Talk Thursday: Semi-True Stories

When I was a kid the Cascades song, Rhythm of the Rain would run through my head endlessly. Which isn’t bad if you’re not trying to go to sleep. But usually I was, tossing and turning, thumping my pillow, and listening to the darn song in my head – verse after verse, chorus after chorus, over and over again. Wide awake.

A bit later on in life I learned to alter my breathing to fall asleep. And a few years after that when we moved to Oregon I would lay in bed at night and wander the streets of my old neighborhood mentally naming each kid, in each house – in order. Then I would name their dogs, their cats, parents, sixty houses, I got pretty good at it. Needless to say, forty years later I can still do it, except it doesn’t put me to sleep anymore. Now I just take pills and say my prayers.

What I did get from the whole exercise (which expanded into blocks away from my neighborhood) was a good memory, or at least the realization that I have a fairly good memory. Apparently better than most, I thought everyone had this good of a memory – people like my friend Pam make me see otherwise.

The one thing I can’t remember is the first grade. I remember kindergarten, crap I remember the first day of kindergarten (but it cost me a nickel if I said crap.) I have a cute little picture of me from that year. I remember my teacher. I remember being bummed at the end of the year because it was summer of all darn things and there was no school (we didn’t get bummed, that actually came several years later.)

My first grade – almost a complete blank. I know my teacher was Miss Saurdeaux (in my head it is Miss Sourdough) she was young and blonde. Tada that is it! I have no school picture from that year and I’m fairly damn certain that is the reason it is a large blank in my memory.

Except one day – the day they took the school pictures. Yep, I remember that very day, because I was home sick with the mumps. It was a sunny November day, I was wearing my Halloween costume (really Girl Scout’s Honor – well except I’d not been a Girl Scout yet, or even a Brownie) mom had gotten me an angel costume that year… remember when you could get flannel Halloween costumes that miraculously became jammies? Been there.

Anyway, it was late morning when my mother became panicked because Butch was missing. I don’t mean he was suppose to be in the front yard missing, I mean he wasn’t to be found anywhere in the neighborhood (which was the afore mentioned three block cul-de-sac of sixty homes) and his trike was missing. Yes, trike he was four years old. Come to think of it Mrs. Taylor couldn’t find Donny, and Mrs. Winters was missing a Lance (it was a blessing really). The three had suddenly disappeared – Butch, the eldest by a year or so was the ringleader – the neighbors were sure.

My mother called the police; her panic increased she was stuck between staying with her sick child and combing the streets looking for her missing child. The cops on the other hand were scouring everywhere within a six block radius for the missing miscreants. I was languishing of the mumps in my Halloween Angel jammies, watching Sheriff John (it was lunch time.)

Mr. Taylor (they lived two houses down) came home and was just about to join the search when a black and white pulled in front of our house with Lance and Donny in the back seat, trikes jutting from the trunk. Yes my brother was safe, but they needed help.

A few days before a little boy a few blocks away had gotten lost in the storm system for a day and a half. In La Mirada the storm culvers are massive concrete structures that run for miles under the streets. It had been feared that the three had some how found their way into the storm system and were lost. A smart officer had decided that was a bit too evolve for three toddlers and checked the local grocery stores. Nope, no trikes and kids at Safeway (which would have been the much preferred location, no big streets to cross.) None, at the liquor store (personally I loved the candy counter at the liquor store.) Across the street at Boys Market (clearly the name should have been a hint) the officer found three trikes jammed in the phone booths outside the store. Why inside the phone booths? They didn’t want their trikes discovered (there’s a hot market out there for bashed and battered trikes) and stolen. Or maybe they didn’t want to be found by the cops.

What was definitely known was that Butch was in big trouble. Not only had he crossed La Mirada Boulevard with his rag tag team of lost boys, but he was refusing to get into the car with a stranger. In fact he wouldn’t even talk to the stranger (except to say he’s not allowed to talk to strangers) and yes, to him that meant the cop was a stranger – no talk.

