- HOM: Fill-ins & Farces
- Graduation. I forgot to mention gifts - the only two I remember are (were?) a knife from Uncle Rudy and a watch from Mom & Dad. I have no clue what the knife's fate was, but the Bulova is buried in the mud at the bottom of Cam Rahn Bay a few hundred yards out from the old pier the Swift boats and PGs used.
Nothing glamorous about losing it - I was swinging a rubber bumper over the side when I hooked the watch band on the line - Ping! Splash! Crap! I eventually replaced it with an Omega from the Navy Exchange in Yokuska, Japan.
After the '64 flood receded, I made my first trip around Hungry Horse reservoir and into the South Fork with Vic. It was a great day! I found out that driving on the corrugations made by Cat tracks made the car sound just like a bearing went out, that spinning your tires in shale could give you a flat tire, and that shooting just under the lily pad a frog is perched on pops the frog a couple of feet into the air without hurting it, and doing so caught Vic's funny bone. Vic had a wonderfully unforgettable laugh!
We made other trips there elk hunting in later years, but none were as much fun as that summertime day of play.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Tuesday March 4, 2008 - 12:08pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
The summer of 1964 was pretty much like the preceding summers, with two or three cuttings of hay to be put up on five or six different farms and free time between cuttings and cleaning pig pens and chicken houses to play. It was the last summer ever in that pattern, though I didn't realize it. It was that fall that Dad & Darel lost their business and Darel lost his home when the bank foreclosed on them. The flood loss of breeding stock and young animals to sell bankrupted them.
Dad had either given up on teaching me to do field work or preferred to do it himself so I only had the normal chores of watering the chickens, mowing the lawn and whatever else popped up. This gave me time to play in the woods. (Fishing in the slough by the house was changed forever by the flood, I pretty much gave it up.)
I had planned on heading for MSU in Missoula that fall, but Dad made a suggestion that surprised me - he thought I should take the fall off and just go hunting. He said it might be the only opportunity I would ever have to do something like that. (He also commented that college separated the men from the boys, so perhaps he was thinking of my lackluster academic career and was trying to postpone the inevitable.)
I started MSU (now UofM) in January of 1965, majoring in wildlife technology and rooming with a friend named Doug Barry in 171 Elrod Hall. Once again I started out lost...
I missed all of the freshman orientation by starting in the winter quarter, so in everything from the required ROTC to classroom locations I was totally,and sometimes literally, out of step! In addition, I seemed to have my alternate classes on alternate ends of the campus so I ended up trotting out a shoelace pattern between buildings (When I could find them!) in the course of a day. I was back at the beginning of the learning curve.
High point and low points? I got into the ROTC-sponsored pistol marksmanship program and actually won an award for most improved marksman - I went from horrible to merely awful. (I loved that program! All the free ammo - .22 & .45 - you could shoot and the use of target pistols!) I bought my first target pistol from a guy in the program, a High Standard Supermatic Citation that looked like a Buck Roger's spacegun.)
I also shot a pistol I have yearned for ever since. It was a Ruger bull-barrel taget .22 that had been customized by a famous pistolsmith named Clark. It hand custom grips that fit my hand perfectly, and my scores jumped 25% when I used it. Unfortunately the owner wouldn't sell it at any price.
We shot at on-campus indoor range and also outdoors at a range by the smokejumper's school at the Missoula airport. Sgt. French, in charge of the program, told me I had too many bad habits ingrained to ever be a master shot.
I took swimming and softball for my P.E. classes, and the swimming class was a great help in boot camp later on. I had the lifesaving side-stroke and the frog kick down pat! In softball, I was my usual unathletic klutz, but for the final exam - hitting, catching a fly & catching a grounder - I did beautifully. I caught the grounder when I realized it was about to hit me in the face - it hit something, bounced up, I closed my eyes and put the glove up for protection, and the ball hit the pocket perfectly. Catching the fly was equally accidental. I am one of those white boys that can't jump, but I did, and my wild stab in the air snagged the ball.
The coach commented that my performance was the biggest surprise of his day, which was a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.
Doug, my roomie, was into physical fitness. He never talked me into following his regimen but we did some hiking up on the hills around the "M".
He liked to go out and run through the surrounding neighborhood at night, but one night he was cutting full speed through a dark back yard and didn't see the clothesline, which caught him right under the chin and laid him out flat. I think he had a couple of episodes with dogs that slowed his running a bit too.
I used to carry my room key on a long heavy cord around my neck so I wouldn't lose it or have to fumble for it in a pocket when I had a load of books, and one night I had just put the key in the lock and turned it when Doug heard me and threw the door open for me - and gave me this wieird rope burn on my neck...
I didn't have the math background the school said I needed, so I had to take a zero-credit bonehead math course along with old classmates Jack McKay & Mike Adams. I guess I finally applied myself, because when we took the final exam the teacher took the tests the three of us turned in, dumped them in the trash without looking at them, and told us we passed.
I remember a class I really enjoyed, on geology, and I still remember one of the questions on a test - "What weighs more, a bucket of sand or a bucket of rocks?" I put sand, assuming less airspace beteen particles, and so did the rest of the class. The teacher reamed us all out for missing that, saying that since obviously a single large rock weighed more than the equivalent amount of sand, it should be obvious that a bucket of rocks would outweigh a bucket of sand.
I still think the question was ambiguous & unfair...
One regret from that term? Dorothy Johnson, author of "The Hanging Tree", "The Man Called Horse", "The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance" and other classic stories was teaching there and I never took the opportunity to meet her.
Other memories? The Indian kids, mostly forestry students, who had this test of "macho" I used to watch. Two of them would lay their right forearms together, then light a cigarette and lay it in the groove the arms formed, then stare each other in the eye to see who would be the first to flinch or jerk away.
Mike & Jack, mentioned earlier, got into an extreme physical fitness class, all work and no play. They did things like piggyback races up to the "M" and back. I haven't seen or heard of either of them since and have often wondered where they are and what they ended up doing.
The first time I was ever in a car at speeds in excess of 100mph was riding from Missoula to Kalispell with them in a big Oldsmobile Mike owned, with him driving and swigging beer. It was exhilerating, and exceedingly stupid!
How did I do gradewise? A little better than high school, to Dad's surprise, with a mix of B's and C's, but was still a boy....
TBC
A few seconds later, one of the geese dropped out of the V formation, gliding and tumbling till it hit the ground, dead. Ian always claimed it was a micracle shot.
He took a long shot at a huge hawk, a hazard to small farm animals and fair game in thise days, and knocked it down. When he walked up to it it was still alive, so being an old farm boy he picked it up to wring its neck. The hawk was faster than he was and sank its talons through the palm of his hand; when he reacted and tried to grab it with his other hand the hawk grabbed it with the other foot.
I never heard how he got out of that, but assume he used his foot to kill it and then brute force to tear his hands free. He had problems with infection and the hands took a long time to heal.
Many, many, years later I stood in that yard and bagged the first bullhead catfish of my life as it flew over the house.
I had a new Ruger .22 auto and was plinking at cans with it when an osprey flew over the house.
Being, young, dumb, and country-raised, I popped off a couple of shots at it and came close enough to make it swerve, dive & jig, and drop something it was carrying.
The "something" was a bullhead, and I have had a lot of fun by watching people's faces as I tell how I shot it out of the air.
TBC
He seemed to have no empathy. He would catch flies and pull their wings off and then stick pins in them. He would burn ants and bugs with a magnifying glass. He strangled his dog for fun, killed a cat with a knife.
I have often wondered what happened to him. Did he die? Is he still around but hidden? Was this psychpathic behavior a normal stage that all kids go through and he outgrew it?
He scared me, I hope I never run into him again.
- THIS IS THEFT!
- But, it is soooo good I can't resist
Please be sure to go to the website and read it and comment!Feb. 27
Bookshelf and Self
“It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it.” So runs the “prime directive” for bookshelf etiquette, as issued by a blogger for Time magazine named Matt Seligman. At The American Prospect a couple of weeks ago, Ezra Klein responded in terms that are no less categorical – though hardly more sensible, it seems to me.
Related stories
- Switching Sides of the Table, Feb. 22
- Growing — and Defining — ‘Global Studies’, Feb. 21
- Man Bites Dog, Nov. 21
- A Swift Kick for Us Humanists, June 15, 2006
- Upturn for Science Doctorates, Nov. 28, 2005
“Bookshelves are not for displaying books you’ve read,” says Klein; “those books go in your office, or near your bed, or on your Facebook profile. Rather, the books on your shelves are there to convey the type of person you would like to be. I am the type of person who would read long biographies of Lyndon Johnson, despite not being the type of person who has read any long biographies of Lyndon Johnson. I am the type of person who is very interested in a history of the Reformation, but am not, as it happens, the type of person with the time to read 900 pages on the subject. More importantly, I am the type of person who amasses many books, on all sorts of subjects. I’m pretty sure that’s what a bookshelf is there to prove. The reading of those books is entirely incidental. The question becomes how we’ll project all of this when Kindles takes off and all our books are digital.”
There is bravery in such candor. The word “poseur” is still around, after all, even if the people who study consumer behavior, and try to channel it, have coined the kinder and gentler term “aspirational taste” for this sort of thing. David Brooks could probably get a best-selling analysis of the American middle class out of the contrast between Seligman’s moralistic injunction and Klein’s jaunty expression of dandyism. Just throw in some references to the difference between Blue and Red states, and the thing writes itself.
But after a grueling weekend of trying to impose some order on my study, I’m struck, not by the contrast between Seligman and Klein, but by the degree to which they share common assumptions. Those assumptions are foreign to my own experience; and so it proves impossible to extract from either of them any maxim applying to local circumstances.
Klein and Seligman seem to share a belief that book ownership can, and indeed should, serve as a medium for displaying something important about yourself. They signify either what you already know or whom you would like to be — and (this is the major point) they do so for someone else. By this logic, bookshelves are a medium of social interaction. As a format for the “performance of self,” they transform one’s books into a way of attaining, or at least claiming, status. Hence the need to come up with rules, however informal, for what is permissible.
