick set up from the pictures I saw.

---

The apparatus in the first picture is called a Beaverslide. The horse team pulls the slide full of hay up the ramp, and that is how the hay gets hoisted to the top of those large loose haystacks. Click on this Beaverslide link to see the explanation.

When I first read this post I was pretty sure I knew who the writer was referring to when he credited his friend Kim. Then it occurred to me that “rdennis” might be Robert Dennis and Robert Dennis sounded mighty familiar. Closer examination (Google) reminded methat Robert Dennis is Kim’s cowboy-poet-and-songwriter friend and it was his latest CD that Kim played in the pickup truck.

Comment on Old Ones Dream

07/20/2018 at 06:01 AM: Marble Mountain Ranch said...

Good read and love these horse pictures, thank you for posting.

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The Quest

Nine months ago, a proper gestation period I think, I announced that I would continue my quest for “The Best Chicken Fried Steak I Ever Had”. I know that your pulse has quickened and you murmur “be still my heart.”

The Territory

According to Wikipedia:

“Chicken fried steak ... is a breaded cutlet dish consisting of a piece of steak (tenderized cube steak) coated with seasoned flour and pan-fried. ...The precise origins of the dish are unclear, but many sources attribute its development to German and Austrian immigrants to Texas in the 19th century, who brought recipes for Wiener Schnitzel from Europe to the USA.”

The Search

I dined on CFS at well regarded restaurants in the Texas Hill Country and the Big Bend area of Texas, from Wimberley to Marfa. Though the quest spanned 4 trips in three years, I didn’t find as many mentionable offerings as I would have liked and that is because you don’t often find CFS on the menu of well regarded restaurants. I wish the time had been available to count the pickup trucks parked in front of roadside cafes and diners and then sample the fare accordingly, but it wasn’t which is my loss and doubtless limited the range of results.

No Conclusion

On the separate trips, I had real good CFS at the Wimberley Cafe twice, twice at Reata in Alpine, and at Jett’s Grill in the Hotel Paisano in Marfa. The atmosphere of the Marfa meal was the best and the food was boldly seasoned to my liking, but the others were good and I added salt and pepper. Because the recipe for Chicken Fried Steak is so simple (5 ingredients including the lard), there is not a lot of variation in quality in quality restaurants. I don’t believe that it is a meal that is a good candidate for “The Best I Ever Had”.

Reata, Alpine, Texas -Photo by Old Ones Dream

To date I have never met a Chicken Fried Steak that I didn’t like.

Next, I will prepare it myself and test my theory. Should I use Alton Brown’s recipe?

-Photo courtesy of The Food Network

After Note: As I look back on this piece from a vantage point 12 years later, the meal at Jett’s Grill in the Hotel Paisano in Marfa was the most memorable. I would love to have it again.

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It was Friday and a sunny day in Gainesville, Florida where I was enrolled in the College of Accounting and Finance. I had finished class for the day and had negotiated the six lanes of traffic across the street to the student union to grab some lunch. I had my chicken soup and saltines and water by the time a student came running in and exclaimed “They shot Kennedy in Dallas”. And that is all we knew for a while because TVs running CNN and Fox were not on every wall of every building like they are now. I ate my lunch and drove the several blocks to the Herbert residence (friends of the family) where I watched Walter Cronkite deliver the bad news

Governor and Mrs. John Connally, of Texas, with the Kennedys, in the Presidential limousine, in Dallas, November 22, 1963.- The New Yorker Magazine, November 4, 2013; Closer Than That, by Adam Gopnik.

My apartment in Gainesville was the dead husbands workshop in the back of a widow’s garage north of town and it was fitted with a cot, a bath, a hotplate, and a carpenter’s workbench and some tools. The widow invited me to join her to watch the news, the Herberts did as well, and by the time it was over about ten days later it had included an interminable funeral train.

Whoa, there you go again.

There was no funeral train, that was Robert F Kennedy five years later. JFK’s body was flown from Dallas to DC, the White House, the Capital Rotunda, and then the funeral mass on November 25, 1963. It seemed like 10 years as the nation and I wallowed in our grief in front of mostly black and white TVs.