I don’t remember what happened when Mr. Taylor brought him home, because I was sick and still had the mumps. Hey, I was only six, give me a break. It was while I was in the first grade and Crap! I can’t even remember that year.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: The Fabric of Connections

For the better part of fifteen years I lived in the same neighborhood. Six kids on my block were in Mrs. Espinosa’s kindergarten class. I remember Michael and I sitting on the flagstone BBQ in my backyard staring at the school on the Mesa waiting for the morning kindergarten to be over so we could go to school. Excitement, I doubt I slept the night before. Our moms walked us – holding hands, envelops with milk money pinned to our shirts down the hill and the four blocks to the school. Five of those six kids graduated in 1974 - together.

Growing up we ran barefoot and wild, roaming our neighborhood from dawn till way past dark during summer playing hide and seek, ditch-it (on bikes), and Red Rover (not on bikes – duh!) There were swim parties at the Taylors and the Meyers, neighborhood sleepovers in my back yard, and when we were older there were parties- birthday, graduation, and finally my going away party.

Several years ago Ducky and I went back to La Mirada, to my old neighborhood. Despite 28 years past some of my old neighbors still lived there. Our names are still etched in the corner piece where Mr. Timmons had cemented because we spun on the street pole so much it wobbled and leaned. All of the olive trees are gone, pink stucco has replaced much of the avocado greens and butter yellows once worn by the track houses and now looking at the three blocks that made up our neighborhood, an area that had seemed so huge to me before, was in truth really quite small.

On September 26th several of us gathered again in Las Vegas for a reunion. It had been in my mind several years to invite all of the kids I grew up with to a gathering of sorts. Ducky and I had flown in just that day. My sister, her husband and their youngest son (he’s 28) had been in Vegas since Thursday, I was looking forward to hooking up with them for margaritas after dinner that night.

Never close to my cousins, I was envious of friends who had close relationships with their. I had none of my own to claim visual ownership to. So Judy and I became cousins. To this day she is my cousin, Psam calls her Aunt Judy, and despite time and distance we have remained close. Judy brought Lori with her for a long weekend. It was Judy that Ducky and I first saw as we checked in.

Despite having just said I had no cousins to be friends with, that isn’t entirely true. I have one cousin who is my age. Lynnie Furby. He lives in Ohio. See there’s the distance factor. But for one year Lynnie lived with us, went to seventh grade with me, made friends with my friends and then he moved back to Ohio at the end of school in 1970. Yes, it has been forty years since I’ve seen him, or really had much contact with him. Seeing him made me feel the loss again, while regaining him and his wife. I won’t lose them again.

Michael showed up looking like his dad. We’d played doctor together when we must have been four or so, I wonder if he remembers? I’m sure he remembers I broke is race car set in a snit when I was about six. Pretty bratty of me, I’ve often contemplated sending him a new one out of the blue.

Pammy was the sheltered kid in the neighborhood, but I really liked her. I have three songs that inevitably bring her to mind so I think of her often. She brought her husband and daughter along for the trip. Very down to earth, smiling people.

Growing up there were six Morin kids: Paul (Gene), Mike, Dale, Vicki, Julie, Janice. Sadly Paul passed of a heart attach July 29th. Mike, Dale, and Janice all showed up in Vegas bringing spouses and grown children.

Cheryl lived on the fringes of our neighborhood, but she and her brother Rod were always around. Her dad having passed just two weeks before it had been questionable if she’d come – but she did.

Eleven and company gathered three weeks ago in Vegas and had dinner, relived moments of our past, but more importantly we caught up on the people who’d been important to us on the road to becoming who we are today. They are my past, a part of my present, and thankful a part of my future.

Sadly my pictures did not come out as well as I’d have liked.