All of which makes perfect sense if and only if you are not a total nerd. Which, all things considered, is a pretty big “if.” A very different set of principles is in effect if you are someone for whom reading itself actually counts as one of the primary forms of social interaction. It’s not that you don’t have “aspirational taste,” of a kind. But the aspiration plays itself out in a very different manner — with different consequences for how your living space is organized.
My experience (which can’t be unique) is that some books end up accumulating out of a misguided attempt to win the approval of authors already well-entrenched on my shelves. A few years back, for example, Slavoj Zizek started to insist that I had to be familiar with the work of Alain Badiou – a French poststructuralist philosopher whose work I had never heard of, let alone read. Well, OK, sure. Thanks to some busy translators, Badiou volumes started crowding in, next to all the Zizek titles.
But in short order, Badiou lets it be known that I am expected to understand something about mathematical set theory — and furthermore should come to appreciate one particular approach to formalizing the basic axioms. Chances are, that second part is just not going to happen. I am willing to try to learn to recognize a formalized axiom when I see one, but can promise no more, and even that much is probably pushing it. So, anyway, off to the nearby secondhand bookshop in search of a couple of introductory works. They are terrifying. The shelf in question is starting to turn into a neighborhood I am afraid to visit.
But that is not the real problem. Around here, the “prime directive” is that there should not be any books on the floor. If a marriage is its own little civilization, this is among the basic clauses in our social contract. Insofar as “aspiration” comes into play, I find it operating at the level of daydreams about replacing one of the closets or windows with another set of shelves.
Clothing and the outside world are much overrated, in my opinion, which does not carry very much weight in this particular case. Bookshelves are storage; that is all. The idea of using them for “display” seems cute and improbable.
The online conversation generated by Seligman’s and Klein’s remarks has at times reflected a kind of guilt that no really bookish person would feel. For there are, it seems, people who feel stress about owning volumes they haven’t read. Evidently some of them believe a kind of statute of limitations is in effect. If you don’t expect to read something in, say, the next year, then, it is wrong to own it. And in many cases, their superegos have taken on the qualities of a really stern accountant — coming up with estimates of what percentage of the books on their shelves they have, or haven’t, gotten around to reading. Guilt and anxiety reinforce one another.
All of this reminds me of a friend who, while in high school, got about a hundred pages into Atlas Shrugged and realized that she loathed both Ayn Rand’s prose and ideas. But she kept slogging through the book, as often as she could work up the will to do so, and finally finished it sometime around her junior year of college. Persistence is a virtue, but it is not the only virtue, and sometimes it is really not good for you.
Beyond any particular virtue is the wisdom to know when and how to keep it in check. Just as persistence can get warped into a vice, so can the urge to be exhaustive, or the impulse to follow up the leads indicated in every footnote. The latter impulse is dangerous, for it leads to misanthropy: A scholar’s seemingly authoritative citations will sometimes turn out to have been pilfered directly from someone else’s seemingly authoritative citations — without any actual reading of the texts involved, since given that the mistakes are preserved intact. It can be a sad day for one’s sense of human nature to discover this.
If you are going to have a moralizing voice in your head, maybe it’s best for it to sound like Francis Bacon, whose essays from the beginning of the 17th century are so much more sermon-like than the ones by Montaigne he was imitating. But “Of Studies” seems like a reasoned statement by a man of the world. “Some books are to be tasted,” writes Bacon, “others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”
Likewise for bookshelves. Many items there are staples. Others are ingredients that, like salt, are only good in combination with something else. Some things you keep around are healthy, if not very tasty, while a few might count as junk food. (A couple of scholarly presses are indeed known for their Pop-Tarts.) And it’s hardly a decent pantry if you don’t have a few impulse purchases you later regret, or gourmandizing experiments that didn’t quite pan out. No formal rule can determine what belongs on the shelf and what doesn’t. It is, finally, a matter of taste.
Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.
Comments
You can’t have too many
I don’t know about most people, but my books overflow the shelves and tables and end up every flat surface in the house and office. There is a certain comfort knowing there is always a new book to read, a reference tool to consult, an author to experience, knowledge to gain. You cannot have too many books to consult, savor, and read over and over again.
Miriam Kahn, at 7:55 am EST on February 27, 2008
Personal Library
I very much enjoyed this piece. My partner and I are known for our massive book collection, but that is not why we have it. We have a large personal library because we have to read for our jobs, like to read for pleasure, and because I like to collect certain kinds of books (dictionaries, children’s books—we have no kids—and cookbooks). We have read most of the books on our shelves, but there are many we have not.
Having a selection of books I haven’t read makes it easier for me to escape the dissertation occasionally without having to go to the bookstore. I have my own bookstore readily available with pre-selected books. I have certainly picked up things I shouldn’t have. I am still at war with White Teeth because it is far too depressing to get through. And there are a couple of things that must have been gifts because I would never have bought them myself.
As for what our books say about us...well, ours tell the truth. They reveal areas of difficulty for us and things we needed to learn more about. They reveal our politics and our educational backgrounds. They say A LOT about our professions. And they give some indication that there is generally something good to eat for dinner. But you could learn that in a three-minute conversation.
That anyone would take the time to establish rules or ‘bookshelf etiquette’ means that s/he doesn’t have enough to do. Ultimately I agree with the author, it’s all a matter of taste. But we have to remember that shelves are utilitarian—they are for storage not for making statements.
Adriane, at 8:15 am EST on February 27, 2008
The Book on the Bookshelf
“The Book on the Bookshelf” is the title of Henry Petrokski l999 text. I bought it new, it sits on my shelf in a privilege place, and I look forward to reading it but for now I like having it.
My point is that if our reading lives are lively, we are in and out of texts all the time. I am fortunate enough in space and money for books, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather be close to. I rarely show my shelves to guests. I’m a bit embarassed about how much of my time and money I’ve put into reading and writing and owning books and don’t care to show them off. In fact, my mentor, Richard Hugo told me once that if I loved a book I should never loan it and always keep it close. However, what I really want to point out is that the stuff to show off is really between the shelves and in the white space of the pages. Any reader knows that. However, only great readers have shelves that consistently speak back to them!
Will Hochman, at 10:10 am EST on February 27, 2008
Other Joys of Collecting Books
Oh, yes, there are many reasons for displaying, collecting, or simply owning books. To wit (in no particular order):
- books add color to the decor of most rooms - their purchase supports worthy authors, whom some of us long to join in real or imagined companionship - book cases provide insulation from drafy walls and serve well as room partitions - books stand as a protest against over-reliance on Google and Wikipedia - books bring out the latent librarian in some of us - books on diverse subjects nourish unplanned intellectual excursions - book “collections” sustain lifelong intellectual quests — even when not all are read — and in some instances find permanent homes in institutional libraries - books signal to children the importance of reading and writing - quality books are an investment, a usable asset waiting one day to be cashed out on Ebay - abiding satisfaction comes to those who “rescue” books from individuals who would abandon them or trash them - book collections, especially if large, are a reminder that moving from home to home is a weighty decision- books are the better alternative to a medicine cabinet full of drugs — in a moment of need find one to assist sleep, nourish hope, escape burdens, seek adventure, or enjoy the fruits of another’s creativity.
In case you are wondering, my wife and I are the proud owners of 5,000+ volumes. We would not have it any other way!
Dick Yanikoski, at 10:10 am EST on February 27, 2008
My Name Is Frizbane And I’m A Book-aholic
Three things ...
First, I own waaay more books than makes sense, but they almost all reside on both stand-alone and built-in bookshelves that I constructed myself. The shelves are deep and, in some locations, I have run out of space to put new shelves. I have, therefore, taken to pushing rows of books to the back of the shelves and stacking new books in front of them. This practice just drives some of my book-loving friends crazy. When I ask why, they always answer in terms of what MY behavior should be ... not theirs.
Second, I only purchase paperback books when it is absolutely necessary. There is something about a paperback that I find distasteful. To me they are pretenders to books ... pseudo tomes. And by the way, one of the best things to happen to those of us who take some care in purchasing books is the presence of on-line used-book shops. I have purchased hundreds (probably thousands) of used books on-line have been disappointed very, very infrequently.
Third, having extensive professional and personal libraries, and I have both, is an illness. “Hello, my name is Frizbane, and I am a book-aholic.”
The number of books I own that I intend to read more than once is a tiny fraction of my holdings (“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” “Don Quixote,” poetry, cookbooks, lots of children’s books (usually read to children), professional stuff, “The Origin of the Species,” the usual stuff). Yet there they sit. Many books I intend to read – and own — could be checked out of the several public and academic libraries to which I have access. Reading a book and then shelving it – and I do “lend out” a great many books to friends who either feign interest in reading something I have recommended or genuinely intend to read something I lend them but never get around to it – is so impractical and inefficient it is ridiculous. This winter, a close friend returned one of my “treasures” after it sat in a stack of books next to her nightstand for more than twenty years ... unread. Before reshelving it I gently fondled it, I imagine the way a pot-head fondles and tests the aroma of a joint before lighting up.
I will die within the next twenty years and my son will have the very distasteful task of sorting through my thousands of books and (1) deciding what small proportion he wants for himself, his family, and friends, (2) separating out those he does not want that can be sold to used-book dealers, and (3) sending the rest on to whatever local charity has an annual book sale. He did promise me just this month that he would write a program that would produce a quite spectacular database of my holdings if I would spend the next year or so recording each and every ISBN ... so you can see he’s already worrying about it. I think I’ll hold out for a barcode reader so I can improve my efficiency by reading the ISBN from the barcode. But what about my pre-1966 tomes? Life is soooo complicated.
I am well aware of – and am in complete denial about – my book-aholism. I’m certain my son and his wife have discussed subjecting me to an intervention. Thank god they have decided that hiring an arsonist or renting a front-loader for a long weekend are less hassle, less expensive, and less painful than forcing me to own up to my illness.