And through all of this I would have bet my bottom dollar that it was the result of a conspiracy to rid the country of a good man. In fact I wrote a sophomoric paragraph describing that “fact” and the consequences. Fortunately I can’t lay my hands on that writing. But for me, as is the case with many I think, these events changed my life. It came at a crucial time in my academic and professional careers and I was distracted by those 3 days and the following Thanksgiving Holiday and I never recovered. And I wouldn’t trade that for anything, because if I had continued on that career track I would have eventually felt as if I had burned out and sold out, and now I would be surrounded by a different home and family and I really do love the one I’ve got. So perhaps everything I am I owe to President Kennedy’s bad day in Dallas.

And to some extent the same can be said about President Kennedy. HIs legacy was sealed by the events of that day. Some said at the time that he was troubled politically and was in Texas mending political fences, and that he was on track to be a one term President. None said that some people wanted him dead. Until he was dead and then theory abounded. Today, fifty years later, he is not the man we thought we knew - the King in Camelot.

He was a graceful charismatic man with a great speech writer. His was the Bay of Pigs. His was the Cuban Missile Crisis that was promoted as a great back ‘em down and send ‘em home show down conducted by him in the teeth of the threat of nuclear holocaust. We know now, and the Defense Department and Department of State knew then, that he appeased the Soviets, against the unanimous opinion of his advisors, by complying with their demand that we remove our own ballistic missiles from Turkey. His was all of the serial womanizing with student interns and gangster’s molls and movie stars and the fraternizing with mob kingpins. None can realistically be a fan of Jacqueline and one of John as well. In 2010 Christopher Hitchens said: “If this vulgar hoodlum president had not been survived by a widow of exceptional bearing and grace, his reputation would probably now be dirt”.

Adam Gopnik’s current piece in The New Yorker is the “A Critic At Large” column and deals with the story of the assassination and the 50 years of paranoia in terms of the hundreds of books that have been written on the subject. There is an article on CNN.Com by Thom Patterson that is useful as well. Both of these treatments come to the same conclusion that of all the conspiracy theories, the only one that cannot be debunked and probably never will be is that Lee Oswald, while acting alone, was nonetheless under, at the least, mind control by the CIA — kind of Manchurian Candidate style.

But meanwhile back at the story, I was in Gainesville, Florida, and I never recovered academically from that week, and I am thankful for that — it changed my life.

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Leaving the Farm

Mother Earth

     to ashes held for years on a mantle place

          but not the first hostage period 

     at the foot of the ancient Scarp

Just finally freed

     scattered on the Little River

     at Corn Mill Shoals 

          spin dancing with the keeper

          broken by the dart of a Brookie 

     like the butterfly in Brazil 

          shot the chute then

     Bridal Veil Falls 

          High Falls

               Triple Falls 

                    Hooker Falls

Confluence with the French Broad, Tennessee, Ohio

     to join with Father

          of Waters 

     then to Mother of all Life

She always loved the sea.

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- Action photo courtesy of Carmen’s Lunch Bar

It was the first Wednesday in April 2015 and we walked barefoot on the beach at Fort Pickens and watched the Blue Angels practice. Stoked on adrenaline and Vitamin D. we found lunch back in Oldtown Pensacola at Carmen’s Lunch Bar. Check the web site and read Mari Carmen Joseph’s remarkable “creation” story and delicious menu.

I had the Spanish Lump Crab Cazuela, which is Mari Carmen’s gluten free version of the Spanish Lump Crab Melt (chorizo, manchego, lemon saffron, arugula). It was the best crab offering I ever tasted.

- Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

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The Bakken, the largest oil formation in the Western Hemisphere, encompasses some 25,000 square miles of North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. The center of the activity in North Dakota is Williston and when I rode AmTrak out in June I was counseled to avoid Williston and de-train a couple of hours earlier at Minot instead. During the month I spent in the grasslands at Medora, we were on the edge of all of the activity and the sunset was often obscured by the dustcloud 10,000 feet in the air drifting south. On June 23rd as I drove from Minot to Medora, my “one trick pony” rental car would have been in the first photograph below. But there is no need for me to tell you about that ant’s nest of economic and ecologic activity up there on the Bakken Formation because the local rancher, singer, songwriter Jesse Veeder tells it better. You have seen the story in National Geographic Magazine, now here you have it from Jesse.