Sith,
Cele

100 Things About Me – 2009

1) I am peaceful,
2) Well maybe not if you’re one of my exes.
3) I’ve been eyeing a solar water fountain for my new garden since last summer
4) It is the only thing I wanted for my birthday
5) Well, except chocolate and that is a given.
6) I got a lot of truffles and a chocolate bear for Valentines day.
7) Let’s just smear them on my hips, that’s where they will end up.
8) For years, really years, I’ve only drunk Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice
9) Now suddenly adore their Apricot Peach Honeybush,
10) A box of Perfectly Pear White tea is waiting, patiently to be opened.
11) What, suddenly at 53 I am embracing change again?
12) What’s that all about?
13) Wow, I didn’t come to snakes until number 12, that may be an improvement.
14) I have a freakish memory
15) When I was a child… er an older, I would make myself fall asleep by naming all the kids in my childhood neighborhood
16) House by house, street by street.
17) My favorite place to be is in my hot tub
18) Watching the stars
19) Hey, I didn’t say these were all facts you don’t know about me.
20) I am annoyed at the people who are perpetuating this economy
21) In the mean time I’ll keep shopping.
22) I have a Bassett,
23) He was named after a mellow, folksie music guy, Arlo
24) There are moments I hate him (my dog, not the folksie music guy) – which makes me cry
25) Really, he is incapable of being house broken,
26) He’s a retaliatory pisser.
27) I’m still not a vegetarian
28) I have begun liking my steaks pretty darn rare,
29) I will refrain from sticking Arlo on a spit and roasting him.
30) My dog, not the folksie music guy.
31) There are moments that I really miss my dad
32) He once put electric wire in his house because his dog couldn’t be house broken
33) He too, was a retaliatory pisser
34) It must run in the family.
35) I love the frosting on bakery birthday cakes,
36) And those really good mini cupcakes you can buy these days.
37) But we should just smear those on my butt too.
38) Despite the butt, 53 isn’t too bad so far.
39) BTW Natalie’s birthday is Tuesday.
40) Thank God my butt size is much smaller than my IQ.
41) Have you noticed there are fewer people who blog consistently over their out put of last year?
42) Sad, to paraphrase a folksie dude, “Where have all the bloggers gone?”
43) Being at peace with myself translates in to boring
44) I don’t mean to be boring, I just don’t get out much
45) I love it at home, with Ducky.
46) The last movie I saw in a movie theatre was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull
47) I think the last movie before that was Second Hand Lions.
48) I told you I don’t get out much.
49) For vacation this year I think we are going to Vegas
50) a reunion of sorts for the people from my childhood neighborhood
51) You know how I say friends are gifts we give ourselves?
52) This year I gave myself the gift of renewed friendships
53) Such as Pammy, the girl who grew up the street from me
54) People are songs to me
55) Pammy is three songs: Angel on my Shoulder, Something Stupid, and Never On A Sunday.
56) And I am lucky she doesn’t remember what a bitch I was as a kid.
57) Last summer I put a courtyard around our hot tub.
58) This summer I have to pull it up and redo it….
59) There are so many waves in it you could hang ten on the south forty.
60) Last year I started a Teen Volunteer program at our local hospital
61) Five months later I may have our first teen volunteer
62) The speed of some progress is five slph (slug lengths per hour)
63) I may give up patience as my only virtue.
64) I am addicted to over the counter sleep aids.
65) Sad, but true, and I’m not likely to kick the habit soon
66) Addiction free lack of sleep is highly overrated.
67) I can get more work done on a Saturday air-shift when no one is there
68) Than in a whole day at work Monday through Friday.
69) Again folks, my name yelled loudly does not mean, “Come here quick my computer in put isn’t out computing.”
70) I cut my own hair
71) I burn out on hobbies
72) Except gardening, it appears.
73) My favorite flower is the Nasturtium and all it’s viney glory.
74) Jane Austin rocks
75) So does Duffy, Jason Mraz, and Five for Fighting
76) But Crosby, Still, Nash, and Sometimes Young
77) Is my favorite group
78) Followed by Cat Stevens.
79) I buy a minimum nine boxes of Girl Scout Cookies a year
80) One for each year I was in scouting
81) My favorites are Samoas.
82) I once had a monkey.
83) I phone flirt (everyone tells me so.)
84) I love deeply and forever
85) I can’t hold a grudge
86) Crap, I don’t want to hold a grudge.
87) I do at least two Suduko puzzles a day
88) Sometimes up to five or six
89) My best friend in childhood was my radio
90) As a child my half of the bedroom was immaculate; my sister’s really, really not so.
91) Today she is a better house-keeper than me.
92) Once, long ago, I was a negative personality
93) Not anymore (thank you husband number two)
94) Now I strive to always be cheerful and glorious
95) Some people find this grating – others love it.
96) You can’t please some people at all
97) But I still try.
98) In my fifties I am becoming a clothes horse
99) But all my shoes are still black
100) except my moccasins.
101) Wow, I only mentioned snakes once, that is truly progress.