Frizbane Manley, at 10:25 am EST on February 27, 2008
book and socket wrenches
Students invariably ask, on the first visit to my office, “Have you read all these books?"My answer is that I have read all of some of them and some of all of them. I suggest that they think of the bookshelves as the tool board in an auto menchanic’s bay. Hanging there are tools s/he uses every day, tools s/he needs for the occasional Mercedes tuneup, and tools s/he once used to adjust the timing on a ‘76 Honda but now has no idea how they function. My job as a professor is to know what’s in the books and how and when to use them, all of them or parts of them. Socket wrenches du jour.
jon-christian suggs, at 10:45 am EST on February 27, 2008
Here’s a radical idea that puts me squarely in the nerd camp: I borrow books from the library and read them. If they pass the audition, then I buy them for my bookshelf.
Reluctant Librarian, at 11:00 am EST on February 27, 2008
There is a lovely little book by Tom Raabe (?) called _Biblioholism_ that discusses the topic at length. One of my favorites has to do with owning a book BEFORE the movie was made.
booklover, at 11:10 am EST on February 27, 2008
On the Topic of Books and Self
“A room without books is as a body without a soul.” Ovid. Truer words were never spoken.
There is no room in my house, including the three bath rooms, that doesn’t contain books. I even keep books in the car to read at lunch or while waiting for an appointment. As a child, I’d read the cereal boxes to amuse myself. There are books I’ve carried with me everywhere, including to a stint as a summer camp counselor (how would I have survived without the Ballentine boxed set of “The Lord of the Rings?")
Some books are old friends, to be read and reread. Others are there as reference—if I get interested in a topic, I’ve got to read about it. I collect cookbooks, hoping one day to exceed the collection that Phyllis Richman used to have at the Washington Post (and yes, Andy Rooney, I do read them when I go to bed.) That’s beyond my collection of law books and books on photography, the subject I teach. As a writer, my husband is constantly bring reference material home and our garage is filled with about half a million comic books of which several thousand are ones he wrote.
We have long since run out of shelf space or wall space for any more shelves. The three stacks of “must get to” books next to my husband’s bed are almost as tall as I am (I fear the next big earthquake.)
This is all to say that if there is any such thing as book display etiquette, I’ve never heard of it. I feel very uncomfortable in a home which does not have books on display. Harlan Ellison, whose collection of books exceeds ours (he builds additions to his house when he starts running out of shelf space), has been known to respond to the question “have you read all these books?” by saying “Of course not. Who wants a house full of books you’ve already read?”
Christine Valada, at 11:50 am EST on February 27, 2008
The books that got away
Books represent the overriding point of conflict in my marriage. My wife constantly urges me to get rid of books. As a result, I have not read many of the books on my shelves on display simply because I had to give away many of the books I have read. Recently, we moved, and I must have given away 100-200 books. Since then, I seem to have accumulated more, which I want to get around to reading. Invariably, I end up reading the books I took out of the library first, because, after all, they have to GO BACK at a certain time, thus giving me a deadline. So for me the bookshelves in my house are a combination of the asperational (yes, I’m going finish Stephenson’s Baroque trilogy THIS YEAR, I promise, really) and the books so beloved that I could not part with them (also books by people I went to college with or are autographed).
Richard LeComte, at 1:15 pm EST on February 27, 2008
As a relatively transient 30-year-old, every move to a new apartment is torture because it means I sort through my books. The resistance and subsequent pain of weeding them is located somewhere between pulling teeth and giving up a firstborn. I give them away to properly appreciative friends and the rest to the local library. And then I have to move the remaining books and shelves, requiring a strong back and even stronger friendships. My joy is restored once the books are back on their shelves and I am reminded of which I still need to read. One would think I would only hold onto the books I love best if I move every 18 months. Yet I own books I’ve moved four or five times but have never read. I have hope, optimism for that future life in which I can read these books that once caught my eye and still hold my interest. But until then, I’ll keep moving them.
Kim Bryant, at 1:30 pm EST on February 27, 2008
I found the piece and the comments so far interesting, but bewildering. My bookshelves are full of books I haven’t read but which I think I might like to read some time in the future when they are out of print and not readily available in a convenient library.
Having read a book I see little point in keeping it except those rare books that I might want to consult or those even rarer ones I might re-read.
Gavin Moodie, Principal Policy Adviser at Griffith University, Australia, at 3:50 pm EST on February 27, 2008
I’m with the Reluctant Librarian here — the vast majority of books that pass through my life spend at most a month or two with me before returning to their shelves of my local university or public library. My personal collection probably amounts to less than 200, split roughly between the useful but hard to find and the relentlessly consulted.
I have arrived at this equilibrium through the agnony and expense of moving regularly, plus an overwhelming preference for the atmosphere of libraries versus that of (most) bookstores. I think I love Powells in Portland because it reminds me so much of a library.
Historian, at 4:30 pm EST on February 27, 2008
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PrintWhen Don's first son was born, he called me to tell me that had named him "James". I was flattered, so I asked him why they named him after me. Don said it was cause the baby was short and fat and smiled a lot!
Payback? Well, My ex-wife was named Lyn, and she and Don were not exactly friends. When I got an email from Don telling me his newest grandchild was named Kaylynn, I called him and asked him why the baby was named after my ex. When he finished sputtering, he said that Lynn was his middle name. I knew that - but gigging him was fun!
TBC
Brief History of the Flathead Valley
By The Daily Inter Lake
1810 — Jasper Howse sent by the Hudson Bay Co. to establish a trading post. Some believe the post was at the north end of Flathead Lake, while others say the unsuccessful settlement was above Lake Pend d’Oreille in Idaho.
1812 — Canadian explorer David Thompson rides to a hill near Polson and describes Flathead Lake in his journal. His Indian companion notes that there is a gap through the mountains above the lake, but it isn’t used because of the Blackfeet Indians on the prairie side.
1846 — Fort Connah established by Canada’s Hudson Bay Co., north of present-day St. Ignatius. The Northwest is disputed territory at the time, with “Fifty-four forty or fight” Americans wanting the Oregon territory to take in British Columbia, while Canadians like Thompson
argue that present-day Washington, Oregon, Idaho and western Montana should remain in British hands.
1854 — St. Ignatius Mission established in the Mission Valley by Father DeSmet. With Indian agents corrupt or, in one case, crazy, the Catholic mission becomes the leading force on the reservation.
1854 — Capt. John Mullan and his party explore the Tobacco Plains near Eureka. The Indians once cultivated tobacco in the area, and near Spotted Bear on the South Fork.
1860 — Missoula County organized. At the time, it was part of Washington Territory. Montana Territory lies four years in the future.
1880 — “Honest John Dooley” builds a boat landing and store on the Flathead River near Kalispell.
1883 — Ashley Crossing founded on the southwest edge of present Kalispell. Some of its streets are part of the current city.
1885 — The U.S. Grant begins hauling freight and passengers on Flathead Lake. It is the first of many steamboats on the lake, running freight up from the Northern Pacific Railroad terminal at Ravalli.
1887 — Demersville is founded on the Flathead River, southeast of present-day Kalispell. It becomes a ghost town when the railroad reaches Kalispell. Named after store owner T.J. Demers, the town is pronounced “De-MARS-ville” by locals.
1887 — Two Kootenai Indians lynched by a mob at Demersville after being arrested for the killing of three prospectors near Libby. In 1890, four Kootenai Indians were hanged in Missoula for other murders. A company of “buffalo soldiers” is stationed in the Flathead to deal
with the uprising.
1891 — The Great Northern Railway arrives in the Flathead and businessman Charles Conrad establishes a town around the division point at Kalispell. But the route west, over the Marion hill, proves to be a tougher haul for locomotives than over the Continental Divide.
1892 — City of Kalispell incorporated.
1893 — Flathead County created out of Missoula County.
1899 — Flathead County High School opens. In the first graduating class is a young black woman, daughter of the janitor at Demersville School. He put all his kids through college.
1904 — The Great Northern moves its main line to Whitefish to take advantage of a lower route down the Kootenai River that eliminates 165 curves. Kalispell residents are angry about it for years, and one local historian writes a book entitled, “The Train Didn’t Stay Long.”
1903 — City of Whitefish incorporated. An early settler described the 160-acre townsite as “a heavily wooded, swampy marsh full of green frogs, lizards and other creepy things with trees so big and so thick that the sun could hardly shine through.” Stumps remain in Central Avenue, resulting in the early nickname “Stumptown.”
1909 — Lincoln County created out of Flathead County.
1909 — Columbia Falls incorporates, more than 20 years after it was founded. It had originally been selected as the division point for the Great Northern. But speculators with inside information demanded too much for the land, and angry Great Northern President Jim Hill turned his sights to Kalispell and then Whitefish.
1910 — Flathead Reservation opened for settlement. Kalispell is jammed with hopeful homesteaders. Indians are given 160-acre allotments, which they soon lose.
1910 — Glacier National Park created. Promoted heavily by the Great Northern, it becomes a mecca for rich tourists until World War II.
1923 — Lake County created out of Flathead County. A 36-square-mile section of the Flathead Reservation remains in Flathead County.
1929 — The Half Moon fire starts west of Columbia Falls and sweeps across the mountains into Glacier National Park. In just three days, it burned 103,000 acres in a 30-mile swath that cut across Teakettle and Columbia mountains, across the Flathead River, into the Canyon and on to Apgar. Denuded by the fire, the south-facing slopes of the Belton Hills become prime winter range, still used by elk.
1938 — Kerr Dam built at Polson. The concrete structure is 204 feet high and controls the top 10 feet of Flathead Lake. During World War II, there is a proposal to add 25 feet to the level, which would have flooded much of the valley below Kalispell.
1947 — Big Mountain is launched with a $100 stock offering in Whitefish. After some nip-and-tuck early years, it grows into a resort boasting 3,600 acres of skiable terrain and 10 lifts. That same year, D.C. Dunham builds a lumber mill in Columbia Falls and names his company after a creek back in Bemidji, Minn. Plum Creek Timber Co. now owns millions of acres of timberland in Montana, Idaho, Washington, Louisiana and Arkansas.
1953 — Hungry Horse Dam completed. At 564 feet high, it is still the United States’ 11th-tallest dam. The Columbia Falls aluminum plant is soon built, consuming about three times the dam’s annual output of electricity.