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Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

music, poetry, musings, photography and philosophy from a woman who found her way back home and wants you to come over for a hike and a cocktail.

Sunday Column: A string of headlights heading toward Boomtown…

Posted on November 10, 2013

This town we drive to for groceries and work, it buzzes and hums and creaks and groans and crashes and grows and creeps in on the neighbors and the wheat fields and cattle pastures every day.

And it’s filled. Filled to the brim with industry and progress, locals and non-locals, passers-through, brilliant minds and lost souls, people looking for a place and people who’ve found their place long ago.

It consumes us. This oil industry. The way that it kicks up dust. The way it brings wealth and eats up the landscape and changes the horizon. Some say it’s bad. Some say it’s good. Most understand that nothing comes without a price.

Nothing is simply black or white.

I allow myself to ponder it because it’s fascinating and it’s my life.

And the world seems to be pondering it too, grabbing for the stories so that they might be the mind to reveal some sort of hidden truth in the one place in America the economy is booming. The one place in America small towns are bursting at the seams.

The one place in America there is an abundance of hope that if we can all just keep working we might pull ourselves up and be able to take root and stay planted or grow wings and fly the hell out of here.

Me, I’m on the side of the roots.

So I spend my days telling my story and listening for others’. What I see in Boomtown, what I think we look like–mothers and men, children and teachers, fifth generation farm families and oil industry professionals, young men with big plans, good men gone bad, bad men starting over and women on their own, leaders and preachers and helpers and people in need, lonely people, happy people, fed up people, inventive people, people in love, people who’ve lost and people who will. not. give. up. My best friends, my husband, these kids’ future–this is not what the world gets to see in the headlines.

Between tragic car wrecks and the dramatic stories that beg to be told of the nameless men who’ve arrived in the wild, wild west in search of their cut of black gold there are people, people like us, building lives and drinking beer, meeting up for a movie, holding open doors, buying steak for dinner and loving each other.

Coming Home: Living in a town of labels, assumptions

by Jessie Veeder

11-10-13 - Photos by Jesse Veeder

Fargo Forum (the piece is no longer available on the website.)

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Thomas brought Libba and newborn Joe B home from the Tri-County Hospital and I remember (in monochrome) the simultaneous delivery of a new clothes washing machine. Watch out! Here we go again because that was July 1945 and according to some sources washing machine production had been suspended by the war effort no later than June 1942 and did not resume until 1947 (or possibly 1946). Thomas could have found a way to purchase a washing machine at practically the instant the war in Europe ended. It could have been second hand. Manufacturers were allowed to continue research and development during the war so the machine could have been available as a favor from the local automobile and appliance dealer Hub Covington, etc.; or etc.. Or this memory might be the combination of two or more childhood recollections; or the information in the internet sources might just be wrong.

The following is a quote from WikiPedia.

In 1942 a rationing system was begun to guarantee minimum amounts of necessities to everyone (especially poor people) and prevent inflation. Tires were the first item to be rationed in January 1942 because supplies of natural rubber were interrupted. Gasoline rationing proved an even better way to allocate scarce rubber. By 1943 one needed government issued ration coupons to purchase typewriters, coffee, sugar, gasoline, bicycles, clothing, fuel oil, silk, nylon, stoves, shoes, meat, cheese, butter, lard, margarine, canned foods, dried fruits, jam, and many other items. Some items—like new automobiles and appliances were no longer made. The rationing system did not apply to used goods (like clothes or cars).

Again from WikiPedia:

The War Production Board (WPB) ordered the temporary end of all civilian automobile sales on 1 January 1942, leaving dealers with one half million unsold cars. Ration boards grew in size as they began evaluating automobile sales in February (only certain professions, such as doctors and clergymen, qualified to purchase the remaining inventory of new automobiles), typewriters in March, and bicycles in May. Automobile factories stopped manufacturing civilian models by early February 1942 and converted to producing tanks, aircraft, weapons, and other military products, with the United States government as the only customer. By June 1942 companies also stopped manufacturing for civilians metal office furniture, radios, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and sewing machines.

Rationing in the U. S. ended in 1946. Rationing in the United Kingdom continued until July 1954.