Sith,
Cele

The Gifts We Give…Ourselves

In the end the best gifts we give ourselves are the family and friends we embrace and hold dear. The memories we treasure of moments gone past. A wise man, eons gone by, once said, “You can’t take it with you.” I’m pretty certain he was talking wealth, fame, and toys, because love you take with you.

For a year I’d planned a trip in April for my friend’s birthday. You know when you meet a person and they answer something in your heart; like you’ve come home? He is that kind of a person. While I’d never met him face to face, from our contact online I knew he was one of those special people who just fit perfectly into my life and my heart. I had wanted Ducky to take the trip with me, but in the long run I went alone…and had a great time. I spent the next four days in gleeful anticipation of the next event, next person I’d met, the next great adventure. Despite missing Ducky it was worth every moment and I collected a new friend or three a long they way.

Friends are worth their weight in silver and gold.

With the expansion of information on the Internet no one can really hide, unless they began covering their trails long before. In the year past I’ve reconnect with several long lost friends and miss placed relatives – a gift to myself. My father’s passing last December made me try a little bit more to reconnect; he’d successfully done so with several cousins/friends in the short years prior to his passing. I admired that he could chat with his cousins, on the other side of the country, phone for hours. In the earliest years they would meet up at the Furby family reunions in West Virginia. He made the effort to reconnect and then held them dear.

From the time I was two, until age 17 I lived on the same street, in the same house, with the same friends. I loved my neighborhood, my childhood friends remain dear to my memory even though we’ve grown and moved on to become other people. I moved to Oregon three quarters through my junior year. Few friends remained in touch. Okay really one, but through her I have been able to reach out to others. This year, hopefully, we will meet in Las Vegas for an “Old Neighborhood Reunion” I am excited and can’t wait. Yes, they will be different, yes they will have different likes/dislikes, passions and focus, but there is one thing we all have that is similar and that is our beginnings. We share many of the same childhood stories. Michael and I got caught at the age of five playing doctor. Sadly, in a fit of childish anger I broke one of the controls for his race car track (this still bothers me.) My mother taught him and his siblings to swim. And they would sleep over in our back yard on hot summer nights. My mother was his den mother, his father drove me to the emergency room when I split my chin on the edge of the bathtub. Childhoods intertwined.

Just a few months ago I reconnected with Pam. Oh the trouble Pam I could have gotten into…but we were pretty sneaky, well that and as we got older we ran in different crowds. She is excited about a reunion. And I am happy to rekindle a childhood friendship. Do I think that we’ll become BBF’s? No, but her renewed friendship I am enjoying. When I emailed her she wrote me back with wonder and joy and that was enough for me.

Over the years since Classmates and Reunion went on line I’ve searched for a friend or three, each escaped me. Until this year. Finally I saw one name I’d been searching for, we’d been somewhat inseparable in high school. I sent her an email and she replied fairly fast. We up dated each other on our lives and activities. And then she quit writing. I am happy to know she is well and thriving in Orange, but I am sad that we are too different to connect further. I wish her Godspeed and a full life.