1964 — A major flood hits the Montana Rockies, wiping out the highway and rail lines across Marias Pass. In Glacier National Park, McDonald Creek runs upstream. The Flathead River laps at the edge of the highway across from the airport and invades Evergreen.
1967 — Grizzlies kill two campers, miles apart, in a single night at Glacier National Park. They are the first fatal attacks since the park’s founding. The incidents are chronicled in the book, “Night of the Grizzlies.”
1979 — Californian Ray Thompson moves his Semitool company to Montana and sets up business in the old Bell Camper factory south of Kalispell. Later moved to West Reserve Drive, Semitool produces the processing tools and cleaning systems used in computer chip fabrication. The business is still thriving and employs 800 people.
1988 — Forest fires sweep the West, including the 37,500-acre Red Bench Fire on Glacier National Park’s west edge.
1997 — On the heels of the wettest year in Flathead Valley history and fueled by near-record snowpacks, the Stillwater and Swan rivers experience 100-year floods. Hayfields turn into ponds, rising groundwater covers Montana 35 near Woods Bay and closes West Valley Drive. The Stillwater River floods parts of Evergreen and the Causeway road on Echo Lake is submerged.
1998 — Blacktail Mountain Ski Area opens near Lakeside.
2001 — The Moose Fire burns for two months across 71,000 acres of Flathead National Forest and Glacier National Park.
2003 — In a historic fire year, 310,000 acres of forest burn in a series of fires stretching from the Bob Marshall Wilderness to the Canadian border.
2004 — Flathead County passes Cascade County to become the third-largest county in Montana. The population growth — almost 10 percent since 2000 — fuels record subdivision activity, real estate sales and commercial development.
2005 — Population growth, investment buying and limited supply combined to drive sales to unprecedented heights in the Northwest Montana real estate market: More than a billion dollars in commercial and residential property changed hands, up 25 percent from 2004.
(This story originally appeared in Flathead Facts, an annual publication of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. C. 2006, Daily Inter Lake, all rights reserved.
I had my first car. The folks finally let me get a driver's license and then a vehicle in the fall of 1963, a two-door Ford Falcon sedan, green with a bronze interior, six cylinder, three-on-the-tree transmission.
I graduated high school in 1964. No honors, but I was done, and the last act was crossing the platform in the gym and getting my diploma and a handshake from Francis O'Connell, Larry's uncle, usually known as Fanny.
We took my car over the '64 Christmas break and went to the Ice-capades in Spokane & visited some of Dad's relatives there. It was my first real highway driving experience and I only messed up a couple of times. No dents, no tickets, just a couple of clenched sphincters and some lessons to remember - like, don't pass on blind corners!
Dad took me on a father/son trip for a couple of days and we visited Lewis & Clark caverns. It was fun, but it was good to get back home again.
I had my first car accident - I was heading north up Main and a guy going south turned in front of me at Main & First. He got the ticket, but I was probably going over the speed limit.
The Flood of '64 happened - the biggest event of the year. It was, if you will pardon the pun, a "watershed" moment in more ways than one.
To quote: "IN THE SECOND WEEK OF JUNE 1964, the worst natural disaster in Montana's recorded history descended on the state in the form of heavy rains that quickly turned once picturesque creeks into raging, mile-wide rivers. Dams, roads, and railroads washed out, homes and ranches were swept away, and thirty people died. The area affected by the flooding amounted to nearly thirty thousand square miles, or roughly 20 percent of the state. By Thursday, June 11, President Lyndon Johnson had declared nine counties in northwest and north-central Montana a federal disaster area. When mopping-up operations ended, damages stood at an estimated at $62 million."
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For a full report, see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3951/is_200407/ai_n9452436
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More : "Although it wasn't the perfect storm, Parret said that the combination of weather, a phenomenon known as âœorographic lifting, and other factors led to a storm that occurs only once every five thousand years.Many areas were hard hit, but among the worst were a band from roughly Kalispell to Great Falls.
Between June 7 and 8, Browning received more than eight inches of rain, 10 inches in Glacier National Park, 13 inches southwest of Augusta, and 11 inches at Heart Butte.In effect, nearly an average year's worth of precipitation fell in a 24-hour period. What was worse was that heavy snow pack also melted and greatly added to runoff."
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The first thing I remember was an early stage of the flood, when Dad & Vic & I loaded our boat & motor into the pickup and headed for Vic's brother's house on the west bank of the Stillwater below Conrad Cemetery. We launched the boat at the intersection of Willow Glen and Conrad Drive. Dad stayed with the truck, Vic & I started hauling Hans and Eda's stuff out, the smaller valuable things likes papers and guns. Every trip we had to go farther, Dad had to keep moving the pickup because of the rising water. The last trip we had to go almost to the foot of the hill in Woodland park.
(For an idea of the water level, I worked as a watchman at the Kmart building when it was built in the early 70's, and the engineer told me that he planned the floor of the store to be three inches above the 1964 flood level.)
Memory number two was Paul & Mom & I taking his boat for a ride. We put in there below the barn and went up past Foy's bend. Bits and chunks of road and fields stuck out of the water, but we had no trouble running the boat on or parallel to the road.
I took a lot of slides with a Mercury 35mm split-frame camera but when I had them developed, Guest's Photo Art conveniently lost them. I had recorded the water levels on a lot of the farm homes and buildings.
Memory three - the water backed up in Ashley creek and it overflowed the banks in several places. The draw north of our house and much of the field flooded, with water getting as close to the house as the ditch by the driveway. The same thing happened at Streits, with the water flowing over the bank into the pothole south of the house, filling the west end of the draw in the Handcock place and finally spilling over and washing out the dike in the middle of that draw and flooding the east end of the draw. This water overflowed the road and flooded the bottom of the old Potato cellar on Darel's and drowned all of their young pigs - Dad & Darel were using it as a farrowing house for the sows who were about to give birth or who had just given birth.
This was the biggest result of the flood in my life - they could not make their mortgage payment afterward and the bank foreclosed on that operation. The good part of this was that Dad, after he got over it a bit, was much more relaxed and somewhat easier to get along with. The partnership with Darel was not all smooth sailing. Maybe more on this later.
Memory 4 - Dad, Mom & I were out on the slough in the boat at the height of the flood when we heard someone yelling for help. Some young guys were drifitng down the river in a boat with a dead motor. There was a little chunk of dry land near where Benny Louden's house now sits, so I dropped Mom & Dad off there and went out into the river, got a rope from their boat to ours and towed them ashore at Louden's, then went back and got Mom & Dad. I remember rafts of foam riding like soapsuds (and maybe they were!) on the crest of the river and the mud colored water was like what I saw later on in Vietnam.
No older houses out in the valley got wet - the folks that built them recognized the possibility of flooding and usually built on the highest part of the land. Most, but not all, of the farmers didn't evacuate but stayed with their homes.
The flood made a lot of changes. Fishing in the slough was never the same and the grouse in the riverbank thickets disappeared. Most of the old cars and trucks that hed been dumped over the river bank up on Dutch Hettinger's (now Seabaugh's) were washed up into the fields, there was wood and other debris in all the flooded fields.
A lot of water stayed behind when the flood receded - it took a long time for the puddles to evaporate or soak into the already saturated ground. Parts of the road into town were like dikes, with water on both sides in the fields.
There was a sizable pond left in our field next to Vic's lane, and I was riding on the back of the tractor - feet on the hitch bar, hands on the hydraulic lines - while Dad was driving. Being very much a kid, I had picked up a rock and when we went by the pond I threw it in. I didn't think anything more about it till Dad started telling folks there were fish in the pond - he saw one jump as we went by on the tractor! Did I ever 'fess up about the rock? Nope!
Donal Grant was living on the west side of what is now Demersville road just north of the bridge, and ended up with four or five feet of water in his house. He hired me to help him shovel mud and rebuild the foundation under the house. Somewhere I have a pic of Mom posing with her finger pointing to the water line on Donal's picture window.
Speaking of tractors - here are a couple of flashbacks! A passenger on a tractor usually rode standing on the back like I described above. Dad & I were headed home for lunch from the hayfield at Darel's, and I planned on beating him into the house so I waited till he cut the throttle right in front for the turn into the driveway and then stepped off the hitch backwards. I didn't count on how fast we were going - I somersaulted merrily a couple of times and got a nice road rash. He beat me into the house, shaking his head at me.
Once I was told to take the tractor home after haying ended at Buck Weaver's for the day, and being dumb and impatient I was going much too fast. The tractor had an open metal box welded on behind the seat for fast access to tools, and I hit a frost bump in the road hard enough to put all four wheels in the air and bounce most of the tools out of the box. After the tractor & I got done bouncing and I had the tools picked up and put away, I was in NO hurry to go on home - I just poked along!
Tractors. I was talking to Vic, who was sitting on his tractor taking a break with the engine idling. I decided it would be funny to pull off a spark plug wire and see what he did. Advice! NEVER grab a plug wire where it is attached to the plug! Vic laughed for a long time about the way I jumped and screamed when I got the full benefit of the spark output.
More rambles later.
TBC
- HOM: Quick Vic
- A very quick Vic story.
1. Vic hated magpies for many reasons, most of them dealing with their destructive habits and their uncaring mutilation of young or sick animals.
2. When Vic was in the ICU, after the unsuccessful cancer operation but before he died, he apparently lapsed into unconsciousness. The family was discussing his burial arrangements and was wondering what he would want, if anything, on his tombstone.
3. The heart monitor was furnishing its beep.........beep.........beep.........beep background to the conversation when a nephew said, tongue-in-cheek, that engraving a pair of magpies on his headstone might be a good idea. When he said that, the monitor switched to a beepbeepbeepbeepbeep rythmn. Vic may not have been responding verbally, but it was obvious he was listening!Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 08:05pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Hits & Misses
- My marksmanship, like my memory, has alway been a hit-or-miss proposition.
I was a bird hunter before I was a deer hunter, and the very first time I hunted deer alone I did one of those memorably stupid things that have been a hallmark of my life.