The car that Thomas, LIbba, and Joe B came home from the hospital in that day was a black 1941 Ford 4 door sedan that had likely been purchased new in that year prior to Pearl Harbor. The rear door latch was on the front of the door and it was hinged at the rear so that if the door was opened at speed it would catch the wind like a sail and open wide with a jerk that might launch anyone holding on to the door handle out into the world. That is exactly what happened to brother JD on the town square in the rain with groceries just purchased at the Dixie Home Store. A little speed and centrifugal force and a life lesson was learned by everyone involved. JD was not hurt much if any.

The next car was a 1949 Mercury 4 Door Sedan (purchased from Cliff Morgan’s East End Motors) with the same rear hinged rear door configuration. One day in the very early 1950s I helped to unload the backseat of the car after it returned from town and I left the right rear door open while I carried armloads inside. Before I returned Thomas drove the car into the brick garage with the door open. I had started working on the farm and he took deductions from my pay each week until I had paid in full for replacing the car door, which took a really long time. That was the first time that I fully understood the Thomas Code. It would not be the last time I saw it at work though it happened rarely.

We did get Joe B and a washing machine at the end of World War II. I would love to know if Virginia’s memory of her family’s stories can shed light on the timing, and how was the household laundry done prior to that day? I remember well seeing lard rendered in a wash pot over an open fire. I also remember soap being made from lard and lye and/or wood ash. I think that I remember Glen being involved in one or the other or both. But I don’t have a separate memory of wash day. Are you there Virginia?

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I feel certain that some readers of my recently published collection “Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” were surprised that I wrote of my father as I did. Among those surprised could be some that knew him as I did, others that knew him under different circumstances, and some that didn’t know him.

My surprise is, that, in the several months since publication, no one—my siblings included—has discussed with me my relationship with “Thomas,” and how I came to write about it. I hope that means that they read the book through, and saw me seem to reconcile—to come to terms—with my dominant, detached, parent.

As we each made our way through the past “Father’s Day,” we saw tributes in the media, social and mass, to Fathers past and present.

“I feel lucky not to have a father so wonderful that I feel I could never live up to his example or so terrible that he haunts me. Maybe it’s easier to become yourself in reaction to someone who’s neither evil nor saintly. Might the middling fathers be, in a practical sense, the best ones?” - Ada Calhoun

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The sausage that we made from our own Berkshire pigs when I was growing up, and during my young adulthood, was the best that I ever had. I thought once that we had found its equal, but it was temporary. It is difficult to sustain that kind of quality on a commercial scale. That flavor and quality became casualty to growth.

On the other hand, we recently picked up local pastured pork sausage and pork chops from Trofel, a health food store in Cheticamp, Nova Scotia, Canada that we had shopped in before and liked a lot. We were not disappointed. The meat was fresh and flavorful still as we remembered it from 5 years before. The quality had been sustained.

Perhaps you can’t go home again, but the sausage that we made on the farm when we were young can be revisited. You grind fresh lean meat from humanely raised and processed pigs, pigs with Berkshire and other breeds with high meat quality in their parentage, seasoned perfectly with salt, black pepper, red pepper and a suggestion of sage. It should contain only enough fat to grease the skillet when it cooks, and you will know it when you have arrived. It is consistently the freshest and leanest taste ever, and the best I ever had.

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Queen Esther “Rae” Franklin 1932 - 2016

-Photo courtesy of her family

Queen Esther became a member of our new small family 50 years ago in the late 1960s – Tanne and the children and I called her Rae. Rae quickly became our friend. It was a joy to watch Rae and Tanne and then Cile all work together like sisters. I have heard Tanne say that Rae was her best friend during those years, and that the hardest part of leaving the Place in 1984 was to leave Rae. I am sure that Cile would have said much the same. I wish that Cile could have written this piece.

Queen Esther is a wonderful name for her as it would have been for earlier kinswomen of hers such as: her Mother “Miss Julia” Muck Franklin; and her Aunts and Cousins Rhoda Franklin James, Emma Franklin Hilliard and Blanche Franklin Spell – tall, generous noble women.