As I look ahead to 2009 it is with joy that I looked behind me during 2008. My friends are a true gift to me, whether they be childhood buddies, long lost cousins, or new found family they are my gifts the things I can take somehow from this plane to the next; they are the wealth I embrace to my soul.

Sith,
Cele

The Circle Game

It was early December, and suddenly at the age of twelve I wanted to start volunteering at the local nursing facility. Looking back I have no understanding of why I decided this, how the thought even came to me, I mean crap I was twelve. But it did and one afternoon I dressed nicely and walked my butt the two or three blocks to Mirada Hills Convalescent and Rehabilitation Hospital and applied for Candy Striper. Except, they didn’t have Candy Stripers.

So instead I became a Nightingale. Being only twelve they weren’t going to let me in except two things: first I turned thirteen (the acceptable age) in just two months, and secondly they didn’t have any Nightingales at the time – program yes, volunteers no. They let me in -now looking back, I wonder if they let me in thinking that I’d drop out after the first day. If so, they didn’t know me at all.

I remember the first requirement, after having the want, was to perform one hundred hours of Nightingale service. That was just to get my nametag. Two hundred hours to get my patch. No sweat, I did one hundred hours in two weeks time. I know pretty shocking right? I breathed, ate, and drank being a Nightingale. I had more than two hundred hours by the end of December. I think they were pretty shocked when I showed up on Christmas Eve, by Christmas day I doubt they were fazed by me.

All this despite the fact my very first patient died on me. Really, she died; I fainted the rest is history.

Mrs. Taylor must have been well into her nineties (but then I was twelve, what did I know?) my first duty was to feed her a late breakfast. That Saturday morning I’d dressed in a brown jumper and a pink plaid shirt, with a beige sweater (I know, one specific event all the way back in 1967, I remember exactly what I was wearing.) I wasn’t going to wear the sweater, (the jumper was made out of this incredibly heavy material) but my mom made me.

Major digression, poor Mrs. Taylor is starving by now. I slowly ladled runny eggs, pasty oatmeal, and this putrid puree stuff into her mouth, between dainty sips of her morning tea. Mrs. Taylor seemed like a really nice little old lady, she smiled and was patient with me when I went to fast. But suddenly she wasn’t feeling at all well, and damn, I was getting really hot. I excused myself to remove the sweater, picked up the spoon and tried to feed her another bit of egg. But she wasn’t having any of that. No, Mrs. Taylor wanted the nurse… just about the time the room started swimming for me. Picking up the call button, I rang for the nurse, excused myself again, walked to the doorway (I’m sure pretty much like a drunken sailor,) and passed out.

When I came to, Mrs. Taylor had expired and I had possibly the worst first day to start a career as a Nightingale. The urged me to go home, called my mom to come get me, but after less than an hour and one dead patient in my wake I was having none of going home. Two or three months later I earned my green striped jumper that signified I was a Nightingale. And by summer I’d earned my nursing cap.

Whether it was just filling room pitchers water with fresh water and ice or delivering and picking up meal trays I was eager to do it. I loved the patients, I loved the work, I loved being needed. These wonderful people with their cute stories and cherished pictures wanted me. But it was those same pictures that made my blood boil. I saw pictures of kids I went to school with, kids who never visited their grandparents, great grandparents. These people who lived just blocks or a few short miles away couldn’t come visit? These people, seemingly, looked forward to my smile, the flowers I sometimes brought with me, to my cookie cart, for just a hello. Before long I was recruiting more volunteers from my friends, and the program flourished. And that is not to say I take credit for that, I don’t, the job and the people just totally rocked. I worked there until just before I moved to Oregon, and never regretted a day.

Now you’re saying to yourself, “Nice story Cele, but get to the point.” Life is a circle, as I always say, where we’ve been is who we are. But it is also interesting at the points of our earlier life that lay a foundation for the points of our future life, hence the title of this blog “The Circle Game.” This afternoon while chatting with a woman I know at work, she mentioned she wanted to start a Candy Striper program at the hospital (she’s a busy person at the hospital, whom I adore.) I began rhapsodizing about how much I’d adored, loved, cherished my memories as a Nightingale.