I left Grandma's house and headed north along the creek one foggy morning and was walking through some waist-high grass and brush when a rooster pheasant took off right in front of me. Remember what I said about training taking over under stress? Just like I had done dozens of times before, I threw up the gun and shot the pheasant. In midair. In midflight. With a .30-30 rifle.
It was a great shot, the problem was that there wasn't a lot left of the bird and any deer that had been around were long gone. I got teased about that shot for a long time.
(Grandma had a little cat, nearly a kitten, that loved to hunt. One day there was a big ruckus in the middle of this same grass/brush patch, and she looked up in time to see an enormous pheasant struggle into a take off with the little cat hanging on to its rear end. When the cat turned loose and dropped off the pheasant went into overdrive getting out of there.)
I hunted alone one evening back on Weaver's island, and was sitting along one side of a pasture when a buck walked out of some trees on the other side. By this time I had done a lot long-range shooting with a .22 so once again training took over and messed me up. I held a foot or so over the buck's back to compensate for the bullet drop and touched off a shot. Unfortunately a .30-30 doesn't require as much hold-over as a .22 rimfire does - the bullet went exactly where I aimed and broke off a limb that landed on the buck's back. The last I saw of him was a white streak off in the timber.
I was a pretty good shot when the target was close up and I had to shoot fast, like at a grouse taking off in the thornapple thickets. It was when I had time to do more than just react and started thinking about ballistics that I would make most of my misses.
Other memorable shots? Standing on the bridge by Grandma's with my .22. I saw a duck coming down the creek about three feet off the water. It passed under the bridge and was headed on north when I made a best-guess calculation and shot at it. The duck was around 75-80 yards away when the bullet hit it and it went down. I suspect it died of surprise!
Jim Pierson & I took a trip up the North Fork drainage one summer and did a little plinking with my .22, a Weatherby XXII. Jim wanted to try it out, so he walked up the road about fifty yards and set up an empty plastic .22 ammo box, then walked back. When he got to me, he turned, brought the gun up, and fired before it was much above waist height. He hit the box dead center and shattered it!
I was totally impressed until he finished bringing the gun up, peered through the scope, and then muttered "Damn light trigger pull! First the gun goes off accidentally and now I can't even find the box in the scope!" When I got my laughter choked down to the point where I could tell him what happened, he didn't believe me until I showed him the broken box.
(Flashback - or forward - to college. Don Hoodenpyle & I went out into the desert to plink a bit and were setting up some junk to use as targets when a rabbit took off from under a piece of cardboard as he was picking it up. Don drew and fired and nailed the rabbit - and waited thirty years to confess to me that he had grabbed the revolver with one hand wrapped around the cylinder and the powder escaping for the barrel/cylinder gap branded his hand pretty thoroughly.)
Let me add another "Don" story to this - he always kept a pistol loaded with shot shells in his house for defense. One day his wife, Sandy, called him and asked him how to load the gun. He told her she didn't need to load it, it already was loaded. She said "Not anymore!"
They had been remodeling the house and Sandy had looked up in time to see a snake wriggle in through a hole and into the living room.She emptied the gun, got the snake - and the TV, and the table, and the wall, and...
Anyway, back to the North Fork! I made the second "miracle shot" of the day. We stopped at a little lake, and far down the other shore were some birds. I popped a shot at them which landed just past them and scared them winging down the lake towards us just above the water. I shot again and the bullet hist just behind them. They flared up, at around 150 yards, and I fired once more. Thud, the bullet hit one that was probably 50 feet up in the air, it pinwheeled down, dead. Jim turned to me and said "Don't you dare tell anyone about that shot - because I saw it and I STILL don't believe it!"
See? The luck runs both ways!
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 03:13pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Fact or Fiction?
- Let me insert the standard CYA disclaimer here - Any Similarity or Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead in This Blog is Purely Coincidental.
Read this for fun, not facts!Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 12:06pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Family Deaths
- Aunt Minnie was my favorite aunt when i was growing up, always sweet and fun, but she'd had some hard times. Her husband committed suicide at home when he was in his late 30's.
Another death I remember was Uncle August Isch. I was staying at Grandma's. Rudy's son Dale was there too. We were in bed when the phone rang downstairs, so he slipped out of bed and eavesdropped through the vent over the stove. It was a call to tell the family that Granmda's brother August had drowned while fishing at McWinegar slough, apparently when he tipped or fell out of a rubber raft. I think August was a WWI vet, though he never talked about it at all. Traditiopn says one of my uncles set off a friecracker in the house and August dove headfirst under a table.Tags: | Edit Tags Monday February 25, 2008 - 10:53am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Vic
- I haven't mentioned Vic much yet. Vic Bjornrud was more of a friend than a father figure, though his daughter & I were born on the same day.
I knew Vic when I was little - he & Mom were good friends, and his older brothers were good friends of Ian's - but I really didn't get acquainted with him till I was in high school. He owned property up near Columbia Falls as well as his old family farm that adjoins ours to the northwest, and lived on the CF property, but in the early 60's his house caught fire. He and his family moved into Grampa Handcock's old house for a few years after that happened.
Vic was Mom's age, but a kid at heart who loved hunting and fishing and laughter, and we got to be good friends.
I could write another book just about him, but I will try to cover the highlights here.
Vic had two older brothers, and during prohibition the family ran a still and sold the whiskey in town. The way it usually worked, or at least Vic thought so, was that he ended up tending the still and doing all the work while brothers Hans & Roy delivered the alcohol, collected the money, and then spent it partying.
When the whiskey was aging in the barrels, they kept a can of a tarry medication handy, so if the feds showed up they could pour it into the whiskey and claim it was just sheep dip.
There was a false alarm that ended their operation, though. Vic's dad was home, and was tipped off that the feds were on their way out, so he contaminated the barrels, took the still apart, and buried the pieces out in the field. The excitement made him have a stroke which rendered him incapable of telling or showing where the still was buried, so it is still out there somewhere. Vic searched for it off and on for years with no luck.
Vic loved wildlife. loved to watch the animals and birds. In his younger days he hunted for survival, so there was no real thrill for him in most hunting, it was just like grocery shopping, but more interesting.
The exception was geese! The honkers could make his hands shake and he loved hunting them. I spent a lot of hours in blinds with him waiting while he coaxed the geese in.
Vic was an exceptional shot, the result of great eye/hand coordination and extended practice as a youngster who fired hundreds of rounds a week at game and targets. I rarely saw him miss, and when he did miss it was usually a goose.
He missed once that wasn't his fault, though. He had his old lab, Sheba, in the pit with him and when the geese finally came in she was as excited as he was. When he stood up to shoot she jumped up too - and slammed her nose into his groin! I was shooting, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the barrels of the ten gauge he was using suddenly jerk straight up and swing wildly as they went off.
Pheasant shooting was an example of Vic's normal shooting ability. He would take hid old Winchester model 06 .22 and ride the combine during harvest. When a rooster would flush he would shoot it down in mid-flight, using the .22 as effectively as most folks used a shotgun.
He & I went into a store together to get shotgun shells. I went through the checkout first and bought ten boxes. Vic bought one box, and explained to the clerk it was all he needed because he was ten times as good a shot as I was. It was hilarious, but true. I remember hunting with him when we flushed a big rooster. I missed it three times, then Vic casually brought up his gun, fired once, and nailed it dead. And grinned.
Every deer and elk I saw him shoot was shot in the head so no meat would be wasted. He never missed.
We were shooting at a target with a scope sighted rifle of mine. I shot at the bullseye, Vic shot at the flies that landed on the target - and hit them.
He told me I was a competent shot, but not a great shot. Later on I will tell of a few of my luckier shots, to compensate for the misses I have written about.
I made one great shot with him. I had just gotten a Remington in the then-new .22-250 caliber. Vic was working back along the creek so I took it back and showed it to him. He decided to try it and popped off an offhand shot at a merganser way up the creek. The gun shot flatter than he was used to so he shot a little over it and scared it into the air towards us, so Vic handed me the rifle and said "Shoot it!". When the merganser went by us about 5 feet in the air and about 50 yards away, I swung and fired. All I could see in the scope was a red blur - the high velocity bullet literally exploded the duck when it hit. Vic laughed till the tears ran over that.
More Vic later - this is enough for today.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 24, 2008 - 08:37pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Streit Flashbacks
- Grandma Streit's house had a big old Ashley wood stove in the living room. It loaded from the top and had a little vent lid at the bottom front for lighting and controlling the draft. It would glow red and put out tons of heat, and there was a grill above the stove to let the heat into the upstairs bedrooms.
In one of my klutzy moments as a little kid, I managed to fall and lay my forearm aginst the hot stove, resulting in vaseline and bandages and tears.
In later years, she had an oil furnace in the basement and I was safer.
The basement (cellar?) also contained the cream separator, and here is a bit about it: "The DeLaval Separator Company, which was established in the USA in 1885, was one of Alfa Laval’s first global sales companies. The company, founded in Sweden in 1883, was based on the invention of the first continuously operating cream separator by Gustav de Laval. This mechanical cream skimmer eliminated the tedious task of hand skimming milk for farmers, and business boomed in the USA where it was popular with farmers in New York State and New England."
I watched Bill clean the plates in that old separator many times, and to my surprise found myself doing the same job for the USN. To quote once again: "A shortage of lubricating oil during World War II stimulated the development of the oil separator and led to the development of Alfa Laval’s industrial separators. The DeLaval Separator Company was an important supplier to the U.S. Navy. Still today, Alfa Laval is a well-known name in the marine industry."
Yup - the diesel engines used the same setup by the same company!
They processed their eggs in that cellar too, just like Mom did.