Here in the Edisto Fork where Cooper Swamp, Snake Swamp and the Two Rivers get together to help form the ocean, families of all colors have toiled together for progress, hopefully (although slowly) progress for all. At times like this you might be tempted to quote William Faulkner about the past, and Dr. M. L. King about the future, but I would rather say that the love and friendship of Rae and her ancestors changed the lives of our families, that her molding of our children’s character has changed their lives and the lives of some of those around them, so that Rae in her life has contributed to Dr. King’s prophesy “. . . the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice”.

Queen Esther Franklin was a tall noble generous woman loved by Cile and Tanne and the children Penina, Oliver, Deaver and Tatum. We like to think that she loved us.

We will never forget her.

__________________

Adapted from reflections offered August 19, 2016 as part of the celebration gathering for Rae at Edisto Fork United Methodist Church.

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At long last.

“Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” pays homage to an Agrarian time and place. It tells of the passing of that Time and the loss of that Place—undespairing, seeking no pity—through the eyes of the writer, the third generation of his placeholder family. It is memoir of a Place in the Lowcountry, and the inhabitants: animal, vegetable, and human—and how the land shaped them as they strove to shape the land.

The storyteller tells tales from the family oral tradition, and from the early writings of family members. He tells stories from his own memory and from theirs. He tells the stories that aren’t already lost, and alludes to those that have been lost. Throughout the telling he threads recognition of the unreliable nature of memory, particularly within family dynamic and dysfunction (coming to terms with a parent).

And, so goes five generations of story, seeded with the hopeful wisdom of the old ones, informed by reading and travel, presided over by Thomas—the elder—and his code of self-serving. The setting is a Place on the Orangeburg Scarp, in the plain of the Edisto River fork. The telling includes the lay of the land, the fields, the allure of the woods, the work performed, and the food—including recipes for the preparation of the mid-day meals.

“Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork” is available from your local independent bookseller, the publisher, and most of the other usual suspects.

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Novosibirsk in 2017 - Photo Courtesy of Wikipedia

When we headed out to the Maritimes last July (2012), the stuff I took with me included an MS Windows PC laptop so that I could remotely get the monthly bills out and production payroll done, and I took my new pride and joy MacBook Air for everything else. Soon after arriving in Nova Scotia the Windows laptop went graveyard dead (I did have a backup of everything) leaving me somewhat crippled in my ability to remotely access the Windows network at the office. The immediate problem was solved by implementation of Parallels Desktop on the MacBook, which amounts to running a Windows PC in a virtual partition on the Mac. That enabled me to run the business applications that I needed during our trip (Bay of Fundy, Cape Breton, and Newfoundland). Once I got home there was some fine tuning to do because my old HP LaserJet P1006 printer, notorious for not playing well with others (printer sharing), would not print correctly from the Parallels box.

I worked some on the phone with Parallels technical support. Then the case was escalated and I got a call from a Seattle area code and Dmitry was on the phone. We worked together for a while and the problem was solved. I asked Dmitry if he was in the Seattle area or off-shore. He laughed and said he was “half-way around the world in Siberia” and had me Google the Wikipedia link to Novosibirsk. I said OK I’ve got it and Dmitry said to me “see the tall building with the big banner to the left of the highway?”. I replied “Yes”. Dmitry said to me “the banner says Parallels - wave to me!”. We had a good laugh and I asked him about Lake Baikal and he said it is a long drive from Novosibirsk. I told him that I had long wished to visit Lake Baikal while riding on the Trans-Siberian Railway. He said “It is very cool ride…, lots of food, …and girls!”

I told him that I would call him when I got ready to get my ticket, and he could give me the tour.

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On a Sunday afternoon about 1950, we were in the backlot behind the stables. Thomas and his town friend Mac and I were witnessing the mating of a Berkshire boar and sow so that pedigree could be attested to and registration papers could be issued for any resulting piglets. The coupling of most farm animals is kind of wham-bam with no thank you ma’am, but that is not true with pigs who seem to enjoy it more. A lull in the conversation had been reached but that was never a problem with Mac who exclaimed; “you know Thomas, one thing that has got the right name is a hog . . . and another is a goose!”. I don’t recall any comment in response from Thomas. His eyes suddenly twinkled, but his lips remained closed and on the level.

As an Oldone I would not disagree with Mr. Mac and would add “ . . . and another is Atonement . . . and Redemption”.