After several questions, Di smiled at me and said, “You’re the one.”

She has wanted to start a Candy Striper program at Peace Harbor Hospital, but needed a volunteer mentor to work with these teenagers. She wasn’t about to start such a program until she had the right person, someone who’d been there and had a passion for it.

In truth I was blown away, almost started crying. Wow, I am incredibly honored, scared, and wow. I need to discuss this with Ducky, but wow, what an opportunity to give back to my community, even in a small way, and it’s something I loved so dearly.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday: Hot Summer Nights

Summer in Los Angeles can get blacktop jungle hot, with little relief at night. June through August in our neighborhood meant backyard sleepovers several times a month over the summer, usually in the Furby backyard. My mom laid out tarps to keep the dew from soaking our blankets, slumber bags and sleeping bags. Then she brought out huge bowls of popcorn and cups of lemonade before we were too deep into storytelling and trying to gross each other out. Above our heads Orion and the Big Dipper peeked through the Chinese elm’s canopy to where we laid just outside the back door.

There were usually eighteen children of assorted ages munching popcorn while telling each other campfire stories. Each tale growing spookier than the one prior as the sky grew dark and the night older. George, Mike, and I were the oldest at thirteen and we were getting obvious pleasure at telling some really spooky tales. The sky was pretty dark, so I’m judging it was a round 10 o’clock when my father came out the back door with another bowl of popcorn and one hell of a spooky story.

Growing up in the back hills of West Virginia my dad was the youngest of eight children and use to walking long distances to get from one place to another. Remembering back that night, he reckoned he’d been about twelve or thirteen and had been picking beans in the fields on the far side of town, on the opposite side of the valley. It had been a hot dusty summer day, with a mile or so more to walk he realized he was hungry, thirsty, and he was dead tired. The sun was beginning to ease low over the mountaintops; the shadows were growing long across the dusty road when up ahead he could see a boy nearing the bend in the road. The shadows were getting deep, but the closer he got he was certain he recognized him from somewhere.

Unable to lay a name to him, but feeling a familiarity my father picked up his pace in an attempt to catch up with the boy. The faster my father walked, the faster the boy walked. If my father jogged, the boy ahead of him kicked up his heels to a jog without even turning around to see who was chasing him. The heat of the evening and the length of the workday had sapped the energy out of my father, but curiosity made him run to catch up with the boy ahead of him. Then just as the boy reached the bend in the road, he vanished.

Vanished into thin air. My father reached the bend in the road. Nothing. Looking ahead into the dusk, there was no one walking ahead. My dad was alone in the growing night, there was no friend walking with him, no one running ahead to get away. He was alone in the night. No crickets chirped in the ticket. No hoot owl hoo-hoo’d from the pines, his only company was the summer night that lay hot and heavy on the air.

Some of the younger children had fallen asleep on their sleeping bags, popcorn kernels and empty cups were scattered between. The older children sat there hanging on each of my dad’s words, feeling the silent, hot West Virginia night wrap around them from three thousand miles and three decades before. He said it wasn’t until the next day that he discovered it was at that very bend in the road that Daniel Smith had died. Died walking at dusk around the bend on that dirt road when he was hit by a car just two nights before. No one knows who hit Daniel Smith, they just know he walks that same stretch of lonely West Virginia back road, night after night, looking for his way home from the bean fields.

As most of you know my father passed away December 29th at 5:30am this last year. Tonight he would have quietly celebrated his 75 birthday. Happy Birthday dad, I miss you, but you live forever in my heart and memory like those hot summer nights when you would hold the neighborhood children captive with your story telling those four short decades ago.