When I was quite little, they added on to the house and put in indoor plumbing. One of my more embarrassing moments as a little kid was using that bathroom. I was getting rid of a lot of excess fluid into the toilet when Grandma heard me, walked in, said "Turn that water off when you get done. OH! Well, never mind!" Didn't bother her, bothered me, makes me smile now.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 24, 2008 - 09:50am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Entry for February 24, 2008
- Tags: | Edit Tags Sunday February 24, 2008 - 09:28am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Ashley Creek
- On another hunt, Paul and I walked up the west bank of Ashley creek through the neighboring farms, and stopped and took a break near a wide spot in the creek. I walked up and looked over the bank and a big flock of mallards that had been huddled against the bank took off. I emptied my shotgun at them and the three shots bagged my full limit of ducks and a lot of Paul's.
Another time we hunted down the creek late in the season, walking on the ice. I was pretty nervous about breaking through the ice, but Paul just told me to walk in his tracks and I'd be okay. Trouble was, I outweighed Paul by 30 pounds. CRACK! SPLASH!
Luckily only one leg went through and I dropped sideways on to thicker ice. Paul thought that was pretty funny, and thought it was even funnier when I kept following him down the creek - crawling on my belly on the ice.
(Flashback: when I was little, a man named Dewey Damon lost control of his pickup on the icy road. It slid, hit the bridge rail, flipped over and landed upside down on the ice in the creek with the cab submerged. He drowned trying to get to open water.
I had to stay at Grandma's with Mom while the men worked to recover his body, and I remember Mom being angry because some of the neighbor kids were skating on the ice while the men worked. She thought it was dangerous and disrespectful. This episode gave me great respect for ice and its dangers!)
Another Ashley Creek memory - Gordon and I and his brother-in-law Joe hunted along the bank behind Ballengers. Joe walked out on a log sticking out into the creek, and was balancing nicely on it when a duck took off. He fired, missed the duck, fell in.
Another memory. It was opening day of duck season and Paul hadn't purchased his own shotgun yet and was using my old single-shot .410. I noticed that when he shot the little gun seemed to kick awfully hard but I reallized why it looked that way when Paul, in a hurry, didn't close the gun completely before he fired. His shoulder jerked back and the muzzle flipped up, but all the gun did was go "C LICK". That's when Paul realized he was flinching, and was one of those episodes I.thought was funny and he didn't.
(Side note: I bought the little .410 as a gift for Dad, but I used it far more than he did. In later years he bought a Thompson/Center .410 pistol to carry on the tractor and used it for pest control.)
I think that when I was growing up Ashley Creek was my favorite spot on earth. I still love the creek, but the farms have changed, the people have changed, and life itself has changed, so the magic I knew there is gone.Tags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 08:53pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Coming Soon!
- Hardcover
7th Heaven by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
The Age of Shiva by Manil Suri
And Sometimes Why by Rebecca Johnson
Becoming Holyfield: A Fighter's Journey by Evander Holyfield with Lee Gruenfeld
Before Green Gables: The Prequel to Anne of Green Gables by Budge Wilson
Betrayal by John Lescroart
The Black Dove: A Holmes on the Range Mystery by Steve Hockensmith
Black Olives by Martha Tod Dudman
Burn Zone by James O. Born
Cadillac Orpheus by Solon Timothy Woodward
Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam by Pope Brock
The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation by Philip Shenon
Dakota by Martha Grimes
Death of a Gentle Lady: A Hamish Macbeth Mystery by M.C. Beaton
Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews
The Eye of Jade: A Mei Weng Mystery by Diane Wei Liang
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
The First Patient by Michael Palmer
Friend of the Devil by Peter Robinson
Gardens of Water by Alan Drew
The Ghost War by Alex Berenson
A Grave in Gaza: An Omar Yussef Mystery by Matt Beynon Rees
His Illegal Self by Peter Carey
Hope's Boy by Andrew Bridge
Ice Trap by Kitty Sewell
An Incomplete Revenge: A Maisie Dobbs Novel by Jacqueline Winspear
The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
The Invisible by Andrew Britton
John by Niall Williams
The Konkans by Tony D'Souza
L.A. Outlaws by T. Jefferson Parker
The Labrador Pact by Matt Haig
Lady Killer by Lisa Scottoline
Lady Macbeth by Susan Fraser King
Leading Lady by Heywood Gould
Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined America by Allen C. Guelzo
Manic: A Memoir by Terri Cheney
Memory by Philippe Grimbert
The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
My Liar by Rachel Cline
The Night Following by Morag Joss
Notorious by Michele Martinez
Obedience by Will Lavender
The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
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Song Yet Sung by James McBride
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Souvenir by Therese Fowler
The Spa by Fay Weldon
Split Estate by Charlotte Bacon
Stalked by Brian Freeman
Standing Still by Kelly Simmons
Stranger in Paradise: A Jesse Stone Novel by Robert B. Parker
Strangers in Death by Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb
Taking the Hill: From Philly to Baghdad to the United States Congress by Patrick J. Murphy with Adam Frankel
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead by David Shields
Unknown Means by Elizabeth Becka
What Never Happens by Anne Holt
Where the Heart Leads: From the Casebook of Barnaby Adair by Stephanie Laurens
Why Women Should Rule the World: A Memoir by Dee Dee Myers
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Have You Found Her: A Memoir by Janice Erlbaum
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Another Thing to Fall: A Tess Monaghan Novel by Laura Lippman
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Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana by Anne Rice
City of the Sun by David Levien
Compulsion: An Alex Delaware Novel by Jonathan Kellerman
The Cure for Modern Life by Lisa Tucker
Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz
Dead Time by Stephen White
The Death Dealer by Heather Graham
Death Walked In: A Death on Demand Mystery by Carolyn Hart
Dreamers of the Day by Mary Doria Russell
Fall of Frost by Brian Hall
Falling into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl by Wendy Merrill
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8 Lee
From Harvey River: A Memoir of My Mother and Her Island by Lorna Goodison
Genghis: Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden
The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson
The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham
Killer Heat by Linda Fairstein
Lush Life by Richard Price
The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace by Aaron David Miller
Olive Kitteridge: A Novel in Stories by Elizabeth Strout
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Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time: The Building of the Panama Canal by Matthew Parker
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Salvage by Jane F. Kotapish
Seen It All and Done the Rest by Pearl Cleage
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Three Girls and Their Brother by Theresa Rebeck
Vienna 1814: How the Conquerors of Napoleon Made Love, War, and Peace at the Congress of Vienna by David King
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Where Are You Now by Mary Higgins Clark
The Woman Who Wouldn’t by Gene Wilder
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The Finder by Colin Harrison
The Forgery of Venus by Michael Gruber
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Home: A Memoir of My Early Years by Julie Andrews and Cokie Roberts
The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story by Michael Hastings
Ladies of Liberty: The Women Who Shaped Our Nation by Cokie Roberts
Lambrusco by Ellen Cooney
Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
Machine by Peter Adolphsen
Madness: A Bipolar Life by Marya Hornbacher
The Miracle at Speedy Motors: The New Novel in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series by Alexander McCall Smith
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Quicksand by Iris Johansen
The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal by Lily Koppel
A Remarkable Mother by Jimmy Carter
River of Heaven by Lee Martin
The Rosetta Key by William Dietrich
Searching for Paradise in Parker, PA by Kris Radish
Shadow of Power: A Paul Madriani Novel by Steve Martini
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South of Shiloh by Chuck Logan
Split: A Memoir of Divorce by Suzanne Finnamore
The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale
The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman
Trauma by Patrick McGrath
Twenty Wishes: A Blossom Street Book by Debbie Macomber
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Wicked City by Ace Atkins
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Split: A Memoir of Divorce by Suzanne FinnamoreTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 02:13pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Pigeons
- The bane of a farmer's existence.
Pigeons love old barns and graneries for the food and shelter they offer. Farmers hate pigeons because of the mess they leave behind. Think of the bottom of a parrot's cage, but 50 feet long and 30 feet wide and six inches deep in the middle with droppings. In the course of a year a lot of hay or grain would be contaminated and wasted, so some of the neighbors encouraged me to keep the pigeon populations down.
At Grandma's, Bill would supply me with .22 ammo and the use of his Winchester model 72 with the Weaver B6 scope to shoot pigeons and then Grandma would have me gather up the ones I harvested so she could cook them.
There were a line of outbuildings that formed part of the barnyard on the south side, and I used to hide in them and wait for a shot.
(As an aside, one of those old buildings was a shop, and in it there was an old manual drill press I would love to own today. I have never seen one like it again.)
Jimmy & Buck Weaver never furnished me anything but access, but I was always welcome at their barns when I had my shotgun or .22 along.
Pigeons were a problem in town too. Dad used to laugh at old Jack McCarthy, who owned Jack's Tavern. Jack lived on Center street by the Equity elevators and would put out feed for the pigeons. Dad laughed because the Equity was putting out feed for them too, right across the street, but what the Equity put out was poisoned.
Jack's tavern, by the way, sat at the corner of Main & Second. It burned some years ago and the spot is now a parking area. I spent a lot of time in there with Uncle Bill when I would go to town with him. Jack sold fishing tackle and guns there as well as alcohol, a situation that never caused problems but that would never be allowed in these days of anal PC.
Paul; bought his hunting rifle there when he came home. a Winchester model 70 Featherweight in .308. He brought it over to the house to show it to me. I got my first fishing tackle there too.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 01:52pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - HOM: Hunting Hodgepodge
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This is a mix of trips between 1962 when i first hunted and the fall of 1971 after I got out of the Navy.
I shot my first deer with Paul.
He bought a 14' Herter's fiberglass boat (the Resorter) and a Scott-Atwater motor of somewhere between 10 and 20 hp. He kept it in the creek for hunting, and we were in it and headed up the creek for a duck hunt when we saw deer on the bank. We went back home, traded shotguns for rifles, and went back. I dropped Paul off where the deer had been and then went on up the creek to the end of Bill's pasture and waited.
The deer moved out ahead of Paul towards me, running. The buck saw me, jumped in, and swam the creek. It looked farther away than it really was so I didn't shoot at it. Next up was the big doe, who went flying up the creek bank opposite me. Five shots later, she was out of range and unscathed. Last up was the smallest doe. My shot number six hit her back foot and she tripped and fell, shot number seven, the last in the gun went into her neck for an instant kill.
Paul said he never knew anyone could work a lever action so fast - and so poorly! I got a lot of teasing over my buck fever, but at least I had gotten my first deer.