Berkshire Sow and Pigs at the Farm circa 1950

Berkshire Boar on the job at the Farm circa 1950

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I have walked in eight decades – by accidents of birth – and my memory is, at best, incomplete. I feel certain that there are things that I have experienced and things that I have learned that I am mistaken about. Such is memory.

I often wish I could ask about events in our past and I think for a fleeting moment “I need to ask mother”. But Libba has been gone some decades.

I had long known the old Chinese proverb “When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground”. I have experienced the loss. I then learned that it is an old African proverb – so there you go. It is, nonetheless, an important concept in Senegalese or Chinese; except that it seems sexist don’t you think? Let’s just say that when an old one dies a library burns.

My very first memory (monochrome), took place at the Northwest corner of the Farm compound where the large cast iron bell for “calling all hands” was mounted. Thomas was away on this day and Libba “called all hands” and tore down an old barn that had been falling down for as long as she could endure. They removed it by the time the squire returned. I don’t recall any aftermath. As we know it is conceivable that he didn’t notice. According to Libba this day took place during late winter 1941. I was born a month or so later. So there you go?

I am the oldest one in the immediate family, so if anyone ever wishes to ask, and my library has burned – then I hope this “blog” will have helped.

This post is a slightly edited version of a page that was posted at the birth of this blog in January 2013.

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After a week at Five Islands and a week at Parker’s Cove we moved over to the Halifax area at the juncture of the South Shore and the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. Halifax is a beautiful historic city with much to see and do with a great music scene in the bars down on the docks. An urban soul could find enough to keep them occupied for several days. Our rural souls just hit the high spots, being sure to visit the farmer’s market, and got out of town at the end of the day.

A pint and a lobster roll in my Indian Taco (Spearfish Creek) ball cap.

Our Halifax streets and harbor chariot.

While in the Halifax area we visited the harbor town of Lunenburg which was established in 1753 and is a World Heritage Site. It was the weekend of the schooner races and while having lunch we had an up close view of the authentic schooners promenading the harbor in a stiff breeze. We saw the Bluenose II in dry dock. Take a look at these websites if you are nautical.

We drove around the Aspotagan Peninsula and Margarets Bay to Peggys Cove which is one of the most photographed spots in North America. Margaret’s Bay is the site of the crash of Swissair Flight 111 in 1998 and there are memorials both at Peggys Cove and at Baywater on the western shore of the bay opposite Peggys Cove. All of this country is picturesque, but some of our photos look like there are ants crawling over rocks — those are other tourists — a job for Photoshop I suppose.

Peggys Cove

Notice that the tide line is “normal” here on the Atlantic compared to the radical tides 50 miles away on the other side of the Island in the Bay of Fundy.

Saint John’s Anglican Church, Peggys Cove

All of our photos of the photogenic Peggys Point light are crawling with people and therefore not appealing. Check out the web site.

This marked the end of our stay on the main island of Nova Scotia.

We departed the next day on the almost 400Km journey to Baddeck, on Cape Breton Island. Baddeck is a thriving tourist village located conveniently in the center of the Island. It is on the North shore of Bras d”Or Lake, an inland sea which cleaves Cape Breton Island from end to end. Baddeck would be our headquarters for most of the rest of our stay in the Maritimes. From there we took week long trips to the Cape Breton Highlands and across Cabot Strait to Newfoundland. The most remarkable points of interest that are readily accessible from Baddeck are:

Highland Village, Iona, Nova Scotia, a living history museum and cultural centre that celebrates the Gaelic experience in Nova Scotia. This is one of the best executed and most informative reenactment museums that we have seen. Don’t miss it.

Louisbourg National Historic Site, Louisbourg, Nova Scotia. The largest reconstruction project in North America, the original settlement was founded in 1713 by the French and developed over several decades as a center for fishing and trade. The site was besieged twice before being destroyed by the English in the 1760s. Archeologists are reconstructing the fortress as it was in the 18th century.

The Baddeck Gathering Ceilidhs. Every evening from June to mid-October enjoy Cape Breton fiddle music King Cole Tea and Oat cakes for refreshment.

Normaway Inn on Egypt Road in the Margaree Valley “Three Fiddler Concert, Ceilidh and Square Dance” from June to October.

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