Sith,
Cele

Talk Thursday - Tanglefoot at Ten

It was early in life when I learned the best days of summer came in August. School generally let out for the summer break in late May, early June. The first weeks of the break were filled with Vacation Bible School, swimming lessons, and then summer school. Where some district hold summer session only for kids in academic trouble, the LaMirada/Norwalk Unified School district held summer school for all takers. And my mom took them up on all offers. Before summer session began, my mother would have workbooks and readers waiting for us, an hour of study and reading each day before summer play could begin. Where summer school filled our mornings, a craft program would fill at least a portion of our afternoons. It wouldn’t be until almost August when summer school would let out and the remaining four or so weeks would be ours.

I was ten and it was my third year of Girl Scout camp that I learned to love, I mean really get into the great out of doors. I found myself for a second year at Circle-Ho, one of the units at Skyland Ranch deep in the Angeles National Forest and the San Jacinto Mountains. The prior year at Circle-Ho I passed out in the flag ceremony before all gathered at the first noon meal, a not so splendid start of the first day of a new session. This year had to be better.

At camp I didn’t go by my name, I was Tanglefoot (thank you mom) because it was much cooler to have a “camp name” and I was pinning my sights on the day I’d get to be a CIT (Counselor In Training.) As happens with every session, many of the returning faces were I knew from the year past: Stephanie Perlman, Karin French, Frannie Hatch, Ann Carrolle and our favorite councilors Dinky, Honey, Twiggy, and Smokey. Camp just felt right that first day, I was back amid the pines, manzanita, and girls who accepted me for, well me.

All remained right until I woke up the next morning to find a Mojave Jade perched in the middle of my chest on my sleeping bag. I’m sure my life was moments from mortal peril, (we’d been taught to beware the insect’s deadly sting) right up until a shoe hit me square in the chest and bounced the scorpion off my bag and into the brush (no we never found it.) Fortunately I’d not been the only girl to wake at that moment in the dawn, Karin French had seen the scorpion eyeing my nose and beaned it with a shoe, therefore saving my life.

Thank heavens Karin’s aim was better than her ability to walk up right. The summer before she’d broke her arm after falling off a boulder, on to some more boulders, breaking her arm. Her injuries would be a running theme through out our time at Skyland Ranch.

The opening days of our two week session in the mountains was spent on forest craft, day hikes, and lessons that would prepare us for our big pack trip, a twenty mile trek into the San Jac wilderness. The evenings were spent in song around a campfire; Barges, Kumbaya, Kookaburra, Puff The Magic Dragon, and my favorite: Spideweb.

Departure day for our pack trip dawned beautiful and bright. We breakfasted on fruit, toast, and the only Oatmeal I’d ever eat – because, damn it was good. We divvied up the supplies we would need over the next four days, secured our packs and climbed in to the vans that would take us to our jump off point.

Stellar Jays greeted us as we started off from Humber’s Landing. Girls followed in a steady stream behind the leading counselors, but as the trek grew long, the line of hikers would become dots and dashes as girls meandering their way along the Devil’s Slide trail. The water rested in a lazy calm of deep pools, but gave way to swifter waters higher up on the trail. In the heat of the day those deep pools would beckon us to enjoy a refreshing dip, but for now it was for us to trod on to make our first night camp.

The days would grow hot and at night we never seemed to be able to get warm in our sleeping bags. I slept one eye open, certain a rattlesnake was going to slither in to keep warm. I should have realized my frozen toes were a sure giveaway that I’d be safe.

A series of three swimming holes prompted us to stop on day three of our pack trip for lunch, then dabble and frolic in the water. Peanut butter, jerky, dried fruit, and Wyler’s lemonade took care of the hunger, the ponds were giving us a great treat from the hiking when suddenly all was not right with Karin French. Just like in a game of Operator the murmurs and whispers that leaked and spread from girl to girl had Karin suffering from cramps, swimming to soon after eating, to snakebite. In truth Karin had to be air-Medivac’d out because her appendix was on the verge of rupturing, she would spend the remainder of summer camp at the hospital in Banning.