I got my next deer a bit later with Gordon. I guess that in all the excitement I had forgotten to tag the first one, so he took me hunting up on Peter's ridge in his old Studebaker pickup.
We were poking along as we drove and another truck passed us. Just as that truck went out of sight its brake lights came on and a few seconds later there was a shot. We drove on up and found them with an elk they had just gotten.
Past there a few miles, some deer crossed the road ahead of us so we stopped, parked the truck, and went into the woods on foot. I jumped the deer first and it was kind of the same story - I ended up with an empty gun and a dead deer, and Gordon said he never knew anyone could work a lever action so fast - and so poorly! I thought four hits in seven shots at a running deer was okay, he didn't, since three of the four hits were just grazes that barely cut the deer's hair.
While we were dressing my deer out (Rather, Gordon was dressing it out and showing me how) when he looked up and saw another deer. He shot it and we went home victorious.
That ended my hunting for the year - Gordon made sure I tagged mine that time. (I have often said, Donal taught me how to hunt, but Gordon taught me sportsmanship.)
By the way, when Dad bought me the .30-30, Gordon was the first one I showed it to.
Dad went hunting with me a few times, usually with others, but we did take one trip down towards Thompson Falls that was just us. He & I & Gordon hunted together a few times, but usually it was just Gordon & me.
Dad went hunting with Paul up above Brown's Meadow and got separated. Mom was working at Sykes then and Dad had to be in town to pick her up. When Paul didn't show up, Dad drove around looking for him and then left for town to get Mom, then went home for the night.
Paul, in the meantime, came back to where the truck had been. When he realized Dad was gone, he hiked around and made sure he had been in the right spot, then hiked up to the top to the old lookout, now torn down, broke into it, and spent the night there.
Dad got Rudy and went back up the next morning looking for Paul and met him hiking down. Paul was furious, would not even accept a ride from him at first until Rudy talked him into getting in.
Paul went into town to the USFS offices, reported what he done, and paid for the damages. He didn't hunt with Dad after that.
Once Paul, Uncle Rudy, Rudy's father-in-law Kirk and I went hunting on Thomopson river. I shot a big doe, no one else got anything. Somewhere i have a few photos of that trip.
My ambition was to shoot a buck and Donal and Gordon cooperated with me on that but without success.
Gordon. We were were headed up Peter's Ridge again, this time in my Jeep, when we saw a nice buck on my side. I eased the door open and crawled out to shoot and about the time I was ready Gordon decided to step out and give me backup. He forgot that his door had an ear-splitting squeak, so when he opened it it spooked the buck. He felt awful.
To make up for it, a few miles later we saw a big doe. It was on Gordon's side but he refused to shoot it because he had messed up my chance. Naturally I proceeded to step out and miss it several times as it ran off.
We were up on Firefighter Mountain hunting in the snow on a foggy, bleary day. Gordon saw a deer and shot it. While he was getting his stuff together I walked out to the deer - which was MUCH closer than it had looked. It was a lot smaller than we thought too!
I was standing over it when Gordon was walking up and asked me where he hit it. I held the deer up head high in my left hand, pointed with my tight, and said "Right here!" The look on his face was priceless. We stopped at the F&G checking station on the way out and the F&G guy asked Gordon how what he had shot it with, and then asked how he had managed to get such a big bullet into such a tiny creature.
Gordon, Dad & I went over to Townsend to hunt once for a few days. I knew the game warden there, Jim Bird, and he advised us as to the best areas. We set up Gordon's tent in his yard as a base and hunted for several day.
The first day we saw deer everywhere, so many we got picky about what we would shoot. Of course, after that the deer all disappeared.
I jumped a buck in the timber, missed it three time as it ran in the trees. Dad heard the shots, asked Gordon if he thought it was a distress signal. Gordon said no, three shots was about as many as I could get off at a deer in that timber.
We had a great time but didn't get anything. On the way back, Gordon was driving. There was a stick in the road and he swerved to miss it and hit it dead center. Dad congratulated him on his skill, cause an average driver would have missed it. Gordon took the ribbing with good humor. That was also the trip when we were exploring some roads and I was driving. We hit a dead end on a skid trail on a steep hillside and there was no wide spot to turn. The area below the road was somewhat open, so Dad pointed down and said "You have four wheel drive - back in there!"
I stuck the Jeep in low range 4x4 and proceeded to do just what he suggested - though I guess he was kidding and it upset Gordon a bit. Anyway, it was touch and go with a lot of spinning and clawing on the Jeeps's part, but we got back up on the road and headed back out.
Fun times.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Saturday February 23, 2008 - 12:22pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
Hodgson: After I left the school increased in size to the point that it needed remodeling. I am not sure what was done inside, but a basement was added. Shortly after that it was hit by the consoliodation wave and incorporated into the Somers schol district. The old school furnishing were given away to the community so I snagged the old dictionary and the globe.
That old Webster's resided, laying flat and opened, on the top of a low cabinet at the north end of the room next to the pencil sharpener. The teachers used to give us a lot of assignments that made us look things up in it. Now it sits on my shelf at home, tattered and torn and chock full of memories.
Grandma's place. The Streit farm. What a bunch of fun and happy memories I have of there. If I could go back in time, it would be to one of those great afternoons or evenings I spent there. I miss those peoples and times.
TBC
Ask Dr. Helen: Is Male Bashing Curable?
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“We’re tired of the way the media portrays us as either abusive, career-driven, slovenly, or one of the myriad of other male stereotypes,” one married man complains to Dr. Helen Smith. She sympathizes.
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So many of you have emailed me and commented in response to my last column, Single Men in Never-Neverland, that I decided to follow up in a similar vein with another letter from a married man who wonders if his “maleness” is worth fighting for:
Dr. Helen,Dear Married Man:I am a 30 year-old married man. I have been with my wife for eight and a half years, and we’ve been married for five of those. Throughout my youth I was surrounded by women who, to be diplomatic about it, weren’t of the best opinion when it came to me. As a result, my mother, aunts, and to a small extent my older sister, would constantly make both my father and myself question our worth simply because of our gender. I’m more than willing to put it out there that karma is a fickle thing and that many members of my gender might deserve this type of abuse, but I’d also like to comment that because of this underhanded and maybe unconscious abuse by the women in my youth, I tend to not talk to them that often. Of course then I get chided for not keeping in touch with my family.
It is also, with no small amount of smugness, that I remind my mother that every woman in my family has been divorced at least once and all of the men in the family are on their first marriage; we must be doing something right. I’ve never cheated on my wife - or anyone, for that matter. I was only with a handful of other women before dating her. I still believe that there are very noble things about my gender but, as you mentioned, there seems to be a law of diminishing return when it comes to being a man.
A few years ago Lionel Richie allowed his wife to knock him around a bit. When the media started to question his masculinity he reminded them that it didn’t matter what line of defense he took, the media would turn it on him; if he hit his wife back in defense or retaliation, he’d become a woman-beater and abusive husband, but if he sat there and took it, he’s labeled as less than a man. It doesn’t matter what we do, we’re vilified through the narrow focus of society and the media. The world has changed and it’s folly to believe that our gender hasn’t changed with it.
While I understand and celebrate things such as the civil and equal rights movements, I deplore the animosity toward men that, I feel, was birthed from them. Despite this, I still believe that there are honorable men in the world today. I still believe that there are good men out there, despite the media’s attempts to tell me otherwise. I still believe that men are a necessary part of society, despite what science is beginning to tell us; that sperm has been crafted from stem cells was an inevitability. I believe that for a very long time men have held up the world by both altruism and greed. I believe that the equilibrium that is gender equity has shifted, and now the onus of responsibility has fallen - not out of disrespect - to women. For better or worse it’s an arguable proposition that men have been integral to the advancement of the human race in many, many different ways. I’m starting to believe that the responsibility for the world may now lie with women not because the honorable and noble men of the world are ignorant or lazy, but because we’re tired.
We’re tired of the way the media portrays us as either abusive, career-driven, slovenly, or one of the myriad of other male stereotypes. We’re tired of the barrage of abuse that we may or may not deserve. And we’re tired of always having to be the ones to carry the weight of the human race. We’ve chosen a different path than our forefather Sisyphus, however; rather than keep pushing that weight up the hill we’ve chosen to cast it to the ground to see who will pick it up. Very many women have risen to the task and succeeded admirably, but it has never been fashionable to criticize a woman for not picking up that weight whereas it is always socially acceptable to criticize my own gender. In seeing who has stepped up to the task at hand, it is important to maintain a critical eye toward both genders, however, and perhaps for the first time the other gender can see that it’s really not as easy as history and the media has made it seem.
The media is singularly focused on the damage that society inflicts upon the feminine psyche and form but pays no attention to the unending attack on the psychology of the male gender. So why fight it? Apathy is much easier than fighting a losing battle and it is, indeed, a losing battle when most of the world is against you. So why fight? If women want the responsibility of running the world, then you can have it. I’m a good husband, a hard worker, and a good friend. And that’s all that I need to be. I don’t blame any of my hardships on anyone other than myself, but I will not abuse myself and dwell in these stereotypes and dim modes of thought.
So now that all of that is out of the way, and despite the way it sounds all of that stream of consciousness above sounds a hell of a lot less self-indulgent in my head than it probably does in the ether, my question for you is this:
Why should we fight this battle when the odds are so weighted against us?
[Readers, the above letter is rather long, but I left it in its mostly unedited form because I believe the writer raises some very good points that I would like to address.]
First, let’s change this question from how the collective, “all men”— to the individual—you—can learn to handle negative stereotypes of men in the culture. It really does sound tiring to think that one has to fight a battle just for being male in our society. Having dealt with a lifetime of putdowns for your male gender from one of the most important persons in your life—your mother—it is no wonder you feel like Sisyphus pushing that rock up a hill. Your desire is to just give up, let women and the men who support them, take hold of the reins while you retreat and lick your wounds. Perhaps there is a middle ground between an all out “battle” and 100% retreat. I suspect part of your difficulty is a psychological one. You have a hard time dealing with the fact that someone who is supposed to love you is also making you miserable and doesn’t even seem to care! You mention that your mother may be doing this unconsciously, without awareness that she is hurting you. This may truly be the case (hard as it is to believe that someone is that unaware, but people can be dense). Start by giving her the benefit of the doubt.