Camp our third night out was spent near the swimming pools, several miles from where we should have been. Despite the excitement of the afternoon, the songs were just as harmonious, though the circle of singers around the fire was missing one camper and one counselor. Gone but not forgotten we toasted them with s’mores and sang another round of Barges. The next morning we had to hoof it to make up time and meet our vans to take us back to Skyland for the remainder of summer camp.

It was in those mountains, among those girls that I always felt most at home. The fresh air tinged with pine, Stellar Jays squawking in the sun, owls hooting in the night, name tags made out of manzanita, campfires and the songs. Oh, my joy of singing with these friends in harmony, in rounds, in solitude at days end, in peace. It was peace I found up in those mountains, the friends were just the icing on my cake. I learned to listen, to hear the world and mother nature breathe, to catch the tinkling and babbling of water over rocks, the wind whispering in the tree tops easing me to sleep. I miss those days, those moments, those friends, but I hold them ever in my heart, I take them out and shine up the memory forty some years later, just like it was yesterday.

A Girl Scout song says,

Make new friends
But keep the old
Some are silver
And the others gold.

Sith,
Tanglefoot

PS the picture above is actually from teh 1971 Camping and Summer Activities guide put out by the Greater Long Beach Girl Scout Council...and yes that was me with my mouth wide open-- at Skyland.

Evolution of the Valentine

Remember having to choose just the right Valentine for each person out of the box of preprinted “Love, Me’s” your mom bought? Then you would meticulously write their name on the front of the little envelope (You know the ones with the glue that taste like dissolved vitamins, and I’m not talking Flinstones – no I’m talking your mom’s vitamins, the ones with extra iron.) And then after all the yuck and the muck stuck to your tongue, the dumb, stupid flap wouldn’t stick. Yeah, those valentines and those dumb, stupid little envelopes.

After spending the entire weekend before Valentine’s Day sweating in preparation and adolescent angst as to whether Jody Coyote or Greg “He touched my hand, I’ll never wash it again” Reed liked your card (yeah, I know I was hedging my bets even back then, albeit in vane) you find out that Pammy Wilkerson was smart enough to specifically add well chosen Conversation Hearts to get her message across, win the boys, and the day. Actually it was Pammy who yelled, “Greg Reed touched my hand, I’m never going to wash it again. He’s meeting me on the monkey bars at lunch.” Now this is before girls were allowed to wear shorts or pants to school. Back in a time when showing panties on the twirling bar and jungle gym was an every day occurrence. Back before it was taboo to us. So you know what Greg was really there for? Yeah, that’s right, twirling until you puked up those Conversation Hearts.



It became a race far too important to leave to preprinted cartoon characters, and by the third grade I was working to leave Pammy Wilkerson in the dust. I’d placed my eyes on new toys in the school yard, I was on a conquest. I toiled with paper lace doilies, pink and red construction paper, Elmer’s paste, and markers that would indelibly let Danny Buzzelli know I WANTED HIM to be my Valentine. Alas. Mon Dieu. Son of a biscuit eating basketball player, Kathy Gaston stole the day and Dan’s eight year old heart (no twirling required – because we didn’t twirl anymore, no we played hopscotch and tetherball now for hours on end.) Kathy, armed with glitter and all the latest Beatles 45’s knew all the right things to say on her doily hearts.



Today I say it with Chocolate; lots of Chocolate (because Ducky only knows four food groups – cheese, crackers, dip, and chocolate – not necessarily in that order, but really close,) music, and several of the best that Hallmark has to offer. There is almond toffee by the coffee maker, Reese’s peanut butter hearts on his steering wheel, Dove chocolate hearts in his lunch, and a Johnny Cash CD in his overnight bag (nothing says “I Love You” more than buying music you can’t stand for the one you love) with Hershey’s Cherry Cordial Kisses in the pockets of his Levis.



But what did my Ducky do? He One Upped Me….BIG TIME!

I ♥ My Ducky!

And those fancy ass chocolate covered strawberries he got me.



Happy Valentine’s and Lots of Chocolate Love coming your way.

Sith,
Cele