Next time she starts saying derogatory things about you or other men, say politely, “Mom, it really hurts me when you say things like that about men. You may not be aware of how you are coming across but I feel like you don’t like me when you say that ‘all men are (fill in the blank).’ Please try to consider my feelings and refrain from saying bad things about men because you are also saying them about me. I know that you care about me and don’t want to hurt me that way.” With any luck, your mother will look upset or concerned and try to bite her tongue in the future. If she lapses once in a while, give her a bit of a break—just gently remind her again that she is hurting you with her statements.
But what do you do if she doesn’t respond at all? That is, she simply keeps up with the negative putdowns against you and your gender? The next step is, “Mom, you are an abuser. Until you learn some self-control, I cannot be around you except once in a while for perfunctory family holidays. If I am not around as much as you would like, you have chosen to keep me away with your sexist abusive attitude towards me.”
And mean it. Simply go to whatever obligatory family functions you must and do not allow her to “chide” you about not coming over more. Finally, it does not serve any psychological purpose to smugly tell the female family members that they are not so great at marriage. That sounds a bit passive-aggressive. Be direct. Let the female members of the family know how you feel about they are saying and make them take responsibility for it.
Now that we have looked at what you can do on an individual level with family, what about the greater world? Does it matter that you hear negative comments about men and should you do anything or just forget it? It depends on your personality. I am not the kind of person who can sit back when I hear toxic comments.
To give you an example, I was once at a Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant with my husband and daughter having dinner and listening to our pregnant waitress gush about her baby being due soon. “Do you know if you’re having a girl or boy?” I asked. “Oh, a girl, of course, we don’t need anymore men in the world!” Taken aback, I loudly said across the restaurant, “What do you mean, we don’t need ANY MORE MEN in the world? What an ugly sexist thing to say!” The waitress looked embarrassed and went slinking away, probably to the back where she spit in my food, but I didn’t care. I bet to this day, she will think twice before opening her mouth in such a nasty and utterly selfish way.
Okay, I felt good about that experience, but maybe you would not. Yet, I can’t help but think that aversive conditioning is not a bad way to react to people who think it is their God-given right to male bash. They do it because it is socially acceptable and there are not only no consequences for it, but often both men and women get kudos for “sticking it to the man.”
One thing, Married Man, that you must remember about human nature, (and especially women) is that most people are terrified of confrontation and will do anything to avoid it. They want to be liked or at least feel that they are a person worth liking. Make it unpleasant for them to let out their toxic tirades and they will stop—and it often takes so little effort. Notice that people in public places and the media rarely say anything derogatory about women. Why? It is socially unacceptable and they are afraid to. Make it costly for people to bash men and they will stop. Start with small steps—if all men and the women who gave a damn spoke up or told people to knock it off when the male bashing started, we would hear a lot less of it.
As far as the media goes, I like what Lionel Richie did in the case you mentioned of his wife beating him. He did not blame himself but nor did he blame his wife—for he knew that this would backfire. Instead, he put the media in a double bind, “It doesn’t matter what I do or say, I will be villainized.” He turned the focus away from himself and to the fact that men in our society can never do or say the right thing, no matter what. He spoke up for all men in that regard—and at least clearly stated the problem. And his career still seems to be on track.
The good news is that more and more men and women are turning away from the MSM and its negative approach to the world. There is so much alternative media now with talk radio, the internet, cable stations that cater to men and other sources of entertainment that one can easily find other like-minded individuals who can make you feel less alone and off-set some of the negative stereotypes you mentioned. I find myself getting upset when I watch a number of MSM shows and therefore, have a few funny sitcoms that I watch if I want to unwind. I rarely watch the regular channels because the propaganda is too much for me to tolerate.
Finally, you do not have to prove your “worth” to anyone. You mentioned that you are a good husband, worker, and friend. That is indeed, good enough. You are not the catalyst for all of the evil stereotypes that some misinformed people wish to project onto the male gender. Disavow yourself of that, for shouldering that burden would make anyone tired. Live your life in a way that brings you satisfaction and let the naysayers wallow in their inflexible negativity.
I could go on forever, but at the risk of boring anyone reading this, I will end with some questions for others to comment on and/or think about:
Is maleness worth fighting for, can the culture be “cured” of its malebashing nature, or is the fight just not worth the hassle? Would it be better to let women take over the burden of running things? Also, any personal experiences with negative male stereotypes and how you handled the situation would be welcome.
I guess I'll just cover the outline.
Gordon & Lois were born-again Christians. Not Bible-thumpers, not condemners, not self-righteous, but kind and loving and nonjudgemental people who lived their faith on a daily basis. Faith by example, the only effective testimony.
For years they extended the invitation to attend church with them but I refused. I claimed to be an agnostic.
One day when I was 16 I hit bottom in my life, a point where the best solution seemed to be dying. Instead, I took Gordon up on his offer of a ride to church. That event change the entire course of my life. It saved my life.
No. I am not going to give details. Many things that happened I can't express properly, some things I want to keep private, but most of my silence is going to be summed up in one sentence: I do not talk about my beliefs because I do not live up to them.
Gordon was a real father to me, and Lois became my "Other Mother" - with all the love of a mother tempered with wisdom and enough distance from me to be objective. Between them, they guided me and molded me into who I am today.
Gordon died in 1978. Shortly before he died he gave me the greatest compliment I have ever gotten - "All things considered, you've turned out all right." Yeah, I know, sounds like pretty faint praise, but from Gordon it meant a lot. It would take a book to tell how much he taught me by his words and most of all by his example.
Enough.
TBC
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- BrainDead
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- HOM: Gordon - The background
- Gordon was a Californio, born there right at the end of WWI. He grew up in a tough area of gangs and knife fights and had the scars and the mental and physical toughness to show for it.
He was a Coast Guard Hospitalman in WWII on a ship in the Pacific, worked in an insane asylum for a while and eventually became a policeman in San Bernardino.
He met his wife, Lois in a nightclub. Lois was working at an office in CA and some of the girls she worked with decided on a girl's night out. At the club, two groups of servicemen (Sailors & Marines, I think) simultaneously swung by their table to try picking them up and a fight ensued. Lois stood up, someone slammed into her, and she fell into the lap of the USCG HMC at another table.
The HMC was Gordon, his ship left the next day, they corresponded, and when his ship came back they got married, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1978.
He was a motorcycle cop, and took a medical retirement in 1960 after a lady ran a red light and hit his motorcycle broadside.
He told me a few stories of his LEO years. When he first walked a beat, he interrupted a robbery as the robber was climbing out a window. The robber pulled a gun and shot at him, but missed. Target training took over - Gordon took the classic pose of extended arm, feet wide apart, body angled 45 degrees from the target - cock, align sites, squeeze trigger, repeat. He didn't miss.
(Side note: when the fecal material hits the rotating blades, training takes over. Your body and mind go on automatic before you even have time to think. Good training builds good habits that keep you alive. When noted Border Patrol officer and national pistol champion Charles Askins Jr. went into his first gun battle, he carefully ejected the empties from his revolver into his hand and dropped them into his pants pocket, just as he been trained - NOT a survival trait. LEO training is much more reallistic and effective now.)
Another time Gordon cornered an armed man in a basement room and ordered him to drop his gun - not a good idea with a cocked pistol and a concrete floor and walls! The pistol fired and the bullet ricocheted all over the room. Gordon said it must have been over in a fraction of a second but he said it seemed like he and the crook stared into each other's eyes for minutes, waiting for that buzzing wild shot to hit one or the other of them. Luckily, it hit something inamate solidly enough to stop first.
One episode that gave him nightmares was coming upon a car wreck moments after it happened and seeing the head of an infant sitting upright on the pavement with the eyes and mouth still moving. Another was chasing another motorcycle one night on rural roads and the biker hit a cow.
When the lady that ended his carerr ran the red light, he saw her coming. He tried to stiff-arm the car and and jump off the bike but all he did was break his left arm and raise his left foot far enough for it to be crushed between the car bumper and the bike engine, then was thrown onto the curb hard enough to split his helmet and give him double vision for a while. He sat up, bloody and dazed, and said "Lady, I have to give you a ticket for running that light."
The prognosis was that he would never walk again, but it was wrong. He had always loved hunting and fishing and was able to do both in later years.
More Gordon later.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Thursday February 14, 2008 - 12:24pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Happy Valentine's Day!
- Tags: | Edit Tags Thursday February 14, 2008 - 11:00am (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
- HOM: Canasta
- The only card game I ever came close to mastering.
Grandma, Bill, Paul and sometimes Mom & Dad played this a lot, though Dad preferred Pinochle.
When the weather was bad I used to stay at Grandma's. The bus ran right by her house unless weather was so bad school was closed. Most of the evenings were spent playing Canasta with Paul & I usually partnered against Bill & Grandma and sometimes tempers flared pretty high.
One stunt I truly regret ended the Canasta games with the four of us. Bill used to get pretty vocal when he was losing and Paul had a tape recorder. Bad combination! There was a grate in the ceiling to let the heat into the upper floor where Bill & Paul's bedrooms were, so during a break in the game I went up, switched on the recorder and lowered the mike through the grate.
When the game ended, I went up, got the recorder, brought it down, set it on the table and played back the game, complete with Bill's cussing and accusations, Grandma's chiding, and Paul's laughing. Bill never played Canasta with me again - by the time he cooled off and forgot about it I was out of High School and away from home.
If I could, I would apologize to him right now - it never occurred to me that I shamed & embarrassed him. I only saw the humor at the time.
The last time I ever played Canasta was in college and I thoroughly got my butt kicked - so thoroughly I suspect my opponent was cheating, but that might be pride speaking.
TBCTags: | Edit Tags Wednesday February 13, 2008 - 04:57pm (MST) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
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